From Stop Mass Incarceration Network:
Stop Mass Incarceration Network–NYC and NYC Revolution Club Condemn NYPD Assault on the General Grant and Manhattanville Houses in Harlem
June 5, 2014 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us
HARLEM, NY—The Stop Mass Incarceration Network-NYC, the NYC Revolution Club, and others, will rally to denounce the June 4 military style assault by over 400 NYPD cops in the General Grant and Manhattanville Houses. Using battering rams, officers in body armor broke down doors as helicopters whirled overhead, arresting 40 people that the NYPD claims are gang members. The raid and arrests are not about fighting crime and violence. They are about criminalizing the youth and terrorizing whole communities.
Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance Jr. and Police Commissioner Bill Bratton claim that the 103 people indicted, ranging in age from 15 to 30, are gang members. Bratton said, “If you choose this lifestyle, you will suffer the same fate as these individuals.” Did these young men choose to be born into a future of poverty, housing projects, no educational opportunities, no jobs and no future? What kind of system is this where many of the youth see the gangs as their only way to survive? If the authorities really cared about the lives and safety of the people in the housing projects they would do something about the horrible conditions of life that many suffer, they would provide decent jobs, they would educate the youth, they would provide a bright future. Instead, their only answer is to criminalize the youth and mass incarceration. Yes, some young people turn to crime. But who put them in these conditions? And why aren’t they doing anything to help them for real?
Many of those indicted and arrested are charged with conspiracy. The NYPD and Manhattan District Attorney’s Office built these conspiracy cases based on monitoring over 40,000 calls and spying on hundreds of Facebook pages. Conspiracy charges based on police state spying? Conspiracy charges mean the police have no way to tie those arrested with the actual crimes but claim they were part of a “conspiracy”. The real conspiracy is to deny our young people a decent future and to criminalize them at an early age in the school-to-prison pipeline.
The real conspiracy is, “For 2 generations, Black and Latina/Latino youth in the U.S. have been shipped off to prison in numbers never before seen anywhere in the world at any time. More than 2 million people, of all nationalities languish in prison—ten times the number 50 years ago. The U.S. has 5% of the world’s population but 25% of the world’s prison population! More than 60% of those in U.S. prisons are Black or Latina/o. 32% of Black men between the ages of 20 and 29 are in prison or on parole or probation on any given day. (From “WE SAY NO MORE! A Call For A Month Of Resistance To Mass Incarceration, Police Terror, Repression And The Criminalization Of A Generation!”)
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