|
NEWS & LETTERS, March-April 2005Community 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 |
Home l News & Letters Newspaper l Back issues l News and Letters Committees l Dialogues l Raya Dunayevskaya l Contact us l Search Published by News and Letters Committees |