Hat's off to Julián Castro

Democratic presidential hopeful Julian Castro joins Black Lives Matter co-founder Melina Abdullah and others in calling for two LAPD officers to be fired in the police shooting of Grechario Mack.

Julián Castro was the only presidential candidate aware enough to pay tribute to Fred Hampton on the 50th anniversary of Fred's assassination by Chicago cops.

Fred Hampton was only 21 when he was murdered by Chicago Police 50 years ago today.

He fought for better education and housing, to end hunger and police violence.

He taught that where there's people, there's power. We can live that lesson today.https://t.co/7SZeGgtejT

— Julián Castro (@JulianCastro) December 4, 2019

On Tuesday, Castro joined a Black Lives Matter protest in Los Angeles, demanding before a crowd gathered outside LAPD headquarters that two officers be fired for killing Grechario Mack. This would’ve been unthinkable for a presidential hopeful four years ago, writes Zak Cheney-Rice at New York Magazine. 

Cheney-Rice is quick to point out that Castro is polling at less than one percent nationally and failed to qualify for the November primary debate, and appears likely to miss December’s as well.

...he’s done himself few favors by pursuing a platform of dubious popularity aimed at helping a small subset of suffering people who have negligible political influence.

But the cards were stacked against Castro and against any non-white candidate in a race so controlled by the party hierarchy and corporate power. All the remaining anointed Democratic debaters are white and all of them seem to me, to be misreading the "negligible political influence" of that so-called "small subset of suffering people." Democrats will do that at their own peril.

Rep. Bobby Rush, a former Chicago Panther himself, stood up on the House floor and recounted the police attack of the house on Monroe St. that fateful night of December 4th.

Madam Speaker, on a cold December morning, 4:30 A.M. Nobody was moving on the streets. They came into that west side community, in Edison trucks. They came into that community with machine guns with the single purpose of killing Fred Hampton and everybody else who was in that apartment. They came using public utility trucks. Not police cars. And in that hour of the of morning. They knocked on the door when they got to that apartment. 

Half of the police officers went to the front door, half went to the rear door.They knocked on the door and they said and one of the gentlemen inside the apartment, he asked who is it, at 4:30 in the morning. And he got a response from one of them police officers and answered by saying, Tommy. And when he said Tommy, he came in shooting. 

I was out in L.A. that night and we got the call around 4 a.m. west coast time telling us that Fred and Mark Clark had been murdered. It was a call that will stay in my memory forever.