Urgent Meeting Of Stop Mass Incarceration Network

michelle11

Michelle Alexander’s book on Mass Incarceration — your understanding begins by reading it

[Community Bulletin]

Stop Mass Incarceration Network Meeting: Monday, June 16, 2014 – 7:00 PM

The Riverside Church, 120th and Claremont Avenue, Enter at 91 Claremont, Upper Manhattan

#1 train to 116th or 125th Street

You’re Needed to Support the Resistance to the NYPD Assault on Harlem — an Escalation of the Slow Genocide that is Criminalizing Black and Latino Youth.  Our protest and resistance to this outrage must be carried through to make October 2014 a Month of Resistance To Mass Incarceration, Police Terror, Repression and the Criminalization of a Generation.

Come to this meeting to get a report back from  of what’s been happening since the June 4 assault on the General Grant, Manhattanville and Manhattan Avenue Houses.  The authorities have seized center stage – lying about what they did and why – laying the groundwork for even more vicious, brutal, and totally illegitimate attacks. This must be beaten back through determined resistance from all corners of society or else we will see more of these attacks escalate into other communities.

We will be moving on two tracks to build a political strategy to expose what’s behind these NYPD attacks on the Harlem community, and combined with a legal defense plan, that will mobilize a greater to this escalation of the slow genocide of mass incarceration and the criminalization of  Black and Latino youth.  Our protest and resistance to this outrage must be carried through to build a powerful Month of Resistance to Mass Incarceration, Police Terror, Repression and the Criminalization of a Generation in October.

Press Conference and Speak Out Held on June 13: Despite a persistent downpour on Friday, June 13, residents and family members from the Grant, Manhattan Avenue and Manhattanville Houses, the NYC Revolution Club, and the Stop Mass Incarceration Network  held a press conference and community rally to speak out to denounce the June 4 military style assault by over 400 NYPD cops in the General Grant, Manhattan Avenue and Manhattanville Houses.    At one point, a section of the rally marched two blocks to confront a dinner welcoming the appointment of the new police commander of the NYPD 28th Precinct, a Black woman.   Carl Dix, Noche Diaz and several members of families from the Manhattanville and Grant Houses spoke out.

Harlem Residents Share Their Stories of NYPD Terror: On June 4th at 6:00 A.M as helicopters hovered overhead, 400 police in body armor, with weapons drawn, charged down hallways breaking down doors with battering rams in private apartment buildings and two housing projects in West Harlem.

Mothers scrambled to protect their children, especially their teenaged boys.  It was a scene reminiscent of slavery days, or U.S. troops rousting villagers in Vietnam or present day Afghanistan.  Dozens and dozens of young men, ages 15 to 30, were dragged away by cops.  Their bail was set at hundreds of thousands of dollars in some cases and some are facing 15 years to life. 

[] A grandmother stepped from her bedroom to find a gun in her face.  She tried to shield her 7 year old grandson from the cops, who revealed his piggish contempt for the people, saying: “We’ll get him later.”

[] A young woman 16 years old, woke with a gun shoved in her face, dragged from her bed in her underwear she was handcuffed and thrown to the floor next to her mother, while the cops ransacked the apartment. “Now I can’t sleep, even a knock on the door makes me jump.”

[] “All the police and helicopters, radios popping… I thought there was a terrorist attack or something. Then when I saw what was happening I realized it was terrorism. The police was terrorizing the neighborhood.”
 

 

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *