RECAP: From #BlackLivesMatter to #RiseUpOctober, a Day of Protest

https://www.colorlines.com/articles/recap-blacklivesmatter-riseupoctober-day-protest

On Saturday, October 24, thousands of people united under the #RiseUpOctober banner and marched through the streets of Manhattan demanding an end to police violence against citizens. Organized by the Stop Mass Incarceration Network and lead by Cornel West and Carl Dix (spokesperson for the Revolutionary Communist Party, USA), the march was the culmination of three days of activity, which included a rally and march in Brooklyn on Thursday to mark the date as the 20th Annual National Day of Protest to Stop Police Brutality, Murder, Repression and the Criminalization of a Generation and time to say the names of victims held in Times Square on the same day; and an hour-long shut down of business outside New York’s Rikers Island jail facility on the 23rd.

Among Saturday’s marchers were dozens of family members of people who have died at the hands of the police, including Kadiatou, the mother of Amadou Diallo, who was killed by the NYPD in 1999.







Other speakers included professor West, Oscar Grant’s “Uncle Bobby,” “Vagina Monlogues” playwright Eve Ensler and “Django Unchained” director Quentin Tarantino. The New York Daily News reports that NYPD union the Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association is asking New Yorkers to boycott Tarantino’s movies in response to his speech. “I’m a human being with a conscience,” he said, per the Associated Press. “And if you believe there’s murder going on, then you need to rise up and stand up against it. I’m here to say I’m on the side of the murdered.”

The rally began at Washington Square North, then participants marched up Sixth Avenue and rallied again near Bryant Park. And a group of about 200 continued on to Times Square after the conclusion of the official event. Eleven people were arrested, including a man whose crime was standing on a bench. He had a 2-year-old child on his shoulders at the time of his arrest.