We Charge Genocide Event

We Charge Genocide/2014

October 5th at 5pm

Bill Ayers/Bernardine Dohrn

1329 E. 50^th St.

Come and meet the youth of: We Charge Genocide!

We Charge Genocide is a grassroots, intergenerational effort to center and amplify the voices of young people most impacted by police violence in Chicago. The group focuses on documenting youth experiences with the Chicago Police Department, and engages in popular education about police abuses and youth-driven solutions/alternatives to policing.

The name "We Charge Genocide" comes from a petition filed to the United Nations in 1951, which documented 153 racial killings and other human rights abuses committed mostly by the police against African-Americans. We Charge Genocide has documented the same patterns today: ongoing violence used by the police to silence, isolate, control, and repress low-income people and people of color in particular.

We are Chicago residents concerned that the epidemic of police violence continues uninterrupted in our city. We seek to address this tradition of violence by offering a vehicle for needed organizing and social transformation.

This November the United Nations Committee against Torture will hold its semi-annual session in Geneva, Switzerland.

We Charge Genocide authored a report documenting Chicago police violence against youth of color to present at this gathering. We are helping to send a Chicago youth delegation to Geneva representing the Black and Brown young people of Chicago who experience the daily reality of police violence in this city. As poets, educators, organizers, and activists who call Chicago home, this delegation will present a strong, convincing case that CPD's ongoing history of police brutality, code of silence regarding abuse and murder, and continued practice of physical and psychological harassment of young people of color amounts to torture.

We Charge Genocide's report, combined with the personal narratives of this delegation, has the potential to generate substantive pressure on the Chicago Police Department as well as building a movement against white supremacy and for real change.




JOIN US on October 5 at 5 pm!