Category: Racism

Outgoing Governor Pat Quinn Commutes Sentence, Gives Additional Pardons

National Alliance Against Racism and Political Repression – Chicago

We, along with tens of thousands of other people, greet the decision by former Governor Patrick Quinn to commute[i] the sentence of Howard Morgan, who was almost killed by Chicago Police on Feb. 21, 2005, and was charged with attempted murder.  Howard Morgan, himself a police officer for over 21 years, was charged and unlawfully convicted in a second trial after being acquitted of firing his weapon in the incident.  He was sentenced to 40 years in prison.

We also greet the pardon based on innocence granted by Gov. Quinn to David Bates, and the commutation of the sentences of Anthony Dansbery, Tyrone Hood, Willie Johnson, and Carlos Villareal.  All have suffered years in prison unjustly, often for crimes they did not commit.

These are victories of the peoples struggles for justice.  We also must recognize the honesty and the courage of Gov. Quinn to act in the face of injustice, injustice that was organized and mobilized by state prosecutors and the police.  Gov. Quinn, in his last act as governor, will join the ranks of John Peter Altgeld and George Ryan, Illinois governors who took giant steps in the face of tremendous opposition to “do the right thing.”

But let us have no illusions.  The courage and honesty of one man, Gov. Quinn, alone could not have done it.  Gov. Quinn’s great achievement is that he was able to see and to hear the upsurge of millions of people all across this nation, demanding an end to police crimes.  Millions have participated, and continue to participate, in marches,  protests, direct non-violent actions, demanding an end to police violence, starting in response to the murder of Michael Brown in Ferguson Missouri.  This movement, embracing all races and ethnic groups even while being sparked and led by African American youth, deserves the credit for forcing the issue of police crimes and the cases of Howard Morgan and the others to the forefront.

The slogan of the campaign for freedom for Howard Morgan has been “Now Justice has a Voice,” because unlike Michael Brown, Eric Garner, and thousands of African American, Latino, and some white people who have been killed by police violence, Howard Morgan survived.  He is now free.  His voice will be a powerful one for ending police crimes, for passage of laws establishing democratic civilian control of the police, such as that proposed by the Chicago Alliance Against Racist and Political Repression.

Howard Morgan, David Bates, Anthony Dansbery, Tyrone Hood, Willie Johnson, and Carlos Villareal are free, but scores of Black and Latino men who have been tortured and forced to falsely confess to crimes they did not commit remain in prison.  In the words of the late Amilcar Cabral, “A luta continua!”

 

 

By Nicholas Powers

Truthout | News Analysis

Jan 2, 2015 – A crowd of law enforcement officers turn their backs on a screen broadcasting Mayor Bill de Blasio’s remarks from inside the funeral service for Officer Rafael Ramos, outside Christ Tabernacle Church in New York, Dec. 27, 2014. Union officials have attacked the mayor for what they see as insufficient support for the police and excessive sympathy for protesters. (Victor J. Blue/The New York Times)

On December 20, a Friday, 28-year-old Ismaaiyl Brinsley eyed a parked NYPD cruiser where Officers Rafael Ramos and Wenjian Liu sat; he pulled out a silver, semiautomatic gun and shot them dead. First and foremost this is a human loss that, like the deaths of Eric Garner and Michael Brown, has left families broken by pain. But quickly their murders were transformed into a political spectacle used by interlocking sectors of the ruling class to delegitimize the Black Lives Matters movement.

Justice will come when the vast majority “sees” that the state, specifically the criminal justice system, is not the cure for crime, but is in part, the cause of it.

On the streets of New York, protesters struggle against the police, conservative media and politicians. Each side fights for the power to shape public opinion. At stake is our social consensus on the limits of the state’s monopoly on violence. The Black Lives Matter movement demands we measure all life equally, which in practice, means sending police who kill innocent black men and women to jail. Whole swaths of reactionary society are lined up against them because they fear a “domino effect” – that if traditional authority is compromised, step by step, we will descend into chaos.

Who wins will determine the very visibility of violence itself. A huge gulf separates the media representation of violence from its lived reality; in that limbo lays the promise or betrayal of justice. It will come when the vast majority “sees” that the state, specifically the criminal justice system, is not the cure for crime, but is in part, the cause of it.

Narrative Visibility

We don’t see with our eyes, but with ideas. Narrative visibility is like a magnifying glass in the brain, it’s the ideological distortion that forces us to “view” some phenomena and be blind to others. Like every city, New York is an imagined community of old-time locals and immigrants, a few rich and the many poor, a boiling metropolis held together, in part, by the story it tells of itself to itself. In the newspapers and TV come endless tales of crime. Some are the hilarious hijinks of passion-addled people. Mostly though, we see the threatening faces of young men of color, tattooed necks and cold eyes. (Continued)

Continue reading Can’t Stop, Won’t Stop: Black Lives Matter Movement Hits Counterreaction

By Bill Fletcher, Jr.

In every vibrant progressive social movement there comes a moment when a psychologically or emotionally disturbed person, an agent provocateur, or a political extremist commits an atrocious act that is seized upon by the State and/or the political Right as a means of attempting to discredit or outright repress the movement.  The action, committed for whatever reason, is sufficiently heinous that confusion develops within the movement and the movement can lose both its momentum as well as a segment of its less committed or more ambivalent supporters.

In 1886, at the height of the Eight Hour Day movement, a bomb was set off at a worker’s rally at Haymarket Square in Chicago.  The rally was called to both protest police killings of worker protesters as well as to support striking workers fighting for the 8 hour day.  The rally was attacked by the police and a bomb was thrown at the police.  To this day no one actually knows who set off the bomb, including whether it was an agent provocateur, or a deranged or infuriated activist.  What is known, however, is that the bombing became a pretext for governmental effort to discredit the protests and the workers movement, and to suggest that the entire movement was led by cold, cruel anarchists who were only interested in violence.  Charges were brought against key leaders of the movement and in a kangaroo trial, eight individuals were convicted for their alleged involvement in the bombing and four were subsequently hanged.

The reaction by police unions, the political Right and much of the mainstream media today, in the aftermath of Ismaaiyl Brinsley’s alleged killings of two NYPD officers, is eerily reminiscent of the aftermath of the Haymarket massacre.  Intense and manipulative efforts are underway to paint those who have protested police violence, or even those who have simply spoken up against it, as allegedly having blood on their hands since they supposedly created the tension between the police and the community.  New York City Mayor de Blasio, for instance, has been demonized by the Right, with the suggestion that he and Rev. Al Sharpton created the incendiary environment that resulted in the murders of the two officers.

In this moment it is critical that progressives counter these arguments actively, vocally and with immense vigor.  These arguments and allegations are cynical and disingenuous efforts to discredit and derail one of the most important movements of the recent past.  Let us be clear as to what has been unfolding.

An apparently mentally and/or emotionally disturbed career criminal allegedly carried out the attempted murder of his girlfriend followed by the murder of the two officers.  This individual had no connection with any social justice movement, had no apparent connections with New York and was certainly not a leader of the movement against police violence.

Second, the tension that exists between the police and communities of color was not manufactured by any one.  It was and is the result of YEARS of police lynchings carried out in African American and Latino communities. 

Continue reading NYC Police Killings and the Haymarket Massacre: Lessons for the Movement