The Lies, the Slandering, the Criminalization of Dorian Johnson—Courageous  Eyewitness to the Police Murder of Michael Brown

By Joe Veale | August 23, 2014 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

Dorian Johnson was walking in the street with Michael Brown when this pig in Ferguson pumped six bullets into Brown—leaving his body in the streets for four hours like he was an animal.

Johnson is a key eyewitness. And with great courage, he stepped forward to testify to what he saw go down.

Not surprisingly the bourgeois news media, working hand in hand with the local (and national?) police prosecutors—and all the way up to the top—are trying to slander and criminalize Dorian Johnson, while the murdering cop walks around free. 

Suddenly it is being reported that Dorian Johnson has a “record” and a warrant out for his arrest.

This “information” is being released and pumped out by the authorities, the powers that be, and the media, in such a way as to make this key eyewitness—this very courageous young man—“suspect.”

Let's stop and think and ask a few questions: Why does the U.S. have the largest prison population in the world—over 2.3 million? Why are the majority of them Black and Latino? Why is it that another five to six million are on the hooks of the criminal INJUSTICE system? Why is it that one out of three young Black men without work was in prison or jail in 2000? Why is it that by the mid 2000s, one of nine young Black men was in prison?

Just from asking these kinds of questions it is not surprising that someone could very easily have a “record.” Just look at how this system works. What happen to whole generations of people since the early 1970's. My generation was not able to make revolution. And the masses of people here and around the world are suffering because of this. Catching mo’ hell than a li’l bit. To borrow a phrase.

The system kept humming on. The system of world capitalism driven by the dog eat dog, cut-throat—competitive drive to expand or die—in search of cheaper means of production—greater profits on its investments. The jobs left the inner cities. Moving first to the suburbs. To the South. To Mexico. To Vietnam. To capitalist China after the revolution and socialism was overthrown there in 1976. To Bangladesh. Globalization, which means a leaner and meaner U.S. Imperialism, better able to compete with its global rivals.

This also gave birth to a situation where Black people—“with that defiant attitude”—especially those in the inner city, were increasingly expelled from the workforce as the industrial base for the U.S. empire became more globalized.

Increasingly Blacks, especially the youth, have become a “surplus” population. People this system is carrying out a steamrolling genocidal program against. Part of a larger section of people this system has cast out.

Millions and  millions slammed into conditions of extreme poverty, living through the underground economy—some of it off the books—including drug dealing, it is all this that has given rise to mass incarceration and mass criminalization of Black youth.

It started when Nixon was president in the early 1970's and it has continued with every president since—today Obama.

In 1980 there were about half-million people in prison in the U.S. Today that has mushroomed to over 2.3 million.

All this has fueled the labelling and stigmatizing of Black youth as “ex-con”, “ex-offender”, as the “criminal element,” or as “someone with a record.” As they are now saying about Dorian Johnson.

This is bullshit! It is part of the authorities and the bourgeois media trying to muddy the waters. Trying to confuse the situation. Because they have been caught in the act of murdering and slandering people they brutalize, dehumanize, and murder on a regular basis every single day.

Caught in the act because people went into the streets and rebelled. And when the authorities pulled off their mask of democracy (you have the right to protest), it showed that their power really stands on violence and force. The defiant ones did not back off. They continued to rebel and fight back.

This is why the world knows what happen to Michael Brown.

Stop and think. Stand in Dorian Johnson's shoes for a moment. Imagine the anguish, the turmoil, the emotions he is going through after seeing his friend murdered by pigs who have an unchallenged monopoly on the “legitimate” use on violence and force against the people.

Now they want to slander and discredit Dorian Johnson?! Talking about he has a “record” and that there is a warrant out for his arrest. Fuck That!  If Dorian Johnson has a record your goddamn system gave it to him and millions, and millions of others. 

Secondly, and even more importantly it does not discredit him or what he was eyewitness to. Whether Dorian Johnson has a record or not has Nothing to do with the police murdering Michael Brown in broad daylight as he was walking, then running when the pig pulled out his gun and attempted to shoot him. Nothing to do with this pig getting out of his car and pumping six bullets into Michael Brown’s body—and leaving his body lying in the streets for over four hours.

People should remember what happen to Trayvon Martin’s friend—Rachel Jeantel—when she testified against that wannabe pig George Zimmerman who got off after stalking, racial profiling, and then murdering Trayvon Martin. The prosecutors, the lawyers, the judge, the bourgeois media treated Rachel like a “criminal.” A “suspect.”

That is how they treated her. The way she talked. The way she wrote. The way she spoke. The way she dressed. This had nothing to do with the fact she was speaking on the phone with Trayvon and could hear him saying: “get off me! Get off me!”

Yet this was all used to discredit, to criminalize really—her—when it had nothing to do with what she heard on the phone. Which confirmed that Trayvon was being followed, stalked, and racially profiled by this vigilante.

Dorian Johnson possibly having a “record” has nothing to do with what he saw.  Has nothing to do with the creditability of what he witnessed. This system and those who enforce it can not be able to get away with this. They can not be able to muddy up people's thinking when things are so cut and dried. They must politically pay for this crime.

What they are trying to do to Dorian Johnson is illegitimate! And it is bullshit!

People should call this shit out. Arrest and indict that cop for murder NOW. Fire the police chief NOW. Release ALL the information You are hiding about this murder NOW.

Now, let's pull the lens back a little and get a fuller, more comprehensive picture of how the slander of Dorian Johnson is related to the murder of Michael Brown. How both are part of a bigger pattern of oppression and criminalization directed at especially Black people, but Latino people as well.

This is best captured by BA, Bob Avakian, chairman of the Revolutionary Communist Party:

BA gets right to the heart of the problem:

“Three Strikes... The book by Michelle Alexander, The New Jim Crow, Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness, has shined a bright and much needed light on the reality of profound injustice at the very core of this country.

“And this brings me back to a very basic point:

“This system in this country, in the whole history of its treatment of Black people, what has it been?

“First, Slavery...Then, Jim Crow—segregation and Ku Klux Klan terror...And now, The New Jim Crow—police brutality and murder, wholesale criminalization and mass incarceration, and legalized discrimination yet again.

“That's it for this this system: Three strikes and you're out!”

It is gonna take revolution—nothing less—to eliminate this injustice and all the injustices that are done to all different groups of people (to Latinos and to women to name just two) in this country and all around the world by the U.S. Empire.

The more you understand the truth that BA reveals about the New Jim Crow—the genocidal thrust of this—the more tightly you can grab hold on the historical, the immediate urgency, the immediate importance of not allowing them to get away with slandering Dorian Johnson—slandering other witnesses—slandering Michael Brown after they murdered him.

Slandering, lying about, and criminalizing those all those who protested—rebelled—against the murder of Michael Brown.

All those—especially the defiant ones—with their “outlaw spirit”—who defied their institutions, their agencies of law and order—really agencies of dehumanization, brutality, and murder.

Institutions and agencies utilized to suppress, repress, those this system of capitalism/imperialism dehumanize, lie about, and criminalize every fucking minute of every fucking day.

As the OCTOBER MONTH OF RESISTANCE TO MASS INCARCERATION PUTS STRAIGHT-UP: THIS ENDS NOW!

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