Chicago is the third largest city in the US. Over 500 people were killed here last year. It is a war zone. Why? Most of the killings take place in the South and West side of the city which are mostly black. The white racist elite have forced the majority of black people to live in these areas over the past decades. Chicago is the most segregated of the large US cities. The racist mayor Emanuel when asked recently about this segregation refused to answer. The mass violence in Chicago is not the result of attitudes of black people. It is the result of mass unemployment and poverty.
The racist system denies this and says the violence is because the majority of people who live in the areas of greatest violence are black. This is a racist lie. The reasons are economic. 34% of black Chicagoans live in poverty. Of 18 to 29 year old black people 21%, that is one fifth, have no jobs. Black unemployment rates overall are 2 to 3 per cent those of whites. In some areas of the city the unemployment rate amongst black youth gets up to over 40%. In the US, the most wealthy of the capitalist countries the unemployed and poor get the least help. In other advanced capitalist countries the unemployed get some help to pay their rent and to eat. So what alternative do many of the unemployed have but to try and make money from crime. Please do not let me hear any talk about crime being bad. The country is run by a bunch of Wall Street criminals, and the war criminals in Government and the pentagon and the criminal bribing lobbyists who buy the government. .
Then there is history. For three hundred years black Americans were forced to work for no wages. Can you imagine that? You and your family and ancestors being forced to work for no wages for over 300 years. And the violence associated with this. Nobody works voluntarily for nothing. They have to be forced to, in the US this has meant lynching, mass murder, rape and the smashing of families by stealing the children and selling or enslaving them. One estimate is that black Americans are owed 20 trillion dollars in unpaid wages. Other estimates make the figure much much more. This has meant that for most black Americans it has been impossible to build up any reserves of wealth or capital. After slavery was ended the bosses organization the KKK and the racist state machine used mass violence and racist laws to make equality impossible, to keep the majority of former slaves still in poverty. Part of this was to keep the black workers on lower wages and related to this to pull down the white workers wages also.
So in this new year racism still exists in the US. Obama has done nothing to end it or to end mass unemployment in general and in particular where it strikes hardest, amongst the black population. He is a representative of Wall Street and the white racist ruling class and acts in their interests and to hell with the black working class and the working class as a whole.
For this year we should pledge ourselves to fight racism and mass unemployment and poverty. And the system that produces these - capitalism. And fight instead for a democratic socialist system. And to achieve this to unite the working class as a whole, black, latino and white men and women into a mass movement for change.
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