From the LA Revolution Club:
The Problem Ain’t Toy Guns! Cops Don’t Care About Black and Latino Lives!
February 23, 2015 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us
Soon after the shooting of 15-year-old Jamar Nicholson, shot in the back by LAPD, members of the LA Revolution Club went out to his school to stand up against this shooting and organize students into the revolution. Jamar was heading to school the morning of February 10, playing around in an alley as he usually does with friends, freestyle rapping and dancing with a toy gun, when cops came up on them. James and his friends heard an adult voice say "freeze" and next thing they knew Jamar was on the ground with a bullet in his back. This is a scenario repeated countless times—in this country there is a Black person that gets shot down every 28 hours by the police, security guard, or racist vigilante. Jamar survived the shooting, and he and his friends have spoken out in the media about what the police did to them.
Soon after we arrived at the school, we were confronted by the school principal and heavily armed school rent-a-pigs. They threatened us with saying they would call the police, making false claims that we couldn’t be in front of the school for the “students' protection.” We demanded that they step back and called them out for claiming to be about the protection of these students while they attack revolutionaries for speaking against what was done to one of their students, and to countless others, by the pigs. They said that we were “protesting” and needed a permit to protest. We called bullshit and did not move.
With copies of "The Cold but Liberating Truth About the Police, the Struggle for Justice, and Revolution," Revolution newspaper, and whistles, we stood near the entrance to the school holding a sign that read "The Problem Ain’t Toy Guns! The Cops Don’t Care About Black Lives! Revcom.us." Students heard us speak to the need to organize to stop these pigs from murdering people. Many stopped to talk to us, calling out what had happened to their friend just a few days back as he was heading to school. We spoke of other such cases where the victims weren’t so “lucky”—Aiyana Stanley-Jones, Tamir Rice, Mike Brown.
The principal stood near us telling the students not to pay attention to the revolutionaries. He told students that they should worry about schoolwork and not what we had to say. We challenged students not to allow school to get in the way of their education! Students took what we had and donated what they had to get a whistle. At one point two young women in support of what we were doing began to argue with their principal. We could hear a back and forth and at a certain point others got involved. One student thought he had a “cool principal” but when he heard what the principal had told us he stepped to the principal and asked “Are you hating on them? That ain’t right!”
This is something new we ran into among these high school students. Many of the students had some understanding why this is going on—they hate how cops have treated them just for walking through their own neighborhoods. The protests that have taken place was part of what fueled them. They have a lot of love for Jamar, their peer, but understood that not everyone that has an encounter like this lives to tell about it.
We have been back out to the school again to build among the students for the February 22 National Day of Remembrance for Tamir Rice as part of calling people back out to the streets against police murder of our youth with #shutdownA14. Students and their families were glad we were there and some said they would participate on February 22.
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