Haïti ProgrèsApril 20, 2000:
26 Avril au 2 Mai 2000
All-Day Demonstration Slams Police Brutality and GiulianiWith flags flying and chants ringing, about 10,000 Haitians and other New Yorkers marched across the Brooklyn Bridge on Thursday, April 20 to demand an end to police brutality and the resignation of Mayor Rudolph Giuliani in the wake of the killing and vilification of Haitian-American Patrick Dorismond, who was gunned down by a New York City policeman Mar. 17.
The thousands of demonstrators marched from Grand Army Plaza in central Brooklyn, all the way down Flatbush, receiving a warm reception from on-lookers. "I would be with you if I could get off of my job," one black construction worker yelled as the demonstrators marched by. "Those Haitians sure know how to make a demonstration," he said, turning to a grinning co-worker.
After crossing the bridge, the marchers surged into lower Manhattan and rallied along Broadway in front of City Hall, where a series of speakers denounced Giuliani as being ultimately responsible for a rash of police shootings and for creating an atmosphere of racism and violence in New York.
The march marked the tenth anniversary of the first time when tens of thousands of Haitians flooded across the Brooklyn Bridge to protest the Food and Drug Administration's classification of Haitians as a high-risk group for AIDS. In the wake of the protest, the classification was rescinded.
Other huge marches -- in 1991 following the coup d'état against President Jean-Bertrand Aristide and in 1997 following the police torture of Abner Louima -- helped established the bridge crossing as the signature of Haitian protest.
This year's march was organized by the Haitian Coalition for Justice, a grassroots alliance of Haitian community groups and activists which came together on Mar. 20. Through marathon meetings and late night "koumbits" (work sessions), a rag-tag army of volunteers pooled their limited time and money to make banners and posters, distribute press releases and flyers, secure police permits, vehicles, and sound systems, and mobilize turn-out on radio and television shows.
Despite some community apprehension after clashes with police during the Mar. 25 funeral for Dorismond which left 27 people arrested and dozens hurt, the April 20 march was both spectacular and peaceful. Young people dancing to the beat of rara bands, senior citizens hobbling with canes, and families with small children all turned out, many with Haiti's red and blue flag tied around their head, draped around their shoulders, affixed to umbrellas, or waved on little sticks. The flags of Trinidad, Jamaica, Puerto Rico, and Panama were also sprinkled through the giant throng. Many stayed from the opening rally at Grand Army Plaza at 8 a.m. until the march dispersed at City Hall about 5 p.m..
The police were also out in force. Hundreds of cops in riot helmets, with clubs and plasic flexicuffs in their belts, marched in a tight formation columns along either side of the demonstrators, while police helicopters droned overhead throughout the day. But the Coalition's own marshals - all in white T-shirts marked "Santinel" - provided a buffer between the annoyed protestors and police, and there were no conflicts throughout the march.
As they marched across the bridge, however, demonstrators did take note of close to 200 officers who were massed on an off-ramp. "Brooklyn Bridge is falling down, falling down, on Giuliani," some demonstrators chanted to the tune of the children's rhyme as they crossed.
Dozens of demonstrators carried cardboard crosses with the names of young people gunned down by the NYPD under Giuliani. Other signs in the crowd read "Guilianism = Fascism," "Giuliani Rache Manyòk ou (Uproot yourself)," and "Stop and Frisk Giuliani, Book Him for Racism." There were many portraits depicting Giuliani as a devil or as Adolph Hitler.
When the thousands rolled off the bridge into Manhattan, the demonstration had its tensest moment. The police had erected barricades at the corner of Chambers and Broadway into a bottleneck only about 15 feet across. For close to half an hour, the demonstrators refused to advance through the choke point. Finally, police widened it a little, and the crowds surged through.
"There are people here as far as the eye can see," shouted the Rev. Herbert Daughtry from the microphone on the Coalition's flatbed truck, which served as a stage. "There is a sea of humanity all the way back to Chambers Street. Whenever you touch a Haitian, you evoke the spirit of Toussaint, of Dessalines, of Christophe. You evoke the spirit of revolution. When Haitians move, they move in great masses, they move united, they move determined, they move as winners, and they will win."
Emcees Daniel Simidor and Yvon Kernizan of the Coalition introduced many other speakers, including representatives of the Dec. 12th Movement, the Oct. 22nd Coalition, Youth Force, the New Black Panther Party, and District Council 1707.
Among the most moving addresses of the afternoon was that of Marie Dorismond, mother of the late Patrick. "The killed my son, the only son I had, they took him," she said in emotion-choked Creole. As she spoke, Haitian men and women in the crowd wept openly, a communion of pain and resistance. "But I know you all are there for me. You help to soak up my tears. In doing this to me, they are asking why I am black. I know I am descended from slaves, but I also have the blood of Jean-Jacques Dessalines in my veins. He says to me, 'They killed Patrick, you have lost your son, but you have not lost the battle.' I sometimes feel small and alone, but I become as strong as one million people when you all stand there before me. Then I know I am bigger than the earth itself."
