A Maoist’s Thoughts on the Murder of Botham Jean

Once more, white supremacy has taken one of our own. I’m not going to rehash extensively the details of this murder (yes, it was murder) here, because we as a people need to stop being so responsive and start being proactive. But, in short, a pig named Amber Guyger (from a racist pig family) murdered her black neighbor in his own home, in uniform, in Dallas, Texas on September 6th. She claimed that she entered the wrong apartment, “issued verbal commands” (which the victim, Botham Jean, was under no legal obligation to obey), and then shot him dead. What followed was a character assassination campaign against Mr. Jean, with Dallas press and pigs declaring that marijuana was discovered in his apartment while not bothering to raise questions regarding the capacity of Pig Guyger to be wandering the streets of Dallas with weapons and legal authority to take life. Apparently her being tired was rationale for murder. Furthermore, Black Pigs T.C. Broadnax (city manager) and Renee Hall are, once again, proving the uselessness of the black political class who reaped most of the benefits of the 1960s mainstream civil rights struggle. We saw a succession of black mayors, police chiefs, fire chiefs, deans, congressmen and women, aldermen, and other officials and yet we still continued to die. Nothing improved for the masses of black people. A black man was just murdered in his own apartment in Dallas, a city which has Black people in two powerful city positions. Once again, we learn that Black faces in high places under white supremacy do not translate to prosperity and liberation for the masses of our people. Once again, stop going to the polls and clamoring for these people to be elected or chosen to serve as neocolonial puppets presiding over our murder, our displacement, our pay cuts, our deportation, our incarceration.Botham Jean, Mike Brown, Vonderrit Myers, Eric Garner, Sandra Bland. These will continue to happen, over and over and over again, until we as a community, a nation, organize ourselves, educate ourselves politically, and arm ourselves. I’m reminded of the settlements like Mound Bayou that our ancestors settled post-slavery. Of course, they were still poor as shit, but the people there were armed and any outsider that entered without knowledge or permission and without any stated course of business was forced to leave at gunpoint. Klan did not ride around shooting into houses in Mound Bayou because they’d know they’d have return fire coming back at them. Police did not come lynching and stealing because they knew that the people of Mound Bayou would fight back. We can take this further back to maroon colonies such as those in the Great Dismal Swamp which served as refuges for self-freed African people, indigenous people, and white indentured servants and lower class people who got tired of being running dogs and slave catchers. We need to update this model for the 21st century, except now we have Marxism-Leninism-Maoism which teaches us that these communities in the past were nascent base areas and that it is possible to build base areas both rural and urban in our nation.Furthermore, it is essential to reach out to and unite with similar elements in other communities in the spirit of international solidarity, following in the footsteps of the Chicago Black Panther Party under Fred Hampton. There is much to be learned from the rapid response networks that have been set up in response to deportations and ICE activity. But, these things must be organized community by community, neighborhood by neighborhood. Copwatch, particularly armed Copwatch, needs to be promoted and led by disciplined communists. Any police presence in a community should be responded to with equal or greater force. Everyone should be on their porch armed or recording the police. There need to be people skilled in law, whether through professional training or life experience or self-study, on call or present on the scene. Social media should be used to bring people to the scene. Bystanders should be engaged. In essence, community defense and community power should not just be an abstract, every day among the masses should be spent promoting this role and, ultimately, creating new communists. Hold study groups and speaking-bitterness sessions that expose the real abuses the police cause in our communities. Parse and hold study groups over material like Our Enemies In Blue. Make music videos, songs, raps, and other popular media and spread these things far and wide. Get a PA system and go to the park with a few other people and spit and speak bitterness. Put up flyers detailing the latest community abuse and call a meeting. Arm trusted members of your community, particularly those who have a record of vigorous struggle. This is with the intent and purpose of educating and bringing more and more people, entire communities, into the anti-police movement. Not just the anti-police brutality movement, but the anti-police movement, meaning the movement against the police and their presence in our communities in the first place. Relentlessly struggle against rightist “good-cop”, “not all cops rhetoric”, even if you hear it from “community leaders” or your own family. There is right and wrong and the police are wrong. Ask Botham Jean.