Racist Los Angeles City Council Part of Corrupt Capitalist System here ♦ Anti-Immigrant Propaganda Serves Capitalist Bosses here ♦
L. A. City Council, October 12, 2022
Racist L A. City Council: Part of Corrupt Capitalist System
“I hope I don’t offend anyone,” said Diana, “but it seems to me that it makes as little sense to believe in politicians as it does to believe in god. We don’t have any evidence that we can count on either.”
We were in a book club Zoom and had gone from the discussion of the cross-border unity of workers in Los Angeles before the Mexican Revolution, to talk about the protests at the recent Los Angeles City Council meeting.
A leaked audio recording had revealed Mexican-American politicians and a union official sharing racist, anti-black, antisemitic, anti-indigenous and homophobic comments in the context of schemes to redraw the lines for city council electoral districts.
Angry protestors filled the city council chambers.
Some speakers called these comments “disappointing and disheartening,” coming from those “we have looked up to…[who] had stood with the community time and time again.” They characterized these officials as “a few bad apples.”
Others were unsurprised by the comments which provide “further insight into why Black and brown residents of Los Angeles are dissatisfied with city leadership and labor leaders.”
All the speakers called for the resignation of those caught on tape. Some called for an investigation of the redistricting process. None of them raised larger issues about the legitimacy of the electoral process itself.
In the past two weeks we’ve talked with many friends who are angry but not surprised. A comrade and a colleague decided to investigate how much city councilors are paid.
“These city council people are paid $200,000 a year to be racist,” concluded a comrade. “It just shows that the system itself is corrupt and the people who are elected to run it are corrupt. It’s the system itself.”
It’s time to face something we’ve known for years. The City Council is just one more example of a governmental structure that functions for the capitalists, not for the working class. We need to build international solidarity, not small issues of reform. Politicians always exist to perpetuate racism in our society. It’s time to topple this system to the ground and build a new one so we can run this society.
—Comrades in Los Angeles (USA)
Racist Anti-Immigrant Propaganda Serves Capitalist Bosses
Recently, a few comrades – Boeing coworkers – were watching a baseball playoff game together and were disgusted and angered by a racist and xenophobic commercial.
A fascist group, led by former president Trump’s speechwriter and policy advisor and some of his former aides, has run these inflammatory ads. They assert that “over 5 million illegal immigrants” have entered the country during the current Democratic Party presidency. They claim that undocumented workers “are draining your paychecks, wrecking your schools, ruining your hospitals, threatening your family” and that “mixed among the masses are drug dealers, sex traffickers, and violent predators.”
What a load of lies! It is the profit-hungry bosses who cut the funding to schools and hospitals and flood neighborhoods with both illegal and prescription drugs so they can fill their for-profit prisons.
This sparked an exchange wherein one friend expressed that “the Republicans will say anything now. They used to try to sneak in their racism. Now, the fascism is right in your face.”
Clearly, the commercials are meant to feed the fires of racism by exploiting the fear and anger many US-born people feel today as the ruling class seeks to right its sinking capitalist ship by throwing workers overboard. Marginalizing and attacking groups of people is an easy way to reassure their base and it allows the true criminals – the capitalist bosses – to dodge responsibility. This is not a new tactic.
Rulers have blamed so-called “foreigners” for societal or systemic problems time and again in world history to explain losses in war, weak economies, social ills, epidemics of disease, the growth of rebellion, and the development of revolutionary movements.
The worker continued, “The Democrats are no better. They bring a knife to a gun fight because they don’t really want to win against fascism, just to get elected.”
Democrats and Republicans are two sides of the same coin. Both represent the interests of the ruling class. The only difference between them is the tactics and rhetoric they use to keep us producing, despite our exploitation.
We know that capitalism is in crisis worldwide and it is growing to the point of world war. We can choose to be afraid, or we can choose to lay the groundwork for the world we want and deserve. We must take it as our historical role to turn capitalist war into communist revolution. We can – and will – build a world where we will live by the principle “from each according to ability and commitment, to each according to need.”
—Comrade in the USA