Denver CO: Leftist 'Internationalist Group' - Hyperbolic 'Report' On Arrest of Stalinists of Party For Socialism and Liberation - 20 Sept 2020

PSL Targeted for Marches Against Cop Murder of Elijah McClain

Defend Denver Anti-Racist
Protest Leaders!

 

PSL activists played leading role in organizing protests against racist police murder of Elijah McClain in Aurora, Colorado. Now they have been arrested in an attempt to intimidate protesters.  (Photo: Liberation)

 

[The Party of Socialism and Liberation activists were not arrested for marching down the street with a banner expressing political views.  They were arrested for laying siege to a police station.  They were arrested for holding police inside the building with the threat of violence. ] 

 

 

 

[The members of the Party for Socialism and Liberation were arrested for being part of a violent street confrontation at a police station where the police building was barricaded by militants and police could not get out for seven hours.  People were not arrested for standing on the sidewalk and holding a political sign against police killings.  People were arrested for attacking the police precinct and the police inside.  ]

On Thursday, September 17, police raids were carried out in Denver, Colorado against activists who have been organizing protests denouncing the racist murder of Elijah McClain, a young black man, by police in suburban Aurora in August 2019.

[The police arrested the six targeted individuals.  They were not arrested for organizing protests, they were arrested for organizing quasi-military style attacks on a police station.  The Party for Socialism and Liberation is a Marxist/Stalinist organization that openly and unashamedly prepares for a socialist revolution that will lead to communism.  Anyone who read one issue of their newspaper, or visited their website could find that out in minutes.  They do not claim to be a pacifist organization that wants to hold signs in the park on Sunday after church.  Yet they are portrayed as innocent bystanders who just wanted to express their opinions. ]

Trey Quinn

Joel Northam

Lillian House

Terrence Roberts

 Six of the protest leaders were arrested, including Lillian House, Eliza Lucero, Joel Northam and Russel Ruch – all members of the Party for Socialism and Liberation (PSL), which has played a leading role in the protests – along with Terrance Roberts and Trey Quinn. They have outrageously been charged with multiple serious felonies, including the absurd charge of “kidnapping.”

[As to why the charges are outrageous anyone can guess.  The people who wrote this report believe that unhinged hyperbole is necessary to overthrow capitalism. ] 

 

The Denver arrests are the spearhead of a national drive by the administration of racist U.S. president Donald Trump to criminalize Black Lives Matter protests and jail the leaders on draconian trumped-up federal charges.  

 [Protesters can go to public spaces and protest every day, all day, and they will basically be left alone.  Trump is not trying to 'criminalize Black Lives Matter protests.  What Trump has 'criminalized' is setting Federal buildings on fire and pulling down statues.   The charges placed against the six arrested are not made-up to criminalize people standing on the sidewalk holding signs.  People surrounding a building, throwing bottles and rocks, and setting fires are not 'protesters.'  ]

The Internationalist Group  and Revolutionary Internationalist Youth, youth section of the IG, denounce this ominous attack on the right to protest. We demand that the arrested activists be immediately released and that all charges against them be dropped. We also demand that all charges be dropped against all of the over 1,500 people arrested during or in conjunction with the nationwide protests against racist police brutality.

[While the Internationalist Group has a coherent world view based on classical Marxism as defined by Lenin and Trotsky they have just about zero weight in the US politically.  Probably numbering fewer than 200 people spread across the US they are in the business of spreading ideas.  The critical mass of people who might put weight behind the tiny group's demand for the Party of Socialism and Liberation members and two other activists to be released is missing.  All of the people across the US who have been arrested for looting and arson and throwing rocks at police are hardly innocent protesters who were just holding signs.  In any case most cities run by Democrats simply let people arrested for rioting out on bail within hours.  In Portland, Oregon, a gunman who assassinated a Trump supporter walking down the street had been arrested and let go after being at a protest brandishing a gun at police.  Police make the arrest and the Democratic Party Liberal District Attorney's simply let them go to create chaos the Democrats think the public will blame on Trump.  These are hardly some innocent protesters peacefully standing with anti-police signs. ]

We have written about the murder of Elijah McClain in Revolution No. 17 (August 2020). As he was walking home from a convenience store a year ago, Aurora police arrived, pinned him down, put him in a chokehold and insidiously injected him with a double dose of ketamine, a potent tranquilizer, which caused him to go into cardiac arrest and ultimately die. 

