At LA Rally vs. Police Murder PL’ers Expose ‘Good-Cop-Bad-Cop’ Misleaders

LOS ANGELES, CA. –– The working class is no stranger to racist killer cops, especially in the recent multiple murders involving the LAPD and LA County Sheriffs.  PLP members attended a candlelight vigil for Christian Portillo, who was gunned down by the murderous cops in Lennox. Recalling PLP’s response to Sean Bell’s murder in New York, we decided to bring revolutionary politics to these events and received positive responses from the working class there.

As the vigil progressed, there was a call by community leaders for a march toward the Sherriff’s office that was to remain calm and collected.  White flags were passed out along with signs calling for an end to police murder. Similar to the misleaders in New York, leaders of this march called for exposing the “bad” cops and respecting the “good” cops. These misleaders called for peace and increased participation in the system. Once Party members saw reformist politics leading the march, we mobilized to circulate more CHALLENGES and literature.  One comrade began chanting “Policia cochina, racista y asesina!” (Police, pigs, racist and murderous!) that was warmly received and picked up by our working-class brothers and sisters.

The workers’ anger, especially that of Christian Portillo’s brother, grew. The march  became a picket line and eventually PLP pushed to move down the block in front of the Sheriffs’ station.  PL members’ chants got louder and more militant. Then, Portillo’s brother tacked a flier attacking these racist murderers on the station wall. One comrade took a bullhorn and gave a speech linking the murder of Christian Portillo to the capitalist system that would continue to flourish with reformist politics.  This comrade called for workers to fight back and join our fight for communism.  At the end of the march, the misleaders continued their call to work within the system.  Another comrade jumped on the bullhorn and gave another speech in Spanish reminding the crowd of the 1992 rebellions in response to the Rodney King beating.  He called for joining PLP and building for communist revolution on the job, in the schools, and in the streets.

The most important lesson we learned is that we should never underestimate our class.  Our initial hesitation to be militant at a vigil based on the fear of being seen as “opportunist” (taking advantage of the situation) was wrong. The actions of the working class in Lennox and especially some of the Portillo family members reminded PL’ers of the responsibility they have to build the fight for communism.  PLP made contacts here and will continue to build the relationships needed for the long-term fight for revolution!  Only revolution will end these brutal police murders and the terror that is capitalalism! J

Protesters Charge Cops With Racist Killing of Latino Worker

Workers PLP met at the Lennox vigil (above) called and invited us to another rally which we attended in Compton the next week against the police killings. Family members of the several victims of racist police terror actively led chants, as they continue being under police surveillance and intimidation. The rally got support from cars passing by and honking.

PLP members led the chant “Black, Brown, Asian, White — to smash racism we must unite!”  Later, when Christian Portillo’s sister spoke, she echoed these sentiments, saying that we all need to unite against racist cop terror. Portillo’s friends and family all took CHALLENGE and were interested in reading it along with our leaflet linking the racist police murders of Portillo and Kevin Wicks in Inglewood with the rulers’ drive to make the working class pay for their wars and economic crisis. One person we had met at the first rally asked us for the new CHALLENGE. She had read the previous one and liked it. She noted that this was the sort of thing that started the civil war in El Salvador. We agreed and could see why the Summer Project which just ended was so important.

By expanding CHALLENGE networks and organizing workers in the factories, in the military and in schools,  PLP is laying the basis to lead the fight against racist police killings around revolutionary communist politics and to build the fight to end racist terror once and for all, not with dead-end reforms but through the long term fight for communist revolution.

Angry LA Workers Mobilize Against Racist Police Murders

HOLLYWOOD, CA, June 21 — Hundreds of workers –– Asian, black, Latino, and white –– expressed their anger at the memorial for Usman Chaudhry, next to the bushes where racist LAPD officers woke him up, handcuffed him, then assassinated him. Chaudhry was 21 years and had autism. Even though the kkkops had his identification the police didn’t notify Chaudhry’s family about his death for 21 days.

The event was also a protest against over thirty such executions since the beginning of 2008 that include Michael Cho who was killed by La Habra police and Brian Moore, 23, in Compton. Just five days later, all charges were dropped against the cops who killed Cho. The memorial challenged the climate of fear that hangs over this block and many others like it.  “It was a good event,” said a regular CHALLENGE reader who lives in the neighborhood, “because people really came together, at all levels.”

On the one hand, we mourned with Usman’s parents, sister, and brother, all of whom spoke, and with friends and family of Cho, Michael Bayoune, and others murdered.  But the barely-suppressed anger of the crowd broke out during the closing candlelight vigil, with raised fists and chants –– led by PLP’ers –– of “No Justice, No Peace –– No Racist Police!”  CHALLENGE and leaflets were warmly received by nearly everyone.

