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NEWS & LETTERS, March-April 2005

Community opposes police injustice

Los Angeles--There is a lot of talk in the community over the jury acquitting police officers for beating a Black youth on the dashboard of a car in the city of Inglewood for protesting the way the officers were interrogating the youth’s dad.  There is also a lot of talk over the closure of the trauma center of King-Drew Hospital and taking away community control of the hospital by the removal of the long-time community representative, Lillian Mobley, under the pretext that she is too ill to be part of the executive board of Charles Drew University. There is a lot of talk over a police officer beating a Black motorist with a flashlight, caught on video, but insufficient in the eyes of the police commissioners to prosecute the policeman for use of excessive force since "a video does not show the whole story." And, there is a lot of talk over the police shooting of a 13-year-old Black youth, Devon Brown, called "justifiable" by the Los Angeles Police Department.

All these excuses are to keep the Black community in line.  As a Black person told me, "How do they expect us to rise up from poverty if every time we try, they grab us by the shoulder and push us down?" Is justice possible under this capitalist system?

In his ETHNOLOGICAL NOTEBOOKS, Karl Marx formulated that the "transformation of gens to civil society is accompanied by conquest, caste, and differentiation in the social rank." These are the bases under which Black people are (mis)treated in the inner cities of this nation.  The foundation of justice in a civil society is equality, yet neither justice nor peace is possible under this "civil society."  We have to get back our "human" rights from this system. We have to rethink an alternative to this capitalistic society.

--Manel

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