Chicago, IL – On August 22, Chicago police violently arrested a Black man in Garfield Park, accusing him of urinating in a public space. Video footage captured and later shared shows the arresting officer pull back his fist and strike the man in the face several times before pushing him face-first to the ground and kneeling on his back and neck to detain him. The individual who recorded the video states that prior to filming, the man was not escalating the encounter and was instead speaking calmly with officers after being accused. During that exchange, officers grabbed him by the wrists and began to place him under arrest. Friends and family members who had gathered nearby began questioning the officers’ conduct. When the man attempted to free one arm from an officer’s grip, an officer struck him and forced him to the ground.
As he was being held down, about six or seven more squad cars pulled into the grassy area in the park, in order to “deescalate” and protect the officer from the non-violent crowd that had gathered while this police violence took place. The victim was pushed into the back of a police cruiser, and within a couple of minutes, all of the police vehicles drove away. The victim was taken into custody, and is facing charges of indecent exposure, public intoxication, and battery of a police officer.
An article from The Black Panther publication printed in 1967, nearly 60 years ago, was written about the murder of an unarmed 22-year-old black man at the hands of racist police. It was in this instance, too, that the police fabricated lies about the victim in order to attempt to justify their violent behavior. The article goes on to describe several instances where previously this sort of horrific brutality by police had been happening to black people in the same area.
The same could be said today about the brutality and violence carried out against black and brown people living in this country. This instance where a black man was wrongfully and violently arrested is far from an isolated occurrence. Looking back over the last month, six months, a year, or even longer, the patterns of police brutality, and alongside it the expanding militarization of the police, have existed in this country long before black people freed themselves from chattel slavery nearly 200 years ago.
It is not surprising that a system built on the genocide and exploitation of indigenous, black, and brown people has historically criminalized, and continues to criminalize, the nationally oppressed in our country, and continues to protect the enforcers of its fascist actions and policies. There will never be a solution offered by the system currently in place that will benefit the nationally oppressed people in this country. The masses must unite together against our common enemy, to defend against the violent system that aims to push oppressed peoples further into submission. Only the destruction of the old and construction of the new system, the New State, can wrest power from the few and place it into the hands of the many.
