Vol. 76/No. 25      June 25, 2012

In the first three months of 2012, cops accosted 203,500 people, a 10 percent increase from the year before, on track to make over 800,000 stop and frisks in the year. Nearly 90 percent of the stops involved Black and Latino males.

As of June 11, more than 230 groups are listed on the march’s website in support of the action, from numerous labor unions and churches to immigrant rights organizations throughout the region.

Joined by NAACP President Benjamin Jealous, National Action Network leader Al Sharpton and union officials, representatives of a number of gay rights organizations announced their support for the protest at a press conference June 5 outside the Stonewall Inn, a bar where patrons’ defiance of cops in a 1969 raid set off battles that inspired broader struggles against anti-gay discrimination.

New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg spoke in defense of his administration’s stop-and-frisk policy at the First Baptist Church of Brownsville, a predominantly Black neighborhood in Brooklyn. He said the program was crucial to stopping crime and getting guns off the streets. Feigning empathy with those angry at the racist anti-working-class program, Bloomberg vowed to ensure it was “conducted appropriately, with as much courtesy as possible.”

“The practice needs to be mended, not ended,” the mayor said.

Bloomberg then hurried from the church service to walk in the annual Puerto Rican Day Parade in Manhattan where a contingent marched to protest stop and frisk, led by the NAACP’s Jealous, Service Employees International Union President George Gresham and others.
 
 
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