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The April 15 bombings in Boston continue to dominate the American media. The twin blasts near the finish line of the city’s annual marathon killed three people and wounded over 170 more, many seriously.

But a more deadly and destructive explosion, the April 17 eruption of the West Fertilizer Company plant in the rural town of West, Texas, has virtually dropped out of the news. That event, to all appearances an industrial accident waiting to happen, killed 14 people and wounded 200, some critically. It virtually leveled a five-block residential area abutting the plant, flattening over 50 homes, gutting an apartment building and seriously damaging a middle school and nursing home.

The pretext for the de facto state of siege imposed on the Boston metropolitan area—an unprecedented military-police lockdown of a US city—was the supposed need to protect the population. But rather than question the mobilization of thousands of troops and police and deployment of armored cars and Blackhawk helicopters—all to hunt down one 19-year-old youth—the media did, and continues to do, all it could to whip up fear and glorify an exercise in police state rule.

With the imposition of a state of siege in Boston, a historical threshold has been crossed. For the first time ever, a major American city has been placed under the equivalent of martial law. The already frayed veneer of a stable democracy based on constitutional principles is in shreds.

On Monday, April 15, two bombs exploded near the finish line of the Boston Marathon in the city’s center. Three people were killed and over 170 were injured, some seriously. This was a criminal act with tragic consequences. But violence, including acts of mass homicide and disasters resulting in major loss of life, is a regular feature of American society. Even as the events in Boston were unfolding, a factory explosion in Texas, to all appearances linked to safety hazards, took far more lives than the bombs detonated at the end of the marathon.

As of Friday evening, 14 people were confirmed dead, 200 injured, and 60 more missing after Wednesday’s explosion at a fertilizer storage and distribution facility in the city of West, Texas.

Residents of the small town compared the eruption of the facility, which stored the highly explosive substances anhydrous ammonia and ammonium nitrate, to the dropping of a bomb. The blast, which registered 2.1 on the Richter scale, left a mushroom cloud billowing over the town. It blew out windows for nearly two miles around and was heard more than 40 miles away.

The explosion leveled as many as 75 homes, destroyed a 50-unit apartment building and damaged a school. Most of the members of the town’s volunteer fire department are either killed, injured or missing.

The Socialist Equality Party (US) announces today it is running D’Artagnan Collier as its candidate for mayor of Detroit, Michigan in the August 6 primary elections. Collier is currently collecting signatures to get on the ballot. To participate or find out more about the campaign, click here .

Collier, 44, is a city worker and life-long resident of Detroit. The son of a Chrysler worker, he joined the Workers League, the predecessor of thee Socialist Equality Party, in 1984, when he was 16, and has spent his entire adult life as a leading member of the socialist movement. The following is his statement announcing the campaign.

As the Socialist Equality Party’s candidate for Detroit mayor, I call on workers and young people to support my campaign as part of the fight to mobilize the entire working class against the emergency manager and bankers’ dictatorship in Detroit.