Mumia on cop violence
Whose interests do these 'pulic servants' serve?
The following is excerpted from an article written
by political prisoner Mumia Abu-Jamal on Feb. 10.
A young woman, engulfed in a diabetic coma while sitting in
her car, is repeatedly shot by a corps of cops, who say they
are threatened by the young woman.
Tyisha Miller, of Riverside, Calif., becomes a
statistic.
A young man sitting in his car in North Philly is surrounded
by a phalanx of armed cops, whose guns are pointed at him from
all points. He is ordered to raise his hands. When he does so,
he is shot to death by one of the cops, who insists he thought
he saw a gun. The 18-year-old is unarmed.
Donta Dawson becomes a statistic.
An emigrant from the West African nation of [Guinea] comes
to America, taking an apartment in New York's Bronx borough.
When four NYPD cops approach his door, reportedly because of a
suspected rape (he was not a suspect), he is shot at 41 times.
Nineteen shots hit him.
Amadou Diallo was unarmed, and will never return to West
Africa.
In case after case after case, in city after city, from
coast to coast, such cases arise with alarming regularity,
worsened by the realization that, in most cases, cops who have
committed these acts, that if committed by others would
constitute high crimes, will face no serious prosecution, if
any prosecution at all.
They are, the corporate media assures us, "just doing their
jobs," "under an awful lot of pressure," or "in fear," and
therefore justified in what they do. In the language of the
media, the very media that make their millions off of the
punishment industry calling for the vilest sentences known to
man, turn, in the twinkling of an eye, into paragons of mercy,
who lament that the "fine young men" who "served their
community" are in "trouble" or have "suffered enough."
The suffering of the slain, because they are young, and
Black, are all but forgotten in this unholy algebra that
devalues Black life, while heightening the worth of the
assailants because they work for the state.
The worst lie that is often trotted out when such cases
occur is when politicians and media people sing the praises of
such people, who are called, by virtue of their jobs, "public
servants." Since when have servants (of any kind) acted in the
vile, arrogant, monstrous manner that many of these cops do in
Black, Hispanic and poor communities? Since when have such
servants been in the position to slaughter, shoot, humiliate
and imprison the very public they are sworn to serve?
They serve the interests of capital, of the wealthy, of
those who run this system from their bank vaults and corporate
offices.
They do not serve the poor, the powerless, nor the
uninfluential. They never have.
They are an armed force organized to protect the interests
of the established, and those who own capital. The history of
labor in this country is splattered by the blood of trade
unionists who were beaten, shot and crushed to the earth for
striking against the trusts, combinations, and megacorporations
of capital.
Who did the beating? The shooting? The crushing?
The cops, who served the interests of a state that declared,
as did the Supreme Court, that unions were "criminal
conspiracies," and that "the Constitution was ... based upon
the concept that the fundamental private rights of property are
anterior to government and morally beyond the reach of popular
majorities."
Capital's voice (the media) and their agents (the
politicians) unite in a chorus of support for their legalized
killers, who bomb babies with impunity (remember May 13,
1985--Philadelphia), who shoot unarmed kids in their cars, and
unarmed African emigrants, whose only capital crime is being
Black in modern-day America.
This legalized violence that they do daily proves that
violence is not a problem to the system--when it is theirs
against the people. This awful crime must cease.
This article is copyright under a Creative
Commons License.
Workers World, 55 W. 17 St., NY, NY 10011
Email: ww@workers.org
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