THE MURDER of Keenan Anderson, the cousin of a co-founder of the Black Lives Matter movement, Patrisse Cullors, after he was repeatedly tasered by police officers in Los Angeles has sparked a massive outcry in the United States where the working class is already on the march against capitalist super-exploitation.
Anderson, a school teacher was repeatedly tasered by Los Angeles police officers and restrained following a traffic accident.
In a 13-minute body-cam footage released by the Los Angeles Police Department on Wednesday, Anderson is seen begging for help as multiple officers hold him to the ground and one officer presses his elbow along with his body weight onto his neck.
‘They’re trying to George Floyd me. They’re trying to George Floyd me,’ Anderson can be heard saying in the footage, in reference to the US police killing of Floyd in May 2020 in Minneapolis, that sparked revolutionary movements of youth around the world.
In the footage, police tell Anderson to ‘stop resisting’ as he lies on the pavement. One of the officers then is heard saying that he is going to taser Anderson.
‘They’re trying to kill me. They’re trying to kill me,’ Anderson shouts as the Taser deploys, asking police officers to ‘help me’.
‘My cousin was asking for help, and he didn’t receive it. He was killed,’ Cullors was quoted as telling the Guardian after watching the footage.
‘Nobody deserves to die in fear, panicking and scared for their life. My cousin was scared for his life. He spent the last 10 years witnessing a movement challenging the killing of black people. He knew what was at stake, and he was trying to protect himself. Nobody was willing to protect him.’
It is the third such killing linked to the Los Angeles police in the first days of 2023. Mashea Ashton, founder and CEO of Digital Pioneers Academy, a majority-black school in Washington DC and also where Anderson was an English teacher, confirmed Anderson’s death in a statement, calling the circumstances of his death ‘as disturbing as they are tragic’.
‘Our community is grieving. But we’re also angry,’ Ashton wrote. ‘Angry that, once again, a known, loved, and respected member of our community is no longer with us.’
A 2021 study in the medical journal ‘The Lancet’ recorded 30,800 deaths from police violence across the country between 1980 and 2018, far higher than estimates offered by the US National Vital Statistics System.
At the same time an 18-year-old Palestinian boy has succumbed to critical injuries sustained in Israeli aggression on a town near the city of Jenin in the occupied West Bank, bringing the number of Palestinians killed in 2023 to nine.
Identified as Abdul Hadi Fakhri Nazzal, the Palestinian was shot in the chest and neck by Israeli forces during the Thursday raid on the town of Qabatiya.
Earlier on Thursday, Israeli forces shot another Palestinian man, Habib Mohammad Ikmail, in the head in the same town. The 25-year-old was later pronounced dead in a hospital in Jenin.
Also on Thursday, a Palestinian named as Samir Ouni Harbi Aslan was killed while trying to stop Israeli forces from arresting his son at Qalandiya refugee camp north of Jerusalem. The Palestinian Health Ministry said the 41-year-old man was shot in the chest during the raid.
Pictures showed Aslan wounded and lying on the ground, surrounded by soldiers. He was later taken by Palestinians and his death was declared at a nearby medical centre. The far-right Israeli regime containing known fascists, is an out and out supporter of US imperialism.
Today they are carrying out the same murderous tactics against workers and youth in the USA, while police killings are on the rise in the UK and the EU. The growing crisis of capitalism is driving the ruling classes to carry out atrocities against both workers and youth.
Now is the time not just to fight back, but to build the world party of the socialist revolution, the Fourth International, to put an end to capitalist outrages by going forward to the victory of the world socialist revolution.