PHOTO/PEPPER HOLDER
Ferguson, MO — August 9 marked the one-year anniversary of Mike Brown’s death. This year also marks the 50th anniversary of the Watt’s uprising of 1965 and the tenth anniversary of Hurricane Katrina. From Watts to Katrina to Ferguson, we witnessed the growing impoverishment of a section of workers who cannot survive in this economic system. They are discarded from a system that demands maximum profits at the expense of human lives. As corporations replace workers with computerized production, millions are tossed aside, barely subsisting at the margins of society. In response, the police state has been consciously erected by our ruling class to contain this impoverished mass of humanity while protecting the wealth of the millionaires and billionaires.
As I stood on Canfield Drive in Ferguson, Missouri, Sunday, August 9, 2015, at the site of Mike Brown’s execution, listening to the speakers honoring the memory of the 18-year-old who became the symbol of ‘Black Lives Matter’ and the struggle against police terror, the faces of many of the fallen flashed by my eyes. In those faces I saw the common threads of poverty and racism; a racism that says these lives of the poor of all colors don’t matter to a ruling class that is remaking the world in their image. A world that is only for those who can pay—the wealthy of all colors and nationalities. As a formerly employed worker who lost his job and is now homeless commented, “The police in St. Louis don’t discriminate. If you’re poor and homeless, they kill you no matter what color you are.”
The truth is that the police are killing the poor of all colors, ages and genders in increasing numbers. It is difficult to come up with exact figures. There is no official national database keeping a tally. But it is acknowledged that in this year alone, police have killed on average over three persons per day. And that doesn’t include those who have died in prison under suspicious circumstances.
‘Racism’ was the weapon the ruling class created to keep the poor whites from uniting with the black slaves in common against their rulers. Today, the computer and robot, which are eliminating our labor, are setting the stage for us to unite across the color line as we descend into poverty together.
These tools also offer us the way out of our common poverty. Owned in common by society as a whole, they could produce what we need to not only survive, but thrive. They could produce a world of abundance without the backbreaking toil and mindless labor of yesteryear. If we collectively owned the means of producing the social products, we could distribute them based on need and not money. There would be no need for a ‘ruling class’ and no need for police.
The first step is to recognize that we cannot win a world of peace and freedom from want if we fight as isolated groups. The struggle against the police state and for a new society must include all the victims of this predatory system. The time is now.
Cathy Talbott is a former telephone operator, a job lost to automation. She was a homeless mother of two and fights for welfare rights. A former co-host of a weekly community radio program out of Carbondale, IL, “Occupy the Airwaves,” Cathy is the Environmental Desk for the People’s Tribune.
