Police killing used to justify greater repression
So they can kill TyRon Lewis in broad daylight and even if there's a brief uprising, they can handle that too. That's alright, they can crush it.
In fact the rebellion justifies a greater kind of repression. They kill TyRon Lewis, and then that justifies bringing in Weed and Seed. They say, O.K., we're going to bring in some economic development. What's the form of the economic development? It's a $300,000 Weed and Seed program (a federal counterinsurgent program imposed on African communities all over the U.S.).
First of all, $300,000 is less money than the mayor paid for his house, and they're going to bring it for the whole black community. That's an insult.
Secondly, Weed and Seed is a police program. It is a designer program that allows the cops to use the most anti-democratic attacks on the people, and to do it within defined borders where it's just black people who are getting the brunt of it. They can use preventive detention, wire tapping and federalized penalties. So, you've got one law for white people while black people are under federal law whose sentences are three times greater than those given to white people.
Sobukwe Bambaata, African People's Socialist Party member, speaks to crowd immediately following police murder of TyRon Lewis (left). Bambaata continued to lead community in the days following the uprising, including leading various demonstrations (right) calling for justice for the family of TyRon Lewis and the African community.
So this is what they do: they put the rebellion down and then create a police cordon to make sure that after having put it down, there's more repression than there was when they killed the boy.
Now you don't have just the St. Petersburg police department, you have the FBI, the Drug Enforcement Administration, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, the Florida Department of Law Enforcement, the State's Attorney's office, all these forces in this target area where African people live.
Problem solved, from their perspective. TyRon Lewis is dead. Everyone in the white world knows he's supposed to die. If you don't believe it, all you have to do is look at the letters to the editors and listen to the most popular talk radio program in the city.
All they talked about was why TyRon Lewis should have died. "He should have gotten out of the car. Bob, what do you do when the cops tell you to get out of the car? You just get out of the car. Isn't that what you do, Bob? You just get out of the car. If he had nothing to hide, he should have gotten out of the car, Bob."
This is the kind of thing that poses as an explanation for why Africans get executed. Now there's the death penalty for not getting out of your car. It's not on any law books I have ever heard of that if you don't get out of your car, you die. But that's alright if it's an African person.
A couple of months ago a white guy in St. Petersburg, Florida had a gun and was shooting up in the air. The police came, he pointed the gun at the police and they killed him.
You should have heard the outrage from the white community about killing this guy. He was armed, shooting and pointing guns at the cops. Nobody's disputing that. Then the white community's outraged. You should have seen the letters to the editor. "Well they could have shot him in the leg," or "They could have done this or that." This is how they've set it up.
So TyRon Lewis was supposed to die. The rebellion's alright because they came in and crushed it down.
