Published on 8/5/18

Thousands of people have taken to the streets the Bay Area this weekend to stand against the far right forces who have come to our community to incite fear, violence, and hatred against what they call “Marxist Terrorism”. However, these so called patriots do not come here armed to the teeth to fight terrorism. The Bay is our community, a community of migrants from Central America and the Middle East, of Black people who have long been organizing against racism and police violence, of Marxists of every color who organize in their workplaces and their neighborhoods to meet their everyday needs like dignity on the job, and a safe, affordable place to live. Marxists and Socialists have historically always been the ones who fight against violence, poverty and exploitation of working people. This is because we believe that we’re the ones who should democratically control our society.
When we go to work, whether it’s to tend the grounds of UC Berkeley or to sweep the streets of Downtown, whether it’s to drive the buses, answer the telephones, build the foundations of new buildings, we the working people of the Bay Area are the ones keeping the gears turning and the money flowing. Socialists believe that we should also be the ones to decide how this surplus wealth is used. Instead of wasting billions of dollars on invasive wars or luxury estates, we could provide healthcare and education to everyone. We could clean up the environment and stop climate change. Everyone would have housing, good natural food, and much more time to spend with their family and friends.
Now, some of these alt-right forces claim that they are not racist, that anti-fascists are the true haters! Many of them are openly white-supremacist, are chanting the same taglines that nazis used a century ago, and wearing symbols of neo-nazi organizations. They claim they’re merely good patriots here to protect America. We’re not fooled by this! Look around you at the people in this crowd: We are the ones who make up this community, we are the ones who build this society, and we are immigrants, we are people of color, we are LGBT, we are not illegal, and today we are all anti-fascist activists! We say No to the hateful anti-immigrant, anti-woman, anti-LGBT views purveyed by the far right.
The same collective power we are exercising here today against the hateful and bigoted movements of the far right is the same collective power that ended the Vietnam War and gained Black Civil Rights, is the same collective power that won working people the minimum wage and union recognition, it is the power that shut down the airports during the Muslim Ban in 2017, it is the same power that shut down the highways in the Occupy and Black Lives Matter movements, it is the same power that stopped the separation of families at the border, and it is only this collective power which will put an end to the violence and exploitation of working people that is the true terrorism of today. It is only this collective power which will end police murders and mass incarceration, which will end the criminalization of immigration, which will transform society into one that serves people’s needs, not profits.
As socialists and Marxists, we in La Voz de Los Trabajadores believe that all working people must unite in one mass movement to challenge the exploitative forces of the capitalist class and the government that supports them. We know that this movement needs to grow, and that it must be led by the ones who are most affected by the poverty, the racism, and the direct violence of the state: the students and youth who can’t afford college, the children who have been separated from their parents at the border, and the indigenous people whose lands are decimated by oil pipes. Nia Wilson, Aiyana Jones, Kayla Moore, Berta Caceres, Heather Heyer, they are the names of those who have been taken from us by racism and state violence, and they are the same people who have been and should be at the forefront of the movements to end that racism and state violence.
As socialists, we believe in building a democratic movement from the bottom up that fights for workers’ civil rights. We believe in fighting for a society where we can choose the conditions of our labor, where we can travel to see family without crossing militarized borders, where we protect and nurture our lands, and where we protect our communities, just like we have shown up to do today.
 
Let’s keep fighting, let’s keep building!