http://themilitant.com/2015/7924/792421.html
The Militant (logo)
Vol. 79/No. 24 July 13, 2015
(editorial)
Take down flag of racist terror!
Working people should join in actions demanding the Confederate battle
flag be removed from the Capitol grounds in Columbia, South Carolina,
and from every public site where it flies.
The flag is the symbol of the bloody defeat of Radical Reconstruction
following the Civil War and the racist terror carried out by Ku Klux
Klan night riders. It was raised on the South Carolina Capitol dome in
1962 in defiant opposition to the movement to end Jim Crow segregation.
Today it is the banner under which rearguard reactionary actions, such
as the terrorist assault by white supremacist Dylann Storm Roof in
Charleston, South Carolina, are carried out.
The widespread outrage and demonstrative outpouring of solidarity in
response to those assassinations, and the rising call for bringing down
the Confederate flag, revealed the sea change in working-class attitudes
that has been developing for some time.
The impact of the proletarian-led fight for Black rights in the 1950s
and ’60s strengthened the working class and won many Caucasian workers,
who had previously held racist attitudes that went against their class
interests, to change.
Rising labor resistance in recent years has dovetailed with the Black
Lives Matter protests that gained steam after a vigilante killed Trayvon
Martin in Florida in 2012, and continued with protests against the
killing by cops of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri; Eric Garner in
Staten Island, New York; Walter Scott in North Charleston, South
Carolina; and Freddie Gray in Baltimore. Many workers and youth who are
Caucasian have taken part in these actions.
It’s because of these gains by our class that capitalist politicians are
moving to bring down the Confederate flag, even in the absence of large
demonstrations. And that Walmart, Sears and other retailers have stopped
selling the flags. The U.S. rulers know which way the wind blows.
Pressing to get that odious symbol of reaction removed from all public
places helps unify the working class and advance the fight for
unionization, raising the minimum wage and demanding that cops who
brutalize and kill be charged, convicted and jailed. And it strengthens
the class on its line of march toward ending the dictatorship of capital.
Nearly 150 years ago Karl Marx, the founder of the communist movement,
wrote in Capital, “Labor cannot emancipate itself in the white skin
where in the black it is branded.” Today more and more workers are
acting on the understanding that only when Black lives matter will all
lives matter.
We join in demanding, “Take the flag down!”
Related articles:
‘Take down that racist flag!’ sweeps country
Shift shows deep changes in working class
Confederate flag: ‘Symbol of fight by labor’s deadly enemies’
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