Activists and community members gathered to commemorate those lost and work to prevent police killings in the future. Speakers included Delilah Pierre, field director of the Tallahassee Community Action Committee, Regina Joseph, president of TCAC and the district organizer for the Freedom Road Socialist Organization, Lee Robertson, communications chair of Graduates Assistant United and a member of TCAC and Timothy White, a long-standing member of TCAC and organizer with the Police Crimes Committee.

Organizers talked about their fears of police persecution and the continuing struggle against police violence in Tallahassee, citing how direct police abuse or police negligence contributed to these issues. White spoke about their experience visiting the family of Raheem Reeder and his mother, Latanya Walkins, as well as his respect for her work in the face of adversity.

“Raheem Reeder got 30-plus people to show out for him with real love. Not every victim gets to have support that strong, or love that sustains their name even in death. So we'll provide support where others can't, in keeping a name more than just a still picture. And I genuinely am pushed, and held steady, by the love Ms. Watkins and her family continue to wield for Raheem's sake,” stated White

After the speakers finished, videos of the Watkins family pledging their support for TCAC and the continued struggle for Raheem Reeder’s life were shown to the audience. Candles and flowers were passed out to the attendees and a moment of silence was held for all victims of police brutality in Tallahassee. The event ended with Joseph and Pierre reciting the famous Assata Shakur chant.

#TallahasseeFL #PeoplesStruggles #PoliceBrutality #TallahasseeCommunityActionCommittee

“We have to fight every day and mourn every day. I don’t get a day when I can just mourn and not fight,” said Lakey Love, co-founder of the Florida Coalition for Trans Liberation (FC4TL)

Marching from the drum circle at Railroad Square to the Florida Historic Capitol Museum, members of the march eventually reached the Florida Capitol building, where people spoke about the importance of Transgender Day of Remembrance and their own personal history with coming out as a member of the LGBTQ+ community.

Cas Casanova from Students for a Democratic Society spoke about their personal experience dealing with transphobia and homophobia in their own home, stating, “It makes me cry because I know what they’re feeling. Because I went through the same thing when I was in high school. I was the only gay person I knew who didn’t have accepting parents.” Their feelings echoed the experiences of trans and queer children who face systemic discrimination and alienation even from their own parents. “Waiting till you can escape a toxic situation to finally be who you are is not right.”

Delilah Pierre, field director for Tallahassee Community Action Committee, shared her story of beginning to understand her gender identity and the process of becoming a part of the LGBTQ+ community in Tallahassee. “When I met everyone in the Tallahassee Community Action Committee, and Lakey, and people in the Pride Student Union, and my friends from college, I finally started to not feel alone. I finally started to feel like I had a community. Like I could actually tell people how I felt. And actually, tell people what I faced. I would do anything, to make sure every single trans person in the world has that.”

Members ended the protest with a reading of 41 names of trans people murdered in the year 2021, as well as a moment of silence with candles. Love said: “I wanna remind everyone that we're here to mourn, but we're also here to fight.”

#Tallahassee #TallahasseeCommunityActionCommittee #TransgenderDayOfRemembrance

Tallahassee, FL – On April 20, in less than two hours after the Derek Chauvin verdict was announced, the Tallahassee Community Action Committee gathered at Cascades Park to celebrate this win but also to reiterate the fight for Black liberation is not over. They chanted, “Indict convict, send that killer cop to jail, the whole damn system is guilty as hell.”

The group played music and passed out pizza to rally attendees.

Trish Brown, stated “History has been made today. With so much wrongdoing and killings by the police throughout history with no Indictments, no convictions, no accountability – officers getting away with murder. It was hard for many of us across the nation to believe that Chauvin would be convicted on all three counts and that George Floyd and his beloved family would get justice. Tears of joy fell down my eyes as I heard the final conviction.”

Brown continued, “But, still what about Daunte Wright, Adam Toledo, Breonna Taylor, Tony McDade, Mychael Johnson, Jamie Johnson, Lil’ Nuke and so many others? Our fight is still not over! Not until we get Justice for all victims and families impacted by brutal and fatal police crimes.”

