SAN FRANCISCO, December 2 — “They executed my child…25 bullets in my baby”…He “was was supposed to start UPS today. He got his uniform,” …Gwen Woods described the police murder of her son Mario Woods and that his future on a real job was snuffed out. A Bayview resident said that the video is hard to watch: “He got shot like he was at a firing squad. Deplorable.”
Videos went viral of five racists San Francisco police surrounding and assassinating Mario Woods, 26, on Thursday December 2. The bosses’ usual claim: “He refused to drop a knife and tried to walk away.” The videos show him stunned with beanbags and staggering against a wall, followed by a volley of gunshots.
By the next night, over 300 angry people assembled around Mario’s memorial for a Vigil , March and Community meeting at a Local Church on 3rd St in the historically Black Bayview District of SF. PLP joined a large multi-racial crowd, Black, Latin White and Asian, reflecting the common working-class anger. Speakers and posters referred to other racist police murders. People welcomed each other. Some Black residents of the Bayview District saying “We are so glad you’re here” to those who appeared to be from other neighborhoods. “Mario Woods RIP” was all over the walls and street.
Along with the long list of young Black men murdered by police in the Bay Area, the racist police have killed 2 Latin young men from immigrant families in the last year. White & Asian youth are not subject to police terror at such a high rate but also come under the gun. The assassinations of Mario Woods, Alex Nieto, Amilcar Perez Lopez, and Kenneth Harding were addressed at the rally.
PLP talked with people and distributed around 200 flyers and CHALLENGEs. Like our leaflet, we asked the question “Why with all this fightback has there been no fundamental change in Police Conduct? The murders, arrests, searches and judicial abuses continue.” And not to mention mass incarceration! We explained that the police are doing exactly what they are supposed to do — serve the ruling class by terrorizing Black and Latin workers, dividing the working class and keeping all workers in line through fear. We made some friends and plan to bring our flyer back to areas where we have political activity.
Same Fight All Over
Family members, friends, Bayview residents, members of neighborhood Churches and Black Lives Matter spoke about Mario and the history of police murder/harassment up and down 3rd St. Again, folks from outside the neighborhood were welcomed.
A PL’er spoke to bring solidarity greetings from Chicago. “The struggle there brought masses of working people and youth took over the streets in reaction to Laquan McDonald s assassination and cover up. It’s the same fight all over.” (see page 3). He said that removing the SF Police Chief Greg Suhr or forcing out the Chief of Chicago Police won’t make things fundamentally different. It will be new faces, new tactics but the same old racist terror. He urged people to make the long hard struggle to get rid of the capitalist system as part of our fight to end its racist economics, ideas and culture. “We need an alternative to this system that profits from racism and division. PLP organizes to replace capitalism with its opposite, a communist system: A system of equality, dignity and shared responsibility for all our needs; a system that produces everything for the needs of the whole global working class.” He got applause and was able to get more contacts from some of the organizers and some people in the school system.
CHICAGO, November 27 — “Your power is in the streets, not looking around in stores! Take the streets!” A member of the Progressive Labor Party said this in response to a Black nationalist mis-leader during a march on a popular U.S. shopping day called “Black Friday.”A multiracial group of Progressive Labor Party members and friends attended the march on Michigan Avenue to protest the racist murder of Laquan McDonald by the Chicago kkkops. This area is where many expensive stores and shopsare, and was called by phony mis-leader Jesse Jackson’s Rainbow/ PUSH Coalition, and others. The Black nationalist mis-leaders wanted to lead the antiracist workers into the stores, “just look” around, and not buy anything.
The PL’ers marching have a better strategy than the dead-ends pushed by fakers like Jackson. These misleaders want to channel workers’ anger into walking around “just looking” inside ritzy stores in rich neighborhoods. These stores are too expensive for workers to shop in, and are done to make a publicity stunt to the capitalist media. PLP fights to unite our class, Asian, Latin, Black and White, to fight back!