Workers and youth are up against a racist profit system that purposely uses police terror to force workers to submit to intensified exploitation in preparation for wider wars, and eventually World War III. Workers and soldiers have nothing to gain and lots to lose from these wars, beyond those killed and wounded.  One in three homeless men are vets, and three-quarters of all vets have substance abuse or mental health problems.  They come home to inadequate care and systematic police abuse.

PLP members criticized demands made by leaders of sponsoring organizations for federal investigations or police reform. Voting for Democrats is no solution. In the midst of budget cuts to health and education, Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa wants more money for cops.  Barack Obama has called for building up the U.S. military for Afghanistan, Pakistan, and maybe Iran.

The coalition that sponsored the rally is planning for more such events in neighborhoods across the city this summer.  PLP plans on bringing Summer Project volunteers to fight back against these racist attacks by organizing on the job and in the schools to build class unity.  Imagine if each police murder were met with on-the-job protests as well as thousands marching in the streets. And then imagine the power of such a movement, based in the industrial working class and led by communist ideas, to take on the capitalist system that’s killing us.

Will Cops Go Free for Sean Bell’s Murder?

While the liberal bosses prance around and pat themselves on the back for “making change” and proclaiming the end of racism in the U.S., three cops might very well be set free for the murder of Sean Bell in November 2006. Seems like the cops and the courts never got the memo.

Bell and two friends were shot at by plainclothes kkkops after leaving a bachelor party at a bar in Queens, NY. The cops claim that Bell and his friends first tried to run them over and that one of the men inside the car appeared to be grabbing for a gun in his waist. The cops then wasted no time shooting 50 BULLETS into the car, killing Bell and injuring his friends.

The bosses enlisted the ex-FBI informer and pacifier of black workers’ anger, Al Sharpton. Our class should not be led by this bosses’ agent who pervasively sells  the snake oil of justice under capitalism. He’s done it before with Amadou Diallo who was shot 41 times by the fascist police, and Patrick Dorismond in Manhattan and countless others. The cops’ main role is to protect and serve the bosses’ private property and terrorize workers, especially black and Latino youth, so that they do not turn their anger into rebellion.

With the coming elections the bosses need to win black, and all  workers, to U.S. imperialism to stay ahead of their rivals like China, Russia and Europe. Barack Obama and the bosses need to give them hope that the system can work for them in the face of years of slavery, Jim Crow racism, segregation, police terror, poverty like in New Orleans and after the devastation of Hurricane Katrina. Workers and students should organize their friends and co-workers to expose the cops’ role in the racist system of capitalism. No court will guarantee workers justice.

France: Black and Arab Youth Rebel Against Cops’ Terror

100 COPS INJURED:
“THEY WON’T STOP ’TIL THEY BURN DOWN A POLICE STATION”

VILLIERS-LE-BEL, FRANCE, Nov. 28 — Black and Arab youth have rebelled against the racism they face every day. Two police stations were attacked and 100 cops were injured in several nights of violent protest that rocked this Paris suburb. Angry youth have shot at the hated cops with hunting shotguns. The rebellion has spread to Toulouse.

The rebellion began after a police car deliberately struck and killed two Arab youth on a mini-motorcycle. The racist cops then fled. When the police failed to investigate the “accident,” the neighborhood exploded.

Le Monde, a French newspaper, quoted Younès B., a resident of Villiers-le-Bel: “A second police team came to pick up their colleagues. But they left the two kids without doing anything.”
The rebellion followed on the heels of two weeks of labor and student struggle (see page 3). On Nov. 27, while the Socialist Party Student group (UNEF) was trying to sell out the student and teachers’ struggle, riot cops attacked protesting students in Nantes. One 17-year-old high school student suffered a serious eye injury when riot cops aimed point blank at his face.
Meanwhile in this Paris suburb where the rebellion began, the father of one of the slain Arab youth, Larami, 16, said his son had been threatened by police last week.

“We’re fed up with the lack of respect,” said Ikram, 23, who used to live here. He predicted the uprising would continue. “The young people won’t stop until they’ve burned down the Sarcelles police station,” he said. Youth anger at the cops and the racist system they serve is very justified.

Rulers’ Wars Intensify Racist Police State

Amid escalating war in the Middle East, and threatening inter-imperialist clashes (see page 2), the rulers must impose wartime discipline on the home front — FASCISM. With the liberal, imperialist wing of U.S. capital leading the effort, a full-blown police state exists for black, Latino and immigrant workers and those of Arab and Muslim background:

•Chicago: In August, the police went on a racist rampage and brutally murdered four young black men in cold blood, in four separate incidents. This year the police have murdered at least 31 workers.

