Uhuru says “Free the MTA 9″
Posted by Jeff Quinton on January 31, 2008A dozen protestors marched Wednesday outside the Baltimore City Juvenile Justice Center, demanding prosecutors drop all charges against the so-called “MTA 9,” the black teenagers accused of brutally beating a white woman on a Baltimore City bus in December.
“No grown person should be spitting on kids,” shouted Quentin Whaley Sr., 54, the father of one of the accused teens, who held a sign that read: “Drop all charges against the MTA 9.”
“If someone spit in your face, what would you do?” he asked. “This isn’t 1857. This is 2008. We won’t be chattel property.”
The protest, organized by the Baltimore branch of the International People’s Democratic Uhuru Movement, came a day before the teens are scheduled to stand trial today on charges they beat Sarah Kreager, 26, her boyfriend, Troy Ennis, 30, and the No. 27 route bus driver Dec. 4 as they were riding home from Robert Poole Middle School in Hampden.
Kreager suffered two broken bones in her left eye socket during the attack, police said. Two seats and the bus’s rear window were destroyed, prosecutors said.
[…]
“We’re tired of the word of a white person being considered more credible than the statements of a black person,” said Nnamdi Lumumba, the Uhuru Movement local president.
Lumumba said he organized the protest because city officials and the media have made Kreager into “the poster child for racial abuse” while ignoring her “long history of violence, drug dealing and abuse.”
[…]
“The children reported she walked on the bus with her eye already bruised and damaged,” Lumumba said. “Yet it is the children who get dragged through the mud as the people who caused the damage to her face.”
At the protest, David Johnson, an activist with the Black Community Forum Think Tank, said Baltimore Mayor Sheila Dixon and other city leaders are to blame for what he says is preferential treatment authorities give to white residents over black residents.
“We are witnessing a rewhitening of the city of Baltimore,” he said.
The International People’s Democratic Uhuru Movement was founded in 1991 in Chicago by the African People’s Socialist Party. Its leadership has ties to former Black Panthers.
Their platform:
1. We demand National Democratic Rights and Self Determination for African people in the U.S.
2. We Demand Community Control of the Police in the African Community and the Immediate Withdrawal of the Terroristic Police and Military Forces from the African Community.
3. We Demand Community Control of the Schools and Mandatory African History in Public Schools.
4. We Demand African Community Control of Health Care.
5. We Demand Community Control of Housing
6. We Demand the Removal of Parasitic Merchants and Slumlords from the African Community.
7. We Demand an End to the Colonial Court and Prison Systems which have the Majority of African Men Incarcerated, on Probation or Parole, and the Immediate Release of all Political Prisoners and Prisoners of War.
8. We Demand an End to the Theft, Kidnapping, Sale, Abuse and Removal of African Children from their Communities under the Genocidal Foster Care System.
9. We Demand an End to the Political and Social Oppression and Economic Exploitation of African Women.
10. We Demand Reparations for African People.
11. We Demand a United Nations Supervised Plebiscite to Determine the Will of the African Community in the U.S. as to their National Destiny.
12. We Demand an End to the Political Economy of the Counterinsurgency; the Parasitic Relationship that Benefits the White Population with Millions of Dollars for Jobs, Resources and a Stabilized Economy off of the U.S. Counterinsurgency (war) on African People in the U.S.
Links:
Uhuru movement wikipedia entry
InPDUM
Previous bus attack coverage:
Inside Charm City
Michelle Malkin * 2 * 3
Comment by Dezzie from Baltimore
I think that people need to stop making this what it is. Tbose children should be charged, those children DID beat that woman, her boyfriend and the driver, and those children should go to JAIL! It makes me so angry that people want to make this black or white. NO, those kids were bad! And up until now, no one paid attention to their behavior. No, the lady, if she did it, should not have spit on anyone, but that’s no excuse for these children to get outside and beat up everybody around the lady that spit. I dont care what color they are, I think their asses should be in jail. And I’m black.
~Dezzie said dat!
Comment by Tamara Godoy
1st of all back off, do not make this racial! That makes you no better than Sarah Kreager. I do not know all the info on this situation but I can tell you this, if anyone spit in my face they better be prepared to run, that is one of the most digusting assults.
