Struggle for a New World strongly condemns the brutal and inhumane police murder of George Floyd, committed by Officer Derek Chauvin, with the aid of other officers of the Minneapolis Police Department, on May 25, 2020. This on-camera murder of an Afro-American man, already handcuffed and on the ground, is only the latest in a long line of legal lynchings. We salute the ongoing popular resistance and community self-defense actions being carried out by the Afro-American people of Minneapolis and their allies. On May 26, thousands defied the restrictions of the coronavirus to peacefully protest George Floyd’s murder, only for the MPD to attempt to viciously repress them. These heroic protesters resisted the attacks of the police. This protest and resistance has continued now into the following days, and will not stop until police murders stop. While the bourgeois media engages in “both-sides” rhetoric and condemns “violent riots” and “looting” in the same breath as they cry crocodile tears over George Floyd, we recognize the legitimacy of resisting, in the words of Malcolm X, “by any means necessary” the attacks and repression of white-supremacist US imperialism, in this instance represented by the MPD.
Let us be clear: it is right to rebel. It is right for the people to storm a police station, as just happened on the night of the 28th. The police are an occupying army who must be kicked out of every Black community, every working class community, every community of the oppressed and exploited. It is right to storm the Targets and ever other store, to seize the capitalist institutions that suck the money out of us and give nothing but starvation wages (with wage theft) in return. Which side are on? Are you on the side of the people, or the pigs? There is no middle path.
This is the latest in a long-running series of lynchings. Four years ago, a MPD police officer murdered Philando Castile, an Afro-American man who was doing everything we’re told to do during an encounter with the police, after pulling him over. A similar though somewhat calmer series of protests occurred then. And before that was Keith Lamont Scott and Charlotte. And before that was Freddie Gray and Baltimore. And before that was Michael Brown and Ferguson. These are just some of the most high-profile police murders of the past few years. And before them there were countless legal lynchings, carried out by the official arms of the white-supremacist US imperialist state. These were the counterparts of the extralegal lynchings carried out by the state’s unofficial arms, the KKK and other fascist paramilitaries. Truly, cops and Klan go hand in hand. Those who wear blue shirts with badges and those who wear white robes with hoods are united in maintaining US imperialism’s control over the oppressed peoples who constitute its internal colonies. Most fundamentally, they are united in maintaining imperialist control over the chief US colony, Afro-America.
Every since its beginning, the American project has been based on Black labor. Beginning in 1619, Africans were stolen and forced to work to build up what now is the US empire, and in this historical process the Afro-American nation was created. This nation remains at the heart of US imperialism, the basis of its proletariat, and its national struggle the most consistently revolutionary struggle within the borders of the US state. Again and again, it has been demonstrated that Afro-America is the Achilles’ Heel of US imperialism. This is why they will do everything in their power to repress Minneapolis, everything in their power to repress future uprisings, and why the police will keep murdering Afro-Americans in the streets. These murders aren’t random, they are terror tactics to keep Afro-America in its chains. But we know that they won’t succeed in stopping the struggle. Consider Palestine: the Palestinian nation has been brutally repressed since the beginnings of Zionist settler-colonialism, and they currently live in one of the most repressive conditions in the world, but they still resist. Just as Palestine will be free, so to will Afro-America. No matter how many police departments go to Israel to train in the latest imperialist brutality, they will not succeed in stopping the struggle. Black Power will come. Afro-America will be free.
To the freedom fighters in Minneapolis, we say that we are with you, and that we will do all we can to aid your struggle. To our readers, we say study the history of Black resistance, get informed and in touch with the Black liberation struggle in your area, and if you can do nothing else, please donate to the official GoFundMe for George Floyd’s family and to the bail fund for those arrested in Minneapolis. There is a countrywide day of protest scheduled for May 30th. If you can, please participate. If nothing is organized in your community, organize it. Your local police department is as guilty as Minneapolis’. Stand up, fight back. Say George Floyd’s name. Say the names of them all. We mourn George Floyd’s death, and we swear we will someday avenge his murder and all those murdered by US imperialism.
Struggle for a New World 