After Chicago Pigs Murder Unarmed Black Motorist on Way Home From Funeral...

People Stand Up Against Killer Cops and Neighborhood Trumpite Goons

November 12, 2016 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

 

What Trump actually means by “make America great again” was given living and horrifying expression on the streets of the Chicago neighborhood of Mt. Greenwood. Mt. Greenwood is an almost all-white neighborhood on the South Side of Chicago. It is home to many cops and firefighters. What is playing out in Mt. Greenwood should be a loud siren further awakening people in Chicago and around the country to the immediate and urgent stakes posed by Trump’s election.

In the days surrounding the presidential election, crowds of rabid racists, including many off-duty cops and their families, clearly on the offensive as a result of Trump’s campaign, are out to violently restore white supremacy as part of the larger fascist project.

On Saturday, November 5, at least three off-duty pigs were involved in the shooting death of a young Black man, Joshua Beal, in the middle of a sunny afternoon in Mt. Greenwood. Beal, the father of two, had come from Indiana to take part in a funeral for his cousin. An off-duty pig in plainclothes tried to run a 17-year-old driver off the road and then pulled a gun and threatened her. According to the family, Beal and other family members got out of their cars in the funeral procession out of concern for her safety. Then another off-duty pig on his way to work jumped out of his car and shot 13 bullets at Beal.

But this was not all. Joshua’s brother was arrested and held for days for tackling one of the off-duty maniacs in an attempt to save his brother’s life.

And that still was not all. The family, in complete shock, was told to wait at a local Burger King until the police released their cars from the crime scene. The Revolution Club and activists in the fight against police murder came to the BK to support the family. Meantime all around the BK, racists began to gather. White people with baseball bats sticking out of their car windows drove by. Shouts of “n***ers” rang out. A group of white people who turned out to be off-duty cops and friends began shouting and chanting, “CPD! CPD!” Cars driving by chanted back “Trump, Trump, Trump.”

The very next day and then again on election night, protests were held in Mt. Greenwood over the police murder of Joshua and to call out the overt displays of racism as unacceptable. Both protests were small and met by hundreds of rabidly racist white people clogging the streets. Off duty cops, cops’ families and their supporters put on brazen and ugly displays. They celebrated the execution of a Black man; called Black people who came to protest “coons” and “n***ers,” spewed ignorant shit like “this is America, not Africa,” and told people to get out of their neighborhood. They called Black Lives Matter a terrorist organization. They growled about how sick they were of the “liberal narrative” making cops look bad (imagine the nerve after endless exposures of racist police brutality and murders in Chicago, all unpunished!). All the while, they were threatening physical violence on protestors. Trump was supported by the police union in Chicago and many places around the country. “Blue Lives Matter” chants filled the Republican National Convention in Cleveland and the streets of Mt. Greenwood.

Father Michael Pfleger came out on election night. The very well-known Catholic priest posted afterward, “Just got back from the protest in Mt. Greenwood... I have not seen so many angry White People filled with such Hate since a child in 1966 in Marquette Park [This is a reference to when mobs of white people attacked with bricks and bottles a march led by Martin Luther King to integrate housing—Ed.].... I was called every name and cursed with every word, by adults and children walking with their parents... an area that is not only White, but heavily Catholic, and will be at church on Sunday... I am embarrassed as a Priest and a Catholic to witness what I witnessed tonight.... Earlier today a man said he wanted to break my legs and drag me from a truck.... Mt. Greenwood you should be embarrassed... by those who represented you tonight....”

The Revolution Club very courageously and boldly made up a significant presence at all three protests together with a handful of Black activists and others who were outraged over the murder of Joshua. For more than an hour and a half on election night, the protestors stood their ground and got in the face of these reactionaries who were chanting, “USA, USA, CPD, CPD, Trump, Trump, Trump.” The Revolution Club was a strong pole of attraction in their shirts as they led chants of “1, 2, 3,4, Slavery Genocide and War; 5, 6, 7, 8, America Was Never Great.” “Sixteen shots and a cover up; thirteen shots at a funeral.” They called for revolution to sweep away the white supremacy embedded in this system.

While small in number, the protestors refused to be intimidated by the howling mobs. Many more people should have poured out to protest this. Some people undoubtedly thought it was too risky to go right up against this. But history has repeatedly shown it is far riskier to do nothing and to retreat to “safe” spaces. The purpose and point of going up against this is not just to make a statement, but to both reveal the virulence of the infection and to draw forth others to FIGHT this. If the revcoms and later Father Pfleger in particular had not been there, the nastiness of the infection would not have been revealed. Much more needs to be done quickly to inspire and challenge people to come forward to fight it.

