BROOKLYN, NY, March 21—More than two and a half years have passed since Kyam Livingston was killed in Brooklyn Central Booking. The police killed Kyam, in a filthy holding cell, by ignoring her pleas for medical care. She had been arrested on a minor charge and never even came before a judge. Each month members of the Progressive Labor Party, along with relatives, friends, neighbors, members of churches and unions, and the Justice for Kyam Committee rally for justice for this racist, sexist police murder.
In the beginning of these monthly rallies, we used to chant, “We want the names! We want the tapes!” In the course of the struggle, the tapes that “didn’t exist” were found and showed the final heart wrenching hours of Kyam’s life as she pleaded with her jailers. Recently, through the court case, we obtained the names of the cops who were Kyam’s jailers in the central booking jail, and the names of all the cops who arrested her and transported her until she was in that cell.
Today, Kyam’s mom read the KKKop’s names to the crowd.
From Brooklyn Central Booking, they are: Shanika Howard, Charles Arthur, Alberta Dennison, Vanessa DeDanzine, Sergeant Linda Deena-Hornick, and Lieutenant Kareema Nevels.
From the 70th Precinct, they are: Michael Defede, Sergeant Matthew Fried, and Lieutenant Kurvin Manwaring.
From the 62nd Precinct: Hiram Riffas.
Kyam’s mother then said that she wanted to see their faces, and ask them why they let her daughter die.
An earlier speaker had spoken about the many other Black and Latin men and women who have been murdered by the police from NYC to Cleveland to Chicago, from South Carolina to Texas to California. We chanted, “white cop, black cop all the same racist terror is the name of their game!” Here in Flatbush, the racist killers of Kimani Gray, Shantel Davis as well as that of Kyam have gone unpunished. Now, Brooklyn District Attorney Ken Thompson, whose office won a conviction of ex-cop Peter Liang in the killing Akai Gurley, is recommending no jail time for Liang. Once again, the racist capitalist system—the courts, DAs, Mayors, Governors, and Presidents—protect and encourage killer kkkops.
After the officers’ names were read, the frustration built in the crowd and in Kyam’s family. A new chant arose, “If we don’t get it? Shut it down! For Kyam! Shut it down! Shut this racist system down!” With that, the multiracial crowd marched into the intersection and blocked traffic. Kyam’s mom led the crowd in the release of balloons of remembrance for the loss of this daughter of the working class. The bosses’ system may protect killer cops, but this working class neighborhood strongly supports our monthly demonstrations. Over 200 copies of CHALLENGE were distributed at the rally, and nods of agreement were evident from the various corners as we stopped traffic.
After the demonstration, several of the leaders and family friends got together to plan future events including PLP’s May Day March. Each month we call for justice, but must ask, is there justice for the working class under capitalism? Black workers, especially Black women workers, are hit the hardest under the profit system—and face constant demonization by the bosses’ press.
When the bosses’ kkkops murder one of our youth, the bosses’ media drag their name through the mud. 16 year-old Kimani Gray was murdered by the NYPD in East Flatbush, Brooklyn, on March 10, 2013. The bosses’ top newspaper, The New York Times, immediately ran an article entitled “Police Kill 16 Year-Old They Say Pointed a Handgun.” Not one eyewitness supported the police’s claim, despite the police claiming to have recovered Kimani’s gun.
More than three years later, the bosses’ media admitted that the NYPD had not found Kimani’s fingerprints on his alleged weapon. As witnesses submit testimony against the police during the wrongful-death lawsuit by Kimani’s mother, the evidence that the police framed Kimani continues to build.
These are just some of the examples of why workers must challenge whenever the bosses’ media slanders our youth, especially when the bosses’ kkkops are involved. How many more years will do we wait to for the bosses to admit they were wrong about so many other murders? The bosses’ justice system will never do justice for the working class. Joining in PLP’s fight for communist revolution is the best way to get justice for Kyam, and all of capitalism’s victims.
