News and Views from the People's Struggle
Minneapolis, MN – “All of us were brutalized. I saw my friends kicked, punched, pushed into walls, put in chokeholds,” said Lauren Pineiro to a 100-person crowd that nearly filled the University of Minnesota lecture hall. “The chief of police even groped a student.”
Fight Back! is circulating this statement from the Committee to Stop FBI Repression.
The Tampa 5 – Gia Davila, Lauren Pineiro, Laura Rodriguez, Jeanie K, and Chrisley Carpio – are the five Students for a Democratic Society protesters at the University of South Florida who were attacked by campus police and are now facing five to ten years in prison for protesting Governor Ron DeSantis' attacks on diversity programs and all of higher education.
New York, NY – The police union that represents NYPD officers, the Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association (PBA), has intervened in an historic legal settlement in an attempt to prevent new regulations on how police respond to protests.
Chicago, IL – In Chicago, the movement to stop police crimes is demanding city hall act to block the most recent attempt by the Fraternal Order of Police to undermine police accountability. Chicago organizers, district councilors and alderpersons spoke in a press conference Thursday September 14, to demand the Chicago City Council vote down an FOP-aligned arbitrator's decision to give officers accused of serious misconduct the choice of behind-closed-doors arbitration instead of going before the Chicago Police Board.
Seattle, WA – On September 14, over 200 people came to an emergency rally and march organized by the Seattle Alliance Against Racist and Political Repression (SAARPR) to fight for justice following the murder of Jaahnavi Kandula by Kevin Dave, an officer in the Seattle Police Department.
Milwaukee, WI – On September 11, at a Judiciary Committee meeting of the Milwaukee County Board of Supervisors, community members took a stance against increased funding for the Milwaukee County Sheriff’s Office (MCSO). The MCSO is seeking a 34% budgetary increase to “look into” the conditions of the county jail and solve their “staffing shortage.” There have been six in-custody deaths within the past year, with no changes in policy or preventative action taken by the MCSO.
Kerrie Hirte gave testimony about the treatment of her daughter Cilivea Thyrion, leading up to her death in December of 2022, describing the mental health care her daughter received as inadequate, lacking privacy and dehumanizing.
“Money is given to you to use wisely, but if it’s not used for the services we need, why give it to them? They’ve been given more money, and yet still people are dying inside the jail. They’ve been given all these things and yet here I am as a mother without a child,” said Hirte. She pledged to keep showing up and fighting in order to stop any other families from going through the same experience.
Representatives of the MCSO stated that more funding would help with better staffing and could help prevent further issues within the jail. County supervisor and chair of the Judiciary Committee, Ryan Clancy, pushed back against this narrative. Clancy asked the MCSO why they hadn’t included any policy changes or action plans in their proposal for a larger budget. He also referenced how the correctional officers have seen two recent raises, yet conditions in the jail have not changed.
“Sheriff Ball ran her campaign on accountability and transparency, and yet there has been none. We need an elected accountability council of the Milwaukee County Jails, now!” stated Tiffany Stark, a member of The Milwaukee Alliance and Coalition for Justice for Brieon Green. The need for transparency and accountability was stressed by all community members who spoke at the meeting, highlighting the larger struggle for police accountability that has been a nationwide struggle.
In order to prevent further deaths and significantly improve the conditions inside the jail, the status quo cannot remain. The Milwaukee Alliance and the Justice for Brieon Green Coalition are demanding the creation of a civilian accountability council with the power to hold the MCSO accountable, control its budget, oversee all investigations regarding issues inside the jail, and create MCSO policy.
Fight Back News Service is circulating the following statement from Kobi Guillory, Co-Chair of the Chicago Alliance Against Racist and Political Repression.
On Thursday, September 7, the people's movements won another historic victory with the removal of the gang database by a unanimous vote of the Community Commission for Public Safety and Accountability (CCPSA). We express our utmost congratulations and gratitude to all the organizations and community members who fought for years to erase the gang database, and to everyone who fought to pass the Empowering Communities for Public Safety (ECPS) ordinance which made the CCPSA a reality. Our movement is powerful and it is growing.
The gang database was a tool of racial profiling which targeted Black and brown people as young as 9 years old by labeling them as gang members, creating barriers to housing and employment and increasing the frequency of violent interactions with police. Youth organizations have led the struggle against the gang database since 2017 and managed to stop earlier iterations of the database from being implemented by the previous mayor, Lori Lightfoot.
Erasing the gang database is exactly the kind of policy change ECPS was intended to enact and make permanent. When Lightfoot tried to instate a new version of the database in 2022, the newly formed CCPSA put a stop to it, and that same Commission, led by community and labor organizer Anthony Driver, scrapped the database altogether on September 7th.
In recent years we have seen monumental wins in the struggle for police accountability such as the passage of ECPS in July.
2021; the elections of Brandon Johnson, progressive alderpersons and a majority of pro accountability District Councilors in February and April this year; and freedom for survivors of police torture and wrongful conviction such as the Hernandez brothers. However, the Fraternal Order of Police (FOP), which fights tooth and nail to maintain police impunity, will try to undo all our victories. We encourage all our allies in the movement to stay ready for the police to try reinstating the gang database through some other avenue, and to fight against the FOP's current attempts to bypass accountability by referring even the most severe cases of misconduct to private arbitration instead of the public Police Board.
As we celebrate this win, now is also the time to further consolidate the gains of ECPS by getting more people to engage with the CCPSA and their local District Councilors, pushing policies such as the Peace Book and Treatment Not Trauma, and opposing all efforts of the FOP to undermine the new system of police accountability. This victory, like all people's victories, has come through unity in the struggles of many diverse communities across the city. We need to maintain this unity as we continue to struggle for the empowerment of the people to truly hold the police accountable.
Los Angeles, CA – On September 9, 40 friends, family and community members rallied in front of the East LA Sheriff’s station demanding justice for the in-custody brutal murder of Adrian Rios, a 28-year-old Chicano. They were joined by the family of David Ordaz Jr., who was killed by East LA Sheriff’s deputies.
Atlanta, GA – Community members gathered outside of the Georgia Supreme Court on the evening of September 8 to display their opposition to the extreme state repression that was brought upon activists in the movement to Stop Cop City.
Grand Rapids, MI – On the morning of Wednesday, September 6, cries demanding justice for the murder of Patrick Lyoya resounded from the steps of the State of Michigan Building. There, a three judge Court of Appeals hearing for the ex-police officer, Christopher Schurr, was taking place. Schurr killed the 26-year-old Congolese immigrant Lyoya with a point blank shot to the back of the head during a traffic stop in April of 2022.