7th anniversary of Kyam: Multiracial caravan indicts racist profit system

BROOKLYN, NY, July 21 — On the seventh anniversary of the murder of Kyam Livingston, a militant, multiracial, antiracist car caravan rolled down the streets of the Flatbush and East Flatbush neighborhoods of Brooklyn, chanting and indicting this entire racist capitalist system. This system rains murder disproportionately on young Black and Latin women and men like Kyam at the hands of kkkops year after year, and the call to fight back for justice was greeted with cheers and support throughout the route.
 The revolutionary communist Progressive Labor Party (PLP) joined the caravan saying that the working class must overthrow this entire capitalist system, and replace it with a communist system that outlaws racism, sexism, imperialism, nationalism, fascism and all the “-isms” that keep  capitalism afloat!
Black women lead the fight for justice
The route of the caravan was planned in honor of the memory of Kyam, and also to continue to link her death to two other victims of racist police murder, Shantel Davis and Kimani “Kiki” Gray, who lived nearby. Hundreds of leaflets linking the anniversary of Kyam’s murder to the recent antiracist rebellions against the murders of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and so many others were distributed, as well as 150 CHALLENGE newspapers.
Members of the Livingston and Davis families, a mom and a sister, both strong women, helped lead today’s action. They gave leadership side by side with PL'ers who have been strong supporters of these families ever since the racist murders of their loved ones.
Seven years of antiracist struggle
It has been seven years fighting for justice for Kyam. On July 21, 2013, 37 year-old Kyam Livingston was being held in a cell in the kkkops’ Brooklyn Central Booking. As she called out in pain for medical attention, the kkkops ignored her and the others in the cell who began calling out to help her as well. Kyam was murdered by the racist kkkops who ignored her pleas for help, by the racist NYPD who covered it up and suppressed evidence, and by capitalism’s utter indifference for working class lives, especially Black working class women.
Masses of workers in the U.S. and around the world, Black and white, already know “liberty and justice for all” is a sick racist joke. The Black women leaders in this car caravan indicted both the killer kkkops and this racist capitalist system – and they show us a glimpse of the key role of Black women workers’ leadership in taking the fight for justice all the way: for armed communist revolution.
Smash racist police terror with multiracial unity
Capitalism is utterly dependent on racism both politically, to divide and conquer the entire working class, and also economically: to reap untold billions of dollars in racist super-profits. In 1866, militant abolitionist Frederick Douglass wrote a scathing open letter attacking the racist U.S. government: “the hostility between the poor whites and blacks…was incited on both sides by the cunning of the slave masters. Those masters secured their ascendancy over both. They divided both to conquer each.” Racism hurts all workers, and racist oppression exists to support and enhance this racist super-exploitation – and one of the principal means of oppression is racist police terror.
Modern U.S. police were formed out of slave patrols post-Civil War, and today they murder us at a rate of 1,000 workers per year. While, kkkops murder more white workers every year, Black and Latin workers are killed at a disproportionately higher rate. Black workers are murdered more than double the rate of white workers, as well as indigenous workers, given their relatively smaller population following centuries of capitalist genocide.
 Racist police terror keeps the entire working class terrorized and intimidated from uniting and rebelling. The fight against racist police terror and the fight for justice for Kyam, like George Floyd and Breonna Taylor, is the fight of ALL workers Black, Asian, Latin and white. The capitalist bosses holding the leashes of their vicious kkkop attack dogs while planning deadlier imperialist wars fear communist-led multiracial working class unity the most, and that is precisely what PLP is fighting to build internationally.
Fight for justice for Kyam and revolution!
The fight for justice for Kyam and for revolution grows with every mass action like this car caravan and by bringing CHALLENGE to more and more workers each issue. The seven-year struggle for justice is far from over because the future of the international working class is bright: workers along our caravan route raised their fists and cheered on our efforts; drivers honked their horns and waved as we passed. Neighborhoods, job sites and schools we passed that have been sites of PL's struggles over the years are today’s fertile ground where we yield recruits, fighters and supporters in our fight for communist revolution!