Black Nationalism vs. Antiracism
PLP came to the march as a multiracial group, despite the efforts of local Black nationalist misleaders to exclude us because they wanted a “Black Space for Black Rage”. PLP opposes identity politics, like nationalism, and neither believes in nor fights for separate “spaces” for different workers with white skin or Black skin.
PL’ers spoke with marchers and contrasted our strategy with the nationalists. The intensity of rebellions led by the Black working class in places like Ferguson and Baltimore are testament to the intense oppression of Black workers in the U.S., especially women. Black leadership is key to building a mass multiracial communist movement to smash capitalism with armed revolution. Black nationalism offers no solutions to capitalism or the racism, sexism and imperialism it feeds on. Black nationalism merely changes the skin color of the capitalist oppressors, leaving Black workers exploited by someone who looks like them with the claim that it’s “progress”.
Black Workers Key To Revolution
One of the misleaders who spoke at the march showed their true colors and said we have to vote for Hillary, “so this will not happen again.” A PL member countered with a speech making the connections that ultimately it was capitalism that killed Laquan. Since Hillary Clinton is one of the biggest imperialists in the world, workers have no interest in her or any candidate the capitalists run for election.
As long as the capitalist system remains, the international working class will never be free of racist police terror, rampant unemployment, or the imperialist wars spawned by capitalism’s relentless drive for profit. Black workers, especially Black women, are hit the hardest under capitalism day in and day out. PLP emphasizes Black and women leadership and is organizing a mass working class movement because it will take the whole, united, multiracial working class to fight back together. Together, the working class can build our own mass leaders and smash this racist capitalist system and its genocidal cops with communist revolution. We have a world to win. Join us!
- Information
Fightback for Kyam’s Justice Inspires New Generation
- Information
- 12 December 2015 67 hits
BROOKLYN — Twenty-nine months into the struggle for Kyam Livingston, murdered in 2013 by Brooklyn cops’ racist medical neglect in Central Booking Jail, an increased presence of high school students in the monthly rally represented an important step forward. This advance didn’t happen spontaneously. Earlier in November, Kyam’s mother, Anita Neal, joined Natasha Duncan—whose sister, Shantel Davis, killed in 2012 by the New York Police Department—in visiting a local high school. Along with a focused effort by Progressive Labor Party youth clubs in Brooklyn, the two women helped introduce a new generation of young working-class fighters to this anti-racist fight.
This struggle is a fight against sexism on two fronts: exposing the racist, sexist murder of Black working-class women in Flatbush, and the fierce leadership given by women in the streets, as demonstrated by Anita, Natasha, and PLP.
Carrying signs and balloons, the protesters flooded into the center of Church Avenue and East 18th Street. The chants rang out: “We want Justice for Kyam Livingston, killed in a Brooklyn cell!” All traffic stopped as CHALLENGEs and leaflets were distributed. Two or three police officers came running to the group to shoo us back to the sidewalk, but the protesters would not be moved. A sympathetic crowd gathered on the sidewalks, excited to see business as usual stopped by the demonstration.
Students from Brooklyn Tech, John Jay and Tilden high schools spoke at the rally. A teacher painted a picture of life under capitalism, pointing out the deaths caused by this racist system. The teacher emphasized the common interests of the working class, and how we need a communist society to benefit working people and not just the wealthy.
Worker-Student Unity
As another speech was given in Spanish, many people stopped to listen to the words of unity. Church members, neighbors, welfare workers, and retirees all spoke at the rally, attacking a capitalist system that allows workers to die slowly because we are denied the resources to save our lives. We saw a worker-student alliance emerging in this fight.
Anita Neal spoke three times to describe her anguish and loss. This is the third year, she noted, that she has suffered through Thanksgiving without her daughter. Money was collected for future leaflets and sound permits. People donated their nickels, dimes and dollars; the working class is ever ready to support the struggle against racism. Many speakers thanked Anita for giving them the leadership that allows them to fight back. They understood that the death of one worker is an injury to all.
