On Sunday June 17 (Father’s Day), thousands of people angry at the recent murder of two young black men, as well as the daily humiliation of the NYPD’s racist stop-and-frisk tactics, will march down Fifth Avenue to the townhouse of “Mr. Wall Street” — billionaire Mayor Michael Bloomberg.
Bronx PL’ers have joined the fight against the fascist murder of unarmed teenager Ramarley Graham, shot by NYC cops in his own bathroom (see adjoining article).
More recently, NYPD officers used their police car to strike and kill a 27-year old bakery worker, Tavon Robinson, who the cops allege was stealing cobblestones in front of his home. Residents of the Bayview Houses in Brooklyn were outraged at the killing of this popular young man.
In 2011, the NYPD stopped more than 685,000 people, 87% of whom were black or Latino. Although black and Latino men between the ages of 14 and 24 are only 4.7% of the city population, they were 41.6% of the people stopped. The vast majority of those stopped and frisked (94%) were innocent of any crime, and the small numbers of arrests were generally for victimless crimes like marijuana possession.
The NYPD’s stop-and-frisk program has been aggressively promoted by NYPD commissioner Ray Kelly and Mayor Bloomberg, with the numbers of those subjected to stops rising from 97,000 in 2002 (Bloomberg’s first year in office) to what it’s projected to be in 2012: 800,000.
Constitutional guarantees against unreasonable searches go out the window when it comes to black and Latino men and women, the racist targets of the NYPD who are far more often humiliated by being spread-eagled while being searched.
A coalition of groups has called for the Father’s Day march: Local 1199 SEIU, the NAACP, and the National Action Network (Al Sharpton’s organization). All three are closely tied to the Democratic Party, and are doing their best to tame the anger of workers in NYC and divert it from their real enemy — the capitalists who profit from the racism.
• The original plan was to have the march leave from 125th Street in Harlem, which was changed to begin at 110th Street and march through mainly the wealthy neighborhoods on 5th Ave.
• The marches in the Bronx and Brooklyn against police terror have been loud and angry, but the organizers of the June 17 march want it to be a silent procession!
• Rather than have a militant rally or picket line when we reach the Mayor’s townhouse, the organizers want the marchers to immediately disperse. This is because they don’t want to antagonize a billionaire who still might endorse and fund the campaign of President Obama.
• A dozen or so Democratic Party officials — members of the city council and NYS assembly and senate — are part of the coalition leadership. Their approach is to pass laws limiting stop-and-frisk tactics, rather than rely on actions in the streets to force an end to it.
The organizers of this march, and the Democratic Party they serve, will never tell the truth about racist police brutality or the terror the police impose on black and Latino communities. Racism, including a racist criminal justice system, will never end under capitalism. In fact, racism is intensifying.
The recent recession took a greater toll on black and Latino men and women than any other group. Black unemployment is twice that of whites. The median wealth of white households went from being 11 times that of black households a few years ago, to being 20 times that today.
From 2005 to 2009 — largely because of foreclosures and falling housing prices — the median real wealth of black families fell by 53%, while the median wealth for Latino families fell by an astonishing 66%. And last year, there were 168,000 stops for young black men by the police, which is more than the number of young black men who live in NYC!
The stepped-up police presence and harassment in black and Latino neighborhoods in NYC is intended to send a message to its residents that rebellion against the deteriorating conditions of capitalism will be met with force. White workers should understand that the daily terror faced by black and Latino workers is what’s in store for them in the not-too-distant future.
Unless we build a multi-racial movement against racist police repression and capitalist austerity, we’ll never have the class unity necessary to stop the capitalists from slashing our wages, health care and pensions, or to prevent what happened in Germany, Italy and dozens of other countries around the world — the rise of fascist regimes using terror to impose their anti-working class program of lower living standards and imperialist war.