By Guest Contributor, on July 11th, 2016 
Cross-posted DC Media Group by John Zangas
Washington, DC — The Movement for Black Lives continued protests to denounce recent killings of Black men on Saturday night in Washington, DC. The Stop Police Terror in DC Project, BlackLivesMatterDMV, BYP100 (Black Youth Project) and allies met at the African American Civil War Memorial and marched through city streets and into Georgetown. Once there they blocked traffic on the main M Street thoroughfare and then blocked Rock Creek Parkway.
The protest lasted over three hours, walking several miles through the city and resulted in no arrests. Many joined along the way, including activists, youth, and families.
The new protests came as video reports came to light of more killings by police of Black men. Delrawn Small, 38, was killed by an off-duty police officer in a road rage incident in Brooklyn, NY. A video published online countered claims by an off duty police officer that Smalls had allegedly punched the officer in the face. Smalls was shot less than two seconds after approaching the unmarked police vehicle.
Another man, Alva Braziel, 38, was shot 10 times by police in Houston, after he went looking for his horse which had gone missing. In that incident Houston police said that Braziel had brandished a firearm.
Smalls and Brazeil are the 655th and 671th individuals respectively killed by US police in 2016.
But Eugene Puryear, an organizer with The Stop Police Terror In DC Project, recognized that the Black Lives Matter movement had made progress.
“It’s only been a couple of years since we’ve been pushing, and already we’ve brought this issue to the forefront of the country,” said Puryear.
Yet a mass shooting of Dallas police officers during a protest Thursday night, which resulted in five police killed and seven wounded, cast doubt that unrest would end any time soon.
Puryear said that the Dallas incident was an unfortunate tragedy but was “not unexpected.”
“When you have a situation when over a thousand people are killed every year by police and no real resolution in the court system…it’s like putting a pot on boil and eventually it’s going to boil over,” said Puryear.
He said the increased national tension is moving the country towards a boiling stage, and change must now happen both socially and politically.
Reports of Black Lives Matter protests dominated the Sunday morning news. Protests were reported in major cities across the country as tensions rose over the spate of recent killings.
Area groups planned to hold a vigil at the African American Civil War Memorial Sunday night.
By Grassroots DC, on June 19th, 2015 
Cross-Posted from DC Independent Media Center Written by Luke
On the 16th of June, DC Ferguson returned to the streets and shut down Chinatown, demanding not only that Police Chief Lanier keep the de facto promise she just made to end jump-outs, but also an end to gentrifcation and homelessness. The 16th of June was the 39th anniversary of the Soweto Uprising a crucial event in the movement that ultimately ended Apartheid in South Africa.
A few days earlier, DC Police Chief Lanier said that the Metropolitan Police Department (MPD) would be switching focus from “low-level drug dealers” to major suppliers. According to the Washington Post report, the city’s vice squads are to be finally eliminated. Not once was the word “jump-out” used in any mainstream media story, but it is clear this is in response to growing pressure to end this tactic. When DC Ferguson began organizing against jump-outs, MPD first claimed to have discontinued the tactic during the 1990’s, then claimed only vice squads did anything like this. Now they say they will abolish the vice squads, but will the jump-outs really end or some other or renamed part of MPD continue business as usual?
Jump-outs are essentially when undercover cops swarm onto a block and attempt to intimidate every young Black male into submitting to an illegal search. Presumably MPD hopes to catch street corner drug dealers by searching everyone on the corner in this way. Jump-outs are seen in gentrification front-line areas and in Wards 7 and 8, which are African-American majority neighborhoods. Police deny they do this, yet everyone on some blocks I know well knows exactly what a jump-out is.
Since Lanier’s statement, FAUX (known by most as Fox) News has been running nonstop crime stories, along with interviews with masked cops complaining about the shift of focus. Faux is yakking every day about overdoses of a bad batch of “synthetic pot”-just after real pot has been legalized. Most likely FAUX has another agenda behind supporting jump-outs, a pro-gentrification one. This is in itself evidence that as protesters charge, jump-outs are about social control and racism, not about drugs at all.
By Grassroots DC, on June 15th, 2015 
Posted on Behalf of DCFerguson
On June 16th 1976 twenty-thousand Black students took to the streets of South Africa to protest the imposition of the racist language Afrikaans in their schools. The event is remembered as the Soweto Student Uprising. Their protests were met with bullets by the Apartheid government killing hundreds of youth. Oppression, however, breeds resistance. The murders of those students jump-started the movement against Apartheid as thousands upon thousands of Black (and white) South Africans actively joined the struggle, swelling the ranks of the Liberation Movement.
Here in the United States we are in the midst of our own Youth uprising, from Ferguson to Baltimore Black youth have led the way and kicked off a powerful movement against racism, police murders and poverty.
On June 16th DCFerguson seeks to honor those who lost their lives in Soweto township in 1976, who gave everything to be liberated. Our uprising must turn into a liberation movement that uproots racist oppression. We will march to commemorate the lives of the lost martyrs in both struggles and in the memory that through struggle comes sacrifice but also victory. Join us on Tuesday June 16 as we continue to demand an end to racist militarized policing in D.C. and the entire United States!
