USA
Written by Alejandro Iturbe
Friday, 28 November 2014 23:13
The acquittal of the white policeman Darren Wilson who murdered the young black man Michael Brown, last August, generated again a wave of outrage and protests throughout the country.
The press reports that there were demonstrations in 170 cities of 37 states, in which thousands of people participated, and on several of them there have been clashes with the police. The mobilizations arose in protest against the outrageous court ruling which considered that the police officer had acted in “self defense” when shooting several times against an unarmed young man who had his arms raised.
This abhorrent decision of “justice” occurs almost simultaneously with a new act of police violence: in a park in the city of Cleveland, an agent killed a 12-year-old black boy who held a plastic toy gun.
Both facts starkly undress the reality of oppression, racism and police violence the millions of blacks and Latinos who live in the US experience daily, especially young people.
The Western media and television shows want to sell us the image of the main imperialist country as “the greatest democracy in the world” and “the land of thousand opportunities.”
However nothing is further from reality for blacks and Latinos, whose young people (who experience the highest unemployment levels, poverty and marginalization), are always considered “dangerous” and are left vulnerable facing policemen with itchy trigger fingers, whose crimes are, immediately, hidden by the justice system.
This violence is not gratuitous but in the service of maintaining the strong exploitation suffered by blacks and Latino people, who together represent 25% of the country’s population and around 40% of its working class. It is a clear way of trying to frighten the oppressed and the exploited ones, a way to show “who rules this country” and so, ensure the functioning of a cruel and inhuman capitalist system.
DarrenWilson’s statements on the Ferguson happenings are very enlightening: “I did nothing wrong. I just did my job.” That is, his job is to murder young black men.
But the facts have not being leftin the dark, they havenot being left into the void of oblivion, on the contrary, the surge of outrage and protests which runs throughout the country recalls the so-called “civil rights movement” that between 1955 and 1968, in response to the murder of the black young man Emmett Till, in Chicago, got some democratic achievements for the black people.
But this time, unlike Emmett Till case (kidnapped and murdered by white civilians), demonstrations are clearly directed against the murderous police and the court system which rules it. In other words, demonstrations are against two central strongholds of the North American regime.
That is why this fight against racism and police violence is explosive and it is aimed, ultimately, against all the capitalist-imperialist system in the US, which has been shown utterly unable to guarantee the most basic human rights (the right to life) to millions of its inhabitants.
We would like to conclude by expressing our repudiation to this abhorrent court ruling, our solidarity with the family and friends of Michael Brown, and our unconditional support to these demonstrations and the struggle they express.