Taking "1000 Years – $1000 for BA Everywhere" to the Scene of Police Murder

May 30, 2014 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

Revolutionaries recently got word that a man named Ron Hillstrom had been murdered by police in nearby University Place (Tacoma), Washington. In news reports, people state Ron was in mental distress and needed help, but instead was tased and beaten to death. In response, Detective Ed Troyer of the Pierce County Sheriff's Department told news reporters "No, he wasn't beaten, he was hit with a flashlight a few times in an area where we believe the screwdriver was, but nothing that would cause any type of injury that would lead up to his death." The evidence shows that the police are, once again, lying and covering up an outrageous murder.

It was about 9:45 pm, and the noise had brought dozens of people out from the apartments that Ron had recently moved to. They watched, and some captured video on their cellphone cameras. One of these videos is shown on news reports, and Ron can be heard screaming for help over and over as he is hit. The video was taken at night and is dark, but clearly shows the long heavy cop style flashlight rising and falling methodically--making fast, hard, sickening connections with a body beneath it. News reports also present statements from multiple eye witnesses and neighbors bravely standing up and speaking out, such as: "I see four officers walking up on him and they're like, 'It's the police,' and he's like 'You're not the police,' and he goes to run in the circle, and as soon as he comes back, the police used four tasers at one time…I knew last night they were gonna kill that man… You beat this man to death last night for no reason and we caught you. Period." Another person: "And then they started beating him. And they just weren't done until he was dead. Bam, bam, bam. It was horrible. It was absolutely horrific." And another: "One cop had his knee right on his neck, holding him down…The other one was down by his feet and two were on each side of him." An hour later, at a hospital, Ron was pronounced dead. He left behind children, parents, siblings, and many other loved ones and friends. Police kill on a regular basis in the Tacoma area. Some examples in the last couple years are Samson Castellane in 2012, Prince Gavin in 2012, Sophia Delgado-Strickland in 2012, Leonard Benjamin Thomas in 2013, Patrick O'Meara in 2013, and Brian McLeod in 2014.

This brutality and murder is not acceptable, and a system that perpetrates this kind of injustice is no damn good and must be done away with through revolution, as soon as possible. And people need to put up powerful resistance to these crimes as a part of building a movement for revolution, and learn more about how this revolution can be made by getting to know about Bob Avakian's work and vision. This is the orientation we went to this neighborhood with to speak to people and learn more about what happened. It was a multi-national neighborhood with many people who had been caught up in the criminal "in-justice" system. We found a deep outrage about this murder and the lies about what happened that are being told both by the police and in some of the media.

One woman told us she saw Ron get tased four times, and then while he was pinned to the ground, cops hit him in the head with a flashlight and fists repeatedly, while also tasing him. Another eyewitness told us an officer beat him over 30 times with a flashlight while he was on the ground. We also heard details from witnesses that did not appear in any news reports: Ron had been hog tied, and then when he was put in an ambulance he was strapped face down on the gurney. Also, that there was a pool of blood where Ron was beaten which was later washed away. A young black man told us, "I have been tased before and I am a big guy. It only took one time to bring me down. This guy was not big; they did not need to tase him like they did."

One team knocked on the apartment doors and introduced themselves by saying, "We are outraged about the murder of Ron Hillstrom and we want to talk to you about the movement for revolution we are building to stop these kinds of horrors from happening." An older white woman brought us into her apartment. This woman had a bible close at hand, and next to that a vase with a small American flag in it. She said "He was a slight man, not big and tall…I'm angry, because he asked for help, and they came and tased and beat him to death…before we end up in a police state, which we are already close to, people need to come together and do something." She kept apologizing for being so angry, but she was just so upset that they just murdered him. We told her that we were building a movement for revolution to end all of this, and not only this but also all the horrors facing the planet, like mass incarceration, the enslavement and degradation of women, and destruction of the environment. This leader Bob Avakian, Chairman of the Revolutionary Communist Party, has developed a strategy to end all of this, and we should listen to his New Year's message audio we have here. She said, "Communism. I don't like that." We asked what she knew about communism, and she said it was like Germany with the Nazis. We said "no, that's fascism." We talked about communism as she was reading the second page of Revolution newspaper, that also gives a description of communist revolution. We told her that the New Year's message would also give her more of a sense of what communism is.

