REST IN POWER: The Newark Anti-Violence Coalition

Words by fayemi shakur | Images by Akintola Hanif

Returning violence for violence multiplies violence, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars. - Martin Luther King, Jr.

Since the summer of 2009, the Newark Anti-Violence Coalition has been holding rallies across the city of Newark calling for an end to the violence plaguing their community. Fed up with murders, empty promises, gentrification and negative images portraying Black and Latino people, the coalition is a collective of activists, teachers, lawyers, gang members, church members, brothers, sisters, mothers and fathers concerned about the lack of response and desensitized reactions to violence.

They held their first protest on July 22, 2009, when they walked into the middle of the intersection and blocked traffic to protest the murder of Nakeisha Allen. Allen was a mother of two children innocently killed in a drive by shooting while walking home from her neighborhood store.

Their most recent protest marked their 129th rally which was held in the bitter cold protesting the death of two children, 2 year-old Mikhy Robinson who died from a gunshot wound to the mouth and 29 month-old Alexis Robinson who was beaten to death by her mother’s boyfriend. With large loud speakers turned towards the windows of the apartment building where Alexis lived, the activists called out to the community telling them to “wake up."

“There used to be a time when women and children were safe. We didn’t have to worry about being robbed or shot at and our babies’ lives were sacred. There used to be a code. I don’t know when we got away from that,” said Natasha Allen, a coalition member who also lost a family member due to violence. She urged women at the rally to stop defending, protecting and relying on violent men for financial help.

Similarly, the People’s Organization for Progress has been on the corner Newark’s Springfield and Market Streets since April calling for an end to the violence in Newark and the creation of jobs in the city, where the unemployment rate is 15 percent, compared to the state rate of 9 percent.

They have vowed to stay there for 381 days, the length of the Montgomery boycott, which began when Rosa Park refused to leave her seat in the “white section” of a city bus, and ended when the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the segregation of buses was unconstitutional.

“I think that a lot has changed. We’re not at the same place, or at that same deep level of segregation that Black people experienced in 1955 as second class citizens but we still have a long way to go in terms of having better jobs, reducing the level of high school drop-out rates and the high level of poverty and racism that exists today. Since the murder of MLK, the path to empowerment has been sidetracked a bit in terms of progress and we have a lot of unfinished business to address," says history teacher and NAVC organizer, Bashir Akinyele.

The Newark Anti-Violence coalition is demanding that elected officials declare the violence a public health emergency which would make the city eligible for funds for more police, better schools, jobs, mental health counseling and other services. They also demanded the firing of Newark police director, Garry McCarthy. While that demand was not conceded to directly, McCarthy has been replaced by a new police director. The violence though, continues.

Newark lists 91 homicides in 2011 and 86 homicides in 2010. Last year there were 13 homicides in Irvington, 7 in East Orange, 8 in Orange, 1 in Montclair and 2 in Belleville and no homicides recorded in the other Essex County communities, according to the Essex County Prosecutor’s Office.

A Newark police detective, Angel Pared was recently acquitted of aggravated assault on a 15 year-old boy although it was caught on video.

Video from the apartment building where the boy lived shows the undercover cop walking up to the teen after the boy’s friend had passed him something. While frisking him the officer assaulted the boy. It turned out his friend was simply passing him a pair of earbuds. The officer said he thought it was a drug deal.