Charges, Backlash, and the Fight for JUSTICE for Freddie Gray

May 11, 2015 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

 

On May 1, a week after the killing of Freddie Gray, Baltimore prosecutor Marilyn Mosby announced that six of the police who brutally beat and killed Freddie Gray would be prosecuted—one of them for murder.

It was a remarkable moment. Stunning, because of the obscenity of the picture of a public lynching of a young Black man, the horrible way he was tortured and murdered so callously. And remarkable because this prosecutor was actually bringing charges—including a murder charge—against police when, over and over and over again, prosecutors refuse to do that even when medical examiners rule that a Black man’s death at the hands of police was “homicide”—as was the case with Eric Garner in New York City who was choked to death by a pig for supposedly selling loose cigarettes.

Marilyn Mosby acknowledged that a factor in bringing charges was the people demanding it in the streets: “To the people of Baltimore and the demonstrators across America: I heard your call for ‘No justice, no peace.’”

But then Marilyn Mosby said: “Last but certainly not least, to the youth of the city. I will seek justice on your behalf. This is a moment. This is your moment. Let’s insure we have peaceful and productive rallies that will develop structural and systemic changes for generations to come. You’re at the forefront of this cause and as young people, our time is now.”

It’s a long way from indictment to conviction, and there are powerful forces and deeply embedded elements in the in-justice system that have let murdering police walk over and over even in the rare events when they are indicted for their crimes. (See “Obama: “Let Legal System Work” to Let Murdering Police Walk.”)

Allowing the struggle for justice to be confined to what is acceptable to the system would be to throw away what has been accomplished so far in even getting these murdering police arrested (they are all out on bail now).

And the in-justice system that time and again rewards pigs who murder Black and Brown people serves a system that has the violently enforced oppression of Black people at its core. That system does not need “structural reform” or cosmetic rebranding. It demands revolution.

Indict, Convict, Send the Killer Cops to Jail

Why were six cops charged and arrested for the murder of Freddie Gray? Examine the evidence. Not the evidence that Freddie Gray was murdered by police, but as Carl Dix, co-initiator with Cornel West of the Stop Mass Incarceration Network and representative of the Revolutionary Communist Party, USA, said at the march and rally in Baltimore on May 2nd:

...Let’s talk about why they indicted those cops. This is not their system working. This is their system showing its fear of you. They saw you stand up. They saw you saying “not this time.” They hear you saying “no more.” So they said, “Well, maybe we should indict and maybe they’ll go home and maybe they’ll forget about it.”

Conflict Over the Charges... and the Role of Marilyn Mosby

No sooner did Marilyn Mosby announce charges than she, and more to the point the decision to bring charges, came under attack from a barrage of lies and bullshit in the national media. They are trying to make it appear as if people throughout this society must choose between backing/supporting Mosby or taking the side of the police. As if there is a fork in the road and everyone must take one road or the other. We can’t go for that.

So what is really going on here?

There are conflicts and contradictions within the ruling class over how to maintain their rule. On the one hand, there is Marilyn Mosby, and those in the ruling class who are backing her, who have responded to the outrage over Freddie Gray’s homicide by issuing charges. On the other, there are those who are taking up the defense of the police and have attacked Mosby with real venom.

An op-ed piece in the Baltimore Sun fumed that “Mosby's ‘quick’ and ‘decisive’ action in charging six Baltimore police officers a mere two weeks after the death of Freddie Gray reflects either incompetence or an unethical recklessness.”

CNN has put on a whole parade of ex-prosecutors and pigs to attack the indictments.

Alan Dershowitz—a lawyer who many, many years ago did some work in support of civil liberties and against police abuse, but who for years has provided cover for all kinds of police abuse, torture, and violations of civil liberties—charged that Mosby was employing "crowd control" in bringing charges, without refuting with any of the facts or substance at all in the damning description of events she presented when she brought charges—material that Dershowitz obviously had access to.

And Dershowitz essentially echoed and provided a “pro-civil rights” cover for police claims that those demanding justice are a “lynch mob” when he tried to equate the “sordid history of justice by mob rule, particularly in the South where the threat of violent demonstrations and lynching too often influenced the outcomes of trials” with demands for justice in a murder for which there is all kinds of evidence (Boston Globe 5/5/15).

