¡Viva Marshawn Lynch!

Giving the finger to U.S. imperialist patriotism and anti-Mexican racism, NFL star Marshawn Lynch sat down for the Star Spangled Banner and rose to his feet for the Mexican national anthem at the Raiders vs. Patriots game at Azteca Stadium in Mexico City on November 19. Immediately after the game, Lynch happily accepted the gift of a Mexican national soccer jersey from a reporter and sent his greetings of “What’s up with my amigos?” to Mexicans living in his hometown of Oakland, California.

Lynch’s act represents something America’s racist rulers hate: black defiance. What he did was a breath of fresh air in the putrid atmosphere of racist cop and migra terror. This proud black man, nicknamed “Beast Mode,” was defying the Commander-in-Chief of U.S. imperialism. And that is just how Trump took it. The next day, he complained in a tweet that Lynch showed “Great disrespect!” and demanded that the NFL suspend him. A few months ago, Trump told his Confederate-flag-waving supporters in Alabama that any NFL player who doesn’t stand up for the anthem was a “son of a bitch” who should be fired. Hands off Marshawn Lynch!

What Lynch did was an expression of solidarity with Mexico. And it was widely welcomed in that country, which suffers under the boot of U.S. imperialism. The multiracial working class, with its strategic component of black workers, has every interest in opposing the depredations of the U.S. capitalist rulers. The same ruling class that strangles neocolonial Mexico through NAFTA and other means—while wreaking death and destruction around the world—also wages war on working people at home and unleashes its cops to kill black youth on the streets. This is “business as usual” for the capitalist rulers, regardless of whether there is a Democrat or a Republican in the White House.

Throughout U.S. history, the fate of black people has been intertwined with that of Mexico. In the 1846-48 Mexican-American War, the U.S. stole half of Mexico’s territory in order to expand black chattel slavery (see “Mexican-American War: Prelude to American Civil War,” reprinted in Black History and the Class Struggle No. 22, July 2012). We fight against the racial and ethnic divisions fomented by the capitalist rulers. Our aim is to build workers parties that can lead the struggle for socialist revolutions on both sides of the Río Bravo (Rio Grande)—to sweep away both the rapacious U.S. imperialists and their Mexican bourgeois lackeys.

In one of Marshawn Lynch’s rare interviews last year, he told Conan O’Brien what he thought of Colin Kaepernick’s act of taking a knee to protest cop killings of black people: “I’d rather see him take a knee than stand up, put his hands up, and get murdered.” Before he became unofficially banned from playing for the NFL, Kaepernick said, “I am not going to stand up to show pride in a flag for a country that oppresses black people and people of color.” ¡Viva Marshawn Lynch! ¡Viva Colin Kaepernick!