Two hundred people gathered in Bridgeton, New Jersey at the site where Jerome Reid, a community resident and recent father was murdered by Bridgeton police during a traffic stop on December 31, 2014.
Called as a Day of Outrage against racist police brutality, the rally was also joined by a busload of the family and friends of Brandon Tate Brown, a Philadelphia man shot in the back of the head by Philadelphia police. His mother, Tanya Brown, joined Jerome’s mother Sheila and the mother of Kashad Ashford another young man murdered by New Jersey police in September 2014.
With signs and banners demanding justice for their loved ones, the three mothers rallied the crowd into the streets, where they blocked traffic and disrupted major intersections on their way to the Bridgeton Courthouse.
There, under the watchful eye of the Bridgeton Police which had posted armed photographers on the surrounding rooftops, they rallied defiantly on the front steps for a people’s press conference as speakers addressed the crowd and surrounding officers over a microphone.
“We demand accountability!” said Tanya Brown, who, like the two mothers beside her, continues to be denied the names of the police officers that shot her son.
She and other speakers including activists and community members boldly racist police violence and the terrorizing of communities of color.
At this point, just when Sheila Reid was about to speak, the police announced that they were opening up the street which had previously been blocked to traffic for the protest.
The move, doubly disrespectful to the Reid family, was a tactic used to provoke protesters into a confrontation situation to discredit what was otherwise a peaceful protest.
This almost proved successful as a car, which tried to drive through the defiant crowd, hit a man. The driver yelled a racial epithet causing a justifiable response from the crowd.
The police presence quickly doubled and came armed with riot shields, tear gas and zip ties. Police detained one protester and began violently pushing others onto the sidewalk. One officer was even seen armed with an assault rifle enteriing into a crowd containing both elderly people and young children.
It is only to the credit of march organizers who vigorously denounced the police tactics to disrupt the demonstration and called protesters’ attention back to the podium that a violent, potentially deadly situation was avoided.
Sheila Reid wished only to tell the crowd that her son had been turning his life around had had a four-month-old son that would never know him. “My son,” she said, “didn’t deserve to die.”
In Bridgeton, Philadelphia and cities and towns across the country communities are rising up against police brutality and demanding justice. All revolutionaries should stand with these fighters and those fighting against the special forms of oppression faced by communities of color in the this country. In order to smash racism we must build a movement that fights for the liberation and equality of all peoples.
Racism is the disease, Revolution is the Cure!
#JusticeforJerameReid
#WhoKilledBrandonTateBrown