After the speeches in the center of the street, we let go of our balloons and watched them waft up into the clouds. The demonstration then marched back to the corner for another 45 minutes of speaking and chanting. We will demonstrate again on Monday, December 21. The struggle will continue!
LOS ANGELES—Three racist murders by the Los Angeles Police Department over the past six months were protested on the Venice boardwalk by 30 members of two Unitarian churches, along with members of Progressive Labor Party. The killings of Brendon Glenn, Jason Davis, and Jascent-Jamal Lee “Shakespeare” sparked chants of “Black, Latin, Asian, White! To Smash Racism We Must Unite!”
Now more than ever, we must publicly denounce the bosses’ racism and accelerating drive toward fascism, as the capitalist profit system moves inevitably toward broader inter-imperialist war. All of us must struggle with one another and within ourselves to become leaders in the class struggle.
From Marchers to Organizers
These protests are important not because we think reforms can fix the problems of capitalism, but because taking to the streets shows the power of a united, militant working class. During the pre-march rally, a comrade called on marchers to become organizers: “If everyone on the Westside of Los Angeles who agreed with us about racist cops were here today, we’d have 10,000 people marching.”
Another speaker reminded us how important it is to stand up and protest police murders and the other atrocities of capitalism and imperialism. Through multiracial unity and international workers’ solidarity, PLP is building a mass revolutionary communist movement to smash racist police terror and this entire racist capitalist system. Every time the working class has stood up and fought back, the capitalist ruling class trembles in fear. Now is the time for workers to rise again!
Communist Leaders Serve the Working Class
After the march, a member of one church said she had “never done anything like this before.” For years, PL’ers and friends have been inspired by this woman’s dedication to feeding homeless workers and her concern for fellow workers in the church. Today marked her first demonstration, a qualitative advance in her commitment to the class struggle. A comrade said, “If you can change, so can lots of other people. And you know some of them.” She smiled and nodded. The implication was clear: Through continued struggle we can win workers to become the leadership our international class needs, communist leaders to help build a movement of millions and liberate the working class from capitalism.
Our work is cut out for us: to create more organizers and more communists. We have invited several new people to our monthly PLP study group and added them to our CHALLENGE mailing list.
We continue to struggle with our friends, coworkers, neighbors and fellow churchgoers to come out and protest. As the anniversary of Tamir Rice’s death and the non-indictment of Mike Brown’s killer kkkop approaches, there will be another rally followed by a “Protesters Potluck.” Stay tuned for more articles!
CHICAGO, November 17 — Rekia’s brother led the crowd in, “I am Rekia Boyd!” Outside the hearing, PLP led, “Racist cops you can’t hide, we charge you with genocide.”
More than a hundred people protested at the monthly Chicago Police Board hearing against the March 2012 murder of Rekia Boyd, a young Black woman, by off-duty kkkop Dante Servin yet to be fired. We distributed CHALLENGE and a leaflet about the Paris attacks. We exposed how the police terrorize workers to maintain the boss’s system.
Servin fired into a crowd in a West Side alley and killed Rekia. He was found not guilty because Cook County Judge Dennis Porter ruled he should have been charged with murder instead of manslaughter. Rekia’s brother said she would have been 26 years old this month and demanded to know why her killer had not been fired in the three years since the murder.
This case illustrates how the police get away with murder, and especially racist murder of Black and Latin women and men. In just three cases of racist murder, the city of Chicago has paid $8 million dollars to the families of the slain victims.
Some protesters were Black nationalists, who advances the idea that Black workers and students have more in common with Black bosses and politicians than with non-Black workers and students; and therefore should ally with bosses and politicians of the same color rather than their class. Nationalism is a ruling class idea to try to divide the multi-racial, multi-ethnic working class. It is a way to divert the communist internationalism PLP fights for. We will organize more workers to attend the next hearing to expose the racist cops and their nationalists.
