Updated September 28, 2015 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us
This is a text of a leaflet from the Stop Mass Incarceration Network-Chicago, which is going out to the Beverly Unitarian Church in Chicago—the church that put up a “Black Lives Matter” sign and then took it down after receiving some hostile responses.
For more on the national debate within the Unitarian Universalist Church on Black Lives Matter and police terror, see Unitarians and Black Lives Matter... Debate Spreads—and watch a video from a Unitarian Church in Anapolis that is responding the right way to attacks on their Black Lives Matter banner.
Open Letter to Beverly Unitarian Church—Which Side Are You On?
Either you stand on the side of those who defend police murder of unarmed Black and Latino people OR you stand against this together with others who refuse to accept it.
By taking down your sign, “Black Lives Matter” you took a side. The wrong side! BLACK LIVES DO MATTER.
PUT THE BLACK LIVES MATTER SIGN BACK UP and many people will stand with you. When you cave into the lies, mis-education and racist threats that led you to take your sign down, you do great harm.
To the congregation of the Beverly Unitarian Church,
Sandra Bland, Rekia Boyd, Freddie Gray, Walter Scott, Tamir Rice, Laquan McDonald, Tony Robinson, Justus Howell. In 2015 alone, there are hundreds of names. We know their names because people stood up and protested and demanded that this society recognize that Black Lives Matter and police murder must stop.
Your church caved into a campaign underway by right-wing politicians, media and police representatives that is out to demonize the protestors. They got your church to swallow their lies that the movement against police terror is anti-white, anti-police and most outrageously, somehow terrorist. Let’s be real. There is terror, but it is police terror—the terror that comes from state violence that ends a Black or Latino person’s life for no reason other than a cop or racist vigilante saying, “I felt scared.” The victim and their families are demonized. There is no justice time and time again.
We call on you to do the moral and principled thing and put the sign, BLACK LIVES MATTER back up. Get back on the right side of history.
We are building for a major, massive demonstration in the streets of New York City on Oct 24th—everyone who agrees with the simple demand that police murder and terror must stop should be there. Let’s make clear to the whole world, in our numbers and determination, that there are many, many people who refuse to tolerate these outrages, who will not be silent and complicit in the face of them. JOIN US IN BUILDING FOR OCTOBER 24th IN NEW YORK CITY.
For more information: Stop Mass Incarceration Network-Chicago
StopMassIncarcerationChicago@gmail.com • (312) 933-9586
www.facebook.com/SMINChicago
@StopMassIncChi
stopmassincarceration.net #RISEUPOCTOBER
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