On the Murder of Trayvon Martin

Statement by the Revolutionary Communist Party, USA

On February 26, 2012, 17-year-old Trayvon Martin went out to buy some snacks at the nearby 7-Eleven. George Zimmerman, the neighborhood watch captain in a small gated community in Sanford, Florida, was driving around in his SUV. Zimmerman called 911, saying Martin looked "real suspicious"—i.e., he was a young Black male, walking around in a hoodie. After the 911 dispatcher told Zimmerman not to pursue the youth, Zimmerman followed Trayvon Martin, got out of his car and then confronted Martin. Zimmerman was carrying a 9-millimeter handgun. Trayvon Martin was carrying a bag of Skittles and a can of iced tea. There was yelling, then a gunshot. Trayvon Martin lay face down in the grass with a fatal bullet wound to the chest. Zimmerman was taken into custody, questioned and released. To this day, he has not been arrested and charged with any crime.


It is very good and very important that people, not only in Sanford, Florida, but all over the country, are outraged by the murder of Trayvon Martin and are making their outrage known in many different and creative forms of protest. It is also important that, in connection with the murder of Trayvon Martin, the memory of Emmett Till—wantonly murdered by white supremacists decades ago—is being raised to express the fact that people have seen this go on for far too long and will not stand by to see it happen yet again.


At the same time, the fact that yet another Emmett Till moment can arise—that yet another outrage of this kind can take place—today, more than 50 years after the original Emmett Till lynching, and that this murder of Trayvon Martin is not an isolated incident but only the latest of an endless chain of such acts that are perpetrated, condoned and covered up by the powers-that-be, shows very powerfully that, this time around, we must not settle for anything less than stopping this, once and for all—we must build a movement to really and finally put an end to these and countless other outrages that spew forth from this system, by sweeping away this system through revolution. This is deadly serious and we must take this up very seriously.

Revolutionary Communist Party, USA
March 23, 2012

Free Troy Davis! The Whole Damn System is Guilty

What does it say that a man for whom there is no physical evidence of his guilt is about to be executed?

What does it say that despite 7 out of 9 witnesses recanting, the system is pushing ahead with his execution?

What does it say that it has come out that police pressured witnesses to identify Troy Davis in the first place?

What does it say that over a million people have signed a petition worldwide to get him a stay of execution and this is being ignored?

What does it say that so many of the Black people pouring out among the protesters are so familiar with being wrongly criminalized that they are taking up the slogan, "I am Troy Davis"?

What does it say that the Supreme Court of the land is letting this go down?

What does it say that the "first Black President" is totally fucking silent and COMPLICIT!?

THE WHOLE DAMN SYSTEM IS GUILTY.

THE DEATH PENALTY IS ILLEGITIMATE -- TRUE, BUT ITS DEEPER THAN THAT. THE WHOLE DAMN SYSTEM IS GUILTY.

JOIN THE PROTESTS HAPPENING IN GEORGIA. JOIN THE PROTESTS IN HARLEM NEW YORK. GET IN THE STREETS WHEREVER YOU ARE. TWEET ABOUT IT. CALL IN TO THE PRESIDENT. MAKE SOME FUCKING NOISE AND DON'T STOP.

"Yes there's a conspiracy..."

Help get 5,000 views of BOB AVAKIAN's video,

"YES THERE'S A CONSPIRACY, TO GET THE COPS OFF"

On October 20, be part of getting 5,000 views of this video clip from
Revolution: Why It’s Necessary, Why It’s Possible,

What It’s All About.

On October 20 watch and spread this clip from Bob Avakian as people organize across the country for October 22, the National Day of Protest to Stop Police Brutality, Repression and the Criminalization of a Generation.


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        The REVOLUTION is real. Watch it. Spread it.     

Young & Black? Expect to be "Stopped & Frisked" if not killed by police

Below are excerpts taken from today’s NYTimes http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/12/nyregion/12frisk.html?pagewanted=4&hp about the rampant “stop and frisk” policy where each year now the NY Police Department stops and frisks over half a million people – the majority of them for reasons such as “furtive movements.”  This article features the most targeted area where the average young Black man (starting at the age of 15!) is stopped on average FIVE TIMES A YEAR!

Throw this in the mix of the recent slap on the wrist given just days ago to the cop who executed Oscar Grant in front of a crowd hundreds and viewed by millions on youtube. 

