The Coalition also works on the Stolen Lives Project, which documents cases of killings by law enforcement agents nationwide. The second edition of the Stolen Lives book documents over 2000 cases in the 1990s alone. Research and collection of data in preparation for a second volume continues, and volunteers for researching or editing are welcomed.
Contact the National Office of October 22nd at: "October 22nd Coalition" [P.O. Box 2627, New York, NY 10009] [oct22national@gmail.com]
O22 Schedule:
Oakland/Bay Area, California
2:30 PM: 73rd & International, Oakland - Assemble & March
4:30 PM: Fruitvale BART Station, Oakland - Rally & Speak-out
Sacramento, California
10:00 AM: Assemble at California State Capitol (1315 10th Street) for rally, workshops, edutainment, and march. E-mail for Sacramento action only: castatewidecoalition@gmail.com
For more information overall, including up-to-date transportation info, contact: [stopmassincarcerationbayarea@gmail.com] [510-926-5207] or go to the Stop Mass Incarceration Bay Area Facebook Even Page.
COMING FROM SAN FRANCISCO WITH NO BART RUNNING? It’s a 45 minute direct bus ride, on AC Transit “O” bus from the SF Temporary Transbay Terminal (the block bounded by Main, Howard, Beale and Folsom) to Fruitvale BART. Bus departs 3:30 PM and 4:00 PM. Fare $4.20.
October 22 at 1:00pm until October 23 at 7:00pm in PDT
Cesar Chavez Park, 14th and E St. in Eureka
Redwood Curtain CopWatch, along with communities all over the country invites, urges you, to stand up to the police state, reject the school-to-prison pipeline and show your solidarity or rage regarding oppression and violence against any and all people for who they are, where they live, what they believe, or what they have or don't have.
Come out on Oct. 22nd and 23rd, Tuesday and Wednesday, united for Days of Action Against Police Brutality, Repression, and the Criminalization of a Generation. Oct. 22nd is the 18th National Day of Protest and the 23rd is the Memorial Day of Chris Burgess who, at age 16, was shot to death by Eureka Police Officer, Terry Liles, who is still an EPD cop and continues to terrorize kids and adults.
We stand in solidarity with courageous prisoners who went on hunger strike this July for an end to torture in CA prisons, in solidarity with kids who, now, if they get in trouble in school, don't get sent to the principal's office but to the criminal in-justice system, put on probation, setting them up for a life of targeting and lock up- as what happened to young Chris Burgess, pursued and murdered for not reporting to probation. We stand in solidarity with people being targeted for living outside, without shelter, with little resources, while affordable housing and living wage jobs are a joke here; we stand in solidarity with all oppressed people, those being beat down, hunted, stolen from, killed, entombed in concrete cells, separated from their loved ones --for migrating to the U.S., for having little to no resources, for being a person of color, for speaking up against imperialism and human right violations, for being young or trans or gay or simply different.
Call 707.633.4493 for more details or check out redwoodcurtaincopwatch.net.
Days of Action Against Police Brutality Oct 22-23
See you there.
Here is the schedule for the 2013 Days of Action Against Police Brutality, Oct 22-23!
No school. No Work.
Bring warm clothes and any other warm stuff for folks who need it. Local call to action is below schedule.
Tuesday, Oct 22 18th NATIONAL DAY OF PROTEST
1:00pm Cesar Chavez Park (formerly 'Hammond Park' 14 & E, Eureka), CONVERGE AND PREPARE FOR MARCH - with lunch
2:30pm starting from Cesar Chavez Park (14th & E, Eureka), MARCH OF RESISTANCE TO POLICE BRUTALITY
6:00pm Carson Park (Carson & H, Eureka -on the Carson end), MUSIC FOR THE PEOPLE- Live Concert, Dinner, Speak Out!
CANDLELIGHT WALK Honor The Victims And Survivors Of State Violence
10:00pm Cesar Chavez Park (14th & E, Eureka), ALL NIGHT VIGIL To Protest the Criminalization of Sleep, with FILM SCREENING
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Wednesday, Oct 23 MEMORIAL DAY FOR CHRISTOPHER BURGESS
midnite-3:00am at the Humboldt Courthouse/Jail: “WELCOME OUT!” Support People Released From Jail At Cold, Unfriendly Hours. Help distribute warm clothes, warm beverage, and a welcoming smile!
