LOS ANGELES, September 26—A multiracial group of 50 women and men marched up the Venice Beach Boardwalk for the second time in two months to demand justice for homeless workers Brendon Glenn and Jason Davis, killed by LAPD cops—and for one of the latest local victims, Jascent-Jamal Lee “Shakespeare” Warren, slain on August 30 by a Cadillac Hotel security guard.
Shakespeare was killed when he went to the aid of homeless friends being harassed by the hotel owner, Sris Sinnathamby, who used a racial epithet as he ordered guard Francisco Guzman to shoot Shakespeare. Charged with murder, Sinnathamby has been released on $1 million bail. Guzman, a felon, ran away but was captured six days later. He is charged with murder, attempted murder (he shot another man in the leg), and firearms possession.
As Google and other tech firms transform Santa Monica, Venice, Marina del Rey and other Westside neighborhoods into “Silicon Beach,” they are accelerating these neighborhoods’ gentrification and pushing to rid the boardwalk of homeless workers. The racist Los Angeles City Council has declared a homeless state of emergency and pledged $100 million to address the problem, with no known source for the funding or a plan to spend it. Of a previous $100 million the city earmarked to combat homelessness, $87 million went to “law enforcement.” Currently, there are police-escorted sanitation sweeps every Friday morning to run homeless workers off the beach, but no plans to provide housing or even bathroom facilities. As L.A. continues to plan for a 2024 Olympic bid, these crackdowns will only increase. L.A. bosses are eliminating homeless people, not homelessness.
One speaker at the rally raised the issue of racism and recent efforts to integrate police forces throughout the U.S. He concluded that having Black, Latin, and Asian cops, whether rank and file or top brass, does nothing to change the racist, brutal essence of the job. Capitalist bosses in every country use the police to terrorize the working class, he explained, as can be seen with the 43 disappeared students in Ayotzinapa, Mexico, and the striking miners murdered in the Marikana Massacre in South Africa. The cops in those countries are the same color as the workers they slaughter, but they’re on the opposite side of the class war.
We are meeting new faces and groups who are cosponsoring these protests. The two Unitarian Universalist church contingents were larger this time. PLP distributed CHALLENGE to marchers and passersby. We identified capitalism as the root cause of the problems of homelessness, racism, and police brutality, and communist revolution as the solution. We are inspired by reading in CHALLENGE about the ongoing protests PLP has helped build in New York City around the murders of Kyam Livingston, Shantel Davis, and others. We will be marching in Venice again on Sunday, October 25.