A mixed group of Johns Hopkins students and community members gathered Wednesday evening to protest Johns Hopkins University's (JHU) Police Accountability Board meeting. This group would oversee the private police force of JHU, which students, faculty, and community members have been strongly against since 2018.
One member of Progressive Labor Party (PLP) and a friend to the Party joined the rally in front of the university's Public Safety Office. We continued with a march around the neighborhood that ended at Wyman Park. The official meeting was hosted on Zoom, which was decided based on claims of death threats to board members. The panelists droned on about community-based policies and feedback, but the protest's organizers had a clever plan. Speakers could use pre-made speeches to call out the board's hypocrisy and link to oppressing workers through this proposed police force. Some spoke freely, whether giving their personal experiences on campus with profiling or stating that a private police force echoes the use of police across the world: protection of property and worker suppression.
The West Coalition, an organization fighting for police accountability and the end of police violence, joined later. Tawanda Jones, the group's lead organizer, also bashed the board's claims of community safety and gave specific examples of police terror in Baltimore. She laid out her personal battle with the city's government since her brother was killed by 17 officers in 2013. Capitalist fact is truly stranger than fiction. Tawanda's experience with the (in)justice system proves that working in the system is as threatening as working against it. Any opposition to police terror is only met with more attacks and threats to our safety.
One organizer made a clear reflection of the meeting, saying, "[E]very time we attend one of these meetings, their brazen complicity with a plan that will undoubtedly lead to terrible violence is even more and more obvious."
PLP supports and recognizes the bold actions of the Hopkins student-led protests over the years. Tonight clearly showed that there are people in our community with political consciousness. It is our job as builders of a communist movement to sharpen that into a clear class consciousness. That is what's needed to shut down any of JHU's attempts to create a private police force of terror and build toward a broader shut down of Baltimore's capitalist thieves.
