Carl Dix: On Police Brutality and Resistance
Join the National Day of Protest to Stop Police Brutality
Revolutionary Worker #926, October 5, 1997
On Tuesday, September 23, Carl Dix, national spokesperson for the Revolutionary Communist Party (RCP) and Dedon Kimathi of the All African People's Revolutionary Party (AAPRP) and Crack the CIA Coalition spoke to students at Santa Monica College. Major themes were the fight against police brutality, the war on drugs and CIA involvement in the crack cocaine epidemic. Following are excerpts from the talk by Carl Dix focussed on police brutality:
I want to talk about the Abner Louima case and what it means for all of us. First we need to get clear on who this man is. He's no gang banger. He's not a criminal. He's an immigrant from Haiti and a college graduate who worked two jobs, one for the city. He was out to have a good time listening to a popular Haitian band. The cops arrested him and beat him just for being there that night. When he kept saying he had done nothing wrong, they decided to "break" him. They stripped him naked, paraded him around the precinct and raped him with a plunger in the bathroom.
The authorities tell us this case don't mean anything to the rest of us because, horrible though it was, it's just an isolated incident and they're doing all they can to make sure nothing like it ever happens again. Well, they're lying.
Even as they claim this is an isolated incident, a man held in the 120th precinct of the NYPD on Staten Island reported being raped by cops on August 23. Also several years ago three cab drivers from Caribbean Islands reported being picked up by cops in New York, taken to isolated areas and raped at gunpoint. A Black reporter tried to expose these atrocities in the New York Daily News. His editors refused to run the story and fired him when he kept trying to get it out.
This kind of perverse brutality is a concentration of the way they treat people 24-7. The October 22nd Coalition, as part of a project to document police murder nationwide that we call the Stolen Lives Project, documented 73 killings by New York cops in the last three years. These are just the ones we could find info on. The whole Stolen Lives list has hundreds of names on it right now, and we will release an updated list on October 22nd with many more names. We plan to continue collecting names until we've documented the thousands of cases of police murder. To do this we need your help.
And it ain't just the cops. Over 40 medical people saw Abner Louima after he had been raped and no one said anything about the lies the police were telling about how he had been injured until a courageous Haitian-American nurse broke this white wall of silence. The politicians give brutal murdering cops the green light to carry out brutality and murder by promoting from the very top levels of government a "crack down on even the most minor violation" mentality.
The authorities like to tell us that most police are good cops who do their job. What does the Louima case tell us about the job they do? Several cops beat and tortured him. Other cops helped to cover this up. And the overwhelming majority of cops at the station maintained a blue wall of silence while the coverup was being carried out.
This is how police departments all across the U.S. treat people all the time. We all saw the cops beat Rodney King in 1992 and Alicia Soltero last year. Just last month in Baltimore, Maryland, the cops blew away a young Black man who was following their orders to put down his knife. This was caught on videotape, yet the killer cop was exonerated in a few weeks. Outside of Pittsburgh, five white cops beat and choked to death Jonny Gammage, a Black businessman. His crime? Driving a luxury car in a white suburb and being Black. None of his killers has been punished.
I could tell you stories like this for every major city across the country. I could tell you how cops who've killed and brutalized people continually get promoted and get assigned to train police rookies. And I could tell you how cops get pressured to go along with this program of brutality or get forced to quit the police force.
A National Scandal
And the way the whole criminal justice system treats our youth ought to be a national scandal. Cops jack up young people, arrest and beat them for bullshit and even murder them. Our youth get hassled and worse by cops for looking at them wrong, for being in the wrong place at the wrong time, for being the wrong color, for having an attitude, for being dressed too street. In the '60s young people were the protest generation. Today they're trying to make them the jailed generation.
L.A. has an innovative way to criminalize our youth--the gang injunction. In some part of the city, the DA has gotten injunctions that make it illegal for "suspected gang members" to be together in public, to wear beepers, to carry a baseball bat, etc. Who's a suspected gang member? Any youth of color who's wearing baggy pants, has tattoos or a close-cropped haircut. In other words, anybody. You're criminal because you're there.
We also gotta talk about the LAPD and police brutality. Because capitalist propaganda outlets like the New York Times, network TV newscasts and Time magazine are saying the real story around police brutality is how in Los Angeles the police are cleaning up police brutality. It might surprise you all to hear this. It would definitely surprise Anna Gutierrez. Her son, Jose, was shot in the back by an LAPD cop two years ago. Dozens of witnesses said he was unarmed. But the cop got off by claiming Jose pointed a gun at him so it was "self-defense." Just this summer, cops made a traffic stop on a relative of Anna. When Anna got out of the car, the cop beat her and took her to jail. While she was in jail, she found out the cops knew who she was. So this arrest may well have been punishment for protesting her son's murder.
Why does the system give the cops a green light to spread terror in oppressed communities? Because that's what their real job comes down to. The cops are out there to enforce the miserable conditions so many people are forced to live under. They are the first line of defense for the capitalist class who rule over us.
A National Day of Protest
What's it going to take to stop this terror the police are being unleashed to spread in our communities? A mass and massive movement of resistance targetting police brutality and police murder. There's already a lot of resistance to this going on. Recently I was part of the march of more than 10,000 people who took over the Brooklyn Bridge in protest of what they did to Abner Louima. There were rebellions in St. Petersburg and in Leland, Mississippi against police brutality last year. There was mass resistance at Cabrini Green projects in Chicago when housing authority police shot an unarmed woman point blank. Four thousand people marched in Eugene, Oregon. And more resistance is going down across the country. All this is on time, but even more is needed. The authorities have stepped up unleashing their cops to instill terror in our communities. We've gotta step up our resistance to the next level.
This is just what the National Day of Protest is aimed at doing. Last year on October 22 there were demonstrations, cultural events and other forms of protest in 45 cities. Many people wore black on that day in solidarity with the protests and in memory of the victims of the police. This year we have to surpass all that.
We've gotta involve more people and more different kinds of people--bringing the people who live under the guns and billy clubs of brutal murdering cops together with those who are shielded from the way the cops act in the ghettos and barrios.
We have to change the way people in society look at the problem of police brutality. Right now, too many people buy the line that many communities are full of criminals and the cops are justified in doing whatever they need to do to keep them under control. The reality is that the system has labeled whole groups of people criminals in order to justify brutalizing them. The Stolen Lives Project is a way to bring out this reality to many, many people. It can put a human face on the problem of police brutality and show people how widespread a problem this is.
We can do this. A powerful outpouring of resistance to police brutality will show people victimized by this that someone will listen when they step forward to express their anger at how they're dogged by the cops. It will bring out the truth to those who don't know how the cops are mistreating so many people. And people on this campus need to be a part of doing this. You've gotta organize people to wear black to school, at work, in their neighborhoods on October 22. You can plan a rally or a cultural event on campus that day and then students from campus can go to the citywide rally. Also you can join the Youth Investigation Teams that the October 22nd Coalition has organized. These teams go into areas where people have been mistreated by the cops and collect information for the Stolen Lives Project.
A Revolutionary Vision
Now, let's trip out some. Let's imagine a world where none of these evils existed. Where a handful of rich countries didn't dominate the entire globe. Where millions of people didn't go to bed hungry or spend days slaving for a wealthy few. Where children in countries like Bangladesh weren't chained to machines overnight in the sweatshops they slave in. Where cops weren't given a green light to brutalize and murder people. Where power over society is in the hands of the people and that power is used to see to it that the needs of the people are being met. Where people from other lands are welcomed and their experience and the diversity they bring to these shores is cherished. Where the reality people have to put up with every day isn't so mind-numbing that millions have to get high just to go on another day.
Now, what kind of world would you rather live in? One like the world we just imagined, or one like this hellhole we exist in now? If you want to live in a world like the one we imagined, you need to get busy bringing it into being. Because people don't have to live like they're being forced to live now. And ain't nobody gonna change things for us. We're gonna have to do that ourselves.
We in the RCP say the cold truth is it's gonna take a revolutionary war to end police brutality and all the other problems this system brings down on people here and around the world. People's lives are on the line, people are dying at the hands of the police. We don't just need a movement that can fight the power structure, we need one that can seize the power and go on to build a whole new world on the ashes of this one. A world where people don't suffer the problems they do in the world today. The RCP's plan for revolution centers on building mass resistance to the attacks being rained down on the people today. We've gotta build the places where we live and work into strongholds of revolutionary struggle. The system has a murderous plan for dealing with us and they're carrying it out with a vengeance. We have to be just as serious about building a movement that can put the authorities on notice that we will no longer let them get away with giving a green light to brutalizing and murdering cops. The RCP is serious about uniting with all the people who can be united to take on this struggle.
Now the capitalist rulers of this country say revolution ain't possible. The truth is they're scared shitless that we'll rise up against the way they dog us 24-7. That's part of why they're unleashing their cops, building more prisons and working overtime to keep us divided and fighting each other--to keep us from coming together to fight our real enemy, them and their system. Let's bring their worst nightmare into being, a revolutionary movement.
We know it ain't time yet to launch the all out revolutionary assault. The capitalists are not deep enough in trouble, divided and fighting amongst themselves. And the people ain't ready to put it all on the line for revolution yet. But things are getting sharper and more intense, and we need to get ready for revolution. The way to get ready for revolution is to rally people to resist the attacks the system is bringing down; and in the course of fighting back, we need to build the organization, the unity, and the understanding that'll be needed to lead people in rising up in revolution when the time is right.
One important front we need to build resistance on is against police brutality. We know that some people ain't ready to get down with revolution--at least not yet. If that's where you're coming from I say to you--are you against the way the cops spread terror in so many communities? Cuz if you are, then you need to get busy doing something about it.... Stop police brutality, repression and the criminalization of a generation.
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