Editor’s Note: While the press organization largely agrees with this article, there are three points for us to address. First, since the publication of the original version of this article, the “Kansas Communist Party” (KCP) has become the “Kansas Communist Association” (KCA).

Second, though we recognize the author’s “survival probability framework” as a progressive effort at wrestling with the problem of revolutionary subjectivity that is crucial for all communists and misunderstood particularly in the Imperial Core, here the author swings too far in her corrective; nuances of Mao’s theorization of the rural semi-proletariat and peasantry, for instance, are glossed over in ways that risk the framework being reduced to just identifying the “lowest of the low” and determining them revolutionary for it, rather than treating their immiseration and class fury as a subjective variable of the whole. What can be a useful tool for identifying our friends and enemies, against Right opportunist trends, may easily become a broken compass pointing us too far afield in the opposite direction.

Third, it is the position of Unity–Struggle–Unity that the article does not go far enough to condemn the deviation being demonstrated by the KCA. A fundamental error in the KCA’s position is that farmers don’t actually own their land because they are debt-burdened — but most capital comes with a debt-burden, and it does not make it any less capital. The debt-burdened farmer with a parcel so small they have to work it by themselves who is merely a few seasons away from being proletarianized is merely a downwardly-mobile petty bourgeois; this does not in any way change their fundamental class character or transform them into a generalized class-ally.

Indeed, the KCA absolutely ignores the settler-colonial basis upon which all land ownership of the Euro-Amerikan “white” settler nation is held within the US (excepting the sovereign territories of the Indigenous Peoples). To that end, the original KCA piece is not merely incorrect, it is dangerously wrong, substituting an enemy class as an ally and ignoring the actual revolutionary masses. It is no wonder; the KCA is an offshoot of the terminally opportunist CPUSA, and is thus clearly plagued with the same types of fatal deviations.

Unless and until the “Kansas Communist Association” corrects these errors, it is firmly in the same camp as the Big Opportunists. Indeed, we may label it a Little Opportunist without losing much sleep about a tactical alliance until its fundamentals have been sufficiently altered to purge it of this dangerous, enemy trend.

Why the Kansas Communist Party is Wrong About Farmers

The original article may be found here. [Ed: Note that within the article is an appended reply to Cde. Persephone’s criticism, linking her original article. Do not click that link, which leads to a site possibly monitored by the FBI.]

It is sadly a common idea that “farmers” represent some kind of revolutionary class in USian society. This comes from a fundamental misunderstanding of Marxism. I wish to dissect this specific article to demonstrate why this type of political revisionism is a fatal error which sands off the revolutionary edges of communism and to provide clarity in answering the question of who the revolutionary subject is within the context of Kansas agriculture.

Part I: The Farmer is Not a Revolutionary Subject

What Marxism Actually Is

What is Marxism, as a philosophy, all about? Simply put, Marxism is about labor — who creates the value in a society. Society is made up of multiple groups determined by their relationship to labor. Are they laborers who produce value, or are they expropriators of value from laborers? Communists are partisans of the laboring classes, which are the only classes capable of bringing about revolution.

In the course of class struggle we must determine who our friends and our enemies are. In the first paragraph of this article, the author stresses the importance of “the question of how Communists might recruit the people […] to our great cause.” This question is indeed perhaps the single most important question we must ask, which leads us to another question: What makes someone become a communist? Why do people go all-in on a revolutionary movement with no guarantee of success? By answering this question we can begin to construct an answer to the other question posed by the author, as to “how [Communists] can specifically approach the farmer [class].”

In my view, the answer is simple: People choose to throw in with a socialist revolution because they see and understand that their probability of survival is higher with the possibility (not guarantee!) of a successful revolution, than it is with the guarantee of the perpetuation of the actually existing social order.

Those who are part of classes which would benefit from the revolution are part of the revolutionary subject that Communists must organize first. The revolutionary subject is the protagonist¹ or driving, motive force of a revolutionary movement. Classes and not individuals, because individual members of classes can go any which-way. Engels, despite being a dyed-in-the-wool bourgeois, is undoubtedly a comrade and a friend to revolutionaries everywhere. Similarly, a working-class stiff who joins the police force for career advancement is a class enemy despite the fact that they come from a proletarian background and collect a wage for their paycheck. This may seem very obvious, but it is a common point of confusion I think exemplified by this article and needs to be stated explicitly.

With all that said: do farmers benefit from the existing order more than they would benefit from revolution?

Farmers as Landowners

According to one of the sources cited within the article, small, independent owner-operators hold 60% of the total farmland in the US. When the author writes that “[t]he personal interests of the farmer is the same as those of all the working class, being the basics of home, food, and the leisure [time] that comes from living in a peaceful society,” this has nothing to do with class interests. Humans, as a species of social mammal, generally have an interest in subsistence and play. But, it is class interests which determine behavior when you want to speak of classes.

Unlike proletarians and lumpenproletarians, the small rural landowning owner-operator farmer (or rancher) owns property. They have a literal investment in the capitalist system of private property. Whatever potential they have for anti-governmental politics is linked to their claim on their land, which belongs to them by right of being an “American.” (More on settler colonialism and how this “American” identity is built on the mass murder of Indigenous people later.) That is why the MAGA movement appeals to the rural landowner as an imaginary reclamation of the past far more than any liberation movement which challenges private property.

In the Grundrisse, Marx writes:

In history, other systems come before [the development of capitalism] and they form the material basis of a less complete development of value. Just as exchange value here plays only an accompanying role to use value, it is not capital but the relation of landed property which appears as its real basis. [emphasis mine]

Modern landed property, on the other hand, cannot be understood at all, because it cannot exist, without capital as its presupposition, and it indeed appears historically as a transformation of the preceding historic shape of landed property by capital so as to correspond to capital. It is therefore, precisely in the development of landed property that the gradual victory and formation of capital can be studied.

The relation between the industrial capitalist and the proprietor of land appears to be a relation lying outside that of landed property. But, as a relation between the modern farmer and the landowner, it appears posited as an immanent relation of landed property itself; and the [latter], as now existing merely in its relation to capital. The history of landed property, which would demonstrate the gradual transformation of the feudal landlord into the landowner […] would indeed be the history of the formation of modern capital.

Karl Marx, Grundrisse, pg. 252

Marx outlines two parallel ideas: 1) the historical development of the money form and the rise of the commodity, where its use-value is of a secondary concern to the exchange-value, and 2) the historical development of capital itself and its relationship to the land and who owns the land. In short, the modern landowners of the capitalist era descend from feudal landlords. The modern capitalist and the modern landowner are both aspects of the bourgeois class. There is nothing that farmers, as landowners, have in common with the oppressed masses of proletarians and lumpenproletarians insofar as the farmers are landowners. The farmer is opposed to the revolutionary masses because they own land. Their psychic anguish is because they fear proletarianization.

It is clear the article attempts to portray farmers as an untapped wellspring of revolutionary fervor, if only they could see the foolish error of their ways. It replaces the analysis of class antagonisms with an extremely condescending view of people — it assumes farmers are stupid and don’t know what’s good for them, that they’re being deceived and that’s why they buy into Making America Great Again.

People, broadly speaking, know their own material interests well enough. They know what they need and what’s good for them; nobody needs to tell a farmer (or anyone else for that matter) that a peaceful society of abundance would be a good thing for them. The farmers know very well what they need. Recall that farmers don’t have a natural solidarity with workers, but rather they revile them on some level because they have great fear and anxiety over becoming one of them. This is the root of why the MAGA movement appeals so much to rural conservative landowners. It’s not that the small landowners are deceived by the bourgeoisie — the farmers are extremely conscious of their status as landowners and they recognize that MAGA is their ticket to preserving their land ownership.

