Voices from the Harlem Streets
June 9, 2014 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us
The day after the massive police assault, revolutionaries organized a press conference/speakout on the corner adjoining the Grant Houses. These are some of what people said at the speakout and in interviews.
A woman who lives at Grant Houses said:
Instead of building this community up, they are trying to break this community down. It needs help. It needs a lot of help. As far as the kids, you know, they need something to do. I mean, if the kids don't have any outlet, you know, what do you think they are going to do? They are going to stand on the corner. They are going to sell drugs. You know, they are going to get into stuff because there is no help in the community.
I always thought the police was here to serve and protect. The police are not here to serve and protect. They're here to destroy. That's all they're about—destroying the community ... My son had nothing to do with nothing like that. My son's not even a gang member. He's just a kid. You know, these kids, they grew up together and they're in this community. You know, what kid in the community don't hang out with each other and don't stick together and do things together, you know?
Another woman said:
The police are robbing the youth of their community. They are stripped of their identity. It is an outrage, it has to stop. Since stop-and-frisk has been stopped, so they have come up with another way which is actually a continuation of slavery, like take all the Blacks off the street. They take innocent people who don't know how to fight, people they pick up are illiterate. They have continued it in another way. I live in Grant Homes, I had my son with me that day, he is an "A" student. But if he weren't with me he would have been picked up.
A woman whose son was recently arrested in a police sweep in another part of Harlem spoke of what she experienced in the courtroom downtown:
There is a new gang court, giving your 13- and 14-year-olds 15 and 20 years. I watch nothing but youth of color in that court, women crying, day after day—it is a mass incarceration going on. It is my son today, your son tomorrow. Caught up, swept up, stopped for no reason. Nobody there came home, nobody. They didn't offer them programs, just 15 to 20 years in prison... Wake up, this is genocide, this is the new Jim Crow. It is going down before your eyes. Not one of those people yesterday had a chance, but they are incarcerating them by the masses...
They rounded up 14 [in the raid that took her son], that was the first. You noticed from yesterday the numbers are going up and up. They are taking them from every borough—majority under 21 years of age. But ask them could they offer them a job. Nobody offers them a job. What can they do when they come home? How can they get their life together when they have been convicted of a crime and no one offers them a job?
A young man said:
The police is like a military occupation in our community. And that's how it's been for a long time and it's just getting worse. They come already with a guilty until proven innocent attitude and that you don't have any rights that they need to respect. That's how they approach us... I think there needs to be a change in the system—a drastic change, because if not, it doesn't matter who you elect or who's in office because the system stays the same.
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