People need to take heart from and also give backing to a few white youths from the neighborhood who right on the spot took a very courageous stand. In the midst of the scene in Mt. Greenwood, a young white student and her two friends crossed the line and stood with the people protesting the murder of Joshua Beal. (There were also a couple of white youths from the neighborhood who came to stand with Joshua’s family the night of his murder.) This young woman held the Stolen Lives banner with pictures of dozens of people killed by police. She said: “Most of my friends are on the other side; this infuriates me, they are probably really pissed at me for crossing the line, but I couldn’t take it anymore.” She continued, “I am here today for the injustice of people that just keeps happening, this racism that’s institutionalized into our homes and in our backyards, in Mt. Greenwood especially. Mt. Greenwood is so racist, man, we just had somebody shot... so many times... and people want to deny and say it’s not because of skin color, but what else is it? I’m ready to make a stand now, I’m ready. Before I would sit quietly, you know, maybe protest online, but now I’m ready to make my voice heard... and speak for those... amplify their voices, not speak over them, but amplify their voices.”

As they did right in the midst of this situation, the revcoms need to wage a determined struggle to expose how this foregrounds and represents the actual program of these fascists, rooted in the whole history of this country and how they have played white people to keep capitalism humming along. We need to be winning large chunks of this generation of white youth to reject this in deed as well as in word. This happened during the 1960s in a major way and the powers that be were very threatened by it.

We need to make this a question very broadly. While the major media reported on the police killing of Beal, there was initially no coverage about the ugly response from the neighborhood. The revcoms issued a public challenge to the major media for its failure to cover the racist garbage spewing out of Mt. Greenwood—soon after articles, editorials began to appear, forcing the Mayor to issue a timid rebuke of what he called “ethnically tinged” language. “Ethnically tinged”? The word n***er from the mouths of pigs is lynch-mob-noose-speak! Now reporters are pointing out police are wearing Trump buttons and defending Trump while on assignment at the large “not my president” demonstrations that have broken out.

This situation is roiling around the city and interpenetrating with the election of Trump, although it is unclear if the thousands who poured out to decry Trump’s victory know about what is concentrated in Mt. Greenwood. After the police shooting of Joshua Beal and the protests over it, a student at Marist, a Catholic high school in the Mt. Greenwood area, had texted, “I F***ing hate N***ers.” Her friend replied “same.” A tweet with a screen shot of this text went viral. One Black student at Marist expressed how deeply angry she was about this text to the Chicago Tribune, “[she] said that while she has been called racial epithets before and during her time at Marist, she was shocked and hurt that the girls whose text messages were publicized, some of whom had been longtime friends of hers, would say such things.... She said she feels like their relationships have been irreparably harmed by the texts and doesn’t plan to reach out to any of the girls about the messages.”

The high school had to issue a statement, as did the Catholic Church, condemning the racism. At high schools around the city, students held mini-rallies to condemn this and organize to go down to Marist. Only 12 percent of the Marist student body is Black. In response, the school shut down for the day of the protest while police blogs spread lurid tales that a notorious gang was coming to Mt. Greenwood to harm children. Some of the high school students who called the demonstration publicly cancelled it and were bamboozled into meeting with the police chief and Marist’s principal to “dialogue” instead. People, including these young student protestors, need to look at what was on display in Mt. Greenwood—what does this tell you? The Black police chief was out there within hours defending the police murder of Joshua Beal. He has not said a peep about the racist mobs made up of members of his department. Do not conciliate with these murderers.

The Revolution Club made thousands of stickers that say, “I Used to Be a White American, but I Gave It Up in the Interests of Humanity” to get out at these schools over the next few days and is looking to call forward the youths who do want to go out and challenge these white students at schools like Marist to hold teach-ins and convocations and protests.

In the Name of Humanity, We REFUSE to Accept a Fascist America.

Rise Up... Get Into the Streets ... Unite with People Everywhere to Build Up Resistance in Every Way You Can

Don’t Stop: Don’t Conciliate... Don’t Accommodate ... Don’t Collaborate

RIGHT NOW IN CHICAGO AREA AND BEYOND—AMONG ALL SECTIONS OF PEOPLE OF ALL NATIONALITIES, ARTISTS AND PROFESSIONAL, RELIGIOUS COMMUNITIES AND PEOPLE OF CONSCIENCE AND YES, AMONG LARGE NUMBERS OF WHITE PEOPLE—YOU NEED TO SPEAK OUT, ORGANIZE AND MOBILIZE AGAINST THIS RACIST UGLINESS THAT TRUMP’S ELECTION IS CALLING FORTH. AND YES, WE NEED TO MARCH THROUGH MT. GREENWOOD. WE MUST SAY TO THE WORLD LOUDLY—THIS STOPS HERE. THIS STOPS NOW. THIS LYNCH MOB RACISM IS ABSOLUTELY UNACCEPTABLE. AND NOW THAT YOU KNOW, YOU CAN NOT BE SILENT—SILENCE IS COMPLICITY.

There are plans for a major protest called "We Oppose White Supremacy! We Stand Up to Racist Mob Threats in Mt. Greenwood IL"—Sunday, November 20, 2 pm, at 111th & Kedzie in Mt. Greenwood, Chicago. See the call for the protest and signatories here.

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