Against all Law Enforcement and Former Slave-Catchers

https://youtu.be/O-J-6SkuKJ0

Against all Law Enforcement and Former Slave-Catchers 

Cop Watch Los Angeles Statement on U.S. Marshal Attack on Our Comrade in South Gate

On Sunday, April 19th, 2015, CopWatcher Beatriz Paez was going for a run in her neighborhood of South Gate in Los Angeles.  She noticed that there were law enforcement agents armed with assault riffles and in Police and Sheriff uniforms; they were raiding a neighbor's house.  With the recent and countless police murders on her mind, she then takes out her phone and begins to film them.  They begin to intimidate and attempt to bully her to leave.  As Beatriz, stands her ground, one of the agents rushes her, assaults her, snatches her phone and smashes it on the ground, and he finishes it off by kicking it.  Beforehand, she had gotten community members to film and to support, and one of the people even gave her safe-housing after the police attacked her, in solidarity.

Beatriz, having the support of Cop Watch organizations, uploads the video to the internet and hopes to expose South Gate law enforcement, and all law enforcement, while giving people courage to stand up to all police when they see them carrying out these type of activities in their communities.  The video has since been seen all over the world, and has shown her righteous resistance to people as well as the cowardly act of law enforcement to everyone.  She has been speaking out and will continue to organize in her community with the support of Cop Watch LA and other Cop Watch organizations. 

Since the video has aired, the U.S. Marshals have taken credit for being in charge of the operation that day (even though there were also South Gate Police Department officers present that day).  To give a brief history on the U.S. Marshals, which is one of colonialism and slave-catching for a white supremacist – patriarchal – capitalist-imperialist society.  The U.S. Marshals were once given the duty of enforcing the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, where they would recover and arrest fugitive slaves who escaped to the “North” and bring them back to their slave masters in the “South.”  They were the main law enforcement agency as the u.s. Settler-colonialists expanded to the West.  They even helped suppress the “Pullman Strike” in 1894 of railway workers.  The U.S. Marshals are not our heroes, and this is their legacy. (source: Wikipedia)

We want our communities free of all colonial law enforcement agencies.  Their role as a whole is one of maintaining illegitimate power and system.  Their are occupiers on stolen land.  Los Angeles, is Tongva territory, and they are all an army of the rich white men who are in power.  Cop Watch is a direct action tactic, where folks can start building their fighting capacity in the community against this illegitimate system, and defending themselves with different tools; so, people can start realizing that they do have power, and that they can fight back in an organized way.  We hope folks can one day build a culture of resistance by taking these actions and organizing their blocks against these occupiers.

We know Beatriz was attacked because these pigs are servants for this patriarchal system, and thought no one was watching and no one would care.  This is how this pig society views women.  They wanted her to submit, but she did not back down.  We stand with our sister, and will continue to fight against all law enforcement, and slave-catchers for the empire.

We all have the right to film the police, and defend ourselves from this oppressive state, from Palestine, to Ferguson, to Cheran, to Los Angeles - we will fight to win.