Urgently Needed:
Powerful Outpourings on October 22, 2013
National Day of Protest to Stop Police Brutality, Repression, and the Criminalization of a Generation
September 15, 2013 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us
- George Zimmerman, the vigilante wannabe cop who stalked, confronted, and murdered Trayvon Martin, is given a not guilty verdict—which comes down to Amerikkka saying, again, that Black people have no rights that whites are bound to respect.
- The cops who murdered seven-year-old Aiyana Stanley-Jones in Detroit and 18-year-old Ramarley Graham in NYC get let off by the courts.
- David Silva—a 34-year-old Latino with four young children—is hog-tied and beaten to death by cops in Bakersfield, California.
- Melissa Williams and Timothy Russell are gunned down in a hail of 137 (!) police bullets in Cleveland.
- Cary Ball Jr., a 25-year-old honor student, is killed by cops in St. Louis who fired 25 shots at him.
- Sixteen-year-old Kimani Gray—gunned down by undercover cops in Brooklyn in a stop-and-frisk that went fatal.
These and many more killings by police and countless incidents of unspeakable brutality by cops have gone down in just the past year alone. Nationwide, an epidemic of police brutality is intensifying—police and racist vigilantes are still literally getting away with murder.
All this is occurring at a time of increasingly sharp attacks on the people by this system—more than two million people continue to be warehoused in prisons across the country; people in U.S. prisons are being subjected to torture, from Guantánamo to the SHUs (Security Housing Units) in California; the government is carrying out massive spying programs in this country and around the world; the president claims the right to assassinate anyone in the world, including U.S. citizens; women’s right to have an abortion is under sharp attack... and more.
And it is all occurring at a time when millions of people are deeply questioning the injustice of this country. This questioning drove thousands into the streets in outrage following the verdict in the Trayvon Martin case. These outpourings were followed by a heroic and inspiring hunger strike by prisoners in California.
It is urgently necessary, and very possible, that the questioning and outrage broadly impacting people be tapped into and brought out into the streets on October 22, 2013.
This October 22 will be the 18th annual National Day of Protest to Stop Police Brutality, Repression, and the Criminalization of a Generation. October 22 has become the day to manifest outrage and show our determination to say NO MORE to the official brutality and government repression that is devastating the lives of millions of people. And it is the day that victims of this injustice have a platform to bring into the light of day the horrors that have been inflicted on them.
Powerful actions on this day can further expose the illegitimacy of a system that subjects so many people to official brutality and treats so many of the youth like criminals—guilty until proven innocent, if they can survive to prove their innocence. And coming at these attacks from the perspective of Revolution—Nothing Less! can bring forward another way society could be organized.
The Call for October 22nd, 2013, will be available soon. People need to begin making plans to act on that day—to hold rallies, cultural events, etc. When the call is released, people should circulate and sign it. And people should contact the October 22nd National Office to coordinate activity nationally and to add their plans to what’s going to happen on that day.
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