PROTESTS in the US state of Wisconsin erupted on Sunday evening following another shooting by police of a reportedly unarmed black man.
According to reports, Jacob Blake was shot seven times in the back by police and is currently in hospital where his condition is described as serious.
Immediately following the shooting in the city of Kenosha, crowds came out onto the streets to confront the police, forcing state officials to declare a state of emergency curfew as demonstrators marched on the Kenosha county police building chanting ‘no justice, no peace’.
In a sign that the US ruling class and its officials are more and more gripped by fear, the Wisconsin governor Tony Evers immediately released a statement on Twitter condemning the shooting of Blake saying: ‘While we do not have all of the details yet, what we know for certain is that he is not the first black man or person to have been shot or injured or mercilessly killed at the hands of individuals in law enforcement in our state or our country.’
He added: ‘We stand with all those who have and continue to demand justice, equity, and accountability for black lives in our country …’
These pious words will not deflect the anger of the masses of American workers who have flocked to support the Black Lives Matter movement that spread across the US following the murder of George Floyd at the hands of the police in May.
Indeed, this support rapidly spread across the globe as workers and young people in every country recognised that the murder of George Floyd and all the killings and shootings carried out by the forces of the capitalist state are part of a war against the entire working class.
Every day workers experience the callous disregard for their lives by the bosses and bankers whose only concern is to make profit. Today, the capitalist class faces a massive historic crisis that it must dump on the backs of the working class.
In America, as many as 30 million workers had their $600 a week unemployment benefit cut off at the end of July.
They were left to rely on state benefits waiting for president Trump’s reduced federal benefit of $400 a week to be implemented. 30 million US workers are claiming jobless benefits with up to 10 million more unable to claim.
This week the last of the federal coronavirus protection for renters ends, with an estimated 30 to 40 million Americans at risk of eviction.
Both the two main bourgeois parties in the US, Republican and Democrats, have refused to extend unemployment benefit.
Instead, at a time when the working class faces eviction and poverty on a scale last seen in the Great Depression, all the resources of US capitalism have gone into driving up the stock market to unprecedented heights on the prospect of unlimited free money from the Fed.
In Britain, the working class faces the same enemy, a Tory government determined to end furlough and drive workers back to work regardless of the threat to lives from Covid-19.
Both the US and British bourgeoisie put the capitalist economy and its profits before the lives of workers – and the working class knows it.
This has produced a revolutionary situation that can be touched off at any time, as workers and young people take to the streets refusing to see their lives destroyed to keep a decaying capitalist system going and keeping the bosses and bankers wallowing in profit.
US workers have shown they will not stand idly by as the police carry on with their murderous shootings and they will not accept being driven back to the hungry thirties but will rise up in the struggle for a socialist USA.
This will be joined by workers in Britain and Europe who face the same enemy in the fight to put an end to capitalism through socialist revolution.
The burning issue of the day is to build sections of the International Committee of the Fourth International in every country to lead the world socialist revolution to victory.
