Stop the Stop & Frisk

I've been asked to post the rallying statement delivered in front of Manhattan Criminal Court on Tuesday, January 17th, 2012 in support of Harlem Mom, Mary Black.

My name is Benita Rivera, and I am the co-founder of The Mothers’ Agenda NY, a grassroots, human rights based membership group of mothers and women united to raise our civic voices and take a stand against the policies and societal acceptances that hurt us and our families.

We believe in the moral authority of motherhood, and our rightful duty to protect our ourselves and our families from undue harassment and hardship.

We ask Mayor Bloomberg and Commissioner Kelly to think back to a time when they, as parents, were teaching and preparing their own children about being outdoors without them. No doubt, their message stopped at “Do Not Talk to Strangers” and “Always watch for cars and cross at the corner when the light is green.” I can tell you these powerful while men did not share the fear that grabs our hearts every single time our sons leave our view, and how that fear rests in our guts until we our boys are home again safely and without incident. I can tell you, the mayor and commission have NO idea how heartbreaking it is for us to tell the babies we bore to beware of the police.

It hurts like hell to explain to our sons how they must be prepared, remain calm and be docile, not IF--- but WHEN they are terrorized by the NYPD for doing nothing more than innocently walking on the streets of NYC. They are traumatized because they have beautifully rich, cola colored skin—the reason they will be disrespected and have their human and civil rights violated. And it demeans us in their eyes to admit to our children that there’s nothing we can do about protecting them from the very people our tax dollars pay to protect everyone else.

Well, we are here on this cold morning to say, We MOTHERS can do something about it.

I want to share what I learned from listening to a warrior-mother from war-torn Liberia, Africa named Leymah Gbowie. In an interview, she said her fear of rape and the threat of death and starvation to her and her children had reached its limit one day, and it gave way to a burning anger. She had no special organizing skills; just so much fear that it burned itself into a live flame of anger and she used that to ignite the same in her Liberian sisters.

So the question is, how many thousands more of our young sons, husbands, brothers and nephews and fathers need to be traumatized and terrorized by the NYPD before our fear for them glows with that same kind of anger?

In terms of how to use our anger, we’ve been given a model lesson in organizing from another group of Black mothers far away in another land, who came together from differing faiths and warring villages to Pray the Devil Back to Hell, and if you’ve seen the documentary, read the book, or just heard about their sister leader Leymah Gbowie’s award of the Nobel Peace Prize— then you know how these women succeeded in waging a united and historic women’s protest movement and gained dignity and peace.

It took time and effort but their consistent “sit-down” protests (without the organizing benefit of hi-tech text messaging, tweets and Facebook) eventually stopped the warlords’ violence of rape upon themselves and their daughters, and stopped the recruitment of their sons as child-soldiers, meaning the kidnappings and resistance that led to amputations of their son’s limbs, ceased as well. The organized work of mothers demanded peace negotiations, and they got them.

The fear for our children is no different than that of the mothers of Liberia, but we have yet to just get angry enough to organize a united strategy and demand from our city, it’s police, its courts and education system.

The Liberian women’s Mass Action Campaign started in one community with 7 women and spread to over 50 communities across that country. Today, I call for that same kind of mass organizing action in NYC. Harlem, East New York, Brownsville and Bed-Stuy may be the NYPD’s targeted communities, but they are also our Mothers’ ground-zero.

Let us organize as The MANY and work together to establish a Mothers’ Agenda that demands a Stop to the NYPD’s Stop and Frisk policies all across this city.

I will close by asking that you let Mary Black’s pain and anger be the flame that fires up our fear, and turns it to an anger that sends a red-hot Mothers’ message of “NO More Stop & Frisk” to the City of New York.

Say it with me: STOP, Stop & Frisk, STOP Stop & Frisk!