'US media forced to demonize rights activists'

Press TV has conducted an interview with Kooper Caraway, with the Indigenous Peoples Liberation Party from Dallas, for his insights into a new report by the Washington Post on shocking numbers of shootings by police officers in the United States.

The following is a rough transcription of the interview.

Press TV: Are you at all shocked by these figures that are being presented by the Washington Post?

Caraway: No, We’re not shocked. The only thing, we’re shocked by is that the mainstream media is actually reporting it. Things are not necessarily getting worse in the United States. In fact, things have been the same since the country was founded. These police have been killing black and brown and poor white people since the founding of this nation. The only shocking thing about these new studies is that’s been circulated in mainstream media.

Press TV: Why do you think that is so? Why is the mainstream media being forced to address this issue even if it’s doing of very bare minimal job at it?

Caraway: I think that the only explanation possible is that the mass movements and these rebellions and uprisings that we’ve seen in the past years from Ferguson to Baltimore and everywhere else. For long time, you had …people responding to these killings by using petitions, maybe voting for different kinds of people or doing others very passive strategies, but when people rise up and actually fight back in these rebellions the media like to call them riots, but historically they’re actually rebellions. When people rise up and have these rebellions then the media of state is [are] forced to do something to prevent further violence.

 Press TV: As you’ve said, there are these movements that have taken place ever since the past few years like we’re seen “the black lives matter” up in center right now. Do you think that momentum can be capped and something more concrete achieved?

Caraway: I think it has to be. And I think if working class, indigenous black and brown people in the US if they need to expect any kind of future in this country then were going that have to keep moving and keep organizing. But it’s going to have to take a more concrete and solid form in this organizing. We can just keep relying on street protest. We’re going to have to reach out to the international community. This study is really exposes and the way it was conducted really exposes the hypocrisy of the US government, when in dealings with police shootings in their own country, when it comes to how they report police shootings in other countries. When we hear about someone getting hurt or killed maybe back when Qaddafi was in power in Libya, what a state what that was, oh this is Qaddafi, this is the regime that is killing these people, but here when we’re killed by policemen they say oh this is not the state killing us, this is officer Darren Wilson or this is officer so and so. They blame it on the individual officer, when in fact, it’s the state, it’s the US government whose doing the killing of its own civilians and needs to be treated like that.

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