Protesters also denounced HB1, the Anti-Protest Bill that has been passed and signed by the Governor, and vowed they would continue to fight.

#TallahasseeFL #PeoplesStruggles #PoliceBrutality #TallahasseeCommunityActionCommittee

Tallahassee, FL – Despite cold weather, concerns about police and vigilante violence, and results of the election still unknown, several Tallahassee organizations came together for the November 4 national day of protest to push for a people’s agenda, community control of police, and to speak out against Trump’s attempts to steal the election. Concurrently with many events across the country, Tallahassee Community Action Committee, Freedom Road Socialist Organization (FRSO), and SDS gathered a crowd of about 50 people in Cascades Park.

Speaker Trish Brown, one of the Tally 19 and a member of Tallahassee Community Action Committee led the crowd in a chant against Trump and his attempts to steal the election. “Robbed! Deprived! Genocide! President Trump has got to fry!”

Although the polls seem to be in Biden’s favor, the importance of counting all the ballots and defeating Trump’s attempts to stop counting and steal the election cannot be understated. Even when Trump is defeated, the fight will be far from over. Regina Joseph, a Tally 19’er, president of Tallahassee Community Action Committee and district organizer for FRSO, said, “Voting is not the end all be all! The fight for CPAC and police accountability will be far from over.”

Backed by signs reading “CPAC now” and “Black lives matter,” Delilah Pierre, vice president of Tallahassee Community Action Committee and FRSO member led the crowd in another chant, calling for community control of the Tallahassee police department. “TPD kills while on patrol! What do we want? Community control!” the crowd chanted.

“Fighting against police violence and political repression are far more extensive issues than just defeating Donald Trump. We have to make sure people have their right to protest and elect the representative they choose to uphold. But we have to work beyond that to ensure real democracy – and especially accountability —from the Democratic Party and all our politicians,” said Pierre.

Even facing political repression, jail time, and violence from police and white supremacists, Tallahassee continues to fight for CPAC and stand up against Trump and his administration. Activists and organizers are preparing for the continued fight against racist and political repression under either a Trump or Biden presidency in 2021.

#TallahasseeFL #PeoplesStruggles #PoliceBrutality #TallahasseeCommunityActionCommittee

Tallahassee, FL – Community activists gathered in front of city hall September 19 for a protest calling for the formation of an elected Civilian Police Accountability Council (CPAC), and demanding that State Attorney Jack Campbell drop the charges against the #Tally19 – arrested for participating in a protest on September 5 to condemn a grand jury decision that condoned three recent police murders of civilians.

Saturday’s action was organized locally by the Tallahassee Community Action Committee (TCAC) with the support of Tallahassee Dream Defenders, Freedom Road Socialist Organization, More Than A Name, and Florida Planned Parenthood PAC. The action aligned with a national day of protest initiated by the National Alliance Against Racist and Political Repression (NAARPR) in response to escalating repression of protest in Tallahassee and elsewhere.

Giant banners that read: “Black lives matter,” “Community control of police,” “CPAC now” and “Drop the charges” offered a visually striking backdrop for, and reflected the messaging of, speakers, chant leaders and singers at the midday action.

This year Tallahassee has seen the appointment of killer cop Lawrence Revell to chief of police; the killing of three civilians by Tallahassee Police Department in the span of two months; subsequent grand jury decisions to hold none of those officers accountable; and brutality and repression put on full display by at least five local law enforcement agencies and used against protesters on September 5, and since.

TCAC member Satya Stark-Bejnar said on Saturday, “We need CPAC and not a toothless review board. We need community control of the police because communities are people, and people deserve a meaningful say in how they are policed!”

Speaking on the need for community control of the police, longtime community organizer and recent city commission candidate Trish Brown declared, “I’m tired of the police policing the police, because all it’s doing is killing us! I’m tired of my Black city officials and my Black religious leaders turning a blind eye to what’s going on in the Black community, which is constant racial profiling and now repression for protesting it!”

