Community Groups Respond to the Call for Racial Justice Week Before the Elections

Justice in Oakland's Schools and Streets!

Media Contact: (510) 295-7834

Education Not Incarceration, the No on Measure Y Campaign and the African People’s Solidarity Committee, the International People’s Democratic Uhuru Movement and other organizations will hold a press conference on Thursday, October 21, 2004 at 11am at the Oakland Unified School District Office at 1025 Second Ave in Oakland to announce activities planned for Racial Justice Week to address the issues both presidential candidates aren’t addressing including the substandard education, police violence, and massive imprisonment faced by black, Mexican, indigenous, and other oppressed peoples.

Activities include:

Saturday, October 23rd, March for Social Justice - Stop America’s Other War! on at 11am at Lake Merritt

Monday, October 25th, Rally at 10:30am at the Oakland Police Department to defeat Oakland’s Measure Y that would direct new taxes to hire more police officers

Wednesday, October 27th, Community meeting at the Uhuru House at 7911 MacArthur Blvd in Oakland on "Rebuilding Oakland's Black Power Movement" at 7pm with Omali Yeshitela, founder of the Uhuru Movement.

Thursday, October 28th at 6pm at Oakland City Hall for the Civilian Police Review Board hearing where complaints from Carijama will be heard.

Press conference organizers hold the city of Oakland and the Oakland Unified School District partially responsible for the disproportionate numbers of African people in the California prison system. Through police containment of the communities of East and West Oakland, the lack of democratic control of the schools and the low graduation rate for students in Oakland schools, the city and district ensure that a high rate of young black, Mexican, indigenous and other oppressed peoples from Oakland will end up in the California Youth Authority and the California prison system.

For too long, Oakland has signed off on police corruption and paramilitary policing as the price of a racist war on drugs, and the culture of unaccountability that allows the head of the Police Officers' Association to argue city cops do not racially profile and should not have to submit to the Civilian Police Review Board must be changed. Hiring more cops will feed more people into a prison system that breaks apart families, subjects prisoners to torture and medical neglect, and to discrimination after they've done their time, and a growing coalition is demanding an end to the epidemic of mass incarceration and enforced poverty.

Organizational endorsers of No on Measure Y include: Oakland Education Association, ILWU 10, SEIU 24/7, San Francisco Bay Guardian, Global Exchange, Alameda County Green Party, Women of Color Resource Center, Asian/Pacific Islander Youth Promoting Advocacy and Leadership (AYPAL), Alameda County Taxpayers Association, Rental Housing Association, Bay Area Local Organizing Committee of the National, Hip-Hop Political Convention, Alameda County Peace and Freedom Party, Justice Now, Just Cause Oakland, Education Not Incarceration Coalition, Prison Activist Resource Center, Oakland Community Action Network, Bay Area Policewatch, Oakland ACORN(Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now), League of Pissed-Off Voters, Youth Together, Poor Magazine/PoorNews Network, Proyecto Common Touch, Out of Control Committee to Support Lesbian Political Prisoners, All of Us or None, Malcolm X Grassroots Movement, Data Center, Critical Resistance, Black August Organizing Committee, Copwatch, International People’s Democratic Uhuru Movement, African People Solidarity Committee, Xicana Moratorium Committee, October 22nd Coalition to Stop Police Brutality and the Suppression of a Generation.]

Call (510) 295-7834 for more information.
Wendy Lea Snyder

NO ON MEASURE Y! NO MORE COPS!!!! http://noonmeasurey.org
Education not Incarceration Coalition http://www.ednotinc.org