Who Killed Sandra Bland?*
This GODDAM System!
We Need REVOLUTION—NOTHING LESS
July 27, 2015 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us
Who killed Sandra Bland? She was a 28-year-old Black woman, with her whole life ahead of her, full of vibrant spirit and defiant attitude. A woman pulled over by a cop for Driving While Black. Insulted and threatened. Dragged out of her car and beaten. And three days later, dead in a prison cell.
Sandra Bland
Was it the pig who zoomed up behind her, forcing her to make a lane change and then pulled her over for making a lane change? Who insulted, humiliated, and terrorized Sandra Bland with a Taser? Who told Sandra, “I will light you up,” dragged her out of her vehicle, handcuffed her, ridiculed her when she cried out in pain, and beat her out of camera range? The cop was enforcing the rules of a system that places no value on the lives of Black people, and Black women in particular; a system that reacts with vengeance and violence against people like Sandra who refuse to “know their place” as this system defines it.
Was it the local prosecutor, who claimed he was treating Sandra Bland’s death in custody as a murder investigation, but who has brought no charges against the brutalizing pig? The prosecutor who didn't even make a pretense of questioning the prison authorities and guards who should be considered murder suspects, and who allowed the actual crime scene—including the prison cell where Sandra Bland was found dead—to be tampered with, including letting reporters trample through the cell?
Was it the ruling class media that has sold a whole stream of lies, cover-ups, and doctored evidence—like an obviously doctored video from the police that has a tow truck driver exiting his truck once, and then exiting again 15 seconds later without having ever returned to the truck—all while the audio of the cop dictating his story into the camera continues uninterrupted? And a media that is forever trying to change the subject to interrogate or slander the victim? This is a media that is about anything but getting to the truth of what happened—unable to see obvious murder suspects right in front of their eyes in the police and jail authorities.
Why are we still fighting for justice in 2015?
"Why are we still fighting for justice in 2015?" is a clip from the film REVOLUTION AND RELIGION: The Fight for Emancipation and the Role of Religion; A Dialogue Between CORNEL WEST & BOB AVAKIAN. The film is of the November 2014 historic Dialogue on a question of great importance in today's world between the Revolutionary Christian Cornel West and the Revolutionary Communist Bob Avakian. Watch the entire film here.
Was it the Department of IN-Justice, which under Barack Obama and Eric Holder has literally supported every single act of police violence that has come before the U.S. Supreme Court during the Holder regime? Seriously, every case—look it up. (See “The REAL Record of the Holder Department of IN-Justice: Supporting Police Violence in EVERY CASE Before the Supreme Court.”) Under Obama, the system has amped up a situation where any Black person in America must fear for his or her life every time they drive down a highway and see the flashing lights of a police vehicle.
Was it the economic system driven by mad-dog competition for profit, that after exploiting African-Americans in the worst, most low-paying, most dangerous jobs in cities like Detroit, Chicago, Cleveland, Baltimore, and across the country for decades, now has no use for them? That moved jobs to places where it can exploit people even more viciously, leaving no future for millions and millions of Black people? A system whose “answer” to all this is slow genocide and mass incarceration. Whose prisons are torture chambers, with a serious element of being death camps—one of which Sandra Bland ended up in?
Was it the toxic smog of white supremacy that has lain thick over this land since the first slaves were dragged here from Africa to be worked like animals to build up so much of the massive wealth upon which this system rests? The dehumanizing racist ideology that served, and serves that? The mass culture of pig shows on TV and in movies that demonize Black people as “thugs” who should all be in jail or dead? An atmosphere where all those involved in the murder of Sandra Bland didn’t even feel a need to look over their shoulders because they knew that over and over and over this system has said Black people have no rights a white man (or enforcers of white supremacy of any color) has to respect?
It is all of that and more!
The Whole GODDAM System!
That’s it.
Now think about what would be required to uproot ALL of that?
We Need REVOLUTION—NOTHING LESS
* Inspired in part by Bob Dylan’s “Who Killed Davey Moore?” and Nina Simone’s “Mississippi GODDAM” [back]
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