Op-Ed by Tommy Johnson
This month, Texas Governor Greg Abbott pardoned reactionary murderer Army Sergeant Daniel Perry, negating the Austin jury who convicted him of murder after only a year. On July 25, 2020 Perry plowed his Hyundai Ioniq hybrid into a crowd of anti-police demonstrators hitting multiple people, only to then open fire and murder community activist Garret Foster. Abbott has been the most outrageous and vocal defender of Perry but he is far from alone.
From the night of Foster’s murder, the backward forces of the state have colluded to protect Perry and those like him who demonstrate racist ideas and target the people in violation of the people’s democratic rights and their justified rebellion. The murder which took place in front of over a hundred protesters and the heavy police presence was swept under the rug, and Perry was interviewed by police blocks away and not arrested on site. The Austin Police Department attempted to conceal Perry’s identity and it took volunteer journalists of the Tribune of the People to break the story of the killer’s identity, something the monopoly media had not accomplished. Austin’s District Attorney at the time failed to present charges until a new DA was elected, riding into office on the wave of the protest movement and finally bringing Perry before a Grand Jury.
The pressure to remember Foster and punish Perry was carried out by the masses and was led by revolutionary activists at their center. Demonstrations of hundreds commemorated Foster as a servant of the people and defender of Black lives; a memorial was set up and maintained in the face of overwhelming police violence that resulted in the vandalism of the memorial and the brutalization of those who maintained it, including Foster’s partner Whitney Mitchell, herself a courageous activist. A solidarity campaign bloomed across the country and around the world. Today there is no memorial, no marches, and nothing but crickets from the so-called revolutionaries.
In a statement to CBS News, Mitchell said: “I loved Garrett Foster. I thought we were going to grow old together… He was the love of my life. He still is. I am heartbroken by this lawlessness. Governor Abbott has shown that to him, only certain lives matter. He has made us all less safe. With this pardon, the Governor has desecrated the life of a murdered Texan, impugned that jury’s just verdict, and declared that citizens can be killed with impunity as long as they hold political views that are different from those in power.”
The far right of the monopoly media personalities like Tucker Carlson amplified the reactionary calls to pardon Perry and such calls served to rally politicians and police aligned with them.
Abbott’s intention to approve a pardon for the convicted murderer was made clear as soon as the conviction at the jury trial was announced. The fact that Perry drove into Austin, had publicly threatened activists and openly stated his virulent racism, that Foster never raised his rifle, and that he was convicted by a jury of 12 at a lengthy trial did not matter any to Abbott—murders can walk free in Texas as long as it is in the interests of the ultra-conservative, reactionary racists and their armed police. The “investigating” officer David Fugitt was no less discrete than Abbott, and he voluntarily worked with Perry’s defense. Fugitt no longer works with APD and is now employed by the Governor. In the opinion of these reactionaries, the fear that Foster could have used his rifle was enough to justify killing him. In reality it was Perry who carried out a vehicular assault and drew a firearm; it was only after he fired on Foster that others returned fire at Perry.
Fugitt is not the only cop who rushed to protect Perry. Days before the pardon was announced, the Austin Police Department drafted a two-page letter to the state asking that Perry be pardoned. The draft letter was signed by APD Interim Chief Robin Henderson, and it confirms that APD as a whole seeks to defend those who murder people protesting the department’s killings. Self-defense is not a question of law and rights in Texas, but a question of what race you belong to and who you side with politically, and the same fight pans out in regard to the Second Amendment of the US Constitution as well.
APD basically insisted that Perry should never have been charged, that the jury system be undermined, and the sentence reversed. APD has made it clear that they wish to be the sole arbitrators of guilt and innocence and that they will determine this on the basis of politics and not of law. Henderson backed out of sending the letter, alluding to the potential controversy it would provoke at city hall. “After discussions with city leadership, as is standard in certain situations, I decided not to submit the letter,” Henderson told the monopoly media Austin American Statesman.
Today Daniel Perry walks free, with all expectation of having his firearm rights returned, putting anyone on the left who opposes racism and police violence right in his line of fire. The most backward reactionaries have scored a point; their rabid dog is free to bite again.
And where is the protest movement who defended the memory of Foster, inspiring his image to be raised around the world? The movement who exposed Perry before, and fought step by step to force the absolutely uncooperative state to bring this killer to trial? In Austin at least it appears to be non-existent.
In 2022, a small band of liquidationists from within the movement turned their backs on the people’s struggle; they spread rumors and fabrications, provoked splits in the movement, and encouraged hundreds to become inactive. Today, when they do attend demonstrations in the people’s movements, the core of the liquidation in Austin does so with the objective of provoking further splits by instigating personal quarrels with their political opponents.
It was only the organized movement that forced the system to convict Perry. In its absence, and with no threat of its immediate return, the reactionaries have seized their chance to put the murderer back on the streets, rearming him. He will now likely become a celebrity of the reaction like George Zimmerman, who murdered Trayvon Martin, and Kyle Rittenhouse, who carried out multiple murders and assaults against anti-racist and anti-police activists.
What have the politically degenerate right liquidators been up to in Austin? Jiminy Krix & Co., the main organized expression of the liquidators in that city, have mainly been tailing City Hall on its various proposals around cultural agendas. When these scabs and rats come into contact with the Palestine solidarity movement, they gather personal information on activists who maintain revolutionary principles and provide this info to websites belonging to their fellow liquidators engaged in the most vile police work.
It becomes clear that they have transformed into their opposites, putting their personal grudges above serving the people. They have withdrawn support for Foster’s family, abandoned other families whose loved ones have been slain by APD, abandoned the memorials and the barricades, and, worse, they attack all those who seek to maintain these fronts of the people’s struggle, all in the name of protecting the community from so-called “abusers”—a slander they eventually fling at any honest revolutionary unwilling to swallow their sewage. The liquidators now have comrade Foster’s blood on their hands; the same individuals who fled in fear from the demonstration the night he was killed now silently stand by as Perry walks free. While the reaction takes the offensive line, the liquidation faithfully plays their defense.
