"Hundreds Gather in Chicago on October 22 to Protest Police Brutality and State Repression" October 23, 1996 1:51 pm November 10, 1996 7:09 pm RE: Overview of National Day of Protest From: VX "This system has failed us, it was never here for our interest. These public servants that we pay to protect our lives, property, they're not doing it." - Imam Ramee Muhammed of Masjid Al-Qadir, friend of Bilal Ashraf, murdered by police on September 24. "I didn't come out here to talk I didn't come out here to play. Put your hands in the air and say 'off these damn pigs if they gonna kill my people.' Put your hands in the air and say 'off the pigs' - can I hear that." - young Black man speaking at October 22nd protest Tueday's protest assembled in Chicago's Daley plaza, a stones throw away from a number of different government institutions. City Hall and the County building was directly across the street. The State of Illinois building just north of that. At times the rally appeared a sea of black coats, hats, berets, sweatshirts, jeans, skirts and black ribbons. Protest stickers were on everyone. One young Black woman liked them so much she put three on her face. Hard to miss in the growing crowd, that ranged from three to four hundred during the rally, was a large metal sculputre. Hemmed in by metal bars and turning on a rusty metal base, were two pictures of a dreadlocked Black man being brutalized by the cops. The photos depicted the 1978 beating of MOVE member Delbert Africa by the Philly police. Music accompanied the photos - the theme song for the Nazi air force. Over the music, the names of victims of police brutality was read. The sculputer who made this sat a top his artwork holding the symbol for the National Day of Protest over his head. He calls this street art, because it goes to where the people are. He's part of a group of artists who make "Sculptures of Discourse." They want to provoke thoght and discussion. The strongest presence in the crowd was that of the victims of police violence. A banner declares "Justice for Jorge Guillen," his painted portrait still glowing with the life that the police stole in a callous act of brutality and murder. It's carried by his sister and widow. Standing with her two daughters, Wanda Hogue held aloft a sign with the tortured face of her son after he was bludgeoned by nine Washington D.C. police officers in a case of "mistaken" identity. "Remember Eric Smith" the sign demanded, "Stop police brutality." Six months after that picture was taken, Wanda and her mother had to watch as Eric was beaten and gunned down by two suburban Chicago cops. In another part of the crowd, a young black man stood solemnly, his head wrapped in a kaffiyah. He is a Muslim and holds a homemade sign that's part English, and part Arabic. Across the top, are the dates 1970 - 1996. "Executed by the Chicago Police," it reads, "Bilal Ashraf." The most powerful image was the line that formed in front of the rally speakers, that stretched out on both sides like an honor guard. Clutched in each persons hands, a poster board with the name of someone who has been beaten, tortured or killed at the hands of the police. The lettering large enough for any passerby to easily read. "Donnell Lucas: Murdered by Chicago Police August 7, 1992," "Michael Lowery: Murdered by Chicago Police June 20, 1993," "Tommy Yates: Murdered by Chicago Police October 5, 1993." With fifty posters and fifty volunteers, it's an irrefutable indictment of police brutality, and a moving tribute to their victims. The emcee for the event, Wallce "Gator" Bradley of United in Peace, opened the rally, "What you gonna hear, are some victims of police brutatliy. Those who are not here to speak for themselves, their loved ones or friends will speak for them." There was Ilsa Guillen, who's late husband Jorge was beaten and asphyxiated by the Chicago police. Shirley Aljeos, beaten in a police station backroom. Wanda Hogue spoke for her son Eric, killed last April with six police bullets. Akua Njeri, herself shot when when her husband, Black Panther leader Fred Hampton, was assasinated by a police death squad, and who's son, Fred Hampton, Jr., was railroaded 3 years ago into prison. Death row was represented on behalf of Aaron Patterson, sentenced to death on a confession extracted from police torture, and Manuel Salazar, who's re-trial for killing a cop in self defense is currently in progress. Bilal Ashraf, gunned down September 24 by Chicago police, was represented by his brother and by Imam Ramee Muhammed, from his mosque. Reverend Michael Yasutake called for a moment of silence for all those victimized. While there were many different people who came to the protest, it was clearly a young crowd - black, white and latino. Five students from Sullivan high school on Chicago's far north side came specifcally because they had been beaten by police. An estimated 40 students came from Prologue, a north side alternative high school of about 100 students. Their reasons for coming was the constant police brutality "Everyday, there would be a lot of people, we be standing outside, they come up to you, throw you on the car, start choking you. I see this everyday." As another student pointed out, a day without police harassment would be exceptional. There was a small group of students from Lincoln park high school as well. There would have been much more had the school not put security guards and police at each entrance and exit to the freshman academy. A walkout had been planned but the adminstration caught wind of it and threatened expulsion for those leaving. Reportedly at least 20 students got stopped and put in dentention. The few who did make it out may be expelled. Despite the heavy clampdown, the vast majority of freshman - perhaps 700 - wore black, as well as students in other grades. There were reports of students wearing black in south side Morgan Park high as well. The mood at the rally and march was one of pain, anger, defiance and determination that police brutality had to go. A number of young Black men speaking openly derided the police as "pigs." A woman from Cabrini Green stood on the stage with her little son and made it clear that the police will NOT be allowed to lay a hand on her child. People wanted to more than just register discontent and leave it at that. The solutions took different forms: Going to the polls to support a former African-American judge, Eugene Pincham, in his bid to unseat current Cook County State's Attorney Jack O'Malley; Actively "policing the police" to defend and protect the young men who are being criminalized by the authorities; building mass movements and a climate of resistance to police brutality; and at times impassioned calls for what ammounted to an eye for an eye when the police commit their crimes. The march covered the sites of power and brutality in the downtown area. The federal building - which one activist described as the "crack kingdom" in a reference to the CIA's dirty hands in the growth of the rock cocaine