“It’s Alienation” Monica Moorehead of the WWP on Gun Control
It’s alienation, not guns. That’s the message from Workers’ World Party 2016 presidential candidate Monica Moorehead on the spate of shootings over the past decade in the US.
I spoke with Moorehead on a number of issues in late June of 2016. Gun control came up late in the conversation.
Moorehead mentioned disarming the police. She admitted that the idea was controversial. She believes the police in the US are an occupying army, “especially for black and brown people, and indigenous people.”
Moorehead believes that the police in America today “are carrying out a genocidal, racist war” and that black and brown people are the target of that war. Therefore, she said, it is necessary for communities to take charge of their police. Then communities can transition into social control of communal security.
I asked Moorehead what she thought about the concept of “mutual drawdown.” In a “mutual drawdown” both police and the public would voluntarily disarm.
“I’m glad you raised that, because we see no equal sign between the police and the public,” Moorehead said. She described how the police are a working part of the “repressive state apparatus.” They are necessary to maintain repressive control over the population.
“You need to control the masses, because the masses are dealing with inequality!” Moorehead said.
“When the people have arms,” she continued, “Those arms are being borne to show that the people have the right to self defense against the police.”
And anyway, it’s not the access to guns that’s the problem.
“If people had jobs, you wouldn’t be seeing this violence,” she said. “There would be no basis for people killing each other. Their conditions would not warrant it.”
Moorehead hopes that she can help to provide that kind of social motivation. Workers’ World Party’s platform aims to end the conditions that lead to social dislocation and outbursts of violence.
“Once we start getting rid of these conditions for the masses,” said Moorehead, “Then you’re going to see people cooperating with each other and treating each other with dignity.”
From there, she hopes for social equality and an end to the kind of alienation from one another that produced violence in Orlando and Sandy Hook.
“Right now, people are just alienated from society,” she concluded wearily, “And for now we’re just going to see more and more of these massacres until it stops.”
You can find more information on Monica Moorehead and her running mate Lamont Lilly at their website.