Estimated reading time: 4 minutes
WHAT IS A PIG?
The Black Panther, Oct. 5, 1968, pg. 6
A low natured beast that has no regard for law, justice, or the rights of the people; a creature that bites the hand that feeds it; a foul depraved traducer, usually found masquerading as the victim of an unprovoked attack.
On May 2nd, Rodney Hinton got into his car, struck a sheriff’s deputy, and killed him. This hits our moment like a body through a windshield. At Rodney’s first court hearing, cops filled the room to sneer at the man who had delivered such a monumental blow. The courtroom was a reverse slaughterhouse, pigs lined up to butcher the man. Rodney walked by without flinching. He wore the wounds on his head from the windshield glass like a crown.
We celebrate Rodney’s corrective and instructive action. The father of a murdered son has rejected the idea that the murderers stand above us, untouchable, and has dragged them down squealing from on high back into the dirt where they keep the rest of us. Here they become recognizable as an enemy we can fight. Here, at eye level, it is clear just how vulnerable they are.
There is a war raging in this country, and it has been raging for centuries. The current form of the police are the armed-to-the-teeth descendants of the slave catchers and “Indian” killers. Killing children is what cops do. If the dead pig Rodney hit didn’t, he trained the pig who did; they chugged beers over barbecue. “An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind” only works if all the world shares the same vision. What we have are eyes glaring across established lines on a battlefield. When an enemy takes something from you, you better at least take as much back so the fight becomes winnable again. We celebrate this radical act of resistance, the same way we celebrated the eradication of every Nazi from Soviet soil, the triumph of the Vietnamese army over the U.S. imperialists, and the repulsion and humiliation of IOF ground troops by Palestinian freedom fighters. Each casualty of the enemy mortifies and terrifies them, because they only know how to wage a one-sided war. They don’t have the stomach for a real fight.
The pigs who filled the courtroom of Rodney’s first hearing and all the others who wear their uniform on this land feel this. The beasts huddle together, licking their wounds, offering themselves reassurances and prayers. They fear what it will mean if they don’t successfully crush Rodney for his defiance. They will continue to try to hide their vulnerability behind inflated budgets and military-grade equipment. They will mask their fear as rage and strike back on the oppressed with even greater fury. This is a call to everyone invested and sympathetic to the call of justice and liberation, we cannot let the pigs strike Rodney down and make him into a symbol. We must rise for him, demand his release, and fight for it! Celebrate it in the street, let every cop quake knowing their enemies are everywhere and see them for what they are.
In this country-wide graveyard of the silenced and oppressed, we say, “Let a million Rodney’s bloom!”
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