By Jeannine Etter

On Saturday, Sept. 22, the Malcolm X Grassroots Movement will be co-sponsoring a community event entitled “Self-Respect and Community Self-Defense in a Land of Endless Racial Profiling - A People’s Forum” at the Humanist Hall, 390 27th St. in Oakland.

The day - which runs from noon to 8 p.m. - will consist of community discussions and presentations on the history of People’s Self-Defense, Racial Profiling, Trayvon Martin, The Rising Tide Of Police Killings, Confronting Stop And Frisk in NY and The Bay Area and Racial Profiling: The Experience, The Resistance, Launching The People’s Self-Defense Organizing Campaign.

MXGM has researched and released a report entitled “Report on the Extrajudicial Killing of 120 Black People” that shows that every 36 hours a Black man, woman or child is murdered by the police, private security guards, prison guards or vigilantes in the U.S. In response to this epidemic, MXGM has stepped up to address police terrorism and other forms of containment (including mass incarceration).

The formation of Black Self-Defense Networks is intended to defend black people and combat police terrorism; build Copwatch programs; engage in mass rights based education trainings for the community; serve as first responders to acts of Police Terrorism; and help coordinate mass resistance to these acts via mass mobilizations and direct action and referendums to institute Police Control Boards (community based structures that have the power to hire, fire, subpoena, and discipline the police).

According to the organization: “These People’s Self-Defense Networks would work as multi-national alliances to engage in a broad manner all of the tasks mentioned above to defend oppressed peoples and targeted communities, such as LGBTQ2GNC communities, against institutionalized racism, white supremacy, institutionalized sexism, patriarchy and state repression be it racial profiling, gender profiling, stop and frisk, mass incarceration, or mass deportations.”

In April 2012, MXGM launched the “No more Trayvon Martins” Campaign. As a central component of the No More Trayvon Martins campaign, MXGM has been pushing for this demand to be met by the federal government, but asserts that, “We are clear, that if this plan is to mean anything and to have any real impact, it is something that has to be developed and implemented by oppressed peoples themselves.”

For more information on the event, Contact Sanyika Bryant at 415 651 4642, oaklandtribunal@gmail.com or sanyika@mxgm.org.