Valuing the Lives of the People vs. Wanton Police Murder --RW\/OR ONLINE\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\nValuing the Lives of the People vs. Wanton Police Murder\r\nWhen the Proletariat Rules\r\n<\/p>
by Bob Avakian<\/p>\r\n
Revolutionary Worker #1255, October 17, 2004<\/em>, posted at http:\/\/rwor.org<\/p>\r\n Let's take the question of police brutality and murder.. it seems like every \r\ntime you open the RW<\/i> there is at least one and often more than one \r\narticle about another one of these outrages--basically the same story of how the \r\npolice go in and wantonly murder someone, especially basic Black and Latino \r\nyouth. And in this [one] particular article I believe it was a Latino youth who \r\nwas involved, it was one of these things where he, you know, lost it a bit and \r\nhad a gun or something, and was out in a public place, and there was sort of a \r\nstandoff and I guess the police shot him and wounded him, if I have all the \r\nfacts right, and his girlfriend was there with him, and she at one point told \r\nthe police that she would get his gun away from him and then the police said if \r\nyou touch the gun, you'll be shot! And his mother came up and begged the police \r\nto let her go get the gun away from him, and they told her the same thing.<\/p>\r\n This article was really very compelling, and by the time you were through \r\nreading it, both the anger at what had gone on and also the fact that with these \r\npolice, this is not some accidental thing, they want<\/i> to shoot down these \r\nmasses, and this is an integral part of what they do--what their social role is, \r\nwhat their political role is--this was brought out very powerfully in this \r\narticle. You know, I finished reading it and I just had this restless anger \r\nwhere you can't sit still, plus this really strong feeling that, as the article \r\nbrought out, not once but twice there was a solution there, but the police \r\nspecifically rejected it and threatened the people with being shot themselves. I \r\nmean this shows, once again, that they're not out there \"doing a difficult job \r\nand faced with difficult choices\" and they couldn't find any way out of this \r\nother than shooting this person.<\/p>\r\n Or you can take the [police murder] of Tyisha Miller..one of the things that \r\nreally needs to be driven home is-- here's the scene where she is passed out in \r\nthe car and they come up to the car, the police, they surround the car, and \r\nthere's a whole bunch of them, they're all armed, they're surrounding the car, \r\nand they just shoot her--execute her basically. And it seems to me that one \r\nbasic point to be made is this: if you can't handle this situation differently \r\nthan this, then get the fuck out of the way. Not only out of the way of this \r\nsituation but get off the earth--get out of the way of the masses of people. \r\nBecause, you know, we could have handled that situation any number of ways that \r\nwould have resulted in a much better outcome, and frankly if we had state power \r\nand we were faced with a similar situation, we would sooner have one of our own \r\npeople's police killed than go wantonly murder one of the masses. That's what \r\nyou're supposed to do if you're actually trying to be a servant of the people. \r\nYou go there and put your own<\/i> life on the line, rather than just wantonly \r\nmurder one of the people.<\/p>\r\n It seems to me that this kind of point can be brought out very powerfully to \r\npeople. What were they there to do? You know, fuck all this \"serve and protect\" \r\nbullshit. If they were there to serve and protect, they would have found any way \r\nbut the way they did it to handle this scene, they could have and would have \r\nfound a solution that was much better than this. This is the way the \r\nproletariat, when it's been in power, has handled and would again handle this \r\nkind of thing--valuing the lives of the masses of people- -as opposed to the \r\nbourgeoisie in power, where the role of their<\/i> police is to terrorize the \r\nmasses, including wantonly murdering them, murdering them without provocation, \r\nwithout necessity, because exactly the more arbitrary the terror is, the more \r\nbroadly it affects the masses. And that's one of the reasons why they like to \r\nengage in--and have as one of their main functions to engage in--wanton and \r\narbitrary terror against the masses of people.<\/p>\r\n From \"Putting Forward \r\nOur Line-In a Bold, Moving, Compelling Way\"<\/p>\r\n
\r\nThis article is posted in English and Spanish on Revolutionary Worker \r\nOnline
http:\/\/rwor.org\/
Write: Box 3486, \r\nMerchandise Mart, Chicago, IL 60654
Phone: 773-227-4066 Fax: \r\n773-227-4497
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