FSP - STATEMENT: "IT'S A THUGGISH SYSTEM - FROM BALTIMORE TO BAGHDAD"

The people of Baltimore are not thugs!
It’s a thuggish SYSTEM – from Baltimore to Baghdad!

The people of Baltimore — and the entire country — are justifiably angry at the racist cruelty of those in power and their armed occupying force — the Baltimore police.

It is outrageous that Freddie Gray died in police custody, arrested for the “crime” of running away from the cops, and now the city establishment refuses to make public how he died and who will be held accountable.

The anger did not begin with Gray’s murder. It is a normal response to a system that favors the super-rich, at the immense expense of the poor, and that uses racism to divide us. The fuel of poverty, urban decay, inadequately funded schools, and joblessness was already set. Freddie

Gray’s murder was the spark.

President Obama and Baltimore Mayor Rawlings-Blake called the young protesters “thugs.” Yet their

capitalist system rewards the real thugs — corporations who rule our lives, dictators they install all over the world, the Pentagon war criminals with their half a trillion dollar annual budget, and the police. 

Are Palestinian youth who throw rocks at racist Israeli troops “thugs”? Then neither are the young people of Baltimore. All are fighting for a decent life against a system they know is aimed against them. But make no mistake about what really upsets the politicians and the large corporations they serve. They are seeing young people who had no fear of the police, no fear of the armed bodies that daily suppress them, harass them, imprison them, and deny them their rights and a decent future.

Obama’s new U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch also condemned the violence of the protesters, but not the far greater violence of those in power. She said the rioting was “counter-productive.” But the capitalist courts she endorses have repeatedly let the cop murderers of Black and Brown people off the hook, from Michael Brown and Antonio Zambrano Montes, to Eric Garner.

The cops who murdered Freddie Gray must be brought to justice!

The Freedom Socialist Party and Radical Women stand with the Black community of Baltimore. We stand for a united working-class response to Freddie Gray’s murder!

We call on elected officials in the federal, state and local government to —

1. End the state of emergency and send the National Guard home.

2. Enact community control of the police based on an elected civilian review board, independent of the police, the city attorney, and the politicians, with the power to investigate complaints, subpoena witnesses, and order remedial action, including retraining or firing those found guilty of abuse.

3. Immediately fund a public works job program to repair and build new public housing; provide free

health care, reproductive care, and drug rehabilitation; and reduce class sizes and massively upgrade

the public school system. 

Working people of all races must come together to replace the bigoted U.S. capitalist system with a humane socialist system based on workers’ power and sharing of the country’s enormous wealth.

4/2015 

Issued by:

Freedom Socialist Party and Radical Women

Freedom Hall, 113 West 128th St.,

New York, NY 10027

nycfsp@gmail.com • 212-222-0633

www.socialism.com • www.radicalwomen.org