NATIONAL DAY OF PROTEST AGAINST POLICE BRUTALITY
Sat., Oct. 22, 2022
5:00 pm
Cambridge City Hall Lawn
Join The Black Response Cambridge for a rally in honor of the National Day of Protest Against Police Brutality. Hear from speakers raising awareness about the history of police violence in America and provide political education around the contemporary abolition movement.
This event is endorsed by the national October 22 Coalition to Stop Police Brutality, Repression and the Criminalization of a Generation. This coalition has been mobilizing October 22 events every year since 1996 for a National Day of Protest against police brutality, bringing together those under the gun and those not under the gun as a powerful voice to expose the epidemic of police brutality.
Our MCs will be Andrew King and Mike Prince.
Speakers will include:
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Leslie Credle, Executive Director of Justice for Housing, a member of the #FreeHer Advisory Committee
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Kavya Crasta of the Asian American Resource Workshop
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Lana Habash, Palestinian Activist
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Courtney Foster, an organizer with Defund Newton Police Department
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Quinton Zondervan, Cambridge City Council member and activist
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Stephanie Guirand, researcher and organizer with The Black Response Cambridge
The event will also include musical performances and questions from the audience, and highlight abolitionist campaigns including:
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#UnlocktheBox: The campaign to end solitary confinement
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#StopShotSpotter: The campaign to end audio surveillance
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S.2030 - An Act establishing a jail and prison construction moratorium in Massachusetts
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Building support for alternatives like the development of a community safety program, Cambridge HEART (Holistic Emergency Alternative Response Team)
Event sponsors include Northampton Abolition Now (NAN), Defund Newton PD, Muslim Justice League, Justice for Housing, SURJ Boston, and the Asian American Resource Workshop.
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SPEAKER BIOS
Kavya Crasta (she/hers) is a queer, South Indian, Brahmin Christian immigrant working to uplift the voices of the most marginalized within the South Asian diaspora and build multi-racial solidarity in the fight for collective liberation. She currently serves as the South Asian Program Coordinator at Asian American Resource Workshop (AARW). She builds programming for primarily queer + trans South Asian youth and young adults in Cambridge & Somerville to learn how to organize in their community. She also works to create caste equity and build a larger community of queer + trans South Asian folks within AARW. She wants to create deeper relationships with amazing organizers in Cambridge & Somerville and work towards building a stronger collective against white supremacy.
Stephanie Guirand (She, her, hers) is a founding member of The Black Response Cambridge, which has convened the participatory action process for developing the Cambridge Holistic Emergency Alternative Response Team (HEART) model. Stephanie is a formerly undocumented immigrant from Haiti and has lived in Cambridge for over 25 years. She identifies as a cis-woman and has a non-visible disability (history of seizures formerly considered epileptic). She likes to go on long hikes.
Quinton Zondervan is a committed abolitionist and the only Democratic Socialist on the Cambridge City Council. As chair of the council’s Public Safety Committee, Quinton has championed HEART and supported its development from the very beginning. He is also a fierce advocate for climate justice and for expanding low barrier housing options for unhoused people in our city. Quinton immigrated to the US from Suriname as a teenager before coming to Cambridge to attend MIT. He is currently serving his third term on the council.
Leslie Credle is Justice 4 Housing’s Founder and Executive Director, leading the crusade to dismantle antiquated and discriminatory housing policies that target justice-involved individuals, leading to homelessness, recidivism and the separation of families. Leslie was awarded the 2022 ECHO Green Innovative Leader Fellowship, for creating the Hands-On-Defense model, which mobilizes communities to fight housing injustices. She is also the recipient of the Criminal Justice Policy Coalition’s 2021 Peg Erlanger Leadership Award, presented by Congresswoman Ayanna Presley, and Boston Women’s Foundation’s, Women of Color Leadership Circle’s, 2021 Fellow. Raised in Boston, on the National Council For Incarcerated and Formerly Incarcerated Women and Girls, #FreeHer Advisory Committee,” and Northeastern University Alumni, Leslie became a fierce leader in the movement to end incarceration of women and girls.
Courtney Foster (she/her) of Newton, Massachusetts, is an organizer with DefundNPD, a local abolitionist group founded in Spring 2020 focused on policing and values-based city budgeting in Newton. She is currently a graduate student at the Fletcher School at Tufts University where she is a Student Council representative, and is also an active member of the Sunrise Movement and other local nonprofits and advocacy groups focused on the environment, education, and equity. She continues to be active in local politics in Newton and at the state level in Massachusetts.