Tesia Lisbon, an organizer with More Than a Name, called for “CPAC now!” and, citing the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., implored city officials, local clergy, and people watching at home to, “Come sit at the table, come hear what we have to say, because the few are fighting for the many.”

Organizers and attendees drew encouragement from one another locally, and in the knowledge that people in dozens of cities were united in simultaneous protest against police aggression, even in the face of escalating political repression.

Local media may have downplayed attacks by law enforcement against local BLM protests, but this local repression is gaining national attention. At a September 19 protest in Chicago, a huge crowd could be heard chanting in solidarity, “Tallahassee 19, drop all charges!”

Ben Grant (he/him) is a Tallahassee, FL activist.

#TallahasseeFL #PeoplesStruggles #PoliceBrutality #TallahasseeCommunityActionCommittee

Tallahassee, FL -The Tallahassee Community Action Committee (TCAC) hosted an online training and workshop, July 30, over Facebook Live on the topic of community control of police. The event was led by experienced anti-racism leaders who are active in the National Alliance Against Racist and Political Repression (NAARPR), and also founding members of their local organizations: TCAC and the group that inspired TCAC’s own founding, the Jacksonville Community Action Committee (JCAC).

“NAARPR, JCAC and TCAC all have political repression and police overreach central to their origin stories,” noted Tallahassee Community Action Committee member Satya Stark-Bejnar.

“Founding members of each organization recognized that state repression through law enforcement and the judicial system, while astonishing on a case-by-case basis, can and must be expected systemically, and that durable, organized bodies – that know to expect this – are better suited to respond to cases of repression, violence and overreach as they arise than individuals going it alone, spontaneous, surprised and starting from scratch,” continued Stark-Bejnar.

“Our movement is powerful because of our work with families of victims of police crimes, our work with police torture survivors, and our work to make sure that local police budgets don’t just bloat every year,” said JCAC panelist Michael Sampson, who opened the workshop. In addition to fighting for justice around specific cases of police violence, JCAC and TCAC are educating their communities about just how much money law enforcement gets from their cities, roughly 40% and 30% respectively, of the entire municipal budgets of Jacksonville and Tallahassee.

“They spend a lot of this money on surveillance,” said Christina Kittle, also of the Jacksonville Community Action Committee, who led the second segment of the workshop. “I learned, from my case, and the four others who were beaten and arrested along with me in 2017, that the Jacksonville Sheriff's Office had already spent over $17 million to illegally surveil us, build files on us- Before that [physical] attack was even launched!”

Sampson and Kittle’s workshop segments were followed by Tallahassee Community Action Committee panelists Delilah Pierre, Regina Joseph and Lakey Love, educating attendees about the difference between appointed police review boards and elected civilian police accountability councils (CPACs), the Law Enforcement Bill of Rights (LEOBoR), and introducing community control of police as an umbrella term that has, since the 1970’s included many specific demands that are currently trending around defund police/re-fund communities, and around police training, policy, oversight and accountability.

“I wanted to make sure people understood what community control of police really represented, said panelist Delilah Pierre. “It's more than a simple change in where the police live, or of their tactics. It's more than ‘review,’ and more than the removal of ‘bad apples.’ It's a real movement to change the structure of the police – to put them under the control of a far more democratic process.”

The workshop also focused on building a statewide coalition to tackle these issues, given limits imposed by LEOBoR, a Florida state statute passed in 1973 and strengthened since, which grants special procedures and special rights to police officers, helping them evade criminal conviction for misconduct, brutality and even murder.

At the end of the workshop, panelists fielded questions from viewers: how to become involved in local, statewide and national actions; who are local and state representatives who support CPACs; and how to bring advocates for specific police-related demands into a unified fight for community control of police overall. To expand the reach of the online workshop, the Tallahassee Community Action Committee’s event was co-hosted on Facebook by the Jacksonville Community Action Committee, the South Florida Afro Pride Collective, the Florida Coalition for Trans Liberation, and the Florida Peoples Advocacy Center, resulting in a viewership of over 1900 and growing.