Other members of Patrick Dorismond's family also spoke, as did Abner Louima, who said: "We come here to say no to police brutality. We are tired of being portrayed as drug dealers, as criminals."
Also warmly received was the presentation of Paul Jean-Maurice François (Mèt Paul), the voice of community-based Radio Lakay, which helped mobilize the Haitian community for the march. "March 16 Patrick left his home, and that was the last time he was seen," Met Paul said in Creole. "His family found him lifeless in the hospital. The police shot him like a rabbit, like a dog, like a bird. Someone is responsible and his name is Rudolph Giuliani. We have come here today to tell Giuliani that we are not defenseless. He has knocked on the wrong door. Because we are a people with a tradition of struggle. Our ancestors have been fighting since 1789 and we will continue that fight whenever dictatorship threatens our freedom. And we say to Giuliani that we will not rest until he is out of office. We will continue to occupy the streets until he is pulled up by the roots."
"This is about our survival," declared Larry Holmes of the May 7 Mobilization for Mumia. "Any one of us could have been Patrick Dorismond. Anyone of us could have been out there that night in front of that bar, trying to get home. But Patrick never got home because they killed him and they are criminals. That kind of police force needs to be abolished. We need to replace it with something which at least is not at war with the people." Holmes encouraged the demonstrators to to continue their battle against police brutality by attending the giant rally for Mumia Abu-Jamal, the well-known U.S. political prisoner, to be held at Madison Square Garden in Manhattan on May 7.
The New York Times and other mainstream media could not ignore this massive and noble march, but they tried to minimize it by quoting the police who said only 2,500 people took part. (The New York Post said 5,000). But the Haitian community denounced these lies on their community radios as did the Coalition on progressive English-speaking radios like WBAI.
As the demonstration was winding down, plainclothes police officers, who had been plying through the crowd with pictures of demonstrators from Mar. 25, ambushed a Haitian demonstrator, Evans Sanon, pushing him through the gates of City Hall. A crowd of people gathered at the gates, demanding to know why he had been arrested. "He is suspected of assaulting a police officer during the funeral march," responded Det. Serge Pierre-Louis, who stood behind the gate with City Councilwoman Una Clarke and a phalanx of cops.
Members of the Coalition, wanting to avoid any more confrontations and arrests, calmed down the angry crowd in front of the gate and led a delegation, accompanied by official legal observer Joel Kupferman of the National Lawyers Guild, to the 67th Precinct in Brooklyn, where Sanon had been taken. The police later released Sanon when they determined he was not the man in police photos. Sanon insists he wasn't even at the Dorismond funeral.
"It just shows how vindictive and stupid Giuliani is to arrest someone like that and for that," said Coalition leader Ray Laforest. "He is clearly trying to intimidate us."
But the Haitian community will not be intimidated, and it showed once again that that it can unite and help lead the many communities of New York in the struggle against police brutality. Towards this end, the Coalition plans to build its links with other anti-police brutality coalitions and work toward uprooting Giuliani before he can go on to campaign as the Republican candidate running against Democrat Hillary Clinton for New York state senator.
As one demonstrator cried out as he passed by City Hall: "We are going to flush this mayor before he can do any more damage!"
Immigrant Workers Plan May Day Marches in US
by David L. WilsonA coalition of labor and other groups representing tens of thousands of immigrant workers is planning marches in New York and other US cities on May 1 to demand a new amnesty for immigrants living in the US without documents. The marches are sponsored by the National Coalition for Dignity and Amnesty for Undocumented Immigrants, which includes groups ranging from the American Friends Service Committee in Texas to the Pacific North West District Council of Carpenters in Washington state and the Farm Labor Organizing Committee in Ohio.
"We have a unique opportunity for winning the general amnesty now," says Haitian activist Ray Laforest, an organizer for District Council 1707 AFSCME in New York, which has endorsed the marches. The movement has gotten "fresh energy" from a general amnesty resolution the executive council of the AFL-CIO passed in February, he said. In the past the labor federation had backed anti-immigrant measures like the employer sanctions in the immigration act of 1986.
Laforest noted that some immigrants have pushed for status adjustments for special circumstances, like NACARA, which is in effect an amnesty for Nicaraguans who left their country during the US-sponsored contra war of the 1980s. "The weakness is that these measures affect only a small number of workers," Laforest says. But in fact the vast majority of undocumented workers "are forced to leave their country because of US government policies destabilizing the country," whether the policies are military or economic. "The only solution is a measure that recognizes that all these workers are productive" for the US economy, according to Laforest.