I don’t want to hear any more talk about how this is a “post-racial” society.  Walking around young and Black still means two things.  First, you are a suspect.  Second, you are a target of police all the way up to and frequently including police murder.

The time is now to be exposing and resisting these outrages, and to be building up the strength to put an end to this madness through real, genuine communist revolution at the soonest possible time.  Nothing can excuse what you are about to read below.

“The officers stop people they think might be carrying guns; they stop and question people who merely enter the public housing project buildings without a key; they ask for identification from, and run warrant checks on, young people halted for riding bicycles on the sidewalk. 

“One night, 20 officers surrounded a man outside the Brownsville Houses after he would not let an officer smell the contents of his orange juice container.

“Between January 2006 and March 2010, the police made nearly 52,000 stops on these blocks and in these buildings, according to a New York Times analysis of data provided by the Police Department and two organizations, the Center for Constitutional Rights and the New York Civil Liberties Union. In each of those encounters, officers logged the names of those stopped — whether they were arrested or not — into a police database that the police say is valuable in helping solve future crimes.

“These encounters amounted to nearly one stop a year for every one of the 14,000 residents of these blocks. In some instances, people were stopped because the police said they fit the description of a suspect. But the data show that fewer than 9 percent of stops were made based on ‘fit description.’ Far more — nearly 26,000 times — the police listed either ‘furtive movement,’ a catch-all category that critics say can mean anything, or ‘other’ as the only reason for the stop. Many of the stops, the data show, were driven by the police’s ability to enforce seemingly minor violations of rules governing who can come and go in the city’s public housing.”

Skipping ahead in the article…

“And some, from academics to the residents of these streets in Brooklyn, believe the stops could have a corrosive effect, alienating young and old alike in a community that has long had a tenuous relationship with the police.

“’This is an important issue, right now, that the N.Y.P.D. must get out in front of as soon as they can,’ said Richard Rosenfeld, a professor of criminology and criminal justice at the University of Missouri, St. Louis. ‘And the best way they can do that is to provide credible evidence that the stop-and-frisk campaign actually is responsible for the crime reductions the city has enjoyed.’

“Without that evidence, he said, the stop-and-frisks that do not result in arrests could ‘reduce the perceived legitimacy of the police in the eyes of the public.’”

Okay, that above quote is very revealing – basically this guy is pointing out that this practice of “stop and frisk” that is disproportionately targeting and terrorizing Black people so blatantly violates what most people consider decent and legitimate (even according to the proclaimed principles of the U.S. constitution and laws), that if they don’t cook up some kind of PR rational for this they could undermine the legitimacy of the very armed force and terror their system relies on to function.

Everyone who is sincere, needs to come to grips with the fact that the outrage of police violence and terror against Black people in this country is so widespread, so pervasive, so dehumanizing and degrading to Black people as a whole that IT ALONE is reason enough for revolution.  Further, everyone interested in revolution ought not to fail to see how significant and strategic a potential vulnerability this kind of ongoing police terror is to the legitimacy of this entire system.  There is tremendous potential to bring forward – through fighting the power and transforming the people FOR REVOLUTION – an alternate legitimate vision, authority, and specter of a radically different society, a revolutionary society, that can put an end to this madness and attract many people into this today.

The article continues later…

“Inside the project buildings and out, males 15 to 34 years of age, who make up about 11 percent of the area’s population, accounted for 68 percent of the stops over the years. That amounted to about five stops a year each, though it was impossible to tell how often someone was stopped or if that person lived in the neighborhood, because the data did not include the names or addresses of those stopped. Police officials say the age figures sound right, since most crime suspects fit that description.

“Young black men get stopped so often that a few years ago, Gus Cyrus, coach of the football team at nearby Thomas Jefferson High School, started letting his players leave practice with their bright orange helmets so the police would not confuse them with gang members.

“’My players were always calling me saying “Coach, the police have me,”‘ Mr. Cyrus said.”

Just think what that means – that the football coach had to let his players borrow bright orange helmets so that they would have a higher chance of not being stopped and harassed and humiliated and possibly beaten or killed by police!  In his epic talk, “Revolution: Why Its Necessary; Why Its Possible; What Its All About,” Bob Avakian talks about how it is doubtful that any young Black man grows up in an inner city without being traumatized by the fear of being brutalized or killed by police.  This story from this coach just captures one small dimension of that – but it speaks volumes.

