{"id":16367,"date":"2020-08-27T00:47:46","date_gmt":"2020-08-27T04:47:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/workersvoiceus.org\/2020\/08\/27\/police-shooting-of-jacob-blake-sparks-nationwide-protests\/"},"modified":"2020-08-27T00:47:46","modified_gmt":"2020-08-27T04:47:46","slug":"police-shooting-of-jacob-blake-sparks-nationwide-protests","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/workersvoiceus.org\/es\/2020\/08\/27\/police-shooting-of-jacob-blake-sparks-nationwide-protests\/","title":{"rendered":"Police shooting of Jacob Blake sparks nationwide protests"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Seriff\u2019s deputies line up to guard the Kenosha County courthouse during a protest against the shooting of Jacob Blake. (Reuters)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

By ROZWELL SIMMONS<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the wake of the largest upsurge against police brutality and state repression in recent memory, another young Black man has been brutalized by police. Jacob Blake Jr. (29) was shot at least seven times by officers on Sunday evening, Aug. 23, in Kenosha, Wis.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Within hours of the shooting, angry protesters took to the streets, and the protests have spread throughout the country, despite violent attacks by cops, National Guard troops, and murderous right-wing vigilantes. In an unprecedented move, professional athletes have also joined the protest by boycotting their games. The movement that exploded after the killing of George Floyd in May has now found new energy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Kenosha protesters. (Dave Goldman \/ AP)<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Disturbing video footage of the Kenosha incident shows two officers following Blake around his minivan. One of them, Rusten Sheskey, grabbed his shirt, and then shot him repeatedly in the back as he opened the driver\u2019s side door to check on his children. Onlookers screamed in horror and were pushed aside by the officers. Inside the car sat Blake\u2019s three children, aged 3, 5, and 8 years old.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

According to Blake\u2019s attorney, Ben Crump (who has represented victims of high-profile police brutality cases including Trayvon Martin, George Floyd, Breonna Taylor), Blake was \u201cbreaking up a fight between two women\u201d and \u201csimply trying to do the right thing by intervening in a domestic incident\u201d that the police had arrived to respond to. From the video, it appears likely that the police saw a Black man, profiled him as the perpetrator of the fight instead of someone trying to help, and based on this racist assumption, shot him.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Bullets passed through Blake\u2019s stomach, arm, and spinal cord, shattering some of his vertebrae and leaving him paralyzed from the waist down. He\u2019s currently hospitalized in Milwaukee, and has been receiving surgery on almost a daily basis.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Doctors are unsure if the paralysis is permanent, but Crump said in a statement that \u201cit is going to take a miracle for Jacob Blake Jr. to ever walk again.\u201d Nevertheless, Blake\u2019s family remains hopeful and has expressed gratitude for the doctors that have been working around the clock to help him recover (in a field of work already under pressure from COVID-19, no less) as well as for the outpouring of community support.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThank God he\u2019s alive!\u201d said Blake\u2019s uncle, Justin Blake. \u201cWe’re just praying for a great recovery.\u201d Justin Blake stated that his nephew was shot merely for \u201cthe crime of being Black.\u201d He demanded that the police officer who shot Blake be arrested and charged with attempted murder.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Thousands across the country have expressed support for Blake and his family. Countless community groups have released statements, organized actions, and shared Blake\u2019s story. On Aug. 26, all NBA playoff games were cancelled after Milwaukee Bucks players initiated a walkout in protest against racial injustice and the Blake shooting. Sports commentator Kenny Smith left the set in the middle of the broadcasting of the \u201cNBA on TNT\u201d show, saying, \u201cAs a Black man and a former player, I think it\u2019s best for me to not be here tonight.\u201d Several major league baseball games were also cancelled as part of the protest.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Tennis star Naomi Osaka announced that she would not take part in the Aug. 27 Western & Southern Open semi-final match. “Before I am an athlete, I am a black woman,” she wrote in a social-media post. “And as a black woman I feel as though there are much more important matters at hand that need immediate attention, rather than watching me play tennis. I don’t expect anything drastic to happen with me not playing, but if I can get a conversation started in a majority white sport I consider that a step in the right direction.” <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Black Lives Matter protesters in Kenosha, who have been in the streets for days, were beaten, tear-gassed, and pepper-sprayed by cops. Then on Aug. 25, Kyle Rittenhouse, a teenager who idolized the police and served as a police cadet, shot three protesters, killing two. Rittenhouse\u2019s frame of mind can be seen in his social media posts, headlined \u201cBLUE LIVES MATTER\u201d and \u201cTrump 2020.\u201d He came to Kenosha as part of a gun-toting right-wing militia that was opposing the protesters in order to \u201cprotect our lives and property.