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United National Antiwar
Coalition
Statement in Support of
Baltimore Protests
In the United States every Black man, woman and child
risks becoming the victim of an extra judicial killing. Because the government
does not record these inconvenient facts, activists are left to determine that
police kill at least 1,000 people every year. While chattel slavery ended 150
years ago, the U.S. still has a very active slave patrol system and it is
carried out by police officers around the country. When they injure and kill
they do so with impunity.
The medical examiner in Baltimore, Maryland ruled
Freddie Gray’s death in police custody a homicide. The filing of charges against
six officers by the State Attorney is a necessary step but by no means assures
justice in this case or a change in regard to a deep and systemic
problem.
The system of mass incarceration began to take shape
as a direct reaction to the liberation movement of the 1960s and 1970s. It
results not just in imprisonment but police brutality and murder and not just in
Baltimore but across the country.
The death toll from police violence went unnoticed
until people rose up as they did in Ferguson, Missouri, Baltimore, New York and
in countless other cities. The inspiration from the people of Ferguson led to
thousands of protests and the Black Lives Matter movement. However that movement
has yet to lead to the successful prosecution in a case of police
brutality.
The United National Antiwar Coalition supports the
right to protest against police murder. Calls for non-violence cannot be used as
a smoke screen to silence the right to demand redress. People in the U.S. are
encouraged to support uprisings around the world if they are sanctioned by our
government, yet are told to condemn any protest taking place in their own
country. There will be no end to police violence if there is not a loud and
unified cry for justice. That cry is only heard when thousands of people march
in the streets.
The Obama justice department has declined to pursue
federal prosecution in the killings of Michael Brown, Eric Garner, John Crawford
or any of the hundreds of other cases of Black homicide at the hands of police.
While the president claimed a previously unknown right to assassinate American
citizens, and did so, the justice department also claims that the legal bar is
“too high” to bring police to justice when they assassinate at will.
The mass movement spawned in Ferguson and now taking
shape in Baltimore must be clear in its demands. The federal government must
prosecute killer police and every community, particularly those of color which
are disproportionately victimized, must have direct control of their local
police departments.
Politicians can no longer be allowed to hide behind
useless “police/community relations” gimmicks which provide no protection from
police brutality. Black faces in high places as mayors, district attorneys and
police chiefs are also not a means of ending the criminalization of Black life.
Reform is just another word for inaction and for maintenance of the status quo
which grants the right to kill without fear of punishment. Any call for yet
another panel or blue ribbon commission is useless if it does not also discuss
community control, and with it the right to hire, fire and if need be prosecute
local law enforcement.
The United National Antiwar Coalition (UNAC) stands
with the people of Ferguson, Baltimore, Chicago, Staten Island, North Charleston
and every other locale where a Black person has been killed by police.
Black lives matter!
End mass incarceration!
Community control of police!
Prosecute police brutality!
5/3/15
Shocking Facts About
Baltimore
Baltimore is a city of 622,000 that is 63 percent African
American. A quarter of the city's inhabitants live in abject
poverty.
148,000 people, or 23.8
percent of the people in Baltimore,
live below the official poverty level.
Official
unemployment is 8.4 percent city
wide. Most estimates place the unemployment in the African American community
at double that of the white community. The official national
rate of unemployment for whites is
4.7 percent, for blacks it is 10.1.
White babies born in Baltimore have six
more years of life expectancy than
African American babies in the city. African American babies in
Baltimore are nine
times more likely to die before age
one than white infants in the city. There is a 20-year
difference in life expectancy between
those who live in the most affluent neighborhood in Baltimore versus those who
live six miles away in the most impoverished.
92
percent of marijuana possession
arrests in Baltimore were of African Americans, one of the highest racial
disparities in the US.
Over $5.7
million has been paid out by
Baltimore since 2011 in over 100 police brutality lawsuits. Victims of severe
police brutality were mostly people of color and included a pregnant woman, a
65-year-old church deacon and an 87-year-old grandmother.
Another little known fact: At least 300 high-ranking
sheriffs and police from agencies large and small – from New York and Maine to
Orange County and Oakland, California – (including Baltimore & Ferguson PD)
have traveled to Israel for privately funded seminars in what is described as
counterterrorism techniques.
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