The Peasant Comparison is Historically Incoherent

The author explicitly and directly compares American farmers to feudal peasants. History from China and Guinea-Bissau — countries with actual peasant classes — can offer us a greater insight on not only what a peasantry is, but also why they have revolutionary potential, unlike farmers.

Chinese Peasants

Mao Zedong wrote the “Investigations of Peasant Societies in Hunan Province” analyzing the peasantry as a class and their revolutionary potential in semicolonial, semifeudal Chinese society. The historical context of this essay is one that is surprisingly applicable to our own discourse. Comrade Mao wrote this as a criticism of a rightist line led by Chen Duxiu’s faction.

Chen, much like the Kansas Communist Party, had a confused idea of the revolutionary subject. In a nutshell, Chen’s faction argued that:

1. China only had a fledgling proletariat of 3 million or so in a population of over half a billion at that time.

2. Karl Marx wrote that the proletariat is the revolutionary subject.

3. Marx did not write that the peasantry was capable of leading a revolution. His books state that it must be the proletariat who leads. (Ignoring that Marx did not closely study the Chinese context, which was very different from the European context Marx was in.)

4. Therefore, because the conditions went against what Marx had written, China must allow itself to naturally develop a proletariat. Only then can a revolutionary movement truly begin, because then things will be exactly as they were written about in a book.

The opposition to Chen’s line argued that the peasantry, although not the same as the proletariat, had a revolutionary character and could be drawn into an alliance against common oppressing classes.²

What gave the Chinese peasants their revolutionary character? Mao writes:

All those whom the gentry had despised, those whom they had trodden into the dirt, people with no place in society, people with no right to speak, have now audaciously lifted up their heads. They have not only lifted up their heads but taken power into their hands. They are now running the township peasant associations […] which they have turned into something fierce and formidable. They have raised their rough, work-soiled hands and laid them on the gentry. They tether the evil gentry with ropes, crown them with tall paper-hats and parade them through the villages […] Not a day passes but they drum some harsh, pitiless words of denunciation into these gentry’s ears. They are issuing orders and are running everything. Those who used to rank lowest now rank above everybody else…

Mao Zedong, Report on an Investigation of Peasant Societies in Hunan Province, The “Movement of the Riff-Raff”

Mao makes it clear that what gave peasants their revolutionary qualities was that they were the lowest of the low. Although it is true that within the peasantry there were strata of upper, middle, and lower peasants, the vast majority of peasants were “lower” peasants, meaning they owned no land and were worked to death by their landlords. They had a low life expectancy, of around 40 years of age. Most were illiterate and subjected to the brutal tyrannies of religious officials and spiritual clerics.

Compare this to the American farmer. Although the article makes it clear that Kansas farmers do face some struggles in life, as discussed above, the struggle of the farmer is the struggle to retain class privileges and thereby avoid proletarianization. Whereas with the Chinese peasantry, for them to be proletarianized would be an improvement in their lot of life and their material conditions.

In other words, American farmers stand to lose a lot in a communist revolution (their land and their privileged way of life) whereas for the peasants, the opportunity to be proletarianized was a blessing and an opportunity for improvement.

Peasants of Guinea-Bissau

The revolutionary Amilcar Cabral wrote a detailed analysis of the situation of Guinea-Bissau which offers us another point of comparison.³

First, Cabral outlines two social-ethnic groups in Guinea-Bissau: the Fulas and the Dyulas. The Bissau-Guinean peasantry resides primarily within the Dyulas ethnic group. What does Cabral say about the Dyulas peasantry and their revolutionary character? He cites their itinerant qualities as lending them a proclivity to revolution. Landowning Kansas farmers do not have an itinerant nature. The closest thing in American society we have to a Dyulas peasant would be the migrant farm worker — a population that is completely absent in the KCP’s article.

Among the Balantes — the other ethnic group with a peasantry⁴ in Guinea-Bissau, social standing and economic class was in large part determined by how much farm labor a family could contribute. This stands in contrast to the American farmer which, by the KCP’s own words, is defined by their ownership of land and capital. Not their subsistence from their labor. Simply put, the farmer is a net consumer and expropriator of value. Farmers extract from the land and human labor; peasants are the labor extracted from. This is true by the article’s own admission.

In both the Chinese and Guinea-Bissau examples, another factor present which is absent in the case of American farmers is their victimization by a colonial power. The peasants of China and Guinea-Bissau were both subject to a brutal regime of colonization. In the case of the Chinese peasantry, it was at the hands of the Japanese. In the case of Guinea-Bissau, it was at the hands of the Portuguese. Compare this to the situation of the American and Kansas farmer, in which case the farmer is the settler and is the colonizer.

What Farmer Rebellion Actually Looks Like

The peasants in China were revolutionary because they demonstrated a willingness to subvert authority and a militant attitude. Can we say the same of the American farmer?

Actually, yes. But it looks a lot different than down-and-out peasants suffering from the oppression of spiritual clerics and noble landlords.\

What does the rebellious insurrectionary spirit of the American farmer look like? It looks like none other than Ammon Bundy, the famous leader of the 2014 Malheur Wildlife Refuge occupation where Bundy led a group of American ranchers to take up arms against the federal government and successfully repelled the police.

What was the source of their complaints? Why did these ranchers and farmers decide to spontaneously rise up? It was because the feds had the utter gall to enforce environmental protection laws against illegal grazing on protected federal lands. These farmers wanted to effectively destroy endangered species and, in some cases, infringe upon sovereign Indigenous lands for the grazing rights of their cattle.

Is this really what the Kansas Communist Party wants to appeal to? The white chauvinists who ignore Indigenous sovereignty and who violate federal environmental protection regulations? This is what a rowdy uprising of American farmers looks like.

The Farmer as Settler

It is strange that in a discussion revolving around land, there is no mention of settler colonialism or colonization. Look at a map of Kansas’s counties to see how important the legacy of settler colonialism is to the state.

Notice how neatly the square territory is subdivided into equally neat square plots of counties. The landowning farmer this article sympathizes so heavily with exists within the context of the Jeffersonian system of land parcels, an orderly grid-like system where the principal concern is the apportionment and ordering of land-as-property rather than land-as-space.

We can consider this a symptom of the fact that farmers are settlers, just as the Boers were settlers and ‘israelis’ are settlers, who benefit from the genocide of Indigenous people and the continued expropriation of their land and their means of production. The American farmer has more in common with a zionazi settler manning a colonial outpost in occupied Palestine than they do with a downtrodden Chinese peasant suffering under the yoke of the Japanese Empire or a Russian serf brutally oppressed by the tsar.

J. Sakai details the connection between settler colonialism, whiteness and fascism in his book Settlers: the Mythology of the White Proletariat, but to recap: the settlers’ economic anxieties are rooted in downward mobility. They will do anything, and strike any bargain, to preserve what they have. This is in contrast to the lumpenproletariat and the genuine (non-labor-aristocratic) proletariat for whom authentic proletarianization would represent upward mobility and an improvement in status.

By pandering to the landowning petit-bourgeois settler farming demographic, what your organization has done in practice is to align itself with the mainstream “communist” organizations. What you are organizing is not the proletariat and its class allies, but instead the settler petit-bourgeoisie and the labor aristocracy. If you do not correct this ignorance and continue to refuse to confront settler colonialism, the end result, regardless of the intentions of your organization or membership, will be a social-fascist line.

