FIGHT FOR COMMUNISM!
	International Communist Workers Party
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Arsonists have torched at least six black churches in North and South Carolina, Georgia, Tennessee and Ohio since Dylann Roof’s heinous massacre of nine black worshippers at Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal (AME) Church in Charleston, SC. 
This was the church that Charleston city officials burned in 1822 after discovering plans of the ex-slave Denmark Vesey for a massive rebellion of enslaved persons.  Vesey, a founder of Emanuel AME, preached a theology of armed insurrection against slavery.  The masters of Charleston had him and 34 other church members hanged. 
Racism – and the unscientific idea of human “races” – was invented by capitalists who profited hugely from the atrocity of chattel slavery.  Today we continue Vesey’s fight by mobilizing to end today’s main form of slavery:  capitalist wage slavery. 
US President Obama said in his eulogy of Emanuel AME’s pastor Rev. Clementa Pinckney that “None of us can or should expect a transformation in race relations overnight.”  That’s true.  Then he said, “If we can find grace, anything is possible.” 
Let’s get real.  Communism, and only communism, can end racism by destroying its material basis:  capitalism itself. 
Masses of black and non-black workers and youth have marched, rallied, and joined prayer vigils at AME churches nationwide.  The sharp contradictions in the black church are being exposed. 
On one hand, as Obama said, black churches are among the few institutions where black workers can temporarily escape the racism that permeates most work and other situations.  In church they are not disrespected for being and expressing themselves. 
And some black churches continue to foster anti-racist struggle. That’s why they continue to attract members — and racist attacks.
On the other hand, as historian Stacey Patton put it, black churches promote “the politics of forgiveness.” After every vile racist attack, black people are expected to express forgiveness instead of grief or rage.  They are promised a better world “in the next life.”  Obama outrageously preached that racist Roof was “being used by God.”
Forgiveness can mean refusing to be reduced to victimhood.  It can express moral superiority.  But the expectation of forgiveness imposes yet another huge psychological burden on those already most oppressed by racist capitalism.
We do not “forgive” terrorist Dylann Roof.  We do not “forgive” slavery or genocide.  We do not “forgive” the callous exploitation that most workers endure if they have a job, nor the grinding poverty they suffer if they don’t. 
But forgiveness isn’t the point.  The point is to rip out the roots of the system which continues to insult, to assault, to murder, to exploit black workers and all workers.  The point is to build a communist future in which racism is not accepted, not tolerated, and eventually not imaginable. 
Communism means building the world we long for in the here and now, not praying to see it after we die.  It means thousands, then millions, then billions of us taking collective responsibility for every aspect of society. 
Communist production and distribution won’t rely on money and markets.  Instead, we will organize everything through networks of comradely social relationships. 
Our goal will be to meet everyone’s needs:  basic material needs and, even more importantly, our need to be connected and respected, loved and fulfilled through meaningful work.

Building these relationships means tearing down the social walls that separate us today.  It demands that we deal frankly with incorrect assumptions about race and unintended racist slights that arise during the struggle for communism. 
To mobilize the masses for communism requires us to confront and defeat the racist ideas that the capitalist rulers intentionally use to divide us. 
Ending the wage system will enable us to end residential segregation and many other ways that racism permeates capitalist society.  This, however, will require continuing struggle against racist ideas and ways of doing things.
For example, racist capitalism places huge stress on black, immigrant and indigenous workers.  This stress intensifies or causes many health problems.  Those of us who are super-exploited today will likely need more health care early on in communism.  This won’t be “preferential treatment.”  It will be an application of “to each according to need.” 
Some sections of the working class have systematically been denied access to training for certain kinds of skilled work.  In the interest of thoroughly integrating workplaces, we will make a priority of recruiting them for on-the-job training.
Mobilizing the masses for communism won’t end racism overnight.  But every small action we take to build the International Communist Workers’ Party is a step toward a real solution.  Religion is not.
“As a nation, out of this terrible tragedy, God has visited grace upon us, for he has allowed us to see where we’ve been blind,” Obama declared.  “We’re all sinners. We don’t deserve it.” More than any policy or analysis, he said, we need “an open heart.” 
Many of us saw the terrible ravages of racism long ago. Many of us have opened our hearts to all our class brothers and sisters worldwide.  We need a communist analysis more than anything.  We deserve a communist world.
No individual is perfect, but CLASS SOCIETY is the original sin.  Mr. Obama, you and the capitalist rulers are the real sinners!  Whether we forgive you or not, we will put an end to your deadly racist system. 

>Dylann Roof wanted to start a “race war” but the US rulers do not want a race war.  They’re opportunistically using the horrific Charleston massacre to build a multi-racial patriotic mass movement.  They hope to win us to fight for their racist system in imperialist wars, up to and including world war. 
 So the “stars and bars” battle-flag of slavery is finally coming down.  In its place the rulers want us all to salute the “stars and stripes” battle-flag of US imperialism. 
Every stripe represents one of the thirteen original colonies.  All had legalized slavery.  Boston and New York City flourished from the slave trade every bit as much as Virginia and South Carolina. 
Every star stands for the expropriation and genocide of indigenous peoples of North America or Hawaii.
From Haiti to the Philippines, from Honduras to Palestine and beyond, the US flag has brought brutal exploitation and misery to the international working class. 
The US flag adorns uniforms of racist killer cops.  It decorates sheriffs who evict workers from their homes.  It flies over prisons where millions are incarcerated, many in long-term solitary confinement.  School children must salute it as they start each day of training and indoctrination to become obedient workers and soldiers.
Capitalists of every nation wave their flags to hide the exploitation of the working class and to rally troops for fratricidal wars.  Down with all of them!  Workers and soldiers worldwide must unite under the one Red Flag of revolutionary communism. 
--A Comrade

The ICWP leaflet on the massacre at the AME Church in Charleston sparked a good debate.
As we were talking about the first attacks on the Church (when Denmark Vesey was organizing his rebellion) we realized that the forces that attacked it didn’t ‘wave’ the Confederate flag but rather the original Betsy Ross, Stars and Stripes flag.
Treated with reverence in the bosses’ media and textbooks, that flag presented the most vicious racism the world had ever seen—village burning, land grabs and slavery. To the indigenous people it must have looked like the Al Qaeda flag does to us today. It was backed by a constitution Vesey and his comrades despised. The Constitution of Haiti—which banned slavery—was far more progressive. So important is the myth about the ‘heroic” birth of capitalism in the US that to this day our High School students are not made aware of the comparison.
The fact is that since the foundation of capitalist nations, all national flags have been soaked with workers’ blood. The only flag worth waving is the red flag of workers’ communist internationalism.
Then the conversation turned to the parishioners “forgiving” the racist murderer. “I can’t believe that,” a retired teacher who was raised under Jim Crow laws in the South said. “There’s no way I would forgive anyone who killed us while spew-ing forth those lies…especially within a day or two of the massacre!”
We then thought about the changes that had come about in the way we understood Christianity because those original AME parishioners weren’t about to forgive the slaveholders, they were going to slit their throats! The Spanish conquistadores didn’t forgive the indigenous people who refused to become Christians; they killed them, with Papal blessings. It seems the doctrine of forgiving is brought to the forefront when it suits the powers that be.
Like so many things Red Flag does, this leaflet was communism-in-action, communism today! Produced voluntarily, immediately and without charge, it provided us the platform to spark debates that undercut the ability of the system to spin mass reaction to events in ways that strengthen capitalism. As the leaflet said, how strong this communism-in-action is depends on you, the reader, joining us.
--Comrades in California

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