Need Justice for Kyam, ‘Voting Won’t Do It’

BROOKLYN, September 26—The protesters moved out into the middle of the street, stopping traffic on Church Avenue on Sept 21. Kyam Livingston’s mother, Anita, echoed many of the speeches made at this demonstration when she said, “We need this struggle to end the killings. Voting won’t do it.” Members of the Progressive Labor Party (PLP) were at this rally with our newspaper Challenge. We encouraged people to join the lifelong struggle for communism, a society run by the working class that will end racism and sexism once and for all. The demonstrators then released balloons and Kyam’s mother said an invocation to her daughter’s memory.
This demonstration marked the 38th month after the killing of Kyam Livingston who died under police custody in a Brooklyn holding cell. It was a large demonstration. There are always people standing on the street listening to the speeches and chants, but this time there was a larger than usual crowd on all the street corners. Many of those people crossed the street to stand with us. The crowd gave donations to help continue the struggle and many took our revolutionary, communist newspaper, Challenge. It was the day after the world heard about the racist police murders of two more Black workers—one in Charleston and the other in Tulsa, Oklahoma. People were angry and wanted to listen about fighting back. A PL’er spoke about raising this struggle on our jobs, in our unions and communities, and at our schools. Let’s organize to fight back everywhere. We need persistence and consistency in going out with the message that racism kills and we need to fight back with multi-racial unity. Many people had tears in their eyes while they listened to the story of how Kyam was cruelly mistreated and ignored by her jailers when she became ill and was refused medical attention.
Some members of a local church attended this rally. At that same church, a discussion on Black Lives Matter took place the following Sunday. A number of the attendees were loud in their anger towards the continued racist terror and spoke of their desire to seek solutions. Many people said they would attend the next Justice for Kyam Livingston demonstration.
At this rally, all the speakers talked about the need for multiracial unity to end these racist killings. They said that all people of all backgrounds, should be involved in the struggle against racist violence because it hurts us all. A PLP member said that capitalism breeds racism. Capitalists need a divided working class to keep wages low and their profits high. The capitalists cannot continue their rule if all the workers unite and fight back. The speaker said that only communism would end this contradiction and called upon people to read and distribute Challenge and become communists. Only this will end racism once and for all.
The demonstrators and supporters were so excited by this rally that they kept talking for another half hour after the demonstration ended. It’s clear that people are fired up. It’s clear that the struggle will continue. We need justice for all the victims of police murder and we need a communist world for the working class. Join us!