May 2000

Dorismond funeral no sanctuary from police

New York--We just returned from the funeral of Patrick Dorismond. The Haitian and Caribbean communities came out by the thousands in an emotional procession, accompanying the casket down Flatbush Avenue in Brooklyn from the funeral home to the church. The night before, there were 2,000 outside the funeral home in a vigil and protest.

Today's march was angry. The organizers had told the police to stay away, that the people were in no mood to see a police presence. The city partly complied, sending mostly community affairs cops and supervisors. The riot squads, the horses and paddy wagons were kept hidden several streets away. Still the marchers were incensed at what police presence there was there, saying "What are they doing here? Get out of here! Murderers!"

The march filled Flatbush from sidewalk to sidewalk. Hundreds who lined the avenue all morning, waiting for the procession, joined in, the sidewalks moving along with the street as one.

BARRICADES TORN DOWN

When we got to Church Avenue, two blocks from the church, we found the police had set up their damn cattle pens, their steel barricades, right down the middle of Church and along the sidewalk. They were going to pen this wall-to-wall tide of marchers into a twenty-foot-wide corral! Tempers exploded, and the hated barricades were soon tossed back, knocked down, thrown against the cops after some shoving.

The cops were no match. The marchers joyfully took the whole street, with all the barricades knocked down for the whole two blocks. I saw one cop on the ground, holding his leg. I guess he got hit by his own barricade. Some women from Barbados were laughing later, saying it was good to see the cops scared for a change, that they were stupid to even try to pen-in such a large crowd.

The cops got their vengeance. They waited till the funeral was over, the family and casket gone. Then the community affairs cops withdrew and riot police were brought in, a provocation that made everybody very angry. They were saying, "We're doing nothing here. We are just in front of the church. They say we have to clear the street. Why? They don't do this in other neighborhoods. Why do we have to leave?"

Then there was a police riot. They attacked, hitting anyone they could. The crowd answered with bottles, and the cops arrested the first 29 people they could grab. It didn't matter if you were doing nothing, the cops grabbed you. The arrested included a reporter for WBAI who was in the middle of an interview when he was savagely beaten by the cops, and a young pregnant woman of 16.

This is not over. Tomorrow there will be a mass meeting at a church in Brooklyn, called by those who also organized this march, the Haitian Coalition for Justice. They have "launched a rache monyok campaign to force Mayor Giuliani's immediate removal from office. RACHE MANYOK means to pull out by the roots in the Creole language."

They are not calling for Federal oversight or take-over of the NYPD (New York Police Department), unlike Rev. Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson and I guess the Black middle class who want a solution within the present system. They are counterposing RACHE MANYOK to that, and calling for community control of the police, not Federal control.

A speaker also said the Haitian community is sick of the hypocrisy of having the NYPD over in Haiti training the police force on how to respect human rights while they are here killing us. And in Haiti the police are now repressing people and using violence too.

HOW DO WE 'RACHE MANYOK'?

Apart from a couple of reporters for National Public Radio and WBAI, I was the only person of the Caucasian persuasion, or pink, that I saw at this march except for a handful of leftists. A Colombian woman was angry at the lack of Latinos whom she felt should have been there since people in today's march were there for Anthony Baez who was killed by police in the Bronx several years ago.

I felt this was more of a community thing, and we were in the heart of the Haitian and Caribbean community. Of course, I would have loved to see more New Yorkers of every color there, but I think this funeral was seen as the community's, and the others not coming is not a judgment. The protest on Saturday, March 18, after the killing of Dorismond the previous Thursday, was, like the Diallo verdict protest, of many colors.

How do we RACHE MANYOK? How do we at least get to where a Haitian mother I was speaking to, as we waited for the procession, who felt these events "are all very sad," how do we get to where she doesn't literally fear for the life of her 14-year-old son at the hands of the police, every single morning when he goes to school? She tells me she leaves it in god's hands. We are god's hands. The point is, it is a very very different reality to be Black in New York and the U.S.A.

Mayor Giuliani says we can't complain this time because the cops that did the shooting were "Hispanic." Well there's Latino and there's Latino. I'd like to see a picture of the cops because there's the color line. Latinos are of many colors, and as that Colombian woman said, there's plenty of racism amongst Latinos too.

We have to keep moving since this police terror is only getting worse. And we have to take care we don't focus so much on the person, Giuliani, that they trick us and give us Giulianism without Giuliani.

-John Marcotte, March 25