Tools of repression For decades, into the 1980s, school districts across the country employed the “Officer Friendly” program that brought local cops into kindergarten and first-grade classrooms. Their point was obvious: to “educate” children with the belief that the...
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The State
The racist history of police militarization and mass incarceration
The following is adapted from Puryear’s book “Shackled and Chained: Mass Incarceration in Capitalist America” (Liberation Books, 2013) In August 1971, a lawyer for big tobacco in Richmond, Va., sent a memorandum to an acquaintance at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce with...
Tactics and fighting slogans for the anti-police brutality movement
An updated study by the Malcolm X Grassroots Movement revealed that every 28 hours, on average, law enforcement officers in the United States killed a Black person in 2012. The pandemic of police violence is largely concentrated against Black communities, but the...
What is behind the expansion of U.S. prisons?
Racism and social unrest The police killings of New York 23-year-old Sean Bell in a hail of 50 shots on Nov. 25 and of Atlanta 92-year-old Kathryn Johnston on Nov. 21 were jarring reminders of the reality of racist police terror, especially in Black and oppressed...
The first modern socialists: their means were utopian, but not their goal
Since the advent of class antagonisms in human society, oppressed people and others angered by injustice have dreamed of a better world. In the face of poverty, disease, humiliation and exploitation, people have counterposed their hopes and aspirations for a life free...
How can the working class defend its revolution? Understanding the dictatorship of the proletariat
The ‘dictatorship of the proletariat’ Workers around the world have instinctively understood the need for a union. In the fight against the bosses—whether it is for pay and benefits, better working conditions or to defend the gains they have already won—individual...
Anarchism’s track record: What is militancy without a winning program?
In the struggle for a better world, the working-class movement often faces the question: Which way forward? It may be in a strike, where the bosses are threatening to bring in scabs. It may be in a demonstration, when the cops are preparing to disperse the crowd. Or...
Dismantle the racist prison system!
Rehabilitation will only be a priority under socialism The United States has the largest prison population in the world. According to a Bureau of Statistics report, over 2.2 million people are in U.S. prisons. With another 5 million people in “the system,” over 7...
The evolution of the modern capitalist state
At a meeting in early February, an activist from South Korea told me: “We only wish Bush could run for office a third time. No other political force could have helped the progressive and pro-reunification movement in Korea make so much progress. Bush’s hard-line...