Chanting ” No justice, no peace! No racist police!” as New Haven’s top cop and other officers looked on, hundreds of demonstrators gathered at the corner of Chapel and Church streets Tuesday evening to decry a criminal-justice system they say has failed.
Fresh off a grand jury’s recent decision not to indict a white Ferguson, Missouri, police officer who killed an unarmed black teenager, the crowd gathered to express anger over that case, to share personal stories about their encounters with the police, and to encourage each other to take up the fight against police brutality and racism. The Ferguson grand jury’s decision sparked angry protests across the country that New Haven demonstrators said they hope won’t simmer down any time soon.
Several speakers, including Kerry Ellington, a supporter of the Malik Jones Foundation, taunted Chief Dean Esserman and police officers, who listened and then escorted protesters as they marched up Chapel Street, through the Broadway District, up Whalley and Edgewood avenues and finally to City Hall. Ellington decried the police department’s “surge” initiative (read about it here) as a “stop and frisk” policy by another name. “Surge on us,” Ellington told the assembled cops. “We’ll surge on you.”
Young people were an integral part of the protest and led the the march. One student, surrounded by fellow Achievement First Amistad High School students, told the crowd that what he took away from the Ferguson decision was “that it’s hard to be a black man in America.”
The evening’s most poignant comments came from Emma Jones, mother of Malik Jones, who was shot dead in 1997 by a white East Haven police officer after a cross-town chase. Jones, wearing angel white in a sea of winter grays and blacks, told a riveted audience not to be fooled: “This is about race.” Jones prescribed two remedies for justice for people of color: “White people have to come forward and say, ‘No more in my name!’ … You can’t claim humanity and watch people be slain in the street.” And for everyone else: “Go back and preach to your relatives and your community, ‘No more!”
Norman Clement, a member of ANSWR Coalition, urged people at the end of the rally not to disappear. He told people to support a call by Jones for an all-civilian review board of police shootings. And he urged them to make themselves heard at the next Board of Alders meeting. “I want everyone here tonight to show up,” he said. “And don’t ask that things change. Demand that they change.”
Where are the loud-mouthed, uninformed policiticans who scream at Blacks folks for not voting now? Now is the time for us to hear your outrage over this police murder of our young people,and you are all quiet as a f*cking church mouse.You are demonstrating to us why so many of us are apathetic about supporting local politics.Leadership expresses the outrage of the people,But Black folks are left to express our own outrage because of the cowardice of Judas Goat leadership.