CHICAGO,January 18—Judge Vince Gaughan sentenced racist killer cop Jason Van Dyke to a pathetic 81 months in prison for his brutal murder of Black teenager LaQuan McDonald in October of 2014. The day before, three other racist cops from the Chicago Police Department (CPD) were cleared of all charges in connection to their role in covering up for Van Dyke in the aftermath of LaQuan’s murder (Chicago Sun-Times, 1/17).
These outcomes are perfectly in line with the long history of racist legal inequality under the capitalist system, spanning centuries. The reality demonstrates time and time again that the working class cannot expect justice to come from the bosses’ legal system, which ultimately can only defend the state power of the capitalist class.
The international working class can only expect true justice to be delivered when we organize ourselves to take it by force. By building the international Progressive Labor Party (PLP) and communist revolution, we can destroy capitalism and its legal system designed to protect property and profits. Justice comes when workers collectively run society, with laws based on protecting the needs of our class!
Racism codified into capitalism
Van Dyke’s shameful six-year sentence represents another blunt reality check to the idea that the bosses’ courts will give any real punishment to racist and sexist cops for their crimes against workers. Even a quick glance at the outcome of the many high-profile racist police murders from recent years in the U.S. drives this reality home:
The creation of race and racism was instrumental to the rise of capitalism, with the capitalist class using its state power over the legal system to write and enforce countless racist laws to maintain its rule. From colonial laws that prohibited interaction between white and Black workers, to the U.S. constitution acknowledging Black people as only “three-fifths of a person” and therefore property, to fugitive slave laws, to obscene inequalities in sentencing for drug and weapons offenses in the present day, racism has always been ingrained in capitalist law.
The courts show such leniency to the killer cops because the cops are a chief force responsible for carrying out racist capitalist law. Although the bosses may try to make an example out of a particular cop here and there, overall they know that the police are essential to their needs of dividing and conquering the working class to maintain their system.
Racist politicians cynically exploit LaQuan’s murder
From the moment the dashcam video of VanDyke firing 16 shots into LaQuan was made public in 2015, racist politicians of all stripes jumped on the opportunity to exploit his death for their own ends, whether to deflect criticism from themselves or to attack their rivals. In light of the recent Van Dyke trial and an upcoming mayoral election in Chicago, these despicable efforts have sharpened.
Long-time liberal Chicago boss and current mayoral candidate Toni Preckwinkle has shamelessly inflated her role (she was city medical examiner at the time of LaQuan’s murder) in the efforts to get the dashcam video made public, an obvious appeal to win votes that has backfired against her. Garry McCarthy, who was fired as police superintendent by racist Mayor Rahm Emanuel in the wake of the exposed video, has used the murder and the legitimate backlash against the racist CPD to promote his own “law and order” campaign for mayor.
Community “activist” William Calloway, who was promoted by the bosses’ media as the spokesperson for the grassroots struggle on LaQuan’s behalf, has responded to the recent court decisions with, “We’re not gonna protest and take to the streets. We’re gonna go to the polls” (Chicago Sun-Times, 1/19). Calloway has unsurprisingly made a campaign to run for an alderman position.
By backing any of these racist lowlifes, workers are choosing a losing strategy. Regardless of who ends up in office, we can expect more of the general trend of intensifying gentrification, the closing of more schools, increases in the cost of living, and racist police terror throughout Chicago and beyond. Nothing short of a mass communist-led workers’ movement can challenge that.
What we do counts
Although Van Dyke’s punishment hardly fits his crime, and is a racist slap in the face to LaQuan’s memory, anti-racist fighters should take pride in the fact that it was their mass anger and actions up to this point that made sure that the bosses felt it necessary to give him a sentence at all. The Black Friday demonstrations that blocked Chicago’s Magnificent Mile, the shutting down of major intersections and highways, the demonstrations within and outside the courthouse, and the march upon Van Dyke at his own home – all these bold actions forced the bosses to act out of fear to our working-class anger.
Progressive Labor Party (PLP) has been proud to be a part of many of these actions, and honored to provide leadership to the movement whenever possible. We will continue to fight alongside our working-class sisters and brothers against racist capitalist injustice, always advocating for communist revolution and a worker-run society as the only real way to guarantee justice for our class.