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A socialist newsweekly published in the interests of working people
Vol. 64/No. 32August 21, 2000

 
'Jail killer cops' say SWP candidates
 
BY MARTY RESSLER  
ST. LOUIS--Socialist Workers vice presidential candidate Margaret Trowe joined more than 200 Black youth and others in the town of Kinloch August 5 to protest the police killing of two unarmed Black men.

Under the pretext of a "drug investigation," cops on June 12 surrounded the car of Earl Murray and Ronald Beasley in broad daylight in the parking lot of a fast food restaurant. Eyewitnesses said that a police vehicle rammed into the back of their car, trapping them. The cops then fired 20 or more times, killing them both.

"This is another example of how the state carries out the death penalty," Trowe said. "Cop killings, state-sanctioned murder, deaths in prison, and workers being killed on the job are a result of the increasingly brutal system of capitalism. Our campaign demands the jailing and prosecution to the full extent of the law of the cops who killed Murray and Beasley."

Alyson Kennedy, Socialist Workers candidate for U.S. Senate in Missouri, a garment worker, and member of the Union of Needlestrades, Industrial and Textile Employees, has attended a number of protests against the killings.

Mary Williams, who met the socialist candidates at one of these protests, attended a public meeting for Trowe and Kennedy August 6. "The killings were uncalled for," Williams said, "and served to put fear in other people. We're not safe in the streets--because of the cops." She said she is glad to see a response to the killings. A young worker who also met the socialists at one of the marches against police brutality attended the meeting and expressed interest in getting involved with the campaign.

Trowe said the socialist campaign "comes from within struggles of working people and gives a voice to these battles." Trowe spoke out against increasingly unsafe conditions on the job, pointing to the mine explosion in Utah earlier in the week where two coal miners died. "Farmers are also facing an unprecedented crisis," she said, reporting on a July 4 milk dumping by dairy farmers in several states.

One farmer said he was "making a statement with this. We have had enough and can't take anymore," Trowe said, noting "a white farmer in Wisconsin is saying the same thing as Black youth in St. Louis."

Kennedy and Trowe both spoke out in defense of campaign volunteer Bill Arth. The auto worker was staffing a table June 25 outside a store with the owner's permission. Arth and another campaign supporter were passing out campaign statements with the headline, "Prosecute and Jail the Cops Who Killed Earl Murray and Ronald Beasley."

Some cops came up and took a copy of the statement and later came back and demanded to see Arth's business license. He explained that he was part of a political campaign, and did not need one. The cops proceeded to write a summons. Arth faces a court date on August 16, and maximum penalties of one year in jail and a $1,000 fine. Kennedy explained that the attempt to silence the socialist campaign is an attack on the rights of all working people.

"We are encouraging everyone who defends democratic rights to send a letter to the mayor demanding the citation be dropped and this harassment of our campaign be immediately ended," Kennedy said.

 
 
 
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