Fruitvale Station Movie Review
“I cried,” said Marcus. “Watching Fruitvale Station at the movie theater was hard. People were crying openly and some people walked out. You really felt the fear and panic, especially of Oscar’s mother and girlfriend.”
Our club was talking about the movie that showed the last day in the life of Oscar Grant, shot in the back on New Year’s Eve, 2008, at the Fruitvale Bay Area Rapid Transit station by the BART police. With so many police murders of black and latino workers recently, including Michael Brown in Ferguson and Ezell Ford and Omar Abrego in Los Angeles, we wanted to see how the movie explained this.
ICWP at Mehserle’s trial in Los Angeles,
July 2010
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Fruitvale Station showed Oscar Grant as a loving partner, son and father, a real friend, a young black worker trying to figure out what to do with his life,” said Lucy. “The point of the movie is that his death is a personal tragedy, but it’s really a racist murder. Portraying it this way covers up the systematic racism of capitalism.”
“The movie had one foot in and one foot out,” said Pablo. “The key incident was a fight on the train between Oscar and his friends and some white racists. The BART cops arrested the black men, ignoring the white racists who started the fight. So it did show how racist the BART cops were. But when Oscar Grant was handcuffed, lying face down on the BART platform and shot in the back, the movie made it look like Mehserle, the cop who shot him did it by accident, like he claimed in his trial. I don’t believe that.”
Mehserle got off with only two years in prison, but Pablo isn’t the only one who didn’t believe it was an accident. Multiracial protests nationwide after Oscar Grant’s murder and at Mehserle’s trial, like the protests over the murders of young black and latino men this summer, accused the police of racist murder.
“They only showed about two minutes of the protests,” said Pablo. “They should have showed more—it was an important part of the story.”
“Since the slave rebellions in colonial times to the rebellions of the 1960s in Watts, Detroit, and Newark, the police have singled out young black men as public enemy number one because they fear our potential to fight back,” said Marcus. “The police make examples of people like Oscar Grant and Michael Brown to keep blacks in line. But they also want to keep blacks loyal to the capitalist system, so they use the illusion that capitalist education will help us to raise our social class so we can escape and not end up like Michael Brown or Ezell Ford.”
People who rose up in the Watts rebellion of 1965 and the multiracial L.A. rebellion of 1992 are part of the militant history of working class struggle in the US. Today, the capitalist crisis around the world, mixed with the struggles of workers of all ethnicities, has reached a boiling point. The ruling class has to work harder to keep blacks and all workers fearful and/or loyal, and open fascist police terror is part of that. As protests from Guerrero to Ferguson show, the working class can respond to police terror with more anger and determination. We invite workers around the world to join ICWP in one struggle, a workers’ struggle for a communist revolution.
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Is swapping freedom and choice for safety and security our only choice? Can we have it all? This article exposes the anti-communism of Lois Lowry’s book The Giver and the recent film – and presents the truth about communism. Students read this book worldwide as part of a discussion about society’s function. The film will reach millions more with false ideas about the system we mobilize the masses to create. One young comrade read this book in class and remembers a teacher saying, “This is what communism is like.”
Main character Jonas’s society seems perfect, until he realizes what he’s been missing. The leaders enacted “sameness” to eliminate most problems capitalism causes today: war, racism, unemployment, etc. They re-engineered society so as to capture the worst lies and stereotypes about communism. For example, the Chief Elder oversees a vast surveillance system to “manage” a colorless, emotionless, and docile population, which has swapped freedom and choice for safety and security. Capitalists spread this lie about communism. We dont have to choose. Under communism, we reach decisions through comradely debate and our commitment to work collectively for society’s good ensures our security. It is capitalism that strips the masses of freedom, choice, safety, and security!
All pre-“sameness” memories are gone; only the aging Receiver of Memory has them and he advises the elders in their decisions. He becomes The Giver after Jonas is chosen as the new Receiver. Jonas quickly realizes that a freer, sometimes painful world, is much better than his own. As a solitary hero, he acts to end sameness. Destroying capitalism and building communism really takes the commitment of millions – of billions! – worldwide.
Just as capitalism does, The Giver negatively depicts human nature and human value. It says people are unreliable to act in our own best interest. Daily injections control emotions and Jonas sees his world more clearly when he stops taking them. When the Chief Elder discovers Jonas’s plan to destroy sameness, The Giver tells her “Now we can choose differently [decide how society should function]!” and she replies with “When people have the freedom to choose, they choose wrong.” As communists, we believe in criticism, self-criticism, and scientific analysis. We apply these to decide whether something is right or wrong for society. We don’t give up all choice if we fail; we use our setbacks to bring us closer to the right path!
In The Giver, birth weight and a development schedule determine if a baby lives. The diminished productivity of old age determines adult deaths. They’re killed by lethal injections, which they call a “Release to Elsewhere.” When capitalism no longer needs us, we’re thrown into the streets to depend on the state, or the kindness of strangers, for survival. Under communism, a person’s value comes with birth and everyone is always needed to help Sprovide for society’s needs according to their ability and commitment.
Young comrades aren’t always sure how to respond to anti-communism, such as The Giver. Write in to share your experiences in defending communism! We must always lead the way in exposing anti-communism and helping our peers understand what communism really means. We look forward to hearing from you!
