Ta'Kiya Young Photo: social media
On August 24, two depraved thugs terrorized, and then shot and killed Ta’Kiya Young in the parking lot of a grocery store near Columbus, Ohio. They murdered her in plain sight. On video.
Ta’Kiya Young was a 21-year-old pregnant Black woman. Her murderers are what this system calls police officers. In fact, these police officers—aka pigs—are violent armed enforcers of white supremacy and the whole capitalist-imperialist system.
Ta’Kiya Young’s supposed “crime”? Being accused of shoplifting.
Ta’Kiya Young lost her own mother last year. Her killing robbed her two sons, three and six years old, of a loving mother. At the time she was shot dead by a pig, she was pregnant with a daughter who her family said was due in November. Family and friends stepped forward after her death with grief, anger and the heartbreaking question—why? A friend described Ta’Kiya Young as “a ball of energy, like a firecracker, her personality was second to none.”
A statement from Ta’Kiya Young’s family described her as a “beacon of love, strength, and energy to all who knew her. Her tragic passing has left a void that words can’t describe, especially for her two young sons, who must now grow up without the love and guidance of their mother, and while coming to understand the circumstances that led to her homicide.”
Once Again, a Young Black Person Murdered by Police. How Long Will This Go On?
Ta’Kiya Young was sitting in her parked car when a pig began demanding “Hey! Out of the car! Out of the car! Get out!” Within seconds, another pig put his hand on the hood of her parked car and pointed a gun at her through the front windshield. Any sane person would understand the threat to their life in this situation. “Get out of the fucking car,” the pig with the gun shouted. “No,” Young is heard asking, “You gonna shoot me?” As Ta’Kiya appears in video to be turning her steering wheel, possibly intending to navigate around this pig to save her life, he shot and killed her through her front window!
The pigs are claiming that because her car was moving, their lives were threatened, and so they were justified in shooting her dead. That is bullshit. It can be clearly seen from the bodycam video that the cop who shot her could have easily moved out of the way.
What is more, even if she was endangering his life—that is still not how police who were actually about serving and protecting the people would handle this. In this video clip from his historic dialogue with Cornel West, Bob Avakian, the leader of the revolution, breaks down how the society that would be brought into being through a real revolution would handle a situation like this. Watch it now:
Bob Avakian on the People's Security After the Revolution
A death penalty for suspected shoplifting!? Here, once again, a cop has murdered a Black person for something so petty it makes your blood boil. Eric Garner, father of four—selling loose cigarettes on the street. Michael Brown, 18 years old—supposedly stealing a pack of cigarillos. Not to mention the long list of victims like Tyre Nichols, whose life was taken on a traffic stop.
The whole murder of Ta’Kiya Young was captured on bodycams. That didn’t save her. Media coverage is twisting and torturing what happened, using terms like claiming the pig “asked” her to get out of her car, and making the accusation of shoplifting the headline. And to make a statement that the life of a Black person in America means nothing, neither murdering pig has been arrested. In fact, one of the two is back on the streets.
A still from Ohio cops bodycam video shows cops shooting Ta'Kiya Young in her car, August 24, 2023. Photo: AP
When will this end? When the system that was built on slavery and the most vicious exploitation, dehumanization, terror and murder of Black people, along with other truly towering crimes, is overthrown and replaced with the radically different and emancipating system based on the Constitution for the New Socialist Republic in North America.
In SOMETHING TERRIBLE, OR SOMETHING TRULY EMANCIPATING… Bob Avakian says:
Instead of fighting and killing each other, what people need to be doing now is uniting to defend each other—opposing all unjust violence, not launching attacks on anyone but at the same time not allowing the police or “civilian” fascist thugs to wantonly brutalize and murder people. And people need to do this as part of building up the forces for revolution.
If you nodded your head when you read that, then you need to be about seeking out this revolution, checking it out, and getting active with it—as soon as possible.