Mary Correia (she/her) is an activist in Tallahassee, Florida.

#TallahasseeFL #PeoplesStruggles #PoliceBrutality #JacksonvilleCommunityActionCommitteeJCAC #TallahasseeCommunityActionCommittee #CommunityControlOfThePolice

Tallahassee, FL – Coinciding with a National Day of Protest initiated by the National Alliance Against Racism and Political Repression (NAARPR), independently-organized actions took place on Saturday, July 18 in Quincy, Crawfordville and Tallahassee, Florida, representing Gadsden, Wakulla and Leon counties respectively.

In Quincy, which recently saw the removal of a Confederate monument, around 30 people attended a “Peace and Prayer for our Community” march in response to recent local gun violence, with the heading, “Black Lives Matter To Us.”

In Crawfordville, Kendra Smith was the lead organizer of a 100-plus person “Let Your Voice Be Heard” consciousness raising march and rally, marking the first-ever BLM action in Wakulla County. “I felt we needed a peaceful protest in Wakulla because racism and discrimination is very much alive here and has been for a while from what I’ve been told by residents who’ve lived here their whole lives. My goal of the protest was to bring awareness to this and to take action and show our community we can protest and stay peaceful despite people saying we won’t.”

Upon announcing the event, Smith received many death threats and threats of violence against the protesters. Attendees from the Tallahassee Community Action Committee provided amplified sound, medics, a lead truck and a relief car, and donated water, masks and hand sanitizer.

At least 100 counter-protesters were present, jeering at the Black Live Matter permitted start point in a Winn Dixie parking lot; then lining the march route with a taunting gauntlet; and finally filling most of the open space in a public park – where the BLM rally had permit access to the central pavilion. Counter-protesters had planted Confederate flags and Trump 2020 flags in the bushes. Within the first few minutes of the peaceful march, sheriffs made an unlawful arrest of attendee Adam Ferguson, who was released soon after law enforcement learned they were being filmed and that Ferguson had already handed his phone off to another attendee. After the event, Ferguson said, “I think it’s important for us to be in Wakulla County because that’s a place where these racial tensions exist but have always been hidden. Being in their face about it for the first time ever is a step in the direction of acknowledging and healing.”

In Tallahassee, the Tallahassee Community Action Committee (TCAC) led a march and car caravan to the Leon County Sheriff’s Office to somberly acknowledge a recent local victory – incarcerated people are now permitted to wear masks in their pods and living spaces – and to demand anew that Sheriff Walt McNiel free all people who are eligible for bail or bond to save lives and slow the spread of COVID-19, which is rising locally among civilians of all ages, corrections officers and incarcerated people.

Protesters marching on foot took and held the streets from a nearby community college parking lot to the sheriff’s office. The march was led by longtime activist Trish Brown’s familiar red truck and a giant hand-painted banner depicting the demand, “Free them all,” and followed closely by a protective barricade of car caravan vehicles adorned with handmade signs and window paint.

People marching chanted, “Black lives matter,” “No justice, no peace” and “Free them all!” Honks from the car caravan filled the pauses between the chants as the march arrived at its destination. Attendees spaced out to hear speeches criticizing policing and the criminal justice system, and in favor of community control of police and an urgent, science-based COVID-19 response. Most car caravaners joined the on-foot protesters at the sheriff’s office, while some remained in cars nearby, with AC on in case of heat-related health emergencies.

Tallahassee Community Action Committee President Regina Joseph concluded the action by leading the crowd in a call-and-response recitation of an increasingly well-known quote by Assata Shakur, “It is our duty to fight for our freedom. It is our duty to win. We must love and support each other. We have nothing to lose but our chains!”

Satya Stark-Bejnar (they/he pronouns) is an activist in Tallahassee.

