Wednesday, July 25, 2012

Police violence against Black & Latino youth

Police violence against Black & Latino youth has always been extreme & has crescendoed in recent decades under the guise of the drug war. Police across the country flout the Bill of Rights in the Black community, including harassment, stop & frisk, illegal search & seizures, racial profiling, & summary execution of unarmed “suspects”. To justify it all, police claim the victims were “suspected gang members” & have made the allegation a loaded term signifying violence & “narco-terrorism”.  The morgues & jails have been filled with the victims of this frame-up--the purpose of which is to terrorize Black & Latino youth & prevent the emergence of a new civil rights movement. A simple review of the Bill of Rights shows conclusively there is no possible legal objection to young people hanging out in groups & it is the tendency of young people to do so--whatever the hell you call them, whether the Boy Scouts, the Baptist church choir, or a neighborhood group of friends. Freedom of association & the right to assembly are rights protected by the First Amendment. But  “suspected gang member" has become the mantra to justify violence against Black youth. That is the context of events in Anaheim, CA where thousands of protestors are responding angrily to a pattern of police shootings of Latino men, including unarmed 25 year-old Manuel Angel Diaz last Saturday & 21 year-old Joel Mathew Acevedo last Sunday who police claim shot at them. Police testimony is not reliable. Here a protestor is arrested at Anaheim City Hall on July 24th. This “Report on the Extrajudicial Killing of 120 Black People” points to the need for a new civil rights movement which the police & government are so intent on preventing. (Photo by Jonathan Gibby/Getty Images)
http://mxgm.org/report-on-the-extrajudicial-killings-of-110-black-people/

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