\u201d The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel<\/em> reported that the militia is linked to a group called The Kenosha Guard. Video footage shows police officers fraternizing with the militia members, offering them water, and thanking them for their presence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On Monday Aug. 24, one day after the shooting, over 700 protesters took to the streets of Manhattan to stand with Blake and against the police. In Jacob Blake\u2019s hometown of Evanston, Ill., about 150 gathered to express support. Many residents remember that it was Blake\u2019s grandfather, also named Jacob Blake, who organized marches resulting in a ban on racist housing discrimination in Evanston following the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. In Philadelphia, protesters marched through the central city, chanting, \u201cSilence is complicity with white supremacy!\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Following the tragic murders of Breonna Taylor in March and George Floyd in late May, the nation and globe have been ablaze with protests. The senseless violence committed by police against Jacob Blake\u2014and scores of other people of color in recent years\u2014have fanned the flames of anti-police militancy. Researchers state that some 15 million to 26 million took part in Black Lives Matter marches in the last three months. Protesters have also demanded justice for Trayford Pellerin, who was killed by cops in Lafayette, La., just a day before Blake was shot. And there are countless other victims of police violence whose stories are yet to be told.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It should be no surprise that police departments are pervaded by racism. The main job of the police is to use violence or the threat of violence in order to protect the capitalist system and to make sure that it functions without hindrance. And people of color are a major component of the poor and oppressed people that cops are assigned to control. That\u2019s why Socialist Resurgence joins the call for the police to be abolished.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The current protests have taken place against the backdrop of the televised Republican National Convention, where a dominant theme has been expressing solidarity with the cops while blasting Black Lives Matter protesters. Trump\u2019s tweeted comments on the shooting of Jacob Blake urged sending the National Guard and federal operatives to police the protesters in order to \u201crestore LAW and ORDER!\u201d On Aug. 27 at the convention, Pence accepted the vice presidential nomination by declaiming that \u201claw and order are on the ballot.\u201d South Dakota Gov. Krisi Noem repeated the pro-police mantra, stating that the country has been \u201coverrun by violent mobs\u201d who threaten \u201cgood, hard-working Americans.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the meantime, while Biden and other Democratic Party politicians have expressed sympathy for the Blake family and called for an investigation of the shooting, they have resisted the growing demand to \u201cdisarm, defund, and abolish the police.\u201d Both capitalist parties stand for maintaining the status quo, and for that they need the police at full strength. Only by building a mass movement independent of the Democrats and Republicans can meaningful change be brought about.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For more commentary on the role of the police, see this recent statement by the Revolutionary Socialist Network: http:\/\/www.revolutionarysocialist.org\/on-the-police\/<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By ROZWELL SIMMONS In the wake of the largest upsurge against police brutality and state repression in recent memory, another young Black man has been brutalized by police. Jacob Blake Jr. (29) was shot at least seven times by officers on Sunday evening, Aug. 23, in Kenosha, Wis. Within hours of the shooting, angry protesters […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":13882114,"featured_media":15272,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_crdt_document":"","_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"_wpas_customize_per_network":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[30821,30850],"tags":[31039,31060],"class_list":["post-16367","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-black-liberation-racism","category-police-and-prisons","tag-jacob-blake","tag-kenosha"],"translation":{"provider":"WPGlobus","version":"3.0.2","language":"es","enabled_languages":["en","es"],"languages":{"en":{"title":true,"content":true,"excerpt":false},"es":{"title":false,"content":false,"excerpt":false}}},"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/workersvoiceus.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/kenosha-cops-825-brendan-mcdermidreuters.jpg?fit=608%2C422&ssl=1","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pdQxqk-4fZ","amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/workersvoiceus.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16367","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/workersvoiceus.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/workersvoiceus.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/workersvoiceus.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/13882114"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/workersvoiceus.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16367"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/workersvoiceus.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16367\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/workersvoiceus.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/15272"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/workersvoiceus.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16367"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/workersvoiceus.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16367"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/workersvoiceus.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16367"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}