The following article is a modified speech from a Nov. 23 public meeting in Washington, D.C.
On Nov. 2, Mayor Adrian Fenty of Washington, D.C., launched the fourth installment of his “All Hands on Deck” anti-crime initiative. All 3,800 officers in the city were assigned to street patrol duty in all seven of the city’s police districts during the first week of November. The city government boasted of the initiative as a response to the rash of homicides and shootings that have taken place in recent weeks throughout the city.
“The stated goal of this initiative is to reduce crime and build community trust by putting more officers on the streets
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Despite the “All Hands on Deck” initiative and other anti-crime law enforcement strategies, “crime” continues to rise within the District and surrounding area. According to the Metropolitan Police Department’s own statistics, crime has risen by 15 percent in the last three months compared to a year ago.
Although the local news stations have recently obsessed over the anti-crime initiative, a few fundamental questions have not been asked. What is crime, who defines it, why does it exist, and what do crime statistics really reflect?
What is the law?
For socialists, the starting point of any discussion of crime—violations of the law—has to be an understanding of the law itself.
Laws are created and enforced to serve those in power. In the United States, those in power have fine-tuned and adjusted the law over centuries, and this small group of people has told the rest of the population what is and what is not permissible. While this ruling class has created some laws to protect against general bodily harm, its priority is to create a legal system that defends and justifies its rule.
Take for example, the case of the Parkway Overlook Apartments in the poverty-stricken area of Southeast Washington, D.C. Mayor Fenty visited this complex during the first week following his election, and as George Bush told Hurricane Katrina survivors on the Gulf Coast, Fenty said, “We will not forget you.”
Since that time the apartment complex has lost its federal low-income housing subsidy. The landlord defaulted on the property, and the D.C. Housing Finance Agency then had the right to come and foreclose it. This was all done according to the law. It was not a crime to put the 256 families that lived in that complex out of their homes. Fenty did nothing.
Washington, D.C. has the highest rate of new AIDS cases per 100,000 population in the United States—a rate that is 10 times the national average. Eighty-two percent of all AIDS cases in D.C. are among African Americans.
But when pharmaceutical companies use their patents on AIDS drugs to sue others who try to manufacture the drugs at a cheaper price, it is done according to the law. It is called “intellectual property rights.” The pharmaceutical companies are not charged with murder or manslaughter, even though they most certainly are sending poor AIDS patients to early graves.
Or let us look at education. The Washington, D.C. public school system is among the highest spending and worst performing in the nation. Tests show that in reading and math, the District’s public school students score at the bottom among 11 major city school systems. Three out of four students fall below math standards, and one out of every three people in the District is functionally illiterate.
Quality education should be a fundamental right. It is not considered a crime in this city or anywhere else in the country when schools fail to provide quality education. Although the students are set back just because they are poor, Black and from Washington, D.C., the law does not consider this discrimination.
So we must question the entire validity of “crime statistics.” When we hear that crime is up or down, we know they are only talking about crimes working people commit. They aren’t counting the wars of aggression, the tortures at secret prisons, the thousands of acts of police brutality that take place nationwide, the foreclosures, the evictions, the layoffs, the denial of adequate health care, the stripping of workers’ benefits.
Anti-social crimes and alienation
But this is only part of the story. How do we address those actions that working people commit that we do consider crimes? There is a popular conception—especially in liberal and left-liberal circles—that crime is simply caused by poverty. This is only half-true. Of course there are certain crimes which are committed merely to stay alive. But on top of these lies another layer of crimes that are not attributable just to poverty, but to what Marxists call “alienation.”
In capitalism, the competitiveness built into society, not to mention the daily quest for survival, leaves individuals feeling alienated, with little concern for the community and people around them. This state of alienation does not come just from poverty, but from the vast inequalities of class society.
Karl Marx once described alienation in the following way: “A house may be large or small; as long as the neighboring houses are likewise small, it satisfies all social requirements for a residence. But let there arise next to the little house a palace, and the little house shrinks to a hut. The little house now makes it clear that its inmate has no social position at all to maintain, or but a very insignificant one; and however high it may shoot up in the course of civilization, if the neighboring palace rises in equal or even in greater measure, the occupant of the relatively little house will always find himself more uncomfortable, more dissatisfied, more cramped within his four walls.”
Capitalism, in its unending decadence, constantly creates new commodities that workers feel they must attain in order to be valued. These status symbols—from the new car that parks itself, the newest iPod, or the latest Coach tennis shoes—become the objects of workers’ constant striving.
In a society driven by this type of individual competition, working people are turned against one other. They are encouraged to express their frustrations with the vilest forms of racism, sexism, and anti-gay bigotry—all with the illusion that their denigration of others will allow them to climb the social ladder.
Self-organization: the answer for our communities
Although alienation is built into the capitalist system, it is countered when workers fight together. Instead of being atomized individuals operating in a society that exploits us, we can come together as a collective force.
When workers struggle together, they find a new, non-alienating bond. This bond arises in the fight against the existing social order. Ultimately, the overthrow of capitalism provides for the withering away of these forms of alienation.
Where progressive and socialist organizations do not emerge to provide this bond, other forms of organization will. Take a look at the gangs. We recognize and stand with all those families who have lost sons and daughters to gang violence. But at the same time, we must recognize the appeal of the gangs.
Gangs give a sense of belonging to people who everywhere have been told they do not belong. Gangs promise undying loyalty and support to young people who have been left out to dry by the political and economic establishment.
So how do we stop the killing on the street? How do we end the violence in our own communities and among our own people?
The answer is organization. Instead of operating as one or two families who turn to the police or other government officials to intensify the police occupation of our communities, we can operate as a collective.
Charlie Mae Gordon in Oxon Hill, Md.—the organizer of the Neighborhood Watch in her community—was recently shot dead in a robbery of her home. How would we respond as a progressive organization?
Instead of turning to the police when the community faces a crisis, the community should defend and organize itself, taking charge of its own prisons and court systems.
Make no mistake—we are not idealists. We feel that anti-social behavior should be dealt with, punished and challenged. But it is the community that should decide how those men are held responsible.
Is jail really the only solution for anti-social crimes? As long as the system perpetuates alienation, racism, sexism, bigotry and does not guarantee the right to a job, the right to go to a doctor, the right to learn, the right to live, how has the imprisonment of two more people made our communities any better? We can’t look to the existing state, which does not care about the Gordons of this city. Instead we must hold it accountable for enforcing a system that breeds such alienation.
As socialists, we don’t just say wait for socialism to come—although it is the ultimate answer to solving the issues here in D.C. and nationwide. We must fight for justice in our own communities through organization. A people organized, class conscious and united is the only way to answer crime in our community.
