December 4, 2014
Eric Garner was an African American man who was murdered by a white cop with the New York City Police Department. The medical examiner ruled the killing a homicide. The video that shows Eric Garner being choked to death in the street – strangled as a gang of police jumped him – has been viewed by tens of millions. You can hear his last words, “I can’t breathe.” Still, on Dec 3, a white-majority grand jury let the killer cop and his accomplices walk free.
What happened to Eric Garner is like what happened to Mike Brown in Ferguson, Missouri: the U.S. ‘justice’ system once again demonstrated that it is about the opposite of justice. Killer cops are allowed to roam the streets and mass incarceration is the order of the day for Black, Chicano/Latino, Native American and other oppressed nationality youth. In fact, the ‘justice’ system not only reflects the inequality and racist discrimination that is part and parcel of U.S. society – it is an instrument of it.
In response, we are now seeing a tide of struggle against police terror across the country. In Utah, Florida, New York, Milwaukee, Los Angeles and many other places, people are standing up to injustice, and the heroic struggle in Ferguson, Missouri has helped to light the way. The rebellions in Ferguson signaled the start of a truly nationwide movement against the epidemic of racist police violence and this movement is without precedent in recent decades.
In the days and weeks ahead, everything possible should be done to build the movement against police terror. In light of the Eric Garner slaying, it should be clear that things like police body cameras are not going to change anything for the better. Nor will polite conversations with the powers-that-be. We need to be in the streets demanding justice and an end to inequity and racist discrimination.
While the ‘justice’ system failed to indict the killers of Mike Brown, Eric Garner and so many others, it did an excellent job at indicting those who run this country, as being unfit to rule. The elite will do anything that they think they need to do to defend their power and privilege. So we need to be about achieving real change by any means necessary.
Justice for Eric Garner!
Jail Killer Cops!
