Every decade since the Civil Rights Movement, African Americans have had riots over American injustice. After the Sean Bell verdict, they were angry enough to riot again.
After Judge Arthur Cooperman rendered a "not guilty" verdict for the three NYPD detectives who seriously wounded unarmed victims Joseph Guzman and Trent Benefield and killed an unarmed Sean Bell, the Rev. Al Sharpton of the National Action Network called for mass demonstrations on Wednesday, May 7, 2008 at six locations across New York City to protest the decision. At the rally on 125th Street and Second Avenue, which started at 3:00 and lasted until approximately 6:00 pm, the protesters were very angry and very intense as they marched and blocked traffic.
The Harlem Rally
Approximately 500 to 700 people joined the protest, including Stanley Ridley, the father of the police officer murdered by other police officers recently in White Plains, New York, Christopher Ridley. More than 200 people watched the march. The majority of protesters were African Americans, about sixty to seventy percent, with slightly more women than men, but with a balanced mixture of young and old. Five protesters were in wheelchairs. There were a substantial number of Latinos and a representative number of Whites. The appearance of the protest resembled the Black Panther rallies of the 1960s in terms of ethnic solidarity to fight the “oppressive” system.
Surrounding the protesters were about 100 police officers with bulletproof vests, riot equipment and arrest vans. Many of the protesters carried signs saying, “We Are All Sean Bell. The Whole Damn System is Guilty!” As the marchers blocked traffic, especially the streets leading to the Tri-borough and East River Bridges, they interchangeably and defiantly chanted, “We Are All Sean Bell, NYPD Go To Hell! Justice For Sean Bell! No Justice, No Peace - No Murdering Ass Police!” They also frequently counted to 50 in unison to symbolize the amount of shots the detectives fired at Benefield, Guzman and Sean Bell.
After approximately an hour and a half of chants and blocking traffic, the protest became even more intense. Several direct confrontations between protesters and police occurred, which resulted in many arrests. It was clear that the people would have gladly marched in the face of fire hoses and vicious dogs much like the Civil Rights protesters of the 1950s and 1960s. The police arrested approximately 30 to 40 people. Each time the police arrested someone, the people chanted louder and louder and applauded the handcuffed marchers the police escorted into the vans.
The Progressive Labor Party
To support the march, representatives from the Progressive Labor Party attended. They eagerly and aggressively handed out leaflets containing the headline: “Sean Bell Executioners – Set Free To Kill Again!!!” The subheading states: “The three kkkops that murdered Sean Bell and injured his friends were set free by the racist US justice system.” At the bottom of the leaflet it reads in bold letters: “Fight For Communism!”
According to the writings on the leaflet, the police, whom the Party refers to as “the Klan in blue,” are really “legalized terrorists” in the service of the controlling capitalist class represented by figures like New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg. Reforms such as having an independent, special prosecutor to handle police misconduct will not help; only a total overhaul of the system will solve the problem of racism and oppression. The Progressive Labor Party sees the killing of Sean Bell as an attack on the working class.
The Labor Party probably makes a good point about the “system” attacking the American working class. Interestingly enough, though, most of the working class people were either crowded on city buses that could not move for the protesters or piled up at the bus stops waiting for the buses to arrive. From the look on their faces, however, they were in full support of the protest, but with the bad economy, they had to go to work to make ends meet.
Sharpton’s Strategies
Rev. Sharpton would probably say that the killing of Sean Bell had more to do with race than class while welcoming the support of the Progressive Labor Party, but he certainly did not organize the marches as a starting point to get rid of capitalism. It is safe to say that he is not in favor of communism and would disagree with the Progressive Labor Party’s assertion that reforms are useless and unnecessary, even though the Party may be closer to the truth about the American system needing a total cleansing more than Sharpton’s fight to reform it.
Rev. Sharpton intends to create reform policies through peaceful demonstrations and protests. His strategies follow those of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr's tactics. In fact, Rev. Sharpton’s leadership has given the period from the mid-1990s to the present a political meaning. It is almost as though he has helped to create a second Civil Rights Movement with police brutality and racial profiling as the core issues of protest.
