Amerikkka, Goddam! Pig Who Murdered Philando Castile Walks Free!
June 16, 2017 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us
June 16, 2017, we got to watch this goddam system once again put the stamp of approval on yet another police murder – this time of Philando Castile. The pig who murdered him walked free.
Last July 4, Philando was driving in a suburb of St. Paul, Minnesota, his hometown, with his girlfriend Diamond Reynolds, and her four-year-old child. Philando was pulled over by cop Jeronimo Yanez – why? Because Philando was Black, had a broken tail-light, and supposedly reminded Yanez of someone suspected of a crime. In other words Philando was racially profiled – it was his 46th time!
Philando broke no laws, and he did everything he was supposed to do after being stopped. He told Yanez he had a legal firearm in the car. He attempted to comply with Yanez' demand that he show him his ID. But Yanez immediately opened fire, shooting Philando seven times. Thousands and thousands saw Philando dying because Diamond Reynolds had the courage to livestream the aftermath of the shooting, even as she had every reason to fear for her own and for her child's life. Within seconds, Philando was dead – murdered for being alive while Black.
None of this mattered in Amerikkka’s white supremacist injustice system. Yanez walked free on manslaughter charges because he claimed he feared for his life, and because this system’s laws are set up to go along with this lying excuse – set up to justify outright murder by the police.
The people's rage was immediate. Philando’s mother Valerie Castile stormed out of the court as soon as the “not guilty” verdict was announced, and condemned it:
“My son was murdered, and I will continue to say murdered, because where in this planet do you tell the truth, and you be honest, and you still be murdered by the police of Minnesota, while you have your seat belt on and you’re in the company with a woman and a child? My son would never jeopardize anyone else’s life.”
His sister Allysza declared: “The system really is wrong, and they really failed us. They really failed us, once again, because my brother was a good man. You never even heard him raise his voice. You never even heard him yell. And for that man to get on the stand and lie, he got caught in three, four, five different lies.”
The night of the verdict, 2,000 people righteously took to the streets of Minneapolis and St. Paul, and shut down I-94 on both sides. There were protests in Minneapolis and in New York, Chicago, Oakland, and Los Angeles the next day. (Go here for reports and photos/videos of the protests.) It was good and very necessary that people went out into the streets to immediately protest—and this must spark even broader and more determined protests across the country against the deeply unjust verdict letting the pig who murdered Philando Castile free and against other murder and terror by the police.
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ENOUGH! Enough of a system that can't function without its enforcers wantonly murdering hundreds of people, mainly Black and Brown, each year and rewards the pigs who do this! Enough of a system that can’t get justice for Oscar Grant, even after his murder was captured on videotape. Enough of a system which can’t convict a pig videotaped murdering Philando Castile. Enough of a system which can't prosecute police who are videotaped shooting Tamir Rice, a 12-year-old Black child, for playing in a park; which can't prosecute police who are videotaped choking Eric Garner, a Black man, for refusing to be degraded on the street; and on, and on, and on...
And enough of this system with its new all-out fascist regime which aims to put this nightmare on steroids, a regime that says it will fully unleash its enforcers to carry out even greater crimes against Black people, and against humanity, while aiming to wipe out any ability to protest and resist.
Enough!
As Carl Dix of the Revolutionary Communist Party said in his statement after the Philando Castile verdict:
Police getting away with murder is unacceptable. And now the fascist Trump-Pence regime is vowing to “take the gloves off the police,” which will mean that police terrorizing and murdering Black and Brown people would intensify. We must act to STOP this horror now! Not try to get the capitalist rulers to ease off on unleashing their front line enforcers to terrorize and murder people, but to STOP this from going down. We must take our righteous rage and refusal to sit by while this goes down into the streets. And we must do this as part of getting ready and in position for an actual revolution, one that overthrows this system because that's the only way to end this horror, and all the other horrors this system enforces on people around the world and in this country.
Stay in the streets! Justice for Philando!
Drive Out the Fascist Trump/Pence Regime!
Revolution, Nothing Less!
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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