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Courts Rule KKKops Guilty, Justice for Tyrone Needed
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- 09 April 2016 154 hits
BALTIMORE, March 30— Our weekly West Wednesday rally was really powerful this evening! PL members and other antiracist fighters are calling for Tyrone West’s killers and the racist capitalist system they defend to be indicted.
Just yesterday, two of Tyrone’s murderers along with about a dozen other cops were found guilty of brutally beating Abdul Salaam in July 2013, just a couple weeks before they murdered Tyrone. This is the nature of capitalism: killer kkkops who beat a member of the working class are set free to murder another worker.
No Justice Under Capitalism
Yes, the verdict against killer kkkops Chapman and Ruiz was a good thing. But, let’s not get it twisted—the capitalist court system will never put an end to the horrible abuses of the racist criminal injustice system! If kkkops are even convicted, they are often let go with few consequences.
Take Peter Liang, the killer of Akai Gurley, a Black youth in Brooklyn. Liang was convicted of manslaughter but was never sent to prison because he was “not a threat”—mercy that the working class never gets. The only way to get real justice and ensure the working class’ safety is to replace this violent capitalist system with communism.
Bosses Dazzle to Distract
At tonight’s rally, Abdul Salaam spoke and strongly encouraged everyone to keep up the fight. The rally was held at the Inner Harbor, where the Light City festival was going on. This display is an effort by the local ruling class to try to keep us satisfied, though oppressed, with little more than just the bare basics. They try to dazzle us with spectacular events so that we forget that we live in a city where 65 percent of the jobs are unskilled and very low wage, and where poverty is high.
Nevertheless, some wonderful activist artists managed to get into the festival, and they did a beautiful light projection, largely about the anti-racist struggle against police brutality. It was right there, invited by those artists, that we held a powerful and inspiring West Wednesday rally!
Every Wednesday, we rally to fight for Tyrone West and to build class consciousness. PL’ers are entrenched in this battle and we consistently give out CHALLENGE to others in the fight. We are hoping that these fighters will come to May Day. We stress that to create a world without police brutality, we need much more struggle, the defeat of capitalism, and a whole new way of life! We can do it! Dare to struggle! Dare to win! March on May Day on Saturday, April 30.
WASHINGTON, DC, April 1— The Trans-Pacific Partnership is a globally racist attack on already super-exploited workers. Members of PLP and George Washington University public health students joined the demonstration today to lower the cost of medicines that can cure Hepatitis C, and treat HIV and cancer.
Global Day of Action Against Imperialist TPP
Twenty-five people rallied outside the headquarters of PhRMA, the trade association of the major pharmaceutical companies. Students hailed from Universities Allied for Essential Medicines (UAEM), and interns at Public Citizen and Center for Economic and Financial Research (CEFR). Protests occurred in other cities including Sydney, Johannesburg, Rio de Janeiro, Tokyo, Delhi, Ahmedabad, New York City, Boston, and San Francisco.
President Obama’s Trans-Pacific Partnership is a major trade deal between U.S. and major countries in the Asia-Pacific region. It is an essential step toward squaring off with China. Framed as a regulatory and investment treaty, it projects an anti-China trading and military bloc consisting of Australia, Brunei, Canada, Chile, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore, the United States and Vietnam, and, prospectively, South Korea and Taiwan.
But the TPP also allows drug companies to maintain their patents for their drugs. This means there are fewer generic alternatives and higher prices. The new Hepatitis C medicine costs $84,000 to cure most people, meaning that most will suffer or die because they cannot afford it.
Gotta Name It to Fight It
These prices have a racist impact in the U.S. since Black and Latin workers have disproportionate levels of poverty and lack access to medical care. Some of the non-governmental organizations (NGOs) that organized the rally hesitated to include anti-racist statements in the press release, claiming it would “alienate people.”
