stop police brutality

pstrongThe October 22nd Coalition leads annual event in Oakland/strong/p pDIV align="left" TABLE cellpadding="5"TR VALIGN="TOP"TDIMG SRC= "../sites/default/files/arch_img/554/photo_1_supplement.jpg" //td/trTR VALIGN="TOP"TD/td/trTR VALIGN="TOP"TDTR VALIGN="TOP"TD pby Dae-Han Song/PoorNewsNetwork/p pBeneath patchy, gray skies and atop a simple platform, stood a dozen people holding in their hands pictures of deceased loved ones. Under each picture were the name and the date on which the person had been killed. /p pOn this day, October 22nd, 2001, family members of police brutality victims came in solidarity with other like families to support each other and decry police brutality. In the words of Jose Silva with the Youth Student Network, one of the lead organizers of the event, "The purpose of this event was for family members to come in solidarity....Most of the time we are shut out and October 22nd gives us that day to express our voices." Jose Silva's connection to police brutality became very personal when his brother, Danny Ray Lopez, had been shot and killed by 53 gunshots from the Denver, Colorado police./p pIn fact, many of the activists involved were personally affected by police brutality. Loni Amaya, one of the people on stage, held a picket sign with the picture of the late Chila Amaya. Family members, fearing for the safety of Chila Amaya as she held a knife in a distraught state, after problems with her boyfriend, called the police for assistance in getting her some psychological and mental help. When police arrived, they stood behind a locked screen door and told family members to go to another room. As Chila Amaya turned around with her knife to see where her family members were going, the commanding officer gave the order to open fire. What had started out as a call for assistance to prevent Chila from hurting herself had tragically turned into her death. In response to police brutality, Loni Amaya admits that "there are good cops out there, but there are also bad ones....a lot of the time police abuse their power when they don't need to."/p pIn a nation where one out of every three African-American males spend some time in the prison system, it is no surprise that many of the victims of police brutality are African-American males. However, this did not prevent an ethnically mixed audience from coming to the event, as many realized the commonality of their experiences. As Yuri Kochiyama stated, police brutality is just another in a string of terrorist attacks against people of color in a history of lynchings, slavery, the taking of Mexican land, the Chinese Exclusion Act and the internment of Japanese-Americans./p pThe long-term goal of the demonstration was to address police brutality not as a one-time event, but as one that happens continually and one that needs institutionalized change. In the words of Jose Silva, "Our long-term goal is that we want a national platform so that police brutality will be recognized everyday."br / /p/td/tr/td/tr/table/div/p