Damar Hamlin and the NFL Bosses: Capitalism’s Profit-Hungry Racism Destroys Workers’ Lives here ♦ It’s Not Just the NFL here ♦ Three Police Murders in Forty-Eight Hours Show Need to End Racist Capitalism here ♦
Los Angeles (USA), January 2023: Keenan Anderson’s sister and cousin lead press conference denouncing his execution by LA police
Damar Hamlin and the NFL Bosses: Capitalism’s Profit-Hungry Racism Destroys Workers’ Lives
RICHMOND, CA (USA), January 22—On January 2, while millions watched on television, National Football League (NFL) player Damar Hamlin (age 24) collapsed and went into cardiac arrest after making a routine tackle. He received CPR for nine minutes on the field before being rushed to the hospital.
After Hamlin was taken away, players were given five minutes to warm up and resume play. They refused. An hour later, NFL Commissioner Goodell announced that the game would be postponed. Some sports writers have called for Goodell’s firing. This won’t stop capitalism’s crimes against NFL workers.
The NFL is a racist, anti- working class, patriotic, and militaristic political tool of capitalism and among the world’s richest sporting leagues. Its thirty-two teams are owned by white male and female billionaires and millionaires and one Pakistani billionaire.
NFL football is a gladiator sport dependent on Black players’ bodies and minds. Seventy percent of the players are Black. Almost all players are from working-class or poor families.
The average NFL career is 3 1/2 years. If you are an NFL player for 3 1/2 years, right now you’ll make considerable money; but at what cost now and in your future?
NFL players have ten times more chronic encephalopathy (CTE) than the general population. This degenerative brain disease is caused by repeated hits to the head. The longer one plays football, the more head and brain injuries one suffers. Autopsies have found CTE in more than 300 former NFL players.
NFL players, compared to the general population, also have three times the rate of arthritis before age forty, are three times more likely to die from amyotrophic lateral sclerosis and are ten times more likely to be diagnosed with early dementia.
Once the dangers of CTE were exposed, the NFL (and youth teams) were forced to institute a few new rules about player safety. This has done very little to make the game safer.
NFL games are capitalist worksites. As elsewhere, workers (players) are injured and sometimes die where they work (play). An ambulance may be called, but the work must go on.
A few meaningless safety rules did not prevent 4,764 fatal work injuries in the US in 2020 alone. Just like other bosses don’t care about workers, NFL team owners don’t care about players. The bottom line is getting the job done; profits must be made. NFL’s media partners collectively pay around $12 billion a season to show games because they bring in huge audiences and ad revenues.
“This advertising money was the only reason the cameras were still rolling,” admitted a New York Times columnist. “We were watching a young man’s near-death be commodified in real time.”
Communists — like most people — look to sports to celebrate the powers of the body, not to systematically destroy them. Capitalism, however, sees sports as an entertainment business—a way to profit from working-class athletes while distracting the masses from the problems of capitalism.
Communism and Sports
Communism will unleash the creativity of the masses to organize athletics which promote physical, mental, and social health for all. Sports and exercise will be part of community life. They will emphasize collectivity, not competition. They will be for fun, to keep in shape, help build comradeship, and to prepare people to fight when needed.
Communists today can encourage each other to participate in exercise that emphasizes collectivity and allows everyone to participate according to their ability. We can also deepen our discussions among friends and family members who participate in organized sports and who watch athletic competition at all levels. Let’s write up these discussions for Red Flag.
It’s Not Just the NFL
Youth worldwide, especially Black and working-class youth, are left with broken bodies from pursuing the almost impossible dreams of becoming rich and famous professional athletes. In the US it’s football, basketball, and baseball. Elsewhere it’s soccer and cricket. Everywhere the capitalists are making money from these sports, while the players suffer.
The greatest damage that capitalist sports inflict on the working class is diverting the anger of millions away from the oppressive racist conditions imposed by capitalism. Instead of rebelling and seeking a revolutionary communist alternative, they spend their energy and creativity pursuing the illusion of a professional sports career.
Team sports can help young people learn cooperation and collectivity, but they often promote competitiveness and individualism. Athletes and spectators take the “us against them” mentality that competition creates to the workplace and the barracks. It becomes an obstacle to organizing on a class-conscious basis for communist revolution.
—Not a Fan of Pro Sports
Three Police Murders in Forty-Eight Hours Show Need to End Racist Capitalism
LOS ANGELES (USA), January 3— “They’re trying to George Floyd me!” yelled Keenan Anderson as Los Angeles police officers cold-bloodedly tased him to death.
Keenan was a 31-year-old Black high school English teacher in Washington, DC, and father of a six-year-old son. He was visiting family in Los Angeles.
The cops stopped him in the Venice neighborhood after a traffic accident. They held him down and electrocuted him five times in 42 seconds, sending 50,000 watts of electricity through his body each time—once for 30 seconds without stopping. Four and a half hours later, Keenan died of a heart attack.
Keenan Anderson was a much-loved and well-respected teacher and mentor to his students. His cousin, Patrise Cullors, was a co-founder of Black Lives Matter. There have been several demonstrations and press conferences, some in the pouring rain, against this racist murder.
In the same 48-hour period, the LAPD also killed Takar Smith and Oscar Sanchez. Shamika, Takar’s wife, called for help because he (a father of six) was in a mental health crisis. The police tased him and then shot and killed him.
Oscar Sanchez was also in a mental health crisis when police found him in an abandoned building where they shot and killed him. The US racist cops kill an average of three people every day!
Cullors and others call for having other agencies and not the police respond to traffic accidents and mental health crises. But these racist murders call for communist revolution to get rid of the wage system and the capitalists’ oppressive rule and exploitation of the masses..
As capitalist crisis and war intensify, so do racism and police terror. The police exist to enforce capitalists’ domination over the masses of workers and guarantee the bosses’ profits. They try to make sure the masses don’t rebel and especially that we don’t organize for communist revolution.
We need to mobilize for communism. We need to get Red Flag into the hands of more families so that workers fight racist police terror with a vision of a communist world.
At work sites, schools, barracks, and demonstrations, we should call for meetings and work stoppages against racist capitalism and for communism. We must organize ICWP collectives to lead this struggle.
Communism won’t have police or police terror. The masses, through ICWP, will guarantee the well-being and safety of all.
Read our Pamphlet:
“End Racism with Communist Revolution”
Available here