NYC:
Revolutionaries Call for March Over the Bridge to Staten Island to Demand Justice for Eric Garner and Michael Brown
August 12, 2014 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us
Carl Dix, from the Revolutionary Communist Party, and Travis Morales, a long-time revolutionary communist, are calling on everyone who is outraged by the police murders of Eric Garner, Michael Brown, and others to take our grief and anger over the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge from Brooklyn to Staten Island on Saturday, August 16. The call has been taken up by the Stop Mass Incarceration Network, NYC. At an August 12 news conference in front of the NYPD headquarters, Carl Dix said:
"We [issued this call] because, look, we all saw Eric Garner choked to death by the NYPD. We heard him going, 'I can't breathe. I can't breathe' as they choked the life out of him. We heard all of that. Then we hear the powers-that-be in this city, that they want to tell us when we can protest this foul murder, how we can go about it, and where. Last Sunday, in the New York Post, they ran this article about how the Mayor, other political leaders, other leaders in this city had prevailed on people, Rev. Sharpton in particular, to withdraw the call for a march across the bridge on August 23. And they said that a march like that would not serve the 'progressive agenda' and would not help to further 'racial healing' in this city.
"Well here is a question: What kind of 'progressive agenda' is it that requires that people not step out the murder of Black people by the NYPD?... What kind of 'racial healing' can you have on the basis of telling people that they cannot protest what's being done? How can we let those who preside over these murders, who implement policies that lead to these murders—and I'm talking about Bratton's ‘broken windows’ nonsense—and people like de Blasio who appoint these people, how can they tell us when, where, and whether we can protest? They cannot, and we should not let them do that!
"So everybody who was angered by the murder of Eric Garner, and then further angered to hear about the murder of Michael Brown out in Missouri, to read about the exposures of the brutality that prison guards in Rikers* are laying out on people in prison, and all the other foul things that the criminal injustice system in this country brings down on people—everybody who's angered about that, everybody who's saddened by the loss of another young life at the hands of those who are supposed to be 'protecting and serving'—bring your anger, bring your grief, Saturday, at noon. We're going to march across the Verrazano Bridge. We're going to bring forward some demands:
"Justice for Eric Garner and Michael Brown!
"Indict the Killer Cops! And in addition to indicting them, convict them and put them in jail—because people who commit murder out in the open in front of many witnesses should not get away with it because they happen to have a badge.
"Stop the Repression of the Witnesses! Because let's look at this: We saw five people kill someone on TV—but the only people who have been arrested are the guy who took the video [of the cops killing Eric Garner with a chokehold] and his wife. They're the only people involved who have been arrested. Let's think of that, and what is that a message of?
"Bratton and 'Broken Windows' Has Got to Go!—and go now!
"All Out for the October Month of Resistance against Mass Incarceration, Police Terror, Repression, and Criminalization of a Generation! Because we have to fight this police terror. We have to fight the brutality that's being inflicted in the prisons. But it's part of a bigger fight. We have to take on the mass incarceration, the police terror, the way they treat our children like criminals—all of that. And we are doing that this October, month of mass determined resistance, here in New York City and all across the country, to all these foul things the criminal injustice system brings down."
The protest will be gathering Saturday, 12 noon, August 16, at 92nd St and Gatling Place in Brooklyn. (R train, 86th St. stop). To find out more: Stop Mass Incarceration Network • stopmassincarceration@gmail.com • 347-979-SMIN(7646) • Twitter: StopMassIncNet.
* Rikers Island is the huge jail complex in NYC. See "The Terror Facing Youth at Rikers Island."
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