By Richard Mellor in California
The law, or what we call the justice system, which includes the police, the courts, the prisons and so on, is not some sort of divine institution. We are definitely taught to view these institutions in that way, as we are the state (government) itself.
The US Supreme Court is also portrayed in this way by the mass media, the media owned by a handful of capitalists; the same people who own the judges on the so-called Supreme Court, which is a bit like the old Politburo in the former USSR. It is a panel of old men and women lawyers whose job it is to protect the existing system and the interest of the few thousand people who actually run society.
US prisons are full of working class people, millions of us who fall prey to the laws and legal system that has an avowed bias. If the law was neutral, Henry Kissinger, George W Bush, Donald Trump, Donald Rumsfeld, Hillary Clinton, and a whole bunch of other characters would be in jail and Julian Assange would not.
When killing people is “attempted” homicide
The little child Nazi, Kyle Rittenhouse, a very competent and ruthless killer, is on trial in Kenosha Wisconsin. Kyle killed two people that night in Kenosha last August, and seriously injured a third. He is being charged with “intentional, reckless and attempted homicide” according to today’s Wall Street Journal. I am a little perplexed at this one. If Rittenhouse shot two people, is that not homicide rather than “attempted” homicide?
Rittenhouse, who is clearly in the camp of anti-working class people and fascists, left his home with an illegal weapon and travelled the 20 miles or so to Kenosha to play policeman. He took an AR 15 rifle with him. It’s important to understand which side of the class divide he is on.
Most workers would oppose and do oppose the destruction of small businesses, when the anger in society at abuse and oppression by the state and the security apparatus of the state wilfully and with intent, kill working class people. While the police in the US kill a lot of working class people as well as functioning as strike breakers, in this case we are talking of the disproportionate murder of black people. In 2019, US police killed 1,099 people, 24% of whom were black, who are about 13% of the population.
I knew who threw paint thinner in the face of a driver who crossed the picket line during our strike, but I did not hand that guy over to the police or the bosses. I shared my objection to this method at the union hall but in times like these, workers get desperate and strike out in anger. This is what happened the past few years over police killings. If justice could be found by other means people take it, if not, we see what happens. But we don’t act as agents of the class enemy. They defend their own we defend ours.
Kyle Rittenhouse is a fascist. He does not hide his views. He is very clear which side he is on in the struggle of workers and the poor against big business, racism and exploitation. He identifies not with the worker or the striker but the police and the state.
I never took weapons to a picket line
He claims self-defence, like the right wing thug from a bourgeois family that killed Trayvon Martin. He armed himself and travelled into a very volatile situation not as a peacemaker, or medic, despite carrying some sort of medical kit, and not as a neutral bystander as he claims, but as a man on a mission and he knew what his intentions were.
The prosecution has to show that the little Nazi’s belief that he faced imminent danger or “interference”, as they put it in the media, was not justified and that the only way he could remove that threat of danger and possibly serious harm was his actions that day.
I have been in many situations like that, including picket lines, and I never took a weapon to them. Had he been without a weapon, an illegal weapon at that, he likely would have faced no hostility except from the police perhaps, but they are his heroes.
Another way he could have avoided killing two people and injuring a third was to have stayed home.
From the US socialist website, Facts for Working People. The original can be found here.
