How easy it will be for some of us to continue our day, prioritize our school and work deadlines, make our phone calls, plan our weekends, surf the web, update our statuses on Facebook, and forward emails. But, how easy will it be for us to overlook injustice, become bystanders of the repetitious and suppressive history of power structures, glaze over the news and become desensitized by the dehumanizing treatment and dire circumstances of powerless people? I hope not easy at all.

Let us be reminded of an organization during the Civil Rights Movement called SNCC (Student Non-violence Coordinating Committee), which was comprised of young people who organized peaceful protests and demonstrations to speed desegregation in the South. Let us be reminded of the Freedom Riders and Sit-ins, conducted predominately by college students. What's my point? During these disheartened moments of perceived defeat in our present time, we can reach into time and continue a legacy in which young people have played a significant role as successful activists working towards justice. If they, then why not you? Why not me? Why not us?

I am saddened that 400 years later progress is still illusory. It is an outrage, however, I believe that Love always cancels out hate and the powerless always win against power, at least that is the witness of Scripture and I stand on its promise reminded of the victory of the Exodus and the victory at the cross where a trans-valuation of values occurred: death became life, defeat became victory, hopelessness became hope. I live in and invite you to live in that hope. I invite you to become a wave of resistance in an ocean of hatred that has recede the shores of Justice, but will soon flood society with love!


The fact, however, remains: Three Detectives ACQUITTED on ALL charges concerning the UNJUSTIFIED and BRUTAL SLAYING of an unarmed man, twenty-three year old Sean Bell, who was shot 50 times on the night before his wedding while at his Bachelor party. Another tear in American history has dropped today.

The family, thank God, is seeking Federal intervention.

I wonder, if this was the 50/60 during the Civil Rights Movement, what our leaders Martin and Malcolm would have done. How would people of the Movement respond? I invite your thoughts to ponder this and perhaps their spirits will resurrect within us and in our actions towards protest and resistance.

Unfortunately, the Sean Bell case is no different than Bull Connor and other white supremacist unleashing their dogs, fire hoses and nooses on innocent brown people who they deemed as less than human. All incidents, present and past, share the same evil: hatred imposed by power upon the powerless.

Just think, Mr. Patrick Lynch stood on national television at a podium today and announced "today there are no winners or losers", and "we are grateful for this outcome".

It is of utmost importance to be a present voice letting POWER know that this is a grave injustice that we WILL NOT tolerate and that goes against the very grain of democracy and against the founding principals of this nation as established by our Constitution.

Aren't you tired of society, or power, treating you as a non-human, as less than a full citizen because of your race, gender or sexual orientation?

Personally, I am beginning to become cynical at Justice and closer to feelings of hopelessness, but FAR from giving up!

Let's act today! Let’s revive the Movement together and in love!

Thank you for your time.

United in the Struggle,
Nikia Smith Robert

photos from outside the courthouse

photos from outside the courthouse

As a Canadian, I am outraged at the acquittals of those cops who shot to death Sean Bell. I would urge all who oppose police brutality and racist courts to:

1.) Show up at the next protest against police brutality, particulalrly white people...

2.) Get your organization to call their own demonstrations...

3.) Do whatever you can to get Bloomberg to pressure Kelly to resign...

4.) Urge Canadian tourists/shoppers to boyctt NYC until the racist police force is overhauled...and for that matter Philadelphia, too, until Mumia is released...these cities are not safe and reflect an open hostility to cultural diversity.

One more Canadian who will not set foot in NYC!
peace~davis

thanks for the photos.

any updates about what's happening, if anything at all, outside the court house or the DA's office?

I am a white boy in New Jersey. I hate having to even say that since we are, in truth ALL brothers and sisters, but there it is. This police force is doing nothing more than hunting black children on the streets of New York. What kind of shit is this?? This is America? Diallo? Bell? how many others? The police and the government of NYC are trying to start a war in the city. They WANT riots. Please, please, please don't give it to them. Look to Rosa Parks. Stop the economy from working. Stop the profit from happening. STOP THE MACHINE from KILLING the CHILDREN--Black, brown, white, whatever!! They've got the guns. We've got the numbers. As just a guy from Jersey, i will do everything I can do to help. STOP THIS SLAUGHTER!
a quote:
“There is a time when the operation of the machine becomes so odious, makes you so sick at heart, that you can’t take part; you can’t even passively take part, and you’ve got to put your bodies upon the gears and upon the wheels, upon the levers, upon all the apparatus, and you’ve got to make it stop. And you’ve got to indicate to the people who run it, to the people who own it, that unless you’re free, the machine will be prevented from working at all!” — Mario Savio, Berkeley Free Speech Movement

