On May 14th, the Tops market on Jefferson Ave in Buffalo suffered a mass shooting motivated by conspiratorial, racist hate.
We’re heartbroken, and mourn the victims.
White supremacy and all racism is antithetical to our core values.
We believe in and work toward a world where all are free and all needs are met. The forces of division, whether race, national origin, ability, gender, or religion, are our enemy.
These divisions aren’t essential or accidental, but reinforced by class society. Capitalism reproduces poverty and the segregation that allowed Masten Park to be targeted.
Efforts against racism and right-wing radicalization must be anti-capitalist.
Democrats and Republicans approve funding for war, policing, and corporations, while everyday people suffer. Their platitudes don’t teach us skills, or build a high-participation democracy.
President Biden’s visit to Buffalo offered sympathy, if only symbolism to a population marred by real inequality. Without public goods, care for the planet, and living-wage jobs, the employing class’ parties don’t provide for or keep us safe.
Some far-right Republicans and their media mouthpieces even gesture to the conspiracy that motivated this shooter to murder 10 community members, like “Great Replacement” theory that states immigrants and demographic change are the causes of American economic distress and resource scarcity.
The solution to scarcity and competition is not racist violence to win the battle against each other. It is struggle against the exploitation of the employers and politicians already winning the class war against all working people.
Without anti-capitalist struggle to educate young people in patient, faithful work alongside members of our multiracial class, they’re facing a world of shocking inequality, flatlined wages, pollution, and addiction – and instead are radicalized to hateful, apocalyptic conspiracies.
It is out of deep love that we organize our workplaces and neighborhoods in support of an alternative, so that the power of everyday people will replace the bureaucracy of a few.
We must unite as a class in the struggle to elevate people across all backgrounds. Our fight is against prejudice in all forms, and against the minority rule of capitalists who only drive people toward hate and violence.