Seattle: Hundreds Rally and March to Demand Justice for Charleena Lyles, Murdered by Police
June 22, 2017 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us
On June 20, two days after the Seattle police murdered Charleena Lyles, a 30-year-old Black woman with four kids, hundreds of people rallied and marched in outrage. The protesters gathered at the scene of the murder and marched for miles, chanting to demand justice and doing a call and response: “Say her name—Charleena.”
Lyles had called police on Sunday, June 18, to report an attempted burglary at her apartment at the Brettler Family Place housing project. Two white cops arrived at her door—and they both fired their weapons, hitting Charleena Lyles multiple times and killing her.
Family members said Charleena Lyles was several months pregnant and that one of her children has Down syndrome and requires constant care and vigilance. A police spokesman said the cops fired because she had a knife. She had reported a burglary—so, if she did have a knife as the cops claim, wouldn’t it make sense that she was trying to defend herself? Charleena’s family said she had some mental health issues—but as in so many other such cases, the police acted as executioners instead of helpers. Whatever the case, there is no justification whatsoever for the pigs to have gunned down Charleena Lyles in cold blood!
Her relatives said that she was small in size and was no threat to anyone. One of her sisters, Monika Williams, said, “Why couldn’t they have Tased her? They could have taken her down. I could have taken her down.” Another sister, Tiffany Rogers, said, "I'll never see my sister again. Her kids will never see her again… I just want to grieve right now. I can’t even do that because I’m so angry. I'm scared of our so-called protectors. I was before, but I definitely am now."
The Seattle mayor made a pitiful statement that the killing of Charleena Lyles was “a tragedy for all involved.” No, goddamn it! This was an intolerable crime—committed by the armed enforcers of a criminal capitalist-imperialist system that rules over the people.
Charleena Lyles was murdered after calling the police for help. Two days after her murder, a cop in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, who had gunned down Sylville Smith, a 23-year-old Black man, last year was acquitted of all charges. And two days before Lyles was killed, a court in Minneapolis delivered a not guilty verdict on the pig who murdered Philando Castile, who was doing everything they say you’re supposed to do when stopped by the police. The month before that it was the pig who murdered Terence Crutcher in Oklahoma who walked free… and on and on.
It’s righteous for people to be out in the streets against these intolerable outrages. And, as Carl Dix said in his statement about the system’s stamp of approval on the police murder of Philando Castile, “We must do this as part of getting ready and in position for an actual revolution, one that overthrows this system because that's the only way to end this horror, and all the other horrors this system enforces on people around the world and in this country.”
Editor’s note: Tyisha Miller was a 19-year-old African-American woman shot dead by Riverside, California police in 1998. Miller had been passed out in her car, resulting from a seizure, when police claimed that she suddenly awoke and had a gun; they fired 23 times at her, hitting her at least 12 times, and murdering her. Bob Avakian addressed this.
If you can’t handle this situation differently than this, then get the fuck out of the way. Not only out of the way of this situation, but get off the earth. Get out of the way of the masses of people. Because, you know, we could have handled this situation any number of ways that would have resulted in a much better outcome. And frankly, if we had state power and we were faced with a similar situation, we would sooner have one of our own people’s police killed than go wantonly murder one of the masses. That’s what you’re supposed to do if you’re actually trying to be a servant of the people. You go there and you put your own life on the line, rather than just wantonly murder one of the people. Fuck all this “serve and protect” bullshit! If they were there to serve and protect, they would have found any way but the way they did it to handle this scene. They could have and would have found a solution that was much better than this. This is the way the proletariat, when it’s been in power has handled—and would again handle—this kind of thing, valuing the lives of the masses of people. As opposed to the bourgeoisie in power, where the role of their police is to terrorize the masses, including wantonly murdering them, murdering them without provocation, without necessity, because exactly the more arbitrary the terror is, the more broadly it affects the masses. And that’s one of the reasons why they like to engage in, and have as one of their main functions to engage in, wanton and arbitrary terror against the masses of people.
Bob Avakian, BAsics 2:16
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