HYATTSVILLE, MD, OCT 10—The campaign to keep ICE agents out of the building at 6505 Belcrest Rd in Hyattsville, MD has taken another step forward with the involvement of Howard University students. Since the start of the academic year, members of Progressive Labor Party and Hyattsville and Greenbelt Resistance Networks have reached over 100 Howard students who live in the dorm next door with leaflets and CHALLENGE newspapers. This week a core group of Howard students met at La Vie (the student dorm)with PL’ers and members of the Prince George’s County Coalition for Police Accountability to plan next steps. We aim to broaden the struggle with a new petition to demand that Howard University administration lean on Prince George’s County Executive Braveboy and the Bernstein management of the building to rescind the ICE permit and keep ICE out of the 3rd floor of 6505 Belcrest. The students planned campus outreach including speaking up in class, involving other campus organizations they are involved with including the Skate Club Good Trouble, and Call to Chapel.
A former Howard student at the meeting urged the students to tell their peers that Black students as well as immigrants are at risk from police brutality and murder. He movingly urged them to learn the history of the police murder of Prince Jones, a Howard student who was brutally shot in the back five times (out of 16 shots fired) by an undercover Prince George’s cop in 2000. The recent murder of Tawfiq Bernard and the William Greene and Leonard Shand cases a few years ago are examples of the brutality of the Prince George’s Cops that has continued since the murder of Prince Jones.
Publications by a PLP faculty member at Howard who attended the meeting provides both historical detail and analysis of the failure of the Department of Justice oversight in the region and the country(contact