NEW YORK CITY, July 24—When Eric Garner fought for his life five years ago, saying “I can’t breathe” 11 times before dying in a chokehold captured on video, outrage at this racist cop murder exploded in an outpouring of militant multiracial demonstrations that shut cities down.
Eric Holder, Obama’s do-nothing attorney general, refused to pursue a federal civil rights charge against Daniel Pantaleo, Garner’s killer. This has now resulted in no punishment for this fiend. Meanwhile liberal mayor Bill de Blasio refuses to meet the Garner family’s demand to fire Pantaleo.
Garner’s mother, sister and others have called for eleven days of outrage in the wake of the federal decision, and Progressive Labor Party (PLP) members were there on the first day’s rally. At points, marchers around us picked up PL-led chants like “If we don’t get it, shut it down!” and kept them going through the crowd. “I can’t breathe!” choked the streets of lower Manhattan, as hundreds demanded the imprisonment of Pantaleo.
PLP’s presence and CHALLENGE was also felt at a gathering organized by the Garner family the Saturday before the federal no-indictment decision, which brought together mothers of 24 Black youth slain by the police. At this intergenerational event CHALLENGE was welcomed by Garner’s mother and multiracial unity in the struggle for justice was emphasized by his sister.
NYPD rotten to the core
Each time one of these police is cleared of wrongdoing the political message is crystal clear—brutality and wanton murder is not an aberration or a mistake, but an essential function of policing in racist, capitalist United States. Pantaleo walks free. Of course, Pantaleo has a pattern of abuse: “Pantaleo was previously accused of false arrest and violating police procedures in two lawsuits, according to court records…In one lawsuit, two Black plaintiffs each won $15,000 after claiming they’d been falsely arrested in 2012 and forced to publicly strip for a search” (Vox, 7/14/2015). Similarly, Black NYPD cop “Bad Boy” Phillip Atkins who killed Shantel Davis caused over $200,000 in excessive force settlements to be paid out before he took her life.
Though a rash of high-profile racist police murders marked the tenure of Amerikkka’s first Black president not a single cop was punished by Obama’s so-called ‘Justice’ Department.
Violent nature of capitalism
Families like the Garner, Livingston, West, Davis and more fighting for justice over many years are positioned to see clearly a lesson the entire working class must absorb: elections do not change the basic violent, racist and anti-worker nature of capitalist state power.
It is up to PLP to organize these families and many millions more into a movement to smash that state power in a multiracial communist revolution that will forever abolish racist police murder.