The following talk was given at the March 19 anti-war protest in Los Angeles.
Sisters and brothers, we are at the forefront of a movement for change. Not the kind of “change” the Democrats tried to sell us in 2008, but change from the very foundations of our society. As we saw in Egypt, as we saw in Tunisia, that kind of change can come and come quickly, but only when the people, the workers, unite in the streets and fight for it.
So let’s keep up the fight for a society that places human need before profit, because if we unite and fight we will win. We can make a true revolution.
There is a class war raging in America. All over the country people are getting laid off, unions are getting smashed, families are being evicted and students are getting kicked out of school. The capitalists created the economic crisis, but the working class is paying the price. Yesterday, the news reported that CEO bonuses increased by 30 percent last year. This, at the same time the official U.S. poverty rate is the highest it’s been in decades.
Right here in California, home to some of the richest people in the world—they want the working class to quietly sit there and take it.
Gov. Jerry Brown’s budget this year aims to cut billions from health care, welfare, education and so much more. But the cops and prisons aren’t on the chopping block. This shows you where the priorities of the capitalists and their politicians lie.
They tell us that they don’t have any money; that we must accept the cuts. But this is a lie. The money is there, it’s in the bonuses for criminal CEOs, it’s in the military budgets, it’s in the money spent on prisons and the tax cuts for the super rich.
This week a government employee in Costa Mesa killed himself after getting pink slipped in a round of layoffs—this is a crime. No one should face this kind of desperation and insecurity. No one should lose their jobs or homes.
But these things aren’t abnormal under capitalism. They are built into this criminal system. We’re here to say, we’ve had enough. Capitalism has got to go!
Let’s make our stand. We can stand up, we can fight back. We can build a movement.
These attacks on workers must end. The only way to stop them is to get organized and build a mass movement of workers, students and unemployed people that fights for our rights and for people’s needs. No more cutbacks! No more layoffs! No more corporate profits!
Join us in this struggle. Join the Party for Socialism and Liberation. Our members work hard every day organizing and building protests like this one. Get involved!
We are many and they are few. This is class war, but make no mistake, it is our class, the working class, that holds the real power in this society, and our class will win!
