"Break On Through! To The Occupy! Hella Occupy Oakland!"
Interview with a revolutionary
(Revolution #249, November 6, 2011)
The following report and interview is with someone who was part of Occupy Oakland nearly from the beginning and who was arrested in the police attack and destruction of the camp. Occupy Oakland has now come back, to the same place as before.
Q: Can you tell us why people came together initially for Occupy Oakland?
Hella Occupy Oakland started off converging onto Downtown Oakland's Frank Ogawa Plaza, all united around the slogan "WE ARE THE 99%!" Many people spoke of the deeply felt anger towards this system in many different ways, from the greed of corporations to the ongoing wars for empire. Others expressed a sense of hope coming from the Occupy Wall Street Movement that is spreading throughout this country and the world, because it is based on mass resistance and mobilization to the crimes of this system on many levels, including mass nonviolent civil disobedience, challenging people to act in accordance with transforming the world, however they may see that or relate to that. Nonetheless the call was clear; we the 99% are indeed, as Annie Day said in her article "Report from Occupy Wall Street: 'We Only Want the World'" (Revolution #247, October 9, 2011), "fed the fuck up," may I add, "hella fed the fuck up!" In the mix the first day were two communists who supported the newspaper Revolution. I was one of them and I had my backpack ready with clothes, hair and toothbrushes, and a sleeping bag ready to hella occupy this mutha fucka! While I listened to people speak and express their sentiments on unity, inspiration, and concerns, a HUGE FUCKING BANNER saying "WELCOME TO THE OSCAR GRANT PLAZA ON OHLONE LAND"
A letter from a youth organizer who was part of yesterday's civil disobedience to stop "stop & frisk." It was read at a program at Revolution Books in NYC on Oct 19th.
Dearest family, friends, and supporters:
On October 21st I will join Cornel West and Carl Dix in a civil disobedience action targeted at stopping the illegal, unconstitutional "Stop and Frisk" policy by the NYPD. 600,000 stops and frisks per year; 1,900 stops per day; 85% of which are Black and Latino; we're talking about a policy implemented by the NYPD that deliberately absolves 4th Amendment rights from whole sections of the population, and criminalizes an entire generation of youth because they "fit the description." This is the other end of police brutality, the pipeline to prison—the slow, relentless obliteration of entire communities.
...Although the experience of being a Black male informs my decision, I am not doing this because of some personal vendetta against the police, or even because I am directly impacted by this policy...read more.
Statement from Carl Dix before yesterday's arrest in Harlem - appearing in Huffington Post
Like most Black people in this country, I will never forget my first encounter with the police. Like most Black people in this country, it was not a pleasant experience. Before I take you down that memory lane with me, let me say up front that today I am joining arms with Cornel West and others to voluntarily land myself in the custody of the police. We are conducting non-violent civil disobedience at the 28th Police Precinct in Harlem, New York to put a Stop to the NYPD policy of "Stop & Frisk."
.... An undercover man ran up from behind and tackled me. Next, he decked me. He said someone had been robbed and I "fit the description." It soon became clear what "description" he was talking about. He and other cops had also stopped a 40-something year old who was 5'6" with a full beard. I was only 13 years old, no facial hair yet, and six feet tall. The only thing we had in common was our Black skin and our stylish trench coats (which, again, everybody was wearing).... read more
Historic Non Violent Civil Disobedience TOMORROW to STOP "Stop & Frisk" -- Be There, Spread the Word!!
From “Up Against the Wall” to
Up In Their Faces
STOP, STOP & FRISK!
