When the man becomes frantic and wraps the seat belt around his neck, the video shows the cruiser stopping. Harris opens the back door and, for no apparent reason other than to vent his own frustration and hurt someone else, Harris then proceeds to punch and elbow the detainee in the head and then place the man’s head in the open cruiser door and slam it shut.

Within hours of this coming to light, he was fired.

This seems like the right outcome — until we look back and see that he’d already been suspended without pay two years ago for excessive use of force, and was also named in a wrongful death lawsuit filed against in June.

This comes in the wake of the murder of Sonya Massey and the swift response to the killer cop Sean Grayson. In the lead-up to November and the elections, the Democrats, who currently control the FBI and U.S. Department of Justice, cannot afford to be seen as allowing police murders to go unpunished. They are, after all, running Kamala Harris as the “top cop,” and have already begun to seek conciliation from reactionaries (both Republicans and Independents) by airing her very first campaign video in which she promises to increase the size of the vicious U.S. Border Patrol.

Just as in the murder of Sonya Massey, the beating here is an opportunity for the police to burn one of their own to save their bankrupt system.

We musn’t be mollified. Only fire can burn out the rot in the heart of the U.S. policing system, and that fire must rage broadly and widely.

On May 15 a pig army ran rampant at California’s U.C. Irvine. Despite the fact that the semester will end next month (U.C. Irvine’s spring quarter concludes on Friday, June 14), the protest was going strong. Other encampments have been broken up by sustained pig violence and state repression; a few were betrayed by their own unelected leadership, such as the camp at Brown, and dispersed after accepting false deals and empty promises from their administrators. Not U.C. Irvine.

$32 billion USD of the U.C. Irvine endowment is invested in zionist-allied or zionist-operated companies. This money supports the continued existence of the zionist state. On April 29 of this year, U.C. Irvine students established a divestment encampment and demanded that the school divest these zionist assets and cease to profit from the apartheid regime. The encampment expanded to occupy a lecture hall on campus and maintained its radical demands. Its leadership did not waver.

This is, perhaps, why the University unleashed no less than 10 pig agencies on the students there. An army of some 200 pigs assembled outside the encampment in full riot gear, carrying drawn nightsticks, and prepared to dismantle the camp and its barricades. These colonial cops marched in jackbooted columns that are all-too-familiar to anyone who watched the pigs attack an Austin, Texas encampment earlier this month or saw the marching SS troopers break up the UCLA encampment. Just like their siblings in blue all over the occupied United States empire, the California pigs were frothing for violence. They clubbed, beat, and batoned their way through the barricades, arresting at least 40 of the student-activists. The standoff began at around 2:30 pm; by 5:30, the camp was cleared and the pigs’ dirty business was done.

The pattern has been set. NYPD’s storming of Hind’s Hall and CUNY is now the order of the day. Every outpost of the student movement should prepare for violent suppression, no matter what the current mood of the authorities may appear to be. UC Irvine justified this explosive response by pointing to the students’ occupation of the Physical Sciences Lecture Hall. Make no mistake! Whether students occupy a building or a quad, the fear has entered the hearts of the administration and the political caste that the student movement will join together with the radical elements of the labor movement.

Had there been radical locals from the community labor unions, radical clergy, petit-bourgeois professionals who support the movement for Palestine, in sufficient force, the pig army would have hesitated before they stormed the barricades and swept the U.C. Irvine students into jail. The masses have the capacity to resist the police, indefinitely if need be; but only when they are united, organized and prepared.

We once again urge the student movement to organize democratically elected councils and to join up with radical labor. Again, we urge the students to study how to retreat if they cannot hold their ground; again, we urge the student-radicals to spend the summer sharpening their knives and preparing for August.

The fight goes on!

Of the crisis, Mark said:

Friends of New Haven,

Tomorrow (Wednesday, 3/15/23), Mayor Elicker is planning to double down on the deepening human rights emergency for economic refugees in our city, over which he presides without conscience or responsibility. He has ordered the forcible removal of our neighbors from the tent city on E.T. Grasso Boulevard, which has been their home for the past three years. He has provided no alternative for these neighbors except to “apply” for help in getting housed. This comes after the city has neglected to provide any essential services there- not even regular trash removal!- and while the agencies involved in service delivery to our homeless neighbors continue to routinely send people there for help because they have no place else to send them…. CITY LAWS WHICH DENY THE RIGHT OF OUR ECONOMIC REFUGEE NEIGHBORS TO TAKE REFUGE TOGETHER ON PUBLIC LAND ARE A DIRECT VIOLATION OF THE U.N. UNIVERSAL DECLARATION ON HUMAN RIGHTS.

Elicker is the hand-picked mayor of the Democratic regime, plucked from his position as an independent to run against old-Democrat and Working Party candidate, former mayor Toni Harp. Upon his victory in the Democratic primary of 2019, Elicker said “People want the establishment politicians that have been in office for decades to step aside and make space for leadership that brings new ideas and new energy.”

Since that 2019 election, Elicker’s ideas have been the same old ideas. His leadership has been the same old leadership: the leadership of Yale and New Haven capital, its iron fist tightening. Under Elicker’s watch, Randy Cox was thrown, unbuckled, in the back of a police van like Freddy Gray, and paralyzed by the New Haven police: the enforcement arm of Elicker’s regime.

During the pandemic, most services for the unhoused were shut down. Wait lists for shelters on the state’s 2-1-1 phone line run to months. Soup kitchens and shelters have been closed. Now, Elicker strikes out as the representative of New Haven’s capitalists by unleashing New Haven’s vicious police on the encampment at Ella Grasso Boulevard. In fact, Elicker has been building up to this final stroke for two years. His health inspectors have harassed the unhoused community and threatened time and again to sweep the area. Using a tried-and-true capitalist tactic, Elicker outlasted organizers and activists and wore down the resistance and empathy of the local housed community with repeated warnings and near-sweeps.

Finally, earlier this month, Elicker made his move. After cordoning the press off and away from the sweep where they couldn’t ask any questions, Elicker gave a statement indicating that he was working to “arrange travel out of state” for the unhoused people.

Meanwhile, Mandy Management continues to crank up the rents in New Haven – some tenants have seen increases of as much as $550 a month. Evictions are soaring and the property speculators that have “invested” record amounts of money in New Haven properties so they can gentrify, expel tenants, and increase rents have gone unchecked. This is the first of many blows dealt by Elicker and the Democratic machine of New Haven in 2023; it will not be the last.How long before the Bridgeport “eviction tsunami” breaks over New Haven with Justin Elicker’s willing collaboration?