Statement by the Revolutionary Communist Party, USA, Bay Area Branch:
THE TRAGIC KILLING OF KATHRYN STEINLE – AND THE SYSTEM’S MURDEROUS, ILLEGITIMATE WAR ON IMMIGRANTS
July 13, 2015 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us
On July 1, 32-year-old Kathryn Steinle was shot and killed as she walked along San Francisco’s Embarcadero with her parents. Police quickly arrested Juan Francisco Lopez-Sanchez, a 45 year old Mexican immigrant laborer.
Then the monsters who represent this monstrous system seized on Steinle’s tragic killing to justify far greater brutality and violence -- against immigrants, especially undocumented Latina/o immigrants.
Lopez-Sanchez was immediately vilified by politicians and the media and presumed guilty. A chorus erupted from openly racist fools like Donald Trump, as well as “mainstream” politicians like Democrats Hillary Clinton and Diane Feinstein and Republican Jeb Bush, calling for tougher action against “criminal” undocumented immigrants and attacking sanctuary measures providing basic due process or humane treatment that 300 cities, including San Francisco, have adopted.
First off, this is a country of colonizing immigrants who genocided the native inhabitants! So don’t say a damn word about “illegal immigration” or “criminal” immigrants!
Since that blood-soaked founding, this country’s rulers have a long history of seizing on real (or concocted) tragedies to whip up xenophobic, racist, and pogromist demonization of the oppressed. These campaigns have nothing to do with the accused’s actual guilt or innocence; they’re about ramming through attacks on the people the system has “queued up” and ready to go.
The 1989 case of the “Central Park 5” is a grotesque example: a white female jogger was brutally attacked and raped in Central Park. Five Black and Latino teenagers were quickly arrested. The media and the political establishment – including Donald Trump – went wild, branding them a "wolfpack" and “crazed misfits.” It turned out, after the five languished in prison for years, that all of them were totally innocent! No matter – their “example” was used by the rulers to justify the stepped up draconian repression against Black and Latino youth that has led to millions being stopped and frisked, imprisoned, and thousands being murdered by police.
And think about it: where were the calls to demonize, criminalize, and round up all disaffected white youth after one carried out a deliberate, cold-blooded, racist massacre of a Bible Study class at a Black church in Charleston, South Carolina?
The U.S. rulers are doing the same thing today with immigrants -- criminalizing and demonizing oppressed people who’ve been forced to cross the border to survive and feed their families. Why have they been forced to migrate? Because U.S. imperialism has raped and plundered their countries, installed death squad governments to enforce that imperialist robbery, and robbed people of any hope or future. Then, when they come to El Norte, the capitalists prey on their undocumented status to super exploit them, robbing them once again.
This is maintained with heartless violence and cruelty on a massive scale. Hundreds die every year trying to cross the increasingly militarized border, and 39 have been killed outright by border patrol officials since 2010. 400,000 undocumented immigrants are imprisoned or detained each year. Under Obama, a record two million plus have been deported. What about these human beings being deprived basic rights and subjected to conditions amounting to torture? What about these families torn asunder? What about these children ripped from their parents? Where is the outrage and media furor over all this horror?
It’s this system that’s illegitimate and criminal – not crossing the border! The demonization, criminalization and massive imprisonment of immigrants have no more legitimacy than the fugitive slave laws did in the 1850's! The only way to end this system’s horrors is through revolution, nothing less, and replacing it with something far, far better.
A key part of working toward that revolution is understanding that immigrants – those with papers and those without – are our brothers and sisters, and that opposing all assaults on immigrants is a key battlefront against all oppression. The more that people fighting on one front become fighters on every front, the stronger each of these battles becomes... and the chance for basic, fundamental change throughout society becomes more real.
STOP—THE DEMONIZATION, CRIMINALIZATION AND DEPORTATIONS OF IMMIGRANTS AND THE MILITARIZATION OF THE BORDER!
FIGHT THE POWER, AND TRANSFORM THE PEOPLE, FOR REVOLUTION
Now I can just hear these reactionary fools saying, “Well, Bob, answer me this. If this country is so terrible, why do people come here from all over the world? Why are so many people trying to get in, not get out?”...Why? I’ll tell you why. Because you have fucked up the rest of the world even worse than what you have done in this country. You have made it impossible for many people to live in their own countries as part of gaining your riches and power.
- Bob Avakian, BAsics 1:14
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