On October 21st at 1 pm be at the State Office Building in Harlem as:
Cornel West, Professor, Author, Public Intellectual
Carl Dix, Revolutionary Communist Party
Rev. Stephen Phelps, Interim Senior Minister of Riverside Church
Rev. Earl Kooperkamp, Rector of St. Mary's Episcopal Church
Debra Sweet, National Director of World Can't Wait
Rev. Omar Wilks, Union Pentecostal Church
Prof. Jim Vrettos, John Jay College of Criminal Justice
Elaine Brower, Military Mom and World Can't Wait
Commit Non-Violent Civil Disobedience to STOP “Stop & Frisk”
The New York Police Department is on pace to “Stop & Frisk” over 700,000 people in 2011! That's more than 1,900 people each day. More than 85% of those stopped are Black or Latino, many are as young as 11 or 12, and more than 90% of them were doing nothing wrong when the police stopped, humiliated, brutalized them or worse.
Everyone knows it is wrong. It is illegal, racist, unconstitutional and intolerable! But THIS FRIDAY people are putting themselves on the line to STOP IT. This is the beginning; this is serious; we won't stop until Stop & Frisk is ended.
Join the non-violent civil disobedience – OR – BE THERE TO BEAR WITNESS & SUPPORT!
WEAR BLACK
Friday, October 21
1pm Rally at Harlem State Office Building
1:30 March to NYPD 28th Precinct at West 123rd and Frederick Douglass Boulevard
Endorsed by:
Rev. Luis Barrios, John Jay College of Criminal Justice
Herb Boyd, journalist, author, Harlem NY
Brian Figueroux, Esq.
Chris Hedges, Pulitzer Prize winning journalist
Nicholas Heyward, Father of Nicholas Heyward, Jr. who was killed by police
Sikivu Hutchinson, author
Lawrence Lucas, Our Lady of Lourdes RC Church
Cynthia McKinney, former Congressperson
Efia Nwangaza, Malcolm X Center, Greenville, SC
Bill Quigley, Loyola Law New Orleans
Mark Taylor, Princeton University
Sunsara Taylor, writer Revolution Newspaper and World Can't Wait Advisory Board
The Stop Mass Incarceration Network: PO Box 941, New York, NY 10002 stopmassincarceration(at)ymail.com * 973.756.7666 * stopmassincarceration.tumblr.com
Why are Carl Dix, Cornel West, Rev. Phelps, Rev. Kooperkamp, Rev. Wilks, and Prof. Jim Vrettos Getting Arrested on Friday?
To put a STOP to the slow genocide of mass incarceration of Black and Latino youth and others -- and the constant harassment, humiliation, discrimination and brutality of the NYPD's "Stop & Frisk" program which is carried out 1,900 times every single day here in New York City.
Time to Intensify Outpouring of Resistance -- by Carl Dix
from Revolution #248, October 23, 2011
Interview with Carl Dix about October 22, 2011
Time to Intensify Outpouring of Resistance
The following is from an interview done on October 11 with Carl Dix:
Revolution: Going into NDP, what is it about the situation today you would like to highlight in terms of both the ongoing and accelerating police murder and brutality as well as the need for people to manifest resistance against that?
Carl Dix: This is the 16th annual National Day of Protest to Stop Police Brutality, Repression and the Criminalization of a Generation. We formed this group [October 22nd Coalition] because there was an epidemic of police brutality and police murder that needed to be resisted on a nationwide level. And that brutality, that repression, that criminalization, has not only continued, it has intensified. I mean, look at the 2.3+ million people incarcerated in the U.S. And this has been really targeted at especially Black and Latino people. The police brutalizing and even murdering people has also intensified. In Chicago, as of last month, the police had shot 47 people, including people in situations where there was no claim by the police that the people had done anything wrong. But none of the police have been charged with crimes or disciplined in any way for shooting, maiming and even in cases of killing innocent people. Then you have things like the death penalty. The Troy Davis legal lynching very graphically brings that to the fore. Here you have a man who was railroaded into prison based on evidence that was concocted by police. And the Troy Davis case is really a concentration of how the criminal injustice system treats Black and Latino people, in terms of people being thrown into prison on the flimsiest of evidence or no evidence at all, given long sentences, or even given the death penalty.
