The Damian Garcia Murder Revisited By Majdur Travail [Originally published in Marxist-Leninist Newswire. Revised and edited, February 25, 2004] Friday, October 05, 2001 On April 22, 1980 members of the Revolutionary Communist Party [RCP-USA] went to the Pico Gardens housing project in the Boyle Heights neighborhood of Los Angeles in order to distribute party information and recruit people to join their planned May Day march coming up the following week. According to Los Angeles Times reports, the RCP was distributing leaflets which said No Work, No School for May Day when a crowd of approximately 50 youth confronted them. The shouting match that ensued quickly escalated to violence when alleged youth gang members turned fire hoses on RCP members and demanded party members leave the project. At first they turned project fire hoses on the RCP; and then attacked them with fists and knives. Two party members were stabbed, Damian Garcia and Hayden Fisher. Garcia died at the scene from multiple stab wounds to the abdomen, chest and neck. Fisher was rushed to a nearby hospital in critical condition with a stab wound to the back and later recovered.1 Damian Garcia had attended San Bernardino High School and graduated from the U.C. Santa Barbara where he majored in Latin American Studies. He was survived by his wife Carole Garcia and a two year old son, also named Damian. As the RCP’s first and only martyr, the Garcia case would provide the RCP with an important propaganda tool, which is infallibly raise each year on the anniversary of his death in the RCP newspaper The Revolutionary Worker [RW]. Since, it was recently exposed that the RCP’s newspaper, the RW, published false reports in 1994 concerning the status of the peoples war waged by the Shinning Path in Peru. The RCP had reported that Chairman Gonzalo of the Shining Path had signed a peace accord with the then Fujimori government. That report was exposed as fraudulent by journalist Cesar Hildebrant in 1997. More recently, the RW falsely reported that Chairman Gonzalo was on a hunger strike. This hoax was quickly exposed by both El Diario Internacional and Red Sun Magazine. The RW was furthermore exposed by MLN for falsely reporting on the status of the peoples war in Nepal. The RW twice reported that the peoples war in Nepal was escalating when in fact the Communist Party of Nepal [CPN--Maoist] were actually involved in peace negotiations with the Nepali government on both occasions. With this in mind, MLN undertook an investigation into reported events which claimed the life of their only martyr in order to further expose an apparent pattern of lies on the part of the RCP’s leadership and party structure. The RCP’s claims about the murder of Damian Garcia did not match the facts reported by the Times. We present those facts here. Although the RCP never published their account of the events that took place at Pico Garden April 22, 1980, they have maintained for over 21 years that Garcia was murdered by the Los Angeles Police Department. Lt. Terry Trent of the LAPD, homicide division, said immediately after the attack what [the RCP] didnt take into account is the territorial imperative of the barrio gang environment. According to the Los Angeles police two gangs controlled that area and had ordered the RCP to leave Pico Gardens. When Garcia verbally challenged them, he was killed. The RCPs Los Angles spokesman Rosalio Gomez immediately declared the murder a police hit.2 Instead of cooperating with the police in an effort to discover the identity of Garcias killer, which would uncover the alleged police plot to kill him, the RCP actually refused to cooperate. Gomez said, at a demonstration the next day on the very spot Garcia was murdered, We dont cooperate with the police at all; we have no need to...it was a police hit. They know who killed him and helped set him up. Los Angeles city councilman Arthur K. Snyder of the Pico Gardens district, warned the RCP to go home 2 before an even more violent catastrophic event occurs...take your violence to Beverly Hills. Although MLN was unable to find any further mention of the Damian Garcia murder case in the Times; neither the RCP, Garcias widow, or any other members Garcias immediate family were particularly interested in finding the killer. We shall, therefore, not tire ourselves in finding him either. What is clear to us, however, is that RCP members saw Garcia’s killer face-to-face and could identify him. In an effort to prove their revolutionary sincerity however, they refused to cooperate with the police. This is a commendable act in itself. To attempt to blame the police, however, when they knew the murder was committed by locals who detested them, marked a long opportunist trend in the RCPs record and has undermined their long term credibility. It is palpably true that if the RCP believed that Garcia had been murdered by the LAPD they would have pressed the City of Los Angles for an inquiry into Garcias murder and organized demonstrations against the City until the case was publicly disposed of one way or another. Activists have long sensed the duplicity by the RCP in the Garcia murder for many years. They lied about the Garcia case and this has caused much unease about them. The RCPs refusal to cooperate with, and scapegoat of, the LAPD in order to cover-up the Damian Garcia murder infuriated city officials. The RCPs application for a parade permit for their planned May Day march was denied.3 Fifteen minutes before the march was scheduled to begin Los Angeles Superior Court upheld the Citys denial and held that the RCP could have their march as long as they remained on the sidewalk. The RCP attempted to comply with this demand, but when 200 RCP marched out of Mac Arthur Park, along Wilshire Blvd., they were confronted by more than 300 riot clad police officers who brutally smashed the demonstration at the intersections of Lucas and Bixel. Eye witnesses reported to the Times that the police attack on the RCP was unprovoked, but the party members waded into the police screaming Kill the Pigs and began hitting officers with