“Settle your quarrels, come together, understand the reality of our situation, understand that fascism is already here, that people are already dying who could be saved, that generations more will live poor butchered half-lives if you fail to act. Do what must be done, discover your humanity and your love in revolution.”

Khaliifah ibn Rayford Daniels’ Abdul-Qudduus, aka Marcellus Williams, has been murdered. After over twenty-three years spent living in a cage, under the constant threat of execution — after the thirty years before his formal sentence living in the open-air prison we call the United States of America — the last of Khaliifah’s life was finally stolen. Apparently, death row inmates get to “choose” how the state will execute them, whether it’s death by lethal injection, or death by gassing. Capitalist freedom as its most honest binary: Coca-Cola or Pepsi; exploitation or starvation; knee or noose; the needle or the gas chamber.

Khaliifah elected the needle. Might someone have asked him, in his death throes: “Mr. Williams, is this harm reduction?” Tell me, is this a lesser evil? 

For those who knew in the years before Khaliifah’s murder— 
For those who knew in the weeks before Khaliifah’s murder—
For those who knew in the minutes before Khaliifah’s murder, many have decried the injustice of his impending execution and insisted on his innocence. As his body cools, this insistence continues like the cries of the bereaved. As the days of his passing shift to months, this clamor will repeat like a seance. (In decades, if we let it, the wailing of ghosts. All of us haunted.) Nothing makes more sense than this: Khaliifah’s murder represents not just the apathetic killing of a human being, but necessarily as well the defamation of his memory. Since the U.S. government refused to spend the time and money to stay Khaliifah’s execution, release him from prison, and investigate the process that pushed things so far, the state elected to do the more practical thing. They must not only kill a man, they must make it the “moral” thing to do. This is the logic of the lynch mob. 

All of us who oppose this repugnancy feel compelled to refute every accusation to defend a good man’s legacy. This is understandable. Necessary, even. But it must be stated and restated just as much, if not more, that there is no sort of person the U.S. government has the right to kill. There is no person this horrific regime has the right to imprison. No person it has the right to beat or abduct or shackle or tailgate or ticket. Its laws are fundamentally unjust, not merely by their content, but the fact that the dictatorship of white supremacy, of the capitalist, is antithetical to the safety of the vast majority of life on this earth. If we argue that there is an unjust imprisonment by the court’s metric of “innocence” or “guilt,” we are ceding ground to our enemy, an empire that tirelessly builds itself on countless Khaliifah’s — a hundred million dead, billions of butchered half-lives. 

We would not find it worth celebrating if every red-handed viper responsible for Khaliifah’s murder was dragged into the light, handcuffed, charged, and sentenced by the bourgeois state.  We would not consider it justice or a victory if they were executed, held for life, or fully reformed. Any action the bourgeois state takes is for its own preservation and the continued safety of the ruling classes. The bourgeois state cannot bring us justice. We saw that with the charging of Derek Chauvin, when the dictatorship of white capital used one hand to toss its servant into a cell to sooth public rage, while, with the other, flooded the same murderous police with ever more funding and arms. If Khaliifah’s execution had been stayed again, and he’d been allowed to rot longer in jail, that would be nothing worth celebrating. Even his full freedom from the prison industrial complex would not be true freedom, for he would have walked from one prison to another, a different kind of captivity. True justice will only be taken by us. This is the foundation for a Communist abolition. Not opposition to imprisonment as a concept wholly, but that we must always oppose the use of weapons in our enemies’ hands. A recognition that within this country, for the oppressed, everywhere is a prison — that to die under capitalism is to have been killed by it.

the silhouettes of their bond visible still at the last glow of the sun
they experience each other and the life of the night as it begins to stir
standing there in silence holding hands
no rush to go back inside
there is so much beauty and comfort in being in love and just being…
–amidst sounds of buzzing
chirps
crickets
the pleasant but irregular blowing of the wind
fireflies dancing in step with the light of the moon
how strange it is to become aware of another’s heartbeat but forget one’s own –
finally love.

Khaliifah, At Last…Another’s heartbeat

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.

