Revolution #240, July 24, 2011

Stop Police Brutality, Repression and the Criminalization of a Generation

OCTOBER 22, 2011:
Join and Build the National Day of Protest

Below is from the Message and Call of the Revolutionary Communist Party, USA (RCP), “The Revolution We Need...  The Leadership We Have”: “The days when this system can just keep on doing what it does to people, here and all over the world…when people are not inspired and organized to stand up against these outrages and to build up the strength to put an end to this madness…those days must be GONE. And they CAN be.”

CLICK FOR POSTER (PDF, 22"x17")

According to Department of Justice statistics, 350 people are killed annually by police nationwide. This number does not include other law enforcement agencies or deaths by tasers, pepper spray, beatings, asphyxiation, or other causes at the hands of police.

Deaths at the hands of law enforcement include:

• Aiyana Stanley-Jones, 7 years old, shot by Detroit police on May 16, 2010.
• Luis Soto, 22 years old, shot by New York City police on August 8, 2010.
• Anastasio Hernández Rojas, 32 years old, beaten to death by U.S. Border Patrol on May 28, 2010.
• Manuel Jaminez, 37 years old from Guatemala, shot by LAPD on September 5, 2010.
• Fletcher “Antoine” Jackson and John Sloan, killed by Oakland police on May 18, 2010.
• Oscar Grant, 22 years old, shot by police in Oakland, January 1, 2009.

The list goes on...

In New York City, on the day you are reading this, the police will stop almost 2,000 people and subject them to humiliating—and illegal—questioning and searches, for any reason or no reason at all. Those stopped are predominantly Black and Latino and rarely charged with a crime. That’s right: almost 2,000 arbitrary stops in one day.

On July 15, 2010, people’s lawyer Lynne Stewart—already serving a 28-month prison sentence—was RE-sentenced to 10 years in federal prison for her work representing one of her clients. Stewart is 70 years old and recovering from breast cancer treatments. She has devoted her life to the legal defense of victims of oppression and repression.

Drug offenses alone account for two-thirds of the rise in the federal inmate population and more than half of the rise in state prisoners between 1985 and 2000. Drug arrests have tripled since 1980. More than 31 million people have been arrested for drug offenses since the “war on drugs” began.

Bradley Manning has been accused by the U.S. government of being the source of the video “Collateral Murder” showing U.S. troops in Iraq massacring civilians, including children. From June 2010 to April 2011, Manning was confined to his cell for twenty-three hours a day. He was not allowed to doze off or relax during the day, and was forced to answer the question “Are you OK?” every five minutes.

In the 1950s, when segregation was still legal, African-Americans comprised 30 percent of the prison population. Sixty years later, African-Americans and Latinos make up 70 percent of the incarcerated population—at a time when that population has skyrocketed.

 

Send us your comments.

If you like this article, subscribe, donate to and sustain Revolution newspaper.