October 22 is the National Day of Protest
to STOP Police Brutality, Murder, and the Criminalization of a
Generation.
Monday, people around the U.S. will be out against mass
incarceration and police abuse.
Find out
where in dozens of
cities.
Stand up for Freedom Fighters!
Four defendants going on trial in Queens, NY
next week, including our national office staffer Bob Parsons, are among dozens
of people who were arrested over the past year in response to the call issued by
Carl Dix and Cornel West to stop “Stop & Frisk.” Twenty of us, including Bob
and myself, were
convicted of disorderly conduct
in Manhattan but were given no jail time.
Now, nineteen face
trial in Queens and Brooklyn. Instead of being put on trial and possibly serving
jail time, people who put their bodies on the line to fight injustice should
be commended for serving public interest.
Yet the Queens District Attorney office is piling
charges on these protesters. Months after the protest, the DA added another
charge that carried another year of jail time, without citing anything
additional the defendants had done. On October 9, the DA changed the charges,
adding "acting in concert" to the charges without informing the defense. This DA
was unable, or unwilling, to effectively prosecute the cops who murdered the
unarmed Sean Bell in 2006 in a hail of 50 bullets, but it is vigorously trying
to put people in jail for protesting injustice.
It is important that this travesty of justice
not be allowed to go down without opposition. We intend to win these legal
cases and to fight them in a way that builds the fight to stop “Stop &
Frisk.” We need your help to do that. October 23 marks the start of the first of
5 upcoming trials. Here’s what you can do:
 On Monday October 22, between the hours of 9am and 5:00
pm EST, call the office of District Attorney
Richard A Brown: 718-286-6000. Ask that all charges for protesting
stop-and-frisk be dropped on:
Carl Dix, Jamel Mims, Robert Parsons and
Morgan Rhodewalt.
The next morning, we'll be demanding the same
thing at a rally as the trial opens. Write me with the DA's response, please.
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Dear Northeast Impeachment
Coalition,
Despite what you may have seen on the screen Tuesday night,
there were little pockets of truth-telling at Hofstra University. World Can't
Wait and the kNOw Drones tour were out with two drone replicas driving home the
message "Stop the Drone War!" and "Humanity and the Planet Come First!" Act-Up
and Queerocracy brought the real lives of people suffering with AIDS to the
media. Access to abortion and birth control was a contended question,
too.
And Green Party candidate
Jill Stein called the debate commission, which kept all third party candidates
out of the debates, "entirely illegitimate." Jill and her running mate Cheri
Honkala were arrested trying to enter the Hofstra campus, and held for eight
hours in a warehouse set up for protest detainees. They were chained to
chairs until after the debate ended. Democracy Now reported this
morning:
Like other
third-party candidates, Stein was blocked from participating in the debate by
the Commission on Presidential Debates, which is controlled by the Republican
and Democratic parties. Stein and Honkala were held for eight hours, handcuffed
to chairs. As she was being arrested, Stein condemned what she called "this mock
debate, this mockery of democracy."
World Can't Wait activists reported, "There was a
group of Obama supporters apparently organized by the campaign, some of whom
took the palm
cards we were passing out and
some of whom tried to deny Obama was using drones and had a kill list. We
challenged the teenagers among them to go home and do their research about those
and the other things we say on the card the next president will continue to
do."
Share this video from a news show in
Cincinnati with those you know
who don't believe Obama has a kill list. Nick Mottern (kNOw Drones) was quoted by patch.com:
Not only are these drone strikes
terrorizing and killing innocent Afghan civilians, says Know Drones' founder
Nick Mottern, of Hastings on Hudson, but they are breeding more hatred among
those in the Middle East toward America.
"It's a heavy weight to bear
morally, but to think you can kill people in other countries with no
consequences, no blow-back, is infantile ... It's adding gasoline to the fire,"
Mottern said. "The people in Afghanistan not only don't like that we're killing
them with drones, but they are insulted that we would send this machine to kill
them like bugs rather than sending someone to fight them."
View more photos here and here.
If I don't spend much time in these messages
demolishing illusions that Mitt Romney would be fit to be run things, it's
because we value the political astuteness of our audience. You came together to
drive out the Bush regime. I appreciated the woman who asked Romney, within the
confines of last night's debate, why he wouldn't be the same as Bush. The
problem is that both Romney and Obama advance policies to the right of
Bush on key questions.
For those who have written me heartfelt messages —
I hope I've answered all you personally — asking whether to vote, or who to vote
for in this election.
Be very engaged in the real issues affecting
humanity and the planet. Join World Can't Wait in speaking and acting in defense
of people's rights against domestic political repression and mass incarceration;
for a real end to U.S. occupation of Afghanistan and threats to bomb
Iran. |
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Debra Sweet, Director, The World Can't Wait |
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| World Can't Wait - info@worldcantwait.org - 866.973.4463 - 305 West Broadway #185, NY, NY
10013 |
Send checks or money orders, payable to "World Can't
Wait":
World Can't Wait
305 W. Broadway #185
New York, NY
10013
For sponsorship level donations, or if you wish to make stock
donations please contact Samantha Goldman samantha@worldcantwait.org, 866-973-4463.
To make a tax-deductible donation of
$100 or more in support of WCW's educational activities, please make checks out
to "World Can't Wait/Alliance for Global Justice," a 501(3)(c)
organization. |
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