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.
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!
Charles Jones, age 25 -- father of Aiyana Jones -- sobbing with head in hands in front of photos of his daughter
Mertilla Jones, grandmother of Aiyana Jones (on left with photo)
Dominika Stanley, mother (on right in front)
Charles Jones, father (behind Dominika on right)
Dominika Stanley (mother of Aiyana) with Charles Jones (father of Aiyana) in front of the home where police killed Aiyana Jones, age 7
Family member putting plexiglass over the window that police shattered with their stun flash grenade -- the same one that landed near Aiyana and burned her before she was struck and killed by a police bullet
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.
