Philly YCL Denounces Vigilante Violence
On the acquital of Daniel Penny and the apprehension of Luigi Mangione
RIP JORDAN NEELY
With the apprehension of the alleged United Healthcare CEO assassin, Luigi Mangione, let it be known that the Philadelphia Young Communist League denounces all forms of political violence. Further, rogue acts of vigilante violence by radical individuals are not conducive to the development of effective working class organization. We will demonstrate our position with today’s simultaneous headlines in Pennsylvania and New York.
Today the family of Jordan Neely learned that their beloved’s killer would face no legal repercussions. Jordan Neely was a young Black New Yorker with a future he deserved to forge freely. It is so brutally evident that a two tier justice system exists in the United States of America. The murder that Daniel Penny committed turned him into a folk hero for the rightwing and they will see his not guilty verdict as a green light for white vigilantism to solve conflicts which arise in our country’s multiracial society. Daniel Penny exists in a bloody American tradition of mob violence: lynchings, firebombings, and riots. These barbaric tools are readily wielded by reactionary elements opposed to broad racial equality. Lynch law, as the heroic intellectual Ida B. Wells elaborated in the 1890s, was a fundamental tool in maintaining the racist regime of Jim Crow in the American South. The acquittal of Daniel Penny therefore presents an alarming new regression that we must struggle against. The unity of the multiracial American working class is at stake.
In a related fashion, Mangione’s alleged act of executive assassination is an alarming manifestation of nihilism about the potential for our movements to build up an anti-monopoly coalition to curb finance capital’s vice grip on our lives. Starbucks workers negotiating an historic contract are not one inch closer because one man decided to unilaterally kill another. The capitalist system we exist in is far more resilient than that—Oligarchs can always buy more security. The type of power we need to build to shift the balance of forces towards the side of working people comes about through collectivity and community, disciplined tactics, and long-term strategic collaboration.
While the struggle continues throughout historical leaps and setbacks it does us well to be clear eyed about the quality of the incoming presidential administration. In matters of violence, the state claims a monopoly. President Trump and the federal security appratus will be qualitatively more repressive than that under President Biden. Vigilante violence like Mangione’s invites collective retaliation on our working class communities and our communities of color.
Cooler heads must prevail.
In his final book Where do We Go From Here: Chaos or Community? Dr. Martin Luther King wrote “Humanity is waiting for something other than blind imitation of the past. If we want truly to advance a step further, if we want to turn over a new leaf and really set a new man afoot, we must begin to turn mankind away from the long and desolate night of violence.” The Philadelphia YCL shares these sentiments and urges our members, coalition partners and followers to recognize that rogue violent acts, no matter the agent’s intentions, do more harm than good to our cause for the liberation of all working people from capitalism.