#TallahasseeFL #PoliceBrutality #Antiracism #TallahasseeCommunityActionCommittee #FreeThemAll #Quincy #Crawfordville

Tallahassee, FL – Tallahassee residents assembled at 12:30 p.m. at Cascades Park, June 28 to launch a march to the capitol. Organizers and volunteers with the Tallahassee Community Action Committee (TCAC) pre-decorated the capitol steps and breezeway with rainbow flags, banners, signs and hand-painted portraits to honor the Black and brown working-class trans women who led the Stonewall Riots in New York City 51 years ago. Organizers distributed masks, water, snacks, bumper stickers and printed copies of Fight Back! to the 150-plus people in attendance. Attendees spread out across the entire capitol lawn to abide by COVID-19 safe-distancing guidelines.

From the massive steps leading up to the Historic Capitol Building, speakers imparted the history of Pride and of Stonewall, including Sylvia Rivera and Marsha P. Johnson’s long and unfinished fights for justice around housing, police brutality and the criminal justice system, and access to public places. Speakers emphasized that in this moment of broad visibility, people will not be placated by empty gestures that make no material changes to how local policing criminalizes Black, brown, queer, working-class people. Attendees were invited to join the ongoing work of defending the rights of the LGBTQIA+ community with local organizations such as TCAC, Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), Gender Odyssey, and Dream Defenders. These groups and others, led by working-class trans members of TCAC, recently passed a robust and inclusive city ordinance banning the torturous abuses known as ‘conversion therapy.’ TCAC is in motion to ban conversion therapy at the county level as well, in addition to leading local demands for community control of police through a freely elected Civilian Police Accountability Council.

“A riot is the language of the unheard and Stonewall was a riot!” emphasized event volunteer Laura McTighe, TCAC member, Queer Tallahassee co-founder, and assistant professor of religion at FSU. “These words are more than a slogan. They are a strategy and a call to action. When Delilah Pierre was on the mic, she drew us into the litany of everyday abuses that Black trans and queer people are facing here in Tallahassee, into the great and unimaginable ones. And she opened a portal to us to feel with her the cumulative impact of these abuses. Because the point when our transcestors picked up a brick at Stonewall, it wasn’t in response to a first abuse. It wasn’t even the hundredth. It was the millionth abuse. Enough was enough! And here today, enough is enough. We’ve got our backs, because we really are all we got. That is the revolutionary promise we made at BLM Pride, and we’ll be working to make it reality for all our Black trans siblings going forward.”

Hannah Schwadron, TCAC member, Sunday Collective member, and associate professor of dance at FSU stated. “Yes, Pride, indeed! Pride for this town’s real talk and soul prowess, Pride for Stonewall as a living practice and no small slogan, Pride for the radical care of our Black and trans leaders and the orgs they lead, and pride in amplifying the voices, needs, and demands of the unheard.”

In addition to speakers and chant leaders, the rainbow stage was graced by dance, poetry, song, guitar, and the undisputed highlight of the event, an exquisite drag performance by Tallahassee’s beloved Sassy Black. “Drag is usually done in the dark – at night, indoors, lit by spotlight. To see my own cousin take that stage in public, in broad daylight, and to see them met with absolute love and enthusiasm was beyond beautiful!” said TCAC founding member Trish Brown, who is also running for Tallahassee City Commission Seat 2 on a progressive, BLM, community control of police platform. “I want our city to be as diverse, open, affirming and inclusive as this stage here is today.”

And from the mouths of babes: “I was concerned about everything,” said Knox Lee, age 9, as he took a brief respite in an organizer’s AC-equipped vehicle standing by. “I really wanted to do something, so I asked my dad, what can we do? He said we could come here and so we did. I’m glad we are here. Everyone is so kind! I just want good things for everyone.”

Satya Stark-Bejnar (they/he) is an activist based in Tallahassee, Florida.

#TallahasseeFL #InJusticeSystem #OppressedNationalities #WomensMovement #PeoplesStruggles #AfricanAmerican #ChicanoLatino #PoliceBrutality #Stonewall #Pride #Antiracism #TallahasseeCommunityActionCommittee