Almost every day a black person is killed by police in the USA. Never mind the thousands who are arrested and convicted on minor crimes such as possession of marihuana to feed the slavery system of the private prisons. Ferguson is just the tip of the iceberg of a colonial racist system in an extremely undemocratic context.
No wonder that an uproar has surged in the streets of the cities across the Imperial Core.
→ https://twitter.com/hashtag/Ferguson?src=hash
 |
| Los Angeles march took over major highway |
This uproar is good and necessary and does not only answers to circumstances. However for things to get straight there needs to be a Socialist focus that tackles the problem of oligarchic rule and lack of democracy. Only People's Power can address the very urgent needs of Humankind in the USA or anywhere else.
The objective conditions for Revolution are here, and not just in the USA, however the subjective ones are not. People is angry with very good reason but they do not seem to know yet how to tackle the prevalent injustice, how to defeat the bourgeois oligarchy and establish a Real Democracy.
Without conscience we are powerless. With class conscience we can change it all.
Update:
The situation across the USA seems to have been developing towards increased protests all across the territory as well as towards increased violence, particularly from police forces, which had no qualm about gassing around everyone or even shooting at them with rubber bullets and possibly even live ammo (unconfirmed).
Twitter reports from Ferguson tell of police commanding the press to leave the city at once and also of heavy automatic gunfire. This kind of violence is not only found in the suburb of St. Louis but also in many other cities.
 |
| LA cop shooting against demonstrators with a drum-fed grenade launcher (source) |
I am not an expert in criminal law proceedings, but it appears that the public prosecutor (an elected official) short cut the process.
ReplyDeleteThe police officer was not acquitted because he did not stand trial. The grand jury is a mechanism to determine whether probable cause exists to charge an individual with a crime. It is a low standard, a low "burden of proof" on the prosecution. In the Anglo-American legal tradition, the defendant does not have the right to present exculpatory evidence. That comes later after he has been charged with a crime. In this case, the prosecutor, who controlled the grand jury process, not only allowed exculpatory evidence but allowed the police officer's version of events to be submitted to the grand jury. In essence he conducted a mini-trial in a process which he controlled rather than a judge. Nine of the twelve jurors were white. Basically, he ensured there would be no trial while placing the decision on the shoulders of the grand jury rather than himself. You may ask how this could happen, but in this case the prosecutor did not want to prosecute the police officer. Ordinarily the prosecutor is expected to have a motivation to prosecute an alleged criminal.
The criminal justice system did not work in this case because of the actions of the public prosecutor. I don't know what recourse there is except to vote him out of office at the next election.
Same thing. How do you explain that in a town 2/3 black the jury is 3/4 white? How do you explain the acquittal of New York? How do you explain the murder of a 12 y.o. kid in Cleveland? How do you explain a proceeding taking place for months?
DeleteWhat is clear is that for this or that specific technical justification: police is never punished for their criminal deeds, being de facto authorized to kill people, mostly black men, at whim.
It's not just this case: it's almost 500 police "exceutions" (many of them no doubt cold blood murder) per year, almost 300 of them of black people.