Tag Archives: police brutality

Manuel Jamines, Guatemalan Day Laborer Killed by LA Police

Carlos Montes demands justice for Manuel Jimenes at community meeting. (Fight Back! News/Staff)

The following article is from Fight Back! News:

Los Angeles, CA – The Guatemalan community, especially the indigenous Mayan sector, has been protesting and angry over the brutal killing of their community member Manuel Jamines. Jamines was shot in the head and body on a busy street in the late afternoon in the Pico Union, a Central American community, by the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) on Sept. 5.

At least two witnesses have said that Manuel was not armed and no threat to anyone. Police and one witness claim that Manuel Jamines had a knife and wielded it at police. Police claim to have shouted to Manuel in English and Spanish to yield, but the community says that Jamines only spoke a Mayan language native to Guatemala. Continue reading

Still No Justice for Oscar Grant

The following article is from Fight Back! News:

Los Angeles, CA – Over a year ago, on New Year’s Day 2009, Oscar Grant, a young African-American man with a four-year old daughter, was murdered by a police officer. He was shot in the back as he lay on his chest on the Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) platform in Oakland, California.

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Progress for Kofi Adu-Brempong, charges dropped

The following article by Jared Hamill is from Fight Back! News:

Gainesville, FL – There is progress in the case of Kofi Adu-Brempong, the University of Florida graduate student shot in the face by campus police after they invaded his apartment on March 2nd. Kofi is still recovering after a white policeman shot his jaw off with an assault rifle at close range. One week ago State’s Attorney Bill Cervone agreed to drop charges against Kofi, an African immigrant. Fernando Figueroa of Gainesville Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) said, “When these racist police put criminal charges on Kofi, they really added insult to injury. We are relieved the charges were dropped, but there should not have been any in the first place.”

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Gainesville: Video of Kofi shooting finally released

The following article is from Fight Back! News:

Gainesville, FL – The video of the March 2 shooting of Kofi Adu-Brempong has finally been released to the public. Students of the University of Florida and members of the community have been outraged about the shooting and have held demonstrations demanding justice for Adu-Brempong.

Justin Wooten, a member of Students for a Democratic Society and organizer for the coalition fighting for Kofi, said, “This is a big deal for us. This video shows just how outrageous the police response was. This video shows what happens when you hire racist thugs who want to play cowboy.”

Justice for Kofi! Gainesville students protest police shooting

Community members speak out on the University of Florida campus before marching over to the Board of Trustees meeting. (Allan Brooks)

The following article by Jared Hamill is from Fight Back! News:

Gainesville, FL – Over 400 angry protesters – a coalition of students, local residents and university professors – rallied and marched to protest the racist police shooting of Kofi Adu-Brempong.

Adu-Brempong is an international graduate student from Ghana who was shot in the face by a University of Florida policeman. After receiving a call from a neighbor concerned that Adu-Brempong was screaming, due to stress over his studies and his immigration status, campus police stormed his apartment, tased him three times and then shot him in the face with an assault rifle.

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Campuses rocked by education rights protests March 4

March 4 protest at UCLA (Fight Back! News/Staff)

The following article by Kati Ketz is from Fight Back! News:

 Thousands of students, workers and faculty at over 100 campuses in at least 39 states participated in a national day of action March 4. One demand was that administrators and chancellors must quit raising tuition and fees. Another demand was that theycut the salaries of the highest-paid administrators instead of the lowest-paid staffers on campus. Many of the protests opposed layoffs. Actions ranged from walkouts and marches, to occupations and shut-downs, to teach-ins and movie showings.

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A closer look at bourgeois democracy

Since today is the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall (please see my previous post, “Democracy, East Germany and the Berlin Wall” by Stephen Gowans), lets take a closer look at bourgeois democracy, since it is supposedly so fabulous according to the self-congratulatory imperialist media:

That would all be funny if this farce weren’t backed by force:

“Bourgeois democracy, although a great historical advance in comparison with medievalism, always remains, and under capitalism is bound to remain, restricted, truncated, false and hypocritical, a paradise for the rich and a snare and deception for the exploited, for the poor.” – V. I. Lenin, Bourgeois and Proletarian Democracy

30th Anniversary of the Greensboro Massacre

On November 3rd, 1979, the Workers Viewpoint Organization (which would become the Communist Workers Party) held a anti-Klan rally in Greensboro, North Carolina. Five WVO cadres were killed by the Ku Klux Klan with the assistance of the Greensboro Police. The following is an excellent documentary about the Greensboro Massacre, called “Greensboro’s Child“.

The Beloved Community Center, Greensboro Justice Fund, and other organizations in Greensboro are hosting a conference and other events to commemorate the “30th Anniversary of the Tragic Killing of Five Labor and Community Organizers by Klan and Nazis in 1979” from Nov. 4-7th.

COINTELPRO: The FBI’s War on Black America

For more information on the FBI’s COINTELPRO, check out the wikipedia page, along with Paul Wolf’s COINTELPRO reference site.

Bourgeois Democracy and the Eviction of Rosemary Williams

Take the fundamental laws of modern states, take their administration, take freedom of assembly, freedom of the press, or “equality of all citizens before the law,” and you will see at every turn evidence of the hypocrisy of bourgeois democracy with which every honest and class-conscious worker is familiar. There is not a single state, however democratic, which has no loopholes or reservations in its constitution guaranteeing the bourgeoisie the possibility of dispatching troops against the workers, of proclaiming martial law, and so forth, in case of a “violation of public order,” and actually in case the exploited class “violates” its position of slavery and tries to behave in a non-slavish manner.

 – V. I. Lenin: “The Proletarian Revolution and the Renegade Kautsky”

The following video shows police kicking and pepper-spraying protesters as they evict Rosemary Williams for GMAC. The people’s occupation of Rosemary Williams’ home has lasted for more than a month, following a long struggle to keep her home. It has been one of the most important and advanced struggles of this economic crisis.

Read the article “Seven people arrested trying to stop the eviction of Rosemary Williams” from Fight Back! News.

One is reminded of the RNC protests that happened in the Twin Cities just over a year ago.

Whether it is one house or a whole city, this is what bourgeois democracy looks like.