SEATTLE — On Tuesday, June 15, millions of people throughout the U.S. and probably the world, witnessed through media reports, a Seattle cop assault two African women.
This white cop assaulted these women, on Martin Luther King Street for no reason, other than he could.
That is, he has an elementary understanding of his membership in an army that occupies the African communities throughout the U.S. He knows that he has free rein to brutalize, maim and even murder occupants of this community with absolute immunity.
The two women have subsequently been charged with “assault on a police officer.”
This charge is standard operating procedure in every police precinct in the United States. They beat you up and then charge you with assault on the police.
If you can remember the Rodney King case in Los Angeles, you saw on video at least six cops beating and stomping King until they were literally exhausted. Out of breath, they conjured up enough strength to file “assault against a police officer” charges against King.
These cops were later found “not guilty” by a legally constituted colonial court and jury. But fortunately the Los Angeles African community extricated its own justice through righteous rebellion.
Then on October 10, 2005, after watching our people suffer horrible deaths because of government indifference, and apparent collusion during the aftermath of hurricane Katrina in New Orleans, we also saw on video the white police beat and kick 64-year-old Robert Davis to a pulp in the French Quarter. He was charged with assaulting the police and resisting arrest.
The cop invaded African neighborhood
The names of the two women victims in Seattle have not yet been released, but one thing is certain, and that is that they were in their own neighborhood, because they were on Martin Luther King Street.
The cop who attacked these sisters, ostensibly for jay walking on Martin Luther King Street, has overwhelming support of the white community in Seattle and of course the support of the Seattle Police Department.
The white cop is the one who was out of place, for he certainly don’t live on MLK. Everybody knows that we “jay walk” on Martin Luther King streets throughout this country everyday.
But we saw more than just a white cop assaulting African teenage women. We also saw African men stand by and let it happen. They did not intervene.
It is normal to fear the colonial police because they do have a history of brutality and murder in the black community. But when we let one white cop brutalize our sisters and stand by like a knot on the wall, then our fear has transformed into cowardice.
I would suspect that some of those Africans who stood idly by and let this terrible thing happen had been to Afghanistan or Iraq, with gun in hand, defending the U.S. gangster government’s oil interest.
The Chicano/Mexicano man who was on the scene came close to intervening, but stopped short.
Police murder us in our communities
The integrity and humanity of our whole people are being challenged by U.S. police departments throughout this country.
The police in Detroit, on May 16, 2010, with guns blazing and throwing grenades, kicked the doors down and murdered seven year old Aiyana Jones. Although they don’t have the right to do anyone’s home in this manner, it has subsequently been revealed they assaulted the wrong house. But to them any old house in the African community will do. And although a camera crew was there with the police on this mission, the video has yet to surface.
In Houston, Texas on New Years Eve 2008, 23-year-old minor league baseball player, Robbie Tolan, son of once prominent major league baseball star, Bobby Tolan, was shot in his own driveway by a white cop.
This shooting took place in front of Tolan’s mother who had come outside to find her son face down with cops standing over him. As one of the cops slammed her against the garage, the unarmed Tolan leaned upward and was shot by the same cop who was slamming his mother, Bellaire sergeant, Jeff Cotton.
Bellaire is a 95 percent white enclave “suburb” inside the city of Houston with their own police force.
The police have said they stopped Tolan because they thought he was driving a stolen car. But just like the police in the case of Obama’s friend, Harvard professor Skip Gates, the police knew exactly who Tolan was and that the car was not stolen.
This was not a case of “racial profiling.” This was a case pure and simple of police terrorizing an African resident of an exclusively white neighborhood. And the fact is that we never know how the situation will end when African people come into any sort of contact with the police. Usually the African suffers terrible consequences.
Cotton has subsequently been found not guilty by a nearly all white jury in Harris County, where Mexican and African people outnumber whites. Cotton had been charged with “aggravated assault by a public servant.”
Robbie Tolan, himself a minor league baseball player, still has the 9mm bullet lodged in his liver. Robbie and his father Bobby were adamant that he was shot because he was black.
Had they been of the African working class and not had the resources to push for the indictment, Cotton would not have gone to trial at all. But the family during the entire ordeal did have the courage to speak up for the rights of black working and poor people.
And on New Year’s Day of 2009, the BART Police in Oakland, California were caught on video in the subway station, shooting 22-year-old Oscar Grant while he lay on his stomach handcuffed. On Friday, June 11, 2010 a Los Angeles County jury and its alternates were seated without one single African on either one.
And although there are Chicano/Mexicano people on that jury, if an acquittal of white cop Johannes Mehserle is given, it is because of the colonial court system.
And if such is the case, Chicano/Mexicano people and Africans should unite and demand justice by whatever means necessary. Together, the African and Mexicano working classes can defeat U.S. Colonialism.
Suprisingly, Barack Obama has not called in all these cops to the White People's House for beer and dinner so he can tell them that the people are acting "stupidly."
Reclaiming our pride
During the Black Revolution of the Sixties, when our people were proud and walked with our heads up high, afros standing tall, the police were forced to ride four in a car on routine patrol. Now in 2010, one white cop on Martin Luther King Street in Seattle, Washington can beat up on our women and feel as though that is a done deal with no consequences forthcoming.
Had this been a black cop, beating up on a white woman for any reason, from jay walking to murder, with white men standing around, there would have been another funeral in the African community.
Maybe we would have intervened, but we were sort of preoccupied with pulling our pants up with one hand while a cell phone was in the other.
The African People’s Socialist Party will come together in Washington, DC from July 10 through 14, at its 5th Party Congress to map out a plan that will stop police violence and murder once and for all. Come join us on this historic mission. For more info on the Congress, visit www.apspcongress.org.
NO MORE FUNERALS!
NO MORE ASSAULTS!
WE MUST FIGHT FOR BLACK POWER
