Terence Crutcher Murdered in Cold Blood in Tulsa, Oklahoma
Do NOT Let This Go Down...
Do NOT Let This SYSTEM Continue One Minute Longer Than Necessary
September 20, 2016 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us
September 16—it’s twilight on a Friday evening and Terence Crutcher, 40 years old, a father of four, is driving home from his music appreciation class at Tulsa Community College. His SUV stalls out in the middle of the road. Should be just one of the petty hassles of life. But because Terence Crutcher was a Black man, and because Tulsa is located in Amerikkka, it meant the end of his life.
We don’t know everything that happened—police video did not capture all that was done or said and we’ve yet to hear much from any non-pig eyewitnesses. But we do know this:
As Terence Crutcher walked away from his vehicle he encountered two cops. Crutcher had not done anything wrong, he was not “wanted” for anything, he was not a suspect in any crime. Yet within minutes the cops had guns trained on him, more cops on the way, and a police helicopter flying overhead. Think about that—a helicopter, like Terence Crutcher was a wild animal that had escaped from the zoo, or a serial killer who busted out of jail.
Before the cops had seen their own video of the incident, Tulsa police spokeswoman Jeanne Mackenzie described what happened next like this:
“They asked him to show his hands. He refused to follow commands given by the officers. They continued to talk to him. He continued not to listen, not follow any commands. As they got closer to the vehicle he reached inside the vehicle and at that time there was a Taser deployment and then a short time later there was one shot fired.”
Police shooting of Terence Crutcher as filmed from helicopter.
Now watch the video to see what a total lie this was! You see Crutcher walking at a steady pace with his hands continuously up in the air towards his SUV, the two cops, guns pointed at his back, a few feet behind and going at the same pace. You hear a cop in the helicopter say “This guy’s still walking, following commands.” And then his partner chimes in: “Time for a Taser. That looks like a bad dude.” And again, think about this—a perfectly normal man seen from hundreds of feet up, following police commands, is described as “a bad dude,” who should be jolted with thousands of potentially fatal volts of electricity, for the crime of having-car-trouble-while-Black.
Crutcher reaches the SUV. He puts both hands, still raised, against the side of the vehicle, and seconds later he is tased and then shot, in rapid succession. As Crutcher—apparently still alive—bleeds in the street, the cops go about their business for several minutes without even providing comfort, much less aid.
NO MORE Stolen Lives
Another pig murder, another stolen life.
We’re three years into an upsurge of exposure, outrage, protest and rebellion. We’ve seen at least dozens of these videos. And for every police killing caught on video, there are literally dozens that are not—over 1,000 a year. And for every police murder, there are countless incidents of Black and Brown people being harassed, degraded, insulted, beaten, arrested on trumped up charges. And for every incident like that there are ripples of fear that spread out to literally millions, enforcing a state of intimidation and terror among oppressed people, making people think twice about going to the store at night, about driving through a white neighborhood, about hanging out with their friends on the street, about letting their kids go to a playground. This violence against people of color is playing the same role it has always played in the United States, since the days when this country’s economy and power was literally built on the enslavement of Africans, the genocide of the Native Americans, the theft of half of Mexico, and the brutal exploitation of immigrants of many different nationalities.
This shit is not an accident people! What we see on the video is not just the brutal murder of one man; we are seeing a concentration of the white supremacy that is and has always been at the core of the U.S. version of capitalism-imperialism, violence that echoes back to the deepest bowels of the slave ships and will reverberate forward into the future... as long as this system is in effect, as long as we let it.
We Don’t Need a “Seat at the Table,” We Need an ACTUAL Revolution
The people who rule over this system of exploitation and oppression see that people are outraged that time after time police murder Black and Brown people, and get a pat on the back for it. Some who represent for the ruling class—like Trump—have a one-track mind: ratchet up police terror and call out and whip up armed white supremacist fascists. Others, like Hillary Clinton, see a need to mix in crocodile tears and to preach that: “we’ve got to have law enforcement respect communities and communities respect law enforcement because they have to work together.” This “advice” from someone who played a critical role in the 90s demonizing Black youth as “predators,” shredding welfare, and accelerating mass incarceration is a call to respect brutal enforcers of oppression who rampage through the inner cities like an occupying army.
In the same vein, a pastor in Tulsa said: “We have to let justice [sic!] take its course ... [W]e have some who are so angry that they want this to be just affirmation that every negative opinion that they have of our justice system is confirmed. You can’t corral everyone when you have so many varying agendas and mindsets. The only thing you can attempt to do is be the voice of reason and put something in place that will help your people vent, and that is safe and in a practical way ... I’m pushing for not only a march or a meeting, I’m pushing for a seat at the table, where we can affect change in the policies and the culture of the police versus the community.”
That’s slave talk. The pig murder of Terence Crutcher is an “affirmation that every negative opinion that [people] have” of the so-called “justice system is confirmed.” But more than that: this whole damn system is guilty as hell. If that wasn’t true, then why do police kill unarmed Black and Brown people and get away with it over and over and over again?
Asking for a “seat at the table” of a genocidal system is asking to help carry out genocide. People’s anger doesn’t need to be “corralled.” It needs to be strengthened, made more determined, and channeled and diverted into getting organized for an ACTUAL revolution to overthrow this system at the soonest possible time. Or else this madness continues.
There is leadership for a revolution in Bob Avakian, and the party he leads—the Revolutionary Communist Party. There is a serious strategy for revolution—see HOW WE CAN WIN—How We Can Really Make Revolution and the Message from the Central Committee of the RCP, USA “Time to Get Organized for an ACTUAL Revolution.” Get your hands on these messages now. Read them, and get them out everywhere.
And as one essential part of working now, towards a situation where a revolution would have a chance at success, there needs to be resistance to the crimes of this system that is both determined and broad. This is not about whether or not this affects “you,” this is about what kind of society, and what kind of world people are going to live in. It is just not acceptable for anyone to allow the powers-that-be to get away with murdering people to enforce a reign of terror on people for whom this system has no future.
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