On “Community Control” of Police

(Letter)

Los Angeles
7 May 2009

With the lead article of WV No. 935 (24 April) “Racist Police Terror U.S.A.,” I wanted to raise a question. Under the subhead “‘Community Control of the Police’—A Liberal Hoax,” it strikes me as odd to introduce the statement: “Even if it could be accomplished, black ‘control’ of the inner cities would not put an end to endemic poverty, joblessness, crime, gutted housing and broken-down schools.” Given the political climate with the Obama presidency, might not a WV reader looking for “Hope” consider this a “theoretical” possibility, concluding that under Obama black “control” is possible, and would be better than nothing? In which case, what does black “control” of the inner cities mean, or look like, “Even if it could be accomplished”?

The entirety of the article is abundantly clear about “the suicidal illusions in the possibility of reforming the system….” The decades-long experience of “black faces in high places” produced nothing less than the current results at hand. The Black Panther Party’s history epitomized this in their efforts at “community control,” first, being hunted down by the FBI/police, and then politically adapting “community control” to running in elections as “Democrats,” à la Bobby Seale. Initially, “community control” in the 1960s/70s was presented by the “Black Power” movement, the “Chicano Movement,” and the East Coast Puerto Rican militants, The Young Lords, as a call “For Self-Determination.” This was a popularized bastardization used by the militants and the New Left that was taken from the Communist Party USA that in turn bastardized (via its Stalinism) the Leninist stance of Self-Determination, in the CPUSA’s attempted application of this in the American South during the concentration of the black population there up until WWII.

Fact is, the radical democratic demands of the time to address capitalist racism and oppression were in varying degrees instituted as part of the Civil Rights Movement (seen as struggling to “self-determine” one’s destiny, and not of working-class struggle for a socialist revolution). These included access to higher education; for Black Studies and Chicano/Latino Studies; for minority representation on local school boards; for minority representation, e.g., in City Hall of black or brown mayors; also, for black and Chicano cops in the ghettos and barrios! And, “the struggle,” into the twenty-first century, for Civilian Police Review Boards. In Los Angeles the well-known black activist, the late Michael Zinzun, would regularly organize rallies when “community” cops had gunned someone down. He would give a fiery speech to the effect that “if the community does not get their demand met for a Civilian Police Review Board…then, we will hit the streets until we do!” As the WV article makes clear...this is A Liberal Hoax! Countering the “suicidal illusions” WV argues the case of our programmatic call for “Black Liberation Through Socialist Revolution!” encapsulated in our fight for revolutionary integrationism!

I was glad the article noted both the history of Oakland mayor Ron Dellums; and how he was made to “sit” by the powers that be at the memorial for the dead cops. In the early 1970s, leftists and black militant youth in Oakland soon noticed how Dellums would talk out of both sides of his mouth. Regarding the memorial for the dead cops, the Bay Area news media repeatedly announced that “a wife” of one of the dead cops demanded that Dellums not be allowed to speak, and this without explanation. The black and white populace of Oakland had to have seen this (whether in agreement or not) as an extended middle-finger to blacks, and the black mayor! Publicly, this was to be accepted solely as “empathy” for “the wife.”

B. Montoya