wooden doweling that was being used to support red flags. The Times featured photographs RCP members soaked in blood. One demonstrator was photographed with an empty soda pop bottle in his rear pocket and one of the 32 detainees was carrying a .45 caliber pistol in a shoulder holster. In spite of the attack by the LAPD against the RCP the remainder of their cadre continued the demonstration to Pershing Square shouting slogans such as Red, White and Blue we spit on you. You stand for plunder you shall go under. and reiterated their assertion that Damian Garcia had been murdered by the LAPD.4 By way of contrast, the Progressive Labor Party [PLP] held a late May Day demonstration along the same parade route the following Saturday. They attracted more than 250 marchers and were observed by only 30 police officers. The PLP remained on the sidewalks and there was no violence despite the PLPs vitriolic slogans e.g. Hang the Nazis Death to the KKK, Turn the Bosses War into Revolutionary War and KKK + KKKarter Means Racist War. According to PLP spokesman Barry Sautman, interviewed by the Times, we disagree with [the RCP] on almost every issue and sometimes I think the group is close to crazy.5 The Los Angeles City Attorney dropped charges against 28 RCP party members and 4 cases were held over for trial or other disposition.6 The RCP was riding high on a wave of favorable publicity. Bob Avakian and 16 others were still awaiting trial on 27 felony accounts stemming from demonstrations in Washington D.C. against Teng Hisao-ping who had just completed a tour of the United States and met with President Jimmy Carter. The RCP organized a Committee to Give a Fitting Welcome to Teng Hisao-ping and undertaken many actions including the vandalism of the newly built Chinese Embassy in Washington and the disruption of a White House ceremony with Jimmy Carter and Teng present at the time. Two RCP members, Keith Scott Kozimoto and Sonia J. Ransom of Seattle, Washington, had infiltrated the ceremony with press credentials from The Workers Press--a local RCP publication, in Seattle. Later that evening 400 members of the RCP, including Clark Kissinger, Bob Avakian and other party leaders broke into a run at the end of a march and charged into Lafayette Park hurling bottles, sticks, road flares and metal weights at D.C. police. Both officers and demonstrators were observed clubbing one another in a melee that lasted about five minutes. 3 Seventy RCP members were arrested.7 Fifty protesters were freed on personal recognizance and 20 remained in jail on reduced bonds as of Feb. 2, 1979.8 RCP party Chairman Bob Avakian was released on a $5,000 cash and $5,000 collateral bond.9 The D.C. events were followed by: • the March 20, 1980 taking of the Alamo by Damian Garcia and others, under the auspices of the Texas Revolutionary May Day Brigade,10 • Garcias murder April 22 in Boyle Heights, • and the smashing of the May Day demonstration in by the LAPD. The Revolutionary Communist Party had reached its revolutionary apogee at this moment but was soon to begin it decline. As of May 2, 1980 Avakian was still in the United States.11 He would soon flee the United States for France and never return. Although all charges were dropped against all the RCP members in relation to the D.C. demonstrations (including the charges against Avakian); Avakian would flee never return. Garcias murder would be all but forgotten. If the RCPs reaction to the Garcia murder enraged the LAPD, it would have the opposite effect on the RCPs rank and file membership. The RCP was riding high on its reputation for its confrontations with the police in Washington D.C., San Antonio and Los Angeles. A self-described revolutionary organization which claimed to be ready to initiate an all out revolutionary war against the United States--the police and the Army, with its party leadership awaiting trial on multiple felony counts, and their takeover of the Alamo a recent memory, was up-staged by a couple of local punks who called their bluff. An organization of the magnitude that the RCP claimed to be couldnt put the hurt on a local street gang who murdered their comrade, face-to-face, without masks, in broad daylight in front of more than fifty witnesses. The RCPs refusal to help the LAPD implied that they could settle the score on their own, but their insistence that Garcia was murdered by the cops was a straw man. The RCP didnt strike back against either the police or the local punks who murdered Garcia. What It said to the rank and file membership was that if they were killed during an RCP sponsored activity; their death would not be avenged. This seriously undermined morale within the organization. After Avakian fled the U.S., the belief that the RCP was all talk had all but been confirmed. These events marked a downward turn the RCP both in terms of membership and revolutionary agitation. They had carried their organization to the brink, they could only escalate their confrontations with authorities or be seen backing away. The trend in the RCP was to make it appear that they were covertly under attack by authorities. By spreading rumors that they were being infiltrated by the CIA and FBI, [who the RCP alleged were plotting to assassinate Avakian], while at the same time revising their rhetoric to make the organization appear more docile to the authorities; they silenced any internal opposition. A long revisionist trend followed and their membership dwindled. Their leadership appeared weak; their revolutionary praxis had come and gone. 1 Los Angeles Times, April 23, 1980, pt. 2, p. 1, col. 4. 2 ibid, April 24, 1980, pt. 2, p. 1, col. 1. 3 ibid, April 30, 1980, pt.1, p. 28, col.1. 4 ibid, May 2, 1980, pt. 2, p.1, col. 3. 5 ibid, May 4, 1980, pt. 2, p. 1, col. 1. 6 ibid, June 13, 1980, pt 2, p.1, col. 4. 7 Washington Post, Jan. 30, 1979, sec. A, p. 10, col. 1. 8 ibid, Feb. 1, 1979, sec. C, p. 8, col. 1. 9 ibid, Feb. 2, 1979, sec. C, p. 5, col. 5. 10 Los Angeles Times, April 23, 1980, pt. 2, p. 1, col. 4. 11 ibid, May 2, 1980, pt. 2, p. 1, col. 3.
Posted on: Thu, 14 Nov 2013 10:33:16 +0000