Shantel Davis: Three Years Later, the Struggle Continues

BROOKLYN, June 14 — Three years ago, Shantel Davis was murdered by Philip Atkins, a plainclothes detective for the New York Police Department, at the intersection of East 38th Street and Church Avenue in East Flatbush, Brooklyn. In the ensuing weeks and months, Shantel’s relatives, neighbors, along with members of PLP, local clergy and elected officials organized a series of marches to the 67th Precinct to demand justice.  
Ever since that tragic day, Shantel’s sister battled through phases of grief but remained steadfast in her determination to keep her Shantel’s memory alive.  While misleaders from a phony left group and the New York City Council attempted to derail the struggle away from confrontation with the NYPD and the Brooklyn district attorney’s office, the anger of Shantel’s family and friends and members of Progressive Labor Party burned even brighter.
A comrade was invited to help open today’s commemorative rally by recounting the stages of the struggle, from street closures to rallying at the DA office to motorcades, from confronting ex-NYPD Commissioner Ray Kelly to school-based speak-outs and much more.  
Then family members of eleven other brothers and sisters killed by the NYPD over the course of the past twenty years recounted their struggles. Some described their meetings with mayors, governors, others of the need for a Baltimore-style uprising in New York. They have seen fascist disregard for the lives of Black and Latin youth, their sons and daughters, up close.
A comrade was invited by Shantel’s sister to close the rally.  After attacking the racist policy of meeting youth at predominantly Black and Latino high schools with an NYPD scanning operation and calling for an end to racist policing in our schools, he went on to hail the working-class fighters who preceded him on the microphone as the greatest educators in the city.  He recounted all the varieties of reforms these families have pursued in search of justice and called it a lesson in our collective education about the true nature of the racist system we live under.  He reminded all present of capitalism’s origins in racist genocide and slavery and its current trend toward more war. There were many nods and approvals when he suggested that if justice is what matters most, then revolution might be the only way we will get it.
The evening closed with the blocking of traffic, a prayer and release of balloons in Shantel’s memory as a dozen of her friends from a local motorcycle club revved their engines in solidarity. It was a night to remember, with the unbeatable combination of communist politics and mass anger that will not die. It was not the last time we will gather and call for revolution in Shantel’s name.