.
from NY Protest Calendar
A little more info to add to what’s below: According to their attorney who was just on Sally O’Brien’s WBAI program, it appears that they were speaking out — not physically intervening — about the police’s brutalizing of a young man on the street when the cops began punching Tarif in the face several times and then arrested both of them. They are apparently being charged with obstructing governmental administration and disorderly conduct.
I hope folks will support these courageous fighters in any way you can.
Read entire post on NY Protest Calendar
Photos from NYC Indy Media More information all posted there.
Filed under: Action Alert!, activism, Art, cynthia mckinney, Long Island Music, Recommended Poetry, social & economic justice, To Study Up On Nonviolence Tagged: | book of the month, Harry Potter
New Year’s Revolution – By Hakim Bellamy
There was a time when officers of the law were respected
They were “peace officers”
More concerned with deterring crime than prosecuting it
Working with the community instead of against it
This year
(Singing Auld Lang Syne)“Should auld acquaintance be forgot, and ne’er brought to mind?”
I’d have to ask the families of Bell and Diallo
As New Year’s was on a Sunday this year, let us pray
That APD resolves to be different
Instead of revolve to be hit…MEN
Give me one good cop
And I’ll give you one less disillusioned, revolutionary hell bent on retribution instead of transformation.
Give me one good cop
And I’ll give you one less kid who wants to rep his curb,
One less mirage deferred
Turned sandstorm, quicksand-to-hand, spinning wheels
“Lex, Land or a Path…”
One less dirty dozen with a badge, “…who didn’t know the half”
One less proud parent
Chest poked out like Pops when “Pac-ito” passes promise and proceeds to pedal on paths paved with potential ‘til (crash sound into dispatch sound)
Dispatch.
The fast traction slips when Dad gets bagged, gagged and jacked for Driving While Black by the boys in the bluest gang
One good cop
And one less version of me
Cause according to the TV?
I always fit the description of a suspect in a local homicide
When the trip is,
Statistics say I look more the like the victim
Internal affairs says it’s a black thing, (Applause and guns drawn motion) CLAP-on-black crime
A healthy serving for one less family seated at a buffet of violence
One less family hungry for a provider
All we got is religion so we fast, dollars
Malnourished so the fast dollars feed antsy hands that shake from BET video withdrawal
( “I got that thuggin’ love…”)
Cops itchy trigger fingers, mothers scratch crucifixes to combat sacrificial examples made out of us…
We actually relate to the officers better than their families ‘cause we too are in the line of fire everyday…It’s “Dis” stressful
Ghandi would be ashamed, cause we are the war we don’t wanna see in the world…
And art imitates the street, not vice versa but Miami Vice…
I got one too many more than ONE GOOD KID,
With one bad cop that stopped her from Pebble-in-Bedrock to Peddling snow in a drought for dessert
When it coulda been one more kid that wants to protect and serve
Grow up into ONE GOOD COP
Who’d use The Force to start the “The Truth Police”
Kinda like the Fashion Police, but twice as blunt…
Instead of citations reading, “That’s hideous”
They return repossessed reparation, and give tickets to freedom reading,
“That sh*t was f*cked up, we’ll upgrade you to first class, aisle or window?”
The “One Good Cop” Revolution
Resolution Double Oh Seven
If you’re in it for the bar fly women, fast cars and lethal gadgets we’ll make you a movie star instead of this not-so-secret agent routine
Then you can still get back at the jocks that kicked your ass in high school without hurting innocent civilians…maybe date Lindsey Lohan instead?
She’s a sucker for a man in uniform.
Resolution Twelve-Thirty-One
Yeah, the New Year’s one…don’t base next year’s success on getting more arrests than you did last year…though the idea of rehabilitation in corrections is a myth, being a “Good Cop” doesn’t have to be…
Resolution 4-1-1
If you see a fellow officer sprinkling some crack on a brother, powdering a crime scene that had just a wee bit too much color, learn from some of them snitches the department keeps around for ego strokin’ and billy-club lovin’ and drop dime on dirty brethren in the Fraternal Order
Resolution 9-1-1
Out of Order
This is the Revolution
You’re in breach of contract with the community
The Truth Police
National Guard of the law
I thought, of all the patriots, you’d know it’s textbook history book
Abuse of power causes the people to take up arms
And the abuse of those people, already “up in arms” can turn once open arms into suicide bombs
Cause we won’t take being profiled for long
Soon we’ll a bout face-to-face
They say “the People shouldn’t fear they’re government”, it should be the government in fear of us, and what we gotta say….
The Truth is
Sniping nappyheads at a distance is a welcomed challenge for the gamesman that has everything
The Truth is
Any inmate can tell you the biggest, baddest gang in the land wears neither blood nor blue, but black and badges
The Truth is
No, the perpetrator ain’t always right, but neither is the police officer
The Truth is
You’re a property-protecting pawn,
A have-not that the have’s play against other have-nots when they wouldn’t even let you piss in an outhouse on Scotland’s Yard
Truth is
Being a good cop is as easy as being an honest politician
It’s hard to find one who’s not drowning
In a system that perverts the pure until they genuinely believe they can baptize the smell of sex out of their love child…
So the best intentions going in are often the biggest regrets coming out
You ask the kids where I grew up
What they fear more, the streets or the people paid to protect them
More would say the “protectors”
In a system of winners and losers, and we’re forced to pick the strongest side to order to survive…
On one,
We got a mother that sometimes eats her young
On the KRS-other-One
An Over-seer charged with keeping me with-IN-side the chalk-OUT-lines
Mr. Officer?
If you ask me which side I think you are on…
Honestly, I’d have to say, it ain’t mine.