Racial Justice

After A Week, Police Bust Up Occupy LAPD Camp-In, Arrest 2 Women

January 7, 2015 Veronica Rocha, www.latimes.com Resist! LAPD, Los Angeles, police brutality, Racial Justice, Social Change

For seven days, organizers with the regional Black Lives Matter movement camped peacefully outside Los Angeles police headquarters downtown, calling their protest "Occupy LAPD." They had a set of demands centered on Ezell Ford and wanted an audience with Police Chief Charlie Beck. But Monday morning, they were forced to pack up tents, blankets, pots and pans and get off the sidewalk. Then two women in the group were arrested as they tried to take a letter to Beck. The group had been camped outside LAPD headquarters on 1st Street since Tuesday after the release of the autopsy report on Ford, the South Los Angeles man shot and killed in August during a confrontation with police.

Protesters Stuck In Limbo By DA’s Office

January 7, 2015 Michael McLaughlin, www.huffingtonpost.com Resist! California, Law, police brutality, Racial Justice

More than 200 people arrested after a protest in Berkeley last month may wait a year before the district attorney decides whether to prosecute them for misdemeanor offenses. The hallway outside a Superior Court of California courtroom was packed Tuesday morning with people, many of them college students, who'd been locked up Dec. 8 during a demonstration over the police killings of unarmed men in Ferguson, Missouri, and New York City. Many faced charges of being a public nuisance and obstructing a public place after shutting downpart of a freeway. They are free without bail and were told by defense attorneys that their cases remain under review by the Alameda County District Attorney's Office. Prosecutors have 12 months to decide whether to drop charges.

How Do Mothers of Slain, Unarmed Black Daughters Grieve?

January 6, 2015 Kali Nicole Gross, www.huffingtonpost.com Educate! police brutality, Racial Justice, Women's Rights

Few seem to care about the mother of Aiyana Stanley-Jones, the 7-year-old Detroiter killed by white officer Joseph Weekley during a botched police raid on her home. So far attempts to punish Weekley have stalled. Meanwhile, the deceased's father has been sentenced to 40 years in prison on a murder charge. News footage of Charles Jones' sentencing shows Lyvonne Cargill, the mother of Je'Rean Blake, 17, reading a statement to the court about her suffering and loss. Even in the brief clip, her grief ispalpable. But the pain of Dominika Stanley over the senseless loss of her baby girl, Aiyana, is also unimaginable. Hard to suffer, too, is the crushing weight of isolation and alienation as the world responds to tragedies like that of Trayvon Martin, Michael Brown Jr., and Eric Garner to the exclusion of the loss of black women's and girls' lives.

Judge Could Decide To Release Eric Garner Grand Jury Documents

January 6, 2015 Jonathan Allen, www.Reuters.com Organize! Eric Garner, Law, New York City (NYC), NYPD, Racial Justice

A New York judge will hear arguments later this month whether to publicly release the records of a grand jury hearing in the case of an unarmed black man killed after a policeman put him in a chokehold while arresting him for peddling loose cigarettes. After an unusually lengthy session lasting nine weeks, the grand jury voted in December not to indict the police officer, Daniel Pantaleo, for his role in the asphyxiation death of Eric Garner on a Staten Island sidewalk last summer. Captured on video, Garner's repeated cries of "I can't breathe!" as Pantaleo holds him by his neck have become a slogan for protesters at rallies across the United States who accuse police forces of being hostile towards black citizens.

#BlackBrunchNYC Disrupts Diners To Protest Police Brutality

January 6, 2015 Lilly Workneh, www.huffingtonpost.com Organize! Food and Agriculture, New York City (NYC), Protest, Racial Justice

In a seemingly new approach to demonstrating, protesters in New York interrupted patrons at various restaurants on Sunday to declare injustice in America and call attention to problematic policing tactics. The event was part of a movement dubbed #BlackBrunch in which protesters purposely selected eateries across the city, or places they referred to as "white spaces," to voice their outrage over police violence against Blacks. On Sunday, about three dozen demonstrators marched into restaurants and briefly interrupted mid-day meals as they read aloud the names of African Americans killed by police, Yahoo reports. “There is a war on Black people in America that cannot be ignored and the Black Brunch tactic is one that is committed to interrupting ‘business as usual’ until the war against us has ended,” reads a statement written by #BlackBrunch organizers.