So all of these things are going on. They’re intensifying. But then the other part of the situation that’s very important and that’s very heartening is the way in which there have been significant acts of resistance. A very important one has been the hunger strike of the prisoners in California. People who are locked down in special housing units that amount to torture chambers, kept in solitary confinement, sometimes for decades, denied human contact. These conditions meet the definition of torture, as far as international law is concerned. These prisoners organized a hunger strike beginning July 1 that involved 6,000 people. The California authorities made a show of negotiating with people and the hunger strike was suspended on July 21. But then when the prisoners saw that the authorities weren’t making any real changes, the hunger strike was started again on September 26 and has involved up to 12,000 prisoners. That’s a very important example of resistance. As well as the response to the Troy Davis lynching. We weren’t able to build the kind of resistance that could have stopped his execution, but there were large numbers of people all around the country and around the world who signed statements, marched in protest, and then marched in outrage after the murder of Troy Davis by the state. And you saw both large numbers of the oppressed who were saying, they’re trying to kill us. But then you also saw people from diverse backgrounds, people from the middle class, white people, who were seeing this, shocked, but also outraged that it was happening, and joining in the resistance. And this is very, very important.
Revolution: I know you’ve been part of an effort around putting a stop to Stop and Frisk, a call has been put out, and there are some efforts leading into NDP to build resistance, to actually stop Stop and Frisk.
Dix: The call to stop Stop and Frisk was issued by Cornel West and me and it came out of a strategy session back in July which discussed how to take the fight against mass incarceration to a new level.
And what we determined coming out of that strategy session, was that there was a lot of work being done to expose this—Michelle Alexander’s book, The New Jim Crow, is a very important work in that vein. And different groups have come together to spread some of that exposure and to work in various ways, either through the courts or through lobbying in the political arena to try to deal with the horrors of mass incarceration.
But we thought that a missing ingredient here is determined mass resistance. And in particular we felt the situation was analogous to the late ’50s and early ’60s in the struggle against Jim Crow segregation and lynch mob terror where a lot of people were being weighed down by these foul and very overt forms of oppression aimed at Black people. But then other large sections of people were not so aware that this was going on. And some of those who were aware bought into the explanations and justifications for it. And what was required to create a situation where things could be changed was a beginning small number of people stepping out and engaging in dramatic resistance. With the Freedom Riders, the students who started the sit-in movements at the lunch counters and other places like that, and there weren’t a lot of them to start with. But they took very determined action, they stood up in the face of repression and delivered a message to the whole country and the world, that we’re not going to take this anymore. And that determined action was a spark that spread throughout the country and launched a powerful movement against the oppression of Black people.
Major March Occupy Wall Street -- Arrests Have Begun, Horses Out, Police are NOT part of the 99%
Tonight a righteous march of the Wall Street Occupiers -- as well as students who walked out, unions, and many folks who have either never protested or not in some forty years. Reports now coming through that the police have begun to arrest. For what good fucking reason?
Read the quote below -- the role of the police is to serve and protect this system that rules over the people...
Troy Davis -- An Illegitimate Execution Planned by an Illegitimate State
I don't have a lot of time this morning to write about this and there is a lot of information available on the web, but let me say simply:
IT IS TOTALLY FUCKED THAT TROY DAVIS IS SCHEDULED TO BE EXECUTED TOMORROW!
7 out of 9 witnesses against him recanted.
Tremendous evidence points to his innocence and makes clear he did not receive anything approximating a fair trial or justice.
This is the fate of all too many Black people in this country -- treated as suspects before being treated as human, stopped and frisked without any probably cause, daily harassed and brutalized by the police, warehoused by the millions in the most massive prison torture complex not only in the world but in history! Now, they are set to execute Troy Davis based on total bullshit, police-intimidated witness testimony (which has since been recanted!), and in the face of massive protest and opposition over years and nation-wide. THIS IS HORRIFIC, ILLEGITIMATE, AND MUST NOT PROCEED!
On October 20, be part of getting 5,000 views of this video clip from Revolution: Why It’s Necessary, Why It’s Possible,
What It’s All About.
On October 20 watch and spread this clip from Bob Avakian as people organize across the country for October 22, the National Day of Protest to Stop Police Brutality, Repression and the Criminalization of a Generation.
