NORTHAMPTON – Eight fahrenheit. The number on the thermometer Saturday morning read EIGHT. The wind chill read as something not fit for a family newspaper. But a call for revolution rang forth from the stone-cold steps of City Hall, and justice was demanded for Tyre Nichols, a young Black father mercilessly beaten to death last month by a Black squad of Memphis cops, all of it caught primarily on their own body cameras.

“WHO GOT THE POWER?” cried emcee Linell Peralta of the Party for Socialism and Liberation, western Mass branch.

“WE GOT THE POWER!” loudly answered a robust and bundled-up crowd of about 40, steam from their collective lungs punching the frigid air.

The Justice for Tyre Nichols Rally, organized by PSL, with its call to defund the police from Northampton to Memphis, joined with many such protests across the country. The overall aim, according to the group’s newspaper, Liberation, which was handed out to participants, is to reawaken the tens of millions who took to the streets after police murdered George Floyd, but has since dispersed into “a thousand little pet projects rather than building (the movement) into a powerful national social force over the long term.”

With national outrage boiling over police terror, they say, the time is ripe for a revolution, a massive mobilization, producing a “change in who holds power in this country.”

Defunding and ultimately abolishing police is the first step.

“The people are never served by the police, they are terrorized!” said Sarah Champion of the Western Mass Communist Party. “Tyre Nichols posed no threat! Breonna Taylor posed no threat! George Floyd posed no threat!”

Champion spoke of the daily terror inflicted by police on the Black community and how it coincided with the fear that came with people out of work. “When COVID and the economic crisis hit, they increased the police budget. We just had the deadliest year on record for killings by cops and their budget is still on the rise!”

Northampton, however, was one of the few communities that reduced its police budget.

PSL’s Dylan O’Brien conjured the elite, often hooded, head-cracking SCORPION Unit of the Memphis Police Department, recently dissolved, of which the five officers now charged with murder were part. A sixth offer, this one white, was fired Friday after an internal police investigation showed he violated multiple department policies in the arrest of Nichols.

“He simply asked what he was being stopped for!” cried O’Brien. “He was complying! This is part of a daily experience for a certain type of American.”

O’Brien scoffed at the futility of waiting for politicians to address this crisis: “We defeated the fascist Trump and elected Biden, and then he yells ‘FUND THE POLICE!’ and increases the police budget!” he cried, referring to the president’s “Safer American Plan,” a $37 billion rollout from last summer and its hope of recruiting and training 100,000 new police officers to quell gun violence.

“The police got even stronger while we got weaker,” said O’Brien, suggesting that much of that bolstering of police was used to quell protest.

J.R. Rivera, of the Workers Party and the Tenants Union of Western Mass, spoke of a rigged game against poor people, with cops in charge. “Some Holyoke barrios are 90% renters,” said Rivera. “Conditions are not great for renters. When the tenant gets evicted, do they call the cops — NO! They can only call upon themselves. Who does the landlord call for evictions — the police! It’s crooked, the same in Northampton, Holyoke and Springfield. One police force is the same as any other.”

Police chief: ‘Morale low’

Northampton police kept a low profile at the rally, though a training session at the Police Academy was canceled so that an adequate number of officers could be on hand should incidents develop. An occasional cruiser was spotted but there were no discernible members of the force on the ground.

Speaking from her office at headquarters a day before the rally, Chief Jody Kasper said, “We want to give them good space to voice their First Amendment rights.”

Asked about the bludgeoning of Nichols, Kasper said, “Absolutely horrendous, with officers showing a complete lack of humanity.”

Kasper is also certain the five will receive long sentences. “Yes, I believe so. I saw the same thing you saw. To me, watching that video, they’ll definitely be incarcerated.”

Kasper has also not seen any of the windfalls mentioned at the rally, as Northampton was one of a handful of police departments that endured city-sanctioned defunding.

“Many (cities) said they would but very few actually did,” said Kasper. “Defunding has had dire effects on our department. In 2020 we laid off five people who had just graduated from the Academy. Very costly to the city, the time, energy and money put into their training. Applications dropped to an all-time low; nobody wanted to come to Northampton,” she said, lamenting the more than 20 experienced cops who’ve left the department for municipalities where defunding is not de rigueur. “We lost many, many officers,” said Kasper.

People still call the cops, though, not all of them landlords. “We can’t make the call demand,” said Kasper. “Between July and December we took 320 calls with no available officers.”

“We get 30,000 calls a year,” she added. “Morale is dismal. So much overtime. An officer shows up for a daytime shift, only to be told that they’re working nights on top of it.”

She also said that cops feel more targeted, with ambushes of police on the rise. “In general, police officers feel different walking around.”

How does Kasper stick it out? “I love this city,” she said.

‘When will it be me?’

The Justice rally’s last speaker, known only as Dev, with a voice slightly cracking, imagined Tyre Nichols beaten unconscious “not 100 yards from his mother’s home. He was out taking photographs just like I do. How easily that could’ve been me, or my siblings. WHEN will it be me?!”

Noting that the cases attracting the most attention — from Floyd to Nichols — come with video documentation, Dev said: “Imagine the hellish actions we’re not privy to.” And likening police violence to a war: “The police are the ruling class’s foot soldiers in this war, the occupying force in our neighborhoods. ‘Fund them!’ Biden says, to uproarious applause. We’ve been fighting to survive ever since.”

“You’ve got both parties singing their genocidal song with one voice. What is real change when the prison is the new plantation?”

To mobilize millions won’t be easy, he said, but when people realize they can make a difference, they’ll abandon comfort zones and take to the streets, as before, in greater numbers. “How can I stand here and say I’ve got it good, here in my hole of privilege?” he asked.

“It’s time to usher in a new just world,” Dev concluded.

“STAND UP AND FIGHT BACK!” roared the crowd.

After the rally broke up, emcee Peralta repeated the demand for “justice and REAL F-ing change.” The murder of Nichols, she said, serves as a catalyst. “You have to jump on key moments when you want a revolution.”

When asked about lumping all cops with the thugs from Memphis, along with Northampton P.D.’s touting itself as a progressive outfit, Peralta laughed and said, “They’re not. They’re just like any other police department in the world— an aide of the ruling class. They are here to protect property. Even if they want to do good, they work under a corrupt system, founded on chattel slavery.”

A copy of Liberation was snatched from a bracing gust of wind. Its lead article ends: “Through unity and determination the people can defeat the cops.”

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