Above: Lawrence Hamm, state chairman of the New Jersey-based People’s Organization for Progress, was angered nearly to tears in front of Newark’s 5th Precinct. Well-liked neighborhood resident Basire Farrell had been stopped by police near at the intersection of Clinton Place and Tillinghast Street. According to eyewitnesses, the police had Farrell in handcuffs, yet continued to hit and kick him, apparently beating the 30 year-old young man to death (see the Newark Star Ledger report here). This was not POP’s first march to this particular Precinct House, the home base of at least two similar cases in the past year. As POP chairman Larry Hamm noted, “I don’t care whether people do it in white sheets or a blue uniform, it sounds like a lynching to me.”
Larry Hamm, one of the great local organizers of our times, puts the killing of Michael Brown in historic context dating back to the slave trade, as well as in the context of the unfair economy. Hamm calls for people to “fill the streets” the day after the grand jury in Ferguson makes its decision. Hamm is speaking at the Black is Back Coalition event in Washington, DC this November 1, 2014. Hamm is Chairman of the People’s Organization for Progress based in Newark, NJ.
Tarak Kauff, a board member of Veterans For Peace, in urging people to watch this video writes “If you care about anything, care about this. The video of Larry Hamm, perhaps the greatest, most insightful and eloquent revolutionary since Martin Luther King and Malcolm X is 14 minutes and 37 seconds short. Clear the table of all distractions. You want to watch this video and you want to listen to every single word Larry Hamm has to say and you want to get ready. Get ready just as we did in the 101st when we were on STRAC alert. Bags were packed, ready to load on planes as soon as we could get to the loading zone. I hear Larry and I hear him loud and clear. My car will have a full tank of gas and I expect to see many of you in the streets with me. As Larry says, ‘I can’t take it anymore.’ And I say, if not now, when?”