Vol. 80/No. 33 September 5, 2016
Socialist Workers Party: Cop brutality part of capitalist rule
“The anti-police rioting comes from years of being oppressed,” Gary Holloway, a 36-year-old unemployed Black worker, told Kennedy. “I don’t agree with burning down our community, but our people were lashing out from anger over the killing.”
“In Cuba, where the workers and farmers made a socialist revolution, taking charge of their own destiny, the police are part of the working class, not a tool of oppression and violence against them like they are here in capitalist society,” Kennedy told Holloway. “We’re campaigning to build the Socialist Workers Party to follow their example, to lead a mass working-class movement to take political power here in the U.S.”
“There is power in numbers. I am very interested in the Socialist Workers Party,” Holloway said. “Call me.”
Vicki Pearson told Kennedy she heard police sirens when Smith was killed. She had participated in the fight to desegregate the schools in Milwaukee when she was a student. Formerly a medical assistant, Pearson is now disabled.
“A lot has to change,” Pearson said after Kennedy explained her party believes the crisis will worsen and the working class needs to take power. “I also think the economy is going to get a lot worse before it gets better. I always vote, and this time I am voting for Clinton as the lesser evil.”
“But when you vote for the so-called ‘lesser evil’ you can be sure that what you’ll get will be evil,” Kennedy said. “I’m asking you to vote for what you want, to support the working-class alternative to all the capitalist parties, the Socialist Workers Party.”
Holloway and Pearson both got the new Pathfinder Press book Are They Rich Because They’re Smart? Class, Privilege and Learning Under Capitalism and a subscription to the Militant.
“I think Sylville ran from the cops because he didn’t want to end up in jail,” Mario Ford, a 25-year-old factory worker who knew Smith from when they were kids, told Kennedy when she knocked on his door. “He may have been armed — the video hasn’t been released yet — but that doesn’t give the cops a license to kill.
“The police have a blue brotherhood where they cover up for each other — like in Chicago where seven cops wrote false reports about the killing of Laquan McDonald,” he said.
After the Chicago cops finally released the dashcam video of the 2014 killing of McDonald last November, a wave of protests swept the Windy City for weeks. Chicago cop Jason Van Dyke was indicted for murder.
“We need to keep up the demonstrations against police brutality and killings,” said Kennedy, who is from Chicago and participated in the protests there.
Related articles:
Milwaukee: ‘Indict cops for killing of Sylville Smith’
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