Parents of students abducted by Mexican police joined a New Haven mother on the 18th anniversary of her son’s killing by East Haven police.
Felipe de la Cruz, father of 19-year-old Angel Neri, marched in solidarity through Fair Haven Tuesday with Emma Jones, anti-police brutality activist and mother of then 21-year-old Malik Jones, whom East Haven police chased into Fair Haven, shot and killed in 1997.
Community members, Yale students and members of activist group ANSWER gathered late Tuesday afternoon at the spot where Malik was killed, to publicly honor his memory and to rally for justice on the anniversary of his death.
They also noted that in September, 43 students at a teacher’s college in Ayotzinapa, Mexico, went missing, abducted by police and handed over to a drug gang, which likely killed them and burned the bodies. De la Cruz — whose son survived the attack — has been touring the United States to ask for political support in fighting the Mexican government and police’s abuses of power and corruption.
“We have been traveling to tell you and the whole world that the things happening here are also happening in Mexico,” he said Tuesday at the rally. In Mexico, young people are killed because they are students. Here, they are killed because they are people of color, De la Cruz (pictured) said.
“Nos faltan 43,” he said. “We are missing 43” students who were going to be teachers, who were going to reject the established system. “The state knows that an educated people, a free people, is a danger,” De la Cruz said.
Aliyya Swaby Photos
The fight against police brutality is “not a struggle for short-term sprinters. It is a struggle for long-term runners. If you can’t commit … then we are just having an event. And we are not here to just have an event,” Emma Jones (pictured) told the dozen marchers.
Looking at the Yale students and other young people surrounding her, she said she felt heartened by the fact that the struggle has inspired so many of the newer generation to join the cause of “justice for people brutalized by police.” Winning the struggle takes commitment, especially from “white people,” who must say, “No more, not in my name,” Jones said.
Jones said she filed a petition for the U.S. Supreme Court to hear her case against the town of East Haven, asking them to “hear my cry for justice.” If the Supreme Court rejects her petition, she said she was “heading to the world court,” to the United Nations. Juries twice awarded Jones damages in a civil suit against East Haven, only to have the verdicts overturned on a technicality, then on an appeal. The 1997 killing sparked years of police-accountability demosntrations that foreshadowed todays Ferguson-sparked movement. In 2013 the Supreme Court denied a request to hear Jones’ case.
Wielding drums and painted banners, the crowd headed down Grand Avenue toward downtown, filing down one lane of the street headed off by police escorts. Their chants reflected incidents of brutality mirrored in Ayotzinapa and New Haven: “Bring back Malik, bring back the 43” and “Nos falta Malik, nos faltan los 43!”
As the marchers passed Farnam Courts, people danced along to the chants and waved them along. Cars honked in encouragement. The protesters’ voices boomed in loud echo under the overpass just before Jefferson Street on Grand. “Hey hey, ho ho, these killer cops have got to go!” they yelled.
The demonstration ended on Park Street at Yale’s Afro-American Cultural Center, followed by a discussion.