Media Contact:
Collette Flanagan
Phone: 214-989-8888
mothersagainstpolicebrutality@gmail.com
John Fullinwider
Phone: 214-683-2493 jhfullinwider@gmail.com
DALLAS, TEXAS, OCTOBER 20, 2014 – Two days after Michael Brown was killed in Ferguson, Dallas police shot to death an unarmed man in Oak Cliff, Andrew Gaynier, one or more than 70 unarmed persons killed by Dallas officers in the past decade. What happened to Michael Brown, Trayvon Martin in Sanford Florida, Clinton Allen in Dallas, Texas, Eric Garner in New York, Jordan Davis in Jacksonville, Florida, and Oscar Grant in Oakland, California – all unarmed, all murdered by police or vigilantes – happens all too often in Dallas. As part of the National Month of Resistance Movement, MAPB and other local groups are sponsoring a March & Rally to End Police Brutality, Wednesday night, from 7 to 9 p.m. Marchers will assemble at Founder’s Plaza, 600 Elm Street in downtown Dallas and will march to Main St. Garden for the Rally. “We are joining with other groups around the country,” said Collette Flanagan, who founded MAPB after her unarmed son was killed by a Dallas police officer in March 2013. “We are coming together in a series of protests stop police brutality, and end mass incarceration and the criminalization of a whole generation of African American, Latino, and poor and working class youth of all races.” The Dallas march and rally are part of a National Day of Protest on October 22, coordinated by the Stop Mass Incarceration Network, which was founded by Dr. Cornel West, Carl Dix, and other activists in 2011
(http://www.stopmassincarceration.net/about). Other sponsors of the Dallas march and rally include Dallas Communities Organizing for Change, Code Pink, Dallas Peace Center, Bill of Rights Defense Committee, American Civil Liberties Union, and Indigenous Peoples Law and Policy Program.
Event Details:7:00 p.m.-Marchers and UNT charter bus will assemble at Founder’s Plaza, 600 Elm Street.7:30 p.m.- Marchers will leave for Main Street Garden to rally.
About Mothers Against Police Brutality
Mothers Against Police Brutality (MAPB) is an emerging, Dallas-based multi-generational, multi-racial, and multi-ethnic coalition uniting people nationally, from all walks of life, to hold law enforcement agencies more accountable. Founded by Collette Flanagan in 2013 after her son, Clinton Allen, an unarmed young man in custody, was shot to death by a Dallas police officer, MAPB calls for an immediate end to substandard investigation of use of excessive force by police officers and policy and culture reform that privileges the sustaining of life rather than the taking of it. Transforming grief into determination, Flanagan and MAPB are leading the charge to change the city’s deadly force policy, to support families who have lost loved ones to police violence, and to help restore trust between the police and the communities they are sworn to serve and protect.