Young & Black? Expect to be "Stopped & Frisked" if not killed by police
Below are excerpts taken from today’s NYTimes http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/12/nyregion/12frisk.html?pagewanted=4&hp about the rampant “stop and frisk” policy where each year now the NY Police Department stops and frisks over half a million people – the majority of them for reasons such as “furtive movements.” This article features the most targeted area where the average young Black man (starting at the age of 15!) is stopped on average FIVE TIMES A YEAR!
Throw this in the mix of the recent slap on the wrist given just days ago to the cop who executed Oscar Grant in front of a crowd hundreds and viewed by millions on youtube.
I don’t want to hear any more talk about how this is a “post-racial” society. Walking around young and Black still means two things. First, you are a suspect. Second, you are a target of police all the way up to and frequently including police murder.
The time is now to be exposing and resisting these outrages, and to be building up the strength to put an end to this madness through real, genuine communist revolution at the soonest possible time. Nothing can excuse what you are about to read below.
“The officers stop people they think might be carrying guns; they stop and question people who merely enter the public housing project buildings without a key; they ask for identification from, and run warrant checks on, young people halted for riding bicycles on the sidewalk.
“One night, 20 officers surrounded a man outside the Brownsville Houses after he would not let an officer smell the contents of his orange juice container.
“Between January 2006 and March 2010, the police made nearly 52,000 stops on these blocks and in these buildings, according to a New York Times analysis of data provided by the Police Department and two organizations, the Center for Constitutional Rights and the New York Civil Liberties Union. In each of those encounters, officers logged the names of those stopped — whether they were arrested or not — into a police database that the police say is valuable in helping solve future crimes.
“These encounters amounted to nearly one stop a year for every one of the 14,000 residents of these blocks. In some instances, people were stopped because the police said they fit the description of a suspect. But the data show that fewer than 9 percent of stops were made based on ‘fit description.’ Far more — nearly 26,000 times — the police listed either ‘furtive movement,’ a catch-all category that critics say can mean anything, or ‘other’ as the only reason for the stop. Many of the stops, the data show, were driven by the police’s ability to enforce seemingly minor violations of rules governing who can come and go in the city’s public housing.”
Skipping ahead in the article…
“And some, from academics to the residents of these streets in Brooklyn, believe the stops could have a corrosive effect, alienating young and old alike in a community that has long had a tenuous relationship with the police.
“’This is an important issue, right now, that the N.Y.P.D. must get out in front of as soon as they can,’ said Richard Rosenfeld, a professor of criminology and criminal justice at the University of Missouri, St. Louis. ‘And the best way they can do that is to provide credible evidence that the stop-and-frisk campaign actually is responsible for the crime reductions the city has enjoyed.’
“Without that evidence, he said, the stop-and-frisks that do not result in arrests could ‘reduce the perceived legitimacy of the police in the eyes of the public.’”
Okay, that above quote is very revealing – basically this guy is pointing out that this practice of “stop and frisk” that is disproportionately targeting and terrorizing Black people so blatantly violates what most people consider decent and legitimate (even according to the proclaimed principles of the U.S. constitution and laws), that if they don’t cook up some kind of PR rational for this they could undermine the legitimacy of the very armed force and terror their system relies on to function.
Everyone who is sincere, needs to come to grips with the fact that the outrage of police violence and terror against Black people in this country is so widespread, so pervasive, so dehumanizing and degrading to Black people as a whole that IT ALONE is reason enough for revolution. Further, everyone interested in revolution ought not to fail to see how significant and strategic a potential vulnerability this kind of ongoing police terror is to the legitimacy of this entire system. There is tremendous potential to bring forward – through fighting the power and transforming the people FOR REVOLUTION – an alternate legitimate vision, authority, and specter of a radically different society, a revolutionary society, that can put an end to this madness and attract many people into this today.
