Mothers Who Lost Children At the Hands of the Police #STAND For Justice in DC!

by Carl Dix

May 14, 2018 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

No more generations of our youth, here and all around the world, whose life is over, whose fate has been sealed, who have been condemned to an early death or a life of misery and brutality, whom the system has destined for oppression and oblivion even before they are born. I say no more of that.

Bob Avakian, BAsics 1:13

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. The law and order the police are about, with all of their brutality and murder, is the law and the order that enforces all this oppression and madness.

Bob Avakian, BAsics 1:24

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A rally at the Capitol Building in Washington, DC, brought together mothers, other relatives of people whose lives had been stolen by murdering pigs, and supporters on Thursday, May 10. Called by the Truth, Hope and Justice Initiative, it drew together 200 people. Many were family members of those stolen lives, and they came to DC from all across the country. The people memorialized at this rally were mostly Black or Brown people. One of the killings had happened from as far back as 1968, and the most recent killing had happened earlier in May of 2018.

Mother after mother, joined by a couple of fathers and a few other relatives, spoke of how murdering cops killed their children; how prosecutors, courts and the whole criminal “injustice” system exonerated these murdering pigs; and about their determination to fight for justice for their loved ones and for all victims of police terror.

Monteria Robinson spoke of how the U.S. Marshals who gunned down her son, Jamarion, in Atlanta on August 6, 2016, had broken down the door to his girlfriend’s house and shot him 76 times. Yes, 76 bullets were fired into his body. Forensics evidence indicated that the last two shots were fired at close range by someone standing over Jamarion’s body!

Latoya Howell told of how police shot her son, Justus, in the back on April 4, 2015 as he ran from them in Zion, Illinois. The day after the shooting police returned to the scene and “recovered” what they said was the gun Justus pointed at them just before they gunned him down, a gun they were unable to find the day they shot him.

Gloria Pinex spoke of how Chicago police murdered her son Darius on January 11, 2011, after they stopped him, claiming that his car fit the description of a vehicle involved in a crime. Five years later it was exposed that the pigs who killed Darius had no description of a car involved in a crime AND that the authorities knew this as they exonerated these murderers again and again as the family fought for justice.

Veda Washington spoke of how two Baton Rouge, Louisiana, cops who had tormented her nephew, Alton Sterling, beat him and shot him dead on July 5, 2016, in a case where the video of the killing went viral and sparked nationwide protest.

Hawa Bah spoke of how on September 25, 2012, she called 911 because her son Mohamed, was acting erratically, and instead of an ambulance to take him to the hospital, cops showed up. These cops refused to let Mrs. Bah speak to her son, broke down the door to his apartment and shot him seven times. Forensics evidence indicated that the seventh shot was fired by someone standing over him as he lay on the floor!

Lisa Finch spoke of how her son, Andrew, was shot on December 29, 2017, by police in Wichita, Kansas, when he went out on the porch of his family’s house to find out why a dozen police cars were on their block. The police were responding to a false report of a killing and hostage situation at her home. (Phoning in such false reports to the police is called “swatting.”) The police took Lisa’s family into custody and searched their house while leaving Andrew to die.

These were only a few of the dozens of mothers and other family members of people whose lives had been stolen by law enforcement. Hearing all these stories, and hearing that in every case the murdering pigs had walked free, was like getting punched in the gut. This kind of suffering is intolerable. It shouldn’t be happening! And the reality that the suffering this had caused for so many people tore at my heart strings because it is completely unnecessary!

The horror of police getting away with murdering people, like the attacks on immigrants, the devastation of the environment, the degradation women suffer, all the other horrors people are forced to endure continue to happen because they’re built into the very fabric of the capitalist-imperialist system we live under. We should live in a world where those entrusted with public security would sooner lose their own lives than kill or injure an innocent person. The truth is that it will take an actual revolution, one that overthrows this capitalist system, that meets and defeats its institutions of violent suppression, to bring that kind of world into being.

This kind of revolution is not only needed. It’s possible. We’ve got the leadership for it in Bob Avakian, the leader of the RCP, a man who has developed a new framework for making revolution and who is the architect of a new communism. He has led in developing a strategy for how we could get organized and be in a position to lead millions—to fight with a real chance of winning, once a revolutionary people in the millions, and the necessary conditions for revolution, have been brought into being.

And he has authored a vision of the kind of world this revolution could bring into being in the Constitution for the New Socialist Republic in North America.

I addressed ALL THIS when I spoke at the rally right after the family members had told their stories. And I called on the people there to enlist in this revolution, to read the strategy for the revolution―we had distributed copies of HOW WE CAN WIN—How We Can Really Make Revolution (HWCW) to just about everyone at the rally. And I called on people to get acquainted with the work of BA, telling them a great way to start doing that was to watch the film, THE TRUMP/PENCE REGIME MUST GO! In The Name of Humanity, We REFUSE To Accept a Fascist America. A Better World IS Possible.

As the rally ended, a few of us stressed with everyone we could talk to that they really needed to watch the film, to spread the word about it and HWCW when they got back to their areas. And we got as much contact info as we could so that we could get feedback from people on the film and HWCW and could work to get them enlisted in the movement for an actual revolution.

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