On Saturday, June 21st, Zayid Muhammad, the New Black Panther Party’s national minister of culture, will rally with the Millions More Movement and the Peoples Organization for Progress in Roselle, New Jersey to demand justice for Marquis Randle, a victim of an unwarranted police shooting in November that may leave him partially paralyzed.

The rally will take place from 12 noon to 3p.m. at Roselle’s Boro Hall, located on Chestnut Street between 2nd and 3rd Avenues.

Randle, a high school student from Plainfield, was visiting relatives and friends when he had his tragic encounter with Roselle police several months ago.

In spite of large protests, a Union County grand jury exonerated officer Craig Howlett, the officer who shot Randle, of any wrongdoing.

Protesters are now pushing for a federal civil rights investigation into the incident.

Muhammad grew up in Roselle and knows members in both Randle’s family and Howlett’s and has expressed being especially heartbroken by this saga.

“It breaks my heart to have to go back to Roselle for something like this, but the injustice is real, and the pain and suffering is real,” Muhammad said in angry resignation.

In addition to supporting the local call by Randle’s supporters for federal rights charges, Muhammad has challenged Roselle’s new mayor, Garrett Smith, to fire the acting police chief, Denis Kelleher, who was on the scene and who perhaps could have prevented the incident from escalating to its tragic consequences.

“This guy has taken community policing and violently turned on its head, and if Roselle were a bigger town, this is the kind of thing that could tear a town apart,” Muhammad went on.

“We are sick of Black mayors and Black elected officials who can only say what they can’t do whenever our people are brutalized by the police on their watch,” he commented. “It’s not what they can’t do, it’s what they don’t have the courage to do. Our elders and ancestors did not sacrifice their lives for the vote for us to be left with spineless leadership.”

For more information, please call 908-943-2414.

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!