Has public awareness of police using excessive force, especially in cases of officers shooting young black men in the back, ever been higher?
A better question is, What will it take to change police culture and hold officers accountable? That’s a question families who lost sons to police killings will tackle at a free public discussion and free-for-all of ideas Thursday night in Memphis:
“Pain Into Power Panel.” Thursday night 6 – 8
University of Memphis Cecil B. Humphreys School of Law
1 North Front Street
Sponsored by BLIND (Black Leaders Improving Negro Development), Black Law Students Association and the Tennessee Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers.
Earlier Thursday, Mike Brown Sr., Alton Sterling’s aunt Veda Washington and other victims’ family members will appear at "Pain into Power Meet and Greet," providing a rare opportunity for media to interview and the public to meet those who were thrust into the national spotlight under the worst of circumstances. Besides families of victims, the panel will include Vickie Hawkins and prisoner-of-draft Carl Dix.
“Pain into Power Meet and Greet”
11 a.m. – noon
Clayborn Temple, 294 Hernando Street
Event sponsored by BLIND
Both events are free and open to the public. At the request of the families, however, the evening panel is not open to the press. The family members don’t want anyone to hold back or feel inhibited to speak.
Along with Dr. Cornell West, Dix co-founded Stop Mass Incarceration Now. An anti-fascist and self-described revolutionary, Dix was imprisoned for 20 months at Fort Leavenworth for refusing to join the Army after being drafted in 1968.
Vickie Hawkins is special assistant to Rev. Peter Johnson, who was a close associate of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
BOTH EVENTS FEATURING:
Mike Brown Sr., whose 18-year-old son Mike Brown Jr. was shot and killed by a Ferguson, MO, police officer on Aug. 9, 2014. The murder set off a firestorm of outrage and propelled the Black Lives Matter movement. There could be no worse way to be thrust into the national spotlight and have your life changed forever than by your child being murdered by police.
Veda Washington, aunt of Alton Sterling, who was killed July 5, 2016, when Baton Rouge officers pinned him down and shot him in the chest outside a convenience store where he was selling CDs. The murder of Sterling and the police killing the next day of Philando Castille in St. Anthony, MN, sparked national protests including the July 10 Hernando DeSoto Bridge shutdown by more than a thousand Memphis citizens.
LaToya Howell and Alice Howell, whose 17-year-old son and grandson Justus Howell died April 4, 2015, after a Zion, IL, officer shot him in the back.
Family of Isiah Perkins, who was shot and killed by a St. Louis officer July 20, 2017.
Family of Derek Brown, of Columbia, Tennessee, who died Sept. 29, 2013, after a
Tennessee State Trooper allegedly rammed his motorcycle from behind, then failed to call for medical attention until Brown had died.
In September, Brown Sr. and other of these family members appeared at a panel discussion in Memphis after a screening of the documentary Stranger Fruit, which exposes the murder of Mike Brown Jr. and its coverup.
Gary Moore operates Moore Media Strategies, founded the nonprofit Citizens Media Resource, makes films about social justice issues and writes about First and Fourth Amendment issues for Daily Kos as FreeSpeechZone.