“George Floyd can’t just be another name. The knee has always been on our neck and we can’t breathe.”
A mixed crowd of people came by foot, car, and wheelchair or with crutches from all over St Albans to gather at Verulamium Park on Friday evening waving banners and chanting Black Lives Matter!
St Albans in Hertfordshire a predominately white area has never seen the like when around a 1,000 strong mixed ethnicity, children, and youth, elderly, able bodied and disabled came together in solidarity to fight for racial equality.\
Hosted by Shelley Hayes a number of people spoke and called for all races to come together to fight racial inequality and systemic racism. To seek changes in the education system and teach a decolonised history, to seek changes with policing and its targeted violence, and change societies perspective to make a balanced prospect for all.
St Albans MP Daisy Cooper spoke and promised to take the concerns raised to parliament.
The gathering ended with the crowd kneeling for 8 minutes and 46 seconds the amount of time that George Floyd had to endure the knee on his neck.
The peaceful gathering dispersed from the park to the sound of reggae music.
Edward Colson falls… now for Cecil Rhodes and all the other statues to slave holders and imperialistsThe US embassy in London looks better like thisAs a matter of record, Churchill was a white supremacistSay Her Name: Breoona Taylor. Rest in PowerShot eight times in her own home by Louisville, Kentucky police.
More than 65,000 are marching in London now (Sunday 7 June).
The statue of a slave owner Edward Colston has been pulled down and thrown into the river at the thousands strong protest in Bristol today.
50,000 marched in London yesterday, 25,000 in Manchester and hundreds of thousands in cities and towns large and small all over the country.
The movement is growing and radicalising. And it is a global movement.
In the US, Democrat politicians and black office holders are being exposed for their years of inaction.
The mayor of Minneapolis was forced on to a “walk of shame” when he refused to commit in front of an audience of thousands of protesters, to defund the police.
The demand to defund the police is attacking the heart of the system and exposes the deep root and branch changes that are needed to end racial injustice and institutional discrimination.
Police attack London marchers
On the London demo yesterday the determination was on display for all to see.
Police decided to stop people leaving the protest at one point and decided to charge their cavalry at the peaceful marchers, with officer not looking where she was going and getting knocked off her horse.
This is a mass movement against racism the like of which has not been seen, at least in the US, since the 1960s.
Matt Hancock is a public health criminal
When Health minister Matt Hancock claims this is all about the US and the UK doesn’t have a problem with racism, it shows how out of touch this racist Tory government is. Having a few black and Asian faces in high places is not a badge of anti-racism. These people are doing the dirty work for the government.
With more than 1,700 people killed in police custody or after contact with a police officer since 1990, Hancock’s comment betrays his ignorance.
This is the government that has brought us the hostile environment, the Windrush scandal and the mounting disproportionate BAME death toll in this ongoing pandemic.
This is the governing party that refuses to investigate Islamophobia within its own ranks.
Police murder black people here in the UK too
In one month in June 2017 four black men were killed by British police, at least two in circumstances not dissimilar to the murder of George Floyd. Rashan Charles and Edson Da Costa died after being restrained by police. Choke holds by police are commonplace as is police brutality.
Black people in London are disproportionately fined – about half of all such fines – for breaking covid rules while Cummings can do as he pleases.
Yesterday, police blocked peaceful demonstrators from leaving the protest and then charged at them with horses. Why?
BAME Covid deaths: Tories to blame
Why is the government not holding a full public inquiry into disproportionate BAME deaths, as Diane Abbott and many other MPs are demanding?
Why is there still no blanket amnesty for all those caught up in the Windrush scandal? Why has only a statistically insignificant amount of compensation been paid to victims from the £200 million allocated?
Why are black people twice as likely to be killed by police and eight times more likely to be stopped and searched?
Why is black history still not integrated into the curriculum?
Why has Boris Johnson never apologised for all the racist remarks he has made, or for allowing a pseudo scientific article declaring black people to be inferior to appear in the Spectator magazine when he was editor?
These are just some of the questions this government and Hancock and a Johnson need to urgently answer with action not words.
Next steps…
Expand the #TakeTheKnee protests this coming Wednesday.
Join the protests next weekend. Fight for socially distanced protests.
Organise local socially distanced protests.
Call protests in your area.
Demand full democratic control of the police.
Sack and prosecute racist police who brutalise our community.
At least 23 peaceful protesters were arrested at the London Black Lives Matter protest, part of wave of solidarity gatherings that swept the country on Sunday.
The cop who murdered George Floyd, Derek Chauvin, has only been charged with third degree murder and none of his three accomplices have been arrested.
Organisers estimate the march at 10,000, with more joining to swell the numbers at different points throughout the day.
Hundreds also marched in Manchester after assembling at St Peter’s Square in the centre of the city.
Protests also took place in Liverpool at St George’s Hall in addition to other cities such as Cardiff, Glasgow, Birmingham and Oxford. There is now a day of action planned on Wednesday as well as further protests this coming weekend.
Vigil in Oxford for George Floyd
Alarmingly, the police arrested peaceful protesters by using Section 7 of the Covid Act, which provides them with powers to arrest people who are social distancing.
March approaches US embassy – white van drivers shows his support
But where was the rest of government adviser, racist Eugenicist Dominic Cummings?
The arrests mostly took place outside the moated US embassy.
Police moved into the crowd a little after 3pm and began to antagonise people. Two of those arrested under Section 7 were Olha Korovina and Raffaello Donnaloia, one of whom was a minor friends told BLMM.
The police refused to say which police station the two would be detained at.
But despite the intimidation of the police, marchers were not deterred.
The day had begun at Trafalgar square at 1pm where thousands congregated, answering the call from a number of BLM organisations.
The chant “Say his name: George Floyd” rang out from the crowd, alongside the passionate insistent shouting of “black lives matter”.
Following the example of NFL star Colin Kaepernick – who “took a knee” in peaceful protest in support of BLM and was ostracised for doing so by the League bosses and abused by Trump who called him a “son of a bitch” in a vicious speech to his rabid supporters – protesters kneeled in unison.
The UK is not innocent
Chanting “I can’t breathe” and the name of Breonna Taylor, killed by US police in March, the marchers moved off down Whitehall to Downing Street.There, marchers continued to chant George Floyd’s name, interspersed with “Fuck Boris” and “The UK is not innocent”.
Arriving at Downing Street
At least three black men have been tasered by police in the UK over the past few weeks. The most recent in Manchester where Desmond Ziggy Mombeyarara was tasered while holding his five-year-old child and a Tottenham youth who was tasered and fell from a wall as a result and now will never walk again.
All this comes on the top of the disproportionate death toll impacting black and minority ethnic communities in both the UK and US.
The UK and US both have among the highest per capita death rates in the world.
At the US embassy protesters chanted “No Trump – No KKK – No fascist USA”, as they called out Trump for urging police to shoot demonstrators.
Speeches from organisers accused the US of being a “failed state, a terrorist state, a racist state” and urged unconditional support for the US rebellion.
Trump was so scared of the protesters in America that he was rushed into a bunker on Friday night as protesters converged on the White House. The Washington DC protests against Trump continue to grow following more incendiary statements by him.
Joining the dots of this rebellion
One speaker reminded the protesters of a speech by Malcolm X when he said: “If they can’t fix their house they shouldn’t have a house. The house should burn down.”
Racist US society is today reaping what it has sowed for so many generations.
At Downing Street: “No justice no peace! The UK is not innocent!”
But a new generation has risen up to again confront America’s systemic racism and social inequality.
With mass unemployment now stalking America, people are starting to connect the dots.
As one demonstrator in New York city who gave his name as Sam B said: “Unemployment is gasoline and then abuse of power is the match,”
Another who was looting said: “If a guy can get away with murdering a guy, I’m pretty sure I can get away with stealing an iPhone, is the attitude.”
The truth is the biggest looters are the rich and the biggest gang of violent criminals are the police whose job it is to maintain racist rule and keep working people in their place. Enough!
London underground driver joins the protests – we have the power!
Some marchers move on to Grenfell Tower in west London where 89 died in a fire because of the poor building standards and fire regulations this government allowed to be introduced to increase the profits of developers.
At the US embassy for a socially distanced protest on Saturday 30 May in the lead up to Sunday’s action
Solidarity with the US rebellion! Spread the resistance.
