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Justice for Javon Dawson, TyRon Lewis, Marquell McCullough and Jarrell Walker!

The Justice for Javon Dawson Committee is raising the demand that the city of St. Petersburg pay reparations to the families of the four young black men murdered by the St. Petersburg police or Pinellas County sheriff’s deputies in the past 12 years.

Regardless of the cover-ups and lies in the State Attorney’s reports, the facts are clear. TyRon Lewis, 18-years-old, was shot during a traffic stop in 1996. Marquell McCullough, 17, was killed by sheriff’s deputies while he was in his truck in 2004. Jarrell Walker, 19, was murdered by deputies as he slept with his young toddler in the next room in 2005.

In June of this year, 17-year-old Javon Dawson was killed by St. Petersburg police officer Terrence Nemeth after a high school graduation party.

With their whole lives still in front of them, each teenager was unarmed and in a vulnerable position. Two were shot in the back, one as he was allegedly running away. Another was shot in the side and one with his hands up, as countless witnesses verified.

In every case the victim was black while the shooter was white. Not one victim was in the process of “crime.” In every instance the murders were ruled “justifiable” following questionable investigations by the very corrupt and unsavory State Attorney Bernie McCabe.

The population of St. Petersburg is only 22.4 percent black, according to Pinellas County statistics, yet the African community is the victim of an inordinate percentage of police murders. Police violence against the African community is often carried out by SWAT teams acting like
an invading army.

In the white community we would not expect our children to return from a graduation party in a body bag as a result of being shot in the back by police. Even white serial killers, spouse murderers and lethal sexual predators are taken in by police and given due process of the law. Yet, African teenagers in the course of everyday life are shot down by police.

Thus, white criminals regardless of the violence they wreak can expect to get a fair trial for their crimes. Yet African teenagers and their families experience the daily insecurity that they may be murdered by law enforcement at any moment for no other reason than they are young and black.

Police policy targets young black men

We charge that the murders of young black men by armed employees or representatives of the city of St. Petersburg are not accidental. They are the result of policy laid out by the city.

It is a policy that dates back to the curfews surrounding the black community every night in the early 20th century, to the lynchings of black men on Second Street South in the 1920s, and the hideously racist mural that hung in city hall until snatched down by Uhuru Movement leader Omali Yeshitela in the 1960s.

This policy is no longer called Jim Crow but it still reeks of a twotiered system of legal rights for white people, and vigilante violence against the African community.

It plays out today in heavy-handed police containment tactics that put the entire black working class community on lock down and under the thumb of martial law, even as policemen often present a friendlier face in some of our neighborhoods.

Why does this policy exist? For money, advantage and careers, of course. The violence against black people in the 20th century was based on the legacy of the very lucrative system of slavery that built this city and the U.S. as a whole. It was fueled by a profit motive of cheap manual labor and service sector jobs forced on black people.

Today, the city’s policy of two-tiered policing enforces its plans for development, condo building, a new baseball stadium, gentrification and a general gold rush of possibilities for cheap property in a county that is hungry for new construction space, even in the middle of an economic downturn.

The only problem is that the property in question is in the middle of or bordering the African community, where at least a quarter of the population lives in deep poverty, where much of the housing is substandard, where salaries are little more than half of white salaries and only a third of students graduate from high school with a diploma.

Thus, in the black community the police act as a force to sanitize, intimidate and disperse the residents for the benefit of the elite and all those who would seek their fortune at the expense of black people.

City of St. Petersburg must pay reparations

Join in the demand for reparations

This injustice cannot continue to tear apart our city. We must demand that our city stop this police violence. We must call for programs to truly eradicate the systemic poverty in the African community through genuine economic development that transforms the conditions and possibilities for all.

We call on everyone to join us in this urgent and just demand. Reparations to the families of these four young black men would be a key step forcing the city to raise the standards of policing across the board through ending its policy of targeting the black community with heavy handed and militaristic law enforcement tactics.

Reparations are not the same as money paid out as a settlement for a case. Reparations involve an apology from the city and a commitment to abandon the practice of the meaningless theft of young black life.

For the city of St. Petersburg to pay reparations to the families of these young African men would set an important precedent for what is an epidemic of police violence around the country.

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About the Author

Penny Hess is Chairwoman of the African People’s Solidarity Committee, active in the organization since its founding conference held in St. Petersburg, FL in 1976. She is author of All Diamonds are Blood Diamonds and Overturning the Culture of Violence. She also writes at UhuruSolidarity.blogspot.com.

All of the ideas and analysis in this pamphlet are based on the theory and understanding of Omali Yeshitela, Chairman of the African People’s Socialist Party and leader of the Uhuru Movement, proponents of African Internationalism, a world view through the eyes of the African working
class.

African People’s Solidarity Committee

The African People’s Solidarity Committee (APSC) is active in bringing campaigns of the Uhuru Movement into white communities on local and national levels. We organize forums, demonstrations, studies and fundraisers in support of African community demands for an end to police brutality and massive imprisonment, and for economic development, reparations and justice for African people everywhere.

For more info contact the African People’s Solidarity Committee
P.O. Box 4176, St. Petersburg FL 33731
727-683-9949 • info@apscuhuru.org • www.apscuhuru.org