 |
|
COMMUNITY EMPOWERMENT
WILL HOLD COMMUNITY FORUM TO ADDRESS |
In response to the inhume beating of Jordan Miles, Community Empowerment is calling to community leaders, families who've been victimized by police violence, afflicted youth, and concerned citizens to contribute their testimonies and suggestions to a community forum on police violence on February 13, 2010 from 2 - 4pm. Location 7148 Fleury Way, Pittsburgh, PA 15208 - CEA Culture Center. It is your time now to speak out for justice! Please help outline a coordinated response to the Jordan Miles attack, as well as a list of demands and action steps for the City of Pittsburgh Police and Government Officials! Help officials understand that the way to reduce gang violence and crime is through improving the health of our communities! Officials can make headway by creating pathways out of poverty with educational training programs, and job opportunities. Police can truly protect and serve their communities by making alliances with local businesses and neighbors, not by harrassing and terrorizing their constituents. Jordan Miles, 18 year old CAPA senior and was accosted in his Homewood neighborhood, by three plainclothed police officers on January 22, 2010. Jordan Miles says he was just walking to Grandmothers house, while the police claim that they suspected criminal activity, and sensed he had a weapon. Regardless of any allegations there is one thing that is irrefutably clear upon seeing the bruises, the swelling, and the patchy scalp of young Jordan Miles - this was a vicious, and unwarranted attacked on an unarmed member of our community. The inhuman attack of a young, black, student, who I will still deem a child, was in no way an act of protection, or an act in the interest of the community that those police officers were called to serve. Jordan was harassed, tackled, stunned with a taser, kicked, punched, and impaled with a tree branch. Yet it is JORDAN that was taken to jail for aggravated assault, and it is JORDAN that still faces criminal charges, as the three police officers still proudly wear the uniform that is supposed to signify a rational authority. It is painful for me to look at these photos of Jordan, not just because I, too, have been the victim of police brutality, but because it resurrects a lineage of atrocity in the African American community at the hands of "authority" that curdles my blood and inflames the proverbial lashes on my back. Sadly, way too many comparisons can be made to innocent black men who have been beaten or killed at the hands of those who were called to protect them: Oscar Grant, Jonny Gammage, Sean Bell. While the references to Jonny Gammage are certainly apt, my visceral reaction scuttled back to open casket of Emmit Till.
|
