Freedom Inc. and Young, Gifted & Black (YGB) have been organizing around the murder of Tony Robinson by Madison police officer Matt Kenny, who, after getting a call asking to help a friend who was acting erratically (dodging in and out of traffic), breaks into the apartment where Tony was staying, without backup, and shot him several times.

Anticipating more of the same from the local DA, the organizations are calling for an independent investigation, but with two major twists:

First, they are calling for a dual track investigation into the specific killing of Tony Robinson, but also into the systemic racial disparities in Madison, which apparently has the highest racial disparity in arrests in the US. And second, the DO NOT want the Justice Department to handle the investigation, but instead are calling for the United Nations and the Organization of American States to investigate (video below).

A few points here:

• Just like DA investigations are conducted by local police, Justice Department investigations are actually conducted by the FBI. There is no police force in US with a worse record of abusing Black communities than the FBI, so asking them to conduct the investigation is not a great idea.
• Justice Department investigations of cops that murder never charge cops with murder. They do not have a much better rate of indictments, but when they do indict it is for lesser charges, such as civil rights violations (their rights were violated via murder) or making false statements (what they were doing to cover up the murder), but never for murder.
• When he was killed, Malcolm X was on a mission to charge the US with crimes against humanity against Black people through the UN.
• In spite of the US Constitution (Section 6, Clause 2: "...the Laws of the United States which shall be made in pursuance thereof; and all treaties made, or which shall be made, under the authority of the United States, shall be the supreme law of the land...) the US government has basically made it illegal for the UN to conduct investigations into alleged US violations of treaties the US has signed. These are the same investigations, incidentally, that the US uses to justify sanctions and even wars against other countries. As such, only a UN Rapporteur would be allowed to conduct an investigation, not the appropriate UN committees, such as the committee on torture or against racial discrimination.

In my opinion, this is a MAJOR leap forward in this growing movement against police abuse of low income Black communities. This is a great demand, but not the highest- more shoes to drop!

In the mean time, I think this is where we should be going as a movement, along with a few other steps.

There is an I AM Color of Change petition- if so moved, please sign it!
http://iam.colorofchange.org/p/justice-for-tony-robinson

Short Video of just the demand:
http://freedom-inc.org/index.php?mact=News,cntnt01,detail,0&cntnt01articleid=30&cntnt01returnid=61

Entire press conference:
http://freedom-inc.org/index.php?mact=News,cntnt01,detail,0&cntnt01articleid=25&cntnt01returnid=61

News coverage of the Press conference: