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
Jul 22, 2013
In the City of Detroit, 17,000 buildings await demolition and have for years. In early July, out of all these, the city chose to demolish the Malice Green shrine. This was a mural done in memory of Malice Green, an unemployed black steel worker who was beaten to death by police during a routine traffic stop in 1992.
Two white police officers were eventually convicted of manslaughter in his death and sent to prison.
That mural has remained there, at the place he was murdered, ever since. Even though the building it was painted on was vacant, it was kept up by neighbors, the grass and flowers around it well-tended.
The demolition has now left behind “a pile of cinder blocks, caution tape, jutting wood, bricks, clothing and other garbage”–in the words of the Free Press.
It is revealing that the city’s emergency dictators–who are creating a “New Detroit”–prioritized removing a memorial to black victims of police brutality.
Instructively, Detroiters responded quickly. The mural’s artist, Bennie White, has met with Ron Scott of the Coalition Against Police Brutality, to plan a new shrine. According to Scott, the new memorial will be in a “protected location, where no one will destroy it.”