Shantel Davis Four Years Later, No Justice Under Capitalism

BROOKLYN, June 14—Today marked four years since the day that the NYPD brutally shot down Shantel Davis. A multi-racial group of about 30 PLP members and friends and some other community organizers congregated with Shantel’s family on the street corner where she was killed to commemorate her life and our four years of fightback. With heavy faces and tear-stained eyes, our collective stood with a myriad of white balloons. In the wake of four years of fighting back against tragedy, one theme remained present throughout the night: Justice for Shantel and all victims of police brutality means nothing short of communist revolution.
The rally began with bullhorn speeches by PL members, the Davis family, and the families of other members of the working class who have been murdered by the kkkops, such as Ramarley Graham, Mohamed Bah, and Anthony Baez. Speeches were bolstered by chants from the crowd of “Racism means we got to fight back!” and “We will never forget Shantel! We will always fight for Shantel!” in between. We then blocked traffic in all four directions of the intersection as we formed a huge circle in the center. As traffic piled up, drivers were told why we were there and they stood in support. More remarks were made over the bullhorn as members of the neighborhood looked on and recorded the spectacle of a multiracial group of protesters on their phones.  
Shantel’s sister delivered a particularly heartbreaking speech. She thanked PL and all in attendance for their extended support in the fightback against this grave tragedy. Her sister had been callously killed on false pretenses, shot in the chest while begging for her life, and her family hadn’t even been afforded the opportunity to properly grieve. Their first task had been to reverse the smear campaign set out by the bosses’ media, which was set in motion immediately after her death, describing Shantel as a criminal monster. Anything to try to convince the community that it was a necessary and justified killing! The reality is that it is the NYPD acting as the neighborhood thugs, violently instilling fear in the working class. In fact, the detective who killed Shantel is particularly known as a menace in the neighborhood—“Bad Boy” Atkins.
Shantel’s sister ended her speech choking past tears, with the words, “I just don’t know what to do anymore…” This speaks volumes about what capitalist “justice” means—there is none! Over the past four years, she has become an incredible, strong leader in the fightback movement against police brutality, but this is what a fight for reform, for a “fix” to the justice system, does to working class morale. Only communism smashes the racism that built this system, and so only the long-term fight for that world can keep us feeling that we can win. PLP knows what to do—and the families of kkkop victims are being won to that idea.
In the months immediately following Shantel’s murder, a group of misleaders tried to convince Shantel’s family that in order to get justice for their sister, they shouldn’t be too militant, as it would make it harder to win within the legal system. These anticommunists “cautioned” Shantel’s family that we in PLP were there for “our own reasons” and we “didn’t really care about Shantel.” 4 years later, the politicians have disappeared and it has become obvious that winning within the legal system is a myth. While the misleaders preached a “behind-the-scenes” approach, we fought for and won Shantel’s sisters to the strategy of organizing a justice committee, along with some of their close friends, to fight back militantly.
The struggle to move our marches from the sidewalks to the streets came out of a bigger political struggle to see that the biggest wins could only come from showing our strength as a multi-racial group fighting back in the streets, to see the courts and politicians as part of the same system as the cops—and to see their fight as part of a bigger working class fight, even if they never see capitalist “justice” for their family member.
This evening ended on a note of hope. We released our white balloons decorated with notes: ‘Justice for Shantel’, ‘We will always fight for Shantel; ‘Fight for Communist Revolution’. One comrade made this poetic observation as the balloons floated into the sky: “They’ve gone so far, and they’re still sticking together.” Let us take this metaphor as a reminder of how we must fight daily to strengthen our force of multi-racial working class unity, build PLP and work towards revolution, so one day we may all receive justice.