On September 15, the calculating Biden White House delayed the hour of the forthcoming strike of U.S. railway unions. While the desiccated puppet Biden himself pays lip-service to the unions, his regime systematically undermines them. The latest outrage forces a 30-day “cooling down” period on the unions ready to strike by requiring them to consider an offer from Biden’s handlers that doesn’t come close to meeting even a single one of the rail workers demands.

One-hundred forty-five years ago, in July of 1877, the city of St. Louis was held by the authority of a revolutionary commune. The Commune of St. Louis began with a rail strike like the one Biden’s masters are afraid of tonight.

It began, as revolutions often do, with a depression.

In 1873 the world-capitalist economy was struck with stagnation and contraction. This depression was kicked off by the Panic of ’73. A series of bank failures in Austria soon spread to the rest of the economy. Credit sharply contracted. Loans defaulted. Banks closed.

Industrial production in the U.S., which had been previously growing at a rate of three times each year, slowed to 1.7 times yearly during the period of 1873-1890. There was a 10% decline in total manufacturing output from the U.S., most of the sectors affected being consumer goods, iron, and construction.

On July 14, 1877, the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad cut wages for its workers for the third time that year. The railroad workers had no unions, but they spontaneously broke out into strike.

The strike started that day, with B&O railroad workers in Martinsburg, West Virginia. They blockaded the town, a critical rail juncture, and prevented all rail traffic from rolling through, demanding that the wage cut be revoked.

The governor of West Virginia dispatched the National Guard to clear the lines and resume rail service, but the guardsmen refused to fire on the strikers. At the same time, the B&O workers in Maryland took up the strike and closed the railroad center at Cumberland.

Albany, Syracuse, and Buffalo New York, all major railyards, closed. The strike spread from the B&O to other lines. In Pittsburgh, the Pennsylvania railroad baron Thomas Alexander Scott recommended the strikers be given a “rifle diet.”

On July 21, the Pennsylvania National Guard bayonetted strikers and then opened fire, killing 20 railroad workers. The strikers did not disperse; rather, they retaliated, trapping the guardsmen in a roundhouse and razing 39 buildings.

Striking railroad workers in Pennsylvania burned 104 locomotives and 1,245 freight and passenger cars. The Pennsylvania National Guard fought their way out of the roundhouse, shooting and killing over 20 people as they cut their way out of the railyard.

This was the background of the strike action in St. Louis. As the country seized in strikes and transport actions, the Workingman’s Party (the first Marxist party in the U.S.) and the Knights of Labor gathered in St. Louis. On July 22, one day after the massacre in the Pennsylvania railyards, train workers held a secret meeting to call for an increase in wages and determined to strike, their numbers stiffened by members of the Workingmen’s Party. They then held a public outdoor meeting, which was steered by that 200 members of that party.

That night, they held a third meeting, and the rail workers adopted a resolution (written by the Workingmen’s Party representatives) that read:

WHEREAS, the United States government has allied itself on the side of capital and against labor; therefore,

RESOLVED, That we, the workingmen’s party of the United States, heartily sympathize with the employees of all the railroads in the country who are attempting to secure just and equitable reward for their labor.

RESOLVED, That we will stand by them in this most righteous struggle of labor against robbery and oppression, through good and evil report, to the end of the struggle.

The demand was put to the bosses, who rejected it immediately.

The strike began at midnight in East St. Louis. Within hours of the announcement, the strikers controlled the city uncontested. They formed an executive committee, comprised of at least 47 people, although all their identities are not recorded and therefore not known. The committee, which met in Turner’s Hall, was elected by the striking workers.

St. Louis was the home of many radical Germans, who had been fleeing from the newly-constituted Germany for years to avoid the compulsory military service instituted under Prussian authority. Roughly 600 of the Workingmen’s Party’s 1,000 members in St. Louis were German socialists.

Missouri was also a former slave state. Two-thirds of Black persons in the state lived in St. Louis (26,387) in 1870, most of whom were either employed as domestic servants or as laborers, with a heavy influence along the levees and among the steamships. By 1877, the Ku Klux Klan had begun a campaign of lynch-terror in the state, and racism was stoked among the workers because the Black laborers were often used as strikebreakers.