Black Lives Depend On A Free And Open Internet

January 5, 2015 Patrisse Cullors, www.thehill.com Resist! FCC, Ferguson, Net Neutrality, Racial Justice

The Internet is the most democratic communication platform in history, largely because we’ve had network neutrality rules that make sure all web traffic is treated equally, and no voices are discriminated against. Because of network neutrality rules, activists can turn to the Internet to bypass the discrimination of mainstream cable, broadcast and print outlets as we organize for change. It is because of net neutrality rules that the Internet is the only communication channel left where Black voices can speak and be heard, produce and consume, on our own terms. But, right now, Black online voices are threatened. The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) is drafting and preparing to vote on new rules that will either preserve the level online playing field we’ve enjoyed for the last several decades, or destroy it.

Uniting Fight For $15 With Ferguson Fury

January 5, 2015 Bryan Watson, www.15now.org Organize! Ferguson, Fight for 15, Labor Unions, Racial Justice

Across the country, the youthful protests against police racism openly expressed their solidarity with the fight for $15. The widespread mood to #ShutItDown, most reflected in highway takeovers, found even sharper expression in marches through Wal-Marts and shopping malls, where chants and speeches often made the connections between economic inequality and police racism. There is widespread understanding that racism is structurally embedded into the economy and political life of American capitalism. For a movement against racist police violence to be sustainable, demands for community control over police must be combined with economic demands that address mass unemployment, low-wages, and underfunded services in communities of color. Demands for living wage jobs and quality public services can also unite wider numbers of workers in the struggle for racial equity.

America’s Authoritarian Police Violently Enforces 1%’s Rule

January 5, 2015 Chauncey DeVega, www.alternet.org Educate! police brutality, Police the Police, Racial Justice, wealth inequality

While the public rituals that accompany the loss of a police officer are by definition designed to hide and obfuscate complex realities through the use of powerful symbols and rhetoric, the basic truth remains that police as a social institution and group are not victims. Rather, in the United States the police are a protected class of people. They are the day-to-day face of the State—and its power to visit violence upon the American people. Police are enforcers of the law; in many ways they are positioned above and outside it. The examples of this Orwellian abuse of power are many. The Supreme Court recently ruled in Hein v. North Carolina that even when a police officer stops a person without proper cause such an act is not a violation of the Constitution’s protections against unreasonable search and seizure.

The Real History Of Selma

January 3, 2015 Emilye Crosby, www.teachingforchange.org Educate! Civil Rights, Human Rights, Racial Justice

On this 50th anniversary year of the Selma-to-Montgomery March and the Voting Rights Act it helped inspire, national attention is centered on the iconic images of “Bloody Sunday,” the words of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., the interracial marchers, and President Lyndon Johnson signing the Voting Rights Act. This version of history, emphasizing a top-down narrative and isolated events, reinforces the master narrative which civil rights activists describe as, “Rosa sat down, Martin stood up, and the white folks came South to save the day.” Today, issues of racial equity and voting rights are front and center in the lives of young people. There is much they can learn from an accurate telling of the Selma (Dallas County) voting rights campaign and the larger Civil Rights Movement. We owe it to students on this anniversary to share the history that can help equip them to carry on the struggle today.

