What you can do:
1. Support Connell’s medical expenses
https://www.gofundme.com/supportconnellcrooms/donate
2. Call 904-630-2187 for JSO’s Internal Affairs to express your complaint.
3. Comment against the slander on the JSO page: https://www.facebook.com/JacksonvilleSheriffsOffice/
4. Share this story to help win justice for the Hemming Park activists.
5. Find videos of the incident and more updates at: https://www.facebook.com/JacksonvilleProgressiveCoalition/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nf7ZEYj-Cu8&
A very serious situation is unfolding in Jacksonville Florida. Yesterday activists holding an anti-war protest in Jacksonville, FL were attacked by far-right provocateurs and the Jacksonville Sheriffs Office (JSO) who appeared to be working in a coordinated effort.
The first activist targeted was a Black community leader and activist Connell Crooms, who is deaf. An accused Klan member named Gary Snow started a fight with Crooms while was on stage leading chants. The police intervened and threw Crooms to the ground, knocking his hearing aid out. Several cops beat him, chocked him, and tazed him until he went unconscious. His limp body was dragged and stuffed into the back of a police cruiser across the street. For several hours activists searched for Crooms’s location and condition, not knowing if he was alive. The Sheriff refused to tell his own mother what his condition was. We since heard from the laywers that he is now conscious and communicating.
At least four others were arrested, some were trying to intervene in the police brutality, others were arrested for just standing by in shock and outrage. An elderly member of Veterans for Peace was punched several times for no reason and a trans activist was targeted. A lead organizer of the protest, Dave Schneider, was arrested while walking away from the scene after being identified by the cops as a leader.
Crooms and Schnieder are being charged with felonies for allegedly “inciting a riot.” Crooms and Schnieder are among a group of activists that have been targeted by JSO with a modern day COINTELPRO program ( https://tinyurl.com/mnn4wqd ) that spied on activists from groups that organized a campaign against JSO for killing a 22-year old Black man in 2016. ( https://tinyurl.com/j3sad6k )
200 people protested the arrests of the “Hemming 5” today outside the JSO and activists were locked out of the courthouse while testimony from police supporters was taken about the events yesterday.
The JSO facebook page has posted slander against the arrested activists, saying they started a riot. JSO is trying to control the message, but we need your support to spread the truth and demand the sharges be dropped, and that JSO and their far-right allies be held accountable for attempting to violently stomp out free speech.
What you can do:
1. Support Connell’s medical expenses
https://www.gofundme.com/supportconnellcrooms/donate
2. Call 904-630-2187 for JSO’s Internal Affairs to express your complaint.
3. Comment against the slander on the JSO page: https://www.facebook.com/JacksonvilleSheriffsOffice/
4. Share this story to help win justice for the Hemming Park activists.
5. Find videos of the incident and more updates at: https://www.facebook.com/JacksonvilleProgressiveCoalition/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nf7ZEYj-Cu8&
Wisconsin Bail Out the People Movement 