There is no principled struggle without naming the tool with which the bosses maims the working class—the tool of racism. The NGOs effectively exposed themselves to be servants of capitalists, as they undermine and manage working-class outrage, politics, and organizing. The role of NGOs and the watering down of politics are important issues to confront as communists work within different mass groups.
As the TPP restricts access to medication to mainly Black, Latin and immigrant workers in the United States, it also severely cuts access to medicines for millions of people in countries (e.g., Yemen, Haiti, Eritrea) where exploitation and oppression of workers are in their more naked forms. The TPP—from Sudan to Bangladesh—not only exacerbate the racist attack on the working class in the form of medical access but also will be using NGOs are their tool of imperialism. Making the struggle against TPP international in scope is essential.
Need Mass Organizing, Not Media Hype
The rally featured a puppet of Uncle Sam (the patriotic personification of the U.S. government) dressed in red, white and blue tied with ropes to the drug companies to demonstrate the power these companies have over politicians and the government. Public tax dollars support much of the drug research and development work but drug companies scarf up the profits. These companies fund all sides of the political spectrum and thus exert enormous pressure on politicians to keep prices high and unregulated, and workers desperate.
PLP members invited the crowd to march on May Day and called to eradicate capitalism, not just these trade agreements. One poster showed the worldwide distribution of people with Hepatitis C and said “Workers of the World Unite.” Most people responded with interest, including a group of middle school students.
Unfortunately, the demonstration played more to the press than the public. There were no fliers to distribute in advance or on the street to explain the issues. The organizing misleaders believed the media could influence policy, rather than build a mass working-class movement. These “community organizations” and the like support capitalism by disabling or neutralizing working-class struggle. A Counterpunch essay explains, “Channeling the fight against the worst effects of capitalism through NGOs hides the central contradiction of capitalism, namely that between capital and labor. The horrific effects of capitalism—oppression, ecocide, wars of conquest, exploitation, poverty—cannot be eliminated without eliminating their cause” (10/20/15). Don’t count of capitalist-funded organizations to topple capitalism. Only a united working class of women and men with an organized party like PLP can do that.
PL’ers in this rally are hopeful that some of these fighters will learn from communists and the working class that the solution must be a revolutionary movement to abolish capitalism, the breeder of illnesses and oppression. Under communism, competition, profit, and even the concept of “payment” will cease to exist. Our health will be in the hands of the people who research, make, distribute, and use the medications—the working class. The socials and environmental conditions will be controlled by those who live in it—the working class. Every aspect of society will run by and for the working class.
CHINA, April 6—Friends of Progressive Labor Party recently had a study group with industrial workers here. We discussed the editorial “Mapping Imperialist War” from CHALLENGE (March 9) and the article about fighting fascism in India.
We especially appreciated two of the main points in the articles. First, it is absolutely correct to consider the conflict between China and U.S. as imperialist rivalry. As we are hit with one global capitalist crisis after crisis, the world is headed towards war. The deceptive propaganda in China makes concerted effort to conceal the deterioration of the world economy. Economic gimmicks like the negative interest rate cannot solve the basic economic problems. The increasing military expenditure around world boosts the danger of military conflict worldwide.
Second, China military, known as the People’s Liberation Army is no longer the workers’ force. The PLA was originally known as the Chinese Workers’ and Peasants’ Red Army, or simply the Red Army. The composition of this army—the world’s largest—is still workers. The change of pro-workers to capitalist regime in China has made PLA the bosses’ army. It is essential to teach soldiers the class war, as they have a critical role in the future imperialist wars.
Obey No Borders
Our study group members also had some doubts about the strategy of PLP. We believe it is rather difficult to get an international alliance of workers nowadays. We agree that workers have no side in the imperialist wars. But the main task for the workers in the wars is to resist their bosses in their country and weaken their forces. This supports the liberty of other countries. World revolution can hardly be accomplished just by the unity of workers all over the world. The major revolutionary work for workers is within their countries. It is hard to unite workers of different countries within an international organization, because the international organization rarely has the ability and the influence in every country to lead the worldwide revolution.