This morning, Mayor Bowser and Chief Lanier announced that they will be “shifting” the strategies of the Metropolitan Police Department. They are backpedaling because of the pressure DCFerguson and their supporters have been able to bring together.
Her announcement is designed to create the appearance of being responsive to those who have called for changes to policing, without any substantive engagement. The Chief, clearly feeling the pressure from our exposure of the jump-out policy, is attempting to make it appear that jump-outs are ending by closing down the “vice units” that were often most responsible. However, there has been no indication that jump-outs themselves will be completely halted. Further, we have no actual way of knowing or measuring progress on this or other fronts while the Metropolitan Police Department (MPD) continues their attempt to sidestep any comprehensive data collection.
The takeaway? That what we are doing is working. Clearly, the administration is looking for a way out. A way of calming down the community and hoping we will relax and stop paying close attention to the actions of police. We will not relax, and we will pay attention. Tomorrow, more than ever, we need to demonstrate to show that this movement isn’t going away until we have changed the racist, militarized policing strategies of the MPD, changed them permanently, and in a way that can be monitored and enforced. Period.
By Malik Thompson, on October 20th, 2014 
On August 9th, 2014, eighteen year-old Black male, Michael Brown, was shot six times by Ferguson Police Department officer Darren Wilson, later dying from his injuries. In response to this tragedy, Brown’s community members constructed a memorial for the young man at the place of his death. However, the memorial was soon destroyed by Ferguson police officers. With unresolved racial tensions setting the stage, Ferguson community members unleashed their frustrations with the authorities’ lack of respect for Brown and his family through protests.
The Ferguson rebellions began the day after Brown’s murder, on August 10th. Gathering at the site of Brown’s death, later taking the protests to police headquarters, the Ferguson police department responded to the community members with military-grade riot equipment.
With the Ferguson community member’s protests continuing for days after Brown’s killing, and increasing brutality of police backlash, activists, organizers, and everyday people across the nation reacted swiftly to the struggles of the Missouri residents.
In a flurry of press releases, art, and rallies, a nationwide call to recognize the value of Black lives was sounded and echoed across the country. Not at all an exhaustive list, here are a sampling of the national and global acts of solidarity sparked by the events in Ferguson.
Starting on the West coast, in Phoenix, Arizona, more than one-hundred people gathered in the city’s Eastlake Park protesting police brutality. Fortunately, no police officers were in attendance to harass the protesters.
Protesters in Oakland, California held mirrors in front of officer’s faces because they wanted the officers to “just look at themselves”, a protester named Nichola Torbett told local radio station KPIX 5.
In Los Angeles, with it’s long history of police brutality, one-thousand people gathered outside of LAPD headquarters, linking their struggles with police brutality to the violence experienced by the people in Ferguson.
On the East Coast, residents of West Philadelphia rallied on the corner of 52nd and Market streets in protest of happenings in Ferguson, speaking out about their own experiences with police brutality in Philadelphia.
After the murder of 43 year-old Eric Garner at the hands of Staten Island police, high racial tensions between NYC residents of color and police simply swelled. Building off the momentum from those protesting in Ferguson, thousands of people from all over the NYC-area flooded the streets of Staten Island in protests of local and nationwide police brutality.
Similarly, after holding a vigil for Michael Brown, Renisha McBride, and other Black people slain by police and vigilantes, protesters in Washington, DC marched to the downtown area by the thousands, one of many protests held in the DC-area.
On the global stage, those struggling against oppressive regimes in Palestine and Hong Kong are using Twitter as a medium to link their struggles with those in Ferguson, offering helpful tips on dealing with a militarized police force during protests. A letter of solidarity published by the Mexico Solidarity Network hints at an even larger global awareness of the significance of the Ferguson rebellions than first thought may suggest.
With the recent events of Ferguson October, including the arrest of prominent Black intellectual Dr. Cornel West, a fresh wave of actions protesting anti-Black racism and police brutality may soon be upon us.
By Malik Thompson, on September 30th, 2014 
On September 21, 2014 over 300,000 people swarmed Manhattan in mass protest against global climate change. With indigenous peoples and people of color leading the charge , the largest protest against climate change in history took place in New York City.
On September 23, Rising Tide DC (RTDC), the local chapter of the international, grassroots climate justice network Rising Tide North America, and the National Campaign for Nonviolent Resistance (NCNR), an organization dedicated to peace and nonviolent resistance, both staged acts of protests against climate change in solidarity with the march in NYC within the nation’s capitol.
NCNR gathered on Pennsylvania Ave. before stopping in front of the White House, and spoke out against the Pentagon’s usage of fossil fuels and similar military practices. Refusing to leave without meeting a person in power, five NCNR protesters were arrested for refusing to step away from the gates surrounding the White House.
While these events were taking place, RTDC led a march through downtown DC opposing the practices of large corporations, such as TD Bank, which cause global human and environmental suffering.
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