BRONX, NY, November 17 — Tonight a crowd marked our weekly protest and march against the NYPD’s racist murder of 20-year-old Reynaldo Cuevas. The next time the police peddle their sick lie that their job is to “protect and serve,” we must remember Reynaldo’s murder and how they gunned down another innocent youth whose only “crime” was “living while Latino.”
On September 7, Reynaldo and his uncle were finishing work at the family bodega when they stumbled upon a burglary. Three armed robbers forced them to the floor. When the cops arrived, the two workers seized the moment to flee for safety. Or so they thought. Rey’s uncle ran outside with his hands up, with Rey right behind him. Surveillance video clearly shows Reynaldo fall onto the sidewalk in an attempt to avoid cop Ramysh Bangali. Bangali pounced on him, pointed the gun at his head and fired, killing him.
This was no accident. It’s part of kkkop Training 101: treat every black and Latino as a criminal, especially youth. This bosses’ terror is used to force black and Latino workers to accept poverty wages. For all the fake tears and excuses by Mayor Bloomberg and Police Chief KKKelly, Reynaldo was viciously gunned down, as an uncle uttered bitterly, “like a dog.”
But the racism doesn’t stop there. Ana Cuevas, Reynaldo’s mother, is still grieving the loss of her husband who, two years ago, was gunned down in the Dominican Republic (DR), an innocent victim of another burglary. That case too is saturated with racism. The DR is a virtual colony of U.S. imperialism, where it promotes tourism, drugs and prostitution for cheap profit. Some desperate workers turn to crime and the entire working class pays the price for a system that runs for the maximum profit of a few bosses while exploiting and reducing the overwhelming majority of workers to poverty. The Cuevas’s “American Dream” of a better life in the U.S. has been exposed as a racist nightmare.
In their grief and rage, Reynaldo’s family has courageously taken up the banner of protest. Drawing lessons from the Ramarley Graham and Shantel Davis struggles, the Cuevas family and supporters have been holding weekly protests and marches to the 42nd Precinct, one week for every year of Reynaldo’s life. During our last protest, several workers, women and men, stopped us to share their own stories of racist beatings at the hands of the cops and to scream obscenities at them outside the precinct.
The Cuevas family is rightly demanding that Bangali be indicted for Rey’s murder. But even as they chant, “No Justice, No Peace, No Racist Police!” they must also recognize that the fight is bigger than one murdered youth. We must view these protests as part of building a movement to destroy the very roots of racism: the capitalist system and its absolute need to super-exploit black and Latino workers for profit.
Progressive Labor Party has been — and will continue to be — involved in these struggles to offer comfort, support, and the political leadership necessary to wipe out racist police terror once and for all with communist revolution. JOIN US EVERY SATURDAY from 5-8 PM! Corner of 169th Street and Franklin Avenue in the Bronx.