Groups Unite in US to Protest Police Shootings, Violence
TEHRAN (Tasnim) – A coalition of black racial-justice organizations has started a series of coordinated demonstrations in more than a dozen cities across the United States to protest police brutality and shootings.
One of the earliest to kickoff the Movement for Black Lives demonstrations was in Washington, where a small, mostly white, crowd stood near the entrance of the Office of Police Complaints holding signs printed with “Black Lives Matter” and “Stop Killing Black People”, New Yotk Times reported on Thursday.
Most came to the protest with Showing Up for Racial Justice, an organization that encourages white people to rally around social justice causes, especially those related to race in America. The white protesters would not speak on the record, saying they did not want white voices to drown out the concerns of the black activists they aimed to support.
One organizer from another group, the Stop Police Terror Project, thanked the crowd for coming out.
“We have to move beyond being allies to being comrades in this struggle,” Sean Blackmon said into a megaphone aimed at the crowd of protesters. “The police are an institution that investigates itself and finds itself not guilty as a matter of habit.”
Blackmon said he was happy to see white residents among the protesters. “Black people don’t have a monopoly on suffering,” he said. “Black people don’t have a monopoly on being killed by police.”
The protests, called Freedom Now, were organized before the most recent shooting, when an officer in North Miami, Fla., on Wednesday wounded a black therapist who had been trying to help an autistic patient on a street, and who was on the ground with his hands up. The protests also come in the wake of other shootings in Louisiana and Minnesota that have stoked racial tensions in the United States, and ambushes of police officers in Louisiana and Texas.
Demonstrations kicked off early in other cities, unifying the message online with #BlackLivesMatter and #FreedomNow, the name given to the collective call to action.
In New York, Showing Up for Racial Justice posted a series of photographs of their followers at police precincts and of a Black Lives Matter banner unfurled at the entrance of a tunnel.
Other cities including St. Louis, Chicago, Chattanooga, Tenn., Oakland, Calif., and Detroit are planning lunches, meetings, marches and demonstrations during the day.
The message has also attracted support in other countries. Protests have been announced in Malmo, Sweden.
The actions in Washington, included signs and fliers that urged passers-by to call the Office of Police Complaints and demand more transparency in the investigation of the fatal officer-involved shooting in June of Sherman Evans, a 63-year-old man who pointed a pellet gun at officers and refused to drop what the police said looked like a real firearm.
Mayor Muriel Bowser of Washington decided to release body camera footage of the shooting this month although the internal investigation was still in its earliest stages.
A small group of the protesters entered the police complaints office when it opened around 8:30 a.m. to file a formal complaint demanding that the office make the Sherman killing a priority and provide updates.
By 9 a.m., nearly all the demonstrators had left, leaving the street corner quiet and passable for people walking by on their way to work.
