Repeatedly, there are cases of black people being murdered by police throughout
this country. Over and over again, these stories create headlines. Often, there
are public demonstrations to show disapproval. Sometimes, as in Minneapolis
now, there are days of riots. Almost never, are the police officers who are
seen on videos murdering people, tried and found guilty. There are people who
point to the progress that we have supposedly made in this country in the fight
against racism. I remember attending an outdoor theater production in a park in
Washington DC in, perhaps, 1947, and drinking from a water fountain labeled,
"For Whites Only". We don't have segregated water fountains anymore. We had a
Black President. Also, I have an adopted half black, half Vietnamese daughter.
No one was adopting transracially back in the 40's or 50's or even, the 60's.
But if we look at the lives of the majority of people of African American
descent in this country, how much has actually changed for them?
Miriam
-----Original Message-----
From: blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
<blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> On Behalf Of Roger Loran Bailey
(Redacted sender "rogerbailey81" for DMARC)
Sent: Friday, May 29, 2020 1:01 PM
To: blind-democracy <blind-democracy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Subject: [blind-democracy] Racist Murder in America: Ahmaud Arbery, George
Floyd and the COVID-19 Pandemic
Racist Murder in America: Ahmaud Arbery, George Floyd and the COVID-19 Pandemic
https://socialistaction.org/2020/05/28/racist-murder-in-america-ahmaud-arbery-george-floyd-and-the-pandemic/
May 28, 2020
By Jeff Mackler
Black Georgia jogger, 25-year-old Ahmaud Arbery, was murdered in cold blood by
three white racists on February 23. Arbery’s family attorneys, led by Benjamin
Crump, have charged that his murder was premeditated.
Local police, on the scene soon after the murder, accepted the testimony of the
killers. They were considered “witnesses,” not suspects. One, a former cop and
police investigator, Gregory McMichael, who had worked under the jurisdiction
of the first two District Attorneys assigned to the case, was immediately
released along with his son, Travis. The DAs concluded that Arbery’s murder was
fully justified under Georgia law.
Under pressure some two months later, when evidence to the contrary emerged,
they recused themselves from further deliberations on the case.
Ahmaud Arbery: “Jogging while Black”
Arbery, a former high school football standout, according to the New York
Times, was jogging in the predominantly white, middle-class small town of
Satilla Shores in south Georgia, a short distance from his house on the other
side of the freeway, largely populated by poor Blacks. On that fatal February
23 day, he stopped at an open construction site and entered a partially built
house to check it out. According to the owner, who had installed a surveillance
camera inside, it was likely to get a drink of water. Nothing was stolen. The
owner had previously reported to the police that a number of others were
recorded as similarly checking out the house, including several whites. In no
instance was anything taken or damaged.
In this instance, however, immediately after Aubrey emerged and continued his
jogging, following a few minutes inside, he was confronted by Gregory
McMichael’s son Travis, armed with a shotgun and accompanied by his father
toting his .357 Magnum pistol. They proceeded to chase after Arbery in their
pickup truck followed by a third white man, William “Roddie” Bryan, who videoed
the “chase” and subsequent murder on his cellphone. Bryan followed the
McMichaels in his own car. The fleeing Arbery was shot three times, as he tried
to fight off Travis McMichael, whose car had blocked his path. The killers told
the arriving police that they claimed the right of “citizen’s arrest” and
“self-defense.
The video recording Arbery’s murder was not revealed by the cops and the
District Attorney until some two months later. The first DA, Jackie Johnson,
recused herself from the case because former police officer and inspector,
Gregory McMichael had worked in her office. The second DA, George E. Barnhill,
eventually did the same after Arbery’s mother, Wanda Cooper, learned that
Barnhill’s son worked in the Brunswick District Attorney’s office, which had
previously employed Gregory McMichael.
Georgia officials prepare their cover-up
But both Johnson and Barnhill had accepted the murderers’ story before stepping
aside. Both had seen the video and kept it hidden. Before withdrawing from the
case, Barnhill wrote to the police that he did not believe there was evidence
of a crime, stating that the McMichaels had been legally carrying their weapons
under Georgia law. He also stated that because Arbery was a “burglary suspect,”
the pursuers, who had “solid firsthand probable cause,” were justified in
chasing him under the state’s citizen’s arrest law. Barnhill stated that video
existed of Mr. Arbery “burglarizing a home immediately preceding the chase and
confrontation.” Barnhill’s statement was contradicted by the owner of the home,
who had informed police that there was no burglary, that “nothing was taken.”
In the letter to the police, Barnhill cited a separate video of the shooting
filmed by a third pursuer, only later identified as William Bryan. Barnhill
said that this video, which had not been made public, shows Mr. Arbery
attacking Travis McMichael after he and his father pulled up to him in their
truck.
