Asian youths killed by Minnesota cops

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4 SOCIALIST ACTION FEBRUARY 1990 ST. PAUL, Minn.-About 500 people gathered at the state capitol on Dec. 28 to protest the shooting of two 13-year-old Hmong boys. The Hmong are a people from the mountains of Laos who were displaced from their ancestral homes during the U.S. imperialist war there. During the last 10 years, they have built a community here.

On Nov. 15 in Inver Grove Heights, a suburb of St. Paul, Thai Yang and Ba See Lor were shot in the back by Officer Kenneth E. Murphy of the Rosemount police department. According to the police version, the two boys and a 14-year-old friend had fled from a stolen car after a high-speed chase. As the boys ran through a berry patch, Murphy fired at them with a shotgun. The 14-year-old escaped but Yang and Lor were both killed.

The police "excuse" is that Murphy thought he saw Yang turn and point a gun at him-which later turned out to be a screwdriver. But this story still does not explain why two small boys were shot in the back.

Local minority rights groups, including the Southeast Asian Advisory Coalition and local branches of the NAACP, immediately demanded an investigation of the incident. Despite the many unanswered questions, on Dec. 7, 1989, a Dakota County grand jury failed to indict Murphy. At this point, the Dec. 28 demonstration was called.

Meanwhile, the local big-business media have spent great effort showing what a nice, family man Murphy is and how aggrieved he is over the incident. The media also exploits the grief of the boys' relatives in order to present this as an isolated tragedy rather than another display of the racism and violence that result from the role of the police force in class society.

After the demonstration at the state capitol, State Attorney General Hubert H. Humphrey III met with the families of the victims and other community leaders. They called on Humphrey to use his powers to reopen the investigation or to prosecute Murphy. This he refuses to do.

Undaunted by the solid wall of official support for Murphy, the movement has decided to continue pressing for justice through large protest meetings, which will demand that the government do its duty and enforce the law.

As New York's first Black mayor assumes the reins, there is no "new dawn" of the Democratic Party on the horizon. It is the twilight instead. Nor is there any future for Jesse Jackson's stillborn Rainbow Coalition, pledged as it is to a strategy of organizing within that same Democratic Party.

There is a tremendous future for a real rainbow coalition, glimmers of which could be seen in Jackson's electoral vehicle. But a real rainbow coalition will be sustained only through struggles in the factories and the streets against the attacks implemented by Democratic and Republican politicians— white or Black. In order to be effective, such a coalition must be organized independently of both capitalist parties.

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