‘Hoops for Justice’ serves our class

BROOKLYN, August 28—For the eighth time in nine years the families of Shantel Davis and Kimani Gray joined with neighbors, friends, community organizations and the Progressive Labor Party (PLP) to offer a different kind of basketball tournament to the Black youth of East Flatbush—Hoops for Justice.   
Shantel and Kimani were killed by killer kkkops working out of the 67th precinct.  In the weeks and months after Shantel’s death in June of 2012, PLP members built a base with her family in the process of organizing street marches to the precinct.  When Kimani was killed in March of 2013, a significant youth rebellion ensued along the same stretch of Church Avenue where our demonstrations had taken place over the prior months.  Hoops for Justice emerged as an annual event to continue the struggle in memory of Shantel and Kimani.
A hallmark of this tournament and the whole fight by this group of families for justice for their loved ones has been to rely on the working class. This reliance on the working class has let all of us see the beginnings of a communist workers led society. A society that we are fighting to put in place by organizing for communist revolution.
A tournament that puts the working class first
A wet start to the day could not dampen the enthusiasm that dozens of young people brought to this now-familiar summer affair. Other tournaments proceeded this summer as if Covid-19 did  not exist, similar to how Mayor Bill de Blasio has opened the city’s schools. These money-making basketball operations showed a disregard for the health of working-class youth in much the same way that the de Blasio school reopening plan was meant to keep the profit-making NYC economy going. Not Hoops for Justice.
Our leadership committee for the tournament engaged in a sharp struggle over the nature of the coronavirus and the urgent need for vaccination. Loved ones of Shantel and Kimani brought a rock-solid determination that this year’s event must go on.
PLP guaranteed that a consistent message that testing and vaccination are a crucial piece of the back to school routine was delivered.
Serving the working class, not the politicians
The slogan of community over competition emerged from our committee meetings and became a refrain at this year’s tournament. As in past years the food provided, the referee stipends, and the music were all provided due to the independent fundraising and leadership of the working class. The families who lost their loved ones have been wooed and courted by local elected officials to join this or that opportunist operation.  
 The families led the largest Manhattan demonstration in the wake of the killing of George Floyd. The “NO” from these women to the liberal political establishment has been steadfast.  Their sense of justice—that no other family ought to ever suffer what they have—can never be satisfied by any of these lying, self-serving, petty, conniving, hack Democratic Party politicians. Only communism can meet this standard of justice and our rededication this year to that fight was marked at a touching memorial in the last hour of the tournament.  Onward!