RISE UP OCTOBER IS ON!
Strategy Session Calls for National March To STOP Police Terror in NYC on October 24, 2015
June 3, 2015 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us
On Tuesday, May 26, in NYC, 80 people met at the Union Theological Seminary at the invitation of Dr. Cornel West and Carl Dix to discuss a proposal for a national march against. police terror on October 24, 2015, in New York City. This Strategy Session was attended by families of victims of murder by police, high school and college students, religious leaders, representatives from a number of justice-based organizations and unions, and numerous activists. After wide ranging discussion, this session called for Saturday, October 24, to be a day when hundreds of thousands of people converge in Central Park, NYC, for Rise Up October to STOP Police Terror.
Imagine hundreds of thousands of people gathering; young people tired of being treated like criminals, guilty until proven innocent if they can survive to prove their innocence, students who refuse to stand aside while these horrors are inflicted on others, family members of people killed by the police, religious leaders and their congregations, contingents from labor unions; people of all races and nationalities, people active in the struggle against injustice on many different fronts – all coming together to deliver an unmistakable message – that murder by police and the whole genocidal program targeting Black and Latino people in this country – must STOP! (See video presentations made at the session by Carl Dix (above right) and Cornel West (below right) that lay out in some detail what’s at stake, why this national march is needed and what it aims to accomplish. We urge everyone to view them and spread them.)
There is a great need for such a march. The authorities have doubled down on unleashing the police to get away with murdering people. And there is great potential to mobilize the kind of defiant and massive march needed to deliver the message that there is a growing force in society that refuses to accept these horrors in silence. Beginning with the response to the police murder of Michael Brown in Ferguson and escalating up to today, thousands have taken to the streets in cities all across the country. People need to continue protesting every time the police gun down or brutalize someone. But we need to take this resistance higher. We need to bring this resistance together into a massive nationwide outpouring – and October 24 is the day to do that, and NYC is the place for it.
A CALL for Rise Up October has been issued. A follow up meeting in NYC has been set for June 30. At this meeting hundreds of people need to be organized into the framework for working to bring first tens and then hundreds of thousands of people into this mobilization And you need to become part of this effort.
WHAT YOU NEED TO DO TO MAKE OCTOBER 24 AS POWERFUL AS POSSIBLE:
- Spread the Call for Rise Up October everywhere to let everybody know this is on and they need to be a part of it;
- Organize meetings of your group – church group, professional association, student group, etc. – to discuss this Call and make plans to mobilize people to be part of Rise Up October. It will be especially important to mobilize young people over the summer to be ready to go into the schools when they open and mobilize students to come to New York on October 24.
- Raise money to be able to charter buses for people to come to NYC, to send organizers to hot spots to spread the word about Rise Up October, to produce fliers, posters, palm cards and other materials, to support youth who spend the summer on a mission to turn NYC and other cities upside down in preparation of October 24, and more;
- Issue video and written statements laying out why you’re taking up Rise Up October and encouraging others to do the same.
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