Contact:                      Nellie Hester Bailey: 646-812-5188/ 212-663-5248

                                    Tony Savino:  646-334-2613

On Wednesday, December 21, 2011 at St. Philip’s Church, 204 West 134^th Street (off Adam Clayton Powell Blvd) from 6 PM to 9 PM Occupy Harlem General Assembly (OHGA) features keynote speakers, Ramsey Clark, former US Attorney General, Glen Ford, Executive Editor of Black Agenda Report and Carl Dix of Stop “Stop-and-Frisk” Civil Disobedience campaign. In addition, student representatives from Columbia University and Stop Tuition Hikes at CUNY will address the OHGA.

Ramsey Clark will deliver a global analysis on U.S. wars and occupations today. Clark, founder of the International Action Center, a major anti-war organization, received the United Nations’ Human Rights award in 2008. 

Recognized by the progressive left as the leading Black intellectual voice in the US, Glen Ford said, “Occupy can only fulfill its promise to build on the contributions of previous movements if it decisively confronts the overarching issue of race, the Great Contradiction at the heart of American life and history that has always thwarted the development of an enduring Left movement”.
Carl Dix, who along with Cornel West initiated Stop “Stop-and-Frisk” Civil Disobedience actions cited more than 700,000 Stop & Frisk by the New York City Police Department in 2011. The overwhelming numbers were Black and Latino men who also constitute nearly two thirds of the 2.3 million people languishing in the profitable US Jim Crow prison industrial complex.

Nellie Hester Bailey and Sandra Rivers, co-conveners of Occupy Harlem and facilitators of the Dec. 21^st meeting announced the overall theme of its fourth and last general assembly for 2011: Permanency and Relevancy of Occupy Movements in Black, Latino & Immigrant Communities. Bailey said, “2012, the presidential election year, becomes pivotal for the occupy movement. Will it collapse into yet another extension of the Democratic Party or emerge truly independent, casting off the yoke of endless betrayals from a supine party that never cease to serve the 1% Wall Street Plutocracy?”

Rivers added, “OHGA will map out a strategic independent grassroots movement building plan for 2012 with occupy targets, conferences and principle collaboration with key partners including Occupy Wall Street.”

Stop "Stop and Frisk"!

A new uncompromising movement against NYPD’s notorious Stop & Frisk program began yesterday as hundreds of demonstrators marched from the Harlem State Office Building to Harlem’s 28th precinct. At the station, Cornel West, author and Princeton professor, Carl Dix of the Revolutionary Communist Party, Rev. Stephen Phelps, interim senior minister of Riverside Church, and dozens of others were arrested in an act of non-violent civil disobedience. Among those arrested and protesting was a large contingent from downtown’s Occupy Wall Street.

“We are here today to put our bodies on the line to stop this racist, immoral, illegitimate and unjust ‘new Jim Crow’ from the gateway of stop and frisk to the wholesale mass incarceration of Black and Brown people,” said Dix to the assembled marchers. “We are serious and we will continue until we Stop Stop & Frisk!” The crowd chanted, “Stop & Frisk don’t stop the crime, Stop & Frisk IS the crime,” as arrestees were carried to waiting police vans. A solidarity march to 33rd Precinct ensused, where arrestees were said to be held.

According to a New York Civil Liberties Union study, the NYPD is on pace to stop and frisk over 700,000 people in 2011, or more than 1,900 people each day. More than 85% of those stopped and frisked are Black or Latino, and more than 90% of them were doing nothing wrong when the police stopped them.

The action was organized in solidarity with #occupyharlem, which will begin on October 28th.