“The police murder of poor people of color –occurring at a rate of roughly two a day across the country in the United States– is not only about the indiscriminate use of lethal force. It is also about maintaining an ongoing climate of terror in marginal communities. It is about making it impossible for the poor, cast aside by corporate capitalists as surplus labor, to organize and build meaningful lives and to resist.”

“It is terror by design. And it will not stop until police are disarmed –the authority to use lethal force should be restricted to specialized, highly regulated police units– and finally held accountable under the law.”

“Until the rule of law becomes a reality for those who live in marginal communities, until we obliterate the poverty; until we stop gunning the poor down in our streets, the nightmare will not stop. In fact, as poverty and inequality expand, this nightmare will only grow.”

These are some of the ideas contained in a comprehensive denunciation of the serious problem of police violence against the black and mestizo population in the US, made by Presbyterian minister Christopher Hedges, author of several books on the subject and who has also reported from more than 50 countries and worked for The Christian Science Monitor, National Public Radio, The Dallas Morning News and The New York Times, for which he was a foreign correspondent for 15 years.

Families, suffocating in grief, terrified for their children, unable to find justice, rendered invisible by the media and crushed by poverty (the worst of all crimes), endure a hell that is directly linked to the plague of mass incarceration, repressive laws, lynchings, and slave patrols.

This terror is the latest manifestation of white supremacy and the expression of a corporate capitalist state that consciously creates huge pools of unemployed and underemployed. The destitute, desperate for work and kept in a state of constant fear, are easily exploited and unable to rise up against their oppressors.

“Several days ago,” said Hedges, “I met three mothers in Santa Ana whose sons had been murdered by police here in Orange County, California. One of them, Manuel Diaz who was unarmed, was shot to death on July 21, 2012, by Anaheim police Officer Nicholas Bennallack, also responsible for a fatal shooting in 2012. Bennallack was cleared in both killings.”

During protests over the Diaz killing, Joel Acevedo, 21, was killed on July 22, 2012, by Anaheim police Officer Kelly Phillips, who had been involved in the fatal shooting of Caesar Cruz in 2009. Phillips too was cleared twice.

Paul Joseph Quintanar, 19, died when he was struck by freeway traffic as police officers tried to arrest him on Sept. 8, 2011. Marcel Ceja, on Nov. 4, 2011, was shot to death by a police officer in Anaheim as he was walking to a store with two friends.

Neither Quintanar nor Ceja had been accused of any crime. They were unarmed.

In Anaheim alone, where Disneyland markets a fantasy vision of a happy America, the police shot 37 people between 2003 and 2011, killing 21 of them, mostly people of color. As is usual across the United States, all of the police officers involved were cleared of criminal wrongdoing.

“The killings and intimidation of Anaheim police take place within sight of Disneyland, the seductive tourist attraction that Anaheim police "protect" jealously. On the anniversary of the July 2012 uprising, the Anaheim Police Department brought in military-style gear and armored vehicles to “protect” Disneyland.”

“Disney is a corporation that wants to take these neighborhoods and pretty much wipe them out of their current residents even though they are the ones serving the food and cleaning up around Disneyland for minimal pay without medical benefits,” the neighbors told Hedges. There’s this corporate image of childhood innocence. Then, when riots happen, it’s the bludgeon of repression.”

During the street protests of July 2012, Disneyland made fireworks to silence the cries of people with the explosions in the sky. This painting would be enough to explain everything one needs to know about cities such as Anaheim and corporations like Disneyland," said Hedges.

October 14, 2015.

- Manuel E. Yepe http://manuelyepe.wordpress.com/

A CubaNews translation. Edited by Walter Lippmann.