This is Worse Than Looting. And Far More Common

 Richard Mellor
Afscme Local 444, retired
GED  HEO

This is what people are protesting about today. It is from 6 months ago. When people of color are claiming racism this is it. This happens every minute of every day in one way or another. The murder of unarmed black people, men especially,  by the police, is the most brutal expression of it.

The rage is not just because some racist or insensitive individual insults them, it's about how society treats them. That's the issue. Racism is integral to capitalist society.  If it was not color it would be religion or something else. There are the murders of black people by the police, representatives of society or the state, and stuff like this absurd situation in the video. One would think it was a comedy sketch but it is not. This cop could kill this black man and likely get away with it.

People (it depends who they are and their intent) are correct to criticize rioting and smashing small business especially. It just doesn't work. It's true, but it does work a bit.  It will not stop what we are objecting to but it will not let them continue so easily and in the same fashion. Oscar Grant, here in the Bay Area, and on a BART (subway) train was laying face down four or five cops around or on him and he was shot in the back. In many of these instances, the use of phones has made much more of this public and has made it harder for them.

Racism, or the color division in the US is the prominent means of social control, of how the ruthless US ruling class maintains its power and the system it governs. It doesn't want it to boil over but it will always use it. A ruling class, numerically weaker than those whose labor provides their wealth, is always facing an opponent that wants to get more of the wealth they produce. They have to be divided, turned against one another somehow.

Some of the looting has been by criminal gangs. People that are de-classed, have no hope that society can change, people abandoned by capitalism. Others are just plain poor, see no way out, no future etc.  But overwhelmingly the protests we are witnessing are comprised of thousands upon thousands of people, I would say mostly young people, who are disgusted with society, capitalism and the alienation it breeds.  I should add that the the largest and  most powerful gang in the urban centers is the police. They are legal and state funded.

We can criticize the looting and also tactics that some elements in society use that are simply violent acts of self indulgence. We are witnessing the beginnings of a much larger movement and we can be sure the state will be making every effort to derail it. That's why it is important as we formulate demands or needs and struggle against the system and its immediate affects, organizational steps are taken to to protect the movement, and maintain its unity around broad common goals. With organization and planning we can police our own marches and actions, having our own security and so on.  We must make class appeals to gang elements who themselves are used to being organized and encourage them to join the movement but with political goals, relieving the real criminals of their stolen loot and building a new society. We can remove the causes of most social ills by ridding ourselves of the social system that makes us sick. As the class polarization intensifies, we learn in the course of the struggle that more must be done. Revolutionary socialists can play a role in strengthening that movement while building a revolutionary current within it.