BOSTON, MA., October 29 — About 50 students and faculty from Roxbury Community College (RCC) marched to the police station today to protest the vicious October 22 police beating of a sixteen-year-old-youth in the Administration Building. The youth had run away from a Department of Youth Services facility in order to be present at the birth of his child.
A student recorded the incident with her cell-phone camera and posted it on Youtube while a cop attempted to intimidate her. If not for her, the incident would have been swept under the rug. No one except those who had witnessed it knew it had happened. The RCC administration kept it silent for almost a week, helping the police cover up their crime. They didn’t address it on the campus until the Youtube video made it an issue in Boston.
At that point, the RCC President Gomes and VP Mercomes tried to distance the college from the ”bad press” since “the boy was not an RCC student.” They showed their true colors as lackeys of the local ruling class, who will do anything to protect the interests of capitalism.
Students immediately organized a response, posted signs around the school announcing a march to the police station. Once there, students expressed their outrage at the police and college administration while demanding the firing of the cops guilty of the beating. One student spoke about the police “serving and protecting” the rich and not the working class, giving a political analysis to the class anger being expressed.
Now it remains the task of these student leaders along with PL’ers and other anti-racists to organize the whole RCC community to take a stand against racist police terror.