From a Reader
Los Angeles Police Murder Again…This Has Got to Stop NOW!
September 30, 2015 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us
On Sunday morning, September 26, two Los Angeles cops shot and killed 37-year-old Norma Angelica Guzman. As they pulled up on Guzman, who they say had a knife, they jumped out of their car and both of them unloaded on her. At this point it is unclear if she even had a knife. A person who knew her and was interviewed by a local TV station said that “she usually carries a bread knife that is not dangerous.”
She was well-known in the neighborhood as she spent a lot of time in the area. People are telling us that she was harmless. A Spanish-speaking man told the story of how she’d come to him the other day asking for money and he shooed her away with a broom, then felt bad about it and gave her a dollar and she walked away happy. “She was harmless,” he repeated over and over again. “If I could shoo her away with a broom and a dollar, why did the police have to shoot her four times and kill her?”
I feel like Gill Scott-Heron, who said, “I said I wasn’t going to write no more poems like this” in his poem/song “Jose Campos Torres,” for the man who was brutally murdered by the Houston cops in 1977. (see “37 years after José Campos Torres murdered by Houston police: Still Fighting to Stop Police Terror,” Revolution, May 19, 2014). I feel like saying, “I’m not going to write any more articles like this,” but I’m compelled to because of the terror, brutality, and murders by the pigs in this country. When is this shit going to be put to a stop?
After the murder of Guzman, the Los Angeles Revolution Club took the Stolen Lives banner, with the faces of people murdered by police, out to the neighborhood and called out the murder. They challenged people to be part of #RiseUpOctober as a way to put a stop to this. A crew of shorties took up the Stolen Lives posters and got them out to everybody. People on the block where Angie was killed are outraged at how senseless and unprovoked her murder was. Angie is the 31st person shot and the 17th person killed by LAPD this year.
The brutal pigs who shot her were wearing body cams, but two days after this murder, the LAPD has not released or even said one word about what was on those videos. Don’t tell me that body cams will prevent this from happening! Don’t tell me that community policing will stop this! Don’t tell me that better training will stop this! Don’t tell me that there is not a slow genocide that could become a fast genocide of Black and Latino people in this country. Don’t tell me that there is even one ounce of legitimacy to these murders. I don’t want to hear that. (see “Carl Dix on ‘Reasonable Demands’ When It Comes to Stopping Police Murder,” Revolution, September 7, 2015)
I know only one thing will stop this. Ultimately it will take a revolution, but what is required today is that people in the country taking to the streets en masse saying “No More. No More police terror, brutality, and murders!” You have a vehicle for this and it is #RiseUpOctober where thousands and thousands must take to the streets of NYC on October 24. I don’t want to write any more letters like this.
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