 [Elijah McClain was on the street with a ski mask covering his face and waving his arms around as a neighbor called police to report a suspicious person acting crazy.   When police arrived and called to McClain he would not answer and refused to stop for them.  The police tried to arrest McClain and he resisted.  Some of his supporters claim that he was in the street dancing at 10:30 at night.  As to why he did not simply stop and talk to police, no one explains.   The central idea of the writers is that the police are simply out at night cruising around looking for a black person to kill.  Across the US almost 400 black people are killed every year.  About ten unarmed black people are killed every year by police.  People who recognize police authority and command of weapons and respond to police orders are very unlikely to be killed by the police.  One might ask the names of anyone championed by Lenin or Trotsky who had run ins with the police and were raise to political heroes by the Bolsheviks.  ]

Elijah taught himself to play the violin, and this caught the world’s attention. This past June 27, string players from across the U.S. gathered to play in Aurora in homage to the young violinist. 

[Who can believe anything these people report.  Every 'peaceful' protest they report on turns out to have involved people taunting police throwing objects, setting off fireworks et cetera.  The writers seem to have grown up in an era when people had limited access to news, perhaps a local news paper or two and television news.  A radical left newspaper could report on something and that would be the only account of what happened.  Today, with internet access, people can see videos of protests and read many different accounts of the events, sometimes people at the protest are streaming the event live.  We live in a different world, and the Left/Socialist media have not gotten used to the idea that people can check what they report.  ]

They were met by violent police repression – batons, tear gas, pepper spray. It was for organizing demonstrations that day, and again on July 3, 12 and 25, that the protest leaders are now being persecuted.

[The protesters did not go to a public park or plaza to protest.  The protesters want to block streets and force motorists to stop under the threat of attack.   There was no permit for the 25 July 2020 protest on the highway pictured below. ] 

Mural of Elijah McClain

The tactics used in the Denver arrests – seizing one in a Home Depot parking lot, surrounding the car of another with five police cruisers as she was driving, sending a S.W.A.T. team to the home of a third – recall the use of federal snatch squads to seize protesters off the streets of Portland in July. 

[Following a suspect to a Home Depot parking lot and arresting him with a legal warrant is like something out of Hitler's Germany?  Isn't that how most arrests go.  Since the subject did not resist he was simply taken into custody, unlike the 'heroic' Elijah McClain, apparently.  A woman in her car was blocked in by five police cars.  So, what?  Would this be any more acceptable if only one car was used?  Or is everything about being hyperbolic.  The Party for Socialism and Liberation looks to Che Guevara and Castro for models of revolutionaries - is it any wonder armed police would expect some resistance from an arrest at the home of one of the revolutionaries?  The police arrests in Aurora, Colorado recall federal authorities arrests in Portland, Oregon?  Do the police arrests recall the Stalinist arrests of Trotskyists in Russia or Cuba?  Apparently not, that doesn't fit the narrative. ]

 

Or the hours-long siege by scores of New York City cops, with dogs, a helicopter and sharpshooters, attempting to arrest (without a warrant) a BLM protest leader, Derrick Ingram, in August. On September 16 it was revealed that U.S. attorney William Barr had instructed federal prosecutors to charge protesters (“rioters”) with sedition, as in attempting to overthrow the government.

 Derrick Ingram at NYC's Bryant Park

[Derrick Ingram was at a protest in NYC when he was prevented from crossing a police line. Angry with the police Derrick Ingram "placed a handheld megaphone directly against the officer's ear, activated the megaphone and yelled, causing pain and protracted impairment of hearing," according to a police report.  This story doesn't mention that activity that led to Derrick Ingram's trouble with the police.  Readers are supposed to think Ingram was targeted simply for being at a protest.  Again the writer believes the reader will have no access to an alternative explanation for why Derrick Ingram was wanted for arrest. ]

As highlighted by Trump’s failed attempt at imposing martial law in Washington, D.C., at the beginning of June,¹ followed by his dispatch of federal forces to Portland² and Kenosha, Wisconsin,³ and the murder of Portland activist Michael Reinoehl by federal agents in Washington state earlier this month, the escalating use of police-state measures is a threat to the civil liberties of all. Although a push for the arrests may have come from Washington, it was carried out by police in a city with a Democratic mayor and city council and a state with a Democratic governor. 

