North Charleston, SC – On June 19, organizers with the Lowcountry Action Committee (LAC), a branch of the National Alliance Against Racist and Political Repression, rallied on the corner of Remount and Craig Streets, a few hundred yards from the site where Walter Scott was murdered by ex-North Charleston Police Officer Michael Slager 11 years ago, in 2015.

Their goal was to stand in solidarity with families impacted by police and vigilante violence, amplifying their No Early Release campaign. Organizers read the names of Walter Scott, Cyrus Carmack-Belton and Kohen Wiley as well as inmates who died at the Charleston County Detention Center. They also urged passersby to sign the No Early Release petition in support of the family of Walter Scott. In 2017, former officer Slager was sentenced to 20 years in federal prison for Scott’s murder, but is eligible for early release to a halfway house beginning in the fall of 2027. The family wants him to serve his entire sentence in prison.

“Don’t forget why we are out here today,” said LAC member Erica Veal as a passing train caused traffic to back up along the busy road, located in the heart of North Charleston.

“The Scott family needs 10,000 signatures on the No Early Release petition to escalate their campaign to the next level, let’s help them get there,” said Veal. “If you are holding a stack of petition flyers in your hand, you need to be going up to these cars and passing them out. This rally is not a performative gesture. We are here to help the Scott family.”

In between handing out flyers with QR codes to the No Early Release petition and chanting the names of the deceased, organizers also made speeches to connect the defense of families to the fight for community control of police.

“The police have no interest in dealing with racist vigilantes or the killer cops they work next to,” said Nate Hubler of LAC and the Elbit Out of South Carolina Coalition, in reference to the murder of Kohen Wiley, a one-year-old who was murdered by police in Mississippi, and Cyrus Carmack-Belton, a teenager who was chased down and shot in the back in Columbia, South Carolina by a store owner.

“We need community control of the police to keep us safe. We can have a system that benefits us. But we will only get that by fighting for community control of the police and working together,” Hubler said.

Matt Colburn of LAC said, “Whether it’s striking workers, people protesting genocide, ICE raids, data centers or police murders. whenever the people try to organize and fight back, the police are always the first line of defense for the oppressors against the oppressed.”

When asked why they chose June 19 as the day of action, Veal said, “It’s important for us to be here on Juneteenth, Freedom Day, to commemorate our enslaved African ancestors who liberated themselves from slavery 160 years ago because we still aren’t free when our communities continue to suffer from police violence.”

The Lowcountry Action Committee encouraged those present to join their organization to continue supporting families like the Scotts and to relaunch the campaign to end the deaths at the local county jail. They said progress has been made in the 160 plus years since Emancipation, but that there was still important work that needed to be done.

Miranda Xiong of LAC said, “The only communities police serve and protect are those of the state. The criminal justice system can’t be remedied by NCPD increasing the budget by 4% every year, while Al Cannon [Detention Center] racks up over 20 preventable deaths by this year from proven medical neglect.”

#NorthCharlestonSC #SC #LowcountryActionCommittee #Juneteenth #WalterScott #InjusticeSystem #OppressedNationalities

Within three days, however, Slager and the police's story unraveled before the eyes of the world. Cell phone video taken on the scene by an eyewitness clearly shows Slager firing shots into Scott's back as he runs away. Scott never reaches for Slager's taser, as the police said. When Scott is shot down, Slager seizes the opportunity to handcuff the dying man, call in his bogus story to his superior officers, and plants a taser on Scott's body as false evidence.

The video, taken by 23-year-old Dominican immigrant Feidin Santana, fueled protests against this latest police murder of an unarmed Black man. Having been caught in a lie, the North Charleston police arrested Slager on April 7 and charged him with murder.

The murder of Walter Scott is the most recent case of racist police violence to draw national attention and protests. In August 2014, the murder of 18-year-old African American Michael Brown by a white police officer in Ferguson, Missouri, sparked a protest movement against racism and police brutality across the country. Similar cases, like the murder of Eric Garner and Tamir Rice, emerged since that time.

Thousands of activists, particularly young people, took to the streets to demand justice around the slogan “Black Lives Matter.” In many cities, activists have linked these nationwide high-profile cases with local police crimes, like the Dream Defenders' campaign in Miami, Florida, to win justice for a mentally disabled Black man who was killed by police earlier this year.

In all of these high-profile cases of police killing unarmed African Americans, the officers involved were not charged. This includes the murder of New York man Eric Garner, who was choked to death by police while being filmed on a cell phone camera. Garner's last words, “I can't breathe,” became a rallying cry for the thousands of activists who took to the streets demanding justice. Despite clear video footage of the murder, a New York grand jury refused to indict the officer responsible for killing Garner.

Now, the murder of Walter Scott by South Carolina police has ignited further debate around the usefulness of body cameras on police. The non-indictment of the police officer who choked and killed Garner highlighted a major flaw with this demand, since the entire murder took place on camera. The racist criminal injustice system, which prosecutes African Americans and Chicano/Latinos more than whites for similar offenses, allows police plenty of legal loopholes to inflict brutality on oppressed nationalities. Furthermore, the grand jury system gives state prosecutors – many of whom are bought off during elections by the police – a tremendous amount of power to frame these cases in a way that usually benefits the police.

In Scott's case, the release of the video footage led to the prompt arrest of officer Slager. Although activists should welcome this positive development, an arrest alone is still a far cry from justice. Many of the same freedom fighters of the Black Lives Matter movement were active in the movement for justice for Trayvon Martin in 2012. While mass protests led to the arrest of George Zimmerman, the racist vigilante who killed Martin, the criminal injustice system found him not guilty on all charges, including second-degree murder.

The video footage of Scott's murder is significant, but the travesty of justice in Eric Garner case reminds us to not overstate the significance of video evidence alone. The key to winning justice for Walter Scott and all victims of racist police crimes is to continue organizing and building a mass movement against the system of national oppression in the U.S.

In places like Chicago, major groups in the Black Lives Matter movement have united around the demand for “community control of the police.” To better exercise this control, Chicago activists are organizing neighborhoods and communities to establish an elected Civilian Police Accountability Council (CPAC). The proposed CPAC in Chicago would have the power to appoint and dismiss the Superintendent of Police and issue subpoenas in investigations of brutality cases.

The growing popular outrage at racist police crimes and the criminal injustice system continues to fuel the Black Lives Matter movement. Activists and organizers have a real chance to strike a blow at the heart of this system by continuing to build the mass movement against racism and national oppression.

#JacksonvilleFL #OppressedNationalities #PoliceBrutality #NationalOppression #AfricanAmerican #RacismInTheCriminalJusticeSystem #Antiracism #BlackLivesMatter #CivilianPoliceAccountabilityCouncil #WalterScott #michaelSlager