PLP agrees that it is hard to build an international party and inevitably the effort will result in uneven development. It may even lead to contradictions between comrades working and struggling in different settings. The working class must view itself as one international force—without capitalist-created borders. The bosses don’t limit themselves to exploiting “their own” workers. Why should the working class in one region limit itself to liberating only “their own”? PLP believes giving in to nationalism, which maintain separation of workers, is dangerous and a failed strategy. Nationalism is a bourgeois ideology. Compromising with nationalism was a serious error committed by revolutionaries in the 20th century and should not be repeated in the 21st century. We have a whole wide world to win.
TEL-AVIV, April 4—It is now well known that the fascist junta who took over Argentina between 1976 and 1982 has committed crimes against humanity, including kidnapping and torturing working-class activists and murdering at least 30,000 in the name of US imperialism. It is also well-known that the Argentine regime of the day was viciously anti-Semitic and specifically singled out Jewish activists for torture and murder—3,000 of those murdered were Jewish, ten times greater than their proportion in the general Argentine population at that time.
But who was a staunch ally of U.S.-backed Nazi Argentina? None other than the Zionist state of Israel. There is clear evidence that many of the junta’s crimes were committed using Israeli weapons, and that the Israeli regime maintained friendly relations with the fascist generals who ruled Argentina. But when Jewish Argentinians wanted to flee persecution and potential murder to Israel, the Israeli embassy turned them down as they were “too leftist” for it—proof of the myth that Zionist politicians care about Jewish workers. This is the true nature of Zionist Israel: a state that serves Israeli capitalism and U.S. imperialism, not Jewish workers. Israeli capitalists and their lackey politicians will do whatever necessary to maintain power and profits. In 1950, as Zionists were spreading anti-Arab racism and ethnically cleansing thousands of Palestinians, they were also terrorizing Iraqi Jews by spreading anti-Semitism and planting bombs in an effort to increase Jewish immigration to Israel.
Today, Israel is harboring a war criminal wanted by the Argentinian government and the Interpol for crimes against humanity: Teodoro Anibal Gauto. He is wanted for $500,000. He was a torturer and murderer at the “La Cacha,” death camp in Argentina. Many of his fellow soldiers were sentenced last October to long prison sentences—15 of them for life imprisonment—for crimes committed there. But Gauto used the fact that his wife was Jewish to flee to Israel in 2003 and live under an assumed identity. Israeli authorities have known of his true identity for at least a year, but steadfastly refuse to expel him to Argentina.
In Line with Imperialist Backer
Why have Israel–Argentina relations soured in recent years? Though the Israeli bosses refuse to disclose the reason for their refusal to send him back, a red eye on the news can find clues. These diplomatic squabbles over extradition mask the truth: imperialist competition between Israel’s backer, the U.S., and Argentina’s ally, China. China has dramatically increased investment in and trade with Latin America in recent years (see editorial, page 2). Moreover, Argentina renewed relations with Iran in 2013, one of China’s large sources of energy and a major enemy of the U.S. and Israel. These moves all threaten U.S.’s position as the main world imperial power and Israel’s regional dominance.
The Argentinian community in Israel is now demanding Gauto’s extradition and exposing Israel’s complicity in the junta’s war crimes. The state claiming to stand for the right of “all Jews” is an accomplice to anti-Semitic pogroms and neo-Nazi murder of workers.
As members of Progressive Labor Party, it is our job to show workers both in Israel and around the world that no capitalist country is true to its claim of supporting Jewish, Arab, Argentine, Chinese, Iranian, U.S., or any other kind of worker. The bottom line is maintaining profits through any means necessary. We cannot protect ourselves by just prosecuting war criminals or supporting nationalist politics. We must smash all borders and create a communist world.