The article continues later…
“Inside the project buildings and out, males 15 to 34 years of age, who make up about 11 percent of the area’s population, accounted for 68 percent of the stops over the years. That amounted to about five stops a year each, though it was impossible to tell how often someone was stopped or if that person lived in the neighborhood, because the data did not include the names or addresses of those stopped. Police officials say the age figures sound right, since most crime suspects fit that description.
“Young black men get stopped so often that a few years ago, Gus Cyrus, coach of the football team at nearby Thomas Jefferson High School, started letting his players leave practice with their bright orange helmets so the police would not confuse them with gang members.
“’My players were always calling me saying “Coach, the police have me,”‘ Mr. Cyrus said.”
Just think what that means – that the football coach had to let his players borrow bright orange helmets so that they would have a higher chance of not being stopped and harassed and humiliated and possibly beaten or killed by police! In his epic talk, “Revolution: Why Its Necessary; Why Its Possible; What Its All About,” Bob Avakian talks about how it is doubtful that any young Black man grows up in an inner city without being traumatized by the fear of being brutalized or killed by police. This story from this coach just captures one small dimension of that – but it speaks volumes.
By the way, there is an additional irony in that little excerpt in that the name of the high school is “ThomasJeffersonHigh School.” Jeffersonian democracy is supposedly what makes this country so free and guarantees all people equal rights and protections under the law. But, in reality in its original conception – and as it is clearly functioning today – it has white supremacy woven into its very fabric. At the time of Jefferson, this took the form of outright slavery. Today, there is – among many other things – the situation that is described in this article from the NYTimes.
“Almost everyone in the projects has a story. There is Jonathan Guity, a 26-year-old legal assistant with no criminal record, who, when asked how many times he had been stopped in the neighborhood where he grew up, said, ‘Honestly, I’d say 30 to 40 times. I’m serious.’”
…
“One recent evening, the police stopped a 19-year-old man for spitting on the sidewalk, a health code violation, and entering Langston Hughes Apartments without using a key or being buzzed in, even though the doors were unlocked. ‘I’ve lived here for 19 years,’ the young man, who lived in a neighboring building, protested. ‘You see me coming into these buildings every day, and now you’re going to stop me.’”
If you can stomach all this, you have a serious problem. If you cannot, its time to get more serious about the real revolution.
Re: Oscar Grant -- The Whole Damn System Is Guilty!
There is important coverage today at revcom.us about the outrageous verdict in the police murder of Oscar Grant. I am reposting one of the pieces below, but go check out the whole paper at:http://revcom.us/
The Whole Damn System Is Guilty!
http://revcom.us/a/207/whole_damn_system-en.html
When a cop can murder a young, unarmed Black man, lying face-down in handcuffs, it's an outrage. This is what happened to Oscar Grant, as clearly shown by numerous videos. Yet his murderer has barely been given a slap on the wrist.
This same sort of outrage goes on year after year, city after city, throughout society. Sean Bell, unarmed, 23 years old and Black—New York police shot 50 bullets at him in 2006, murdering him on his wedding day. Amadou Diallo, a young African immigrant, murdered on his front steps by police who fired 41 shots at him. Patrick Dorismond, Haitian-American... Mark Garcia... Anthony Baez, Puerto Rican...Tyisha Miller, shot 12 times by the Riverside, California, police as she sat in her car, unconscious... the list goes on. All murdered by police, all committing no crime, and in all cases but one the police going totally free. The Stolen Lives Project has documented several thousand such cases—and this documentation itself is far from complete.
This is murder carried out "under color of authority." This murder is obscene. This murder is illegitimate. This murder is unconscionable and utterly immoral. AND IT MUST NOT BE TOLERATED!!
And when this kind of murder goes along with the widespread imprisonment of Black and other minority youth, with the police routinely forcing these youth to "kiss the pavement" and often beating them for the slightest show of defiance or merely to "make an example"...
when this kind of murder goes along with schools that don't teach and inescapable discrimination in jobs and whole areas being left to rot, while those who have been consigned to this fate are constantly demonized by the media...
when all this comes on top of 400 years of different forms of oppression, all preserving the essential core of white supremacy, despite oceans of blood shed by people trying to get free of this...
when all this flows out of and reinforces the basic economic workings of that same rotten society, generating untold wealth and power at the top of society and indescribable misery at the bottom... and when it finds endless echoes and constant reinforcements in the culture and ideas and institutions of that society... then:
It's A System.
