MISSISSIPPI – In a horrific admission of the State’s true intentions, Mississippi Attorney General Lynn Fitch declared that the horrific murder of 1-year-old Kohen Wiley “was justified” following her office’s investigation. The Senatobia Police Department brutally murdered Kohen Wiley in June. The callous rubber-stamping of a clear, national chauvinist, murder of a New Afrikan child under the pretense of shoplifted diapers puts the repressive and terroristic agenda of the State in full view.
While there was no evidence in the world that could have made this anything other than what it so clearly was, the body-camera footage, finally released, only further confirmed the bloodthirsty nature of this crime. In the footage, it is clear that an armed gang surrounds the car and opened fire on the vehicle. Wiley’s mother was accused of shoplifting diapers, an essential and easy-to-produce good that is packaged and sold by capitalists at extortionate rates that put a high price on dressing a child. The State and its armed, legally empowered thugs murdered a woman’s child to continue to enforce a nationally oppressive, exploitative system that demands life and labor for the most basic of goods and then commends the killers for doing so, saying they “feared for their lives.”
It must be emphasized that there is absolutely no circumstance in which the shooting could ever be acceptable. The medical examiner who conducted the independent autopsy on Wiley confirmed that the killing bullet was fired from the side of the car, through the window, negating any claim to “officer safety” as even a flimsy pretext. With the State’s formal collaboration this is tantamount to a State-sponsored lynching of a New Afrikan child for the crime of poverty. The killer, Hunter Foster, has been allowed to resign, feigning ignorance of the situation and claiming to be upset by his own actions. His version of the story, as conveyed by his lawyer, contends that he had no idea what was going on and fired at them simply because they were running. This is the best excuse the State cares to entertain. That extra-judicial execution of children is sanctioned so long as a targeted vehicle is moving away from prowling agents.
In addition to Foster, the interim Police Chief Angelica Maze also stepped down from her leadership role, though she remains with the Senatobia Police Department. The resignations allow the officers to avoid criminal accountability while the State preserves its repressive apparatus and shields those who enforce its rule. AG Fitch, running for governor of the State in 2027, has little political incentive to challenge the police as the election approaches. Her decision to shield Foster from prosecution may also appeal to the most reactionary and chauvinist elements of the voting base. By treating the officers’ resignations as a sufficient response, the State maintains the architecture of terror inflicted on national minorities.
This is not an isolated incident, and the bourgeois courts and their so-called “justice system” will continue to facilitate the state-backed mass murder of New Afrikans and other national oppressed peoples throughout the country until they are stopped by the combined forces of the masses. To bring about an end to this reactionary, chauvinist, terroristic violence enacted on behalf of the capitalist-imperialist class, the masses must build Neighborhood Defense Units and revolutionary mass organizations rooted in their communities, capable of defending the people, exposing the killers and their protectors, and sustaining a struggle that cannot be silenced by resignations or court rulings. Whether in Senatobia, Minneapolis, Charlotte, Los Angeles, Chicago, or anywhere else, these organizations must unite the anger of the masses into a durable universal force against State terror and carry the struggle for revolutionary justice beyond each particular case.
[Image Source: Mississippi Attorney General Lynn Fitch, left, 1-year-old Kohen Wiley, right, MFP Photo by Shaunicy Muhammad/courtesy family]
