Saturday June 26th over a hundred people joined together in downtown Detroit to oppose the murder of Aiyana Stanley Jones by Detroit police. People came from all over including, Chicago, Kentucky, New Orleans, Indiana, and New York City, to take a stand including dozens of people who came over from the U.S. Social Forum to join the march. The march was largely youth and even young children who were angry and distraught about what happened to little Aiyana. The march was multinational with Black, white, Latino and Native American people joining together.
Protesters went through the streets of Detroit, some with their fists in the air and signs opposing police murder and “no knock” raids, to the city county building. Chants included “No Justice, No Peace”, Justice For Aiyana Jones, The Whole Damn System's Guilty", and a chant from a vigil in Aiyana Stanley Jones' neighborhood earlier that day: “Aiyana Jones she has a name. Her family is not to blame. The system is wrong. We gotta be strong,” passers by honked their car horns when they saw and heard this.
Featured speakers were Jewel Allison, and Reverend Omar Wilkes, as well as Ron Scott from the Detroit Coalition against Police Brutality and Carl Dix from the Revolutionary Communist Party.
There was a sense of collective determination to go forward and fight this outrageous police murder and the attempts by the authorities to cover this up. Those who spoke put forward that this was only the beginning and there would be further demonstrations demanding justice for Aiyana and her family later in the summer in Detroit, as well as New York and other places around the country. People from different parts of the country spoke out about why they came including an 11 year old who said she is afraid to sleep on her couch in New York City, and a woman from a local organization that brought up another outrage in the city, the bodies of at least 8 women murdered and found dead on the east side this year, as well as revolutionaries that are in Detroit building the movement for revolution and pointed to the whole system of capitalism imperialism as the problem. The march ended with poetry from Jewel Allison, opposing racism and oppression.
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