•Atlanta: Undercover cops shot and killed a 92-year-old black grandmother, Kathryn Johnston, in her own home.

•Cleveland: In May 2007, police killed three black people – Aaron Steele, Steven Ray and Ira Mitchell – within three days.

•Conneaut, Ohio: On Nov 17, Immigration Customs Enforcers (ICE) arrested an immigrant mother breast-feeding her child.

•North Carolina: Police shot and killed Phillipe McIver, a 23-year-old black man.

•Los Angeles: LA cops murdered Francisco Mondragon a 24-year-old schizophrenic.

• Minnesota: Law enforcement agents have killed five black people in the first half of 2007.

•New York City: Nov. 25 marked the one-year anniversary of the assassination of Sean Bell, a 23-year-old unarmed black man, murdered with 50 shots from NYPD gunmen. On Nov. 7, the same NYPD assassinated 18-year-old Khiel Coppin, shot 13 times (see box). Since then, they have killed at least ten more people.

•Jena, LA.: Six black youth are being legally lynched for standing up against the racism of fellow students who hung a noose under a “whites only” tree. On September 20, over 50,000 people marched in Jena, protesting this racism and supporting the six youth.

•Since then over 60 incidents of noose hangings have occurred nationwide. (NY Times, 11/24)

•Thousands of Muslim workers have been detained in the U.S. and the Middle East and imprisoned and tortured in concentration camps in Guantánamo and “secret” CIA jails.

On the road to waging imperialist wars to control the flow of oil, the U.S. war machine has been tripping over a few roadblocks. Two of the main ones are their troop shortage and the fact that a crumbling economy hits most heavily on the super-oppressed black and Latino workers and youth. On the one hand, they need to win black, Latin and immigrant workers to fight and die in their wars. But since racism is inherent to capitalism, it inevitably shoots and harasses black and Latin workers while using the threat of deportation to terrorize and persecute immigrant workers. This racist terror undermines many of these workers’ loyalty to the system.

As a result of such racism, 2.2 million people are imprisoned nationwide, 70% of them black or Hispanic. Every twelfth black male between 25 and 29 languishes behind bars; the figure for whites is 1 in 100 (Bureau of Justice Statistics). Liberal misleaders and reformers have been working overtime to try to solve this insoluble contradiction: the system’s inherent racism oppressing black and Latino workers and their need to super-exploit them for super-profits, versus needing to use them as cannon fodder in their wars. They try to divert workers’ anger into such reform efforts as “community policing,” “civilian review boards” and their election campaigns. But to fight police murders we can’t fall into this trap!
The only way to smash the Klan in blue is to smash the racist system — capitalism — that uses them to terrorize working-class communities. Communism — the system of workers’ power, a society run for need, not profit — will sweep away these new night riders and their politician masters, crushing them like the cockroaches they are. To achieve this, we must organize!

POLICE TERROR

There is an alternative to capitalist oppression and its rotten culture: a society that produces for need, not profit; a society where the workers from all backgrounds can determine their own destiny as one united class; where we can stamp out selfishness, racism, sexism, killer cops, “workfare,” profit wars, prisons, deportations and national borders; where this system will be ground into the dust under the feet of millions of united workers and students.

That society is communism, and Progressive Labor Party is serious about organizing to make that world a reality. Join us!

Racist Cop Torturers: Chicago’s Abu Ghraib

CHICAGO, IL, October 26 — Yesterday a majority of the City Council asked a federal judge for access to the names of hundreds of Chicago cops who have multiple citizen complaints against them for brutality and false arrests. The Chicago Police Department (CPD) has lacked a superintendent since April and the current interim chief said that the current scandals are “eroding confidence” in the department. A former FBI official and president of the Chicago Crime Commission said, “Suspicion is running very high as to who you can trust, as far as officers.” (NY Times, 10/26)

This follows a series of crises that have rocked the racist CPD, starting with the ongoing investigations into the torture cases involving Jon Burge & Co. From 1973 to 1991, long before Abu Ghraib, detectives under Burge’s command used what the City’s own lawyers called, “savage torture” to get confessions from suspects. Ninety people complained of the use of electric shock with portable hand-cranked generators, suffocation, burnings on very hot radiators, the use of cattle prods on the genitals, severe beatings and mock executions.

U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald, the prosecutor who convicted Cheney’s errand boy Scooter Libby, has taken over after the County’s four-year investigation found a long history of racist torture and brutality against black workers. It also found that Assistant State Attorneys never properly investigated the torture charges and that those who prosecuted the victims are now the very judges denying them appeals! The investigation also found that Mayor Daley, then a State’s Attorney, knew of the torture complaints and did nothing.

