People’s Organization for Progress Chairman Larry Hamm, center right, points to the Peter Rodino federal building in downtown Newark, where the office of U.S. Attorney Paul J. Fishman in located, on Monday, July 18, during the grassroots social justice group’s 25th consecutive weekly Justice Monday rally, seeking to get Fishman to open federal civil rights investigations into police-involved shooting deaths and use of excessive force on unarmed black male suspects in municipalities across New Jersey.
NEWARK, NJ — The People’s Organization for Progress held its 25th weekly Justice Monday rally at the Peter W. Rodino Federal Building on Broad Street in Newark on Monday, July 18.
P.O.P. Chairman Larry Hamm and the members of the grassroots social justice group found themselves once again rallying in an attempt to get U.S. attorney Paul J. Fishman to launch federal civil rights investigations into the police-involved shooting deaths and use of excessive force on unarmed black male suspects in municipalities across New Jersey, including Abdul Kamal who was shot and killed by Irvington police; Kashad Ashford, who was killed by Lyndhurst police; Jerame Reid, who was killed by Bridgeton police; and 14-year-old Radazz Hearns, who was shot seven times by Trenton police.
And this week they were protesting for a second time in the aftermath of the apparently targeted killings of three police officers, as they had done on Monday, July 11, at the 24th consecutive Justice Monday rally.
The July 11 rally took place at the Essex County Courthouse on Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard in downtown Newark, right in front of a statue of the famed slain civil rights leader. That rally was in the aftermath of the police-involved shooting deaths of Alton Sterling in Baton Rouge, La., on Tuesday, July 5, and Philando Castile in Falcon Heights, Minn., on Wednesday, July 6, and in the wake of five police officers murdered on Friday, July 8, during a peaceful public rally in downtown Dallas, to protest those earlier incidents in the other cities.
The P.O.P. rally took place after three Baton Rouge police officers were shot and killed and three others were wounded in the line of duty on Sunday, July 17. According to authorities, both the Dallas and Baton Rouge shootings were carried out by U.S. military veterans upset about the deaths of unarmed blacks due to aggressive policing tactics.
Hamm said the latest rally was “a protest to demand justice for police shooting victims Alton Sterling killed in Baton Rouge and Philando Castile killed in Minnesota” and “to demand federal probes into the police shootings of Sterling and Castile, and into the police killings in New Jersey of Abdul Kamal, Kashad Ashford, Jerame Reid and the shooting of Radazz Hearns.”
Hamm said the rally was also a protest of the targeted killing of police by individuals frustrated by police tactics in black and mostly minority communities. He said anyone taking such violent action is counterproductive to the police-reform movement.
“First of all, I want to express my condolences and sympathies to the families of those officers that were killed,” said Hamm on Tuesday, July 19. “It’s a terrible tragedy. Our hearts go out to their families, because it’s a terrible thing, when people are killed in that manner.”
“It’s unfortunate that some people feel so ignored by the criminal justice system that they feel they have to take the law into their own hands. However, I would urge people not to follow that course.”
“The best course is positive, mass direct action and not engaging in acts of violence that essentially hurt people who are not directly connected to the incident that has caused the anger,” said Hamm. “So I would urge people to continue to engage in collective, mass, nonviolent protest because if one looks at the situation we see that when these individual violent attacks take place it shifts the whole national discussion about the issue to another issue and that is the violence against police. These types of incidents don’t really help the movement. In fact, one could argue that they hurt the movement, because they shift the attention from the need for police reform to the extreme further militarization of police because, in the aftermath of these incidents, the cry is for more police, more arms, etc. So when these events happen, it does not help the cause for police reform. It hurts the discussion.”
P.O.P. member Zayid Muhammad said this week’s rally was unique for other reasons as well.
“This Justice Monday will also observe the second anniversary of the police killing of Eric Garner, captured on videotape,” said Muhammad on Sunday, July 17. “Garner was killed on July 17, 2014. The officer involved in the chokehold death of Garner, Daniel Pantaleo, was not indicted. The use of the chokehold as was employed in this incident was banned in 1993. However, Ramsey Orta, the witness who videotaped the incident, was soon after indicted on weapons charges. Serious critics say that this was done by the police and prosecutors to discredit Orta with regard to the Garner case.
Muhammad said, “Protests in New York City have continued around the now infamous ‘I can’t breathe’ case.” He said U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch has acknowledged the Garner case is still an open federal investigation, and is facing mounting criticism for not having charged Pantaleo yet.
Muhammad said this week’s rally was “in solidarity with protests all over the country condemning the recent killings” by police officers in Baton Rouge and St. Paul. He said both of those incidents “also have on-the-scene video footage capturing the horrific incidents.”
“In response to the immediate and still ongoing mass public pressure, Gov. (John Bel) Edwards of Louisiana and Gov. (Mark) Dayton of Minnesota have both already asked the federal government to investigate these cases, something that did not happen in the New Jersey cases or in the Garner case in New York,” said Muhammad. “Dayton, in an extremely rare and politically courageous position for an elected official, dared to acknowledge the role race played in the Castile incident. He said: ‘Would this have happened if the driver were white, if the passengers were white,’ and he answered his own question with: ‘I don’t think it would have.’ ”
P.O.P. member Matt Williams, 84, said there’s only one way to put an end to the cycle of violence.
“They’re worried about stopping this; they’re talking about stopping the violence and stuff,” said Williams on Monday, July 18. “It’s easy to stop this. All they have to do is give some of these police officers that are murdering people — out-and-out murdering them — they’re showing you on tape. No doubt about it. They’ve been lying about it for years. But now it’s on tape. And they’re still getting away with it. If they could stop that, that’s why we’re in front of this building. Fishman is the U.S. attorney here. … We need the police. We need good police. We don’t need trigger-happy police.”
P.O.P. hosts 25th rally to protest recent shooting deaths added by Editor on
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