Rise Up October to STOP Police Terror
Debra Sweet | July 19, 2015
Michael Brown, Freddie Gray, Rekia Boyd, Andy Lopez, Tamir Rice…
One after another — and so many others, precious Black and Brown lives — victims of police murder. We think of their faces, and furiously ache for justice. Over 1000 people a year killed by police – yet since 2005, less than 60 indictments, less than 25 convictions! * (see footnote)
Millions languish in prison, generation after generation, Black and Latino brothers and sisters. The spearpoint of a whole matrix of oppression.
People have struggled, resisted, risen up. This must go on and go further – all summer, in many different ways, intensifying.
At the same time, these repeated outrages cry out for a major, national manifestation this fall that states very clearly:
NO! THESE MURDERS BY POLICE MUST STOP – NOW!!
This demonstration will be resistance-based, uncompromising in spirit and, at the same time, pluralistic and diverse, involving hundreds of thousands of people, reaching into every corner of this society and powerfully impacting the whole world.
History has shown that no significant change has been won without mass determined resistance.
We refuse to be derailed by promises of reform that are merely that: promises. We refuse to be intimidated by government repression or by threats from forces of open and unrepentant racism and fascism. We will respond to the urgency of the political situation by mobilizing hundreds of thousands of people to take to the streets to say these horrors must stop.
We aim to amplify the many forms of resistance against police murder and mass incarceration. More important, we aim to change the whole social landscape, to the point where a growing section of people all over take ever-increasing initiative and make it unmistakably clear that they refuse to live in a society that sanctions this outrage, and where those who do NOT feel this way are put on the defensive.
Join us – on October 24 in the streets of New York City.
*Thousands Dead, Few Prosecuted – Washington Post, 4/12/15; Police Killings Rise Slightly, Though Increased Focus May Suggest Otherwise – New York Times, 4/30/15
Right Now: Endorse the Call for Rise Up October