The Trial of the Cops Who Murdered Freddie Gray:
The Whole Damn System Is Guilty as Hell!
December 7, 2015 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us
Freddie Gray
Gary Proctor, the lawyer for William Porter, the first of the six Baltimore cops facing trial for the murder of Freddie Gray, wound up his opening statement in the case by doing a take-off of a slogan heard in the streets of Baltimore and many other places where cops have murdered people. He said: “Let's show Baltimore the whole damn system is not guilty as hell.” Outside the courtroom, protesters chanted the reality: “The whole damn system is guilty is hell!”
Well, which is it?
The fact that the lawyer for the cop involved in murdering Freddie Gray had to bring this up speaks volumes about how worried the powers that be are about the legitimacy of their whole set-up. Even when forced to put some of their front-line enforcers on trial for killing someone, as they have been in this case by the people’s uprising, they aim to use the trial to re-assert and reinforce the system’s legitimacy.
OK, Mr. Proctor, let's get into this: IS this system legitimate or is it… Guilty as Hell?
First of all, the so-called criminal “justice” system serves a whole global system that is built on genocide and slavery, wages unjust wars around the world, degrades and enslaves women, threatens to make the planet uninhabitable, demonizes and terrorizes immigrants, and more.
Why are we still fighting for justice in 2015?
"Why are we still fighting for justice in 2015?" is a clip from the film REVOLUTION AND RELIGION: The Fight for Emancipation and the Role of Religion; A Dialogue Between CORNEL WEST & BOB AVAKIAN. The film is of the November 2014 historic Dialogue on a question of great importance in today's world between the Revolutionary Christian Cornel West and the Revolutionary Communist Bob Avakian. Watch the entire film here.
How has this system treated Black people from the very beginning of this country? Africans were dragged to these shores in slave chains, to be worked from can't see in the morning till can't see at night, doing unpaid labor that built up the wealth and power of America. And slave patrols, the forerunners of today's police, kept enslaved people from running away or rising up against the horrors inflicted on them. After slavery was abolished, Black people were subjected to slavery by another name, held as sharecroppers on the plantations where they had been enslaved, robbed by the plantation owners, and subjected to Jim Crow segregation and lynch mob terror. Today the police have taken over for the lynch mobs, enforcing terror on Black people by subjecting them to brutality and murder.
And the whole damn system has backed up the terror heaped on Black people. During slavery, theories about the inferiority of Black people and biblical passages about god having decreed that Blacks should be slaves were spread to justify slavery and Jim Crow. Today the victims of the terror are demonized and criminalized to justify the brutality and murder the pigs subject them to.
And when the murderous deeds of the cops get dragged into the light of day by the people’s defiant resistance, the whole damn system goes into motion to exonerate them. District attorneys refuse to indict them or lead grand juries through a process of letting the killer cops walk. If the authorities feel they have to indict one of their front-line enforcers, the prosecutors forget how to prosecute and the killer cop walks free or gets off with no more than a slap on the wrist.
Mr. Proctor, we have seen case after case of cops brutalizing and murdering people, with the whole damn system having the backs of the brutal, murdering cops. Thousands of innocent, unarmed people who were doing nothing wrong have had their lives stolen by those who are supposedly sworn to protect and serve.
So, yes, Mr. Proctor, the whole damn system is guilty as hell!
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