BRONX, NY, December 12– Before court officers brought kkkop/Corrections Officer and murderer Dion Middleton into court on Nov. 16, they wanted a word with the block of 18 supporters that packed the small Bronx courtroom. Looming over our group and looking directly at the mother of Raymond Chaluisant (the victim of Middleton’s racist rampage), they said they didn’t want any trouble. No one could make any moves toward Middleton, or make any noise while he was escorted in or during his appearance in front of the judge.

No one could express any emotion, they said, “no matter how you feel.” You could feel the threat of violence in their words. But there was also great fear. Because the bosses and their minions know something we must keep reminding ourselves: the working class is mighty, and if we rise up, we can overthrow them and their racist profit system!

After this stern lecture, the racist murderer was escorted into the courtroom (and later, back out again) flanked by armed bodyguards, in a display that showed both the power and panic of the state (the government).

This was but one of the lessons we have learned during our campaign as we fight this case and support the family of Raymond Chaluisant. This  18-year-old was gunned down in the street this past July in a hit-and-run by off-duty kkkop Middleton for allegedly playing with a toy water gun.

We communists know that, if we fight to build our movement, the days of racist police terror are numbered and can one day be extinguished forever. Even our relatively small group that day had the power to disrupt court and to broadcast the contempt that millions of workers have for the bosses’ criminal injustice system.

We were appearing in court alongside Raymond’s family to make a clear statement that the working class is watching these proceedings. Middleton, who is a Black corrections officer, is one of the few kkkops to be charged after murdering a Black or Latin youth or worker. But we aren’t kidding ourselves: even if he is convicted, which—even for such an egregious (extreme) criminal act as a hit-and-run, is not guaranteed—it will do nothing to change the nature of the police or corrections officers, whose job it is to “enforce” the racist capitalists’ anti-worker laws.

You can’t reform the police!
As communists, we have come to understand that we can never reform the police to somehow serve the working class. Our study of the history of capitalism and the police (including in these pages of CHALLENGE) exposes how slaveowning plantation owners in the Antebellum South formed the original police patrols to capture escaped slaves, and how factory bosses in the industrial age of the late 1800s and early 1900s expanded the cop’s role to break strikes, and, always, to quell (put down) rebellions. From post Civil War times and continuing to this day, cops were intimately involved in building and protecting the Ku Klux Klan (often occupying leadership positions)—which is why we use the nickname kkkops! Many of those right-wing fascists who stormed the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021—not to make revolution but to stage a fascist coup—were members or former members of law enforcement.

We continue to study history to learn the invaluable lessons from every struggle we involve ourselves in so we can improve our work to build our revolutionary movement to liberate the working class. We may be students or home health aides or transit workers or teachers, but we can all become professional revolutionaries and communist organizers.

The bosses are terrified of the power of the working class
We see over and over again, from the bosses’ fascist response to the freight railroad workers (see editorial, p. 2), or to anti-racist students at Kingsborough Community College (see CHALLENGE, 11/30 and 12/14), the bosses use their laws and stormtrooper kkkops to attempt to control the working class. They do this because they know they are outnumbered. They know their sick exploitative profit system is diametrically opposed to the needs of the working class. But they don’t care!

So they train their kkkops, their politicians, even their teachers and social workers, to fall in line and enforce their rules and laws that serve their interests.

We need to learn from this essential fact! Like the Kingsborough students have shown, when the working class unites in militant, multi-racial action, we are unbeatable!  

Our campaign to support Raymond Chaluisant’s family has been modest, but we should not underestimate its importance. We have had multiple Saturday demonstrations and marches in the neighborhood where he lived. We have spread the word, passing out leaflets, taking turns speaking on the bullhorn, and distributing hundreds of copies of CHALLENGE. We have also been reaching out to the family, offering practical support and sharing our vision for a different world.

Our work is important enough that the court is afraid of us; there’s our proof!

Smashing racist police terror: a lifelong struggle
Some of us in our group have a lifetime of struggle going back decades. We have seen over and over the same MO (pattern): kkkops murder and the bosses explain it away. Once in a while, as if to throw a dog a bone, the rulers do discipline one of the kkkillers (and then, often an Asian cop, or a Black cop like Middleton, easier to scapegoat), and make a cosmetic change or two. But as we saw in the wake of the Breonna Taylor and George Floyd protests, these “reforms” are often reversed (by the liberal Big Fascists (see page 6), it should be noted) in the very next breath. And their racist terrorizing and murder of the working class? They don’t stop!

Even if they convict Middleton and send him to prison, they can never bring Raymond back, and they cannot stop their terrorizing of the working class, because the bosses NEED the kkkops to terrorize us. When they say “protect and serve,” they mean serve their racist profit system!

But good luck trying to pacify us: we know better! In our experience, many families of slain youth and workers have become active in the struggle for a better world; some have joined Progressive Labor Party. We must acknowledge the profound trauma and cost of losing a loved one in such a shocking and vicious manner. As we continue trying to support Raymond’s family in every way we can, we have become more resolute as a collective to marshal our forces and continue the struggle for a communist world.

When Middleton has his next court appearance on Wednesday, Dec. 21, we will be there, and we plan to continue organizing in the neighborhood. As our international communist movement continues to grow, we will increasingly give the bosses of the world and their cronies something to REALLY be afraid of: communist revolution!