The Police are the outside agitators. The police are the instigators of violence. The rich are the real looters. Donald Trump is a thug and the UK is not innocent either. We have an illegitimate government led by a racist and elected on a pack of lies – a government that has promoted and imposed policies that have seen at least 63,000 people die. We have criminal racist government. End the hostile environment; Defund the police.
Justice for George Floyd and all those brutalised and murdered at the hands of the police in the US and UK.
It is extremely important that social distancing is enforced and respected at all protests. This government doesn’t care about the disproportionate number of black and minority ethnic people dying in this ongoing Covid pandemic. This is the same problem that confronts the protesters in the US, where people are having to risk their lives to protect lives. The protests below have been called by London BLM and are supported by BLMM. The BLM UK organisation that claims to be the “official” BLM group is not affiliated with any of the organisers.
“Black liberation by any means necessary!”
– Malclolm X
“A riot is the language of the unheard”
– Martin Luther King
Handsworth, Birmingham
Monday 1 June 8pm
Meet 8pm at Cannon Street Church, 300 Soho Road, B21 9NA
UK-wide black lives matter day of action -Wednesday 3 June 6pm
Organise a socially distanced protest in your locality, take a selfie and post to social media, come out at your front door and make some noise, make and display a placard message
Demo – Hyde Park
Wednesday 3 June
1pm
Birmingham – Victoria Square
Thursday 4th June
4pm
Demo – Parliament Square
Saturday 6 June
1 pm
Demo – US Embassy
Sunday 7 June
2pm
Please send in your forthcoming event details and reports from around the country to [email protected] – or go to our contact page to leave details.
#justice4George#justice4breonna – Solidarity with US uprisings against racist police terrorism is needed now more than ever as the US state steps up repression.
Strict social distancing applies –
With the Covid pandemic disproportionately impacting BAME communities, it is imperative that strict social distancing applies at this gathering.
American cities are occupied by militarised police and the National Guard, facing off against overwhelmingly peaceful protesters.
Journalists are being deliberately targeted by police to try and stop the world seeing the extent of their repression.
Shamefully, Democrat politicians have tried to blame protesters for the violence that the police have instigated by firing tear gas and rubber bullets at peaceful protesters.
Protesters have chosen to fight back against the repression. We must support them.
“A riot is the language of the unheard” – Martin Luther King.
Rebellion grows
The uprisings and protests are not the work of “outside agitators”, “foreign influencers” or “urban terrorists”. This is a lie that is preparing the ground for massive violence by the state to try and put down the rebellion.
These are all the same excuses used by the US authorities in the 1960s in response to righteous urban insurrections. The difference today is that the protesters are multiracial.
That really scares the authorities because it shows the potential to ally race and class in a united fight to eradicate racism.
Show your solidarity with the US uprisings against police racism and brutality.
Racism is a 400-year-old problem that will require a revolutionary challenge to the social system for change to come.
The murder of George Floyd follows the murder of Breonna Taylor in her own home by police and the lynching of Ahmaud Arbery in Georgia, and are just the latest examples of the reign of terror that black people live under in the US.
Take a knee for George and Breonna
Join this socially distanced protest Trafalgar Square 1pm.
Bring banners and masks. Take a knee
RIP George Lloyd and Breonna Taylor and all murdered at the hands of racist US police. Please observe social distancing.
In the Romani settlement of Krompachy, which is currently under quarantine because of COVID-19, a police officer is said to have beaten five young children with a truncheon on Monday. According to the children’s testimony, he even threatened to shoot them.
The entire incident is said to have been observed by a soldier in the Slovak Army. The children’s mother, Anna Holubová, posted the information to Facebook and it is being reported on by two Romani media outlets in Slovakia, Gipsy Television and Press TV.
A boy age 10 and four girls, two age 7, one age 9 and one age 11, went to collect wood and play near a stream in a location where soldiers had previously allowed them to go. “We went for wood and the cop began to chase us and shouted at us that if we didn’t stop he would shoot us. We stopped and he took us into a tunnel and beat us there,” one of the little girls described to Press TV while crying.
According to Gipsy Television, military physicians treated the children. They did not, however, immediately give medical reports about the injuries to the children’s parents.
