This Father’s Day, thousands of people were in the streets of New York City to demand an end to the NYPD’s racist “Stop and Frisk” policy. It was an important step in building the movement we need to challenge the police brutality and harassment that millions of us face every day.
After all, “Stop and Frisk” is the tip of the iceberg. Poor and working people, especially Black and Latino communities, live in a virtual police state. Young men are railroaded to prison or are victims of torture, beatings and execution at the hands of police. The family of 18-year-old Ramarley Graham, murdered at the hands of NYPD cop Richard Haste in February, is still demanding justice.
And it is not just New York City. Across the country, racist police terror is considered business as usual. There are the cases that get wide publicity, like Oscar Grant, murdered by cops in Oakland in 2009. But there are also the unreported cases, such as the 54 people executed in Los Angeles last year by cops—no trial, no judge, no jury. Instant death penalty.
Could President Obama intervene? Yes! Police departments with a track record of racism, like the NYPD and the LAPD, could be put into receivership by the federal government and turned over to organizations that really represent the community, such as unions, tenant associations and PTAs. The top brass of these criminal police gangs should face trial on charges of murder and massive civil rights violations alongside the killer cops who commit the crimes.
Unfortunately, Obama represents the very criminal system that benefits from this systematic abuse and harassment. Even when the NYPD killers of Sean Bell were acquitted in 2008, candidate Obama asked us to “respect the verdict.” That’s been his message for the last four years as president: To respect a “justice” system that has failed us, and to respect and economic system that has failed us.
The PSL’s Lindsay/Osorio 2012 Presidential Campaign has a simple message: We need a new system! Whether or not Obama is elected, if the for-profit capitalist system remains, we will still face unemployment, poverty, war and racist police terror. We need socialism, a system that puts poor and working people first and truly in charge.
Join us in the effort to build the movement we need for the society we deserve! That’s how we’ll put an end to police terror once and for all.