Arbery family fights back
Interviewed on Amy Goodman’s “Democracy Now!” Arbery family attorney Benjamin
Crump’s account is startling. Crump insisted:
“Well, as Ahmaud Arbery’s family and my co-counsels have maintained from the
beginning, we believe that William “Roddie” Bryan was part of this organized
gang that was attempting, based on a premeditated plan, to confront and capture
Ahmaud Arbery as he jogged through that community that day. And the text
message that was sent by police officer Robert Rash to the homeowner, saying
that, ‘If you see him again, don’t call the police. Call Gregory McMichael.
He’s a former police officer’ — so, we believe this was an organized mob that
was planning on confronting Ahmaud. So it is wholly appropriate that Bryan was
arrested and charged.”
Crump’s remarks were made only after the Bryan cellphone video was leaked to
the media by the McMichael’s attorneys, who believed that it would vindicate
their clients. The aforementioned text message sent to the owner of the house
under construction by police officer Robert Rash, with instructions to not
contact the police but rather Gregory McMichael, was central to attorney
Crump’s charge that Arbery’s murder was premeditated. Here you have the
McMichaels, armed, ready and in immediate pursuit, as unarmed Arbery emerges
jogging, as had been his habit, from the open construction site, while dutiful
Gregory McMichael phones the police from the back of his pick-up truck to
inform them of his pursuit. The police arrive less than a minute later.
Crump concisely summarized the Arbery family demands as follows: “We want the
Justice Department to not only open a hate crime investigation, but we want
them to look at the due process of law violations under the 14th Amendment
involving everybody who was involved in this investigation, from the police
officers who were first on the scene to the first DA, Jackie Johnson, who, it
is alleged, told the police not to file charges in the case; to the second
district attorney, Barnhill, who also said, like Jackie Johnson, he had a
conflict of interest, but yet wrote a memorandum saying that he saw no probable
cause to arrest this murderous father-and-son duo, and, in essence, put his
thumb on the scales of justice in favor of the McMichaels; and the third
prosecutor, who said when he looked at this video and he looked at all this
evidence, the statements, said that he didn’t feel he could arrest them, that
he had to take it to a grand jury; and so, the Glynn County Sheriff’s
Department, who leaked the video of Ahmaud Arbery from three years prior, we
believe, in an attempt to assassinate his character, as well as Robert Rash,
the police officer who sent the text to the homeowner that condoned and
encouraged this vigilante mob to capture and confront Ahmaud Arbery.”
Until the release of the Bryan video the Arbery case was basically considered
closed. The law, in all its racist majesty, was followed, so proclaimed the
authorities, who managed to secretly leak a report indicating that Arbery had
been previously convicted of a shoplifting offense. He was Black, in a white
neighborhood, trespassing in a house under constructing, tagged as a burglar
fleeing from a crime and pursued by two and then three innocent bystanders, who
were legally armed, legally in pursuit of a criminal and legally entitled to
shoot him in “self defense.” All this was deemed by three DAs to be totally in
accord with the law. In truth, Arbery was lynched in accord with the
“principles of southern justice,” today practiced by killer cops across the
nation.
Video’s release brings national media exposure
But again, only with the release of the video, national media, in the context
of today’s COVID-19 pandemic, as we shall see, finally took notice. The New
York Times asked Michael J. Moore, an Atlanta lawyer who formerly served as a
U.S. attorney in Georgia, to review Barnhill’s letter to the Glynn County
Police Department, as well as the initial police report. Meanwhile, The Times
compiled a detailed minute-by-minute account of the unfolding events, using
multiple videos, phone and text messages. Moore emailed The Times stating that
Barnhill’s opinion was “flawed” and that the McMichaels appeared to be the
aggressors in the confrontation, and such aggressors were not justified in
using force under Georgia’s self-defense laws. “The law does not allow a group
of people to form an armed posse and chase down an unarmed person who they
believe might have possibly been the perpetrator of a past crime,” Moore wrote.
The Times compilation, coupled with the release of the Bryan cellphone
recording, instantly reversed the lynching cover-up momentum.
The Georgia Bureau of Investigation (GBI), notwithstanding its racist history,
took over the investigation and arrested the McMichaels on charges of murder
along with Bryan, the previously proclaimed happenstance eyewitness, who is
today jailed and charged with the same felony murder.
Cobb County’s first Black female prosecutor, Joyette Holmes, has now been
appointed lead prosecutor. As with the events in Ferguson, Missouri, where
police murdered innocent Black man Michael Brown, the case is expected to
proceed more openly and slowly through a number of legal channels, wherein the
temporarily cowed racist criminal “injustice” system can be expected to craft
more “refined” arguments and “legal interpretations” aimed at the release or
perhaps partial vindication of the three racist Georgia lynch mob participants.