They say the parents will receive the reports from the Defence Ministry. News service Romea.cz also wanted to find out what the Slovak Police have to say about the incident.
The Krompachy Police refused to make a statement about the case and referred Romea.cz to the police spokesperson for Košice, who did not answer her telephone for an entire afternoon. The case should begin to be investigated by the Slovak Interior Ministry’s Office of Inspection Services. “The police inspection knows about the case and will take action once the necessary documentation is delivered,” Silvia Keratová of the press department of the Interior Ministry told Gipsy Television.
Slovak MP Jarmila Vaňová, a Romani community member with the governing OĽANO party, commented on the case on social media by posting “Children are not for beating”.
Update: 1 May 2020 There have been conflicting statements from the authorities. The interior ministry of Slovakia has issued a statement that the children’s families say is false. In the statement, released earlier this week, a doctor claims that the children received the injuries before contact with the police officer.
Violence against the Roma by both the police and fascists is endemic in Slovakia and many other parts of Europe, with the European Union refusing to intervene effectively to protect Roma rights.
Daniela Abraham, founder of the Sinti Roma Holocaust Memorial Trust, says the government is worried by the response from the Roma community to this latest racist outrage, and so are the fascists. “I have received threats from the far right since I started sharing about this on social media. I have written protests to the Slovak prime minister Igor Matovič and the president, Zuzana Čaputová. I urge everyone else to do so too.”
“It is bad enough when they beat and torture Roma people – I’ve just watched disturbing footage from Romania in which a Roma man is being tortured by the police – and nothing is done about it. But these were just little children. We are all united to get justice for our children and need the help of all anti-racists in Europe to stop the terrorising of our community,” Abraham continued.
“The authorities are using the virus as an excuse to spread even more hatred and violence against the Roma.”
Daniela Abraham
But with the testing, all is not what it seems on the face of it either.
In the Krompacy area, according to the government, there are 40 cases of Covid-19. The 4,000 Roma who live in the area reside in four slum settlements. The one in which the children are resident is called Stara Masa and has no cases of infection. This means that the 40 infections are in the other three settlements.
However, all the settlements have been placed under “quarantine” after a government “hygienist” inspected the slums and the testing began. This is despite the government’s own guidance which says that such quarantine measures should only be introduced when infection rates are 10% of more in a given community.
Roma representatives say the quarantine is being used to control the Roma and not to stop the spread of the Covid-19 disease.
Testing in Roma communities in Slovakia began on 3 April, with initially 33 communities tested as part of a pilot, which the authorities say focused on those returning from abroad or those “who wanted to be tested voluntarily” according to Slovak news site DNES 24. A total of 793 were tested over four days to 6 April, including Krompachy where the children were assaulted by police
Andrea Bučková, the government Plenipotentiary for the Roma Community, reporting on tests conducted on Sunday 5 April, said: “The results for the first day of testing confirmed that in the village of Jarovnice, where there is the highest concentration of Roma, no one has tested positive for COVID-19 to date”. [Google Translates].
Discriminatory quarantine against Roma
The head of the local government in and around Krompachy, Iveta Rušinová, has not hidden this, say local Roma. She is on record as saying the Roma will stay under quarantine even after the virus has gone, according to locals.
Both Rušinová and local police have sought to blame the victims themselves.
“No one has the right to raise their hand on a child. But where were their parents, who are responsible for them? They were on the third-class road and alone, unattended,” she said.
A spokesperson for police force special operations, Mário Pažický, claimed “we support any investigation”, but it should not be used to undermine the “legitimacy of our ongoing operations. We can say with certainty that the minors escaped from the quarantined settlement.”
But the police and authorities have not addressed the fact that there is no Covid-19 infection in the settlement the girls live in, and why there is a quarantine imposed there and on the other Roma settlements in Kompachy.
There are no quarantines in Slovakia, except for those imposed on Roma communities.
Many Roma refuse to provide their names or the settlements they come from when making accusations of blatant racism by Rušinová, for fear of retribution.
Despite years of empty promises, the authorities have not connected Roma communities to water services and are holding the threat of never doing so over the heads of the population.
Yet the same authorities say they want to eradicate the Covid-19 outbreak, such as it is, in the settlements where they claim their tests show the virus is present.
