D.C. Protesters Slam Racist Police Murders

Washington, DC, October 8 — Today PLP rallied at a major subway station to denounce the police murders in this area over the past few days. PL’ers and friends distributed over 400 leaflets and CHALLENGEs to outraged workers and students. Several workers asked for bunches of flyers to share with their friends, and others expressed the need to take action against the kkkops. A resolution calling for the indictment of the cops has been introduced at the Association for Humanist Sociologists meeting in Arlington, and others are joining this effort against police brutality and racism.
The Case of Miriam Carey
In a gross display of brutal overkill, the Secret Service and the Capitol Police shot 17 times and killed Miriam Carey, an unarmed young black woman. She apparently tried to first crash her car into the White House and then tried to crash it into the Capitol. The cops put out the word that there was “an active shooter incident” to get the public behind them, but the only shooters were the trigger-happy cops. In fact, Cathy Lanier, Chief of Police, boasted that the bollard barriers to both the White House and Capitol, put in place after 9/11, worked perfectly.  If that was the case, there was absolutely no reason to gun down the driver. But it you’re black, the cops shoot first and ask questions later.
In Prince George’s County
The day before, in Prince George’s County, the cops chased a man through the woods and shot and killed him as he supposedly reached into a bag. The seven-year veteran cop claimed he feared for his life.  But no weapon was found at the scene — other than the cop’s gun.
Behind Police Brutality
The “War on Drugs” by the government and cops intensified their targeting of black and Latino workers and led directly to the mass incarceration that jams the jails and prisons throughout the country.  The “War on Terror” similarly unleashed military-style attacks against any “threat to the homeland.” The working class is enduring ever greater fascist terror, in addition to massive cutbacks in social programs, wages, and benefits. More devastation lies ahead unless the working class mobilizes to fight back to limit such attacks.
Ongoing Struggle
In a related action, workers and students in the Peoples Coalition in Prince George’s County recently rallied to demand the indictment of the county cops who killed Archie Elliott 3rd as he sat handcuffed in the front seat of a police cruiser in 1993. This case, like the murder of Medgar Evers, the Mississippi NAACP leader,  and the murder of four black Birmingham girls in a church bombing, cries out to be re-opened and the killer cops brought to justice. After protest and mass petitioning by the Coalition, the states attorney finally met with Archie’s mother and her supporters. But the response? There was no way the state of Alabama would re-open the 20-year-old case, even as the states attorney acknowledged that the cops were out of control in the 1990s.  
Now there are two more bodies that the killer cops have given us, in D.C. and in Prince George’s County, and more throughout the nation. The cops will continue to play their role of terrorizing the working class with brutal racist repression. Justice cannot be won in a racist capitalist system. But the working class can stop them cold with communist revolution.