NYC Revolution Club Member Takes on Attack against Ferguson Rebellion

February 9, 2015 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

 

From a reader:

Former New York City mayor David Dinkins, together with Brooklyn borough president Eric Adams (a former NYC cop and State Senator), were on a panel at Columbia University on February 5 called “Improving Police-Community Relations.”

The program opened with Adams, the ex-cop, trash-talking the righteous rebellion in Ferguson, Missouri, as the “wrong” way to protest, as violent and counter-productive. Noche Diaz, member of the NYC Revolution Club, sprang to his feet calling out the bullshit. And he called on people to come to the Stop Mass Incarceration Network conference in Atlanta on February 7-8. (See YouTube video of what happened.)

After Noche left the room, there was a changed mood. Later in the program, others in the audience spoke out. An ex-cop spoke with outrage at the ways the police get away with murder after murder—while it’s guaranteed that if someone harms a police officer, they’re going to be locked up for a long time. Others pointed out that police rape women, and how youth are trained to accept having a target on their backs. When another member of the Revolution Club stood up to say she was “thoroughly convinced that NONE of this is going to change short of a revolution,” the panelists and the room had to address the question of revolution as the solution. Some said that revolution can’t succeed; others said, yes, but it would have to be a nonviolent, MLK kind of “revolution.”

People afterward came up to the Revolution Club members, including a mother whose son had been murdered by the NYPD. People said they were glad the club was there at the program, had told the truth, had challenged the speakers, and continued to be out in the streets.

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