Crusader News

by Oduko Chima

2024 has seen a number of high-profile police murders of our people. In July, Sonya Massey of Springfield, Illinois was murdered by white supremacist pig Sean Grayson after calling the police department for assistance.¹ Grayson had a concerning pattern of violence beforehand, and as an article by The Departure Film² pointed out, a tattoo with norse symbolism common among white supremacists. On September 1st, beloved community activist Justin Robinson was approached while sleeping in his car and subsequently murdered by MPD officers Bryan Gilchrist and Vasco Mateus in Washington, D.C.³ In New York, NYPD pigs chased passenger Derell Mickles for evading fare and shot him, two other passengers, and a fellow officer at a stop in the historically Black Brownsville community.⁴ In an article from Optimum Media news affiliate News 12 Hudson Valley, NYPD claimed that the brandishing of a knife by Mickles as the reason for their action; but their reckless violence which injured bystanders, as well as the fact that they escalated over simply refusing to pay a fare, speak for themselves (not to mention that according to the news outlet The Gothamist, the knife found and published by the department was not even the same one in the officers’ bodycam footage!)⁵

On top of this, there is a developing story out of Henderson, North Carolina of a suspected lynching of 21 year-old Javion Magee, who was found hanging from a tree in the area on September 11th. Magee, native to Illinois, was stopping in the town for work. Magee’s family has been raising awareness on social media, encouraging people to spread the news and assist them with any information. The Magees have reported that the Sheriff’s Office and coroner have not been transparent, suggesting complicity on part of the police. Footage of Magee purchasing rope from a Walmart was recently released by the Vance County Sheriff’s Office, but Magee’s family still suspects foul play, as according to their spokesperson retrieved from ABC news affiliate ABC 11: there was “nothing under his fingernails or hands…. He did have a broken neck with blood around the neck which came from the hanging…. They also feel that this entire investigation is in no way transparent”.⁶ All of this suggests that Magee’s death was the result of racist intimidation in a story that feels reminiscent of the environment in which Strange Fruit was written.

What do all of these stories have in common? Wanton disregard for and outright hostility towards Black people. This comes as no surprise to the majority of Black people, who have lived under colonial violence for more than 400 years at the hands of the white supremacist ruling class which funds the police. After all, modern-day police departments in the United States evolved out of the slave patrols of the South. It would be more surprising for them to have changed their character. The indignation has never disappeared though, as every family member, friend, and loved one that the police murder fuels a righteous and revolutionary hatred towards the very system responsible for taking them from us; a system which asks us to legitimize its continued existence every four years.

On the heels of the George Floyd uprisings of 2020, then-candidate Joe Biden ran on a platform of “reforming” the police as a way to placate the just anger of the people, while promising Democratic Party donors that there would be no fundamental change in law enforcement policy. Unsurprisingly, this meant that his promises were fluff, as Biden would go on to increase funding for the police in his 2023 budget plan to a whopping $32 billion! The plan, as elaborated in an article on the subject by the National Review, included “$106 million “to support the deployment of body-worn cameras (BWC) to DOJ’s law enforcement officers.”⁷ As 2023 would go on to became the deadliest year for killings by police, according to a USA Today article on findings by Mapping Police Violence,⁸ all this meant was that we could more readily watch our people be murdered on camera.

Black people should have no illusions about what the police are and who they serve. The Atlanta Public Safety Training Center, more commonly known as “Cop City,” is a $90 million highly-militarized police training compound being constructed in East Atlanta, the heart of the city’s Black population. The facility is funded by the Atlanta Police Foundation, whose donors included some of the largest corporations in the United States such as Bank of America and Truist. Community members and activists who have protested its construction have been met by heavy police repression. In the USA Today article, What is ‘Cop City?’ Why activists are protesting police, fire department training center in Atlanta, by N’Dea Yancey-Bragg,⁹ the murder of activist Manuel Esteban Paez Terán, “Tortuguita”, by the Georgia Bureau of Investigation and State Troopers, as well as the charging of 23 protestors at the site with domestic terrorism, stand out as the most egregious examples (these charges would later be dropped).

Why is so much funding and training being invested into the police, despite an increased number of murders of our people and a continued lack of accountability? Simply put: capitalism and imperialism. Capitalism, the political and economic system we currently live under, necessitates police officers in order to protect the property and profits of the rich and put down rebellions that might upend this system of inequality. Imperialism is when capitalism becomes so monopolized, so concentrated, that it has to rely on the super-exploitation of colonized peoples in order to remain profitable. For Black people, this means intensifying white supremacy in order to maintain the double-oppression that we face: as a nationally oppressed peoples; and for the majority of us, as workers. In short, as long as capitalism needs to find profit, the ruling class needs to continue oppressing Black people, occupying our neighborhoods with police and making sure we can’t rise up when they kill us.

