Justice for David Dungay and All the Victims of
Racist State Terror in Australia!
Solidarity with the Uprising Against Racist Police Murder of
Black People in the U.S.
30 May 2020: Black people in the U.S. have had enough. Had enough of racist police terror and systematic discrimination in all aspects of their lives. Today many black people have spearheaded a heroic uprising across U.S. cities. This struggle has been joined by thousands of anti-racists from all other races – white, Native American, Hispanic, Asian, Middle Eastern etc. The immediate trigger for the uprising was the horrific racist murder in Minneapolis of George Floyd, an unarmed black man, by a racist white police officer. The cop knelt forcefully on Floyd’s neck for a whole nine minutes as Floyd, handcuffed and face down, begged for the cop to stop: “Please”, “I can’t breathe.” The cop heinously ignored these pleas and that of bystanders. He even continued to put his weight on Floyd’s neck for several minutes after Floyd became unresponsive. George Floyd was a 46 year-old father of two daughters.
This was unmistakably an act of racist torture and murder. The perpetrator did it because in racist America he expected that he could get away with it. And if not for the uprising, the cop would have gotten away with it! Immediately after the murder, the chief prosecutor started making excuses for the cop. The racist cop was only charged four days after the murder, after the uprising had intensified and spread. However, at this stage, the charge is of a much lower sub-category of murder charge – “third degree murder.” Protesters and Floyd’s family are rightly furious that the racist cop has not been charged with a higher murder charge given his obviously conscious torturing of Floyd and repeated ignoring of Floyd’s pleas. They are also rightly angry that the three other cops assisting the murderer have not been charged. Moreover, given the racist bias in the U.S. legal system, it is far from certain that the charge will lead to an actual conviction and an adequate sentence.
Chillingly, hard right U.S. president Donald Trump has threatened to have protesters shot, tweeting “when the looting starts, the shooting starts.” Now Minnesota’s Governor has fully mobilised the National Guard against protesters. Riot police across the U.S. are brutally attacking protesters. Those standing up to racist terror are also being threatened by armed, fascist militiamen and right-wing shopkeepers. Let us stand in solidarity with those involved in the militant protests against the state repression and far-right attacks that they are facing! Drop all charges against the anti-racist protesters!
The strength of the uprising is because Floyd’s murder is far from being an exception. His killing recalls the racist murder of black man, Eric Garner, in New York six years earlier. Garner, a grandfather, was strangled in a chokehold as he pleaded, “I can’t breathe” at least eleven times while held face down. Hundreds of black and other non-white people have been killed by racist cops in America over the last few years. On average, police in America kill over 1,000 people every year with the victims being disproportionately black, Hispanic, Native American, other non-white and poor.
People are also enraged at the all-sided racist discrimination against non-white people in the U.S. and at the oppression of working class and poor people. There is widespread anger at the botched and totally callous response to the COVID-19 pandemic of the Trump regime and Republican and Democrat state governors alike, who have put the interests of corporate profits and the stock markets ahead of those of the poor, sick and elderly most vulnerable to the pandemic. With health care unaffordable for poor people, the poor often having to live in crowded or substandard housing and with racist discrimination at every level, black people in America have been dying from COVID-19 at two and a half times the rate of white people. Working class and poor people of all races, especially youth, are also furious that the bosses who have exploited huge profits from their labour over the years have not hesitated to throw them out of work at the first sign of loss of revenue when the pandemic hit.