The Message and Call of our Party puts it this way:
"It is a system of capitalism-imperialism...a system in which U.S. imperialism is the most monstrous, most oppressive superpower...a system driven by a relentless chase after profit, which brings horror upon horror, a nightmare seemingly without end, for the vast majority of humanity: poverty and squalor...torture and rape...the wholesale domination and degradation of women everywhere...wars, invasions and occupations...assassinations and massacres...planes, missiles, tanks and troops of the USA, bombarding people in far away lands while they sleep in their homes or go about their daily lives, blasting their little children to pieces, cutting down men and women in the prime of life, or in old age, kicking down their doors and dragging them away in the middle of the night...while here in the USA itself the police harass, brutalize and murder youth in the streets of the inner cities—over and over again—and then they spit out their maddening insults, insisting that this is 'justified,' as if these youth are not human beings, have no right to live, deserve no respect and no future."
And as we ask elsewhere in this paper, "how much more do we need to see of this system, before we decide we have had enough of it, and work with everything we have to build a movement for revolution to get rid of it...and put something in its place that would value the lives of the millions of people like the one wantonly murdered and would actually bring justice?"
Cop Who Killed Oscar Grant Gets Slap On the Wrist -- "Post-Racial" My ASS!
From Revolution Books, Berkeley
INVOLUNTARY MANSLAUGHTER: UNACCEPTABLE!
WE DEMAND JUSTICE FOR OSCAR GRANT!
The Whole Damn System is Guilty!
"The killing of Oscar Grant, an unarmed 22-year-old Black man, was a cold-blooded murder. It was a towering crime. This verdict is a slap on the wrist. It is another crime of the system."
WATCH THE FOOTAGE OF THE COLD-BLOODED POLICE MURDER OF OSCAR GRANT:
WATCH THIS CLIP FROM BOB AVAKIAN -- "YES, THERE'S A CONSPIRACY TO GET THE POLICE OFF"
Under the law, 2nd degree murder is the unjustified, intentional killing of a human being. Involuntary manslaughter is a much lesser offense, and carries a much lighter sentence. We saw the videos. From the beginning, the cops were the ones driving the action. Detained, lying face down, putting his hands behind his back while one cop kneeled on his neck, Oscar was shot in the back. Cold-blooded murder, a totally unjustified and brutal act.
Think about it: If this case did not involve police, the situation would be completely different.
Imagine if seven ordinary people had swarmed the BART platform that night, rousted people off the train—cursing them with racist epithets—kicking, and shoving people to the ground, and then killing a man who was lying face down—shooting him in the back. Imagine if dozens of people had seen it. If they videotaped it. What had happened wouldn’t even be a question. It would be obvious. Murder.
This involuntary manslaughter verdict tells cops everywhere they can kill and get away with it. And this verdict tells the people that when we or people we love are gunned down, a slap on the wrist to a cop is the best that we can get.
Let's tell the truth—this system lets cops get away with brutality and murder every single day. The only reason that Mehserle even had to face murder charges at all—and everyone should know this almost never happens—is because the people rose up and fought for justice. And now the defenders of this system are saying that the battle for justice hurt the people. Bullshit. It’s the system the cops enforce with their brutality that hurts the people.
But it doesn’t have to be this way. We don’t have to live in a society where our youth are gunned down by the police who get away with it over and over, where immigrants are criminalized by just the way they look, where oil gushes into the gulf and marshes week after week killing rich sea life and a whole way of life for many thousands. We could build a society where police brutality and other injustices are done away with and people work together to build a new society. Building that kind of society would take a revolution. We need such a revolution and right now we are building a movement for revolution.