The marches are being held on May 1 -- international workers' day -- in order "to recover the historic date... and to commemorate the struggles in Chicago through which workers [eventually] achieved the eight-hour workday, and to connect this date with the situation of today's immigrant workers," explains Monica Santana, a member of the National Coalition's Executive Committee and director of the Latino Workers Center in New York.
Organizers recognize that it will be difficult for many immigrant workers and their supporters to take time off from work on May 1, which falls on a Monday this year. But they feel that the only way to move US politicians around the issue is for a large number of people to demonstrate their commitment. Laforest noted that a march by more than 10,000 amnesty supporters last October in Washington, DC was one of the factors in winning the AFL-CIO's support for amnesty, since the demonstration showed the labor leaders "the strength and potential of the movement."
The National Coalition is also hoping to internationalize the struggle by asking unions in other countries to include in their own May 1 marches signs and slogans supporting the demand for general amnesty in the US.
In New York, the marchers will gather at Union Square Park (14th Street and Broadway) at 1 pm, and then march downtown to the Federal Building and City Hall. Help is needed to put up posters and fliers for the march -- to get involved, call 212-633-7108 or 212-473-3936 or see the National Coalition web site at http://www.tepeyac.org/amnistia. For French or Creole, call Ray Laforest at 212-219-0022 x113.
Defend the People Arrested at Patrick Dorismond's Funeral!
Drop the Charges Against the Protestors - Jail the Killer Cops!
by the October 22 CoalitionOn March 25, thousands of people attended the funeral of Patrick Dorismond, an unarmed 26-year-old Haitian-American man who was shot to death by an undercover cop because he didn't have any drugs to sell. He is one of four Black men murdered by the NYPD in March. His death on a street corner in midtown Manhattan came less than a month after the four cops who murdered Amadou Diallo were acquitted. This verdict gave the cops the green light to keep on murdering people. And we've all seen the results.
Police disrespected Patrick Dorismond, his family, and the community at his funeral. Cops were out in force at his funeral - after killing him, they wanted to control his funeral. As Nicholas Heyward, Sr., whose 13-year-old son was shot to death by a NYC housing cop in 1994, said, "I went to the funeral to pay my respect to Patrick Dorismond. And once again I was confronted by police. I was in the church before the service began and was ordered out by police who said they had to search the church. They put up steel barricades in the street and on the sidewalk. This was a funeral. I wasn't allowed to park my car near the church. Police wanted clear access and control of the area. If the police were there to 'protect and serve,' who were they protecting? Not Patrick Dorismond. They'd already killed him. Not the Dorismond family. They'd already killed their son. Not the people at Patrick's funeral who police beat, bloodied, maced and arrested."
At least 27 people were arrested at the funeral, and some are charged with felonies. Many of the people arrested were Haitian, many were injured including a young pregnant woman. Activists from the October 22 Coalition to Stop Police Brutality were at the funeral, carrying the Stolen Lives banner and distributing the Stolen Lives : Killed by Law Enforcement book. Stolen Lives documents over 2000 cases of people killed by law enforcement agents throughout the US since 1990. An Oct. 22 activist with the Stolen Lives Project was yanked from the crowd by police and arrested. Also among those arrested was Errol Maitland, reporter and producer at WBAI radio. After being arrested, Errol had to be hospitalized in the Kings County Hospital's critical coronary care unit. Errol's whole career in broadcast journalism has been about getting the truth out, at no small risk to his himself. Last year while reporting on the IMF protests in Seattle, Errol was teargassed (along with many others). In 1998, Errol recorded a reading of Stolen Lives by actors Ossie Davis and Melvin Van Peebles, film maker Michael Moore and poet Jerry Quickly that airs every year on Oct. 22 National Day of Protest to Stop Police Brutality on Pacifica's Democracy Now. Among the names in Stolen Lives is Errol's son, Douglas Fischer, who was choked to death by security guards at a Best Buy store in Spartanburg, SC, for allegedly trying to use a bad credit card.
Those arrested on March 25 will be in court on Monday, May 8 and Thursday, June 1. We need to fill the courtroom to show that the community supports people who stand up and speak out against police brutality. Be in the courtroom! Monday, May 8 (Part AP1 - 9:30 am) and Thursday, June 1 (Part AP3 - 9:30 am), Brooklyn Criminal Court, 120 Schermerhorn St., 6th floor, Brooklyn, NY. (Take A, G trains to Hoyt St./Schermerhorn St.; F train Jay St./Borough Hall, or 2, 3, 4, 5 trains to Borough Hall, Brooklyn). For more information, call 212-477-8062.