[Protesters set part of a church on fire that is a block from the White House.  President Trump wanted to walk from the White House to the church.  The Washington city leaders are Democrats who do not want to make things easy for Trump and want the public to blame the chaos on the streets on Trump.  Protesters blocked the path the president wanted to walk.  The protesters did not have a permit.  Trump used federal forces to clear the protesters out of his path and walked to the partly burned church.  For the fabulists writing this article this exercise taking an hour or so is "imposing martial law."  Have any of the writers ever been to a country that is under martial law?  Apparently not.  The admitted assassin 'activist' Michael Reinoehl was arrested numerous times for carrying a gun, sometimes at BLM protests.  While he was being arrested for the assassination of a random Trump supporter walking down the street Reinoehl reportedly resisted.  In any case one can hardly assume that the police went out to 'murder' a man they would have love to put on trial.  But, once committed to hyperbole, why stop.  To claim that the death of a political assassin who had regular run-ins with police for bizarre behavior is a threat to everyone's civil liberties is a stretch.   ]

 

And while the white-supremacist Republican in the White House is running for reelection with incendiary attacks on anti-racist protesters, the Democrats are running their own “law and order” ticket of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris.

[Trump is a 'white-supremicist' no proof required.  What 'incendiary' attacks on anti-racist protesters has Trump launched.  Anyone who condemns rock throwing, and explosive commercial fireworks launched at police, or looting and arson apparently really means they oppose 'peaceful protest.'  No, some people tolerate peaceful protest, and oppose the chaos of looting and burning.  A simple concept for any honest person.  But the writer has an agenda and a narrative to advance.  No distractions allowed.  ] 

 

We call on organized labor and unions around the country to denounce and take action against the arrests of the PSL activists and other protest leaders in Denver and the repression against demonstrators protesting police terror elsewhere around the country. 

 [So labor union members are supposed to see the struggle of a Stalinist Party for Socialism and Liberation struggle to attack a police station as a part of the labor movement's efforts to build a better world for workers.  As if  'attacking a police station is every person's right.' What?  ]

This is both necessary and possible. In 2013, the Internationalist Group in Portland was instrumental in gaining the endorsement of five area unions of a resolution denouncing an FBI witch hunt and arrests there, and as well as the feds’ spying on activists and labor unions.⁴ 

 [Fair enough, labor unions should resist the police and federal authorities efforts to stop labor union organizing.  What that has to do with random criminals getting into fistfights and fire fights with police is a good question. ]

And this past June 19, the International Longshore and Warehouse Union shut down all 29 U.S. West Coast ports as well as Vancouver in Canada in honor of George Floyd and to denounce police brutality and systemic racism.⁵

^{[People and workers should oppose and expose police brutality.  Racism is real, and every decent person should oppose racism. ]} 

The power of the multiethnic working class must be brought out in labor/black/Latino/immigrant mobilizations against the racist police terror carried out by both major capitalist parties. Escalating bourgeois repression highlights the urgency of building a class-struggle workers party to fight for a workers government. Free the Denver Six!

[One exaggeration upon another, a half truth mixed with a truth.  Facts left out because they don't fit the narrative and the writer assumes the reader will not look up the facts.  All this comes down to a sweeping call for labor unions to take to the streets to oppose the Democrats and Republicans.  Could that happen?  Perhaps.  Is 'bourgeois' AKA 'capitalist' repression increasing?  Maybe, but who can believe the reports from these fabulists who wake up every morning looking for the news that backs their worldview.  There are no revolutionary heroes opposing the system, so they make heroes out of random criminals who get in a losing fight with police.  Did Karl Marx make heroes out of everyday criminals?  Did Lenin champion random people killed by the Czar's police into political heroes to be emulated?  Did Trotsky write dishonest articles claiming that socialists organizing military actions of revolution were simply 'peaceful' protesters being unfairly targeted by police?  Who is the audience for this truncated version of reality?  Do delusional people make the best class-struggle revolutionaries?]

http://www.internationalist.org/defend-denver-anti-racist-protest-leaders-2009.html