Tag Archives: mike brown

From Ferguson to New York to Palestine, Solidarity with the Resistance to Racist Oppression

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Samidoun Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network, Dec 8, 2014

 

“Nobody in the world, nobody in history, has ever gotten their freedom by appealing to the moral sense of the people who were oppressing them…Prisons are a profitable business. They are a way of legally perpetuating slavery. In every state more and more prisons are being built and even more are on the drawing board. Who are they for? They certainly aren’t planning to put white people in them. Prisons are part of this government’s genocidal war against Black and Third World people.”

– Assata Shakur

“I speak as a victim of America’s so-called democracy. You and I have never seen democracy – all we’ve seen is hypocrisy. When we open our eyes today and look around America, we see America not through the eyes of someone who has enjoyed the fruits of Americanism. We see America through the eyes of someone who has been the victim of Americanism. We don’t see any American dream. We’ve experienced only the American nightmare.”
– Malcolm X

“This trial cannot be separated from the process of the historical struggle in Palestine that continues today between the Zionist Movement and the Palestinian people, a struggle that centers on Palestinian land, history, civilization, culture and identity…As for your judicial apparatus, which is where this court comes from: it is one of the instruments of the occupation whose function is to give the cover of legal legitimacy to the crimes of the occupation, in addition to consecrating its systems and allowing the imposition of these systems on our people through force.”
– Ahmad Sa’adat

Samidoun Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network salutes the resistance led by the Black movement that has taken the streets of every major city and town in the United States in defense of Black lives and in resistance to state-sponsored police killing, targeting and profiling of Black people and of other oppressed communities. These protests, led by strong and militant Black youth and their comrades, have occupied highways, roads and bridges, disrupted “business as usual,” and are true sparks of Intifada against a racist system of exploitation and oppression.

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“I can’t breathe.” “Hands up, don’t shoot.” “Black Lives Matter.” The slogans, in their clarity, are an assertion of existence and resistance in the face of a racist system that has been built for centuries on the devaluing, dismissal and suppression of Black rights, existence and struggle.

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The System That Failed Eric Garner and Michael Brown Cannot Be Reformed

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 by Mychal Denzel Smith, The Nation blog, December 3, 2014

 

That a grand jury decided not to indict NYPD Officer Daniel Pantaleo for killing 43-year-old Eric Garner the same week that President Obama proposed spending $75 million in federal money to outfit 50,000 police officers across the country with body cameras would seem to be hack Hollywood writing with neatly applied plot points. Garner’s death was caught on video—video that the police were aware was being taken—and it still was not enough to indict anyone, least of all the man responsible for choking Garner to death, for any type of wrongdoing. It’s as if this decision was handed to us at this time in order to get us to say, “Now what?”

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Why blacks are urging a Black Friday boycott

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By Soledad O’Brien and Rose Arce, CNN,  Wed November 26, 2014

(CNN) — Once again, the streets are electric with anger after a white police officer evades charges for fatally shooting a black man. Sirens screech and wood batons push back marchers protesting from Missouri to New York to Los Angeles. This time the cadence of “No Justice, No Peace” has been replaced with “Hand’s Up. Don’t Shoot.”

Protesters gather on the steps of the National Portrait Gallery in Washington on Tuesday, November 25. A grand jury's decision not to indict Darren Wilson, a white police officer, in the August shooting death of unarmed black teenager Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, has prompted demonstrations across the country.

Protesters gather on the steps of the National Portrait Gallery in Washington on Tuesday, November 25. A grand jury’s decision not to indict Darren Wilson, a white police officer, in the August shooting death of unarmed black teenager Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, has prompted demonstrations across the country.

But there was another sign raised above the crowd in a recent protest in New York: “Doing Nothing with Saying Nothing. Changes Nothing.” The mathematics of this one are clear. Something’s gotta give.

A loose network led by African Americans in the film and arts world has emerged from the fog of tear gas to call for a quiet riot in response: a boycott of Black Friday shopping.

Ryan Coogler, who directed the 2013 film about police brutality called “Fruitvale Station,” told us he was confounded by the eruptions of “human rights violations committed by public servants.” Continue reading →

Resisting the War Against the Black and Brown Underclass

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A system cannot fail those it was never meant to protect. — WEB Dubois

November 25, 2014

Why We Won’t Wait

by ROBIN D.G. KELLEY

Wait. Patience. Stay Calm. “This is a country that allows everybody to express their views,” said the first Black president, “allows them to peacefully assemble, to protest actions that they think are unjust.” Don’t disrupt, express. Justice will be served. We respect the rule of law. This is America.

We’ve all been waiting for the grand jury’s decision, not because most of us expected an indictment. District Attorney Robert P. McCulloch’s convoluted statement explaining—or rather, defending—how the grand jury came to its decision resembled a victory speech. For a grand jury to find no probable cause even on the lesser charge of involuntary manslaughter is a stunning achievement in a police shooting of an unarmed teenager with his hands raised, several yards away. Distilling 4,799 pages of grand jury proceedings to less than twenty minutes, he managed to question the integrity of eyewitnesses, accuse the 24-hour news cycle and social media for disrupting the investigation, and blame alleged neighborhood violence for why the removal of Mike Brown’s body from the pavement had to wait until morning. McCulloch never indicted a cop in his life, so why expect anything different now?

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Ferguson Protesters In Boston Stop Outside Jail, Chant ‘Black Lives Matter

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  11/25/2014

WASHINGTON — Bostonians turned out Tuesday night to show solidarity with protesters nationwide, upset over the decision not to indict Ferguson police Officer Darren Wilson for killing unarmed African-American teenager Michael Brown. But the protest in Boston had a twist: Marchers stopped at a local jail to stand with the inmates there.

According to the Boston Globe, approximately 1,400 people marched to the South Bay House of Correction. Protesters were reportedly chanting, “We see you,” and “Black lives matter.”

The South Bay facility houses adult male and female inmates convicted of crimes with a sentence of 2.5 years or less.

African-American men are six times more likely to be incarcerated than white men, according to The Sentencing Project. If current trends continue, one out of every three black men in the U.S. will go to prison. ProPublica recently found that “young black men [were] 21 times as likely as their white peers to be killed by police” between 2010 and 2012.

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When Art Speaks Truth about the Police State, It Is Criminalized and Destroyed

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 [Whether banning or burning books, or destroying truth-telling murals, repressive systems reveal their fear of informed people.  —  Frontlines ed.]

Ferguson-inspired ‘Sagging pants is not probable cause’ mural in Trenton removed after police request

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A mural depicting Ferguson teen Michael Brown, who was shot and killed by police earlier this year, was removed from a gate on the corner of North Broad and Hanover Streets on Monday Oct. 20, 2014 after concerns from police. (Jenna Pizzi / Times of Trenton)
By Jenna Pizzi | Times of Trentoon October 20, 2014

TRENTON – A mural was painted over Monday afternoon after Trenton police expressed concern that the painting, depicting Michael Brown, a Ferguson, Mo., teen who was fatally shot by police in August, sent the wrong message about community and police relations.
The painting depicted Brown’s face with the caption “Sagging pants … is not probable cause.” Will “Kasso” Condry, the artist behind the mural, said he wanted to start a conversation about racial profiling.
The Trenton Downtown Association elected to remove the image after hearing concern from police officers that the mural sends a negative message about the relationship between police and the community.

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