BALTIMORE, August 3—The courts are institutionally racist, and serve the capitalist class; it’s their legal system, not ours, and it’s definitely not neutral. With this in mind, at last week’s West Wednesday rally, a member of Progressive Labor Party (PLP) explained his anger about the trial of a local squeegee worker, facing murder charges.
Last summer, a young Black man was working informally to earn tips at an intersection, asking drivers if they’d like their windshield washed. On July 7, 2022 a white motorist, Timothy Reynolds, pulled over haphazardly amidst heavy traffic, and walked across about 10 lanes of traffic with a metal bat to attack the squeegee workers. He forcefully swung at them, an immediate and deadly threat. One of the squeegee workers, in defense of himself and others, shot Reynolds, who was pronounced dead at a hospital.
A squeegee worker was jailed and charged. A PLP comrade attended his trial, along with many others, to support the squeegee worker. Two days later, our comrade—angered by what he heard and saw—spoke about it at the decade-strong West Wednesday rally, which is a weekly protest against the murder-by-kkkop of Tyrone West in 2023 & all victims of police terror.
Courts & laws defend racism
Bat-wielding Reynolds, as explained by a defense attorney, had no contact with any of the squeegee workers before getting out of his car. He was immediately in racist, attack mode, not due to any personal experience that day.
What’s more, he was 6’ 3” and weighed over 300 pounds, compared to the accused squeegee worker, who was 14 years old and probably weighed less than half as much.
One of the defense lawyers, Mr. Gordon, kept getting his legal arguments objected to—perhaps 20 times in rapid succession, and nearly always sustained by the judge—when he tried to speak about the motive for Reynold’s violence. Mr. Gordon and Judge Schiffer then had quite a battle. Gordon said instead of denying racism, we should be dismantling it.
The judge appeared to get red and said, loudly and defensively, that her blocking of his arguments was due—she claimed—to a lack of relevance, and because the remarks were inflammatory. They sure were inflammatory…to her!
It was disheartening to see—to avoid jailing the squeegee worker for many years—the jury would need to reject 1st degree murder, 2nd degree murder, and manslaughter.
According to the capitalist’s laws, a finding of self-defense meant the jury had to agree the squeegee workers had retreated. What a messed up, capitalist legal system, expecting people to retreat when facing relentless, violent racism!
An article in The Sun (7/23/22), pointed out a major inequality in the outcome of such trials: “A 2013 Urban Institute analysis of FBI homicide data found that killings where the defendant was white and the victim was Black are 10 times more likely to be ruled justified than if the roles are reversed.”
On top of all that, the judge failed to instruct the jury about an important exception to the requirement for retreating. For a finding of self defense, retreat is not required if retreat would be too dangerous. If the squeegee workers had started walking away, retreat would mean their backs were vulnerable to Reynold’s deadly bat.
‘It’s all about the money’
So, yes, our comrade was deeply angered, and expressed that at West Wednesday!
The capitalist framework within which jurors must function, unfortunately, led to a conviction for manslaughter, not the worst, but still meaning up to ten years in jail. It's important to note that no prison sentence can address the racist ideas that led to this murder; capitalist "justice" is a lie!
At West Wednesday, our comrade said, “People often think the courts are neutral, that the police are neutral, that the government is neutral. But the fact of the matter is, the majority of the laws in the United States deal with property relations. And about half of one percent of the people own the vast majority of property: not just land, but businesses and machinery too: anything that can produce a profit. So the legal system is really their legal system. It’s 100 percent biased. And we saw that in this trial!”
Tyrone West’s sister, giving the major speech at that same rally, hit the nail on the head! “This is a dirty system… When you have the media portraying squeegee kids as goons, thugs, as bad people, as soon as a racist comes in town, they’re coming to attack… They have so many laws that are not right. You’ve got all these racist judges… They don’t want to address racism. It feeds this capitalist system… It’s all about the money, and that’s sad and disgusting… I just feel like we need to smash and trash this system!”
