BROOKLYN, NY, March 25 — The fight-back against the racist police murder of 16-year-old Kimani “Kiki” Gray sharpened the class struggle here in East Flatbush. Young neighborhood students and workers led a militant anti-racist rebellion on March 11, two nights after Kiki’s murder. The youth returned every night for nearly two weeks, joined by protestors to confront the police that occupied seemingly every inch of the neighborhood 24/7 out of fear of another uprising.
The rebellion helped popularize proof that the police are lying about Kiki pointing a gun at them. Witnesses say Kiki tried to walk away from police — who never identified themselves — and begged for his life as he was gunned down. An autopsy revealed that seven out of eleven bullets hit Kiki, three in his back. The officers involved have a history of falsifying evidence. The facts exposing the cops as liars are all similar to nearly every case of police murder, but without the rebellion that followed Kiki’s death, the truth would not have been exposed as it has been.
Youth Defy Media Lies
Politicians, preachers, cops and the media all labeled the militant youth everything but what they were. They were rebels that led a small, brief but powerful uprising, not looters, rioters, misguided or committed gangsters. On the whole the youth targeted the racist bosses and their goons.
Young men and women defied police by taking the streets, overturning trashcans, and surrounding two cops. The youth targeted a local Rite Aid convenience store whose manager constantly followed black and immigrant youth while shopping. Not a dime was stolen out of the registers. Dozens of local barbershops, beauty salons and restaurants were untouched.
The rebels broke capitalist laws which protect mass murderers that are responsible for millions of deaths from racist profit wars, global drug cartels, mass poverty and unemployment. These gangsters in suits walk free, run businesses, command armies and hold government power. The ruling class paints entire black, Latino and immigrant working-class neighborhoods as criminals. But in reality, it is bosses who are the enemies, closing hospitals and killing patients, as well as workers and children in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Pakistan.
Only a revolutionary communist society where the working class has power can rid the world of racist killer kkkops. The capitalist courts encourage and tolerate cops who murder black, Latino and immigrant workers. Meanwhile, five million black and Latino workers and youth are forced into the criminal injustice system, either imprisoned, on probation or on parole. Seventy percent of the 2.4 million in U.S. prisons are black and Latino. And if cops do get punished it’s a slap on the wrist. NYPD Detective Phillip Atkins who in June murdered Shantel Davis, a young unarmed black woman killed a short walk away from where Kiki was killed, was supposedly suspended. But Atkin’s wife, a community affairs cop, told a classroom of students that Atkins was never even on desk duty.
Killer KKKops Have Racist Record
As it turns out, Atkins and the cops Mourad and Cardova who killed Kiki are members of the same death squad. Mourad and Cordova have a long history of vicious racist assults. The city has been forced to pay out $215,000 to victims of five previous attacks.
Our class will need to break many more bosses’ laws to smash the bosses’ state and take power for the workers. A communist society based on workers’ needs, not bosses’ profits, can enable everyone in society to make positive contributions. Our neighborhoods need a fighting PLP to grow into a mass party that can win youth away from gangs.
After the East Flatbush rebellion, misleaders came out every night to pacify the neighborhoods’s anger and call for police “reform.” One night Jumaane Williams, a local city councilman, and a host of preachers and self-appointed community advocates tried to lead marchers into a church to talk instead of to the 67th precinct to protest. PLP and Shantel Committee members blasted Pastor Verald Mathews for kicking the Shantel Committee out of that very church because he couldn’t make money off of the struggle. The youth marched to the precinct instead.
After the March 11 rebellion, cops flooded the neighborhood 24 hours a day to intimidate workers. The media in demonizing the rebellion took their cue from the cops and politicians to scare away supporters. Councilman Williams told “outsiders” to “stay the HELL out” of the neighborhood and stop “agitating” youth. Actually people came from both inside and outside the neighborhood, and are still coming.
Kiki’s Mother Dimissed Mayor
PL’ers were there the very first night shoulder to shoulder with the youth as we were every night thereafter. We brought out co-workers, friends and students in the ones and twos that decided to take a stand. Our response to the intimidating fascist police occupation of East Flatbush was to fight back, not hide. Kiki’s family supported the demonstrations and personally organized the biggest march of all day before Kiki’s wake that saw over 1,000 gatherers. And his mother dismissed billionaire Mayor Bloomberg’s “offer” of condolence, saying she’s not looking for a photo op.
At one point councilman Williams gave up trying to keep people out and got on the radio to invite the whole city to demonstrate in East Flatbush. Unlike his call for people to stay out, the media did not publicize that invitation.
The recent struggle in Flatbush shows us that everything PLP does to build a revolutionary communist movement counts. PLP’s involvement in the campaign against the June police murder of Shantel Davis, a young unarmed black woman killed a short walk away from where Kiki was killed, directly influenced the young East Flatbush rebels. Most, if not all, of the rebels watched months of weekly protests by the Shantel Committee, PLP and others in front of the 67th precinct. But the passive anger became raw and personal at the first vigil for Kiki when Shantel’s family and Committee members spoke about marching down Church Ave. Memories of years of racist police harassment, racist mis-education in schools and now a second police murder by the same death squad that killed Shantel, exploded.
When the youth marched, they took the same route of the Shantel marches. One of Kiki’s cousins turned out to be a friend and co-worker of a Shantel Committee member. The cousin attended an August BBQ for Shantel. When he decided to take action for Kiki he drew on the Shantel Committee and PLP to help lead the fight-back.
During the night of the biggest demonstration, one of Shantel’s sisters told Kiki’s cousin that fighting back was difficult but that “you have to fight” because that was the only way to make things better. Weeks before the police killed Kiki, PLP and other Shantel Committee members convinced Shantel’s sisters to keep active despite low morale, partly to help lead the struggle when the next police murder occurred in Flatbush.
We will not be able to prevent the next police murder in East Flatbush. Already the same cops that killed Kiki and Shantel shot a young man in Brownsville, Brooklyn who police claim had a gun. Even rebellions and the civil rights movement that fought Jim Crow segregation left behind capitalism which must maintain racism, both for its superprofits and to divide the working class. PLP should make a fight on every campus and job and in mass organizations to support the rebellion and defend the youth who were arrested. Workers’ power lies in building a revolutionary communist movement to one day smash the cops and the bosses’ whole state apparatus. The time to join is now.