By Yasin Muhammad
After a successful March over the Brooklyn bridge from Manhattan and arriving at the Barclays center an altercation between protest and police occurred. One of the medics for the protest got hit in the throat with a baton. I ended up standing off with the police as they arrested other protesters heinously, maliciously, and without cause. While this was happening a few words were exchanged between an NYPD officer and protesters.
This officer, a white woman from Staaten Island pleaded her cause. “I joined the force to help people. The people in my community love me. How is the system gonna change if you’re against the police” she insisted that there was no point in standing off with the police while her fellow officers abused protesters who had done nothing wrong. She insisted that the system would change from the inside while taking orders from a superior who wanted us all in a paddy wagon. It was brainwashing and gaslighting at its finest. When I arrived at the scene I saw a woman, my friend, who’s filled with love compassion and support faced down on the ground cuffed with her pants around her ankles. It was heartbreaking. Female and male officers alike did not attempt to give human dignity because human dignity was not in their orders.
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The protesters pleaded with the cops to help her, and you could see some of the officers’ faces look solemn or what I can imagine was embarrassment that they could do nothing but protect the fellow officers while my friend was on the floor without pants. Another protester gasping for air because an officer hit him in the throat.
So during the standoff with the female officer I could not help but see the insane world she was living in. The uniformity of the police is the driving force behind modern day slavery and it enforces and attempts to normalize brutality in every way. The officer in states island may wry well be doing good in her community, but in our community, she’s protecting officers that shoot us. That hit us with batons, she is paid to protect the suppression of democracy and oppression of humanity.
The prison system is slavery reimagined and Officers or Overseers they are Slave patrol and the roots of that system is to keep black people enslaved in chains and working for free. Every officer is culpable because the whole system is guilty. Abolition is the only option. Build new roots from community equality and fairness. The old roots are rotten and based in free labor and unspeakable oppression, and we can see the ripple effect. A new system is possible and being implemented in the ecosystem of the people. We protect each other, we hold ourselves accountable and we can access brotherhood sisterhood and rainbow community that protects our children and ensures a future of life liberty and the pursuit of happiness for all people, not just the rich the wealthy, and the white.
