A number of organizations have joined together to call a Million Youth March in Harlem on September 5, 1998. To be young and Black in America is to be shut off from economic opportunity, to be followed through stores by guards, to be tracked into a third-rate education, to be the victim of a predatory underground economy, and to be fair game on the street for any cop with an attitude.
Refuse & Resist! solidly supports the right of Black youth to march in Harlem, and we call on people from every community to step forward, make their voices heard, be vigilant, and ensure that no further schemes are used to prevent or disrupt the march.
In keeping with the government's program to criminalize a whole generation, Mayor "Adolph" Giuliani tried to declare that America's most oppressed youth would not be allowed to march. He was slapped down by a federal judge who found his attempt to ban the march completely arbitrary and unconstitutional, but then a higher court stepped in to severely restrict the March.
Giuliani said it would be a traffic nightmare. What hypocrisy! Every group from the NY Marathon to the President's motorcades is allowed to bring the city's streets to a snarling halt. Nor have we heard any demand from the people of Harlem that their own youth not be allowed to march.
Refuse & Resist! also remembers well that the government mobilized the National Guard in 1990 in Washington, DC, to enforce the "right" of the Ku Klux Klan to march through the nation's capital. What an exposure! That the government will use armed force to protect white supremacists, then turn around and threaten armed force to suppress Black youth, tells it all.
At the same time, blaming Jews for Giuliani's attacks on the Million Youth March, as some march organizers have done, is both false and obstructs the unity needed to defend the right of youth to protest. Even more important, it is not going to build the unity needed to defeat the whole range of attacks on Black and other oppressed youth for which Giuliani is one of the point men nationally.
The Nazi's came to power in Germany by targeting and marginalizing one group after another. Ultimately they sent revolutionaries, Jews, Gypsies, homosexuals, foreigners, and even people with birth defects to be exterminated. Well, we are not going to let them continue targeting Black youth in this country.
Mayor Giuliani, who has tried to suppress the Million Youth March, is at the forefront of a national program of poverty, punishment, patriarchy, and police. Whether the government is allowed to get away with suppressing a protest of Black youth has implications for our whole society.
Refuse & Resist!
305 Madison Ave., Suite 1166,
New York, NY 10165
Phone 212-713-5657
E-mail: info@refuseandresist.org
Web site: http://www.refuseandresist.org
[posted September 3, 1998]
Contact Refuse
& Resist!
305 Madison Ave., Suite 1166, New York, NY 10165
Phone: 212-713-5657
email: info@refuseandresist.org