Police murder one unarmed Black person each day!
In racist America police and police-related murders of unarmed Blacks are
tragically routine. A partial study of such murders released several years ago
at the height of the Black Lives Matter movement demonstrating that cop murders
of unarmed Black people take place on average of one per day! I say partial
because many districts make it a point to not report such murders. And how many
of these murders end in the conviction of the killer cops? Less than a handful!
A tiny few of the thousands of racist murderers are ever convicted. We list
here just a handful of the Black victims of police murder to keep their
memories alive as we continue to challenge the inherent racism in capitalist
America.
Dontre Hamilton, Shot 14 times by a police officer in a Milwaukee park.
The officer was responding to a call from employees at a nearby Starbucks
alleging that Hamilton, who had been diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia, was
disturbing the peace. Arriving officers first determined that Hamilton had
committed no crime.
Eric Garner, Placed in an illegal chokehold by NYPD officers for 15 seconds for
allegedly selling loose cigarettes. Garner said “I can’t breathe” 11 times as
he was held down by several officers on a sidewalk.
Michael Brown, Shot and killed by Ferguson, Missouri police officer Darren
Wilson.
John Crawford, Shot and killed by a police officer at a Walmart in Beavercreek,
Ohio. He was shopping and holding a toy BB gun.
Ezell Ford, a 25-year-old mentally ill man, was shot three times, including
once in the back, by a white police officer.
Dante Parker, father of five, died in police custody after being repeatedly
stunned by a Taser in San Bernardino County
Tanisha Anderson, died after officers in Cleveland slammed her head on the
pavement while taking her into custody.
Tamir Rice, 12 years old, was shot and killed by Cleveland police after
officers mistook his toy gun for a real weapon.
Rumain Brisbon, was shot and killed by a Phoenix police officer who mistook a
pill bottle for a weapon.
Akai Gurley, Shot and killed by a police officer while walking in a dimly lit
New York City public housing stairwell with his girlfriend. New York Police
Department Commissioner Bill Bratton called the shooting an “accidental
discharge.”
Jerame Reid, Shot and killed by police officers in Bridgeton, New Jersey. He
was a passenger in a car driven by his friend, who was pulled over by police.
Tony Robinson, Killed by a Madison, Wisconsin police officer who was responding
to reports of someone disrupting traffic.
And on March 13: Breonna Taylor, an EMT in Louisville, Kentucky, was shot dead
in her own apartment at one o’clock in the morning. Using a “no knock” warrant
for a suspect who had already been apprehended, police broke down her door and
fired 20 shots, eight hit Taylor.
And just last week: George Floyd, pinned to the ground with a Minneapolis cop’s
knee on his neck, Floyd repeatedly exclaimed, “I can’t breathe.” He died in a
hospital shortly after. Police hurled explosive tear gas canisters and fired
rubber bullets at the thousands of outraged protestors marching from the site
of his killing to the 3rd Precinct police station. Two days later, with
thousands of outraged protestors outside, the precinct, earlier evacuated by
the police, was burned down.
In neighboring St. Paul, buildings were set afire across the city. As we go to
press 500 National Guard troops have been called in by the governor.
The original police report read that Floyd “appeared to be under the
influence,” had “physically resisted officers,” and was “suffering mental
distress.” Said Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey, after viewing a bystander video,
“Every bit of what I saw was wrong. It was vicious. And it was unacceptable.
There is no grey there.” The four cops involved were subsequently fired. No
murder changes have been pressed. No arrests! The announced future FBI
investigation can only be expected to find “grey” areas to perhaps, once again,
exonerate the killer cops.
A May 28 New York Times article, titled “Fury in Minneapolis Over Latest in a
Long Line of Police Killings,” began by noting that the appointment of a Black
police chief who once joined a lawsuit that accused the department of being “a
cauldron of racist behavior,” has not changed the racist nature of policing.
“Excessive force complaints…have become commonplace, especially by African
American residents.” The article notes that of the many resident reports of
racist and vicious police violence since 2012, “about 1 percent…have resulted
in disciplinary action, according to city records.”
Moreover, the article records the repeated failures of numerous efforts to
“reform” the police, including the election of a white mayor who “openly
discusses systemic racism” and the appointment of a Black police chief who
“embraces a community-oriented approach” and earlier in his career sued the
department for being “a cauldron of racist behavior.”
The article continues, “There have been some hard-won police reforms including
a change to the use-of-force manual requiring that officers intervene when they
see colleagues using excessive force.” But when George Floyd was lying on the
ground repeatedly saying “I can’t breathe”
while Office Derek Chauvin drove his knee into Floyd’s neck – continuing even
after he went unconscious – the three accompanying cops at the scene did
nothing but keep away the increasingly distressed onlookers who saw it all.
