Staten Island, NY, July 17—Over 250 people, including members of Progressive Labor Party, marched to and boldly denounced the 120th Precinct in Staten Island, the same precinct responsible for Eric Garner’s murder exactly two years ago.
This rally was organized by The Legacy Eric Garner Left Behind (named after his last daughter, Legacy) and supported by Staten Island Against Racism and Police Brutality (SiaraPB). Eric Garner’s family, friends, and working class brothers and sisters feel sorrow. We miss Eric Garner, known as a “gentle giant” and nicknamed Nice. Whether he sold cigarettes or not does not justify the racist murder. After trying to break up a fight between two other people, he was choked to death by one cop as several others held onto him.
The soundtrack after the choking of Eric saying “I can’t breathe” eleven times has echoed around the world. Once everyone arrived at the police station, the crowd broke up and attempted to surround the whole block around the police station. A dozen vans and forty cars showed up.
At the precinct and during the march, PLP distributed CHALLENGE and lead people in militant chants like, “How do you spell racist? NYPD!” to show our rage not just at Pantaleo but at all the police who continue to terrorize Black, Latin, and immigrant workers.
These murders are business as usual for the police. They are part of a system that depends on racism to make profits and keep people divided so that they don’t fight back. New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio was elected with a promise to end “Stop and Frisk”, a policing practice where police stopped people on the street to search them for weapons or drugs. It is a racist policy that allows police to harass Black and Latin workers. DeBlasio’s first act as mayor was to hire police commissioner William Bratton, who substituted “Stop and Frisk” for “Broken Windows” policing. In this kind of policing, police arrest workers for small “crimes” like selling loose cigarettes or panhandling with the excuse that it will prevent more serious crimes. This is merely another way to continue the racist oppression of Black, Latin, and immigrant workers by giving cops a different excuse to harass, arrest and imprison workers.
This policy is a way that kkkops, politicians, and real estate bosses cooperate to gentrify an area. In New York City, San Francisco, and Newark, “Broken Windows” policing is used to intimidate Black workers out of neighborhoods so that they can rebrand the neighborhood as a “safe” area, develop it, and raise rents. The same thing happened in Brazil when the government was preparing for the World Cup. Thousands of workers were ruthlessly evicted from their houses and the slums were demolished, all in the name of developing valuable real estate.
If not reforms, then what?
Our march gives us an insight as to what we can do instead of fruitless reforms. Our march was multiracial and we took the street. Multiracial unity is much more powerful than a body camera. One leader of SiaraPB gave a speech about the continuing fight SiaraPB has been waging in the community and on the campus of the College of Staten Island to bring Pantaleo to trial for murder. She emphasized the multiracial character of SiaraPB and called for unity in the struggle. After the speeches, a local neighborhood youth choir beautifully sang, “I can’t breathe”. Then all of us in sorrow and rage said “I can’t breathe” eleven times. The march was followed by popcorn and ices for neighborhood children and adults who stayed in memory of Eric’s life.
This type of working class unity, where we all fight together and support each other, will ultimately smash racist police terror. A member of PLP gave a speech warning that the only way to end racist police terror is by smashing capitalism once and for all. Politicians want us to believe more Black, Latin, Asian and Muslim cops, body cameras, and “community policing” will make a difference. That won’t help anything. Black kkkops didn’t do any more for Freddie Gray in Baltimore than an Asian kkkop did for Akai Gurley in Brooklyn. In Baton Rouge, where Alton Sterling was murdered as the cops held him down on the ground, the police claim their body cameras “fell off.”
None of the reforms proposed by politicians can address the role of the police. Capitalism is a system built on racism and we must get rid of it to smash racism. She emphasized that whether Black, Latin, Asian, white, immigrant or U.S. born, men or women, we must unite to fight racism together. A united, multiracial working class is the only thing that can smash capitalism and build a communist world. Join the fight!