We are out­raged that police offi­cers have stood idly by while armed, racist vig­i­lantes assault­ed, threat­ened and sex­u­al­ly harassed anti-racist pro­test­ers demand­ing that the stat­ue of geno­ci­dal slave trad­er Christo­pher Colum­bus be removed from Mar­coni Plaza. The PPD is ful­ly com­plic­it in this vio­lence. The racist mobs and the cops are work­ing hand in hand to repress the move­ment for Black lives. But we will not let them succeed!

These vig­i­lantes do not rep­re­sent South Philly, no mat­ter what they say. Black, Indige­nous, Lati­no, Asian and white; immi­grants and US-born — we stand unit­ed against racism! Join us to show that South Philly and the entire city rejects the vig­i­lantes, and the police department’s deci­sion to facil­i­tate their violence.

This action is being orga­nized in sol­i­dar­i­ty with the march on the same day start­ing in West Philly to demand the defund­ing of the PPD and redi­rect­ing those resources towards meet­ing people’s needs. As the city’s bud­get for the next year approach­es it’s final approval, these actions are more impor­tant than ever.

Amid the dev­as­tat­ing Coro­n­avirus health and eco­nom­ic cri­sis, May­or Jim Ken­ney and Man­ag­ing Direc­tor Bri­an Aber­nathy pro­posed a $19 mil­lion increase to the police bud­get while slash­ing essen­tial ser­vices like pub­lic health, home­less ser­vices, and libraries. Even worse, after the upris­ing demand­ing racial jus­tice and end­ing police bru­tal­i­ty after the mur­ders of George Floyd, Bre­on­na Tay­lor and Tony McDade, Coun­cil dared to pass a shame­ful bud­get at 11 p.m. that nei­ther defund­ed the police nor invest­ed in our com­mu­ni­ties as the peo­ple of Philadel­phia demand.