A Note on Book Worship

Toward the end of the article, in footnote 38, the author writes “as we have seen throughout history and in to the current age, dogmatic adherence to Marxist values can often be a detriment to the overall goals of providing for the people.”

I would like to ask the author: in what universe is there an excess of adherence to Marxist “values”? Which values specifically are you speaking of? We know about book worship, the mechanical application of texts without regard for concrete conditions. But here, you adhere to a fabrication of Marx that ignores the method in favor of the conclusions. This article invokes “dogmatic adherence to Marxist values” as a mistake to be avoided with the purpose of abandoning class analysis altogether.

Chen Duxiu’s clique insisted that China must wait for a proletariat to develop because that’s what the European model described. Mao corrected this by applying Marxism — materialist analysis of concrete conditions — to the Chinese context. What KCP’s article does is book worship in a different key, distorting reality to fit into models taken from history. The article waves away the question of who produces value and who expropriates it, precisely because answering that question honestly would reveal that farmers are not the revolutionary subject the article wishes them to be.

The Marxist method would require asking basic questions about the political economy of Kansas’s agricultural sector. What are the material conditions of agricultural production in Kansas? Who performs the labor? Who owns the land and the machines? Who captures the surplus value? The answers do not favor the thesis of farmer-as-revolutionary. The article’s hedge against “dogmatic adherence” is therefore an evasion of the analysis that Marxism demands as a science.

Part II: The Migrant Laborer is the Revolutionary Subject

The Absent Protagonist

For an article about farmers, I thought that there might be some mention of the struggles of undocumented migrant workers, as well as migrant workers who have legal papers but are still subject to capitalist repression. Kansas might not be a border state, but it’s had its fair share of brutal raids by Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

I remember that when I still lived in Manhattan, Kansas, within a week of Trump taking office, the gestapo stormtroopers raided the community and hauled off dozens of people whose only crime was not having their papers in order. I don’t know exactly what these Manhattan residents did for a living, but I do know that in the US, many farm workers are undocumented. These are the people who grow our food and actually work the land.

There might be small farms owned by independent families, who have to work the land themselves, who could be drawn into an anti big-agriculture struggle. But it is also true that farmowners, big or small, employ and therefore exploit peoples’ labor. More times than not, these farmhands are part of the most vulnerable class in the US — undocumented immigrants. But the migrant laborers, who actually produce value in agricultural production, are completely absent from the analysis. This alone speaks to the settler viewpoint of the author.

The Material Conditions of Migrant Labor

Let’s apply the survival-probability framework I established earlier:

Consider the material conditions of the undocumented migrant farm worker. They own no means of production. They sell their labor under extremely precarious conditions. The state can snatch them from their homes, workplaces, and communities, and deport them to countries they might not have seen since they were a kid. Their wages are tiny because their undocumented status makes them vulnerable to coercion. The law ensures they cannot organize openly, appeal to the courts, or vote. They are less than proletarian, denied even the minimal legal recognition afforded to citizen workers. Revolution offers them the possibility of human dignity. They have nothing to lose but their chains.

What about the material conditions of farmers? The farmer fears losing their land and becoming a worker. The farmer desperately clings to their privileged position — the hope that MAGA or some other reactionary movement will preserve their petit-bourgeois status against the concentrating dynamics of capital. Compared to the migrant farm worker, the farmer has many things to lose.

This is what the article fundamentally misunderstands! When the author writes about farmers facing crushing debt and corporate consolidation, he fails to realize they are phenomena occurring within the bourgeois class, not between the bourgeois and the proletariat. The farmer being squeezed by Cargill or Monsanto is a small capitalist being squeezed by larger capitalists. Capitalism monopolizes over time, and trying to turn back the clock to a society comprised entirely of petit-bourgeoisie is definitionally reactionary.

Revolutionary Praxis

I established that migrant farm workers are revolutionary, as a class. What does their revolutionary consciousness actually look like? Unlike the Bundy rebellion, which was a reactionary defense of the right to exploit public lands and destroy ecosystems, revolutionary action by migrant workers is directed at their actual class enemies: the farmers who exploit their labor, the corporations that depress their wages, the state that terrorizes their communities.

The historical United Farm Workers, despite its later degeneration into a reformist organization, demonstrated that migrant and seasonal farm workers are capable of militant organization. More recently, strikes and work stoppages by agricultural workers during the pandemic, “essential” enough to risk their lives but not essential enough to receive protection or fair wages, show that this kind of workplace organizing is still alive. The networks of mutual aid and sanctuary that emerge in migrant communities in response to ICE raids demonstrate spontaneous forms of solidarity and resistance running ahead of the “communist” organizations.

On the Question of Tactical Engagement with Farmers

A Contradiction Worth Noting

Having established that farmers are not a revolutionary subject, and that migrant laborers are, I want to address what I think the KCP article wants to do: find some basis for engaging with farmers as an important element of the rural population, no matter how theoretically contorted.

There is a real contradiction in the situation of the landowning farmer. The farmer relies on migrant labor to work their land and harvest their crops. The state, through ICE and Border Patrol, periodically raids these communities and removes this labor force. This disrupts the farmer’s operations and cuts into their profit margins. The farmer therefore has, at least on this narrow issue, an interest that conflicts with the enforcement arm of the state.

Mao analyzed the national bourgeoisie in anti-colonial contexts. The national bourgeoisie, while still a capitalist class, had contradictions with imperialism that made them potential but unreliable allies in the anti-colonial struggle. They could be incorporated into a united front, but only under proletarian leadership and only on terms that did not compromise the fundamental class character of the movement.

However, this analogy can’t be stretched too much. The national bourgeoisie in anti-colonial contexts faced an existential threat from imperialism. Their contradiction with the imperialist powers was terminal. On the other hand, farmers can survive deportation raids. They simply face reduced profits and operational disruptions. They can hire new workers, or mechanize further, or sell their land to larger operations. Their survival as a class is not threatened by immigration enforcement.

This means any alliance with farmers is even shakier than the already shaky alliance with the national bourgeoisie that characterized New Democratic formations. The farmer’s commitment to opposing immigration enforcement extends exactly as far as it is profitable for them to do so. The moment it becomes more convenient to side with the state, so long as it preserves their land ownership, they will do so without hesitation.

The Conditions for Any Engagement

If the Kansas Communist Party (or any other Communist organization) insists on attempting engagement with landowning farmers, the following conditions are the minimum requirements for such engagement to avoid degenerating into tailism and class collaborationism:

First, the farmers’ contradiction with ICE is shallow. Farmers are a petit-bourgeois class with a narrow, temporary, self-interested reason to oppose one specific state apparatus. This must be stated openly. Tactical engagement on one specific issue does not transform the farmer into an long-term ally.

Second, any engagement must be premised on farmers providing concrete material support to migrant workers. This means: using their property to shelter migrants from ICE raids, contributing to legal defense funds, bail funds, mutual aid networks, refusing to provide information to ICE, refusing to allow ICE on their property, public advocacy, etc. Farmers must give actual useful aid.

Third, farmers cannot lead in any formation that emerges from such engagement. The migrant workers and their organizations must lead. The farmers’ role is subordinate and contingent on continued material support.

Fourth, the moment farmers begin to waver, to prioritize their property over the safety of migrant workers, the engagement ends. The farmers will betray the alliance when it becomes convenient. Plan for it in advance.

I am skeptical that even this can produce meaningful results, based on the class analysis outlined above.

