https://themilitant.com/2020/05/16/vigilantes-charged-for-killing-ahmaud-arbery-as-cover-up-comes-apart-in-ga/
Vigilantes charged for killing Ahmaud Arbery as cover-up comes apart in Ga.
article
BY JANICE LYNN
Vol. 84/No. 20
May 25, 2020
REUTERS/DUSTIN CHAMBERS Over 1,000 protested May 8 in Brunswick,
Georgia, demanding justice in vigilante killing of Ahmaud Arbery.
Cover-up by cops, prosecutors
was exposed by release of suppressed video. figure
Over 1,000 protested May 8 in Brunswick, Georgia, demanding justice in
vigilante killing of Ahmaud Arbery. Cover-up by cops, prosecutors was
exposed by
release of suppressed video.
REUTERS/DUSTIN CHAMBERS Over 1,000 protested May 8 in Brunswick,
Georgia, demanding justice in vigilante killing of Ahmaud Arbery.
Cover-up by cops, prosecutors
was exposed by release of suppressed video. figure end
ATLANTA — A multinational crowd of over 1,000 rallied in front of the
Glynn County Courthouse in Brunswick, Georgia, May 8 to demand the
prosecution of
Travis McMichael, 34, and his father, Gregory McMichael, 64, a former
cop and investigator for the prosecutor’s office, the men who shot and
killed Ahmaud
Arbery. He would have been 26 years old that day.
The two McMichaels were arrested and charged with murder and aggravated
assault the day before, more than two months after the February 23
shooting took
place. It wasn’t until a video was leaked to the media May 5, and the
outcry that followed, that the arrests were made.
The video, shot by an associate of the McMichaels, shows Arbery, dressed
in shorts and a T-shirt, jogging through the Satilla Shores
neighborhood. He attempts
to run around a pickup truck where the armed McMichaels, who are
Caucasian, confront him, telling him arms in hand they want to question
him. He resists,
and is shot to death by Travis McMichael.
This was a vigilante killing in which the two men took it upon
themselves to act as judge, jury and executioner. This kind of vigilante
thuggery has a
long history against working people, the labor movement and fighters for
Black rights.
No charges were filed initially in the case. Instead, local officials
did everything they could to cover up the facts in the killing to
prevent the arrest
of the McMichaels. Waycross Judicial Circuit District Attorney George
Barnhill, who was assigned the case after the Brunswick DA recused
herself, claimed
the McMichaels acted in self-defense. He said they were trying to make a
“citizen’s arrest,” believing Arbery was involved in burglaries in the area.
But as Brunswick attorney James Yancey told the media, “You can’t argue
self-defense if you instigated the event. No Black man being chased by
two white
men in a pickup truck with guns is going to stay and talk to them. He
[Arbery] had every right to defend himself.”
“Your son was involved in a robbery,” was how the cops reported Arbery’s
death to his mother Wanda Cooper-Jones. She told the Atlanta
Journal-Constitution
that they claimed, “There was a confrontation with a homeowner. There
was a fight over the handgun. Your son was shot, and he was shot
multiple times.”
“It’s hard when you can’t really believe what authority tells you,” she
said later as the facts of the killing finally came out.
Arbery’s first cousin Kevin Smith, along with two of his aunts, led a
protest of several hundred May 5, the day the video was released. They
marched on
the street where Ahmaud was gunned down, calling for the prosecution of
the two vigilante killers.
“My kid was murdered,” Arbery’s father, Marcus, told the media. “That’s
all I can say. He ran like that every day — all his life.” Demonstrators
at the
May 8 protest rally sported T-shirts and carried signs with the words,
“I Run With Maud.”
Investigate the cover-up
“I won’t be satisfied until everyone involved is gone,” Richard Nixon,
president of Local 1423 of the International Longshoremen’s Association,
told the
May 8 rally, calling for the firing of all those implicated in the
cover-up. Brunswick is the second largest “roll-on/roll-off” port in the
U.S., a major
hub for import and export of cars, trucks and tractors. The ILA
organizes the port.
James Woodall, president of the Georgia NAACP, called for the
resignations of both the Brunswick and Waycross DAs. “Ahmaud was shot
down like a dog,” he
said. “We are here to support this family.”
Protests have been held in a number of other cities. Support for
prosecution of the McMichaels has come from a host of celebrities,
politicians and sports
figures.
On May 10 Georgia Attorney General Chris Carr asked the U.S. Justice
Department to investigate the local authorities who handled the case.
There is a long history of police cover-ups in Glynn County. Cops there
have been “accused of covering up allegations of misconduct, tampering
with a crime
scene, interfering in an investigation of a police shooting and
retaliating against fellow officers who cooperated with outside
investigators,” the New
York Times reported May 9.
“All working people should speak out against vigilante assaults like
this and demand the indictment and prosecution of all those involved,
including those
who engineered the cover-up,” Rachele Fruit, Socialist Workers Party
candidate for U.S. Senate from Georgia, told the Militant. “My campaign
supports all
fights against police brutality, racist discrimination and the entire
capitalist injustice system.”
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