The Militant(logo) 
    Vol.63/No.13           April 5, 1999 
 
 
Protests Over Police Killing Of Diallo Provoke Crisis  

BY AL DUNCAN
NEW YORK CITY - The daily demonstratons here against the police killing of Amadou Diallo have provoked a political crisis for the administration of Mayor Rudolph Giuliani.

Tens of thousands of working people have taken part in protest actions since Diallo was shot by four cops February 4, refusing to let the brutal killing go by. The police fired 41 bullets at Diallo, a young worker from Guinea, as the unarmed man stood in the entrance to his apartment building.

A growing number of prominent political figures, many of them Democratic Party politicians, have been arrested at daily civil disobedience actions at One Police Plaza, the main police headquarters in downtown Manhattan, since March 9.

The list includes former mayors David Dinkins and Edward Koch, congressmen Charles Rangel and Jose Serrano, state comptroller Carl McCall, NAACP president Kweisi Mumfe, comedian Dick Gregory, actors Ossie Davis and Ruby Dee, and Dennis Rivera, president of the hospital workers union Local 1199 in New York.

These actions are organized by Democratic Party politician Alfred Sharpton and his National Action Network, Rev. Herbert Daughtry of the House of the Lord Church, and others.

The arrests have been heavily covered in the media. Less widely reported are the simultaneous picket lines that have grown to 500 or more a day. Many of the pickets are workers who join in on their lunch break; others take a day off to participate in these noon-time actions. Other victims of police brutality and representatives from organizations who have been fighting against it like Parents Against Police Brutality participate.

Fellow Republicans have begun to take their distance from Giuliani. Interviewed March 21 on the national Sunday morning TV show "This Week with Sam Donaldson and Cokie Roberts," New York governor George Pataki stated that the mayor was not "responding appropriately to criticism" over the killing. "The mayor has done an excellent job on issues like crime," he said, "and the police have done an excellent job, but the Diallo incident was so horrendous and so horrific that it has created a sense of moral outrage."

And President William Clinton, who has made putting more cops on the street a hallmark of his administration, stated in a national radio address in early March that he was "deeply disturbed" about police violence, alluding to the Diallo killing.

Giuliani has toned down his incendiary language under this pressure, no longer calling the protests "silly." At a March 23 news conference he said, "I believe there is a feeling in the minority community that police officers are unfair to them." But he maintains his defense of the cops, refusing to even suspend the four who shot Diallo.

The mayor's hard-line stance puts wind in the sails of rightist elements, especially those in the police department. At every demonstration at One Police Plaza there has been at least one counterprotester expressing support for the cops.

At a March 24 demonstration in the evening, supporters of the police were passing out leaflets encouraging people to hold a counter demonstration the next time at the same time as the anti-police brutality action. About 75 cops and others responded to that call, all of them white.

`The cops should be arrested'
The main demand of the hundreds of protesters at One Police Plaza is to arrest and convict the cops who killed Diallo. "This is outrageous," declared Dennis Larkee, 35, when asked his opinion about the Diallo killing. Larkee, a hospital worker, decided to come to the demonstration on his day off March 21. "The cops are no different from you and me, they should be arrested," he concluded.

"I'm here to protest the shooting of Amadou Diallo. This was a big injustice and a massacre," said 42-year-old Malik Muhammad, a construction worker and union shop steward, at the rally a week earlier. "I see the [civil disobedience] arrests as one stage in the fight against this stuff. I'll come as often as it takes to demonstrate."

Among those at the March 24 picket line was 16-year-old Greg Coates, a student at East Side Community High in Manhattan. "I'm coming to rally because we need to have young people support this and also bring energy to it. I also want to tell other young people about what's going on. We can't let cops take the right to protest from us. Doing this can make a difference," he said.

"What the cops did to Diallo there is no excuse for. Nothing that Mr. Diallo did could excuse 41 shots being fired by them," said Amy Wolfe, a librarian. "This just confirms my view that the cops are racist, sexist, and antigay."

Ludmila Svoboda, a nurse and immigrant from the Czech Republic, echoed that view. "I'm totally fed up with how the police department treats people," she said. "People are gunned down because they fit a certain profile."

At the March 22 picket line large contingents of construction workers and United Auto Workers members were visible. While demonstrators have been overwhelmingly Black in the earlier actions, the protests recently have become more multinational.

For example, more than 200 people identifying themselves as Jewish joined in the March 24 action - many carrying signs in Hebrew against cop brutality. Several joined civil disobedience arrests.

New people are joining the actions every day. Wayne Wade, a clothing store owner and manager from Long Island, was at his first protest March 23. He drove an hour with two others to get there. "We came to lend our hand in support," he explained. "Police brutality is not just a problem in New York but all over."

In addition to the actions outside the police headquarters, there have been meetings and demonstrations by a range of groups. Daily pickets also occur at the Bronx courthouse, where the grand jury is considering whether to press charges against the four cops who shot Diallo.

A poll published in the March 16 New York Times reflected the impact the Diallo killing has had on many people in this city, including among some of those who have supported Giuliani's "tough on crime" stance in the past. When asked whether they agreed with the statement, "Most of the police use excessive force," 51 percent of all New Yorkers said yes. That included 62 percent of those identified as Hispanic and 72 percent of those who are Black.

When asked whether they thought "based on current knowledge, the shooting of Amadou Diallo was tragic and there is absolutely no excuse for the way the police acted," 74 percent agreed, including sizable majorities in every racial category.

In this context, Police Commissioner Howard Safir was called before the city council to answer questions about the "street crimes unit." This outfit, which the cops who killed Diallo belong to, includes some of the most aggressive cops in the NYPD. It numbers about 400, a little more than 1 percent of the police department. It admits to stopping and frisking about 27,000 people last year, less than 4,000 of whom were charged with any crime.

The fight for justice for Amadou Diallo has encouraged others resisting police harassment and brutality. Residents of a block on 159th Street in the Washington Heights section of Manhattan organized a street protest to prevent the police department from establishing another "model block" where they live. On four other nearby blocks, and others around the city, police put up barricades on both ends of the street and demand identification from everyone entering.

"The Diallo situation further enhanced what we already know, that there is a great deal of police brutality, and it has just made us more enraged," resident Stephanie Colley, 20, was quoted in the New York Times as saying. "Already, they come up to you if you're standing on the block and harass you, asking you what you are doing or asking for ID. The model block will only make it worse. It will make us prisoners in our own community."

"The New York Socialist Workers Party and the Young Socialists," reads a statement issued by the organizations in response to the killing of Diallo, "join with the thousands who are protesting this brutal and racist killing. We urge all working people and youth to turn out to these actions, and organize other speak out to demand: `Justice for Amadou Diallo! Jail the guilty cops now!'"

The statement continues, "The determination by thousands to stand in solidarity with the Diallo family and other victims of police brutality - from Anthony Baez to Abner Louima - make it harder for the city administration...and other capitalist politicians to cover up this crime by the NY police." Towards the end the document points out the brutality wreaked on Diallo is the same Washington has in store for the people of Yugoslavia and is carrying out with the near-daily bombing of the people of Iraq.

 
 
 
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