Take Back the Bronx Statement on the Death of Lloyd Morgan
We are deeply saddened by the unintended murder of Lloyd Morgan, and our hearts go out to his family in this time of mourning. We need to grieve for the loss of his young life. But we also need to consider how we can resolve conflicts in our neighborhoods, to stop the violence we direct at each other.
We are deeply angered because the violence in our communities doesn’t come out of nowhere. It is a direct result of the violence we are subjected to every day by the NYPD, the landlords, the real estate industry, the prison system, and our 3-term billionaire mayor. The rich and powerful in this city are waging a war of extermination against our communities. We endure police harassment, mass incarceration, institutional neglect, gentrification and displacement. This war creates an atmosphere in which everyone is desperate, impoverished, and ready to fight their neighbor. This violence killed Lloyd Morgan.
How did the politicians respond to Lloyd’s death? Assemblyman Eric Stevenson exploited it as an opportunity to claim the NYPD’s stop and frisk policy isn’t so bad after all. He is using Lloyd to justify an all-out terror campaign against every black and brown youth in the Bronx. We must not tolerate sell-out behavior like this. We must not tolerate being pimped. These self-serving politicians don’t care about us, and will take the side of the oppressors at every opportunity.
We need to unite as communities of color targeted by the rich and powerful, and stop turning our guns on each other. We need to build real community protection, establish no cop zones, and refuse to use violence against each other. We need to defend our people, especially women, LGBTQ folks, homeless people, youth, elders, and those formerly or currently incarcerated.
Take Back the Bronx works to rebuild and unite our communities, and oppose the forces that are out to hurt us. We believe communities in the Bronx must find ways of resolving conflicts amongst ourselves–even in the case of something as terrible as a child’s death–without relying on those who cage, murder, displace and neglect us.
We believe the community can come together to decide how to deal with Lloyd’s death.
We support any community response that helps Lloyd’s family heal, and ends the cycle of violence in our neighborhoods, without relying on police and politicians.
We look forward to holding community conversations, changing how we relate to one another, and protecting each other from those who hurt our communities, intentionally, every day.
Long live Lloyd Morgan, Alberta Spruill, Amadou Diallo, Malcolm Ferguson, Sherly Colon, Anthony Rosario, Hilton Vega, Timothy Stansbury, Ramarley Graham, and so many others.
NO MORE FORCED FUNERALS FOR OUR YOUNG PEOPLE!
NO MORE “ACCIDENTAL” DEATHS, CAUSED BY THE VIOLENCE
WE ARE ALL SUBJECTED TO EVERY DAY!
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i will always stand for my community and never will the enemy be successful in their false accusations. We need unity and not division.
Who God bless no man curse. I called for reform of stop and frisk, nothing else. I dont support nypd harrassing my community.
Well said Assemblyman Stevenson. You have always been there on the front line for our community. Don’t allow the haters to distract your great work. God will be with you on your path against your enemies.
Dear Mr. Assemblyman Stevenson,
Instead of taking such a ‘defensive’ attitude to the comments or ‘accusations’ as you referred to them, I suggest you step outside of yourself for a minute. The writer is entitled to their opinion of how you responded to the incident. That is what community members do, and this is their ‘democratic’ right. As an assemblyman your responsibility is not to defend yourself, but, instead to try to analyze the situation from different angles, incorporating all opinions into your analyses. An attempt at unity, which you stated is the goal, undoubtedly necessitates this kind of action on your behalf.
You were quoted by the media for the following statements: “We have to take responsibility in our own communities, and patrol our own communities,”… “The community has come together, in some sense, behind this,”… “A lot of the parents are really fed up, and those who were afraid to speak up are now coming forth to speak up because we now have a coalition of many people.”
As the writer intelligently and eloquently infers, the problem of violence is not fundamentally an individual one, but instead, the product of violence institutionalized by corporate interests and the state managers of dissent. Unfortunately, politicians are an intricate part of the management of corporate interests. It takes a courageous leap to acknowledge this reality, but, if you don’t, I don’t see how you will ever be able to necessitate any fundamental change in the obvious inequalities suffered by the communities you serve. The greatest violence is poverty, and the despair, hopelessness, and destruction of one’s humanity which it engenders, can only lead to the pitting of people against people in order to survive. How can one expect youth to act humanely when their humanity has been destroyed through generational poverty, an unkind and discriminatory educational system, a violent and uneducated police enforcement institution, and a world without meaningful work and acceptable wages, amongst others?
I have no reason to not believe your statement that you don’t support ‘nypd harassment in your community’. However, your response to the writer seems to reveal that you are limited by not having a deep enough political, economic, and social analyses of the real problems facing your communities.
Regarding the The 79th District constituent who replied to your post by saying “Don’t allow the haters to distract your great work”, my opinion is this. Stop kissing up to the politicians, but, instead, hold them accountable for their thoughts and their actions. Encourage them instead to listen and consider differing opinions, to continue educating themselves about the world, to allow themselves to be teachable and to be courageous enough to recognize, publicly, when they are wrong, and to take the immediate and necessary actions to remedy their words and actions.
Sincerely,
A watchful Soulful Cultural Warrior