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Only Revolution Can Bring Justice by Gordon Barnes As Catalyzing Moments for the Current Rebellion

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Only Revolution Can Bring Justice by Gordon Barnes As Catalyzing Moments for the Current Rebellion Revolution No. 17 August 2020 50¢ The Racist Police Murder of George Floyd Only Revolution Can Bring Justice By Gordon Barnes as catalyzing moments for the current rebellion. They are not This article was first pub- Karl Mondon/Bay Area News Group Karl Mondon/Bay unique, but rather horrendously lished in June in Other Voices at routine, with previous waves disobedientbodies.com and re- reaching public attention in 2011, published at internationalist.org. 2014, 2015, while in reality they Amidst the unprecedented occur all the time. COVID-19 pandemic, the United That George Floyd repeat- States has been wracked by na- edly cried out “I can’t breathe” tionwide protests against racist po- while Derek Chauvin noncha- lice brutality and murder. Nightly lantly snuffed out his life is a we hear the helicopters overhead; chilling reminder of Eric Gar- daily come new images of police ner’s last words as an NYPD violence, repression, curfews, ar- officer strangled him to death in rests and the threat of martial law. 2014. Then, as now, a massive When talking heads and upsurge of discontent has fol- politicos decry the ongoing pro- lowed. What is different now is tests as having “nothing to do” that it occurs against the back- with getting justice for George drop of a profound economic Floyd, they seek to defame the crisis triggered by the pandemic. countless thousands (myself As the contradictions of Ameri- among them) who are filling Thousands of young protesters outside Mission High School in San Francisco, June 3, begin can society are laid bare for all the streets day after day in fury march demanding justice for George Floyd (in portrait), murdered by Minneapolis police. to see, from the police killings, and outrage. But this much is to the incapacity and inadequacy true: the protests aren’t only about the lence meted out by police forces across an explosive situation of social ferment. of healthcare infrastructure, to capitalism’s racist lynching of George Floyd at the the country. This historic truth, when Floyd’s murder was the proverbial anarchy of production, we must ask: Why hands of the Minneapolis Police. They juxtaposed to the combined coronavirus straw which broke the camel’s back, as does this continue to happen, how will it are about the everyday brutalization and and economic crisis’ disproportionate and it came shortly after the police murder of stop, and what does the future hold as these violence which is endemic under Ameri- horrific toll on black people,1 has created Breonna Taylor and the racist vigilante protests develop? can capitalism. Black people, as an op- killing (by an ex-cop and his son) of Ah- Why is it that, despite the waves of 1 Citing a paper from the Annals of Epidemiology, pressed race/color-caste – integrated into NPR (30 May) reports that “while disproportion- maud Arbery. The murders of Floyd, Tay- protest and cyclical pledges of “reform,” the U.S. economy but forcibly segregated ately black counties account for only 30% of the lor and Arbery are new notches in a grim the police keep murdering black people? at the bottom of society – bear and have U.S. population, they were the location of 56% of tally of black death at the hands of the capi- The list of their names is endless. As borne disproportionate levels of the vio- COVID-19 deaths.” talist state and racist vigilantes and served continued on page 12 Democrats, Republicans: Parties of Racist Repression As Protests Rock U.S., Cops Keep Killing By Maeve themselves met with police brutality. Cops and National The brutal May 25 kill- Guard troops launched tear ing of George Floyd by Min- gas and pepper spray, fired neapolis cop Derek Chauvin rubber bullets, fired flash-bang set off the biggest sustained grenades and beat protest- protests in the history of this ers with clubs and batons. In country. Multiracial crowds some cases, these “non-lethal” of demonstrators, largely means of repression resulted young but including people in permanent injury, as in the of all ages, filled the streets case of journalist Linda Ti- to voice outrage against rac- rado. In Minneapolis on May ist police terror, not only in WeWe RememberRemember 29, a rubber bullet penetrated major urban centers such as her goggles, blinding her in New York, Los Angeles and From left: David McAtee, Sean Monterrosa, Rayshard Brooks. one eye. At a July 11 protest Chicago, but in small, often in Portland, Oregon, federal officers fired a conservative towns throughout the country Many protesters hoped and believed killings by police and racist vigilantes in the “less-lethal” projectile at Donavan La Bella’s as well. Many participants remarked that that