From Up Against the Wall to Up in Their Faces
STOP – "STOP & FRISK"
You're young and Black or Latino. You're on your way out to have a good time, without a care in the world. Or you're going to or from work or school, or just hanging out in your hood. All of sudden cops descend on you. They make you turn out your pockets and show some ID; maybe they disrespect you in the process. If you're lucky, it doesn't go any farther than this.
But only going that far is still too damn far! And it happens all the damn time. The NYPD is on pace to stop and frisk over 700,000 people in 2011! That's more than 1,900 people each and every day. More than 85% of them are Black or Latino, and more than 90% of them were doing nothing wrong when the pigs stepped to them.
What gives the NY pig department the right to stop and frisk you just because you are Black or Latino? Who revoked the part of the constitution protecting people from unreasonable search and seizure for people whose skin happens to be Black or Brown? And these kinds of stops can easily go beyond harassment and humiliation. Remember Amadou Diallo, gunned down in a hail of 41 police bullets because they said they thought his wallet was a gun? This is intolerable! It must be stopped. WE ARE STOPPING IT, AND YOU MUST JOIN US IN DOING THAT!
NY pig chief Ray Kelly says his police don't practice racial profiling. The numbers show that Kelly's statement is a lie. Is he stupid, or does he think we're stupid enough to believe this lie. Policies like Stop & Frisk are why there are 2.5 million people in jails across this country. They have criminalized whole generations of our youth. This is intolerable, and it must be stopped. And we are stopping it!
Figures on marijuana arrests in NYC tell the same story. Despite the fact that NY decriminalized possession of small amounts of marijuana, more than 50,000 people were arrested in the past year on charges of possession of marijuana. Even though the government's own figures say the overwhelming majority of marijuana users are white, more than 2/3 of those arrested for possessing marijuana are Black or Latino!
WE ARE STOPPING ALL THIS—JOIN US IN DOING THAT! In the days leading into the Oct 22nd National Day of Protest to Stop Police Brutality, the Network to Stop Mass Incarceration is calling for Stopping Stop & Frisk. We will target this illegal, unconstitutional policy with non violent civil disobedience.
If you are sick and tired of being harassed and jacked up by the cops, JOIN US. If you have had enough of seeing your brothers and sisters, your cousins, your aunts and uncles and fathers stepped to and disrespected by the cops, JOIN US. If you don't want to live in a world where people's humanity is routinely violated because of the color of their skin, JOIN US. And if you are shocked to hear that this kind of thing happens in this so-called homeland of freedom and democracy—it does happen, all the damned time—you need to JOIN US too—you can't stand aside and let this injustice be done in your name.
This Call is issued by:
Carl Dix, Revolutionary Communist Party &
Cornel West, professor, author and public intellectual.
Herb Boyd, author, journalist, Harlem, NY
Efia Nwangaza, Malcolm X Center, Greenville, SC
Rev Omar Wilkes
Contact Us to Get Involved and/or to Sign This Call:
Stop Mass Incarceration: We're Better Than That! Network |