STOP DEPLOYMENT OF NJ STATE TROOPERS FROM JOINING THE OCCUPATION OF BALTIMORE
STOP DEPLOYMENT OF NJ STATE TROOPERS FROM JOINING THE OCCUPATION OF BALTIMORE
It is being reported that NJ will be sending over 100 state troopers to join the occupation of Baltimore and the repression of the youth led uprising there.
After a parade of killings with impunity by police across the whole country, many of them captured by video camera and broadcast across the country, and after months of #BlackLivesMatters nonviolent protests, civil disobediences, meetings and gatherings of all sorts, youth of Baltimore organized a concerted active resistance in response to the police murder of Freddie Gray whose spine was broken in police custody. This was after days of non-violent protests, including a march of 10,000, demanding the arrests of the police perpetrators.
The rebellion has captivated the orchestrated US media with most attention focused, not on the decades of deprivation, poverty, mass incarceration and abuse and killings with impunity by police that preceded the rebellion but on demonizing the responsive actions of the super oppressed of the Baltimore community. Now everybody that has not cared in the least about the massive killing by police with impunity has an opinion about the response of the people of Baltimore.
That NJ tax dollars are being spent to provide repressive means to occupy the Baltimore community and to join the suppression of a rebellion that is the result of decades of multiple forms of super oppression – not just against Baltimore – but against Black and Brown and impoverished communities across the entire USA is only part of the reason why the people of NJ should oppose the deployment.
NJ still has not fully funded the public schools, is withholding funding for pensions, has cut funding to cities, nursing homes and other infrastructure yet NJ can afford to deploy hundreds of state troopers to Baltimore for occupation duties!
The Baltimore rebellion is also a training ground for police militarization and counter insurgent type operations. The NJ State Troopers along with police forces from throughout the eastern seaboard will be field testing technology and tactics. They will be preparing for the eventuality where similar means are deployed in NJ and elsewhere.
We hereby call upon Governor Christie to immediately halt the deployment of NJ State Troopers to join the occupation of the Baltimore community and further to immediately withdraw and NJ State Troopers already deployed. We call for instead, full funding of NJ’s public schools, pensions, nursing homes, homeless support, other human needs and NJ’s cities.