The racist murder of George Floyd recalls the eerily similar murder of 26 year-old Aboriginal man, David Dungay, by sadistic prison guards at Sydney’s Long Bay Jail in December 2015. Dungay was crushed to death by racist prison guards after six guards stormed his cell on the pretext that they need to “protect” the diabetic man from harming himself after he started eating biscuits. In this murder that was also captured on video, five heavy-set guards bore down upon Dungay and strangled his breathing as David Dungay repeatedly pleaded, “please, I can’t breathe!” However, the guards ignored him and continued to crush Dungay causing him to be starved of oxygen and die. There were also protests demanding justice for Dungay. But unlike the response to the killing of Floyd, the protests were not able to reach the scale of a militant, nationwide uprising. As a result, none of the murdering, racist prison guards were even disciplined let alone charged! A coronial inquest that was finalised last November whitewashed the prison guards’ killing of David Dungay. Over the last three decades, 450 Aboriginal people have died in state custody, many simply murdered by cops and prison guards or killed as a result of their racist neglect. The victims include Daniel Yock, TJ Hickey, Mulrunji Doomadgee, Kwementyaye (Terrance) Briscoe, Julieka Dhu, Rebecca Maher, Eric Whittaker, Tane Chatfield, Nathan Reynolds, Tanya Day, Kumanjayi Walker and so many more. The oppression of Aboriginal people in racist, capitalist Australia is if anything even more intense than that of black people in the U.S. – with Aboriginal people enduring a higher rate of imprisonment and a higher level of economic and health inequality. Not a single police man or woman or prison guard has ever been convicted with the killing of an Aboriginal person in custody in Australia’s long and sorry and brutal colonial history of invasion, exploitation and oppression! Instead, too many Aboriginal men, women and children continue to languish and remain at risk locked up in this country’s many prisons and detention centres. Alarmingly, although Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander adults make up around 2% of the national population, they constitute a shocking 27% of the national prison population and, shamefully, half of the 10- to 17-year-olds in jails are Aboriginal. Trotskyist Platform supports the call – in response to the added threat now posed by COVID-19 to Indigenous lives in already overcrowded prison conditions – made by the brave families of victims of deaths in state custody to immediately release Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander prisoners across Australia: https://www.alsnswact.org.au/open_letter_from_families_clean_out_prisons.
Trotskyist Platform joins many others in giving our full support to the uprising in the U.S. against racist cop terror and systematic racist oppression of black people. We in particular defend acts against the instruments and symbols of racist state terror – like police stations, police vehicles and court houses. Here, all anti-racists and politically aware workers rights activists must support Aboriginal people’s struggle against racist oppression by joining them in building staunch, mass resistance. Let us demand the jailing of the prison guards who killed David Dungay and the jailing of the state personnel who murdered all the other victims of racist state terror in Australia. It is crucial that the power of the multi-racial workers movement be brought to bear in this struggle alongside Aboriginal people and other people of colour facing racist attack in Australia – like Australia’s Chinese and East Asian communities who are being so viciously attacked by rednecks under the cover of COVID-19 fears.
Unfortunately, the disguised white supremacist consensus that dominates Australian political life even infects sections of the workers movement at this moment. This hypocritical ideology is being promoted by the Liberals and ALP alike as well as by all the mainstream media. Far from mobilising resistance to the current exploitative and racist social order, the current pro-ALP leadership of most of our unions seeks to find common ground with the capitalist exploiting class and their state. We need a new agenda to guide our workers movement. One that is committed to staunch resistance to the exploiting class and their racist regime. Central to such an agenda is the understanding that racism is poison to workers of all races because it divides and diverts workers and, thus, weakens the ability of the working class movement to resist attacks on their workplace conditions, cuts to their jobs by bosses who have leeched huge profits from their labour over many years, further casualisation of the workforce and the growing reach of the so-called “gig” economy. Positively fighting against racist oppression is crucial to the working class building the unity needed to stand up for its own rights. Importantly in the U.S., some unionised bus drivers have taken solidarity action with the current uprising by refusing to take in their buses arrested protesters to jail. Just as in the U.S., the working class’ own struggle in Australia can only advance if it champions the cause of all others downtrodden by the very same capitalist ruling class that exploits it – in particular by standing by Australia’s most cruelly subjugated people, the Aboriginal first peoples of this country.
Justice for George Floyd, David Dungay and all the victims of racist state terror in the U.S. and Australia! Jail for the racist cop and prison guard murderers! Solidarity with the antiracist uprising in the U.S.! For mass, militant resistance in Australia against racist state terror against Aboriginal people! Mobilise the power of the multi-racial workers movement to join Aboriginal people and people of colour in joint resistance against all forms of racist oppression!