9:00am at the Clarke Plaza (3rd & E St., Eureka): BREAKFAST
11:00am starting from Clarke Plaza (3rd & E St., Eureka): MARCH through neighborhoods & to police stations. March for Chris Burgess, murdered by Eureka Police Officer Oct 23, 2006.
4:00-7:00pm at the corner of Wabash & Broadway, Eureka: PROTEST & DINNER Stop the criminalization of youth! Being young is NOT A CRIME! Stop the school-to-prison pipeline!
SACRAMENTO STATE CAPITAL
OCTOBER 22ND NATIONAL DAY AGAINST POLICE BRUTALITY
On Tuesday October 22nd 10 AM-5 PM , thousands of Californians will join 50+ families of those murdered by law enforcement to demand accountability for police terror on the 18th National Day Against Police Brutality. Innocent lives are being taken at the hands of law enforcement all over our country and California is leading that trend. California police in the span of a few years killed more human beings than we have ever executed in the history of death row. Accompanying these deaths is a culture of the code of silence and police investigating themselves and next to never holding these officers accountable.
“We are looking for common sense solutions to curbing the violence we see coming out of our police depts. We want to see police officers drug tested on a random basis and whenever there is an incident, I think most Californians would be surprised that is not happening” said Christina Arechiga organizer of the event who’s cousin Ernest Duenez Jr. was murdered by John Moody of the Manteca, CA PD and who’s families civil trial starts in 2014
Beyond drug testing the families are calling for: cameras on all police officers “body cams” should be worn at all times, civilian oversight committees that are elected and autonomous of police, protection for whistle blowers and accountability from the officer committing the crime to the person at the top letting it happen, to the city councils and the district attorney, all of these people must be able to do their job without pressure or influence from the PD’s or they too must be held responsible. And most importantly the families &communities across this state are calling for dismantling of the POBOR (police officers bill of rights) which was created for police by police and signed by a Governor Brown who’s track record and campaign finance history has proven works largely for Police & Prison Guards Unions.
Kamala Harris was invited to speak and listen to the concerns of the people but she did not respond.
Keynote speaker: Cruz Reynoso, civil rights lawyer, professor emeritus of law, and the first Chicano Associate Justice of the California Supreme Court
Notable Speakers:
* Alex Salazar, ex-LAPD officer speaking on the code of silence
* Elaine Brown, prison activist, writer, singer, & former Black Panther Party chairman
* Cephus Johnson “Uncle Bobby” – Uncle of Oscar Grant murdered by BART police
* Ron Thomas – father of Kelly Thomas a Fullerton, CA homeless man beaten to death by police in July 2011. Three officers are currently starting a murder trial as a result.
Film crews from Director Costa Mantis will be on scene at the capital recording a documentary about the case.
In attendance will be the family of Michael Nida II murdered by Downey, CA Police when they “mistook” him for their suspect and shot him with a machine gun. He was killed on October 22, 2011. A vigil in his memory will be held today, Monday October 21st at the Federal Courthouse 7 pm.
https://www.facebook.com/events/206231896215621/
For additional information please contact:Christina Arechiga 916-370-0846 castatewidecoalition@gmail.com
"Uncle Bobby" Cephus Johnson
Nicholas Heyward Sr on October 22nd National Day of Protest
The Message of O-22
O-22 Public Announcement
"The Call for the 18th National Day of Protest to Stop Police Brutality, Repression and the Criminalization of a Generation"
October 22, 2013 -
“The Call for the 18th National Day of Protest to Stop Police Brutality, Repression and the Criminalization of a Generation is to bring forward the united, powerful, visual coalition of families victimized by police terrorism and to reach into all parts of our community. May our unity bring the change that our children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren so rightfully deserve – freedom, justice, equality, humanity, respect, and a right to take BART [Bay Area Rapid Transit] and a right to walk to 7-11 for Skittles and ice tea without being executed.” - Cephus “Uncle Bobby” Johnson, the uncle of Oscar Grant
This year has seen a sharp escalation in a full spectrum of attacks on the people. Yet even through some of the most repressive attacks that the government has made, there are signs of hope in the nationwide eruptions of outraged people and communities who are fighting back. We have a heavy responsibility going into the 2013 National Day of Protest to Stop Police Brutality, Repression and the Criminalization of a Generation, to stoke these sparks of resistance into a movement that can not only stop but reverse these escalating attacks.
