by Marc LaPointe
Assistant News

Only about 50 students turned out Monday to participate in the campus events marking a nation-wide day of activism against police brutality. The day was to originally include both a rally and lecture series. The rally, however, was canceled.

Organizers of the protest originally had planned on staging the rally outside of the campus center, an event to be followed by two speakers in the MPR, but had to cancel the rally due to noise concerns.

“We couldn’t hold the rally outside the campus during school hours because we had received some complaints from students and Wesleyan employees during the anti-war walkout a few weeks before,” said Una Osato ’04. “So we decided to just focus the event on the speakers that came to campus.”

The non-active character of the event disappointed many students.

“Wesleyan’s participation in a nation-wide day of solidarity should coincide with actions taking place throughout the country,” said Matt Burton ’04. “But I did enjoy the speakers a great deal and the event was really interesting.”

On the same day last year, students marched to the Middletown Police Department in protest of the unlawful arrest and racial profiling case of Ray Dophin ’01. Osato saw this galvanizing event as the reason for the larger turnout last year as opposed to this year.

“We were definitely expecting more people,” Osato said. “A lot of work needs to be done in this, and we need to make connections between this movement and others.”

The lectures which marked the focus of the day against brutality were well received nevertheless.

Reverend Cornell Lewis, a social activist and Church leader in Hartford, and David Rudovsky, a Professor of Law at the University of Pennsylvania and member of the Board of Directors of the American Civil Liberties Union, spoke on a wide range of issues relating to police brutality.

Lewis took a more local approach to the issue, speaking on his personal experiences as an activist in Hartford.

“Who is policing the police?” Lewis begged of the crowd. “We’re not going to put up with this same thing year after year. When crime goes up, people in the inner cities are the victims both of the crime and of police brutality.”

Lewis’s anecdotes, although serious in their undertones, were delivered in a lighthearted fashion that elicited a favorable response from students.

“We had been targeting crack houses in Hartford and not only the drug pushers, but their customers as well, both black and white, urban and suburban,” Lewis recounted.

“So we went into Torrington, CT and were met with some Klan members. Little did they know of course that although I was coming in the name of Jesus, I also have a second degree black belt in hand to hand combat.”

Students erupted with laughter.

“These guys didn’t know who they were dealing with!”

Rudovsky followed with a talk that did not elicit as many laughs, but served to educate the attendees as to the significance of the United States’ current situation at home and abroad. He concentrated largely on the implications that the current war in Afghanistan is having on the civil liberties of American citizens, and the role that domestic police brutality plays in that.

“Since Sept. 11, over 800 people have been detained by police,” Rudovsky said. “They are being held in connection with supposed terrorist connections, but none have been told specifically why they are there.”

Students viewed this connection as one of the goals of the police brutality event.

“We hoped to make the point that just because the United States is at war right now, it doesn’t make police brutality go away,” Osato said. “In fact, people should be even more aware of police brutality since so many people have to experience it now.”