People's Justice called for a 5:30PM rally today at 125-01 Queens Boulevard outside the Queens District Attorney's office. I arrived at 6:30PM and most everyone was across Hoover Avenue in the park. People were milling around and someone was speaking. It was a mix of people - some ethnic-oriented progressive groups like CAAAV Organizing Asian Communities. Then there were the usual people selling Workers Vanguard, Revolution, 1917 etc. Food not Bombs was there with a banner. A lot of black people, and a lot more young black men than I see at the usual demonstrations. Around 7PM or so we began marching down Queens Boulevard towards Jamaica. Drivers were honking their horns and waving their fists in the air as we passed. Some people, mostly black people, seemed very happy to see us marching and were clapping and waving their fists. But all kinds of people were as well - some Latinos who were dressed in day laborers clothes, south Indians and Guyanese, etc.

I believe the march did not have a permit but I think the police (meaning their superiors) were anxious to not provoke anything that might lead to mass arrests and the like. Who knows what would have happened if the police went into the crowd swinging in the middle of Jamaica, on the night all three NYPD cops walked free after killing Sean Bell? Anyhow, we turned off Queens Blvd. onto Jamaica Avenue and then south on Sutphin Avenue, which is a busy intersection in Jamaica and then we marched to were he was killed. Some speeches were made, and I left. I walked up Jamaica Avenue and got some food. Fifteen minutes later, I see a crowd marching past and I joun them again, and we walk through a busy part of Jamaica. But the streets looked emptier than usual. The march turned and I broke from it and headed home.

i was at the protest tonight. the rally was lame, and lasted too long, but the march took streets and attracted widespread support, even from drivers stuck in the streets.

it is a terrible, but not at all surprising, verdict. cops can gun down unarmed citizens with impunity.

the fact that tens of thousands were not out protesting is even worse. i know that nyc has become a police state with "free speech zones" and militarized goon squads patrolling the subways, but come on people, if you can't rise up after an outrage like this, what is it going to take?

The reactionary judge's verdict and the police murder both are signs that labor is very weak in this country. The capitalist legal system has nothing to offer the workingclass but is in fact the apparatus of the capitalits class used to oppress the entire workingclass, of all colors, genders, sexual orientation, the 80% of the population that sells our labor for less than $75,000 a year, usually much less, or about 160 million adults. The only way anything is going to get better in this country, whether it be the legal system, ending the war machine, the school system, the lack of a health care system or all the other issues of concern to the workingclass, is for labor to organize for a general strike to put an end to the private profit system that is the cause of all our grief. The police terror is perpetrated by the capitalist class and its courts to make the workingclass afraid to fight for decent wages, hours and working conditions. Labor in the US is only 12% organized, and too many union workers do not make enough to live decently. The advances made in the 1960s WERE DUE TO THE SUCCESS OF THE LABOR MOVEMENT OF THE 1930S AND 1940s. It is thanks to the relative prosperity created by labor organizing and a serious fight back on all issues with labor's participation that we could move forward to eliminate legal segregation, expand the women's liberation movement, and have the beginnings of a gay liberation movement, all of which owe their success to the black liberation struggle of the 1960s, to the extent that it managed to succeed. We see today that in fact we did not accomplish very much because without an ever growing labor movement, the capitalist class has done a great deal to destroy our minimal gains. It is time to put an end to capitalism and establish socialism, a planned, non-profit economy where labor can share the wealth that it creates with all as equitably as possible. THE MOST IMPORTANT ANTI-POLICE BRUTALITY, PRO-PEACE, PRO-ENVIRONMENTAL, PRO-WOMEN'S RIGHTS, PRO-GAY RIGHTS, PRO-EDUCATION WORK WE CAN DO IS ORGANIZE LABOR, ALL 160 MILLION ADULTS IN THE US WHO ARE MEMBERS OF THE WORKINGCLASS.

i am surprised by the total lack of spontaneous protest. where is the outrage? i was in harlem early afternoon, malcolm x boulevard, and i didn't even hear people talking about it. there are so many things going so wrong in the city and the country, and yet nobody hits the streets. our collective impotence is not only disheartening, it's bewildering!

YAWN