By Frank Chapman, Field Secretary
Chicago Alliance Against Racist and Political Repression
The murder of Eric Gardner in New York this past week brings to mind how lynching as a method of social control and a weapon of political reaction is still alive and still perpetrated in the name of law and order and maintaining racial oppression. Look at the white vigilante groups on the border threatening violence to Mexican children, and look at the wanton, senseless murder of African Americans and Latinos by the police in our cities and you can clearly see that lynching is the heart-beat of reactionary, racist politics in this land. We see racist attitudes everywhere from blatant racist attacks against President Obama to blaming African American and Latino families for inner city violence to vigilante murder of black children to the sidewalk murder of Eric Gardner by a gang of white police officers. Lynching is traditionally defined as the extra-judicial murder of someone by mob action.
Historically, in the South, lynching has always been the result of the actual or perceived loss of white privilege and is associated with the re-imposition of white supremacy after the Civil War and the abolition of slavery. In the Northeast and West lynching was used against U.S. and foreign born workers (remember Joe Hill) to keep them from organizing unions for better pay and working conditions. The San Francisco Vigilance Movement often mounted mob violence against the Irish, Chinese and Mexican communities.
Also black and white civil rights workers were lynched in the South during the 1960s. According to the Tuskegee Institute 3,446 African Americans and 1,297 whites were lynched between 1882 and 1968. In the same period about 200 anti-lynch bills were introduced into Congress and only three passed in the House of Representatives. None passed in the Senate. June 13, 2005 the United States Senate apologized for its failure to enact an anti-lynching law. With a voice vote of 80 senators the U.S. Senate passed a resolution formally apologizing for its failure to pass an anti-lynch bill when it was most needed. The resolution expressed, in part, “…the deepest sympathies and most solemn regrets of the Senate to the descendants of victims of lynching, the ancestors of whom were deprived of life, human dignity and the constitutional protections accorded all citizens of the United States.”
What has happened in the last nine years since this Senate Resolution of a formal apology? Police and vigilantes have continued to kill African Americans and Latinos with impunity and the federal government has not taken any consistent actions to stop this new style lynching by the police. Since 9/11, 5000 people have been killed by the police (compare this with the 4,743 lynched between 1882 and 1968) and needless to say they have been disproportionately people of color.
Randall Kerrick, a Charlotte, N.C. police officer, earned infamy in September, 2013 when he shot Jonathan Ferrell, 24, a former Florida A&M football player, 10 times in the middle of the night. Ferrell had crashed his car in what police called "a pretty serious accident," and he was reportedly seeking help while in distress. After a nearby homeowner called police, Ferrell staggered toward the officers who arrived on the scene. That's when Kerrick shot the man. Again: 10 times. January this year a grand jury refused to indict Kerrick for murder.
But the situation with Eric Gardner, the young man just killed by a gang of police in Staten Island in broad daylight, the case cited above and the police killing of a 16 year child in Chicago over the July 4th weekend are not isolated incidents or occasional breakdowns in the system. There is a definable racist pattern and we see it clearly when we look at the stats. For example, from 2009 to 2013 there were 267 police shootings. 75.3% of those shot were African American. (These figures are taken from Independent Police Review Authority reports here in Chicago).
The Chicago Alliance Against Racist and Political Repression has launched a campaign for an elected Civilian Police Accountability Council (CPAC) and I submit that this CPAC campaign is in reality the equivalent of an anti-lynch campaign. We say this because the police and vigilantes are operating under the color of state laws to do the same thing that lynch mobs did and often with the same racist fervor. In point of fact when George Zimmerman murdered Trayvon Martin he (Zimmerman) was supported by a white racist mob organized by right wing extremist that raised nearly a million dollars for his defense fund.
In the period January 1, 2009 to June 30, 2014 there have been 86 people killed by Chicago police officers acting under the color of law. They (the people killed) were among the more than 294 people shot by police officers. African Americans were 78.1 per cent of the shooting victims and Latinos were 13.2 per cent, while 7.1 percent were white.
Police crimes of murder and torture have been made acceptable police practices in spite of the public outrage against them. The politicians and the fraternal order of police justify these lynch like tactics by criminalizing the entire African and Latino communities. All people of color are suspects.
If we are to avoid morphing into a fascist state then we must stop this present state of siege in our communities by fighting for community control of the police. Police repression is an integral part of racial oppression and that is why people of color can’t just call for the police to police the police or for federal intervention. The best intervention is the democratic intervention of the masses and that is why we must fight for a Civilian Police Accountability Council that will be elected by the residents of any given police district. This elected body would not be a police review board but a police control board.
Ted Nugent is standing up to the liberal America-haters! For the lying...
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