The Diallo Verdict:
Turning Rage into a Movement
By David Thurston

The Diallo verdict was a slap in the face. For days, the words “not guilty” burned in my gut. I had expected to be angry. I would have been angry if they had been convicted only on lesser charges. But suddenly four lying, vicious murderers were going free, and an absolutely ominous signal was being sent.

They claimed the murder was a mistake, that any cop could have made it. As the judge took pains to explain to the jury, cops do indeed have a license to kill.

But while the verdict is a defeat for ordinary people and a go-ahead to depraved police thugs, the tide is turning in a fundamental way. Most people in New York were disgusted by the verdict. An overwhelming number of people, including whites, now recognize that the cops are racist. In Chicago, police brutality was seen by a majority of people as a more serious problem than crime.

This is a huge change in American politics that cannot be over-emphasized. The watershed victory against the death penalty in Illinois is significant in this context. For years, playing up one’s support for the death penalty has seemed like a quick way to score political points. In his first bid for President, Bill Clinton returned to Arkansas to witness the execution of a mentally disabled Black man, Ricky Ray Rector. Not only was Clinton “tough on crime,” he was willing to go all the way.

Now we have a pro-death penalty Republican putting a halt to executions in Illinois. Not even George Ryan could ignore the 13 innocent men released from that state’s death row. After years of allowing Clinton to put a smiling face on Republican policy, liberals are acting like liberals again. Jesse Jackson Jr. has put a bill in Congress for a seven-year moratorium. In states across the country, small groups of activists, and even politicians have launched calls for local moratoriums.

What this represents is the breakdown of one of the most important political weapons of the rich and powerful. For years, crime hysteria has been the justification for putting more and more cops on the streets and incarcerating Blacks and Latinos at heart-stopping rates. In the early 1990s, many Blacks supported the paramilitary-style policing that has led to LA’s unfolding police corruption scandal and to the horrors of New York’s Street Crime Unit. Something had to be done about crime—or so the argument ran.

Yet increasingly brutal policing and incarceration had little to do with fighting crime. Tough-on-crime policy was a means for politicians to deflect attention from social issues like education and health care. Had they been serious about crime prevention, they might have tried creating jobs, building schools, or funding drug rehabilitation programs.

Today, the politicians’ lies are breaking down. Sentiment is turning against them as the facts are getting out. When people understand how racist and class-biased the death penalty is, they no longer support it.

For years, politicians have gotten away with scapegoating “criminals” and “welfare queens” for society’s problems. They have justified systematically shifting money into prison construction and out of public education. They have put more and more cops on the streets, while the gap between Wall Street and the rest of us has grown wider. For years, politicians have gotten away with this—they do not have to get away with it any longer.

The author is a member of the ISO and serves on the coordinating committee of United Students Against Sweatshops.