Roosevelt Island Residents Association Public Safety Committee Statement On Killing Of George Floyd And The June 3 Roosevelt Island March For Justice - "We Commend Our Local Young Activists Who Organized The Wonderful — Peaceful But Resolute — June 3 Solidarity Action On Roosevelt Island"

Roosevelt Island Residents Association (RIRA) Public Safety Committee issued a statement on the killing of George Floyd and in support of the June 3 Roosevelt Island March For Justice

BLM, Roosevelt Island pic.twitter.com/rU6FNUNP8f

— Minnehanonck (@minnehanonck) June 3, 2020

organized by local residents Thalia St Hubert, Zoe Lopez,  Dimaura Cole and Eneaqua Lewis. Here's Ms Lewis March For Justice speech at Good Shepherd Plaza:

... When i see that video I see my brother with a cop on his neck. I see my son who is 12 years old laying on the floor with a knee on his neck. I see my brother's friends and see my cousins. I see my neighbors. How many more times do I got to see it? Why is it OK? Guess what Roosevelt Island, you're not off the hook. There's racism here too...

According to June 4 statement from RIRA PSC Chair Erin Feeley-Nahem.

The Roosevelt Island Residents Association (RIRA) Public Safety Committee (PSC) joins the overwhelming majority of the people of the United States — and of the world, who have taken to the streets in huge and unprecedented numbers in solidarity with US protests — in condemning the horrific murder of our brother George Floyd.

We commend our local young activists who organized the wonderful — peaceful but resolute — June 3 solidarity action on Roosevelt Island. In 2013, community activists led by the RIRA PSC, organized mass public protests that forced the removal of the leadership of an abusive Public Safety Department. This led to greatly improved and constitutional policing in our beautiful Island community. These young activists, and our community, stand on the shoulders of these and other past struggles on our island and in our city, state, and nation.

The RIRA PSC supports massive, legal, peaceful, disciplined, and self-policed protests. The overwhelming character of this massive national upsurge for justice has been legal and peaceful. We reject unconditionally the destructive actions, in New York City and nationwide, including unprovoked attacks on police authorities, of elements that undoubtedly include agents provocateurs and opportunists.

Looting and destruction of property give the real sources of racist and class-based state violence — the rigged criminal justice system and its legal machinery of mass incarceration and police immunity for murder and brutality — an opening to get off the defensive and ludicrously attempt to occupy the moral high ground. We cannot let this happen! We must continue the struggle legally, peacefully, and with discipline. That is the road to winning meaningful concessions from the authorities and advancing to genuine social and legal transformations.

We also reject violent provocations, intimidation, and unprovoked brutality — much has been documented in plain sight with videos rolling — by the mobilized NYPD. The curfew recently announced has been used as a pretext to attack peaceful protests.

New York City has a long and sordid history — endless lists of murdered, unarmed men and women can be compiled from decade after decade — of racist police killings and brutality, cover ups, frame ups like the Central Park 5, corruption, and jailhouse coercion and torture. In recent years, we saw the rise and fall of the unconscionable and unconstitutional stop-and-frisk policies implemented by NYPD at the behest of civil authorities. It is the weight of this legacy that fuels this social and political mass struggle for justice, which is overwhelmingly legal and peaceful.

We have joined in the universal demand that all four of the police involved on the scene in Minneapolis be charged and detained. That has now been accomplished. They should be given a fair trial — more than they allowed George Floyd — and spend many, many years in a penitentiary. This is the only possible deterrent to future killers and brutalizers who are obviously so numerous in police departments from coast to coast.

The supposed bad apples rarely, if ever, get weeded out — unless exposed in their careless social media posts or captured video footage. Thugs with a badge and uniform must be made to think twice with the next Eric Garner or George Floyd or Sandra Bland or the child Tamir Rice. They must know they will face consequences and jail time and not the traditional impunity. Only galvanized public pressure, as well as legislation that strengthens constitutional rights and policing, can advance this.

New York State Governor Andrew Cuomo has stated there must be an end to the shielding and covering up of the disciplinary records revealing the histories and practices of brutal and killer cops. We agree. We also agree with him that it is absurd for local DAs and prosecutors, who are intimately tied to the local cops and courts, to prosecute such cases. These are small, important, and obvious reforms within a corrupt and racist system.

Furthermore, insofar as dozens and hundreds of cases of police murders of unarmed Black men and women — and many others of all races and nationalities — have resulted in generations of cover-ups and exonerations in a rigged and racist system, there needs to be focused political pressure to legally bring charges in cases, like the police murders of Tamir Rice in Cleveland and Eric Garner on Staten Island. There is precedent for this in finally bringing to justice many murders of Black freedom fighters, such as Medgar Evers, in the era of the Civil Rights Movement.

We do not trust that justice will be gained without independent mass pressure on the authorities and their system. It is this system where cruel mass incarceration remains the norm. It is this system where police brutality and killings almost always end with police impunity and little, if any, justice. This is no less true in “liberal” and “sophisticated” New York City than anywhere else in the country. Maybe just more hypocritical here.

This massive national (and International) upsurge for justice from a vicious killing in Minneapolis, comes on top of the glaring, grotesque, and growing social inequalities in wealth, access to decent education for young people, massive unemployment, and access to health care in the United States brought into sharp and damning focus and exposure with the COVID-19 pandemic.

The RIRA PSC urges everyone in our community, including our respected PSD officers and leadership, to stay safe, dignified, and loving — and always seeking justice — in these difficult times.

Black Lives Matter!

We Shall Overcome!

More video from the June 3 Roosevelt Island March For Justice here.