March 1999

New York protests demand end to executions by cops

New York—"There is rage in the streets—the moment is now for change." So proclaim the flyers, speakers at the many rallies, newsletters, radio talk shows, and any Black person you talk to about the Feb. 4 execution of Amadou Diallo, a West African immigrant, by four of "New York's finest." The cops shot 41 bullets at him for no reason except they thought he looked like a suspected rapist, that is, he was a young Black man.

The killing has caused near-continuous demonstrations throughout the city. The first two weeks the demonstrations were almost entirely Black. The media played up Al Sharpton and Black Muslims as "spokesmen" for Diallo's parents and wrote up the demonstrations to make whites seem unwelcome. But at a demonstration of about a thousand people at City Hall, Feb. 22, hundreds of whites, Latinos and Asians joined with Black protesters. Speakers extolled the multiethnic composition of the crowd, which was unanimous in blaming Mayor Giuliani for the killings. There were young and old people of every color, and contingents from white churches, Jewish groups, schools and left organizations. Some groups called for a shutdown of the city by strikes, boycotts, and so on.

Eight gay rights activists chained themselves together and lay down in the street, tying up traffic, and were arrested. Calvin Butts, a prominent Harlem minister, thanked the gay and lesbian movement for its support during his speech at the rallly. It was an important moment of mutual support between the two movements.

Not since the cop torture of Abner Louima in 1997 has there been such an outpouring of protest. Never before have the protests been almost daily and continued for so long. The killing has brought together African-American, Caribbean and African people. Every Black person is saying "it could have been me."

White people are discussing the killing as well, in houses of worship and in the streets, perhaps because of the unmistakable viciousness and intention of this murder. The local media even went to Guinea to cover Diallo's funeral. Unfortunately there was no attention paid when one of the cops who shot Diallo, Kenneth Boss, shot Patrick Bailey, a 20-year-old Black man in 1997, and left him to bleed to death.

The media is stressing the fact that Diallo had no police record, but the protest movement is stressing the fact that the police hassle and arrest Black youth all the time. Having a record is no indication you are doing something for which you should be shot. At meetings and demonstrations, people are discussing the long list of Blacks and Latinos murdered by the cops in the past few years and demanding an end to the racist killings. Everyone blames Giuliani for the increase in cops killing people, since he always extolls the police.

The killers were members of the elite Street Crimes Unit, which Vicente "Panama" Alba described at a meeting of the Citywide Coalition to Remove Giuliani, Feb. 16. The unit has grown from 100 to 490 cops under Giuliani's regime. The city refuses to release the unit's racial composition and where its members live, but, Alba said, you can bet they are 99% white and suburban. The criteria for membership is being "aggressive" and their motto is "We own the night."

Alba describes them as young white men full of racism who come into the plantation to control the city's minorities. He connected the killing to the periodic roundups of Black and Latino youth under the pretext of fighting gangs. "We are supposed to accept them killing people and our losing our civil liberties as a trade-off for the reduction in crime, but that is the foundation of fascism," he said.

At the Feb. 16 meeting in Harlem, many people connected police brutality to loss of money for schools, hospitals, welfare and housing for Black people. All demanded justice from a system that is not likely to give it. Others demanded the laws be changed to put some teeth into the Civilian Review Board, to end the rule that the cops can't be questioned for 48 hours after they shoot someone, and to take the money awarded to victims of the police out of the police department budget.

One subject of discussion at meetings and rallies is whether it is possible to change the police by removing the "rotten apples," or whether they are an occupying army that must be gotten rid of. We hope the discussions will lead to increasing united actions against the city's racist and anti-working class politicians and institutions.

—NY News and Letters Committee

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