There is no reforming the racist nature of the police in a capitalist society.
Their job is to terrorize, divide and make compliant the working class, to ease
the way for the workers’ exploitation at the greatest levels of profit
possible. Racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, and anti-immigrant hatred
are quintessential tools of that exploitation, along with many other
institutionalized repressive forms the ruling class promotes and enforces to
keep workers divided from each other.
In all of these very briefly detailed cases above, the murder victims were
Black and unarmed. No police officer was charged or convicted of murder.
And then there was Malcolm and Martin…And now there is Mumia and Leonard and
countless other victims of racist police murders and frame-ups, like Trayvon
and Oscar.
COVID-19 and Ahmaud Arbery
The national exposure of Ahmaud Arbery’s murder, a racist killing that would
have otherwise passed virtually unnoticed, came at a special time in U.S.
history. It broke into the headline at a time when the Covid-19 pandemic, like
the racist pandemic that daily plagues U.S. capitalist society, has taken its
greatest toll on Black America. Every study today tells us that the COVID-19
death rate of Blacks is qualitatively greater across the country than whites.
Blacks have been systematically subjected to racist discriminatory policies
that relegate them to the lowest paying service center and other low-wage, dead
end jobs, to the poorest housing conditions and the least healthcare coverage,
if any.
Largely obscured by capitalism’s incessantly-hyped claims of stability, low
unemployment rates and a prosperous economy, this veil of lies has been
suddenly and unexpectedly lifted to reveal a society replete with unprecedented
inequality – a society with real overall unemployment rates at close to fifty
percent. As always, Blacks suffer a disproportionate share of this generalized
horror. A broad range of economists today predict that some 42 percent of the
jobs lost over the past two months are never coming back. And if the newly
unemployed, 40 million in the past seven weeks alone, do find work, it is
expected that it will be at significantly reduced pay and benefit rates.
Tens of millions of working people have become aware more than ever of the
nature of the capitalist beast that today seeks to force millions back to work
in the most dangerous of times just to keep capitalist profits rolling in.
It is in this context only that Ahmaud Arbery’s case has come to national
attention, including when CNN host Chris Cuomo, brother of New York Governor
Andrew Cuomo, regularly features COVID-19 pandemic reporting as well as exposés
of Georgia’s police racism in Arbery’s case and now with regard to George
Floyd. Indeed, the Democratic Party’s “establishment” leaders of U.S.
capitalism fully understand that this is no time for blanket denials of
society’s ills. They have pressed their presumptive candidate, racist Joseph
Biden, to assume a more reasonable stance toward vital social questions,
encouraging Biden to at least pay lip service to some of Bernie Sanders’ timid
reforms, if not flirt with the idea of tacking on “liberal” Elizabeth Warren as
his VP. Or perhaps even a Black running mate like Georgia’s liberal Stacey
Abrams, who opening seeks the VP spot, to help the racist Biden win the votes
of Black communities in the disgusting spectacle that capitalist electoral
politics has descended to.
The racist disparity of COVID-19, where the oppressed suffer the consequences
qualitatively more than the general population, is but the flip side of the
institutional racism that allows white racist police to murder unarmed Black
women, men and children with impunity, while filling the prisons with millions
more to work at Fortune 500 corporations in the increasingly privatized, for
profit, fifty-cents-an-hour slave labor prison-industrial complex. The fires of
mass discontent that now burn in Minneapolis, St. Paul and as we write, in
Louisville, Kentucky, are but the initial sparks that may well ignite a working
class fightback that opens the door wider than in nearly a century to the
thinking of previously unknown thoughts. The great working class masses that
hold the potential to bring this degenerate system to an end will have the
final word in this matter. The stakes have never been higher.
Related Articles
The Blue Plague and Black Death
May 29, 2020
George Floyd’s death by Blue Plague in Minneapolis was widely condemned by the
same parties that have encouraged and funded the spread of the fatal contagion.
Pandemic Capitalism’s Cruel Absurdity
May 24, 2020
By MARK T. HARRIS
The United States has the highest number of Covid-19 cases and deaths in the
world. Capitalism’s inexorable drive for profits over human needs got us here.
Killer Capitalism Says “Back to Work!” in a Pandemic May 21, 2020 By JEFF
MACKLER and JAMES FORTIN The daily number new cases of COVID-19 in the U.S. is
still
22,000–25,000 and deaths are expected to rise to 3,000 a day by June 1.
Yet every state is sending workers back to work. Why is this, and what really
should be done?
--
___
Steven Pinker
“It's natural to think that living things must be the handiwork of a designer.
But it was also natural to think that the sun went around the earth. Overcoming
naive impressions to figure out how things really work is one of humanity's
highest callings.
[Can You Believe in God and Evolution? Time Magazine, August 7, 2005]”
― Steven Pinker