In Bakersfield, CA, 33-year old David Silva was hogtied and savagely beaten to death by law enforcement officers, who had found him passed out on a street. The vicious killing of 30-year old Melissa Williams and 40-year old Timothy Russell, shot down in a hail of 137 bullets by Cleveland police, has been described as a modern-day lynching. As of yet, the thirteen officers are still on the job. In an assisted living home in Chicago, 95-year old John Wrana was killed by police after being tasered and shot with a bean bag round. Witnesses say that Miami Beach police high-fived each other after tasering to death 18-year old graffiti artist Israel Hernandez-Llach. Police around the country continue to kill young Black men with impunity, such as 25-year old Cary Ball, Jr., killed in a hail of 25 bullets by St. Louis, MO police, and 16-year old Kimani Gray, shot seven times by NYPD, three times in the back. In Dallas, TX, the last time a killer cop was indicted was in 1973. Dallas police have killed 250 since, with 68 Black men killed since 2001. Over and over, we hear the justifications for police brutality and killing. The reason Miami-Dade police gave for restraining and choking 14-year old Tremaine McMillian, that he gave “dehumanizing stares,” shows just how much law enforcement expects impunity.
This system also criminalizes certain communities by protecting from prosecution those who kill people of color. From the Bronx judge's overturning of indictments against the cop who killed the unarmed Black teenager Ramarley Graham, to the mistrial declared in the killing of seven-year old Aiyana Stanley-Jones by Detroit police, the system's prosecutors always seem to forget how to prosecute when one of their own is on trial. The soft touch that Florida police gave to Trayvon Martin's killer and the acquittal of racist vigilante George Zimmerman epitomizes the racism inherent in the justice system, as the trial was conducted and covered in the media as though Martin was the one on trial. As a Guardian columnist has written, the verdict of the Zimmerman trial declares “open season on black boys.”
The rise in reports of sexual harassment of and assaults against women and transgender people by police in recent years is staggering, unfortunately nothing new for long-time female activists who have had close encounters with police. There are reports from all across the country of groping and verbal sexual harassment during arrests, especially prominent at recent protests for women's reproductive rights in Texas. Also in Texas, state troopers have subjected women to cavity searches during traffic stops. In addition, a recent U.S. Department of Justice report revealed that hundreds of teens have been sexually assaulted or raped in juvenile detention institutions across the nation.
Scores of political prisoners continue to languish in state and federal prisons, many aged and infirmed. At least four are terminally ill: Maumin Khabir, Mondo we Langa, [Herman Wallace - R.I.P.], and people’s attorney Lynne Stewart. Their conditions demand our immediate concern, as the federal and state prison systems refuse to grant any of them compassionate releases. We cannot allow the denial of their immediate release nor the continued incarceration of any of our freedom fighters.
Meanwhile, as the culture of cop watching becomes more pervasive and more people document the violent acts of law enforcement, the criminalization of recording police intensifies. Among many incidents across the country, a West Palm Beach man was arrested and charged with eavesdropping after trying to film police detaining someone, three NYC cop watchers were arrested during the unrest after Kimani Gray’s killing, a Hawthorne, CA man’s dog was shot and killed by police after the man was arrested for filming a police barricade, and Detroit police roughed up and arrested a newspaper reporter for filming an arrest even after she identified herself as press.