In the morning of July 23, having more or less complete control of East St. Louis and with no police on the street to oppose them, the Executive Committee elected by the strikers issued General Order No. 1: no railroad traffic other than passenger trains and mail would be permitted to pass. The committee then appointed the mayor of East St. Louis, John Bowman, arbitrator of the labor dispute. He helped the committee select special constables to guard the property of the railroads from damage. Already, even in its nascent stage, we can see the Executive Committee’s unfortunate attention to the needs and wants of the capitalists.

The Chicago & Alton company tried to start a freight train that morning, but it was stopped and turned back to the yard. The Union Railway & Transit Company removed their wage decrease, but the Transit workers continued to strike in solidarity with their brothers, stiffened by the militants in their ranks.

City officials wired frightened messages. Some warned that this was a repetition of the Paris Commune of ’71.

On the second day of the strike, July 24, the strikers expanded their blockade to include passenger trains. A train was decoupled from its passenger cars and only permitted transit when the locomotive was bare.

At 11:00 AM that morning, twenty-five strikers led by an Ohio and Mississippi Railway engineer seized two Missouri Pacific Railroad locomotives, took Missouri and Pacific engine shops, and tried to persuade the workers there to cease work. They refused.

As unrest increased, 3,000-4,000 people gathered at the depot. It was announced by the city authorities that six companies of infantry were marching to put an end to the blockade and clear the rail lines. For the first time since the strike began, police went out onto the streets and tried to disperse the crowd.

At 4:00 PM that afternoon, flatcars from other striking yards near the city arrived, loaded with more strikers. The word had gotten out that St. Louis was the hub of a powerful solidarity movement across all railway lines.

At 6:00 PM, six companies arrived from Fort Leavenworth. Their commander stated that he had “been ordered here with general instructions to protect the property of the United States,” but he declined to take any action other than to hole up in the army barracks and wait.

That night, Communist leaders held meetings throughout the city. Processions marched through the streets. The city government, paralyzed by the fear that they were not heavily armed enough to act, did nothing. The police remained “inert.”

On July 25, 1877, at 9 AM, the Communists gathered a crowd in a downtown marketplace. There, they convinced wire manufacturers to join the strike. At 10 AM they marched to Turner Hall where the Executive Committee was meeting. At a meeting that morning, a Black worker is said to have asked, “Will you stand with us, regardless of our color?” The crowd shouted back at him “We will!”

Across the river, the Workingmen’s delegates anticipated violence, though the strike remained peaceful in East St. Louis. One speaker across the river in downtown St. Louis said, “The workingmen now intend to assert their rights, even if the result is the shedding of blood…. They are ready to take up arms at any moment.” But the party did not arm the laborers. They were never given the weapons they needed to defend their gains.

An air of solidarity prevailed throughout East St. Louis. The Workingman’s Party declared that all work within the city would soon come to a halt. All would join the strike.

On the morning of July 26, a mass meeting of coopers agreed to cease work. Smelter and clay workers joined the strike. 35% of the striking workers were U.S. born; 29% were German; 18% were Irish; 12% were English or Welsh. A full 12% of the striking workers were Black.

The strike was controlled by its Executive Committee — it issued orders, demands, and instructions. The most prominent members of the committee were not themselves workers but were clerks, a student organizer, a doctor, a drug and bleach maker, a newspaper seller, and a boot fitter. There were many petit-bourgeois men on the committee, which perhaps accounts for its sensitivity to protecting small businesses and private property.

On the evening of Wednesday, July 26, in Carondelet, six miles south of the city center, iron workers arrived at the Martindale Zinc Works to call on its workers to join the strike. The foreman of the works struck a striker with a crowbar. When the police tried to intervene, the strikers drove them off with rocks.

The ironworkers took control of the zinc works and there they unfurled the red flag of the International. By the end of the day, there was not a single manufactory in operation. The strike had shut down the entire city. It was all in the hands of the Workingmen’s Party.

