On April 18-19, 2015 the Black is Back Coalition for Social Justice, Peace and Reparations will hold a national conference at Janan Academy, 3625 N. Garrison Ave. in St. Louis, MO to launch a campaign to win “black community control of the police.”
Following on the decision of the Black People’s Grand Jury in Ferguson that Darren Wilson should be indicted for the murder of Mike Brown, the Coalition is working to consolidate a practical program to put an end to police violence and murder.
According to Coalition organizers, “There is but one response to the scourge of police depredations that plague every black community in the United States: black community control of the police.
“The struggle for Black Community Control of the Police assumes the ability of African people ourselves to redefine the role of the police so that it no longer functions as an agency imposed on us from the outside.
“Reformist gimmicks such as Justice Department ‘consent decree’ agreements with local police departments and citizen review boards that only react to police atrocities after the fact are diversions from the urgent task of seizing control of the police apparatus, itself.
“This is not a relationship that can be fixed by reform,” said a statement by the Coalition’s executive committee. “Civilian police review boards cannot fix it, nor can special government sponsored or endorsed discussions on race relations. It cannot be fixed by sensitivity training and cultural awareness within police departments.”
Coalition leaders view ending the armed occupation of black communities as part of the larger fight for self-determination. “Black Community Control of the Police is a democratic demand that pushes our struggle forward toward self-determination, the highest expression of democracy, which for a colonized people begins with placing limitations on the ability of the colonial State to intervene in the lives of the colonized.”