trade. There was a stop at the Immigration and Naturalization Service office. As the marchers gathered in front, a line of police horses assembled across the street. A clear show of force from the authorities. Undaunted, a very enthusiastic Black man stood near the INS building and gave the police a never ending stream of insults and comments about their corruption and brutality. A lifetime of abuse being paid back on the spot. A speaker from Guatemala, a former torture victim, echoed a similiar viewpoint. "The CIA, the INS, the Chicago Police is the same trash". It was starting to drizzle at the next stop, the Metrolpolitan Corrections Center and Chicago's very own downtown high-rise prison. The issue of super-max prisons - what one speaker described as "living burial grounds," was brought to the crowd - prisons where 23« hour-a-day lockdowns are the norm and protest is rewarded with being chained for days to ones bed. He read a statement from some of those incarcerated: "You can bury us and hide us away in these super max prisons and try to pretend like we're not here, just as you can try to hide the crimes of police brutality against the people, but you will not shut us up." Wallace "Gator" Bradley also addressed the issue of criminalizing a whole generation - "All you young brothers and sisters from all the alternative schools, this is the alternative that the system has for you. This is the federal joint." That point was made earlier by Akua Njeri, of the National People's Democratic Uhuru Movement, "Used to be a time when you go talk to somebody - 'oh, my son is locked up,' - you whisper about it. Now that's all you hear on the bus. That's all you hear in school. That's all you see. People going down with these babies to visit their daddies. To visit our children. And then you get treated like shit when you're down there. So you can imagine what they're experiencing, they're being locked up. We got to build a movement in our own interest and not look like this is an isolated incident. This U.S. government has waged war against us." If there was anything that was a common bond in the crowd, it was that for the most part, as "Gator" said, that everyone out there knows someone who's been brutalized or harassed by the police - including themselves. There was the forty-one year old Black man who took the same bus every night for ten years on his way to work. One day getting pulled off and roughed up because some cop thought him a suspect - the same thing happening another time when going to get food because a cop thought "some black guy was doing something." His conclusion was a common one among those at the march - "These cops ain't good for nothing" One Streetwise vendor who had watched the march go by, told of having to go to 11th and State to get his son - who worked as a security guard downtown, and was picked up as a suspect in a robbery. He wasn't the one but it didn't make any difference to the cops - he was dragged down there. While waiting, he saw a man locked up to the wall, begging and begging to use the bathroom, due to a weak bladder. The cops refused, the man pissed on himself and the urine formed a pool at his feet, trickling next to the shoe of one of the police. The cop was furious and beat the man to "to the ground." The march was a magnet for people who were brutalitzed by the police. One man from Haiti brought copies his OPS complaint from a number of years ago. He was doing a one man protest over US policy on Haiti while Barbara Bush was doing a book signing. He was arrested and insulted in a racist manner by police - they told him to get back on the bannanna boat. He was never charged or told why he was taken to jail. Residents of a west side Chicago community brought a flyer they had done denoucing the police department's handling of a shooting of a 11-year-old child. People are angry that the police made it into a "drug related" issue. The lawyer for the young man arrested asserts that police beat a confession out of the youth. A Latina woman came to the protest who along with a number of family members, was beaten up by the police on the night they were celebrating her mom's birthday. One of her brothers who was arrested has epilepsy, and the police did nothing while he had two siezures while in lockup. A two year old nephew was handcuffed. Fortunately, one of her brothers was able to capture brutality of the police on video tape. The march makes it's final stop in front of the State Street headquarters for the Chicago police department. Metal barricades were set up fencing in the hundred or so remaining protesters. Dick Reilly, active in the fight for Justice for Jorge Guillen, remarked, "Fred Hampton is here with us. Mark Clark is here with us. Jorge Guillen is here with us. Bilal Ashraf is here with us. Leonard Bannister is here with us. Donald "Bo" Lucas is here with us. Trinity Bownman is here with us. Gilberto Cruz is here with us." The victims have come to their killer's lair to make their indictments. In the words of Arriba, spokesperson for the RCP, the action was just the beginning. "This is an unprecended event, this is historical, we are taking the future into our hands and we are saying that this generation is not going to go down in your control. We represent the people cause there is nobody else." While time will tell the impact of the march, a number of people offered their opinions. What gave Wanda Hogue satisfaction was seeing the multinational crowd protesting this issue. Delbert Tibbs, a former death row inmate and current anti-death penalty activist commented, "This was absolutely necesary, indespensible, youthful and what we have to do to change the country." Twenty-year-old Lisa, who came in one of the high school delegations, dropped her passive acceptance of police brutality as a result of the protest. "The way the cops throw people around - I thought that they could do whatever they want - that's what I thought. No one really protested against it until we started hearing people protest against it. And so we decided to protest against it too. Everybody put up with it because they was afraid to say anything. I seen people, they would say something, the cop would just hit them with a club - they were so mean. But we found out that you don't have to put up with that, they can't do that." Kenny X, Chairman of the southside Black Panther party, echoed the sense that something new had come into being when he closed out the rally. "When I speak out against oppression of Afrikan people, when we speak out against the oppression of poor people around this country we're victimized by them. We can't have a voice, but I'll tell you something. We got a voice and it's a national voice. It's a national voice and it's gonna speak out against the racist funky-dog ractionary system. RIght on! We got it and we aint going nowhere. Repression breeds Resistance. And we gonna resist with everything we got. You can jail the revolutionary movement but you can't jail the revolution. Cause the revolution lives."