U.S. Riots show crisis of working class leadership

Newsletter Reporter

THROUGHOUT the United States, the long hot summer has produced its riots, centred in Chicago on the question of housing.

The deep hatred shown to the Negroes in the South for over a hundred years has now found its expression in the North with white people gathering near Negro and white Civil Rights demonstrators to throw rocks, beer cans and any other missiles at hand.

Of course, Martin Luther King has latched on to the deep feelings of the Negroes against housing discrimination, and has been hit on the head with a rock for his troubles—a knife also narrowly missed him.

He has led several militant demonstrations through predominantly white areas . . . only to kneel and pray!

Another who has come to the fore is Stokely Carmichael, 25-year-old chairman of the Student Non Violent Co-ordinating Committee. Equally dangerous to the Negro people as King, Carmichael now says that SNCC is considering a coalition with the Black Muslims.

No surprise

To the 'New York Times' this was no surprise—they had got hold of a confidential SNCC document which states:

'If we are to proceed toward liberation, we must cut ourselves off from white people. We must form our own institutions, credit unions, co-ops, political parties, write our own histories.'

While Martin Luther King leads militant Negroes up the garden path to prayer, Carmichael talks of 'Black Power', which can only lead to disunity and defeat.

In Chicago last week crowds shouted 'White Power' as Civil Rights marchers moved through an all-white district. Demonstrators' cars were burned and turned over or pushed into a lake.

When the marchers returned later in the week, police had to protect them from some 7,000 white people who began throwing everything at hand at the demonstrators.

On Sunday in Cragin, another white district, 1,100 police formed a cordon around 1,500 demonstrators as hecklers shouted 'kill them' and 'monkey go home'.

Jobs found

In Minneapolis, the local authorities were forced to find jobs for some 60 Negro youths following rioting and looting of white-owned stores in a multi-racial district.

In Philadelphia promises were given that charges of police violence would be investigated following three nights of battles between police and Negroes on a housing estate.

In Omaha, where National Guardsmen had been used against demonstrators in July, Negroes fire-bombed and looted several shops and buildings.

Police viciously waded into a crowd of Negroes in Providence, using large shields, after Negro youths pelted nine policemen who were watching shoppers in a Negro neighbourhood. Previously Civil Rights demonstrations had been held there.

Puerto Ricans have also clashed with the police. In Perth, New Jersey, 7,000 Puerto Ricans rioted for four nights after police had arrested someone. The police claimed they had been attacked with rocks, bottles and Molotov cocktails.

'Police rioted'

A Puerto Rican spokesman said it was the police who had rioted by grabbing innocent people on the street.

In Atlanta, where SNCC has its headquarters, Carmichael led a 200-strong crowd of Negroes in chanting 'Black Power' after a white motor-cycle policeman had stopped a Negro motorist for making an illegal turn.

The House of Representatives is now discussing a section of the Civil Rights Bill on fair housing and on the death sentence for violence and threats in demonstrations.

But neither government laws, nor the 'leadership' of the Bible thumpers or 'Black Power' merchants can solve the problems of the coloured people of America.

The immediate task is to forge a unity between Negro and white workers behind Marxist policies to answer these problems and in the process to forge a revolutionary party to take the power from the crisis-ridden US capitalists.