Stolen Lives: Killed and Brutalized by Police

"Stolen Lives belongs to those whose lives have been ended by the police. They cannot speak for themselves, but we can and will..."

So begins a stunning account of police killing and brutality in the United States. Stolen Lives: Killed and Brutalized by Police documents the findings of a joint project of the October 22nd Coalition to Stop Police Brutality, the National Lawyers Guild and the Anthony Baez Foundation.

Here are the names and stories, some with snapshots - supplied by families, witnesses, attorneys - the initial results of the project's "call to people who live with brutality every day to come forward and tell what they know and experience."

Begun in 1996, Stolen Lives is a work-in-progress. Its authors have set out "to put a national spotlight on police brutality ... and compel many, many more people to step out and demand that this brutalization stop." To this end, they aim to gather and publish the names and stories of the many, many people killed by U.S. police and border patrol since 1990 - every name, every story that can be uncovered. The Fall 1997 edition of Stolen Lives is this project's first installment.

Documenting the time, place, and circumstances of every death, Stolen Lives recalls the other roll calls of "hidden" genocides - African slaves in the Middle Passage, Jews and others in the Holocaust, the "disappeared" of the "dirty wars" in Latin America - and compellingly shows that here, today, "there is an epidemic of police brutality in the United States. The victims are overwhelmingly African American, Latino, and other people of color. Many victims are youth."

Each name in Stolen Lives will be read aloud, remembered, and honored in cities across the country on October 22, during the National Day of Protest to Stop Police Brutality, Repression and the Criminalization of a Generation.

"if you hate the toilet plunger rape perpetrated on the young Haitian immigrant...
if you want to know the truth - who is dying and how and why: rogue cops? or usual police practice!
if you abhor complicity in officially sanctioned brutalization and murder...

... then Stolen Lives is written for you."

Stolen Lives: Killed and Brutalized by Police
Stolen Lives Project, National Lawyers' Guild, Anthony Baez Foundation, editors
First Edition - 120+ pages. $5.00 each.
$3.00 each for orders of 10 or more.

order from:
Stolen Lives Project/October 22 Coalition
c/o KHL
Box 124
160 First Avenue
New York, NY 10009
212-822-8596

An on-line database of the SLP is located at http://www.october22.org/stolenlives/index.html

[posted June 21, 1998]

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