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Chicago Protest for Trayvon Martin, 3/24/12. Photo by FJJ. |
by Carl Dix
Trayvon Martin, a Black youth walking home with a bag of skittles and a can of iced tea, is gunned down, and the cops see no reason to arrest the killer! Why not? The killer, George Zimmerman, is a member of a neighborhood watch group, and he tells the cops he shot Trayvon. Yet Zimmerman has yet to be even treated like a suspect in a homicide. Why not? Witnesses have come forward who have disputed Zimmerman’s claim of self-defense, and still he walks free. Why?
In 1857, in the case of Dred Scott, a Black man who had escaped slavery, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that a Black man has "no rights which the white man was bound to respect." The vigilante murder of Trayvon Martin and the countless other ways the criminal injustice system in this country abuses Black people and other oppressed people show that this white supremacist logic is still in effect.
This is a system whose wealth and power came from the vicious exploitation and brutal oppression of minority peoples. It remains true to that legacy today. Even after the Civil War officially ended slavery and after decades of tremendous sacrifices and heroic struggle by Black people and others, this oppression remains in effect. Police commit brutality and even murder and get away with no punishment. Racist murders like that of Trayvon happen again and again, and there is no justice. This happens because the system that spawned this oppression remains fundamentally intact.
If the only problem was the way this system mistreats Black people, Latinos and others, that would be reason enough to get rid of it. And this is far from the only problem humanity faces—there’s the degradation women face, wars for empire, destruction of the environment, indefinite detention and even assassination of those the government calls threats to national security, and more. It will take nothing short of revolution to end all these horrors, once and for all. Revolution to get rid of this system and bring a fundamentally different system into being. We in the Revolutionary Communist Party are building a movement for revolution. Get with that movement and join the emancipators of humanity.
And there is an urgent, immediate need right now—that is for determined mass resistance from every person of conscience to condemn the murder of Trayvon Martin and to demand justice. And to stand up and say no to all the horrors this system inflicts on Black and other oppressed people.
Carl Dix is one of the Initiators of the upcoming April 19 "National Day of Resistance to Mass Incarceration." This will be a day of resistance on college campuses, in high schools and in communities—a day when religious and other institutions open their doors and invite the community in to speak bitterness about abusive policing, and youth take to the streets determined to no longer accept being criminalized in silence, and others from many different walks of life join them. A day when people in the prisons find ways to raise their voices. All of this involving all kinds of people, from different walks of life and points of view, all saying NO to Mass Incarceration, NO to everything that leads up to it, and NO to all its consequences. For more information or to get involved, contact:
stopmassincarceration@ymail.com
P.O. Box 941 Knickerbocker Station,
New York, New York 10002
866-841-9139 x2670
This article originally appeared on Revolution.