Tallahassee Alliance Against Racist and Political Repression honors victims of police crimes at Cascades Park
Tallahassee, FL – On June 20, the Tallahassee Alliance Against Racist and Political Repression (TallyAARPR) held its Angelversary rally and vigil at the Lynching Historical Marker at Cascades Park to honor the lives of those killed by racist violence.
Organizers demanded justice for victims of police violence, such as Kohen Wiley, the one-year-old shot and killed by police in Senatobia, Mississippi, as well as those victims who still have not received justice, such as Mychael Johnson and Tony McDade, both killed by Tallahassee Police Department officers within weeks of each other in 2020.
Other groups in attendance included the Tallahassee Immigrants Rights Alliance (TIRA), Tallahassee SDS (Tally SDS), and the Tallahassee District of the Freedom Road Socialist Organization (Tally FRSO).
Aedan Bennett with TIRA said, “In Florida and in all of the southern states in the Black Belt South, Black and brown people are still criminalized just for existing. In Florida, Black children are transferred to adult court and tried as adults at seven times the rate of white children. For immigrants and Latino people in this country, they are thrown in jail for being here ‘illegally,’ a fake crime, where they are denied medical care and access to running water.”
Speaking for Tally SDS, JJ Glueck stated, “Most of y'all remember the first time you bought diapers or baby formula or pacis and that feeling of how good it feels and how nice it is to get to take care of this little sweet child that you're related to or that you know. I can't believe that Kohen Wiley's mom will never get to buy him another thing. It's heartbreaking that she'll never get to buy him another thing.”
Glueck continued, “They don't care about any of our lives. But most of all, they treat Black lives like they're disposable, like they're worth killing for some kind of $20 diaper.”
Brandon Beckett with Tallahassee FRSO spoke towards the broader causes of political repression. “This is what police terror looks like. Not an exception, but a pattern. Not a few bad officers, but a system that chooses the property of the capitalist class over the lives of Black people every single time. Over and over again, we see the same thing happen. A Black person is killed. The officer is put on paid leave. The investigation goes nowhere. The grand jury does nothing. And the cycle continues. It is predictable. It is deliberate. And it is by design.”
The event also highlighted the recent attacks on voting rights around the country. Speaking for TallyAARPR, Delilah Pierre said, “The right to vote for Black people wasn't fought in the courts. It was fought in the streets. The right to proportional representation to end gerrymandering is a fight that the people struggled for, not just a few politicians.”
Pierre continued, “We're fighting because in the 1870s, we fought for proportional representation, for Black people to have real rights. And that fight has not been finished. But let me tell you something. Our generation, our movement, our era, will be the ones to finish that fight, and we will be the ones to win.”