Shantel’s 7-year anniversary: Black leadership key to revolution

Brooklyn, June 14 - “How do you spell RACIST? N-Y-P-D!!!” This uncompromising chant was shouted in defiance by a determined band of anti-racist fighters who rallied and blocked traffic in memory of Shantel Davis, murdered by killer kkkop ‘Bad Boy’ Phillip Atkins seven years ago today.
A blue-shirted ‘community affairs’ cop attempted to rush a solemn release of balloons in memory of Shantel and anger exploded among families, who had members killed by cops. The cops interference only served to prolong our occupation of the street. Carloads of plainclothes assassins like the one who shot Shantel swarmed the scene.  No arrests were made, as the show of fascist strength was matched by the strength of multi-racial working class unity with communist politics in the lead.
Though Public Advocate Jumaane Williams (the #2 figure in New York City government under Mayor Bill de Blasio) was present, Shantel’s sister asked a Progressive Labor Party member to give the opening speech. Jumaane has been in our protests from the start, but has delivered little. Here is the PLP speech:
Like so many other families who have survived racist cop murder, the one thing Shantel’s sister wants is for no other family to have to suffer the loss she has faced. But this is the one thing that no elected official can promise. In fact, just nine months after Shantel was killed by Atkins, Kimani Gray, 16, was killed by cops working out of the same Flatbush precinct, the 67.  
Atkins had a record of settlements against him well into six figures at the time he murdered Shantel.  The city paid out damages because he had a track record of being brutal. But he was kept on the streets.  In fact, the city knows who are their most brutal cops, because they pay out the money in damages when complaints are filed.  Yet the ruling class keeps these cops on the force no matter who the mayor is.  Elections do not change that. And so any leader who tells you that an election can give Shantel’s sister, and all the other grieving families, a system where racist cop murder won’t happen again is a liar and a misleader.  In fact the youth rebellion that erupted after Kimani was killed, or the rebellion that just hit Memphis,over another police killing of a Black man, are closer to what it is going to take to end racist cop murder than any election could ever be.
This misleaders’ strategy of elections will only get more intense as we approach the 2020 election. But just like liberals want us to live with racist cop murder, they will hide their march to World War III behind the cover of being anti-Trump.
These families have suffered a loss the rest of us can’t imagine. We need to trust their leadership to continue the struggle through the emotional ups and downs of life without their loved ones, not the misleadership of those who point us to elections as an answer.  It’s going to take a revolution and a communist world for us to have the society that will deliver on the promise of making racist cop murder a thing of the past.
Another speaker called for multiracial unity and a rejection of the kind of identity politics that would make Shantel’s murder a ‘Black issue’ or a ‘women’s issue.’  Her call for working class solidarity was loud and clear.
When mis-leader Jumaane spoke there was little left for him to say.  He said that it is true he could never deliver on a promise that any racist cop murder would be the last.  That it was true that the most important leaders are un-elected, even that capitalism was no good and that he hoped to be ‘with us’ in a revolution, but that for now we had to use the tools of the system, like we use money every day, and vote.  
This is why liberal politicians are the most dangerous: because they will say whatever it takes – including that they want a revolution – to get us to live with capitalism’s inevitable and necessary attacks on our class.  This is how we must understand Sanders’ call for a ‘political revolution’ and who ever else emerges as the anti-Trump in 2020 – they want us to live with what is killing us, capitalism.  We will have to kill their influence over the workers in order to kill capitalism.  
For a short time on the seventh anniversary of Shantel’s death, on one street corner in Flatbush, in the face of a disproportionate police presence, the multi-racial, intergenerational working class, with bold leadership from Black workers and communists, achieved the kind of political victory that will bring us closer to the classless society that will not only forever abolish racist cop murder, but also the very concept of race.