Keep Marching On

January 3, 2015 Bill Fletcher Jr., www.jacobinmag.com Resist! Civil Rights, Ferguson, police brutality, Racial Justice

But this anomalous (if egregious) violence against police officers cannot be used to stop a nonviolent movement. The Haymarket Massacre is still the paradigmatic case of the state using a violent act to justify repression. In 1886, at the height of the movement for an eight-hour workday, a bomb was set off at a worker rally in Chicago’s Haymarket Square. The rally was called to both protest police killings of worker protesters and to support striking workers fighting for the eight-hour day. When police attacked the demonstration, a bomb was thrown. To this day no one knows who set off the explosive, including whether it was an agent provocateur or an activist. What is known, however, is that the government used the bombing as a pretext to discredit the protests and the workers movement, suggesting that the entire movement was comprised of supposedly violent anarchists.

The Police Were Created To Control Poor & Working Class People

January 2, 2015 Sam Mitrani, www.counterpunch.org Educate! Economic Justice, History, police brutality, Racial Justice

Before the nineteenth century, there were no police forces that we would recognize as such anywhere in the world. In the Northern United States, there was a system of elected constables and sheriffs, much more responsible to the population in a very direct way than the police are today. In the South, the closest thing to a police force was the slave patrols. Then, as Northern cities grew and filled with mostly immigrant wage workers who were physically and socially separated from the ruling class, the wealthy elite who ran the various municipal governments hired hundreds and then thousands of armed men to impose order on the new working class neighborhoods.

Protesters Mark New Year With ‘Black Lives Matter’ Marches

January 2, 2015 Resist! Eric Garner, Ferguson, NYPD, police brutality, Racial Justice

Protesters from the East to West coasts of the US ushered in the New Year with ‘Black Lives Matter’ marches against police brutality. In St Louis demonstrators tried to take over a police station, demanding that the “occupiers” be “removed from power.” In a letter addressed to St. Louis Police Chief Sam Dotson and all other “occupiers of the St. Louis Metropolitan Police Department,” protesters announced in August they were evicting them from the building for a range of alleged offenses, including police brutality and transforming the police department into a “militarizing occupying force.” A grand jury’s decision not to indict Officer Darren Wilson in the shooting death of Ferguson, Missouri teen Michael Brown last month sparked a nationwide protest movement against excessive police force. Just over a week later, a grand jury in Staten Island opted not to indict New York Police in the chokehold death of Eric Garner, bringing the slogan “I can’t breathe” to national attention. The movement has inspired similar protests against police brutality abroad.

I Am A 20th Century Escaped Slave

January 2, 2015 Assata Shakur, www.counterpunch.org Educate! Cuba, Political Prisoner, Racial Justice, usa

y name is Assata Shakur, and I am a 20th century escaped slave. Because of government persecution, I was left with no other choice than to flee from the political repression, racism and violence that dominate the US government’s policy towards people of color. I am an ex-political prisoner, and I have been living in exile in Cuba since 1984. I have been a political activist most of my life, and although the U.S. government has done everything in its power to criminalize me, I am not a criminal, nor have I ever been one. In the 1960s, I participated in various struggles: the black liberation movement, the student rights movement, and the movement to end the war in Vietnam.

2014: The Year The American Justice System Officially Died

January 1, 2015 Carey Wedler, www.theantimedia.org Educate! Criminal Justice, Law, Mass Incarceration, Racial Justice, Social Change

In 2014, the problem of police brutality forced itself to the forefront of the national conversation following the brutal killing of Americans at the hands of the police. This increased attention has been a success for activists from all walks of life and for the well-being of citizens. The problem of racism and police murders that involve it is finally receiving widespread acknowledgment and opposition. But as much as the issue of police abuse needs attention, it remains that injustice in America permeates layers of society that transcend law enforcement, race, and problems of direct violence against citizens. Rather, police brutality is a symptom of much deeper decay in the concept and system of “justice” in the United States. In 2015, the fight against police injustice must continue. But that fight must not forget the multitude of other ways that justice is trampled. In fact, if the system is allowed to continue, any small, superficial wins made in the fight against brutality will surely be reversed at the hands of a government whose foundational power is never questioned.

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