Conclusion

The Kansas Communist Party’s article represents a fundamental confusion about Marxism and revolution. By misidentifying the revolutionary subject, the article veers into revisionism of the most dangerous kind, social-fascism. It is the kind of error that, if uncorrected, leads toward tailism, class collaborationism, and ultimately the evacuation of any revolutionary content from communist politics, as it has already done so within the mainstream “communist” organizations.

I have attempted to correct this error by going over basic Marxist principles, by which it’s obvious that farmers aren’t a revolutionary class. This doesn’t mean farmers aren’t useful, but the vast majority won’t be allies to any serious Communist organization. Farmers who wish to contribute to revolution have to offer material support for migrant farm workers. And even then, they’ll be short-term tactical alliances subordinate to the leadership of the revolutionary classes.

The Kansas Communist Party should immediately issue a self-criticism acknowledging the erroneous line of the original article, explain the theoretical confusion that led to this error, and rectify itself by studying the struggles of the undocumented immigrants and migrant laborers who produce the value that farmers expropriate. Investigate their conditions and their praxis. Build relationships with their organizations. Offer something real to support them in struggles they are already waging. That is where revolutionary potential actually exists, with undocumented immigrants and migrant laborers who face the full wrath of the ameriKKKan state, and who have every reason to fight for a different world.

1. I use this word, “protagonist” with some hesitancy as it creates a temptation to view class struggle through moralistic lens. A protagonist drives a plot and sets things into motion but that has nothing to do with being the “good side” in a Marvel superhero comic-book-movie. ︎
2. How do we know that the opposition was correct? We know it was correct because it succeeded in creating a revolution. The line opposed to Duxiu won. That is the evidence. Reality is the ultimate arbiter of whether or not a theory is correct. ︎
3. It is true that Cabral was initially dismissive of the peasantry’s revolutionary potential. Cabral and the Guinea-Bissauan revolutionaries also demonstrably failed at revolution — therefore we can say on some level that although Cabral came much closer than most others, it is nonetheless true that Cabral’s analysis on some level was systematically wrong. This in no way is meant to degrade or slander the legacy of Comrade Cabral, who by all means was a committed and serious revolutionary whose works and legacy are worth engaging with. What matters is that Cabral had a thorough analysis of the peasantry’s material conditions which will offer great insight into why calling American farmers “peasants” is wrong. ︎
4. The Dyulas and Balantes both have a peasant component, but by Cabral’s account, the peasantry composes a much greater percentage of the Dyulas than the Balantes. ︎

We say that we must come to know the difference between mobilization and organization because the enemy will use mobilization to demobilize us. Mobilization is very easy. Very, very easy. Since we are a people who are instinctively ready to respond against acts of injustice, any time there’s one little act of injustice, we can blow it up and we will find people who will come and make some mass demonstration around it. […] And this is what mobilization does, it mobilizes people around issues. Those of us who are revolutionary are not concerned with issues, we are concerned with the system. The difference must be properly understood. […] Mobilization usually leads to reform action, not to revolutionary action. […] We must transform mobilization to organization. We say the enemy will try to use mobilization to demobilize us. Many brothers and sisters who’ve been to the million and more march will say to you, ‘I was there.’ Well, what are you doing today my sister?

— Kwame Ture

Organizing, Not Merely Mobilizing

We have all heard and seen the mass demonstrations, marches, and walkouts that erupted in the Twin Cities, signaling the start of this year of struggle. We’ve heard the tramp of ten thousand people marching against the occupation, the sounds of mobilization; but beneath it, and lasting beyond, for those who know to listen, is a steadier sound — like whispers, like chants. That of the organizers standing sentry on street corners in the aching cold, coordinating grocery runs, rapid response to raids, and transporting students and workers safely. These bands are built by grassroots organization, and it’s precisely the last lesson our enemies want us to learn.

Five years ago, Minneapolis erupted in response to the murder of George Floyd. For that summer, it seemed every city in the world became an uprising, as Democrats scrambled to take a knee and corporations writhed to retire racist brand mascots and grant better media representation. USU spoke with a Communist on the ground in Minneapolis who has witnessed the sweep of 2020 to the present moment. “During this period, it felt like people were taking power in a way that’d be much bigger,” they told us. “Living in south Minneapolis, a police precinct being lit and set on fire, grocery stores looted and turned into mutual aid sites, 200 buildings going up in flames – that was a lot happening. In that short period of time, it felt more than a moment, but it quickly went away.”

All the energy to abolish the police, or even defund them, was funneled by liberal counterinsurgents into tactics that either wasted the time of great masses of the oppressed, or narrowly appealed to the upper classes of the nationally oppressed through job prospects and investment opportunity.¹ The “moment” that was 2020 evaporated into an utter defeat for the oppressed, and a complete victory for the settler-colonial ruling class that ensures daily the death of a countless unnamed Floyds. The only price paid: a handful of temporary concessions this current regime has already pried back with vengeance, and a single sacrificial pig.

As our comrade in Minneapolis said, “As Communists, we were not organized enough to win the masses over when they were ripe to be captured.”

It is the general consensus of principled Communists that this was a watershed moment wasted. Every failure is a lesson, data in the experiment of social revolution; but if no one is keeping track, if no one is recording the results and learning from past efforts, the movement might as well be hurling human lives at the wall to see what sticks and looking away at each impact. But, as it turns out, something has stuck. Something has lodged itself firmly in the communities of Minneapolis, that all resulting efforts to resist occupation have been able to grow from: organizations, persisting from the embers of 2020 to now. It’s our responsibility to learn from them.

In Minneapolis, there was a massive wave of homelessness at the beginning of COVID. Networks of mutual aid popped up because of that. Then the uprising happened, and people started figuring out how to take care of each other. Figuring out food, how to handle work, those networks were built by organizers, and after the mobilized masses disappeared in 2020, these networks remained.

The remarkable pace at which these networks expanded, from the handful of organizations to the intersecting community webs connecting every single city section, neighborhood, and block proves the lessons that Kwame Ture described so perfectly more than half a century ago. It also shows all of us, empire-wide, a roadmap for how to prepare as these “occupations” escalate. Every city on this land is a garrison fort, palisades replaced by cameras, automatic alarms, and barbed wire, so to call any concentration by the federal government an “occupation” is essentially a misnomer. It is merely a reinforcement. It is a concentration of already-existing state repressive powers. But we must not ignore the difference in form. The organizers in Minneapolis have adjusted to the reality of their new opponents.

All law enforcement in this country can and will kill you, we know that. They’re parts of the same arm in this imperialist state. However, what has become clear with these federal agents is that they do not function on the same playing field as a local PD. They do not operate on the same playing field as the National Guard. […] I don’t know if it’s a martyr complex or just talking shit, but I see this tendency from people who don’t live here when they say, “Stop filming and go de-arrest.” Or, “I wouldn’t let this happen.”

I’ll tell you: you would let it happen, or you’ll get killed.

De-arrest is more common in anarchist circles; anarchists here are not calling for de-arrest anymore that I’ve seen, because it’s understood in the city that we don’t stand any chance. You can de-arrest with the local PD. Not with ICE, because there’s a 50/50 chance they’ll kill you and the person they’re trying to kidnap. In the end, you still won’t stop who they’re trying to kidnap.

The organizers in Minneapolis understand fundamentally the dialectic between theory and practice. They have gathered experimental data from their lives, developed practices, tried and applied this theory, analyzed the results, and developed new theory and new practices. They are at the forefront of the fight against the bourgeois government.

