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Unfortunately, as yet the working class as a whole has not seen the need to throw its organized weight into support of a sister trade unionist, Angela Davis.

It is true that the bourgeois ideology of racism has found acceptance by large numbers of white workers.  It is also true that these workers can be won to understand that there are a great number of similarities between the designs of the Nixon Administration on the rights of all workers and the increasing withdrawal and denial of fundamental rights of all Black people, including Black workers.

In terms of the ruling class it is not coincidental that the state of California decided to invoke Penal Code 169 - illegalizing demonstrations in front of a court -  at the same time that President Nixon was threatening to jail the leaders of the ILWU.  It certainly follows that Penal Code 169 would then very likely have been used to stop the workers from demonstrating their support for their union and its leadership.

It is extremely significant that the Alameda County Central Labor Council has recognized the inherent dangers in Penal Code 169, a blatantly unconstitutional abridgement of the First Amendment to the Constitution - part of the Bill of rights, and recently unanimously went on record in opposition to it.

The foregoing, even in miniscule fashion, I think tends to point up the fact brought out in every report during this Convention.  The monopoly capitalist class is more unified than ever on its basic principle, i.e., when threatened by any meaningful organization of the working class and/or its allies, the answer is to unleash its repressive arms.  These arms are the willing courts with their judges and prosecutors, the police and sheriff's departments, the jails and prisons.  Their aim - to stop the challenge to whatever extent, by whatever means; to prevent the organization of the movements for freedom, peace and progress.  This is justice - capitalist class justice.

Of course this is not new.

Working class and people's leaders who refuse to yield to

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the demands of the bourgeoisie, refuse to sell their class, their people, their principles for their own individual "freedom" (as we have seen in the case of Hoffa - who sold his soul to Nixon, the open representative of the most reactionary elements in the ruling class).

The role that racism plays in meting out capitalist class justice can be pointed to ten times over.  The fact that the prison population in every state is represented most heavily by the oppressed, the poor and the working class should be sufficient to make the point.

Claude Lightfoot has recently completed a book dealing with the role of racism and the divisions in the ranks of the working class that facilitated fascism's rise to power in Germany.  These lessons are real, they are valid and they are relevant to the current rightward trend in our own country.

Let us put the question: can Nixon's economic policies of wage freeze, increased productivity, mass unemployment, increased budgets for wars of imperialist aggression abroad and more and more repression at home, be halted without the unity of the working class - Black, white, Chicano, Indian and Asian?

In short, Angela Davis represents not only a challenge to the racist, jingoist monopoly interests, but also a challenge to our Party and our class.  Angela's freedom is directly linked to our ability to restore basic fundamental democratic rights.  Moreover, her freedom opens the door to the extension of those rights to all who live in the United States.  Though the white working class has been indoctrinated with the ideology of racism, it is far from correct to conclude that white workers cannot be won to the struggle to free Angela and other political prisoners.  Indeed, the aforementioned union support through the leadership of Black trade unionists represents thousands of white trade unionists.  The struggle to win white workers to fight racism not only must but can be won.  this is a foremost task of white Communists.

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