MINNEAPOLIS
MINNEAPOLIS, MN July 17 — The Twin Cities working-class community took the streets to protest not one but two killings of unarmed young black men that racist capitalist oppressors deem “disposable.” We all know about the blatantly racist killing of Trayvon Martin and the equally racist jury freeing killer Zimmerman.
Terrance Franklin was 22 years old and the Minneapolis cops racially profiled him during a traffic stop for DWB (Driving While Black). They said something to him which caused Franklin to panic and run. He was cornered in a house and outside witnesses could hear the fascist cops saying “we got a n----r.”
These two cops ended up shooting each other as they were trying to shoot Franklin and a third cop, SWAT team cop Lucas Peterson shot Franklin twice in the back and three times in the head execution style.
This has outraged Minneapolis workers. Cop Peterson has a notorious history of racist violence toward black workers. Of 13 excessive force complaints, nine were settled by City of Minneapolis for $700,000, the largest against a single cop.
Peterson began harassing black workers when he was a part of the now — disbanded Metro Gang Strike Force. It got so out of control that it was dissolved.
The County Coroner has refused to release Franklin’s body to his family, as if they are trying to hide his injuries. The Minneapolis police are giving multiple versions (lies) about the fatal incident.
During the rally held at Government Plaza in downtown Minneapolis an African immigrant called for black cops, judges, and officials. But black nationalism supports capitalism and only makes blacks the oppressors as in Sanford, Florida, which has a black police chief.
The rally was very multiracial — black, white, asian, latino, Native Americans, and immigrants who all express working-class solidarity. CHALLENGES were distributed and contacts were made.
It is fascist U.S. capitalism that sees black working-class people like Trayvon and Terrance as “worthless.” Capitalism must be smash ed with communist revolution!
HARLEM
Figuring that racist murderer George Zimmerman would be acquitted, our multiracial Harlem interfaith coalition was ready to roll when the verdict came in. For several weeks we had planned a sharp and immediate response. On Sunday, the day after the verdict, we wrote a leaflet calling for a vigil that night in solidarity with the family and friends of Trayvon Martin. A church where we have friends gave us space. We distributed150 leaflets at a nationalist rally at the New York State Office Building and posted more leaflets near the church.
The rally was the usual black power-screaming, divisive do-nothing circus. Our multiracial presence was attacked — nearly physically — by several nationalists. Almost everyone else gratefully took our leaflet. Several promised to attend the vigil.
We began at 7:30 with a core of coalition members. By 8:15, twenty-one people we’d never met, most of them black workers, had joined us. We each shared our outrage and heightened fears for the black and Latino young people we know and love. My white sons hung out with their black, Asian, and Latino friends, I said, and risked being gunned down together.
The main theme of discussion was how Trayvon’s unavenged murder will open a much wider wave of fascist terror that will also ensnare white workers and students in a net of oppression and death. Of course, this terror will also shock more workers and students into struggle with us. Near the end of the vigil, the local state senator “dropped in,” nervous about the threat we pose to the capitalist gang he serves.
Everyone ardently thanked us for our initiative. Most gave their contact information and promised to meet with us soon to continue the struggle to re-indict and convict Ramarley Graham’s Killer KKKop and to build widely to bring our message of multiracial struggle against advancing fascism to Washington on August 24, the 50th anniversary of Martin Luther King’s “I have a Dream Speech.”
Fight the good fight!
LOS ANGELES — Protesters, enraged with Zimmerman’s verdict, take over highway.
London Protest Against Racist Verdict
BOSTON