deeply-felt mass indignation against rac- U.S., the repressive forces have continued to head, fracturing his face and skull. they were demonstrating for the first time in ism would lead to a fundamental change in murder black people. In some cases people As we have noted, Democratic mayors their lives. Solidarity protests erupted inter- the way police operate. But the bitter reality have been killed right in the midst of protests are the bosses of the cops from New York nationally, with some of the first occurring – that racist cop terror derives from the very against this deadly scourge. to Los Angeles, Minneapolis, Chicago, Bal- in Liberia and Nigeria on May 28, soon af- function of the police in capitalist America At one protest after another, demonstra- timore, Atlanta, Louisville, Albuquerque terward spreading to over 60 countries on – was shown once again. Even against the tors who came out to demand an end to un- all continents except Antarctica. backdrop of worldwide fury over constant relenting racist violence from the cops were continued on page 4 Protests Denounce Murders of Transgender People in Racist, Capitalist U.S.A. By Will Samwel Leopardi Facebook Swiger Photography As we face a new school year in Fall 2020 amid the surreal realities of a society in crisis, Revolution recalls a protest at the City University of New York that has many echoes for us today. In Fall 2015, after a year of Black Lives Matter marches that were sparked by the police murders of Eric Garner and Michael Brown, racist cop terror con- tinued unabated. In a rural Texas jail, lynch- law terror had cut short the life of education worker and activist Sandra Bland in July of that year, bringing a new wave of horror and outrage. Not long thereafter, the CUNY Inter- From left: Dominique Rem’mie Fells, Jayne Thompson, Layleen Polanco. nationalist Clubs brought students, teachers, rendous death toll – 25 transgender people ly bigotry against transgender people. multiple stab wounds and her legs cut off. workers and activists together to remember had been killed in the U.S. so far this year, In his classic work on building a revolu- The particularly gruesome nature of Sandra Bland and others of our sisters and outpacing last year’s total of 27.2 Of those tionary workers party, What Is To Be Done? her murder underscores the deep-seated brothers – particularly transgender women – killed in 2019, 91% were black. Moreover, (1902), Russian revolutionary leader V.I. prejudices and dangers facing so many who who had been targeted by racist murder. At a 2014 report by the National Coalition of Lenin emphasized that such a party must do not conform to bourgeois gender norms the protest, Revolution reported, “carefully Anti-Violence Programs found that trans- be a tribune (defender) of all the oppressed, today. While talking-head hypocrites give made posters showed faces and names of gender people who survived violent attacks “able to react to every manifestation of tyr- endless speeches to glorify “the land of the transgender women, mainly African Ameri- were seven times more likely than non- anny and oppression.” Revolutionary Marx- free” (sic), and politicians parade for votes can and Latina, who have been murdered this transgender people to also experience police ists seek to expose the roots of oppression today in Pride marches, let us recall that the year, including London Chanel, Taja Gabri- violence when reporting those attacks. as part of our struggle to bring the power of murder of Rem’mie Fells occurred fifty-one elle DeJesus and Ashton O’Hara.”1 The capitalist dystopia called the United the multiracial working class into the fight years after Stonewall. That is, more than Yet in the racist, capitalist United States States is a living hell for the oppressed, triply to uproot all forms of social oppression. half a century after the “riot against police” of America, as we and millions more are con- so for black and Latino trans people. Endem- To win that fight, the workers and op- that the big-business media and politicians tinually reminded with each new name that ic, structural racism is key to how capitalism pressed will have to take power away from of both parties denounced – in which Mar- police terror and murderous bigotry add to operates in this country. Added to the deadly the oppressors and exploiters in a proletar- sha P. Johnson and other courageous Afri- the list, “it never stops.” Since Minneapolis mix is backlash and bigotry against anything ian revolution to open the way for a class- can American and Latina trans women were cops murdered George Floyd on May 25, deemed “threatening” to bourgeois society’s less socialist society on a world scale. Un- in the forefront of repelling violent police mass demonstrations against police terror institution of the nuclear family. Emerging like reformist leaders and groups that claim attacks right here in New York City.
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