People fed up with police violence in US: Activist
Press TV has conducted an interview with Yejide Orunmoli, a Florida-based leader of the African People’s Socialist Party, to discuss the protests against police brutality in the United States.
Press TV: Ms. Orunmila, there are large ongoing demonstrations in Baltimore. So, how far do you think the people will take their demonstrations and protests?
Orunmila: I think what we have seen since the murder of Michael Brown is that people are more willing to protest, whereas before, it has not been something that we would see on TV; but people are now fed up with it, and in terms of how far we can go, I mean we can only go so far with our protests… what we need to start doing is coming up with demands that we will want to hold people accountable for.
So, while be it righteous indignation around the death of yet another black person, here in the United States, what we should do as a movement is really talk about what the next steps are beyond the protests and how we plan to organize for power in our communities.
Press TV: But of course, all of this is because of what people call police brutality, what changes do you think there should be in the police department to prevent further instances?
Orunmila: Well, I mean as long as the power remains squarely in the police departments themselves, there is not going to be any changes.
Protesters have been demanding for video cameras on the bodies of the police officers, they have been demanding for a citizen review board, but all of that still allows for the police to have control over our lives and you know, like I said before… you know, the Uhuru movement and the African People Socialist Party believed that we need to have black-community control of the police, and what this means is that we have to have the ability to hire and fire the police officers. We get to - as a community - choose who polices our community, what do we want them to do, do we want them to police us, do we want them to do public service. We have to make that call because then you start to see a shift in how… what the outcome is, when the police confronts someone from our community.
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