Minneapolis Activists Continue Fight Against Systemic Racism and Police Violence

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Minneapolis Activists Continue Fight Against Systemic Racism and Police Violence

Wednesday, 06 January 2016 00:00
By Ibrahim Hirsi, Truthout | Report


Nekima Levy-Pounds watched the scenes of officers slaying unarmed Black men replayed, one after another, in major cities across the United States, including New York, Charleston, Chicago, Milwaukee, Cleveland and Cincinnati. During all of them, she clung onto one hope: to never see the same stories unfold in Minneapolis, where she raises her 11-year-old son, heads the local NAACP and participates in the local Black Lives Matter movement.

However, it's clear that Minneapolis, too, is home to the kind of police violence that has inspired protests from Ferguson to Baltimore and led to the birth of Black Lives Matter, a national racial justice movement fighting against police brutality.

By November, Levy-Pounds found herself on her knees on a cold Minnesota night with her hands raised in the air and her eyes fixed on scores of state troopers on I-94, one of the state's busiest highways.

She was among hundreds of Black Lives Matter protesters in solidarity with Jamar Clark, a 24-year-old unarmed Black man who died a day after police officers shot him outside his sister's Minneapolis apartment on November 15. ...............(more)

http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/34283-minneapolis-takes-national-spotlight-in-the-struggle-for-black-lives