Thursday, March 8, 2012

Wendell Allen Murdered by NOPD: Another Tragic Example of "The New Jim Crow"

In Chile, this is how people react to the police murdering someone. Banner reads "Mendoza Collio: We Mourn Your Death With Fire." May our anger boil over to such powerful action.
Wendell Allen was murdered yesterday by the thugs in blue of the NOPD. He was unarmed. He was a star basketball player. He had his whole life ahead of him.

While the outcome of his encounter with the police may have been especially tragic, his story is far from unique.

The New Jim Crow system of justice put his body on an all too familiar path, on a collision course with the fear-inspired bullets of the NOPD thugs who broke down his door last night.

The entire story of Allen's interactions with the justice system reflect a perfect example of The New Jim Crow, in the way Michelle Alexander defines it in her book of the same name. From Wendell Allen's criminal record for minor offenses (especially drug offenses), to the trap of probation violations, of non-payment of exorbitant fines due to poverty leading to further warrants and arrests, of kids with criminal records being second-class citizens when it comes to employment, leading many to turn to the black market economy to survive (not saying that Allen sold weed himself, but some around him of the same age group did, and it led to his unjustifiable murder by Officer Josh Colclough).

All of these events in Allen's life are straight out of Michelle Alexander's narrative of how a new system of Jim Crow has been enacted on African-Americans through the policing and imprisonment systems over the past 30 years.

Listen to Alexander's excellent NPR interview and you'll be amazed as she recounts almost word for word an outline extremely familiar to what Wendell Allen had encountered in his short life. Now he will never get the chance to live in freedom from this new Jim Crow system, and another mother is burying a son far too soon in New Orleans.This daily terrorism, the relegation of large portions of our community to second class citizen status, and the police murders that inevitably result from the system's criminalization of an entire generation of young people must come to an end!



RIP Wendell Allen, Justin Sipp, Adolph Grimes III, Henry Glover, Shotgun Joe Williams, Cayne Miceli, and so many more.
IT IS UP TO US TO END THIS UNJUST AND BRUTAL SYSTEM THROUGH STRUGGLE IN THE STREETS!
NO ONE WILL DO IT FOR US!
FIGHT BACK! THE LIVES OF OUR FRIENDS AND NEIGHBORS DEPEND ON IT.

5 comments:

  1. While Serpas released these details at a late-afternoon news conference at NOPD headquarters, Allen's relatives stood outside, holding signs aloft demanding justice for their loved one.

    They alleged that the shooting was unjustified and called police "killers."

    "They killed him for nothing," said Allen's aunt, Karen Allen, 32, of Sulphur.
    http://mobile.nola.com/advnola/db_96856/contentdetail.htm?contentguid=IdXsovJw

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  2. Community United for Change will hold a Press Conference at 10:00 am today (March 9, 2012) in front of NOPD Headquarters.

    Also, CUC will hold an Emergency Town Hall Meeting on Monday, March 12, 2012 at St. James AME Church - Meeting Hall, 221 N. Derbigny, 6:30 pm.

    Justice for the Sipp & Allen families!


    posted by: Sheree Camel
    (cousin to Earl & Justin Sipp)

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  3. Everyone come out tomorrow, Saturday, at 10am to the funeral and second line for martyr Justin Sipp at Majestic funeral home 1833 OC Haley Blvd. Everyone is invited and encouraged to bring signs or wear t-shirts memorializing Sipp and calling for an end to police murders.
    Do not miss this event!
    People are encouraged to bring a friend and have signs/shirts saying "I am Justin Sipp"...

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  4. Crime fight crippled by distrust of New Orleans Police Department: Jarvis DeBerry

    NOPD acts like an occupying army. This isn't Iraq! Get these roid raging, PTSD-having, un-educated thugs with guns out of our neighborhood NOW!

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  5. I pray that cop get the chair for what he done because if it was a black person killed a white ,all I can say is lord have mercy .nopd are murders nothing but thugs with badges I pray for justice for wendell Allen they are monster that poor black,the old ,and the black male has to be afraid of they not trying to stop crime or help the people they come in neighbor terrorism people .my son is bipolar ,so sometime I need help to get him to the doctor but I hate to calling him they come in cursing and just taking down to people. They need more training and the screen.

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