On the rainy, cold morning of April 21, more than 100 Pittsburghers gathered for a rally against police brutality and racism. The story of Jordan Miles, a Black youth who was brutally beaten by three undercover policemen as he walked towards his grandmother’s home, is one that has activated the Pittsburgh community to fight against racist police brutality and injustice.
The Miles incident sparked the formation of the Alliance for Police Accountability, a coalition of community members and organizations including the Party for Socialism and Liberation. APA, which organized this rally, has long been active in demanding prosecution of the three officers: Michael Saldutte, Richard Ewing and David Sisak.
Attendees were also set in motion by the case of Trayvon Martin, which has been forced into prominence nationally by the energy of hundreds of communities around the country.
The rally featured several speakers, many of whom had themselves been victims of police brutality. One woman recounted her own painful experience with police: She was tasered at close range in the ear, eventually causing her eardrum to burst, along with further health consequences and lasting trauma.
Blupac Shakur, a man from the Black community of Homewood, shared that he is frequently harassed by police while doing his job as a conflict mediator—despite promptly showing his credentials—because, in their words, “he looks like them.” He emphasized that racist abuses by the police throughout the country are not simply isolated incidents but part of a larger “social problem.”
PSL member Taylor Goel expanded upon Shakur’s implication of deeper social and economic issues at play: Mass unemployment, mass incarceration, the so-called War on Drugs, racist police brutality and a justice system that actively protects and encourages racist oppression, Goel explained, are all vital pieces sustaining a capitalist system that depends on division and exploitation:
“We also have to realize that we cannot permanently get rid of racist police brutality without challenging all forms of injustice. … The fight against police brutality and the struggle for a just world are inseparable and I am convinced it is that same fight that will ultimately uproot this corrupt social order that relies on racism, police brutality and mass incarceration to sustain its vicious unjust rule of exploitation.”
Peter Shell, a long-time Pittsburgh organizer in many different struggles, emphasized the importance of popular resistance, noting that the eventual filing of charges in the Johnny Gammage case—another notorious Pittsburgh case of racist police brutality—did not originate from the good will of those in power, but rather was forced by “the multicultural and militant, grassroots movement that organized to demand justice for Jonny Gammage”.
The rally presented a clear message for District Attorney Stephen Zappala: “Prosecute and resign!” For more than two years Zappala has failed to file charges against the three cops who beat brutally beat Jordan Miles; they instead have been rewarded with more than a year of paid leave—in fact at a higher rate than they earned while actually on duty—as well commendations. They were returned to active duty with the police force in May 2011.
Brandi Fisher, a well known community organizer in the fight against police brutality and one of the coordinators of the rally, vowed to continue to help organize demonstrations every month for the next three: The pressure must be maintained, she knows, in order to short-circuit the justice system’s traditional maneuver of delaying to ultimately deny justice as public attention fades.
“The reason I fight is that our children have a right to be who they are,” Fisher said.
