About The Amadou Diallo Police Shooting

A Verse Letter To T.G.

1-28-2000

yesterday (Sunday) we finally did hook up with the march down Broadway

No Justice?
No Peace!

towards
(historically)
what end?

a criminal re-trial? unlikely.

a civil court trial--possible, and?

once begun (energies going there)
as footnote in the affair?

they did: a crime: the cops--
what "criminal" statutes, are cops held to?

and so can we talk about it--Power

there's Minimalist and Maximalist political demands
(attentive to dynamics of the moment)

to not (from the jump) comp to
monistic impulse
the whole tamale
"revolution"

what matters the radical flavor of the rhetoric?
(rhetor, be still, for a moment)

...are you
for something like:
an Independent Community Review Board of the police?

ability to hire and fire, approve or reject "programs" carried out by precincts--

checking The Department's agency--self-validating authority
100% hegemonic

a something beyond
"(Just) Fuck Tha Pigs"
prurience

and so, what demand

pursue to

concretize

and how would such a board be constituted?
appointed by same villains?

or elected--accountable

a composite of the population corresponding to the population being "policed"

our civil liberties defended?
yes, but what's more: transformed

lutta continua

and so the slogan:
all cops out of our neighborhoods--now! (period)

the affect
though justified

yet, is it
already (in any way) a mass
political demand?

working class of the Burroughs stand ready to--ouster?

8 or 9 folks, down Broadway, one "a wigger" (blonde dreads) pitching that, lively rhetors,
spirited components of the march, that from the hip shoot--straight?

the task of The Moment
not some form of IRB?

U.S. working class (especially Black, Latino) fight for it
repeatedly-every function of the Bourgeois State, opposes--

and a longer discussion (later), this next--
that
U.S. has not had viable mass working class party

since Debs Socialist Party

to push for such a Thing, do you?

if so,

what current efforts / parties now include IRB's in platform
to counter
the countless
"operations"

"apache"  "viper"  "moonlight prairie fire"

conjured up by
countless
RepubliCratic "mandates"

roll populations, shake-out

The Bronx, 6 years Stop-and-Frisk "Operation"
(code-named, I forgot frontier-sounding jingle)

no probable charge whatsoever--required

"mutual relations...are degrading daily"
quoth He, anchorchimp, on TV--

though state of "warfare"
is  unilateral!

organized

......
......

And the march (having begun at the United Nations)--we caught up with it at around 16th
all the way down to City Hall--some 2 hrs--3 cops to every non-cop...

but you say
why not do away
with police  altogether?

 ok!
end-goal, yet

police are Alpha and Omega of system itself--last guardians
(with armed forces)

 t'would be the Eve
of Revolution
itself

literal abolishment of State Apparatus

[my essentially Leninist outlook]

so, what is The Demand?
(transitional demand)

as we were down there at City Hall, on knees, wallets raised
(previous to such an "Eve")

No Justice?
No Peace!

mean we to: encroach, or not? on Right that State reserves (exclusively) for itself?

as form--beyond
solely "outraged"-demonstrably so
(as who couldn't be? Nazi-like NYPD!)

as form-beyond
non-contestation of civic terrain
-pre-IRB (status quo), "moral appeal", in the main-

but with "revolutionary" patina?
then that

more truly
(quote) "rearguard reformism"

re: the (ultra-leftist) charge

inverted
redirected

back at cha' (preemptive even!)
actually chuckling now-at it (and at myself), Ted-

but so that we can talk about it (no frills)-Power-

as form-

from content

yrs,
as ever,

RT

This poem appears in the 2002 Anthology
View all poems by Rodrigo Toscano