Protesters point out links between cop violence in the U.S. against Black people and Israeli attacks on the Palestinians
By N. IRAZU
On July 24, a crowd gathered outside the Hartford, Conn., police department and prepared to march around the city. With chants of “We want change!” and “Black lives matter!” they were protesting the murder of Sonya Massey, a 36-year-old Black mother, by the white cop Sean Grayson, in Springfield, Ill. on July 6. Even as one of the organizers of the Hartford rally called the murder “a travesty, an embarrassment,” cases such as these are all too common in the United States.
The footage of the murder, obtained from the bodycam of the other cop on the scene, is horrific. Massey initially called the police because she suspected there was a “prowler.” After no prowler is found, the cops enter her house, and as she goes to turn off her stove where she was boiling water, the cops order her to put down the pot. In response, Massey twice says, “I rebuke you in the name of Jesus,” to which the Grayson yells, “I will fucking shoot you in the fucking head.” Within seconds, as Massey is saying, “I’m sorry,” Grayson shoots Massey three times. [1]
This vulgar murder was carried out by a cop who had gone through less-than-lethal training, such as using a taser and pepper spray. But this training in no way prevented him from murdering Massey. [2]
The utter disregard for Sonya Massey’s life is clear from the conversations the cops had between themselves, captured on body-cam footage. They talk about her in derogatory terms, and Grayson tells his fellow cop to not bother with his medical kit, since it was a “headshot.” [3] Although chilling to watch, the footage makes it crystal clear to anyone that watches it that this was no accident; the officers held Sonya’s life in contempt. Grayson is currently being charged with first-degree murder.
It is in this context that the rally in Hartford was carried out. Tre Brown, from Black Lives Matter 860, one of the organizers of the rally, said that “we create this march as a way to say enough is enough. And from this march there will be more, until we see justice and change come down like mighty streams of water.”
Change is clearly necessary. Black people continue to be killed in cold blood by police officers all over the country, four years after the George Floyd uprising and 10 years since the Ferguson uprising. In 2020, due to the pressure brought down to bear upon the system by millions and millions of people in the streets demanding justice, Democratic Party politicians paid lip-service to the Black Lives Matter movement. But the Democratic Party is the coffin of all social movements, and it was the same with this one. Now, nearing the end of the feeble Biden presidency, we can see that nothing has changed. Police departments have not been defunded, and only in exceptional cases are killer cops jailed for their crimes.
Tre Brown added, “This is a clear reflection that change is necessary in America. This is a clear reflection of the words of Malcolm X, that the most disrespected person in America, the most unprotected person in America, is the Black woman.”
At the rally there were numerous people with keffiyehs, a symbol of the Palestinian liberation struggle. Ahmad Hamdan, of We Will Return, outlined the connection between the struggle for Black liberation and that of Palestinian liberation, pointing out that cops in many U.S. cities are trained by the Israeli Defense Force:
“The same brutalization, the same techniques that they use on Black Americans here in the U.S. are the same techniques they often use to brutalize Palestinians both in Gaza and in the West Bank. And when you extend it further, you recognize that the same systems of oppression that are designed to keep the people in power, that allow these systems of weaponization, the systems of police brutality to continue to exist, are the same ones that continue to employ that same level of brutalization in places like Palestine, in places like Sudan and Congo. Without Black liberation, there is no Palestinian liberation and vice-versa.”
And he was correct. The same day as the rally was happening in Hartford, thousands massed in the streets of Washington, D.C., to oppose the visit of the genocidaire and war criminal, Israeli Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu. As they protested in the streets, the halls of Congress were filled with a standing ovation that will surely go down in history as a disgusting pledge of allegiance to the most monstrous crimes imaginable.
And there is more to this story than mere chance. U.S. imperialism dishes out death both at home and abroad. As Basel Alnajjar, also from We Will Return, pointed out at the end of the rally,
“The prime minister of Israel just came to Congress to address the United States of America, and we found out that 400 new police academy graduates were all trained in Israel and were immediately shipped over here to defend the honor of a war criminal. We can see that the same systems they use over there they use over here. […] In the same way they use occupation over there, they use redlining over here. In the same way they use genocide over there, they use murder here.”
In the U.S., as in Palestine, the state violence against the oppressed is no accident and does not occur in isolation. The genocide the U.S. is funding in Palestine finds its equivalent in the murder of Black people in the United States. The struggles for liberation are materially intertwined, as not only are the strategy and tactics of oppression shared between the U.S. and Israel, but there is also a material exchange in weaponry, training, and materiel.
That is why Alnajjar could say, correctly: “When we fight for a Free Palestine, we also want a free African American people in America. When they say Black Lives Matter over here, we say that Palestinian lives matter over there as well. We are all fighting for the same struggle. We want everyone to know that if you stand for Black Lives Matter, you must stand for Palestinian lives, and if you stand for Palestinian lives, you must stand for Black lives as well.”
Photo: N. Irazu / Workers’ Voice
References:
[2] Ibid.
[3] Ibid.