The Righteous Protest Against Murder by Police in Philadelphia and the Fight to Demand the Fascist Regime OUT NOW

October 30, 2020 | revcom.us

 

Editors’ Note: The following is adapted from some orientation notes written to revcoms and others involved in the struggle to drive out the fascist Trump/Pence regime in the wake of the police murder of Walter Wallace Jr. in Philadelphia and the righteous protests that followed. This is an orientation of “both/and” to these struggles, not “either/or,” linking up the streams of struggle for powerful mass political resistance.  

The October 26 murder by police of Walter Wallace Jr. in Philadelphia was yet another clearly outrageous killing by this system’s pigs. According to the Washington Post, Wallace was the latest of the 804 people shot and killed by police this year already. This shows once again that, as Bob Avakian has emphasized (see here and here, for example), brutality and murder by police are fundamental to the oppressive system we live under—it cannot function without this. Now, this has been made all the worse by Trump, and will be made qualitatively worse still should he prevail with stealing the election. If he is able to move forward to a fully fascist regime, there will not even be room to fight against these towering injustices. These cops—who, as Trump himself says, love Trump and who he “loves” back—have actually been incited by him to go on a rampage since the summer’s beautiful uprising against police murder and white supremacy.  

A further basic point is that Trump is a white supremacist and indeed a genocidal racist—and it is imperative not only that he be defeated in the election but that Black people are enabled to fully and freely exercise their right to vote, and to come into the streets to demand that this regime be OUT NOW, along with raising righteous outrage against police murder. The voter suppression being carried out by the fascists right now is heavily targeting Black people, as well as Latinos, immigrants and Indigenous peoples.

The Democratic governor of Pennsylvania has ordered the National Guard into Philadelphia. By doing this, the Democrats are actually putting a chill on the activity of the masses. Let’s be clear: the National Guard as a force is being brought in to repress mass political activity and resistance. 

First of all, it is not as if the situation in Philadelphia has developed into a violent clash between two sections of the people in which innocent people were getting maimed or worse and there was an objective need to restore order. From what can be seen from news reports, some stores got damaged and some police claim to have been injured while they were attempting to beat, mace and arrest people who were protesting the fact that, once again, they murdered someone in the throes of a mental health crisis. 

Second, soldiers of an occupying force standing on every corner hardly creates a situation in which people want to express themselves politically, whether by voting or in any other way. Quite the opposite.  

Third, with Philly already having been made a target by Trump for election day intimidation by his thugs—and in a nationally televised debate at that¹—the question arises: who do you think this Guard will act against? The fascist thugs who come in claiming to be “volunteer poll watchers”—or the masses who resist attempts by these thugs to repress and harass them?  

The police murder of Walter Wallace took place in the very same neighborhood as the MOVE massacre in 1985—the attack on the MOVE organization in which the police not only brutally assaulted their house, but then connived with the DA and mayor to imprison the sole adult survivor of the assault for seven years and tear the one child survivor away from loved ones and place him in foster care.² This is the same neighborhood that political prisoner Mumia Abu-Jamal comes from. Mumia is doing a life sentence from a railroad trial in which he was accused of killing a cop but denied legal representation of his choice, and at one point was threatened with death by lethal injection before his death penalty was overturned less than a week before he was scheduled to be executed. In other words, the oppression of Black people and the struggle against it is written all over the streets of this neighborhood.

A further point: the criminalization and police suppression of Black and Brown people, and fascization of the rank-and-file of the police departments across the country, go hand-in-glove with the decades-long Republi-fascist voter suppression schemes³ that have now metastasized into “old Jim Crow” threats of violence—both products of a system that has no answers and in which fascism is now not just a viable alternative but in power and fighting to consolidate that power.

The protests of the people against this latest police murder and calls for justice are righteous and should be supported. This struggle is definitely not in contradiction with the fight for Trump/Pence Out Now. In fact, given the struggle against white supremacy and Trump’s genocidal racism, and Trump’s calls for “law and order” to suppress the righteous rebellion against institutionalized racism and police murder, there are real connections here and a need and basis for people to unite broadly and be out in the streets in struggle in increasingly massive numbers. 

 

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1. During the first televised debate with Biden, Trump said that his “poll watchers” (i.e., Republi-fascist goons) were thrown out in Philadelphia—“Because bad things happen in Philadelphia.”  [back]

2. See revcom.us America Crime series, Case #99: May 13, 1985: The MOVE Massacre.  [back]

3. See revcom.us American Crimes series article on the suppression of the Black vote: Part 1 and Part 2.  [back]