Marxist-Leninists Behind Anti-police Signs and Demonstrations in New York
by Christian Gomez
Earlier this past April, the New York Post reported that the dozens of professionally printed signs used by demonstrators to protest against the New York Police Department (NYPD) over the fatal police shooting of Brooklyn native Saheed Vassell, 34, were made by a cadre of radical socialist outfits. Vassell was thought to have been pointing a firearm, shortly before being struck by seven bullets from four NYPD officers.
“The Party for Socialism & Liberation and the Workers World Party distributed the bold, black-on-yellow and black-and-red-on-white signs that anti-cop demonstrators held aloft on sticks outside the 71st Precinct headquarters in Crown Heights,” the Post reported.
The organizations behind the protest boast about themselves as being anti-capitalist, “revolutionary Marxist-Leninist.” More radical even than the Communist Party USA, both the Party for Socialism and Liberation (PSL) and the Workers World Party (WWP) regard themselves as being “anti-revisionist,” lamenting the demise of the old Soviet empire. In their various publications and other printed materials, the PSL and WWP exuberate their support for the despotic one-party state dictatorships of North Korea, and communist Cuba, and Nicolás Maduro’s socialist Venezuela.
On the WWP’s website, it reads: “Workers World Party is a revolutionary Marxist-Leninist party dedicated to organizing and fighting for a socialist revolution in the United States and around the world.”
Unashamedly, the WWP continues: “With branches around the U.S., WWP develops militant organizers in every struggle, from anti-racist and immigrant rights to labor, anti-war and anti-imperialist struggles.”
The WWP further incriminates itself, admitting its involvement in much of the radical civil unrest directed against law enforcement. “We are active in the Black Lives Matter movement including advocating for disarming the police and other repressive state apparatus.”
The PSL is no different, advocating on its website for the “socialist transformation of society.” While both organizations may not ostensibly call for violence against police, their rhetoric certainly fuels it.
As the Post pointed out, some of the PSL-printed signs read, “NYPD: Biggest GANG in New York” and “NYPD: RAPISTS MURDERERS THIEVES.” Footage of the demonstrators captured by CBS 2 in New York showed individuals carrying additional signs saying “END RACIST POLICE TERROR!” and walking with a large, PSL-branded banner reading, “STOP RACIST POLICE BRUTALITY!” Another sign read, “ABOLISH THE NYPD,” with the WWP’s website Workers.org printed below.
The Posts’ article further corroborates what both the Intelligence Brief and The New American magazine have previously said about such anti-police protests around the country not being spontaneous, but rather the concerted effort of organizations, in particular ones that self-identify with Marxism-Leninism.
Such protests have occurred elsewhere throughout the country, in cities such as Ferguson, Missouri; St. Louis; Baltimore; Chicago; and San Francisco, to name a few. Local and national television stations will typically show footage of these protests, depicting the signs paraded by demonstrators with either the RevCom.us, PSLWeb.org, or Workers.org websites printed on them. However, these same news broadcasters omit any mention of the obvious identifiers printed on the signs revealing the organization behind the mass demonstrations.
This omission by the media is not only true of liberal-oriented networks such as CNN, ABC, NBC, and CBSN, but also true of the purportedly conservative alternative FOX News. Rather than reporting what their own news footage reveals, news anchors and other commentators frequently describe the protests as being “spontaneous” or the product of “community outrage.”
These glaring omissions have aided in concealing the identity of these organizations, enabling them to operate free from scrutiny. Meanwhile, local police and sheriff departments are given no such quarter as they bear the brunt of public condemnation by the media and communist street agitators.
Communist organizers of anti-police protests typically have no regard for the actual circumstances leading up to the fatal shooting. Instead they focus their attention on how to exploit the situation to portray police and law enforcement negatively.
In the case of Saheed Vassell, shortly before he was fatally shot by NYPD he was caught randomly pulling out the tubular end of a silver welding torch and pointing it at sidewalk pedestrians in Crown Heights as though he were going to shoot them with a gun, according to private surveillance footage released by the NYPD.
The communist PSL and WWP have since portrayed Vassell as a martyr against what they describe as “racist police brutality.” In fact, communist organizations such as the PSL and WWP, as well as the Revolutionary Communist Party (RevCom) and the Communist Party USA (CPUSA), typically exploit police shootings involving African-American suspects in order to stir distrust and anger toward local law enforcement. Communists often utilize this tactic as a means of building support for their revolutionary, anti-capitalist, and anti-government agendas.
RevCom, WWP, and the PSL and its parent organization, the Answer Coalition, aim to undermine local law enforcement and overthrow the U.S. government, further seeking to replace the government with their own despotic regime akin to that of the Soviet Union’s and in lockstep solidarity with the ruling Stalinist-style dictatorships in North Korea and Laos.
As lofty and radical as their aims are, the hateful and dangerous nature of these communist outfits should not be underestimated. Nor is there any evidence to suggest that they will simply disband and abandon their anti-police and revolutionary tendencies anytime soon.
Police departments and their personnel ought to maintain a degree of vigilance with regard to the Party for Socialism and Liberation, the Workers World Party, and other subversive organizations that ideologically identify with Marxism-Leninism or that openly call for the violent overthrow of capitalism and the American government.
Such Marxist-Leninist organizations also have the potential of placing uniformed law-enforcement personnel in danger, as their rhetoric may inspire others to commit violence or other acts of attrition against law enforcement. The recent demonstrations in Crown Heights reported by the New York Post are a call to attention to the Marxist menace behind the current lawless, anti-police movement.