the Voice of
The Communist League of Revolutionary Workers–Internationalist
“The emancipation of the working class will only be achieved by the working class itself.”
— Karl Marx
Feb 1, 2016
Dearborn police shot and killed Janet Wilson, a black woman from Detroit. This comes on the heels of Kevin Matthews, a Detroit resident also shot and killed by Dearborn cops on December 23rd.
The Dearborn police were making a traffic stop. Wilson apparently tried to get away. Maybe she thought they would shoot her like they shot Matthews.
Well, they did. The police just began firing multiple rounds into Wilson’s car. They had no idea what was going on with her. Was she having a heart attack? Did she just receive terrible news? What? They didn’t have a clue. They shot first without regard for human life. Earlier she was described as being “distraught” by Fairlane Town Center security guards.
Michigan State Police, who are investigating the shooting, confirmed she was not armed with a gun, but said she was “armed with a three-ton vehicle.” What was she driving, a Humvee? She was reported as driving a “black Chevrolet.”
Dearborn police Chief Ronald Haddad said “We are very proud of our long history of civil rights advocacy as well as appropriate use of force.” Their long history includes 36 years of Mayor Orville Hubbard, whose statue stood for 25 years in front of Dearborn’s old City Hall as a constant reminder of Dearborn’s bitter style of “civil rights advocacy”–which included public warnings by Hubbard for black people to get out of Dearborn by sundown! This was the mayor who once examined the bullet-riddled body of a black man and called it an open-and-shut case of suicide.
Dearborn has a long history of racism. The police can say how “ridiculous” it is to say this is a black and white issue because a white officer shot a black woman. What is really ridiculous, outrageous, and yes, racist, is shooting into a car for a traffic stop!