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
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
May 23, 2022
We Own this City, 2021, directed by Reinaldo Marcus Green, on HBO Max
The miniseries was developed and written by George Pelecanos and David Simon, the authors of the series The Wire. Both series are based in Baltimore and based on real events. We Own this City is based on the book by Baltimore Sun reporter Justin Fenton and chronicles the rise and fall of the Baltimore Police Department’s Gun Trace Task Force. Unchecked power and thefts of drug money speak to its horrifying corruption and moral collapse and the state of policing today.
The Groveland Four: The Sad Saga of a Legal Lynching, paperback, 2004, by Gary Corsair; and Devil in the Grove: Thurgood Marshall, the Groveland Boys, and the Dawn of a New America, 2013, by Gilbert King. A video documentary on PBS is also available.
Highlighted today are two books on the case of the Groveland Four in Lake County, Florida, 1949, where four innocent black youths were accused of the rape of a white woman. These young men, aged 16 to 26, two of whom were recently-returned WWII veterans, were falsely accused and wrongfully convicted. Two were murdered by police. All to maintain white supremacy. Only last year, in 2021, did Florida finally admit its wrongdoing and exonerate all four.
Both books show the KKK on the rampage: wanting to lynch them, burning homes, terrorizing communities, and showing the KKK’s deep ties in the white community. The first book provides extensive painstaking research of all the people involved, and even adds details unearthed 50 years later. The second book provides more background material of how the police and the KKK violently enforced a class system which benefited the citrus growers who needed cheap labor.