It is obscene to equate a righteous struggle to demand justice for a murdered Black man with a racist lynch mob carrying out random terror and murder against Black people to enforce a system of white supremacy. If you are looking for a force doing that today, Mr. Dershowitz—a force acting like a lynch mob—look no further than the police department in any city or town in the USA!

By May 7, reports flooded the media, attributed to unnamed police sources, without any facts or evidence, declaring “police investigation doesn't support some of prosecution's charges." For example, CNN reported “homicide investigators who were briefed by the medical examiner's office believed the examiner's autopsy report would likely find the cause of death to fall short of homicide.” This despite fact that this assertion was refuted by the final autopsy report, quoted by Mosby, which did rule Freddie Gray’s death a homicide. (CNN 5/7/15). The head of the police union (who called righteous protests in the wake of the murder of Freddie Gray a “lynch mob”) cried that this case—based on far more evidence that has been mustered to put millions of regular people in jail—was an “egregious rush to judgment."

Reality Check

Here’s the contradiction and the reality: The system is caught between a rock and a hard place. On the one hand, the system has NO future for the masses of Black and Latino youth. There are no jobs for them. Now there is work these youth could do that would fill a great social need and tap into their initiative, creativity and desire to transform the world, but under this capitalist system there is no way to profitably exploit them. This system sends them to rotten schools that are more like prisons. There is nothing for the youth but a life in and out of low-wage work and/or crime (and prison). They are told in a million ways that their lives don’t matter. And for that reason, the system sees them as “social dynamite.” To the powers-that-be, these youth, our youth, are a force to be hounded and controlled, degraded and brutalized, locked up and if need be murdered.

And who does that? The police. Why do you think every major politician (including Mosby) in every comment they make about police goes on and on about how much they respect and support them, and how much “the community” needs them? Because every major politician knows that this is the program, and they know that the police are the ones who carry it out. Some of them might say there need to be reforms. Others say the police should be allowed and encouraged to carry out all this brutality and murder even more openly.

In this case, the upsurge of the people forced the system to promise to bring some police to trial—something they only very rarely do. But this is just to steer people back into having faith in the powers-that-be to deliver justice. This system is using Marilyn Mosby to tell people they should chill out the struggle and trust in a savior.

Let’s face it: Marilyn Mosby is a prosecutor. She is, regardless of her personal views (whatever they may be), part of the machinery of repression that fills the prisons with oppressed people and unleashes the police as an occupying army in the inner cities. On a very on-the-ground level, the operation of her office requires the most intimate collaboration with and backing for police brutality and murder. But it is larger than that. It’s about the whole system.

Her “job” is not about real justice for the thousands who are brutalized and yes, murdered, in Baltimore. As millions are incarcerated in this country, she is working to preserve and maintain the illusion that the American legal system is about justice and not about protecting the set-up as it exists, a set-up which keeps the vast majority of Black and Latino people in Baltimore and in society as a whole downpressed.

The reality is that the choice the people face is not between supporting Mosby’s actions or supporting the foaming at the mouth police supporters, but in continuing to mount a fierce and ongoing struggle against the system which is founded on the oppression and exploitation of people here and around the world.

The Whole Damn System is Guilty As Hell

Remember: the decision to bring charges against the police who murdered Freddie Gray was a call by the powers-that-be overall, not a single prosecutor. Mosby herself acknowledged in her statement that bringing charges required cooperation of elements of the Baltimore Police Department, sheriffs, and the (Republican) governor of Maryland. And she has been overt about doing this to chill out the struggle.

The kinds of conflicts and contradictions within the ruling class that have accompanied that decision are part of the terrain on which the struggle for justice will be fought. And, as a matter of fact, conflicts within the ruling class—which tend to intensify when the people rise up—are part of the reason why revolution is possible—scientifically understood—they reveal “cracks in the wall” that the people have to go up against to bring about an actual revolution.

But we’ll get nowhere lining up behind one or other of theses forces. Efforts by forces who for various reasons are already throwing out a lot of bullshit have to be called out. But all these forces are coming from trying to preserve and shore up a system that has—from its inception—been built on the oppression of Black people, and that today—because of factors inherent to—built into—the way capitalism works—is implementing a program of slow genocide that could become fast genocide.

The police who murdered Freddie Gray must be convicted and sent to jail! You can’t say “no justice, no peace” and then call for “peace” when there is no justice. And you can’t rely on the enforcers for the system to bring about any kind of serious change in that system.

 

 

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