CHICAGO, November 18—In the early morning hours of November 11, the racist killer kkkops murdered another member of our class. The Klan-in-Blue opened fire on 26-year-old Black security officer Jemel Roberson at a bar in the Chicago suburb of Robbins, while he was actively trying to diffuse a fight that had broken out at the location.
Jemel tragically joins the ever-growing list of workers legally lynched by the racist kkkops. These sexist and racist thugs can’t be reformed any more than the sexist and racist capitalist system that they serve and protect. The only way to permanently end racist police murders –and achieve true justice for Jemel and countless other victims of capitalist state violence –is to join and build the international Progressive Labor Party (PLP) as the force to crush capitalism with communist revolution!
Guilty of being a Black armed worker under capitalism
To his many loved ones, the racist murder of Jemel at the hand of the Midlothian Police Department has been completely devastating. Those closest to him have described him as a “gentle giant,” and devoted father, brother, uncle, and boyfriend.  He was widely respected by his fellow workers, and was a talented athlete as well as the organist for his church.
Jemel was hired security and attempting to subdue an armed individual who was threatening other people at the bar when the kkkops responded at the scene and opened fire. Although their “official” report states that Jemel had no identifying markers that he was working security and that he was given multiple warnings to drop his weapon, other workers are challenging their racist cover-up.
According to other workers at the scene, Jemel was clearing wearing a cap and a sweatshirt that had the word “security” clearly written on them. They also claim that “not even five seconds” passed before the kkkop entered the room and shot him. The racist murder was so reckless that another cop present was heard to openly criticize the one who fired the shots (Chicago Tribune, 11/16). Despite Jemel wearing security clothing and having a legal license to carry a gun in the state, he was instantly perceived as a threat and gunned down.
This murder of an armed Black worker reflects in large part the racist profiling in the thoughts and actions of millions of kkkops, but also reflects a deeper fear of a major threat to the bosses and capitalism. For all the bosses’ fascist rhetoric about the “sacredness” of gun ownership in the United States, the fact is that workers–especially Black workers– possessing weapons has always presented an inherent political problem for them.  The ruling class wants to control all the guns, preferably in the hands of their cops. The ruling wants guns to control workers, not in the hands of workers. What the bosses fear most is a multiracial working class armed with guns and class consciousness.
Racist murders mean—we got to fight back!
Committed to building such a movement for communist revolution, a group of PL comrades and friends attended a vigil in Jemel’s memory the Friday after his murder. The vigil took place at his former high school, Lane Tech College Prep, on the north side of Chicago, and was organized by classmates and other school alumni.
Many of the speeches reflected a deep sense of shock and grief over the loss of Jemel. A group of his classmates had difficulty in even expressing the depth of the pain that they were feeling after his murder. They spoke on the racism and alienation that they had already experienced as a result of being a small Black student minority in a selective enrollment high school made up of mostly white students. After losing Jemel to the hands of the killer kops, they were handed another harsh treatment of feeling invisible and unwanted under capitalism.
Other Lane Tech alumni, friends of Jemel, and community organizations also made statements in his memory. One Black worker came to the microphone and made a clear call on the need to take action. He said, “We are in a war, and we need to choose sides.” Other speakers echoed the need to get organized to fight back against the racist bosses and their killer kops, but unfortunately stopped short of calling for mass multi-racial working-class unity as the most effective way to build that fight.
For our part, our small multi-racial group of PLers worked to make that message clear. We distributed our communist newspaper CHALLENGE, engaged in conversation, and made a few contacts that we intend to follow up with.
We build this fight, for Jemel and workers everywhere
Justice for Jemel Roberson goes beyond getting his kkkop murderer fired and thrown in jail. Although these outcomes,in and of themselves won’t lead to a world where working-class people everywhere can live a productive life in safety and dignity.
For that future, we need to connect racist police murders, deportations, unemployment, and imperialist war to their common root of capitalism, and build the struggle for international communist revolution as the only solution to wipe these anti-worker attacks from the face of the earth. It’s no simple task, but for us, it’s the best possible way to honor fallen working-class heroes such as Jemel.