Self-Respect and Community Self-Defense —A People’s Forum

Self-Respect and Community Self-Defense in a Land of Endless Racial Profiling —A People’s Forum—

Where: Humanist Hall, 390 27th Street, Oakland, CA, 94612-3104
near Broadway

When: Saturday, September 22, 2012
Schedule overview:
12 pm:Registration

1 pm: People’s Self-Defense, a history--Racial Profiling, Trayvon Martin, The Rising Tide Of Police Killings--Confronting Stop And Frisk in NY

3 pm: The Bay Area and Racial Profiling: The Experience, The Resistance

6 pm: Launching The People’s Self-Defense Organizing Campaign

As you may have heard or seen, The Malcolm X Grassroots Movement has researched and released a report entitled “Report on the Extrajudicial Killing of 120 Black People” that shows that every 36 hours a Black man, woman or child is murdered by the police, private security guards, prison guards or vigilantes in the US.


One element of structural change that the Malcolm X Grassroots Movement has been advocating for to address police terrorism and other forms of containment (including mass incarceration) is a National Plan of Action for Racial Justice and Self-Determination. As a central component of the No More Trayvon Martins campaign we have been agitating for this demand to be met by the Federal government. The agitation has mainly served the purpose of educating a broader audience and serving notice to the Federal Government. But, we are clear, that if this plan is to mean anything and to have any real impact, it is something that has to be developed and implemented by oppressed peoples themselves.

To develop and advance a more comprehensive model of resistance to police terrorism and containment, we are calling for the following:


1. The formation of Black Self-Defense Networks to defend our people and combat police terrorism. These Networks should seek to build Copwatch programs, engage in mass rights based education trainings for the community, serve as first responders to acts of Police Terrorism, and help coordinate mass resistance to these acts via mass mobilizations and direct action. These Networks should also be encouraged to engage in offensive campaigns, such as referendums to institute Police Control Boards.

2. The formation of People’s Self-Defense Networks to defend the lives and interests of all oppressed peoples’ and exploited classes against various forms of state terrorism. These People’s Self-Defense Networks would work as multi-national alliances to engage in a broad manner all of the tasks mentioned above to defend oppressed peoples and targeted communities, such as LGBTQ2GNC communities, against institutionalized racism, white supremacy, institutionalized sexism, patriarchy and state repression be it racial profiling, gender profiling, stop and frisk, mass incarceration, or mass deportations.

3. The launching of campaigns for local referendums to institute Police Control mechanisms – i.e. community based structures that have the power to hire, fire, subpoena, and discipline the police.

4. Forming People’s Assemblies, on local, city-wide, and regional levels to engage in program and demand development initiatives that will structure the development of a Peoples’ National Plan of Action for Racial Justice and Self-Determination and the broad implementation of people’s programs for self-defense and mutual aid.


Come through and find out ways to plug into this work
Free The Land

Contact: 415 651 4642
oaklandtribunal [at] gmail.com
sanyika [at] mxgm.org