Shut Down Rikers! Oct 23, Non-Violent Direct Action as Part of #RiseUpOctober
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Shut Down Rikers!
Oct 23, Non-Violent Direct Action as part of
#RiseUpOctober
Just 300 yards from the runways at LaGuardia airport, just a
few miles from a glistening city, an island sits dedicated to confinement,
brutality, and torture of our youth and others.
Human beings languish for weeks, months, sometimes years awaiting trial.
Many simply for lack of money for bail.
Many locked down for weeks and months in solitary confinement. Guards inflict a culture of violence –
fractured jaws, broken bones, denial of medical care, cover-ups and retaliation
against those who report, and rampant sexual violence against the women and
LGBT people as well as the men. Rikers
typifies and concentrates the immorality and illegitimacy of mass incarceration
in the U.S.
It is difficult to say which is a greater shock to the
conscience: that this torture and brutality goes on day in and day out, or that
millions go about their daily lives accepting this as normal just miles away.
The violence against inmates at Rikers has been
studied. It has been exposed. Guards have been sued. Settlements have been paid. The deaths inflicted through brutality and
negligence have been documented. The life-long trauma and disfunction imposed
on inmates has been proven. Yet the
brutality continues day in and day out.
All this is plain for the whole world to see.
The time for wringing our hands is over. The time for cosmetic but essentially
meaningless reforms is over. A line must
be drawn. People of conscience must
put our bodies on the line to stop this depravity and barbarity, else we
ourselves are complicit.
WHICH SIDE ARE YOU ON?
This call was initiated by:
Nellie Baily, Harlem activist
Rev. Stephen Phelps, Member, Presbytery of New York City*
Cindy Sheehan, mother of Casey Sheehan, killed in unjust
U.S. war on Iraq, 2004
Sunsara Taylor, writer for Revolution Newspaper, initiator
of StopPatriarchy.org
Mia Thornton, NYU Student Activist
Jame Vrettos, Professor John Jay College of Criminal
Justice*
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