Roma representatives are demanding urgent international intervention. The Romani Union of Slovakia has called for a full independent inquiry into the beating of the young children in Krompachy and the threats to shoot them, in addition to the circumstances surrounding the discriminatory “quarantines”.
Also, the Slovak Republic embassy in London was contacted for a response to the allegations, but they have provided no comment.
Additional reporting by Gary McFarlane (Media Workers CV19 Crisis Group)
Send protests to:
President of the Slovak Republic, Zuzana Čaputováirst
WARNING – SHOCKING CONTENT: In the Paris suburb of Les Ulis residents were able to film this shocking footage of a man being taken to an underpass and beaten and tortured by police.
This reign of terror is happening throughout the suburbs every single day of the lockdown.
France’s notoriously racist police force is stuffed full of fascists from the Front Nationale (or whatever Le Pen calls her thugs now). They are harassing, brutalising, humiliating and terrorising the community.
There will be an explosion of resistance. As if this is not enough – a hugely disproportionate number from the ethnic minorities are dying as a result of Covid-19 infection because of the inequalities of overcrowded living conditions and poor health due to poverty.
It is estimated as much as a quarter of the Paris population has fled to second homes in the countryside. This is not an option for most working-class people and those French people from an African or Arab background.
Here’s an excerpt from the New York Times. The European press has so far ignored the oppressive situation in the Parisian suburbs.
“We’ve got a lot of young people in big families, shut up in tiny apartments, and it’s difficult to close them up like that,” said Bilal Chikri, a filmmaker who lives in the neighbourhood. “There’s a lot of clashes with the police, lots of police missteps, lots of abuse of power.”
The approach has left residents vulnerable to both the police and the virus. Paris had 732 virus deaths compared with 402 in Seine-Saint-Denis as of April 8, but the city has half again the population of the suburb, where many of the metropolis’s cashiers, deliverymen, transit workers, nurses and couriers live.
“This is getting really tough,” said Larry Karache, an out-of-work shopkeeper, standing outside Chêne Pointu, the housing project where France’s 2005 urban riots were born, and which was depicted in last year’s hit film “Les Miserables.” “We’re actually in prison here.”
The New York Times reports (10 April 2020)
Racist police in the US, Europe, the UK and elsewhere, are using the lockdown as an excuse to unleash a wave of racist violence against minorities. This is happening in addition when these communities are being disproportionately impacted by Covid-19 with death rates running at twice that for white people. This is due to the discrimination and poverty faced by many for generations.
These same communities are disproportionately to be found on the frontline of the fight against Covid – from delivery drivers to cleaners and nurses. In the UK the first 10 doctors to die were all from ethnic minority background and mostly Muslims. Stand up. Fight back!Racist police in the US, Europe, the UK and elsewhere, are using the lockdown as an excuse to unleash a wave of racist violence against minorities.
This is happening in addition when these communities are being disproportionately impacted by Covid-19 with death rates running at twice that for white people. This is due to the discrimination and poverty faced by many for generations.
These same communities are disproportionately to be found on the frontline of the fight against Covid – from delivery drivers to cleaners and nurses. In the UK the first 10 doctors to die were all from ethnic minority background and mostly Muslims. Stand up. Fight back!
If you were distressed from watching the video of a defenceless child being brutally assaulted by Detective Constable Kevin Rawley of the Metropolitan Police and want to make a complaint, plz see below and link to the complaints form.
How to make a complaint about this police violence
The procedure for submitting a complaint is a simple process. Feel free to adapt the template below:
“When did this happen?
23/04/2019
Approximate time or additional details about the time of the event.
Late afternoon
Please describe the event and what happened in as much detail as possible.
I have been adversely affected by the conduct of a police officer that involves a serious assault” I was traumatised and appalled by watching a video of Detective Constable Kevin Rowley carrying out a violent unprovoked assault using his baton on a defenceless young man who was in handcuffs. This is not the sort of service we expect from our police force.
This officer needs to be reprimanded and firm action taken as an example to the rest of the Metropolitan police force that such brutal assaults on defenceless citizens is NOT ACCEPTABLE!!
Do you have a reference number linked to this complaint?
Not given
What do you feel would be a suitable outcome from this complaint?
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