Every day, millions of workers and young people in America face threats, intimidation, beatings and even murder at the hands of the police, whose badges give them a license to kill. Arbitrary police violence and terror are facts of life, alongside chronic mass unemployment, worsening poverty and dwindling educational opportunities.

Last year, police in the United States killed over a thousand people, many of whom where defenseless and unarmed. In every case, the government - local, state, and federal - has done everything possible to shield the police from prosecution.

The wave of state-sanctioned police violence and murder expresses the sweeping decay of democracy in America, under conditions in which the super-rich monopolize an ever greater share of society's wealth, while the working population is increasingly impoverished.

Join the International Youth and Students for Social Equality for a discussion of the social roots of police murders and the way forward in the defense of democratic rights and the fight for socialism.