Hundreds of People Demand Justice for Keith Lamont Scott: Taking the Struggle to the NFL Game in Charlotte
September 26, 2016 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us
From readers:
September 26—Hundreds of people took the battle for justice for Keith Lamont Scott and against police murdering people to Bank of America Stadium this afternoon for the NFL game between the Carolina Panthers and the Minnesota Vikings. People were wearing “Am I Next?” shirts and chanting “Black lives matter,” “If we don’t get no justice, you don’t get no peace,” and “Release the tapes.” The latter refers to the ongoing refusal on the part of the murdering police to release all the video of Keith Scott’s murder they have, and also sentiment that people are systematically lied to. Before the game, the media carried photos of Cam Newton, the Panthers’ quarterback, warming up before the game wearing a shirt with a quote from Martin Luther King: “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.”
Protest in the streets outside the stadium where the Carolina Panthers NFL team was playing, September 26. Photo: Jon Cornwell
Outside the stadium, hundreds of police—some with paint guns—encircled the protesters to isolate them from the fans going into the game. Nonetheless, here and there a handful of fans with their Panthers jerseys joined the protest. In one incident, a belligerent white racist fan tried to attack the protest and the National Guard protected him. The National Guard was deployed throughout the area—specifically guarding and enforcing the system’s agencies of violent repression.
Visible in the VIP seating atop the stadium, fans could be seen looking not at the playing field but out to the protest. Beyond the organized protest, a number of people from the community as well as activists gathered with signs on corners demanding an end to police killing Black people.
Protesters marched through the area, surrounded by police who blocked streets to isolate and intimidate people, and the protest blocked intersections as well. At one point, the protest passed the location of where Justin Carr, a Black protester, was shot and killed on Wednesday night under circumstances that are not at all clear, despite police insistence he was killed by someone else in the protest. That Wednesday night protest was viciously attacked by the police, who shot people with rubber bullets inflicting serious injuries, and arrested dozens of people.
At that point, the crowd stopped and there was moving salute to the sacrifice Justin Carr made in the struggle.
Within the crowd there were different views about what’s the problem and what’s the solution. There was definitely a section of the crowd who felt protest as it has been going on is not making the point, and looking for ways to make a more powerful statement. In the mix, a couple revcoms recruited people to start up the chant “What’s the problem? The whole damn system! What’s the solution? Revolution!” This got taken up by various people in the street.
After the game ended, marchers headed for the Charlotte Government Building. And as evening came, youth who wait ’til later to get into the streets started to come out.
Throughout the day—especially as the day wound down—we got into very serious discussions with people of the flyer Tulsa... Charlotte... Columbus... How long? Once More, Lying, Murdering Pigs Run Amok. What Time Is It? Time and Past Time to Get Organized for an ACTUAL Revolution, both with activists who had been in the protest, and youth who were beginning to congregate on street corners in the expectation there would be more struggle after nightfall. We walked through with people, step-by-step, how that flyer poses what is going on, why revolution is the only solution, and what we need to do right now to make that happen at the soonest possible time. And there was serious receptivity.
During the day, and in days leading up to today, we had a number of discussions of HOW WE CAN WIN—How We Can Really Make Revolution with people we’ve met. We need to walk through this with people point by point. And we were organizing more of those while we were out today. When we get with people, we’ll also get into BA: A Contended Question, and we will leave people with posters to study and get up. We are telling people about the launch of Bob Avakian’s pathbreaking book, THE NEW COMMUNISM in NYC on October 8, and the ways they could stay connected and become part of the organized forces of the revolution.
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