Justice for Nicholas Robertson! The Whole Damn System Is Guilty!

December 14, 2015 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

From a reader:

In the video, you see two sheriffs standing and aiming their guns, shooting straight ahead at a man on the ground. The cops keep firing as the man tries to crawl away. The cops pause, and then start firing multiple shots again. The man is killed by the hail of police bullets. NO! This must stop!
Nicholas Robertson was a 28-year-old Black man, the father of three children. On Saturday, December 12, in Lynwood, California, which is just next door to Watts in Los Angeles, Robertson was getting ready to go to his brother’s wedding. Instead, he was violently ripped away from his family and loved ones at the hands of law enforcement. Ava Duvernay, director of the film Selma, said on Twitter, “Unacceptable. Crawling away. Shot brazenly in broad daylight. Looks like a firing squad. Don’t accept this. #Lynwood.”

As it got to be nighttime, many hours after Nicholas Robertson was killed and his body still lay covered up in the gas station where he died, family, friends and, others refused to quietly accept his murder. Together with the LA Revolution Club, people gathered across the street, where sheriffs stood blocking the street. Nicholas’ wife and his sister-in-law sobbed and shouted their pain and anger as friends and others joined them. When people began to speak out their fury on the bullhorn and hold up posters of the faces of people killed by police nationwide, more police arrived, lining up in front of the crowd and putting on riot helmets. People did not back down in the face of this, but continued to call out the murder, shouting that Nicholas was crawling away, and calling out the Lynwood sheriffs for their brutality and terror.
Several Latino people who had come to the nearby restaurant joined the protest, outraged at what happened to Robertson. One man yelled out at the police, “Where was his trial?” A member of the Revolution Club said on the bullhorn that if the police were really there to “serve and protect,” they would have responded to this murder by arresting the cops who shot a man who was crawling on his knees. Instead, they came in riot gear to further terrorize the family and the neighborhood. She linked this to how the police get away with murder over and over again nationwide; how the U.S. military is doing the same in Syria, Pakistan, and Afghanistan; and how this shows the whole system is guilty. She called on people who are sick of all this and want to see a different world to get into Bob Avakian and get into the movement to make an actual communist revolution at the soonest possible time.

Police and media are working overtime to justify this horrific murder, claiming that Nicholas Robertson had a gun and was pointing it at them and saying they picked up a gun on the scene. In the video, all we see is Nicholas walking and then crawling away from, not towards, the deputies while they fire again and again, at least 30 shots, in broad daylight at 11 in the morning. This is the perverted mindset and practice of genocide against Black people going on right now in America. All over the country police lie about the people they kill and get away with murder again and again, even when caught on video, even in front of the whole world.
Indict, Convict, Put the Killer Cops in Jail! The Whole Damn System Is Guilty as Hell! It’s up to us to rise up for the humanity of Nicholas Robertson and all the stolen lives. It is up to us to fight the power, and transform the people, for revolution.