The Four Opportunists and the Spontaneous Movement

As the press organ of the All-Empire Worker’s League, we have already taken a stand against the Four Opportunists, those “organizations” that capture revolutionary and radical energy, sweep up developing Communists and the newly class-conscious, and then negate them by combining them with liberals, by denying them access to the levers of power in their own organizations, by teaching them bad theory, and by burning up their energy through endless mobilization with no strategic goals. The Four Opportunists are the CPUSA, the PSL, the FRSO, and the DSA. (See “The 2026 Outlook of the Central Press” and “Liberalism and Fascism With Communist Characteristics” in the Red Clarion).

In Minneapolis, the growth of the spontaneous movement has continued in the face of the Four Opportunists, specifically the FRSO and DSA. USU has had contact with other Communists in Minnesota who tell us that…

De-legitimizing action and organizing is being done by individuals acting on the behalf of FRSO (DSA was also involved on this front). The hegemony held by FRSO makes this possible, as their cadre members are involved in other orgs. There’s another Somali group in Cedar Riverside who call themselves the Cedar Riverside Protection Alliance, but are democrat adjacent and pro assimilation. They were attempting to de-escalate by gathering all the African folks into their homes for that day, telling them to stand down and not confront [Jack] Lang.² Cedar Riverside Protection Alliance was doing flyering, circulating statements via signal group chats or boosting messages that were calling [an] org ³ outside antagonists with no right to organize in Cedar. They cut off supply lines and disrupted organizing work doing this.

When the fascists came to town, Jack Lang and co., the Coalition Against the Trump Agenda (A group made up of a lot of FRSO front orgs) enacted the strategy of “shadowing” the fascists.

Basically, this amounted to them just following them around and yelling stuff at them. However, things did not play out as FRSO planned. Roughly 1000 folks showed up (the divide between the masses and org affiliated was obvious) to counter around 10 fascists with a banner. The FRSO marshals protected the nazis’ banner from the masses, until they eventually lost control and the banner was destroyed in spite of their efforts. Extreme peace policing.

An additional note to further illustrate the resource strangulation and white chauvinism of FRSO: [a] Somali organization that led the defense action against Jake Lang in Cedar Riverside reached out to the SRA [Socialist Rifle Association] of Minneapolis for a firearms training. They later learned that there is a strong FRSO contingency in SRA. Once SRA realized this Somali organization was the one that held the defense action, SRA informed the organization that they would not move forward since they “created confusion and gave other (FRSO) organizations a hard time.”

From the comrade in Minneapolis:

One thing I can speak to is, right now, not just in Minneapolis, but nation-wide — we’re seeing opportunism. There’s this tailist need to use this term “general strike“ to try and illicit buy-in from people. For these days of action. We saw this last Friday. The labor unions involved, the orgs involved, it was never called a general strike. It was clear we weren’t calling for one. There were outside groups that decided to call it a general strike. […]

When we mislead people into thinking a day of vacation is the same as a general strike, we do an insurmountable amount of damage to education and getting working people to understand the actual risk-reward of going on strike. And dealing blows to capital which is the point of a strike. That is the big criticism I Have right now. The organizations that should and do know better, continue to use words like general strike.

PSL has pursued a similar strategy in Minneapolis: more than any other group, they have misrepresented the effort to organize petty-bourgeois businesses to voluntarily close as a “general strike.” They encouraged people to use paid time off to participate in marches. This is the PSL’s strategy of class struggle — not as the struggle of the lowest elements of the proletariat against the imperialist system, but as the struggle of the petty bourgeois and labor aristocratic layers to achieve limited political aims. This is not revolution. This is counterinsurgency.

The spontaneous development of the people is breaking free of the chains long cast over the struggle for liberation by the Four Opportunists. In every corner of the US Empire, the grip of the opportunists and the tailists is weakening. We must unite the most advanced theory with the most class-conscious elements of the people and we must fight against the settler-socialism of the opportunist groups. What is this settler-socialism? It is the Marxism of capitulation, a form of revisionism that sees reform as the only path forward and puts the question of revolution forever over the horizon. (See “Revolution in Our Lifetime” in the Red Clarion). In FRSO and PSL, this is partially accomplished through the deceptive organizational structure in which access to internal documents and planning is entirely isolated and inaccessible; day to day members of these organizations are encouraged to pay into them and attend marches, but the strategic and tactical level operates at one remove from the general membership. All decisions are made by a secret group of select few — Blanquism, in other words. (See, for instance, “The Cult Building Tendency” in the Red Clarion). Have you seen calls for marches spring up with less than 24 or 48 hours notice? That’s the work of the Four Opportunists. Whether it is their intention or not, the material result is the bleeding off of revolutionary energy into channels that are acceptable to the ruling class. In truth, it is an attempt to find accommodation with the ruling class and demand a different distribution of power within the imperialist system. It is the plea of the imperialist labor aristocracy and petty bourgeoisie (who overwhelmingly command the Four Opportunists) for more spoils to be allocated to them and for a greater degree of input into the empire’s political system.

For more on the Four Opportunists and our criticisms, see generally “Stagnant Parties Don’t Deserve Your Time” in the Clarion, and…

CPUSA – “A True Accounting of the CPUSA In Its Members Own Words,” “Why I Left the CPUSA”

PSL – “Revolution in Our Lifetime”

FRSO – “The Settler J. Sykes and the FRSO,” “Forward Out of FRSO”

DSA – “Triumph For the Zionist Left”

We, and the organizers in Minnesota, reject this settler bargain.

The League Principle

We require a country-wide organization to fight both the Four Opportunists and their labor-aristocratic/petty-bourgeois base and the bourgeois state itself. The lessons of Minneapolis are clear: it is possible to bring elements of the imperialist working class into direct and antagonistic contradiction with the state when we move our strategic goals out of the narrow realm of wage increases and into the realm of the national liberation struggle. White anarchists and Communists, petty bourgeois and labor aristocratic elements, have joined the national liberation struggle against ICE. Breaking the law for the first time, acting directly against the state for the first time, opens a new world of revolutionary potential among the labor aristocracy. Show them that it is possible to oppose the state, rather than seek accommodation with it, and we develop the subjective awareness of revolution. Revolutionary potential is created within otherwise reactionary elements of the population.

However, this is only possible with uncompromising proletarian leadership. Without the anchor of a revolutionary, proletarian organization, opportunism is the unavoidable result. Those members of the imperial labor aristocracy and petty bourgeoisie who will not voluntarily surrender their class-outlook and who will not voluntarily subject themselves to proletarian class-leadership are our objective enemy.

The principle of the League is the intermediary principle between our present stage of development (scattered, ideologically incoherent, with the presence of small pockets of developed Communist organization at the local level) and the militant party-form. Yes, we need a party of the new (new) type, as the All-Empire Worker’s League has put it,

It’s not enough, though, to just state the obvious: that the US in 2025 is not Russia in 1917, it is not China, it is not Viet Nam, it is not a semi-feudal country or a country in the global periphery. The US is the center of world-capitalist reaction, an imperial hegemon that acts as the backstop and system of last defense for capitalism across the entire world. No metropolitan country has ever seen a successful proletarian revolution….

We must create a vanguard organization of the working class that can purge all opportunism and revisionism from its ranks, educate and elevate the working masses, defeat internal and external chauvinism, unite the liberation struggles of the colonies and semi-colonies, and prepare the reserves of the revolutionary proletariat for direct confrontation — for direct class war — with the enemy state, with bourgeois civil society, and with the world-bourgeoisie themselves, who largely reside within the US-Canadian bloc. In order to satisfy these requirements, we must creatively apply the lessons of 1905, of October, of the course of struggle in China, Viet Nam, Ghana, and the whole periphery.