U.S. Imperialism oppresses colonized people both here and abroad, as the Georgia International Law Enforcement Exchange (GILEE) has been instrumental in bringing the tactics the genocidal Israeli state uses against Palestinians back home. An article by Truthout¹⁰ reveals that many of the donors behind the Atlanta Police Foundation are also donors to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC). Both of these ruling class special-interest organizations work in concert to facilitate the training of American police officers by the Israeli Defense Forces, who have their own militarized training compound dubbed “Mini Gaza” in the Negev desert. Against all illusions that the genocide in Palestine is not a domestic issue, major donor to GILEE and former CEO of Home Depot Bernie Marcus has praised the program for having been “so beneficial to both the state of Israel and certainly to the state of Georgia” so that U.S. police do not have to “reinvent the wheel” with the IDF showing them “what systems could be used”¹¹.

The role of the police is clear: they are not in our communities to protect Black people. They are here to take our lives in defense of the system of white supremacist exploitation. They are simply carrying out their four-centuries-long duty to maintain the enslavement and subjugation of African people. Our liberation as a nation of people will not come from the system that owes its existence to our oppression. We have to take up armed self-defense against white supremacist violence, and, in time, link our struggles with that of our colonized brothers and sisters and the working people of the world.

In 2020, in the wake of the racist murders of Rayshard Brooks in Georgia and George Floyd in Minneapolis, numerous Black militias across the country formed the “Not Fucking Around Coalition” and marched on Stone Mountain, a popular site for white supremacists to gather. When interviewed by Newsweek for their motivation, a NFAC member stated clearly: “We want change that’s really going to permanently help us. We don’t want [any] little change, we want some real change”.¹² NFAC understood what many of our greatest revolutionaries understood: political power comes from the barrel of a gun. If we want real change, we have to come to understand and organize around this fact, as do our enemies.

1. O’Connor, John, Body camera video focused national attention on an Illinois deputy’s fatal shooting of Sonya Massey, AP News, https://apnews.com/article/illinois-sonya-massey-deputy-shooting-grayson-01b91fa1731da8007cff693206cad2bc ↩︎
2. Shrestha, Alisha, Cop Sean Grayson’s Inked Arms Hinted At Supremacy Beyond Sonya Massey’s Rebuke Statement, The Departure Film, https://thedeparturefilm.com/cop-sean-graysons-inked-arms-hinted-at-supremacy-beyond-sonya-masseys-rebuke-statement/ ↩︎
3. Gathright, Jenny, What we know about Justin Robinson’s death and the D.C. police shooting video, The Washington Post, https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/other/what-we-know-about-justin-robinson-s-death-and-the-d-c-police-shooting-video/ar-AA1qkRzS ↩︎
4. Santorelli, Marissa, Family of victim, community member discuss Sutter Avenue police-involved shooting, News 12 Hudson Valley, https://hudsonvalley.news12.com/family-of-victim-community-member-discuss-sutter-avenue-police-involved-shooting ↩︎
5. Ostadan, Bahar, Brooklyn DA plans charges in fare evasion case that ended in police shooting: source, Gothamist, https://gothamist.com/news/brooklyn-da-plans-charges-in-fare-evasion-case-that-led-to-police-shooting-source ↩︎
6. George, Tom, Sheriff says video shows man buying rope found around his neck, family says it’s left more questions, ABC News 11, https://abc11.com/post/javion-magee-new-video-shows-21-year-old-truck-driver-purchasing-rope-used-death-walmart-henderson-north-carolina/15314106/ ↩︎
7. Downey, Caroline, President Biden’s 2023 Budget Increases Funding for Police, National Review, https://www.yahoo.com/news/president-biden-2023-budget-increases-154615051.html ↩︎
8. Yancey-Bragg, N’Dea, 2023 was the deadliest year for killings by police in the US. Experts say this is why, USA Today, https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/2023-was-the-deadliest-year-for-killings-by-police-in-the-us-experts-say-this-is-why/ar-AA1n75Pg ↩︎
9. Yancey-Bragg, N’Dea, What is ‘Cop City?’ Why activists are protesting police, fire department training center in Atlanta, USA Today, https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2023/03/06/what-is-cop-city-why-activists-protesting-atlanta/11413222002/ ↩︎
10. Seidman, Derek, Atlanta’s Cop City Is Funded by Some of the Same Billionaires Who Back AIPAC, Truthout, https://truthout.org/articles/atlantas-cop-city-is-funded-by-some-of-the-same-billionaires-who-back-aipac/ ↩︎
11. Ibid. ↩︎
12. Seidman, Derek, Atlanta’s Cop City Is Funded by Some of the Same Billionaires Who Back AIPAC, Truthout, https://truthout.org/articles/atlantas-cop-city-is-funded-by-some-of-the-same-billionaires-who-back-aipac/ ↩︎