Grief and Outrage on the One-Year Anniversary of the Police Murder of Alton Sterling

July 7, 2017 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

On July 5, 2016, Baton Rouge, Louisiana, police tackled Alton Sterling to the ground, held him down, tased him, and then shot him dead in cold blood. In May, the Department of “Justice” announced there would be no charges filed against the police who murdered Alton Sterling. On July 5 of this year, the one-year anniversary of Alton Sterling’s murder by police, there were expressions of pain and outrage.

In the evening, a memorial service was held at the Arc of Safety Ministry. After the memorial, dozens of people went to the Triple S store. The store features a larger-than-life mural of Alton Sterling, and protesters displayed a striking banner demanding “Justice for Alton.” Alton Sterling’s family members and others gave passionate statements of grief and anger that one year later, there is still no justice for Alton. In response to promises of change and reforms, in the wake of mass and determined protests last year, one woman, a nurse who lives near the site of the murder, said “Nothing got better. Nothing changed... They haven’t even given us justice for Alton.”

Earlier in the day, in an incident spread widely on social media, Baton Rouge police brutally assaulted protesters at police headquarters, at an action organized by the New Black Panther Party. That protest included relatives of Alton Sterling. Police attacked with Tasers, stun guns, and pellet guns, and arrested seven people on specious charges of “entering and remaining after being forbidden” and “resisting an officer.”

Speaking of the exoneration of the cop who murdered Sylville Smith in Milwaukee, the refusal to indict Alton Sterling’s murderers, as well as the exonerations of police who murdered Philando Castile in Minnesota, and Terence Crutcher in Tulsa, Oklahoma, Carl Dix said:

This amounts to a statement from this system that no matter how outrageous the murders the police commit, no matter how many people have seen the videos of these murders; all the murdering pigs have to say is: “I feared for my life,” and they get a do not go to jail card.

Bob Avakian, the leader of the Revolutionary Communist Party (RCP), says: “The role of the police is not to serve and protect the people. It is to serve and protect the system that rules over the people. To enforce the relations of exploitation and oppression, the conditions of poverty, misery and degradation into which the system has cast people and is determined to keep people in.” I challenge anybody to deny the truth of this statement.

If the brutality, terror and murder carried out by the police was the only thing wrong with this capitalist-imperialist system, that would be reason enough to get rid of it once and for all thru revolution. And this is far from the only horror this system enforces on humanity. The RCP is organizing people into a revolution to overthrow this system at the soonest possible moment. If you want to see police terror and all the other horrors humanity is subjected to ended, you need to get with this revolution.

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