The system is rotten. We don’t have to live this way. We need a Real Revolution!
Statement from Attorney Martha Conrad Regarding November 1st at the EHSC
I am a lawyer licensed to practice law in the state of Illinois for the last 23 years.
I was present at the Ethical Humanist Society of Chicago [EHSC] on November 1st. I personally witnessed the entire incident leading to the arrest and can lay out the salient facts of what occurred at EHSC that day.
That morning, I entered the building behind Ms. Taylor and others about ten minutes before the 10:30 am program was to start. No one at any time told Ms. Taylor, the videographer or anyone else that they could not enter the event, which was advertised as being “free and open to the public.”
I was close to Ms. Taylor and the videographer the whole time. Ms. Taylor entered the auditorium and sat down. A man, who I later learned was the director of EHSC, came over to talk to Ms. Taylor and told the videographer who was videotaping the interaction to turn off the video camera. He did so. At no time, did the director or anyone else ask Ms. Taylor or the videographer to leave. After talking briefly to the director, and before the official EHS program was to start, Ms. Taylor stood next to her chair and began making a short statement challenging the decision by the EHS to “disinvite” her. At no time during her statement was she told to stop. After approximately two minutes, the police came into the auditorium and Ms. Taylor stated, “I’m going to be leaving now.” At that time the videographer appeared to be recording Ms. Taylor’s statement with a cell phone. I then saw a uniformed police officer and a man in a baseball hat grab the videographer by each arm. I didn’t hear either give any instruction or warning. They proceeded to roughly pull on his arms as they took him out of the room. (Later, the man in the baseball hat identified himself to me as a police officer who had been hired to be there.)
I followed them to the hallway, and saw officers repeatedly batter him. I turned away for a moment, and when I looked back the videographer was down on the floor. The police pulled him down the hallway and out of my sight. I pushed past some other people in the hallway and entered the foyer. I saw 4-5 officers piled on top of the videographer as he lay face down on the floor. I loudly announced I was a lawyer, and called out to them that the man had done nothing illegal. I demanded that they stop battering him.
There were so many officers on top of him that it was difficult to see him. But I did see the officers bash his head against the floor at least twice. They twisted his arms behind his back and handcuffed him. A couple of minutes later, after the officers had taken the videographer outside and were putting him in the police car, I observed that one side of his face and neck was scratched up. One of his eyes was violently red and tears were pouring out of that eye and down his cheek.
At no time was the videographer aggressive toward the police officers. At no time did he resist arrest.
A sergeant on the scene approached me and claimed, gesturing to EHSC and the EHSC people in front of it, “These people here are doing this. It is not us.”
I went to the Skokie police station, where the videographer was taken. When I arrived I saw an ambulance there. I identified myself as a lawyer, announced my concern for the videographer’s medical condition, and demanded to see him. I was not allowed to do so. The same sergeant who I had seen at EHSC came out and spoke to me in the waiting room. He told me he had called the ambulance due to the videographer’s injuries. The videographer declined going to the hospital in the ambulance and flushed his own eyes of a chemical spray they had used on him.
The videographer is charged with criminal trespass to property, resisting arrest and battery on a police officer. These are very serious charges and totally unwarranted. Later that afternoon, the videographer was released after a collection was taken up to pay his bond. Immediately upon his release, he went to Skokie Hospital where doctors treated his multiple injuries to his head, chest and wrists. His case is set for November 18th, and I ask that you join in demanding that these unfounded charges be immediately dropped!
Sunsara Taylor is a writer for Revolution Newspaper, a host of WBAI's Equal Time for
Freethought, and sits on the Advisory Board of World Can't Wait. She has written on the
rise of theocracy, wars and repression in the U.S., led in building resistance to these
crimes, and contributed to the movement for revolution to put an end to all this. She takes
as her foundation the new synthesis on revolution and communism developed by Bob
Avakian. You can find her impressive verbal battles with Bill O'Reilly and various
political commentary on things from abortion to religion to cultural relativism by searching “Sunsara Taylor”
on youtube.
