PRINCE GEORGE’S COUNTY, MD, October 17— Scores of antiracist fighters gathered to condemn racist police brutality in Prince George’s County, MD, Baltimore, and the world. Fiery speeches were delivered by relatives of Black men murdered by the police from the 1990s through today. The rally closed with a bold speech by a PLP member who urged participants to organize long-term to crush the fountainhead of racist brutality—capitalism—with multiracial militant organizing through the Progressive Labor Party (PLP).
Then came Part II  of today’s direct action – an unpublicized caravan to the opulent, corner-lot home of County Executive Angela Alsobrooks. She is a Black Democrat and former prosecutor who uses nationalism to cover up her cop-loving history and her selfish ambitions to be governor. She is one of many Black politicians in the county leadership who dismiss the needs of Black working class people in Prince George’s. Over 50 people filled the street and sidewalks by her house, with multiple bullhorns blasting her for her crimes against the working class. It took the cops over 15 minutes to show up to protect her and attempt (unsuccessfully) to intimidate us!
One mother condemned Alsobrooks for having indicted her son when she was States Attorney on a false gun charge. The gun in question actually belonged to the cop who made the false arrest and had been found under the laptop of the cop! A PLP member also lambasted Alsobrooks for having invited the mother of a teenager who had been murdered by the police to a meeting on false pretenses after a protest. She told this mother and her many supporters that she had no intention of re-opening the case! The teenager, Archie Elliott III, was gunned down by cops in 1993 while seated in a patrol car after having been searched, hands cuffed behind his back. The cops falsely claimed he pointed a gun at them from that position! The PLer declared, “We, the united working class, are coming for you and your capitalist partners in crime.” Other speakers criticized Alsobrooks’ attempt to co-opt the antiracist movement by establishing a police reform task force that includes mainly cops and prosecutors, with window-dressing slots for representatives from the NAACP, the SCLC, PG Changemakers, and the Public Defenders’ office.
This event was initiated by the sister of the Hyattsville police murder victim Leonard Shand (see CHALLENGE, 11/6/2019 and 5/27), and joined by other local organizations that have grown as a result of the summer of uprisings after the murders of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor. It also comes on the heels of a major Zoom conference organized by Community Justice on police brutality in Prince George’s County. The rally occurred only a day after another young worker was killed by the Hyattsville police. PLP members have provided leadership and consistency to the past 45 years of struggle here against police brutality and continue to organize amidst the rising anger and militancy of these organizations. This bodes well for a resurgent working class revolt against the capitalist system.
But still, a recurring theme at anti-police brutality actions like this one is the imperative to hold cops and politicians accountable and to demand reforms to achieve this. The truth is that the police and politicians are doing the jobs they’re supposed to – on behalf of the capitalist class, not us! The capitalists need racist intimidation and terror against the working class in order to keep us fearful and divided, reducing our ability to unify and overthrow their racist exploitative system. We would do well, then, to expand our vision beyond fruitless efforts to reform an unchangeably exploitative system and heed the words of the PLP speaker who called for the revolutionary overthrow of capitalism itself, and its replacement with a system of communist equality and collectivity.