The intrusion of the national security state has reached mind-boggling, unprecedented levels. This year, whistleblower Edward Snowden, a contract employee of the National Security Agency, revealed that the U.S. government has been conducting the largest, most coordinated, and most intrusive surveillance of citizens in human history. Instead of these revelations being treated as evidence of massive governmental wrongdoing, Snowden has been treated like other whistleblowers, such as Chelsea (née Bradley) Manning, who uncovered widespread U.S. war crimes in Iraq and Afghanistan and is now facing 35 years in prison as a traitor. With evidence that law enforcement has singled out for surveillance and harassment groups and mosques simply for being Muslim, and individual and groups of activists for being progressive and leftist, we must not accept these intrusions and these attacks on the people who expose them as the "new normal."
In the face of escalating brutality and repression, people’s determined resistance must grow not just to fight for justice and against repression, but also to change people’s understanding of what is needed and possible today. The critically acclaimed film about the 2009 police killing of Oscar Grant, “Fruitvale Station,” has burned into the minds of many the utter devastation and outrage of Stolen Lives cases. Advocacy and public debate to decriminalize marijuana/cannabis has clarified the epidemic of criminalization and demonization of whole groups of people through unconstitutional raids and mass incarceration, and how the “War on Drugs” is really a war on the poor and people of color. Other efforts seek institutional changes through legal and legislative means, such as the Community Safety Act reform bills and "Floyd" lawsuit victories against the NYPD and the Committee for Professional Policing political action committee in Minneapolis. Efforts by activists and civil rights organizations have also resulted in calls from the UN Human Rights Committee that challenge police violence and impunity. These efforts contribute to the needed societal discourse about the racist reality of “Stop-and-Frisk” policies, police brutality, repression, and the criminalization of Black and Latino peoples, breaking the silence and strengthening the resolve of many to take independent political action to end these daily horrors for so many people. The National Day of Protest welcomes and must give voice to the greatest concentration of diverse and disparate voices and forces in order to beat back the genocidal trend of vicious police brutality and repression, and change the current equation.
Most importantly, people have been rising from the ground up, the most oppressed of our communities grabbing the reins and fighting forward, unafraid! Prisoners have organized with inspiring unity around demands for basic human rights, under conditions internationally condemned as torture, such as confining prisoners for decades in solitary confinement, a deadly lack of concern for their health that kills on average one prisoner per week, and illegal, coerced sterilization of incarcerated women. Most notably, a hunger strike that spread throughout California had up to 30,000 prisoners participating. Families of people killed by police are standing strong and building together for a national movement for their Stolen Lives. Undocumented youth are heroically outing themselves, often getting arrested and deported, in order to fight for their entire community. Tens of thousands rose and continue to rise up in powerful ways for Trayvon Martin, and against racist killings by wannabe cops, cover-ups by real cops, and injustice by the justice system. Muslim, Arab, and South Asian communities are speaking out against unwarranted governmental surveillance and criminalization. People in even the most conservative areas are finding strength in organizing together, such as the growing movement in Dallas, TX and the uprisings in Anaheim, CA. Videos exposing police brutality and misconduct appear every day from all over the nation, made by organized cop watchers as well as everyday people who are fearlessly recording even as police try to intimidate them. All over the world, people have had enough and are rising up in exciting and visionary ways, and this October 22nd is where we bring all our struggles and victories together!
October 22nd is a day that people around the nation have mobilized every year since 1996 for a National Day of Protest to Stop Police Brutality, Repression and the Criminalization of a Generation. It is crucial that we bring forward a powerful National Day of Protest in cities and towns across the U.S. to challenge the ongoing violence against the people. This October 22nd, stand with thousands across the country to express our collective outrage, creativity, and resistance in response to the crimes of this system. On October 22nd, WEAR BLACK, FIGHT BACK!
Join us if there is already an October 22nd event in your area. Create one if you are in an area where there is currently no group organizing. For listings of activities in your area, check the Assembly Points page.To start building for an event in your area, email oct22national@gmail.com
TO ENDORSE THIS CALL, EMAIL THE ABOVE ADDRESS OR SIGN BELOW AND MAIL TO: October 22, P.O. Box 2627, New York, NY 10009, along with your tax-deductible donation to the national organizing effort. Suggested donation $15.00 (paid to "IFCO/October 22")
Name: ___________________________________________
Email: ___________________________________________
Organization: ____________________________________________________________________
* (note if for identification purposes only)
Signature: __________________________________________________________
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