Born in the USA – implemented with gross impunity in Bahrain – US Police Violence Model for Bahrain

Police violence in Anaheim: The class issues
by World Socialist… 26 July, 2012 – Socialist Equality Party

Statement by Jerry White, SEP candidate for US president

As the Socialist Equality Party’s candidate for US president, I condemn the brutal shooting of 25-year-old Manuel Diaz in Anaheim and the subsequent violent crackdown on protesters. These acts of police brutality are an attack on the entire working class and must be met with a unified political response.

The killing of Diaz, who was unarmed, was followed by the use of tear gas and rubber bullets against peaceful demonstrators, including children. Barely 24 hours later, 21-year-old Joel Acevedo was shot dead, allegedly in the course of a chase in which he drew a weapon. Acevedo was the sixth person killed by Anaheim police this year.

In response to the second killing, there were even larger protests Tuesday outside City Hall, with as many as a thousand people taking part, and 24 arrested. There was sporadic window-breaking and water bottles thrown, which was seized on by police as a pretext for unleashing nightsticks and rubber bullets to disperse the crowd.

These protests show the widespread anger among working people, not only over police brutality, but over the deepening economic and social crisis that has driven unemployment in California well into double-digit figures. The plight of Anaheim’s Hispanic working class population, the target of increasingly draconian anti-immigrant policies, is particularly dire.

The police violence, and the social crisis behind it, are not, however, primarily racial issues. They are class questions, manifestations of an economic system in which a relative handful monopolize the wealth, while the vast majority of all races struggle to survive.

According to one recent report, median family income has fallen 6 percent since 2000, the worst drop since the Great Depression. Meanwhile, the top one percent of households has doubled its share of national income, from 10 percent to 20 percent, since 1972. Under Barack Obama, the country’s first African-American president, the top one percent has swallowed up 93 percent of all income gains since the beginning of the so-called “recovery.”

Under such conditions, it is impossible for the ruling elite to maintain its wealth and power through democratic and peaceful means. Instead, there has been a systematic buildup of the powers of the police, initially in name of fighting “crime,” more recently using the pretext of the “war on terror.” The real social function of the police, however, is to defend the interests of the corporate and financial elite. …more