From the Revolutionary Communist Party, Chicago branch:
McCarthy fired. Now Indict EVERYONE who is part of the CONSPIRACY to cover up Laquan’s officially-sanctioned MURDER!
POLICE MURDER AND TERROR MUST STOP!
The whole damn system is guilty as hell. We Need an ACTUAL REVOLUTION!
December 4, 2015 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us
For days there has been national outrage and spreading anger and protest in Chicago over the police murder captured on video of 17-year-old Laquan McDonald in October 2014. Laquan was gunned down in the street worse than a dog. Demonstrations have been rocking Chicago, especially the shutting down of N. Michigan Avenue and major stores on Black Friday. (See below for upcoming protests).
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Every day more comes to light about the cover-up by police that started right from the start...surveillance video and dash cam audio disappear...eight other police, none spoke up....lies spread through the media that Laquan lunged at the cops...hush money...400 days of cover-up.
In the face of all this, Mayor Emanuel did an about face from having complete confidence in police superintendent McCarthy to firing him. Yes, McCarthy has presided over and covered up the crimes committed by the police department and he should have been indicted. But let’s be clear, the whole damn system is guilty as hell. The powers that be are scared and maneuvering to contain the outrage, limit how much more about police murder and brutality comes out and quell questioning of the legitimacy of the police’s use of force against oppressed communities. The representatives of this system have backed up an inch...this is not a time to let up, but to take the resistance broader, deeper and to a more determined level as we continue to debate what is the problem and what after all is the solution to the hundreds of years of the oppression of black people and the other crimes of this system.
Besides firing McCarthy, Emanuel created a task force to “study the problem.” Who is heading up the task force? The current head of the Police Board!!
This is your answer? Really? NAH. We are not fools. We aren’t having it.
Here is a just demand: EVERY SINGLE PERSON involved in Laquan’s murder and the cover-up should be indicted and prosecuted. EVERY SINGLE COP involved in the police murders and cover-ups of a long list of other people, like Ronnie Johnson or Roshad McIntosh, Darius Pinex, Dakota Bright or Martice Milner should ALL be indicted. There is no statute of limitations on murder. The list is long and the crimes are many.
Our demand is simple: Stop police terror. And we want to know—which side are you on?
The murder of Laquan McDonald and then the ongoing cover-up was not a one-time horrific act. Every day there is more news about just a small fraction of other cases of police murder and brutality of people in Chicago. It should not need saying after the past year, but it does—it is not that police in Chicago are more brutal, more corrupt or have a more engrained white supremacist culture than other cities big and small across the U.S. Ferguson and Baltimore, Minneapolis and Madison, New York and Los Angeles, Albuquerque and Pasco, WA....and many other cities. All these cities have been rocked by protests against police murdering people in this past year because there is a nationwide epidemic of police murder and terror.
This is the nature and role of the police in modern day America. As the revolutionary leader Bob Avakian says, “The role of the police is not to serve and protect the people. It is to serve and protect the system that rules over the people....” (BAsics 1:24)
This is not going to be fixed by some puny reforms like more cameras (Laquan’s murder was caught on camera!), more Black cops (like commander Evans!), independent prosecutors (Wisconsin’s independent prosecutor let the police who killed Dontre Hamilton and Tony Robinson off!), community review (NY City has this and Eric Garner was choked to death on camera and his police killers exonerated).
Further, let’s be blunt since a lot of people are calling for Federal investigations: there is NO JUSTICE IN THE DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE. Ask the families of Sean Bell, Oscar Grant, Nicholas Heyward, or Trayvon Martin or Mike Brown. None have seen justice. Why is it you cannot name one case where the federal government has convicted a cop for killing someone. So stop kidding yourself about saviors from the Department of Justice coming to the rescue.
It is up to us. It is on us to spread, deepen and broaden the resistance to police murder and demand it stop. Why do you think the city was so afraid to release the video of Laquan’s murder? It wasn’t just Chicago politics. It was Ferguson and the uproar in the country over the police murder of Mike Brown and their worry that Chicago would erupt with a fury that surpassed Ferguson and Baltimore. The fact that in Ferguson, defiant ones from rival gangs set aside their beefing with each other and stood up, together with many others from the community – and said we aren’t taking this anymore. They braved tanks, National Guard, massive arrests, tear gas and more. Their standing up won support for the justness of their cause from many artists, students, community people and people of all nationalities who themselves are not directly feeling the boot of the police but do not want to live in a society where this happens to people because of the color of their skin.
Again, this system is guilty as hell. This system has a name. It is a system of capitalism-imperialism that has murdered Black people, Latino, Native Americans and other oppressed people since the day of its founding. As Carl Dix (a co-founder of Stop Mass Incarceration Network, Rise Up October and a representative of the Revolutionary Communist Party) put it in his statement on Laquan’s murder:
We need a revolution to deal with this, and the path to that revolution has been charted by Bob Avakian and is being hastened every day by the party he leads, the Revolutionary Communist Party. And right now, everyone who wants change... everyone who wants freedom... everyone who wants justice... everyone who is willing to say that these are OUR youth and the murder must stop—needs to do two things.
One, be out there on Friday demanding that MURDER AND TERROR BY THE POLICE MUST STOP! Take defiant and determined action to make clear to everyone, all around the world that killer cops like the one who wantonly stole Laquan McDonald’s life must all be indicted, convicted, and sent to jail. Jason Van Dyke, the pig who murdered Laquan, had many, many complaints for excessive force and using the “n” word. Yet he still marauded through Black and Brown neighborhoods with a badge and gun and a license to kill, as long as he said the magic words that killer cops always use—“I feared for my life.”
And two, go to the web site www.revcom.us and find out more about Bob Avakian and the revolution we need. Everybody, every group and every person that opposes this kind of madness, that wants a better future for the youth, should be reached with this statement. And they should get with the movement for revolution the RCP is building and Fight the Power, and Transform the People, For Revolution!
We support the call from the Stop Mass Incarceration Network:
’Tis the season to be defiant. Stop police murder. Justice for Laquan
Saturday, December 5 at State and Jackson in Chicago at noon
Wednesday, December 9, Chicago City Council meeting, 10 am, City Hall, 121 N. LaSalle, Chicago
Revolutionary Communist Party, Chicago branch
For more information and showings of film of a talk by Bob Avakian, BA Speaks: Revolution—Nothing Less! call: 773-489-0930
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