Youth in LA’s Crenshaw District Join Struggle
We are all Trayvon! The whole damn system is guilty!
July 17, 2013 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us
From a reader:
On Monday night July 15, LAPD chief Beck sent out a tweet that began with the sentence “Violence is never the answer”! This as LAPD helicopters, 350 cops in riot gear, scores of police cruisers surrounded and blocked off Crenshaw Blvd. They closed off an area of two to three miles in the heart of this predominantly Black and Latino neighborhood, which includes the historic Black cultural and political hub of Leimert Park. What prompted the bullshit from Beck as the LAPD put this whole area under siege, arresting over a dozen people and putting at least one into the hospital?
It began with a prayer vigil of several hundred around 6 p.m. at Leimert Park to protest the verdict. A couple of hours later, hundreds and hundreds of mainly youth, many of whom looked to be the age of Trayvon Martin, joined the protest. TV footage showed crowds of people running through parking lots, jumping on top of cars, kicking plate glass windows of businesses, and burning trash cans.
Beck claimed in a late night press conference that 150 people broke away from the vigil and broke windows, and promised to clamp down on any more protests in the Crenshaw area beginning the next day. He menacingly warned parents not to let their kids go out to any protests in the Crenshaw. LA supervisor Mark-Riddley Thomas and ex-LA police chief and now councilman Bernard Parks brought up the image of the 1992 and Watts rebellions, and outrageously talked on and on about non-violence. Beck's warning is clearly an ugly threat of extreme police violence against the people, especially the youth, of this area, to shut down the deep rage and growing. The LAPD’s brutal, murderous, racist history and current reality is well known for those who care to face the truth.
A Black woman shown on TV said something along the lines of “we’re gonna get it right, that’s what we’re doing out there, we’re gonna stay out here till we get it right, they didn’t get it right in Florida.” It was reported that a small crowd of about 20 mostly young men and women, many with “I am Trayvon” shirts, ran into the McDonald’s on Crenshaw Blvd, turning over tables and chairs. And it was also reported that one of these youth said they were not hurting anybody but only wanted to express their rage over this verdict. One man said he wants to take 2,000 people to Florida to protest.
Monday night’s youthful rebellion in the Crenshaw district followed two nights of protests on Saturday and Sunday nights. Within a couple of hours after the verdict was announced on Saturday, more than a hundred people gathered in Leimert Park for a speak-out of diverse political forces. The Stop Mass Incarceration Network was among those who spoke to the crowd about the stakes. The Revolution Club and BA Everywhere van tour were also in the house.
This crowd then marched several miles up Crenshaw and blocked the metro train for a short period, before marching further north to the 10 freeway (over 5 miles), threatened by the LAPD all the way, and finally dispersed around 1 a.m. For some of the protesters, this was their very first demonstration, such as a Black woman and her daughter who stood in a shopping mall and began sobbing upon hearing the verdict, but ran into a revolutionary on their way to the protest, and decided to show up there themselves.
At Saturday’s night vigil, one speaker talked about the unjust verdict but then mistakenly confused this state supported white supremacist violence with so- called “black on black” violence. He was taken on by an angry Black woman in the crowd who called out this bullshit. By the way, Revolution readers should know it’s the same line run out by Newt Gingrich on CNN’s “Crossfire” and some Black bourgeois spokespeople. The sister told him that he was wrong, the protest is against the murder of Trayvon by the vigilante Zimmerman, not so-called “black on black” violence which is a different issue, and if his wrong-headed comments got on the news, it would send out the wrong message about what’s really at issue and at stake.
There was a protest called by the Stop Mass Incarceration Network that took place in Leimert Park early Sunday afternoon. And later that day, there was a speak-out called by other political forces that was held at the busy intersection of Crenshaw and MLK, which went into the night. Hundreds of protesters again marched the several miles to the 10 freeway but this time they marched right onto the freeway itself. An LA Times photo shows protesters with a gigantic 6-foot banner with Trayvon’s hoodie image with the words “we are all Trayvon, the whole damn system is guilty” accompanying marchers on the freeway. It seems some of this crowd of 400-500 protesters split off and went up to the heart of Hollywood to demonstrate, and marched through the lobby of the ritzy “W” hotel as part of their activity.
In the midst of the protests and resistance, a lot of revolutionary literature is passing hand to hand in the Crenshaw district and neighborhood. This includes copies of Revolution, and palmcards of BAsics 1:13, Carl Dix’s recent statement “Zimmerman walks free: How long will this system continue to get away with murder?” and palmcards for the exciting July 20 LA Central Library showing of BA Speaks: REVOLUTION—NOTHING LESS!
Revolution Club and BA Everywhere van tour members report encountering palpable rage and visceral hurt among the basic masses brought up by this cruel, unjust verdict. Even though many Black people told us they had the sinking feeling Zimmerman would get off, the verdict was a razor-like slap across the face. For many Black people, like the mother and daughter mentioned above, the verdict made tears flow with a feeling of pain that tore through their very core. One man in the neighborhood was crying when talking with Revolution Club members about this. Like so many others, he ran down the system’s raw and bitter oppression in his life, and all the unbearable things that had happened to members of his family. And like others, he was really glad to run into this revolution.
One of the complexities we’re finding is that mixed in with the anger and bitterness is some defensiveness among many Black people about their oppression by the system. In earlier times (e.g., 1965 Watts rebellion, or 1992 LA rebellion over the LAPD beating of Rodney King), most Black people more clearly saw the hand of oppression targeting Black people, and now we have the complexity of the New Jim Crow in a supposed colorblind society.
The mother and daughter who were sobbing about this painful outrage said they didn’t want to “play the race card” as to why this nightmare is happening. And a Black woman at one of the protests, in a righteous desire for unity in opposition to some extremely narrow, anti-communist Black nationalists, said this is not about Black vs white but a child being killed. This is the result of decades of ideological assault on Black people, intensified under Obama, that their oppression is their own damn fault vs the system is to blame. But the youth on Crenshaw Blvd Monday night defiantly spoke for many others who are not in a defensive mood about the actual reality of the oppression of Black people in the U.S.
The harmful lie about Amerikkka being a color-blind society comes from Obama and the whole capitalist-imperialist system itself. Obama ran out a raggedly ass statement and bald-faced lie about how the issue in the Zimmerman trial is gun violence. WRONG. It’s about RACIST profiling and white supremacist vigilante violence. Then with a straight face, he said this country is a nation of laws, and the jury has spoken. This is the same shit he said when the cops who murdered Sean Bell got off scot free. And I have just three words about the country of laws: torture, and Edward Snowden.
People (of all nationalities) need a scientific understanding that is in the special issue of Revolution (#144), The Oppression of Black people, the Crimes of the System, and the Revolution We Need. More than anything, millions urgently need to connect with the leadership and works of BA, especially what’s in BAsics, from the talks and writings of Bob Avakian and BA Speaks: REVOLUTION—NOTHING LESS! Bob Avakian Live. And we need to find ways to make sure all those who hate this injustice get connected to the revolution we need and the leadership we have in BA and the Revolutionary Communist Party he leads, especially those rebel youth who were out on Crenshaw Monday night.
If you like this article, subscribe, donate to and sustain Revolution newspaper.