While we work to create this party, we must organize our various local organizations together and take advantage of the benefits this centralization can provide. While a League is not yet a party, it is an organization of organizations. We have discussed the formation of regional leagues in the Clarion in the past (see “Towards a New York City League of Workers and Students” and “Towards a Boston League of Workers and Students”). It is through this process of regional organization that we can build our capacity to resist the state as well as the class forces that tend to drag Communist-oriented projects in the US empire toward opportunism.

Since 2025, the All-Empire Worker’s League has worked to integrate local organizations and propagate, develop, and advance the theory necessary to combat the opportunists and the bourgeois imperialists. In areas with a high concentration of developed local organizations that are actually engaged in class struggle against the state, we urge them to band together to resist opportunism and form centralized organs of class power.

In regions where the struggle has not yet been heightened to the same degree as in Minneapolis, we urge local organizations to prepare for the same degree of struggle. Our sources on the ground warn that unless we prepare in advance, we will be caught off guard. Washington is willing to kill to suppress class-consciousness and solidarity between the imperialist labor aristocracy and the US proletariat. We have to be ready to counter that violence with the main weapon we have: organization!

Footnotes:

1. Black, Too and Rasul A. Mowatt. Laundering Black Rage: The Washing of Black Death, People, Property, and Profits. Routledge, New York, NY, 2024. Introduction, xi-xxiii and 138-145. ︎
2. Jack Lang is a pardoned January 6th rioter and fascist agitator. ︎
3. “[…] a group of communists who have been organizing in Minneapolis and Saint Paul who are critical of the established Left in the region and are actively attempting to build a viable decolonial Marxist alternative[…]” — From the Communists in Minneapolis. ︎

The Navajo, Havasupai, and Ute Nations are being poisoned. Toxic uranium saturates their land, drinking water, and homes. Southwestern indigenous tribes lived on top of uranium deposits for centuries without issue. They called it leetso, or “yellow dirt.” Cancer rates in this area were so low that some believed the Navajo were immune. This changed in the 1940s, when the federal government pledged to commit a nuclear holocaust against Japanese civilians. Since then, over 40,000 tons of uranium ore have been extracted from their land with no concern for the Indigenous miners or their families. The Navajo language had no word for “radiation” or “cancer” at the time. They didn’t know what the mines would do to their people, and they were desperate for a source of income. The federal government and mining companies knew.  

The trucks traveled from Pinyon Plain Mine (formerly Canyon Mine), which is controversially located on Havasupai territory. The mine sits in the foreground of the Havasupai’s sacred mountain, Red Butte, and over several important aquifers. These were the first trucks sent from the mine since it began operation in December 2023.  They were set to follow a 300 mile route to the White Mesa uranium mill in southern Utah. The Navajo outlawed uranium transport in 2012 due to its horrifying legacy of radiation sickness and cancer in the Navajo nation. 

Alas, the federal government does not recognize Indigenous sovereignty in any meaningful sense. Indigenous nations are technically allowed to write laws concerning their internal affairs, but exceptions are made when a law could interfere with pillaging tribal lands. In the case of uranium transport, the statute exempts state and federal highways on Navajo lands which Energy Fuels Resources, the company contracted to mine and transport the radioactive material, has designated as hauling routes between their mine and processing mill. While the company is allowed to travel in the eyes of the American government, President Nygren has promised to set up roadblocks against any additional trucks. He demands an agreement that requires Energy Fuels to provide ten days notice before shipping uranium so that the Navajo nation can take safety precautions and inform the community. The Navajo nation is generally opposed to any movement of uranium through its land, but they are willing to let the ore through if given proper notice, which was not the case here. The Navajo nation only learned of the trucks because the Forest Service relayed the message that same morning.      

On August 2, First Lady Jasmine Blackwater-Nygren led a rally and march with Navajo, Havasupai, Hopi, and Fort Mojave nation members. They marched up the hauling route as Grand Canyon tourists drove by in the opposite direction. Many honked in support. Energy Fuels Resources has since agreed to pause uranium hauling until an agreement can be reached with the Navajo nation. It is in Energy Fuel’s best interest to cooperate, given new research that suggests the mine will contaminate the Havasupai’s drinking water. A temporary pause in shipments would be a small price for Energy Fuels to pay if they can continue exploiting the sacred Ancestral Footprints Monument. Genocide Joe Biden and Killer Kamala Harris ironically designated this area as a national monument in August, 2023, but since the Pinyon Plain mine was approved in 1986, it escapes regulation. Thanks for nothing, Joe and Kamala!

The Navajo nation’s promise to block uranium shipments is a test of Indigenous sovereignty over its borders. The federal government has their dirty fingerprints all over Indigenous statutes. Indigenous nations are often referred to as semi- sovereign, but “semi- sovereign” will always remain a shallow and disingenuous concept under the settler colonial relation. So-called limited sovereignty is reduced or annihilated at any moment the settler government chooses. Congress can terminate the existence of Indigenous nations at any time, like it did in 1953 when hundreds of thousands of indigenous were relocated to American cities for cheap labor. The Supreme Court will continue to affirm Congressional fiat over Indigenous nations. Limited sovereignty has a clearly defined ceiling, but no floor. These are the scars of oppressed nations entitled to full control over their peoples, resources, and destinies. 

Protests against Energy Fuels Resources are set to continue. Another 100 indigenous people marched along the haul route on Saturday, August 24th. The next march is scheduled for October 12th against the company’s processing mill. Energy Fuels Resources must face consequences after poisoning Havasupai and Ute Tribal members. Organized Indigenous nations pose an inherent threat to the status quo of settler domination. The settler regime will only pretend to recognize sovereignty for so long. Force Congress to exert its veto power so that all may see the zombified corpse that is limited sovereignty.

In a transparent attempt to shutter the press, investigators seized critical machinery needed to run the newspaper: the press file server, computers, phones, their internet router, personal cell phones, and their backup drives. Eric Meyer told reporters that “We are going to publish somehow,” but “it’s the nitty gritty stuff nobody can help us with. Like where is the ad log? Where is our nameplate?” The message was clear: “Mind your own business or we’re going to step on you.”

What’s the business? Police are acting on behalf of local restauranteur, Kari Newell, owner of the local business Parlour 1886 in the Elgin Hotel. The Record staff had been kicked out of a public forum with U.S. Representative Jake LaTurner by Newell the week before. She attacked the paper online as well. In response, a  confidential source leaked information to the Record that Newell had been convicted of driving under the influence but continued to illegally use her car without a driver’s license. In Kansas, a criminal record like this can jeopardize a business’ attempts to get a liquor license, and Newell was seeking one for her catering business.

The editors at the Record suspected the information was coming from Newell’s husband, who was filing for divorce, and decided not to run a story using it. Meyer alerted the police instead. “We thought we were being set up,” he said. Police notified Newell. She made public statements at a city council meeting claiming the Record had gotten and distributed sensitive documents illegally, which wasn’t true. The Record published a response laying out the facts on Thursday.

Before 11 a.m. on Friday, the police launched their raid. The warrant alleged that the paper was participating in the “identity theft of Kari Newell.”

The police in Marion are merely a miniature model of the police throughout the U.S. Empire. Police often act directly as the agents of the propertied classes. Newell, whose property was threatened, went to the police in Marion and asked them to take action to protect her money and her company. Just like they do when they arrest the unhoused for daring to pitch tents on public property so they may live, just like they do when they arrest the starving for taking the necessities of life from huge corporations, the police moved immediately to protect Newell.

