Milwaukee: On June 30, D’Vontaye L. Mitchell, a 43-year-old Black man, was savagely murdered in broad daylight in downtown Milwaukee. Four security guards at the Hyatt Regency Hotel pinned D’Vontaye to the pavement with their hands and knees for an estimated 7-15 minutes. These killer pigs sneered, “Stop resisting,” as they squeezed the life out of D’Vontaye. He gasped, groaned, pleaded for his life, and called for help. One of the guards attempted to stop witnesses from video recording the incident. He taunted them by shouting, “Are you cool with [D’Vontaye] trying to hurt us?"

DeAsia Harmon, Mitchell's widow, exposed the sadistic cruelty of the pigs who killed D’Vontaye: "They pushed his head into the concrete. Then they flipped his body over, and you see he was bleeding from his head and from his nose and his mouth. To see them beat him repeatedly over and over and over again, they didn't stop."

Grief and Anger, Lies and Coverup

Hyatt Regency officials claim D’Vontaye created a “disturbance” inside their hotel and was being escorted out. The initial report from Milwaukee police claimed, without offering any evidence, that D’Vontaye “fought with security guards as they were escorting the individual [D’Vontaye] out.” About two weeks later, as knowledge of D’Vontaye Mitchell’s murder spread in Milwaukee and beyond, hotel management fired an unknown number of employees who were supposedly at the scene of the killing. But as of July 11, no criminal charges have been filed by the Milwaukee County D.A.

Listen to the pain of D’Vontaye Mitchell’s family. His mother, Brenda Giles, said: “He was murdered.… He might've had mental illness, but he was a good man. He didn't deserve to be killed. Security killed my son." D’Vontaye’s sister-in-law Candice Miller said: “They treated him like he was nothing, like he was an animal.” His older sister Nayisha said, “They need to stop killing Black men…. We are not going to stop until we get justice. We are not going to allow his death to be swept under the rug."

A white rideshare driver who witnessed part of the murder told reporters, "I saw three security on top of him. It was reminiscent of the visual of George Floyd.” Shawn Moore, a Milwaukee community activist who was an eyewitness to D’Vontaye’s muder, said the incident “reminds me of George Floyd. Watching that video, the only thing is he didn't scream for his mother, but he was screaming… looking back at it, I feel like I should've did more."

Here the words of the revolutionary leader Bob Avakian spring to mind, in the crucially important work SOMETHING TERRIBLE OR SOMETHING TRULY EMANCIPATING: Profound Crisis, Deepening Divisions, The Looming Possibility Of Civil War—And The Revolution That Is Urgently Needed. A Necessary Foundation, A Basic Roadmap For This Revolution:

There is the need to prevent the police from brutalizing and just coldly murdering people. Let us remember what was said by some people who witnessed, and even recorded, the slow-motion vicious execution of George Floyd: They agonized over whether they should have done more, should have acted to stop this blatant assassination of a defenseless Black man. Now, again, what I am pointing to is consistent with point 6 of the six Points of Attention for the Revolution—and, in what I am saying here, I am not calling for launching an attack on anyone. But there is no right for anyone, including police, to just murder someone—and there is a right and responsibility to defend and protect people from unjust attacks on their rights, and on their very lives.

Imagine if, in these different kinds of situations, there were a force of hardcore revolutionaries, including basic youth, whose presence in a disciplined and organized formation made clear that no unjust attacks on people would be tolerated. But this must not just be imagined—it must be developed as one important part of the overall process of preparing for, and building the organized forces for, revolution.

A Fascist Convention of Genocidal Racists, a System That Must Be Overthrown 

By the time you read this, the Republi-fascist National Convention (RNC) will be underway in Milwaukee. The Hyatt Regency is in the RNC “Security Zone,” and Republi-fascist officials and delegates will be lodged inside the hotel where D’Vontaye Mitchell was murdered.

Donald Trump, the fascist kingpin of the mobs gathered in Milwaukee, is an open white supremacist and slobbering lover of the police. He has called for pigs to shoot suspected shoplifters, he has encouraged them to brutalize people they arrest. He called for the death penalty against five Black and Latino youths in New York falsely accused and convicted of rape (the Central Park 5), and stood by his call even when, years later, those men were fully exonerated after having been released from prison.   

But the problem goes even deeper. As Bob Avakian has written

The fact is that Trump is not simply an “open” racist. As I put it in a series of articles in 2020, he is a genocidal racist, who would be more than willing not only to continue incarcerating, but to actually kill off, huge numbers of Black people, and other people of color, whom he clearly regards as less than human. 

Murderous Racism, as American as Cherry Pie

The savage murder of D’Vontaye Mitchell, the anguish that has been inflicted on his family and those that love him, is part and parcel of Amerikkka. It is an expression of the brutal repression this country has inflicted on Black people in this country for centuries, and it will end only when the capitalist-imperialist system that rules over us is overthrown. And we are living in a time when the possibility of making a revolution to overthrow that system is greater. 

As our call for Revolution Summer states: 

Look around. Israel is carrying out a heartless genocide against the Palestinian people. Whole families buried in rubble or burned alive. All of this backed and funded by the U.S. government. Capitalism-imperialism is poisoning the air and the oceans, killing off species and destroying our planet. Women's right to abortion and LGBTQ rights are being ripped away. Immigrants and refugees are being demonized and face detention, deportation, and even death. The police are killing Black and Brown people on the daily. People look at the future with a feeling of doom.

This is not the world you want. It is not the future you should accept. 

Isn't it time you join with others to do something about it?

This summer: Be a part of making history. Be a part of fighting for a whole new way humanity could be living. Be part of REVOLUTION SUMMER 2024.

Justice for D’Vontaye Mitchell!

STOP Genocidal Persecution, Mass Incarceration, Police Brutality and Murder of Black and Brown People!