That evening, there was another mass meeting at Lucas Market of over 10,000 people. Peter Lofgreen, a Workingmen’s delegate, harangued the crowd and told them that if the managers could not restore their pay, it was time for the management of the railroads to be in the hands of the workers. Full nationalization would be one of the demands made by the Executive Committee.

Thomas Curtis declared that the demands of St. Louis must go all the way to the president of the United States. This, he said, was “not a strike – but a social revolution!”

On Thursday, barbers, wagon-makers, painters, blacksmiths, and mills closed, with only a few remaining open by order of the Executive Committee to make bread to feed the city. The National Stockyards were permitted to slaughter some few animals to keep the people fed. The mayor met with the Executive Committee repeatedly, begging for more shops to be opened, and the committee haltingly tried to oblige the business interests.

In Carondelet, 18 metal workers were organized into a makeshift police force that patrolled the streets. In East St. Louis, the railway workers had a parade with a brass band and banners that said “We Want a Peaceful Revolution” and “Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity.”

That’s when the Executive Committee made its worst decision. At the dawn of the 27th, they caved to pressure by the petit-bourgeoisie and the mayor, who feared the Black labor solidarity and the marches, the mass meetings, the red flag of the International. They issued an order to calm the wealthy. This order stated that “in order to avoid riot, we have determined no large procession will take place until our organization is so complete as to positively assure the citizens of St. Louis a perfect maintenance of order.”

When a group of Black workers asked to join the party, the Executive Committee replied that “we want nothing to do with them.”

While shop-owners were begging the committee to stop the marches, reaction was not asleep. Merchants were raising $20,000 (close to $1 million today) behind closed doors to arm the militia that would eventually attack and destroy the Commune. The St. Louis Gun Club supplied shotguns. 1,500 rifles and 2 cannon were sent by the governor from the state armory. 11,000 volunteers were mustered into service.

On July 27, the governor sent a missive demanding the disbandment of the Executive Committee and all its strike committees. The Workingmen’s Party replied, “Nothing short of compliance to the [just demand for wages] will arrest this tidal wave of revolution.”

The papers were now referring to St. Louis as the “St. Louis Commune.”

At 3:00 PM on Friday July 27, municipal and federal forces arrived downtown. Police cavalry led the way, riding abreast to cover the entire width of the street. They were soon followed by foot police with rifles, the militia that had been arranged by the petit-bourgeois shop owners, and two cannon from the armory. The Workingmen’s Party, having failed to provide the strikers with weapons, had no way to resist them.

Half a block behind the city police came federal U.S. troops, marching with fixed bayonets. The cavalry plunged into the crowd outside Turner’s Hall where the Executive Committee met. One of the officers shouted, “Ride ’em down! Ride ’em down! They have no business here!”

The committee tried to broker an agreement with the city fathers. Those delegates they sent to the meeting were arrested. Within hours, several others had been taken from their hiding places and joined the detainees. 73 rank-and-file workers were arrested during the police surge.

The Executive Committee had failed to protect the revolution from counter-revolution. It had rejected the all-important aid of Black workers that made the seizure of the city possible, spat on the right of self-determination for the former slaves. The remaining members of the committee were now isolated. The strikers were at the mercy of the police.

From July 22 until August 1, the strike committee had controlled the city. It had failed, utterly, to establish the necessary self-defense required for the revolution. It had dealt with the mayor and business interests as allies – cold allies, but allies none-the-less. When the time came, those “allies” turned on the committee and the strike; every request from the businesses and the city fathers was little more than a delaying tactic.

The committee failed to expropriate the property of the dangerous and deadly foes of the revolution: because to them, they were not foes. Indeed, in the face of Black labor solidarity, the committee preferred its white shopkeepers to Black laborers.

What if they had not suspended the mass meetings? What if they had armed the workers? What if they had not broken up the solidarity of Black, white, and immigrant labor and instead expanded their demands to include those of the Black toilers? What if indeed. We cannot know what if, merely study their failings at a moment when power was in the hands of the people and their leaders refused to act.

We must learn the lessons taught by history, and overcome them. We must stand for the freedom of all, not the wages of a few. We must be prepared when the conditions for the next St. Louis commune arrive.