A Happy New Year of Struggle, We had our last meeting on the last Monday (Dec. 29, 2014); about 13 people attended and we had one out of town guess from Philadelphia and a new member who turned in over a hundred signatures on the CPAC petitions. We presented at the meeting a summary of our activities in the Campaign for an elected Civilian Police Accountability Council since 2012. We started our campaign with the goal of building a mass protest movement against police crimes and torture, demanding justice for victims and survivors and pushing legislation through city council that will establish an all civilian, all elected council empowering the people to hold the police accountable for the crimes they commit and with control over police policies and procedures in their respective communities. The first action we took in initiating this campaign was to convene a Peoples Hearing On Police Crimes that would allow victims and survivors to present their grievances to the public and appeal for support. This hearing took place on July 21, 2012 in West Englewood. 150 people attended and 23 victims and survivors testified. Such was our humble beginning. In February, 2013 we held another hearing and about 260 people attended and 26 victims and survivors testified. From this hearing we launched a Spring/Summer offensive wherein we went into the communities hard hit by police crimes canvassing door to door, petitioning/tabling and holding street corner rallies and organizing workshops. The end result was that we collected close to 5000 signatures and marched on City Hall in August, 2013 with 500 people. These people who marched came out of Englewood, Woodlawn, Washington Park, Humboldt Park, Roger Park, Pilsen, Hyde Park, Roseland and Chatham. They were mainly African American but also Latino, white, Palestinian and Asian. There was also a strong labor contingent of UAW local 551 and retired steel workers. In other words we had built an organized, unified movement of protest for CPAC and for justice for victims and survivors of police crimes and torture. While we were busy building a movement against police crimes in Chicago we also could not ignore the national scope of this problem given the Travon Martin case, Oscar Grant, and the increasingly tense situations developing in New York, Texas, California, Florida, St. Louis and on our borders with Mexico. Also the FBI attacks on the Peace and Solidarity movement and the Arab American Action Network had our attention from the very beginning. So we partnered with Angela Davis and Tracey Mathews and called for a National Forum on Police Crimes. This forum, held May 17-18, 2014 attracted over a thousand people including the rally that was given at Trinity United Church of Christ. Now as we approached the Summer of 2014 we had collected well over 6000 signatures of people who not only signed our petitions but declared themselves supporters and volunteers for the campaign. The day we were participating in the Bud Billiken Parade in August is the day Michael Brown was murdered and the day the uprising started in Ferguson. It was also the day cops tried to put us out of the parade and the people rallied in our favor yelling Leave them alone, stop police crimes! We knew at once that this uprising in Ferguson was the rosy dawn of rebellion. We immediately joined in the solidarity demonstrations here and went to Ferguson to join the protest. As we have pointed out repeatedly in public statements, speeches at rallies, numerous press releases and on social media we support unconditionally this youth-led rebellion which is quickening the pace of the struggle against police crimes and an utterly corrupt criminal justice system. Now we have over 10,000 people signed up our campaign and they are mainly concentrated on the Southeast Side. We have over 200 (mostly youth) volunteers from the affected communities and we are developing concrete working relationships with community based organizations, churches, youth groups and grass roots leaders. We are opening a satellite office (hosted by HoodHope) in the Woodlawn area. We have been in the streets and in meetings with BYP100 and We Charge Genocide. We have young people increasingly joining our ranks from the neighborhoods and colleges. And of course the driving force of our movement to enact CPAC is the many survivors of police crimes and torture we work with on a daily basis. Moving forward on this basis we are calling upon the communities we work in and all progressive organizations we work with to join us in a march of ten thousand on the Federal Building and City Hall this August 29, 2015 the 50th Anniversary of the Watts Rebellion. If we continue our base building in the communities potentially we will be able to mobilize the masses in the neighborhoods that are hard hit by police crimes into a much needed organized force for radical change. In pursuit of this path of struggle we are engaged with the various contingents of the young freedom fighters who are leading the protest and demonstrations. Since we were founded in Chicago 41 years ago we have fought on this issue of police crimes. We were founded in the wake of the murder of Fred Hampton and Mark Clark and the freeing of Angela Davis from the hands of her would be murderers so we have known victories and defeats in these struggles. We were agitated into existence by the illegal, criminal acts of the FBI and CIA’s counter intelligence program (known as COINTELPRO) aimed at the destruction of the Black Liberation Movement and all progressive, democratic struggles against the social savageries of capitalism. There are those of us who have endured the harsh winters of repression, many were killed, many were imprisoned and some died in prison and some were released decades later, some were forced into exile and too many are still imprisoned. Our movement has never been disconnected from those punished by the system because they dared to struggle, from Assata, Mumia, Mutulu, Leonard Peltier and our movement has never hesitated to defend those who the system would currently victimize because they stand for justice from the Cuban Five, to the Peace and Solidarity Committee to Rasmea Odea (a Palestinian community activist here in Chicago) and Iggy the young brother just arrested for protesting against police crimes. So there you have it! A brief summary and comment on the last meeting of the Stop Police Crimes Organizing Committee in 2014. We go into the new year of 2015 inspired by the immortal words of our Black National Anthem: Facing the rising sun of our new day begun, Let us march on till victory is won!!!! Yours in unity and struggle, Frank Chapman, Field Organizer CAARPR
Posted on: Fri, 02 Jan 2015 16:00:55 +0000
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