I do not think that all 9 needed to do this much damage, the Bus driver is trying to do his job, you should not attack him or State Property! Tell these to ignorant people to get off the bus or drag them off then kick her butt, but be fair make it a 1 on 1 fight, thats the problem today nobody fights fair anymore, they either carry guns and blow your brains out, or knives and stab you to death, or a gang jumps on 1 person and expects everyone else around to not do anything to help the person being beat by the gang.
first of all if you are a student at Robert Poole you are old enough anf big enough to go to the authorites and tell someone you were assulted by a dirt bag who spit on you. If this had been done in the 1st place these 9 children would not be in the trouble they are in now. 2 wrongs do not make a right, this is what happends when we think we can take the law into our own hands, these children should not get off scott free BUT neighter should Sarah Kreager, what she did was dirty and disrespectful, and she should be charged with assault and battery also.
Comment by Swamp Thing
This is the most ridiculous thing I have read all year. We lived among the lawless in Hampden for 5 years. Kids (under 16) get arrested for assault, rape, etc., get bailed out by their older siblings or step-parents, and are back on the streets drinking and smoking pot 4 hours later. It is pathetic.
These kids (99% white) have no concept of fighting fair. They think they are tough “gangstas” and anyone who “disrespects them” gets a brick in the face, or whatever else. You know what, I get “disrespected and insulted” every day. I’ve been spit on, shot at, you name it. Do I call 8 of my friends and go bust somebody’s skull? NO. What a bunch of idiots.
Comment by Rev. Know
What is it suppossed to mean to say making it a racial issue is making you just as bad as alady who attacked children? In a situation where you have children whos story will not be listened to who some have no record at all and a woman who have multiple run ins with the law, a drug problem, an abusive husband, ect… will have every word listened to as if it is the truth… That is what has happened with the MTA 9. A white woman with all types of negative history will be believed over black children with no record. This is a problem.
But of course it could not be an issue of race??? In a world where white children can shoot multiple people in a school and all types of debates rise up about the violence in video games and rap music or whether the child was just misunderstood or picked on which led to multiple killings be comitted. But a black child kills a person and is automatically assumed a thug, gangster or whatever.
This is what we live in and even as these contradictions are spelled out people will say there is no problem here and it is definitley not race?
Comment by Patti
“Rev. Know”…you should be ashamed of youreself! You comment:
But a black child kills a person and is automatically assumed a thug, gangster or whatever.
Regardless of what race, any “child” that KILLS, is CERTAINLY a MURDERER! Yet, you defend that because of the fact, they are black? You are promoting racial biased, and in my opinion it’s people like you who have these opinions, that are the basis for the way “black children” are being given a platform to kill or maim at thier disgression, as it is ok in the eyes of those like yourself! That is just disgusting. I wouldn’t want to be you on Judgement day! Those that participated in that beating, should be tried and convicted to the fullest extent of the law!! How about the elderly gentleman on that bus that was also attacked?? What did he do to deserve that> NOW tell me that he ate his Cheerios that day, and decided that he was gonna strongarm a bunch of innocent black youth, just for the h*ll of it! BS! Wake up! STOP promoting violence!!!!
Comment by Desiree
I went to Robert Poole Middle School. It was NO picnic. What these girls did is NOT excusable. Regardless of a racial slander or not. I am “considered” biracial. I’ve been called quite a few names in my life, I never once went into a rage that caused me to break facial bones or grab 8 friends and beat the living life out of someone. It hurt, I won’t lie, but I would never lower myself to the standards of the people calling me a racial name. I am half hispanic and half caucasian, therefore I confused a lot of people. Some were brazen enough to ask “what are you?” but others just “assumed”. The day my mother got me up for my first public school day, I was 10 and had been in catholic school since 1st grade, she said “baby, not everyone will like you. Some of the white kids will probably not want to play with you because your not fully white but don’t let that bother you, just truck on.” And I did. I could’ve cared less who liked me and who didn’t. I’ve had my share of problems with all races, including my own that I identify with, hispanic. When I started Robert Poole, life was HELL. So many girls, mostly african american, would pick on me because they thought I was half caucasian and half african american and hated my skin tone, straight hair, body firgure, and so forth. They pulled me into a bathroom and tried to set fire to my hair! Of course that day it was 5 against 1, unfair odds if you ask me. I’ve also been spit in my face. I was accosted in this manner at Towson Town Mall over a parking space! Did I get out of my car and beat the crap out of her? No, I maintained my dignity (and was in shock that someone would actually do this) and tried to follow this woman to get her tag and report to the mall security to file a complaint. She got away of course because she high tailed it out of there. My main concern these days is…what is wrong with the youth of america? Is it something in the water? Too many hormones in the meat and milk of cows? What is it?!?! I’m only 28 year old and I feel far too mature for the generation I grew up in. The youth of america are crazy these days. I feel anyone that beats someone, breaks facial bones, and beats an INNOCENT by stander, and destroys public property should be charged with aggravated assault and/or assualt and battery. That’s just my 2¢.