SMASH THE KLAN with black-latin@-labor united action!

****************
Saturday, May 12, 2007
Rally in Hammonton, New Jersey

Help us build a massive mobilization to kick the Klan out of Hammonton!

* Distribute this leaflet.
* Form an anti-Klan committee now in your union, workplace, or school.
* Prepare for public anti-Klan coordinating meetings, as part of a national effort to stop the Klan.
* Raise funds to help with organizing and defense.
****************

Joseph V. Bednarsky Jr. (left), a local leader of the KKK, has called for a rally in the blueberry-farming town of Hammonton, New Jersey. Racist and ultra-right-wing websites and groups nationwide have picked up his call. The Klan intends to protest members of the Hammonton town council, who accused the Klan of sabotaging a construction project by contaminating the town hall with asbestos, in order to prevent a black-owned construction company, which did not have the capacity to handle the cancer-causing poison, from filling a city contract.

Fascist groups such as the KKK want to violently overthrow the government, to protect the traditional order of white supremacy, the oppression of gays and women, and capitalism, against the threat of the multinational working class fighting for its rights. Since Reconstruction was ended in 1877 by a compromise between the Northern and Southern capitalists, the Klan has operated with the tacit approval of the government as a terrorist gang, menacing and assassinating blacks and their allies who stood for racial equality. The panicked, conservative, bigoted small business owners who form the base of fascist organizations may rant and rave against "big business," but their goal is an authoritarian dictatorship to smash any organized resistance by the workers and oppressed: unions, anti-racist and human rights organizations. Massive organized defense based in the unions is the way to kick the Klan out of Hammonton. They don't listen to reason. The only language they understand is the one they speak: armed force.

In the current period when the bosses, bankers, and landlords are able to maintain their power by "democratic" means, when the government is not threatened by massive strikes and protests, the fascists are a minority. Sometimes they even face repression from the government, although not nearly as harsh as the government's attacks on workers and oppressed people. But when social conflict rages, the capitalists abandon their democratic pretenses and turn to the fascist gangs to unleash a reign of terror against all organizations of the workers and oppressed. We cannot rely on the bosses' government to stop the Klan. The cops will be there on May 12, protecting the Klan's "freedom of speech." Nor can we follow the advice of the liberals and reformists to ignore the fascists because their numbers are small. The Klan wants to use this rally to recruit followers and build its influence, so our task is to disperse and demoralize them.

To prevent the fascist nightmare from happening again, we have to learn from history. The workers can only rely on our own forces and methods to oppose the fascists. Whenever the workers relied on capitalist "democracy" to stop the fascist gangs, the bosses and their parties have betrayed us. They would rather see fascism triumph than allow the working class to command the military apparatus and the social resources - industries, banks, and lands - necessary to defeat fascism. An anti-fascist mobilization of this sort would threaten the capitalist monopoly on productive property, and when it comes to choosing between democratic rights and guarding his investments, the capitalist knows where he stands. In the final analysis, fascism is not the opposite of capitalist democracy, but the inevitable result of the class conflicts, between workers and bosses, that divide "democratic" society, if they are not overcome by socialist revolution. US capitalist democracy in particular is distinguished by pervasive, brutal racism, which can only be overcome by giving black workers control of the industries and lands with which they have been exploited: again, a democratic measure that no capitalist "democracy" will ever permit. The only way to stop the Klan and other fascists is to build a workers' party that fights for socialist revolution.

Leaflet issued by Working Class Emancipation
401-837-3685 laboraction-AT-aim.com