"They think it's a game, they think it's a joke!" Ferguson organizers speak!

Submitted by T. Forsyth on Wed, 2014-11-12 21:56

On Wednesday, October 22, 2014, Ricardo Adams and Yusef Bunchy Shakur introduced a community report back with Dhoruba Toure Shakur & Sixela Yoccm from Ferguson, MO. "They think it's a game, they think it's a joke!" Ferguson organizers speak! came together rather quickly as resources were pooled to bring these organizers to Rochester to not only speak about what was going on in Ferguson, but also to answer questions from the community about Michael Brown's murder and organizing going on here. Up to the point of coming to Rochester, both organizers had been on the streets of Ferguson for over 70 days operating with Tribe X and the Freedom Fighters. The event was apart of the Flying Squirrel Community Space's stop mass incarceration programming for the month of October.

October 22nd was fortuitous as it is the National Day of Protest to Stop Police Brutality, Repression and the Criminalization of a Generation.

Ricardo Adams is a father, husband, community organizer, educator, and activist who lives in Rochester, NY and has worked tireslessly for justice on many fronts.

From Detroit, the author, father, youth mentor, inspirational speaker, community organizer and bookstore owner are just a few of the significant roles willfully acquired by the indispensable Yusef Bunchy Shakur.

Both men met Dhoruba and Sixela in Ferguson as well as many other organizers, made the connections, and were able to get them up to Rochester.

After the discussion/presentation, local, amazing, awesome vocal artist Danielle Ponder (of Danielle Ponder & The Tomorrow People) came up on stage and sang for those gathered.

Finally, after Danielle sang, Dhoruba and Sixela played their music video that was in production months before Michael Brown was murdered by officer Darren Wilson. It's called "Black=White" and it was recently uploaded to youtube.com. Watch it below:

It's not a game, and it's not a joke.

Statement from the Flying Squirrel collective on stop mass incarceration programming:

The Flying Squirrel Community Space joins in the call-out for a month of mobilizing against mass incarceration! We demand an end to mass incarceration, police terror, repression and the criminalization of a generation! Our month of action and education against mass incarceration is a scream against the societal effort to cover up, white out, ignore, neutralize and suppress the reality of the prison industrial complex. The PIC imprisons over 2.2 million people, and monitors another 8 million people through parole, probation, ankle monitoring, general surveillance and other measures of state control. If the prison population in the U.S. were put together in one city, it would be the 4^th largest city in the country.

We REFUSE to live in a society that has no better fate for millions of its people than segregation, harassment, brutalization, incarceration and outright murder at the hands of its enforcers—and we will not rest until this is STOPPED. We refuse to make our peace with this “new Jim Crow” – a social system which targets communities of color, immigrants and the undocumented, disabled people, youth, elders, transgender and queer people, women, the poor, the homeless, and others. This system of correctional control, injustice, and domination is nothing but a slow, structural genocide. We will not tolerate this. WE RESIST!