The statute of limitations has run out so the torturers, from Burge to Daley, cannot be prosecuted. The feds are investigating perjury allegations against police and others. The city is spending millions on attorneys, including Burge’s lawyers, to delay settlement of the civil torture cases.

More recently, the Special Operations Section (SOS), an “elite” anti-drug/anti-gang unit, was dissolved due to its own crime wave of robbery, false arrests, kidnappings, brutality, and murder. One cop is charged with hiring a hit-man to murder another cop who was willing to testify to save himself.

This past August, the police went on a racist rampage and brutally murdered four young men in cold blood, in four separate incidents. West Side workers and youth marched and confronted the police over the murder of 18-year-old Aaron Harrison. PLP was active in this fight-back and met many angry residents. They’re being invited to this month’s CHALLENGE dinner.

Last week, two cops were found guilty in a civil case of sodomizing a young black worker with a screwdriver, after having been “cleared” by the Office of Professional Standards. (OPS “investigates” citizen complaints). That will cost the city $4 million. Another jury awarded another black man $2 million for being framed and falsely arrested.

Like many politicians, CEO’s, bankers and union leaders, personal corruption has hurt the CPD’s ability to implement the rulers’ plans for war and fascism. To regain control of the police, the City is working with the Police Executive Research Forum (PERF), a “progressive” police think-tank that includes NYPD chief Ray Kelly and LAPD chief Bratton, and follows George Kelling’s community policing model.

Now Al Sharpton has opened up shop here to maintain control of masses of angry workers and youth, taking advantage of Jesse Jackson’s silence about the rise in racist police terror. Sharpton criticized Daley for not handling the SOS scandal. He’s calling for a civilian review board over the police.

But review boards won’t stop these racist killer-torturers from doing the bosses dirty work of terrorizing us into accepting a future of wider wars and poverty wages. Review boards won’t stop racist cutbacks in mass transit and public health to finance the endless oil wars. The racist murderers and torturers and the entire capitalist system they protect must be destroyed with communist revolution!

Murdering Racist Cops Pump 13 Bullets into Black Teenager

BROOKLYN, NY, Nov. 13 — Last night five killer cops unloaded 20 rounds on an unarmed mentally-ill Brooklyn teen, 13 of the shots hitting their mark. Then, after being gunned down, Khiel Coppin, 18, was handcuffed and his lifeless body dragged away by the NYPD assassins and taken to Woodhull Hospital where he was pronounced dead.

Coppin was carrying a hairbrush, which eyewitnesses said he dropped when raising his hands in the air in front of the cops, before being cut down in a hail of bullets. Several witnesses reported that the police fired so many rounds that one officer began yelling, “Stop, stop, stop shooting — he’s down,” but cops kept firing like they were “playing with a toy.”

Coppin’s mother had tried to have her son admitted for psychiatric treatment before the incident. After a dispute last night, she called 911 in an effort to remove him to get help for his mental illness.

The cops’ story has changed drastically several times between last night and this morning in an effort to rationalize what everyone else present at the shooting witnessed. But all their stories hinge on the claim that his mother had warned the 911 dispatcher her son “had a gun” — a charge the mother denies. Additionally, police are trying to wash the youth’s blood from their hands by speculating that Coppin was attempting “suicide by cop,” a bigoted charge commonly leveled at mentally-ill victims of cop murders.

In one police story, Coppin has a knife, in others he doesn’t. In one he drops from a window with the hairbrush under his shirt (hence their “believing” it to be a gun), and charges at the police while reaching under his shirt for the hairbrush, “ignoring orders to halt” — but in a different police narrative, he “walks across the sidewalk” to them.

But all witnesses state clearly that he lowered himself from his window to the ground, stood and immediately raised his hands up, dropping the hairbrush to the ground. Then police opened fire, murdering another working-class urban youth.

Now, as always happens, liberal misleaders and reformers will try to contain the working class’s righteous anger, channeling it instead into their reform efforts like “community policing” and “police oversight” and their election campaigns. But to fight police murders, we can’t fall into this trap!

The only way to smash the Klan in blue is to smash the racist system —capitalism — that uses them to terrorize urban working-class communities. Communism — the system of workers’ power, a society run for need, not profit — will sweep away these new night riders and their politician masters, crushing them like the cockroaches they are. But for this, we must organize!

Now, more than ever, is the time to direct our anger where it belongs: not into more dead-end reform campaigns designed solely to keep angry workers and youth under control, but into the streets and into our shops, unions, communist organizations, churches, schools and campuses.