From the March-April 2015 issue of News & Letters
Los Angeles—About 500 people, mostly Black and Latino youth, gathered in front of Homer F. Brown Jr. Southwest Community Police Station on Feb. 21, on Martin Luther King Blvd. Anti-police brutality and anti-ever growing surveillance society has radicalized youth as well as concerned people from all walks of life. There were young people from college, high school and middle school, middle-aged minorities and groups of white participants who all had a clear message: “Don’t shoot! Hands up!” and “We can’t breathe!” as the marchers went to Crenshaw Blvd. and turned to Lemirk Park. We were demanding justice for Ezell Ford, Michael Brown and Mexico’s Ayotzinapa students, too.
There were SEIU-ULTCW United Long-Term Care Workers, SEIU Local 721, African American Caucus, True Grit, Fight the Lockdown, Stop LAPD Spying and News and Letters Committees. Some of our demands were: “Ezell Ford deserves justice!” “Demilitarize cops under community control!” And there was a call for a National Day of Remembrance and Justice for Tamir Rice. People carried a picture of Malcolm X in celebration of his birthday.
There was a huge police presence. They followed the march with ambulances and a police motorcade. The march ended in the park with speeches by religious and community leaders.
—Mannel
The young people in Baltimore refuse to separate their celebration of Black life in their city from their demands to end the kind of police brutality that has killed, injured and disrupted the lives of so many Freddie Grays and families.