A cross-disciplinary initiative on the theme of police violence.

Press Release
Right2Fight A cross-disciplinary initiative on the theme of police violence. One day, all day. Sarah Lawrence College, New York 27 April 2002 As weapons and methods of surveillance become more sophisticated and grass roots dissatisfaction with political and economic systems grows, in many parts of the world policing is becoming increasingly brutal and intrusive. From Johannesburg to Melbourne and Brooklyn, this state of affairs is drawing the attention of artists. In an age of mass media and cleavage to the status quo, voices, images, sounds are emerging that speak of this violence with power and outrage. Right2Fight showcases an important international group of cultural producers whose work stands at the forefront of this movement. This is an emphatically cross-disciplinary undertaking: from web-based projects to grafitti, sculpture to video, installations to street wear, Hip Hop to posters, experimental music and photography to performance poetry. The event's contributors speak as few can to the social and ethical costs of police violence, to the dangers inherent in allowing such violence to proliferate, and to the responsibilty we share as individuals and communities, to denounce and battle it in all its manifestations. Right2Fight is not a symposium. It is a constellation of performances, film and video screenings, installations, showings of net.art and web-based pieces intended to prompt dialogue and questions. This day-long collision of ideas, technologies and images seeks to transcend mere catharsis. The goal is not to satisfy neo-liberal guilt but to engage in concrete action. Representatives of human rights organizations dedicated to ending police violence will be on hand to explain their work. Those who wish will learn, here, how they can become actively involved in the fight, channeling their emotions into actions, their words into deeds. Right2Fight is not an indictment of all police officers. It does, however, condemn the brutality to which many law enforcement communities resort. In light of recent events, the organizers hold, it is more important than ever to address issues of xenophobia, prejudice and violence. In the US and abroad, these have a disproportionate impact on the poor and marginalized. Millions suffer, die, are broken daily. Against this, its dehumanizing effects and causes, Right2Fight takes aim. Contributors include: Antibalas Chris Bratton Robbie Conal Adam de Croix Dee Curry Graff 1 Graff 2 Ashley Hunt Emily Jacir Carol Jacobsen Richard Kamler Jared Katsiane Deborah Kelly William Moses Kunstler Fund for Racial Justice Goddy Leye Pia Lindman and Angel Nevarez Malam Bradley McCallum and Jacqueline Tarry Tewodross Melchishua Julia Meltzer and Liz Canner John Edginton No One Is Illegal October 22 Coalition Sally O'Brien Pass-Fix Horit Herman Peled Jenny Perlin Jenny Polak Picture Projects Lesego Rampolokeng Oliver Ressler Rod Rodgers Dance Company Rick Rowley Jayce Salloum Dread Scott Trebor Scholz Gregory Sholette DJ SKI HI Stolen Lives Project Voices Unbroken Katharina Weingartner Angel Williams Herve Yamguen Herve Youmbi The event's organizers are an urban historian who works in Central Africa and teaches at Sarah Lawrence College (Dominique Malaquais) and a Brooklyn based, East Berlin-born interdisciplinary artist whose work has been extensively shown in Europe and the Americas (Trebor Scholz). The two share a commitment to tactical media, street activism and visual culture. Both curate, speak and publish widely, focusing on issues of social and political concern.
+++++ Three years ago, a Guinean man named Ahmadou Diallo was struck down in a hail of bullets fired by New York City police. He was reaching for identification; the officers assumed he was reaching for a gun. They fired forty-one bullets. Nineteen hit the target. top On Sunday October 17, 1961, Algerians living in Paris organized a peaceful march to protest a curfew on persons of Arab descent. The police moved in. Their commander was Maurice Papon, who during WWII had overseen the removal of 1400 French Jews to German concentration camps. Two hundred unarmed Algerians were shot, bludgeoned and drowned. In February 2001, the government of Cameroon instituted the Operational Command, a paramilitary task force bringing together members of the local and national police and the army. The C.O.’s official purpose was to end a crime wave in the city of Douala; it was meant in fact to bring to heel sectors of the population opposed to the repressive rule of the governing party. In its first six months, the C.O. perpetrated 500 extra-judicial executions; by year’s end, 1000 people had died. top In April 1996 in Guatemala City, Susana Gómez was raped by two National Police officers; she was sixteen years old. In September 1996, Ronald Raúl Ramos was shot and killed by a Treasury Police officer; he too was sixteen. More than ten other street children were murdered that year, likely by police. A year later, none of the perpetrators in these cases had been apprehended. In Seattle, Quebec City and Genoa, over the past two years, unarmed women, men and children calling for a more measured approach to globalization than has been proposed by such bodies as the WTO and World Bank were attacked by police wielding batons, rubber bullets, water canons and tear gas. Similar violence greeted unarmed protesters at May Day rallies throughout Asia and the Pacific in 2001, from Sidney and Brisbane to Karachi, Seoul and Jakarta. top Last month, a colony of squatters was violently dispersed in central Johannesburg. The police leveled the inhabitants’ makeshift homes and destroyed their belongings. The squatters were made to board buses and were driven out of the city, where they were unceremoniously dumped, miles from friends and family. The methods employed in this dispersal were similar to those used in forced removals of the apartheid era. top Since 1994, racially motivated violence against Roma Gypsies in Bulgaria has increased dramatically. Much of this violence is perpetrated by police and private security firms. top In the course of one week in April 2001, eighty young people were killed by the police in Kabylia, in north-eastern Algeria. All were members of the minority Berber ethnic group. On August 9, 1997, Abner Louima, a Haitian national, was tortured by members of the NYPD. A broken broomstick was shoved into his rectum and mouth while his attackers screamed racist epithets. Four policemen were convicted. On February 28, 2002, three of the four convictions were overturned. One of the officers was granted a new trial; two others were cleared. Legal technicalities were cited. top