Outrage and protests against so-called racial profiling and cop brutality have immersed the administration of New Jersey Governor Christine Whitman in a political crisis. More demonstrations are needed to put the Orange, New Jersey, police who killed Earl Faison behind bars and convict the two state troopers who fired 11 shots into a van of Black and Latino youth on the New Jersey turnpike last year, wounding three of them. This is the only way to win justice for Faison, the countless others who have been brutalized by cops, and victims of "racial profiling." Fighters against cop brutality should also attend the June 7 trial of Max Antoine, who was beaten by Irvington, New Jersey, cops and is now being charged with assaulting them!
The protests in Orange, New Jersey, are part of the pattern of increasing resistance among working people to racist police violence across the country - from the cop execution of Tyisha Miller in California to the slaughter of Amadou Diallo in New York City. Eyes around the world are now focused on the trial of the barbaric cops who tortured Abner Louima.
"Racial profiling" - the targeting of Blacks and Latinos on interstate highways by state troopers - is nothing new. Workers and others of oppressed nationalities have always been singled out for abuse by the brutes in blue, whose function in society is to mete out punishment to working people on the spot. This is what cops do in their role of protecting the property rights of the wealthy class that runs the capitalist system.
The indictment of the two New Jersey State Patrol cops and the belated acknowledgment by Whitman and the State Attorney General that New Jersey troopers systematically harass Blacks and Latinos on the turnpike is intertwined with the debate among capitalist politicians and petty-bourgeois political figures over how best to put a lid on the crisis and stymie mounting outrage among working people. This is also why Whitman dumped her superintendent of the New Jersey State Patrol for saying Blacks and "other minority groups" are the cause of "the drug problem."
The calls for more Black cops, consent decrees to reform the police, "outside monitors" to watch the highway patrol, or appointing civilian review boards to root out "bad apples," will never solve the problem of cop assaults on working people. In fact, the rulers will intensify their brutal methods as workers and farmers increasingly take action to defend our working conditions and standard of living in this period of accelerating capitalist decay. The establishment of a military defense command, paramilitary units to fight the "war on drugs," and mock "antiterrorist" invasions of U.S. cities by U.S. Marines highlight this reality. What the owners of capital in store for us are more executions, more prisons, and more time spent in jails.
The U.S.-led war on Yugoslavia is another example of the wealthy class's assault on working people. It shows how their foreign policy is an extension of their domestic policy - savage punishment for those who don't get on their knees and follow the rules of the capitalist bosses.
The way forward for working people is more mobilizations in the streets to demand jailing of guilty cops, including those who killed Faison. We should call for an end to the racist harassment and discrimination by state troopers along with their illegal searches. We should demand the Whitman administration abolish the cops "Hotel-Motel Program" - the snoop and snitch operation aimed at Latinos and West Indian immigrants that tramples on the democratic rights of all working people.
All convictions of Blacks and other oppressed nationalities arising from arrests on the New Jersey Turnpike and other state highways should be overturned. And any money paid for fines and court costs should be refunded.
Jail the guilty cops!
Justice for Earl Faison!