I’m someone who got involved in the early days of building up the October 22 Coalition to Stop Police Brutality, Repression and the Criminalization of a Generation. The October 22nd Coalition formed in the late 1990s to fight police brutality and many, many different groups and people joined together, building support for and protesting with the families of children whose lives were stolen by police murder—even publishing a book documenting the many cases of people who were killed by police. For over fifteen years, we worked together with O22, making a difference.
The leadership of Bob Avakian and the Revcoms was key to this fight against police brutality! Because before we built up the October 22 Coalition, I didn’t see anyone else out there fighting against police brutality. No one else was out there on a national scale. O22 was the first out there broadly in this fight. I even went with the October 22nd Coalition to Washington, DC and unfurled a banner on the steps of the US Capitol and I remember Al Sharpton as one of many speaking that day against the 41 bullets shot by police into the body of Amadou Diallo. And it’s still going on, since police shot over sixty bullets into Jayland Walker, murdering him.
I think it is important that we all unite together now—to fight for abortion rights! To attack Rise Up 4 Abortion Rights as disrespectful to Black people and people of color because Rise Up raises the slogan “Forced Motherhood is Female Enslavement” is wrong and goes against the whole history of this country and how people are enslaved in many ways and forms, including that we are now living in the era of the New Jim Crow. As Black people, we know that over generations Black women were being raped and everyone turned a blind eye. So the slogan “Forced Motherhood is Female Enslavement” is very correct and important to raise in our battle for us, as women today, to have the right to abortion.