Stop the Attacks on Anti-Racist Struggles
in the U.S. and Australia!
Down With McCarthyist Repression!

Support Anti-Racist Organisers Imprisoned in Denver, USA!

The following letter of solidarity was sent to the Party for Socialism and Liberation (PSL), a leftist group in the U.S. whose members were charged and imprisoned (they have now been released on bail) for organising anti-racist protests demanding justice for Elijah McClain, a 23 year-old black man murdered by racist police.

We encourage other organisations in the anti-racist movement, Left and workers movement in Australia to also support the campaign to defend the persecuted activists. Send letters of solidarity to the PSL to the following E-mail address: info@pslweb.org

For statements of solidarity with the arrested activists issued by other groups, please see: https://www.liberationnews.org/progressive-and-socialist-organizations-condemn-attack-on-denver-anti-racist-leaders/

23 October 2020

Dear Sisters and Brothers of the Party for Socialism and Liberation,

Trotskyist Platform sends our support, from here in Australia, to the anti-racist organisers who were arrested in Denver, Colorado on September 17. We understand that four of the six arrested activists are members of your group, the Party for Socialism and Liberation (PSL). We therefore also send our solidarity to you in the PSL. We are in full solidarity with the arrested activists because they are being persecuted for doing very worthy work: organising protests demanding justice for Elijah McClain, a 23-year-old black man murdered last year by racist police when he was walking home from a convenience store. It is outrageous that the arrested organisers have been hit with completely bogus charges, including one of “kidnapping”; and that they now face the threat of being imprisoned for years.

The arrests of the Denver anti-racists is part of the vicious repression of Black Lives Matter struggles that has been ordered by the divisive White nationalist in the White House, Donald Trump. Yet it is telling that the District Attorney (DA) Dave Young who filed charges against the activists is a Democrat. He is the very same DA who refused to lay charges against the cops who killed Elijah McClain. All this confirms that it will be bad news whether it is the Republican Trump or the Democrat Biden who wins next month’s presidential election. It is the working class masses, with doubly oppressed black workers in the lead, united with all the downtrodden that is the force that can push back against racist violence, job slashing and capitalist exploitation of workers.

Here in Australia, the racist rich people’s regime has overseen the deaths of more than 450 Aboriginal people in state custody in just the last three decades. This regime incarcerates Aboriginal people at a rate even higher than that which the U.S. rulers imprison black people. Meanwhile, just as in the U.S., the capitalist rulers here repress anti-racist struggles. Police here have used the need for social distancing during the pandemic as an excuse to crush several rallies protesting against the racist murders of Aboriginal people by police and prison guards. Australia’s authorities have attacked the demonstrations despite protest organisers’ strenuous efforts to ensure COVID-safe events and even while the regime allows crowding of people in dangerously virus-spreading, indoor commercial environments. Tellingly too, rallies that fall in behind the Australian capitalist regime’s agenda have conspicuously been allowed to take place even while Black Lives Matter actions have been attacked. The very day before police shut down a July 27 Sydney rally demanding justice for David Dungay – a 26 year-old Aboriginal man suffocated to death by prison guards in circumstances eerily similar to the murder of George Floyd – police facilitated an anti-communist rally outside the Chinese Consulate in Sydney held by the New Federal State of China, an outfit spearheaded by Trump’s fascistic former campaign adviser, Steve Bannon.

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The attacks on anti-racist protest organisers in the U.S. and repression in Australia are also part of an alarming rise in McCarthyist attacks on leftists in both countries. The more that the capitalist system is unable to provide secure jobs for workers and the more that downtrodden communities resist the brutal racist oppression that is characteristic of capitalist societies, the more the U.S. and Australian rulers crack down on conscious opponents of capitalist rule. Meanwhile, with the world’s largest socialistic power – the Peoples Republic of China (PRC) – continuing to grow in strength and with its system having shown to the world its superiority over capitalism when it comes to handling the COVID-19 threat, the U.S. and Australian regimes have cranked up their Cold War drive against the PRC. This has been accompanied at home here in Australia by authoritarian persecution of both, on the one hand, Chinese migrants, international students and scholars sympathetic to the PRC and, on the other, non-Chinese people who make even the slightest comments sympathetic to the PRC and her allies. It is perhaps no coincidence that the group targeted as part of the Denver arrests, your group the PSL, happens to be one of the all too few socialist organizations in the U.S. with enough political courage to oppose the Cold War attacks on the PRC. Here, Australia’s ASIO secret police have carried out terrifying raids on the homes of Chinese journalists working in Australia; and subjected to threatening interrogations Chinese international students who organised a Sydney rally in August last year opposing the pro-colonial, anti-PRC forces in Hong Kong. Meanwhile, in June, a NSW upper house parliamentarian, Shaoquett Moselmane, was subjected to a draconian raid by Australian regime forces after he had the temerity to praise China’s response to the pandemic. As a result of the accompanying political and media witch hunt, the elected state senator was prevented from sitting in state parliament for nearly four months until ASIO had to finally admit that he was not the focus of a “foreign interference investigation”. Meanwhile, a sympathizer of the PRC’s socialistic ally, North Korea, has been imprisoned here in harsh conditions for the last nearly three years. Chan Han Choi has been charged with trying to broker deals to assist the people of North Korea to evade cruel economic sanctions but has been denied bail, as he awaits trial, largely on the basis of his avowed sympathies for the socialistic country. All this Cold War repression has created such a national security obsession that it has allowed the Australian regime to repress other dissidents and whistleblowers who have no direct connection with Cold War issues. Thus, a military lawyer David McBride is being threatened with 50 years in prison after being charged with disclosing to the media details of heinous war crimes by Australian special forces troops in Afghanistan. Meanwhile, another whistleblower along with his lawyer, Bernard Collaery, are being persecuted in the courts for revealing to the world the spying on East Timor’s government by Australia’s overseas spy agency as part of this regime’s neocolonial drive to steal impoverished East Timor’s energy resources.

Especially given the commonalities between the attacks on anti-racist organisers and PSL activists in the U.S. and racist and right-wing repression in this country, we will do what we can to promote solidarity with the Denver anti-racists within the Australian anti-racist and Left movements. We demand: Stop the attacks on anti-racist struggles in the U.S. and Australia! Drop all the charges against the Denver anti-racist organisers! Justice for Elijah McClain, David Dungay and all victims of racist, capitalist state terror! Free and drop all charges against Chan Han Choi! Down with the growing Cold War McCarthyist repression in the U.S. and Australia!

In solidarity,

Sarah Fitzenmeyer

Chairwoman
Trotskyist Platform