On May 28, members of the El Monte, California, community gathered at City Hall to mourn Sawandi Toussaint and commemorate other Black lives lost. In October 2019, after responding to an alleged shooter, El Monte Police shot and killed 21-year old Toussaint when he was at a bus stop. The El Monte Police Department justified the killing claiming that Toussaint had a gun in his hand when they shot him. The gun presented as evidence was later revealed to have previously belonged to an EMPD reserve officer. This narrative is all too familiar as the same one is repeatedly used to justify violence against the Black community.
Say Their Names LA organized the vigil during which several community activists addressed the community with calls to transform the system of policing on an institutional level. Toussaint’s sister, Victoria Toussaint, and her daughters spoke about their relationship with him and described him as a fun uncle, a caring brother, and a warm human being that put others’ needs first.
Corruption in the “justice” system
Community activists called to attention the contradictions present in between the EMPD version of the story and their own evidence. Security footage used as evidence shows a suspect with one shirt in one frame, and then in another frame Toussaint in a different color shirt. In another frame which they claim portrays Toussaint, a person is holding a firearm in his right hand, yet Toussaint was left handed.
No amount of evidence justifies the public execution of a human being. Nonetheless, current state and federal laws give police immunity in the case of “self-defense.” Speakers at the vigil rallied the community into action, noting that police violence like the act committed against Toussaint is not an isolated incident, but in fact a systemic and intentional feature of the system of policing and capitalism, something which has become ever more apparent in light of the George Floyd protests during the summer of 2020. Among other demands, Victoria Touissaint called for practical changes that could be implemented in the immediate future: “Police need bias training… I don’t feel that police departments shouldn’t be investigating their own officers involved in shootings. It needs to be an external, unbiased party investigating.”
Class character of police violence becomes apparent
The vigil numbering in the dozens marched across to the adult school where Toussaint was set to earn his GED. Two other families who have been victimized by police violence came forward and gave their testimonies against police brutality, expressing solidarity for Sawandi Toussaint’s family. The families of Marco Vazquez, Jr. and David Ordaz, Jr. spoke about the dizzying, nightmarish experience of losing a loved one at the hands of police. They highlighted that any members of oppressed communities, be they Black, Latino, Indigenous, Asian, immigrant, or working class, all are susceptible to police violence.
Community security councils and alternative forms of community care are springing up in communities like El Monte, and this momentum will be even more powerful if organized coherently and consistently across all communities and across all states. It will take the organized working people in a multinational socialist government to begin to permanently undo the racist institutions that enact daily violence against the people they claim to serve.