Police have two overarching missions in the U.S. Empire. The first is unique to the settler-colonial history of the country — they act as a domestic garrison to put down Black and Indigenous uprisings. The second is something they share in common with police everywhere: the protection of private property. We often consider this “corruption” in the common parlance, but in fact it’s what police do all over the country. Big and small, police departments act at the beck and call of moneyed interests. From the FBI down to the tiniest local police station, they are the right hand of property owners. You can think of them as the blue-jacketed Gestapo of the local Chamber of Commerce and the fascistic petty business tyrants. The bigger the police, the bigger the paymaster.

The police of Marion Kansas are the face of police throughout the U.S. Empire.

What is it like in the warehouse? The mood is somber and depressed. We joke daily about suicide: “Maybe I’ll jump off the Mod” — that’s the 50-foot tall platform pickers stand on — “or jump in front of the forklift.” There’s no beach here. We bond on the gallows.

Our days are tedious, physically painful, crushingly boring. Your department is chosen by day and when you get there, you either walk or stand in one place for ten to twelve hours. You’re given two breaks and not a minute more. The work is both physically exhausting and psychologically violent. Many of us go home each day limping and sore. Old, disabled, and pregnant workers are forced to struggle for the handful of promotions to jobs where they can occasionally sit down.

But if you haven’t heard much about the conditions inside of AEO’s warehouses, you’re not alone. That’s no accident. The company’s employee handbook sets out draconian rules for how workers are allowed to talk about the company, during and after employment, essentially muzzling workers who dissent. 

“When they first rolled out the video, I could tell just by looking at it that this wasn’t going to work.”

Last year, American Eagle spent over a million dollars to “modernize” its crumbling warehouse. Part of this “modernization” was the installation of a new, automated packing system designed to replace skilled labor — the company bragged that workers could be trained on the new system in “about five minutes.” The system, from U.K. packing corporation B.G., adds hours of work on the front and back end to prepare items for automation and to receive and sort what comes out the other end. It has made the already-fungible packers even more replaceable, certainly one of the goals of the American Eagle execs who paid for it. But it’s also plagued by glitches, which causes the system to stall out many times during each shift.

This money could have been spent repairing the dozens of holes in the ceilings in both buildings, which leak water into the warehouse every time it rains. This apparently isn’t important enough for American Eagle to consider fixing. Every time it rains, enterprising maintenance workers are forced to place individual trash cans under the holes.

The money could also have been used to fix the warehouse’s forklift shortage. Multiple forklifts have to be “Locked-Out, Tagged-Out” — the industrial procedure for locking and labeling broken or otherwise unsafe equipment to prevent injury to those attempting to use them — every shift. The company finally attempted to remedy this a year ago, but did so in the most incompetent way possible, which, as any long-term AE worker will tell you, is standard procedure. Without speaking to a single forklift operator, the company purchased several used forklifts from the bankruptcy sale of another corporation. These forklifts are practically useless, save for one model (called a “pacer” in the warehouse), that we in fact did not actually need more of. The rest are incompatible with the warehouse in some way. Even a brief trip through the warehouse would have shown the execs that these machines wouldn’t work. Some are too tall, others too short; they are universally the wrong size. Even the new Crown batteries are incompatible with our old Raymond forklifts. These “new” forklifts are now sitting in the back of the warehouse, gathering dust. 

Our supervisors are petulant dictators, petty tyrants who harass subordinates that have no recourse. Supervisors and leads split up friends and partners into different departments, give their preferred subordinates favorable jobs, punish workers they don’t like with the unpopular work, and gossip about subordinates behind their backs. Managers and supervisors promote friends and relatives, leaving loyal, knowledgeable workers to languish in the same menial tasks for years. Of all the indignities the overseers visit on the workers, surveilling them — watching them as they work — is among their favorite Some are known to stalk the Mods and packing rows, keeping an eye out for workers who might take a break from their monotonous jobs for the momentary respite of each other’s company. Their power being both arbitrary and immense, some supervisors punish chatting — others let their favorites talk at work, while cracking down on everyone else. Workers worry about the “higher-ups breathing down [their] necks”, and check over their shoulders every few minutes for fear of accusation that they’re off-task. 

In the picking department, a computer program monitors workers’ every move and flags their username to their leads if they’re seen as “idle” for five minutes. Having too much “gap time” (usually defined as 60 minutes or more total during a 12-hour shift), results in punishment from the harsher overseers. We’re given stringent quotas to meet, and a culture of hyper-competition is fostered among the warehouse workers. We are often afraid to go to the bathroom or to get water.

This culture of total top-down hierarchy instills a sense of hopelessness, numbness, complacency, and apathy in workers. When asked their feelings on a new punishing policy or arbitrary rule, most will shrug their shoulders in defeat. “It is what it is.”

Harassers, abusers, and other assorted pests get a general pass in the warehouse, especially if their production is good. One maintenance technician was known to make cruel sexist “jokes” and anti-woman comments for years before finally being fired for an unrelated infraction. A lead that was known for sexual harassment was simply shuttled to a different department with fewer women for him to target. A date-rapist was merely moved to a different shift from his victim. A harasser who stalked a coworker online and made disgusting comments about her body at the workplace was simply told to stop by the HR department. He still works here.

American Eagle relies on staffing agencies so they don’t have to hire full time employees who might qualify for benefits. Many of these workers are Latinx and primarily Spanish-speaking. This makes it harder for them to stand up against the mostly white, English-speaking leads and supervisors. Spanish-speaking associates are left to flounder, as the company relies on bilingual full-time workers to do the work of a translator in addition to their regular duties, without any extra pay. 

These temporary workers are separated from us full-time workers in every way possible: separate lockers, segregated work meetings, and special badges. Other workers refer to these temporary workers with scorn and reflexively blame them for malfunctions. Racism simmers just under the surface. There are loud questions about the immigration status of the Black and Latinx temporary workers. Having someone lower in the hierarchy gives folks someone to direct their hate towards, and makes it so the shit the bosses give them can roll onto someone else.

Workers regularly take out their anger on each other. Snide comments and toxic competition dominate conversation. Since workers are expected to conform to rigid production standards, they often vent their anger towards teammates who work slower than they do, accusing them of dragging down their “numbers” or “not pulling their weight.” Accusations of laziness float in the air like a thick smog, shaming workers who don’t — or can’t — make quota. Many workers suffer fatigue, illness, pain, anxiety, and desperation in silence, for fear of being labeled “lazy” by their supposed teammates. 

Despite making impressive profits, the company always manages to find ways to underpay their employees. This year, they announced employees will not receive their yearly bonus. The yearly 3% raises are quickly eaten up by inflation.

Overworked trainers are forced to push new workers through training in a matter of days, sometimes hours. The workers are then, predictably, anxious and unsure of themselves, and then make simple errors that create difficulties further down the line and can sometimes result in punitive actions towards the trainees. 

Group leads and operations clerks are increasingly placed into production roles, or are forced to do jobs that would have been handled by other associates, in addition to their regular duties.  

“At least it’s better than Wal-Mart!” has been the rallying cry of the desperate workers. Ottawa, Kansas is a warehouse town. The American Eagle warehouse stands on one side, the Wal-Mart Distribution Center on the other. Just next door to our warehouse is Schuff Steel, the place of nightmares, known for the abuse heaped upon its workers. With those options to choose from, American Eagle once looked like paradise.

But over the years, American Eagle has started to look more like a Wal-Mart or Amazon warehouse. Years ago, American Eagle boasted two 20-minute breaks and a 45-minute lunch on a 10-hour shift. Today, a worker on a 10-hour shift gets only two breaks: a 30-minute break and a 25-minute break. In a 12-hour shift, you have to work for four hours straight. Today, more and more of the American Eagle workers are going across town. Might as well work at the Wal-Mart — at least they pay better for what has become the same misery.

