FERGUSON, MO—Yet another frontline warrior and prominent activist of the African resistance in Ferguson has met an untimely end.
Colonial media sources reported that 27-year-old Edward (Emijah) Crawford died from a “self-inflicted gunshot wound” to the head on the evening of May 4, 2017.
You may remember Edward best as the young man immortalized in the Ferguson uprising photo holding a bag of chips in one hand and tossing a police deployed gas canister back in the direction of the pigs, away from a group children and other protestors with the other.
The image won the Post Dispatch a Pulitzer Prize for breaking news photography while leaving Edward to defend himself in court against charges of interfering with a police officer and assault.
In a statement, Edward Crawford Sr., the father of the young activist, said it wouldn’t make sense that his son would be so upset that he’d take his life.
Edward had just acquired a new apartment and job, and the young father of four was in love with his children. He also stated that he’d seen his son just a couple of days prior and that he was in “good spirits.”
Edward Sr. says district detectives in charge of investigating Edward Jr’s death are “being hush-hush.”
The International People’s Democratic Uhuru Movement (InPDUM) is clear that the State lies all the time and cannot be trusted. It is also clear to us that the State murdered brother Edward Jr.
Come into revolutionary organization
Since the initial uprising surrounding Michael Brown Jr’s death at the hands of killer cop Darren Wilson on August 9, 2014, several of the participants of the Ferguson rebellion have turned up dead; something hitting far too close to home to be dismissed as mere coincidence.
One of the most high-profile instances is the murder of Darren Seals in early September 2016.
Though Darren’s death has been investigated as a homicide and Edward’s a suicide, the number of incidents among the small area of Ferguson, and smaller still the portion of the community that participated in the uprising, a total of seven recorded deaths has many locals unsettled.
While revolutionary organization is necessary in order to gain freedom from the colonial State, it is also necessary that revolutionaries, understand how to move under the scrutiny of the State.
The purpose of the State is to protect the economic and political interests of the white ruling class, at the expense of the African working class.
We must demand Black Community Control of the Police!
It is imperative that revolutionaries learn and understand the strategies of our enemy, understand that the State’s objective is keeping us oppressed, and struggle for organization to keep each other safe.
We are losing a lot of activists partly because they are not won to the value of organization. This is actually more counter-revolutionary than they may understand because it strips the resistance of some of their strongest forces through State-sanctioned assassinations.
We must make and continue to make revolutionary demands like black community control of the police.
Points 18 and 19 of InPDUM’s Revolutionary National Democratic Program states: “We demand African community control of schools, police, and all the institutions of coercive colonial State power that wreak perennial havoc within our colonized community.
“We demand the immediate withdrawal of the terroristic police and military troops from the African Community and their replacement with African liberation forces whose struggles in defense of our community against our oppression demonstrate their loyalty to our community and their willingness to serve in its interest.”
We must make the struggle for black community control of the police that occupy our communities! These revolutionary demands and more should be won throughout our communities.
The demand for black community control of the police means that our people control who is hired, trained and fired as cops in our neighborhood. Any cop who murders an African, would have to answer to the black community.
We urge all our readers to come into revolutionary organization—join InPDUM and build the Black Community Control of the Police committee! It is through revolutionary demands like this that we will protect ourselves against the oppressive colonial State.
Visit InPDUM.org
Rest in Uhuru Edward Crawford!
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