By the way, there is an additional irony in that little excerpt in that the name of the high school is “Thomas Jefferson High School.”  Jeffersonian democracy is supposedly what makes this country so free and guarantees all people equal rights and protections under the law.  But, in reality in its original conception – and as it is clearly functioning today – it has white supremacy woven into its very fabric.  At the time of Jefferson, this took the form of outright slavery.  Today, there is – among many other things – the situation that is described in this article from the NYTimes.

“Almost everyone in the projects has a story. There is Jonathan Guity, a 26-year-old legal assistant with no criminal record, who, when asked how many times he had been stopped in the neighborhood where he grew up, said, ‘Honestly, I’d say 30 to 40 times. I’m serious.’”

…

“One recent evening, the police stopped a 19-year-old man for spitting on the sidewalk, a health code violation, and entering Langston Hughes Apartments without using a key or being buzzed in, even though the doors were unlocked. ‘I’ve lived here for 19 years,’ the young man, who lived in a neighboring building, protested. ‘You see me coming into these buildings every day, and now you’re going to stop me.’”

If you can stomach all this, you have a serious problem.  If you cannot, its time to get more serious about the real revolution.

Re: Oscar Grant -- The Whole Damn System Is Guilty!

There is important coverage today at revcom.us about the outrageous verdict in the police murder of Oscar Grant. I am reposting one of the pieces below, but go check out the whole paper at:http://revcom.us/




The Whole Damn System Is Guilty!

http://revcom.us/a/207/whole_damn_system-en.html
When a cop can murder a young, unarmed Black man, lying face-down in handcuffs, it's an outrage. This is what happened to Oscar Grant, as clearly shown by numerous videos. Yet his murderer has barely been given a slap on the wrist.

This same sort of outrage goes on year after year, city after city, throughout society. Sean Bell, unarmed, 23 years old and Black—New York police shot 50 bullets at him in 2006, murdering him on his wedding day. Amadou Diallo, a young African immigrant, murdered on his front steps by police who fired 41 shots at him. Patrick Dorismond, Haitian-American... Mark Garcia... Anthony Baez, Puerto Rican...Tyisha Miller, shot 12 times by the Riverside, California, police as she sat in her car, unconscious... the list goes on. All murdered by police, all committing no crime, and in all cases but one the police going totally free. The Stolen Lives Project has documented several thousand such cases—and this documentation itself is far from complete.

This is murder carried out "under color of authority." This murder is obscene. This murder is illegitimate. This murder is unconscionable and utterly immoral. AND IT MUST NOT BE TOLERATED!!

And when this kind of murder goes along with the widespread imprisonment of Black and other minority youth, with the police routinely forcing these youth to "kiss the pavement" and often beating them for the slightest show of defiance or merely to "make an example"...

when this kind of murder goes along with schools that don't teach and inescapable discrimination in jobs and whole areas being left to rot, while those who have been consigned to this fate are constantly demonized by the media...

when all this comes on top of 400 years of different forms of oppression, all preserving the essential core of white supremacy, despite oceans of blood shed by people trying to get free of this...

when all this flows out of and reinforces the basic economic workings of that same rotten society, generating untold wealth and power at the top of society and indescribable misery at the bottom... and when it finds endless echoes and constant reinforcements in the culture and ideas and institutions of that society... then:

It's A System.

The Message and Call of our Party puts it this way:

"It is a system of capitalism-imperialism...a system in which U.S. imperialism is the most monstrous, most oppressive superpower...a system driven by a relentless chase after profit, which brings horror upon horror, a nightmare seemingly without end, for the vast majority of humanity: poverty and squalor...torture and rape...the wholesale domination and degradation of women everywhere...wars, invasions and occupations...assassinations and massacres...planes, missiles, tanks and troops of the USA, bombarding people in far away lands while they sleep in their homes or go about their daily lives, blasting their little children to pieces, cutting down men and women in the prime of life, or in old age, kicking down their doors and dragging them away in the middle of the night...while here in the USA itself the police harass, brutalize and murder youth in the streets of the inner cities—over and over again—and then they spit out their maddening insults, insisting that this is 'justified,' as if these youth are not human beings, have no right to live, deserve no respect and no future."

And as we ask elsewhere in this paper, "how much more do we need to see of this system, before we decide we have had enough of it, and work with everything we have to build a movement for revolution to get rid of it...and put something in its place that would value the lives of the millions of people like the one wantonly murdered and would actually bring justice?"