The police arrested Anthony Lester later that night on probable cause, but released him after a 24-hour holding period, without charges. For four tense days, Ralph’s family, and the Black community in Kansas City, grieved and demanded justice, while Lester sat at home, free of charges. Obeying police instruction, local news agencies protected the perpetrator by refusing to speak or print his name. Nevertheless, local community members gathered in protest outside Lester’s house on 115th Terrace over the next few days, persistently demanding he be brought to justice for his attempted murder of an unarmed Black child. The police, the state prosecutor, and the Missouri courts did not want to prosecute him.

Anyone can see that this was an attempted murder. The Missouri statute for second degree murder, 565.021, is simple. It requires only that the perpetrator knowingly caused the death of another person or, with the purpose of causing serious physical injury, caused the death of another. There is no reasonable debate to be had. No one shoots a child in the head without intending at the very least to cause serious injury. Lester, in no uncertain terms, shot to kill, and Ralph almost died.

Missouri, like many states in the U.S. Empire, also has a so-called “attempt” statute (562.012). To be found guilty of an attempted crime, the law of Missouri requires only that the perpetrator have taken  a “substantial step” toward carrying it out. Failing to successfully carry out the crime in question is not a defense. Being physically unable to carry it out is not even a defense.  In other words, Ralph’s survival makes Lester no less guilty of attempted murder in the second degree. Moreover, the penalty for a criminal attempt in Missouri is the same as the penalty for the completed crime — in this instance, ten to thirty years imprisonment.

Now, most people believe that the police are obligated to enforce the law and “protect and serve” people. That’s why they exist, after all, right? What would be the point of the police if they only “protected and served” when they felt like it? 

Good question! In fact, police explicitly aren’t obligated to enforce the law or protect people from danger — not even life-threatening danger. In a 5–4 decision in 1989, DeShaney v. Winnebago County Dept. of Social Services, the Supreme Court of the United States warned that citizens have “no affirmative right to governmental aid, even where such aid may be necessary to secure life, liberty, or property interests.” The Court ruled in that case that the county’s department of social services had no duty to protect a young boy from being beaten until he suffered brain damage, despite the fact that his mother repeatedly begged them to intervene. This doctrine, now well-established in U.S. law,  also applies to police departments. For example, in the 2005 case Castle Rock v. Gonzalez,  SCOTUS ruled 7–2 that police have no affirmative duty to protect people — even when doing so will prevent murder. In that case, a woman, Mrs. Gonzalez, called the police because her husband abducted her children, and she feared for their safety. In fact, she had an active protective order in place preventing him from coming to her house or seeing the children. The police chose to wait and see what happened. Mr. Gonzalez murdered all three of their children and then committed “suicide by cop.”

Every day, thousands of people across the U.S. Empire are arrested on “probable cause.” Only a modicum of evidence is required to make a “probable cause” arrest: If a single person says out loud that they saw a crime being committed, that is sufficient for police to arrest a suspect. Probable cause is so broad as to be essentially a free pass to police to arrest almost anyone at any time, for any (or virtually no) reason. Prosecution of any crime requires merely probable cause to proceed. This may be confused with another standard of proof, “beyond a reasonable doubt,” which is the standard for conviction in a criminal trial. To bring charges, all prosecutors need is a a few threads of evidence: hearsay, or a person claiming to have witnessed, for example, the suspect giving money to a friend on the street, or pocketing an item, or running down a street, or otherwise “acting suspicious,” is sufficient “probable cause” to support an arrest and continue prosecution for an illicit drug sale. “Probable cause,” those thin threads, prevents defendants from getting cases dismissed — cases upon which any reasonable person would say the state has no grounds to proceed. As a result, hundreds of people lose their jobs, their homes, and their families or are incarcerated each month — on these scant probable cause.

Every day, lawyers challenge probable cause on cases far less evident than this one, and judges in every court in the country frown and reply, “It’s only probable cause, counsel,” before overruling the defense. Yet in the case of Andrew Lester, who was witnessed and admitted to shooting Ralph Yarl, point-blank, in the head,  the police decided, and attempted to convince an enraged public, that there isn’t enough evidence to arrest this would-be child killer. The emperor is not only naked and exposed; he has been skinned and hanged from the branches of a sycamore tree.

The Black community of Kansas City, and their allies, did not wait for the police to act. They demanded action. The masses, primarily the local Black working-class community, poured into the streets. They gathered in front of Lester’s house to demand justice. They gathered in front of the police station to expose the lie of “protect and serve.” Missouri has not forgotten any of her dead — not Michael Brown, not any of the Black lives cut short by white supremacy. The Movement for Black Lives has only sunk deeper and broader roots among the masses; its demands have become more organically and urgently adopted with each Black life cut short by the U.S. Empire’s regime of apartheid terror. The people protested for days, crying for action. Slogans that have become all-too-familiar in their demands for justice denied under the white supremacist empire were heard on the streets — “Black lives are under attack!”; “Standup, fight back!”

An organization calling itself The People’s Coalition led the protests, mobilized  marches, prepared slogans, and channeled the wrath of the people into an undeniable, if still localized, political force. The Yarl family’s lawyer, Ben Crump, pressed the attack, demanding the recalcitrant state immediately arrest Lester. It’s not only in Missouri that voices have been raised. No, across the entire empire, the people have lifted their voices in protest. Black outrage and working-class solidarity rose swiftly.

Two days ago, over one thousand students at Staley High School in Missouri walked out of class in an organized display of protest at the callousness of Kansas City officials. Ralph’s friends and classmates carried signs and banners, and condemned the failure of the city to prosecute Lester, then to release him on a low bond — $200,000 — when most attempted murderers look at bonds of $1 million or more.

This firestorm has even drawn, like a dying, confused moth to a mighty inferno, the undead imperial president Biden, a man of an age and complexion with the murderous Lester, to Kansas City. There he and his second-in-command Kamala Harris took the opportunity to denounce, of all things, gun violence. Gun violence! Of course the white supremacist state has tried to tie the shooting of a young Black man by a white would-be killer, as pure an expression of direct national oppression, of murder motivated undeniably by racism, as a problem caused by the white supremacist’s tool! God forbid the oppressed take up the same tool, and wield it against their oppressor! No, it wasn’t the gun that gave rise to lynch terror! It’s not the gun that causes Black children to fear the police from childhood — the same rabid dogs-in-blue who will routinely pummel, tase, and strangle Black people to death without once drawing a gun! It wasn’t gun violence the people of Kansas City gathered to combat: it was the white supremacist state — the state that refused to bring a racist child-killer to justice, until it was forced to.

But that state, that white supremacist state, is afraid! Its servants keenly remember the of the 2020 Summer Uprisings, in the wake of George Floyd’s murder, and fear the specter of another rebellion. They know that the next wave could begin anywhere, and they are desperate to prevent it. The prosecuting attorney and his compatriots in the Kansas City police have finally made the decision to hold Lester “accountable,” and city officials have finally acknowledged that the crime had a “racial component.” But they will just as soon provide for Lester’s acquittal, if they believe the public is no longer watching. It’s not the crime that concerns them — it’s the threat of another uprising.

The people have everything within their power. When they are united and prepared, nothing can stand against them, not even the white supremacist state of the most powerful empire in human history. We have seen it reel; we have seen it falter. Now, the pressure must be kept up, not only to prevent Lester from entering a favorable plea deal or the state prosecutor from purposefully bungling a trial, but also to remind our oppressors of the cost of injustice — and only the people can do that.