Troy Davis is dead.

Despite the appeals of many, despite an overwhelming lack of evidence in his case, the capitalist “justice” system decided that he must die.

Like a lynch mob in the American apartheid known as Jim Crow, the state has sanctioned murder in the name of punishing and terrorizing a community for its perceived trespasses. The events of yesterday aren’t simply a failing of a system, or a crime against a single individual. This is a crime against an entire community deemed “criminal” because of their skin color and class, and it is entirely intentional.

Capitalist “democracy” gives the pretense of being fair, just and impartial when it deals its punishments. The reality is far from it.

Capitalism uses its police as its representatives in class warfare. Their purpose, rather than to protect people or lofty and abstract principles like “justice,” is to protect and preserve the unjust antagonisms on which our society is constructed. To put it simply, they are the army of the wealthy, the defenders of their state. They are judge, jury and executioner in the streets when workers and the poor aren’t content with their lot. The system depends on such enforcers to maintain its everyday exploitation of working people.

It is for this reason that state repression cannot allow itself to be challenged. In the case that a police officer is killed, someone — regardless of guilt or innocence — needs to be made an example of.

Troy Davis was made to suffer and die not for a crime he committed, or even a crime committed by another person against a police officer, but to protect the everyday crime perpetrated by capitalism and its agents of repression.

The message that Troy Davis’ body sends is this: if anyone challenges the power of the police, anyone can be made a target for frame-up and murder.

If any reader still entertains illusions of “justice” being the end in mind of police forces and courts within capitalism, Troy Davis’ example is one of many that reveals how alien “justice” is to the American police and court systems.

There is no justice in a system which defends exploitation with state-sponsored murder.

There is no justice in a system which gives slaps on the wrists of corporate criminals who destroy the lives of millions, yet executes those whose guilt is in doubt.

In some of the last words he ever spoke, Troy Davis has asked those he has left behind to continue his fight.

We at the American Party of Labor condemn his murder, and the everyday terror police forces and the court system visit on working people in every corner of our country.

Troy Davis may no longer be with us, but Troy Davis and countless other victims live on in our minds and hearts as we struggle against a criminal justice system founded on the most criminal injustice.

We must not falter in this struggle, and we must not forget the sacrifice of those who we have lost to capitalism’s state repression.

Categories: American Party of Labor, Discrimination, Government, Labor, Prisons, Racism, Racist Oppression, Statements, U.S. News, Workers Struggle