We played the message, and where BA says "We need a new world, an entirely different world," she gave a firm "Um Hum. Yeah." And to "This system has a lot of contradictions…," she gave a strong "YEP." During the part where BA talks about people getting treated badly for being gay, she said, "well I don't know if I agree with that." After the message ended, she told us about how when she went to the South with her husband, she said that she was shocked to see how Black people acted around her. Everywhere she went, everything stopped. Four Black women were waiting to use the bathroom, but they let her go first. She was insistent in saying she thinks people should not be treated differently because of their skin color, and that she does not think she is better than anybody.

I pointed out to her that the same way that people looked (or still look) at Black people is not very different than about how she looks at gay people. Just the way that people shouldn't be treated differently because of their skin color, people should not be treated differently because of their sexuality. She nodded her head and smiled, "I know you are right. I know that's right." She then went on to explain to us that her son had been molested by a close male friend who was gay. We explained about how millions of little girls are also molested by straight men, but that doesn't mean that there is something wrong with being straight. It's the system and how it trains people to view children as property. She said she could see what we were saying, and one of us talked to her about a gay friend of theirs who recently told them that she had tried to kill herself when she was 17 because of being raised in a Christian fundamentalist home where gay people were seen as sick and wrong. The woman said, "Well nobody should feel like that. I think that's wrong."

She then asked, "So how are you going to change people for this revolution?" We told her that a big part of that is people standing up now and resisting, as a part of transforming themselves for revolution and being a part of spreading the word that there is leadership for such a revolution with the BA Everywhere campaign, digging into what the problem is and what the solution is. She asked "Well, how do you get people to stand up? When I tried to go outside to help Ron, my neighbor told me to go back inside because she was afraid something might happen to me. I could hear him screaming and I wanted to do something." This was something that came up a couple times with other people, with one person saying that they are scared to protest because of what the police will do.

We talked about how when people start to stand up, it can inspire other people to act with them. We talked a little bit about the freedom rides in the South in the '60s, and how when people acted on principle, it moved other people to act as well and it started to change how many people thought. We also talked about the whistle blowing we had done on Stop Stop-and-Frisk in the neighborhoods, in an area where people usually just silently got harassed and jacked up, day after day, with many afraid to speak out. And how some of this changed, in a beginning way, when people saw others also standing up and coming together. We made clear to her that as she is learning more about communism, she should be a part of standing up against the horrors of the world. She said she needed to find out more about communism.

She was not immediately convinced that communism and revolution is the solution, but after getting into police brutality and its connections to mass incarceration and the whole world of ills of this dog eat dog system, and looking over the centerfold in Revolution newspaper on the "1000 Years – $1000 for BA Everywhere" effort we asked if she could support the BA Everywhere campaign. She pledged $10 after she received her next paycheck. She said that was probably all she could give, and we pointed to her that if 100 people give $10 that is $1000. We told her that now she was part of ending the horrors, and she grinned and said "We need to stop this stuff that is happening because of the capitalism." We made plans to follow up with her and collect the donation, and she said her caregiver (she is in poor health and sometimes bed-ridden) might also want to know about this because of all the cuts happening in the medical field.

Another woman whose door we knocked on also took us inside, and told us she had seen the whole murder and is very angry, and has nightmares about Ron's murder. "I really believe some of the stuff going on needs to come to an end." Her ex-fiance is in prison. She is very concerned for the future of her children and she told us about how she had been sexually molested by a family member. She ran away from home when she was young and the police took her back—back to her molester. We also had a long and substantial discussion here, including engagement with "1000 Years – $1000 for BA Everywhere," to which she donated $9 for the time that her ex-fiance has been in prison so far. He will probably be in prison for life.

In various other interactions with people at their doors and in the parking lot, the face of mass incarceration was present. One Black teenager told us her father was serving 20 years in prison in Texas. Someone asked, "Bob Avakian, is he like Asata Shakur?" and we talked with them about BA's background and work. Another man donated $5 to support Revolution newspaper.

We will be back to follow up on pledges to BA Everywhere and on new relationships. The challenge is how to make a breakthrough in mobilizing people here to stand up together and challenge these crimes along with the other intolerable injustices humanity faces, and bringing to them how this can be ended once and for all. As noted above, there are many police murders in the Tacoma area, and a memorial protest is happening soon for a young man who was executed last year for having a toy revolver. We're thinking we could invite others from Ron's neighborhood to go to this protest, and help start cohering forces for the October Month of Resistance Against Mass Incarceration, and also BA Everywhere.

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