By Diane Bukowski

DETROIT – A mother and child from New York City led a march of hundreds from across the nation in downtown Detroit June 26 to condemn the Detroit police killing of seven-year-old Aiyana Stanley-Jones in May. The U.S. Social Forum, a national gathering of activists in Detroit, had just concluded.

Marchers carried dozens of signs displaying Aiyana’s photo, which declared in bright red, “Redeem Aiyana’s Dream,” and “We Say No to No-Knock Raids.” They chanted, “Don’t kill our kids, don’t shoot our kids,” and “The system is wrong, we’ve got to be strong, Aiyana Jones, she has a name, her family is not to blame.”

“People all over New York City, and from London, Africa, Germany and Peru have contacted me in outrage over this child’s death, said Jewel Allison, leader of the International Aiyana Alliance, as she led the march, holding hands with her daughter Honesti, 11.

Allison lives in Bedford-Stuyvesant, New York and is a nationally known speaker, writer, poet and former journalist.

Aiyana was shot to death at 12:30 a.m. May 16 during a military-style invasion of her home in a poor Black east-side Detroit neighborhood. Her killer was white Detroit police officer Joseph Weekley, who lives in a Detroit suburb.

A police “Special Response” team simultaneously lobbed an incendiary grenade through the window of the first-floor flat where the Jones family lived. Aiyana and her grandmother Vertilla Jones, 46, were sleeping on a couch directly below the window. Also in the home were three other children ages four, three and 3 months old.

“The First 48,” an A&E reality show which features Weekley on its website as a regular star, filmed the incident.

The team was seeking to arrest a man who lived in a different flat for an earlier killing. According to the family’s attorney Geoffrey Fieger, a police surveillance car was outside the two-family flat when the man exited at 6 p.m., but did not arrest him then. Fieger said an independent autopsy showed that Weekley aimed directly at Aiyana’s head.

“New York is Detroit and Detroit is New York. Out of the love I have for my daughter, I say, oh no, you cannot shoot our children in the head and get away with it,” Allison declared. “I began grieving myself when I heard of Aiyana’s killing, this totally upset our household. For the last four weeks, we have organized non-stop to bring our message to the world on the streets of this city where Aiyana was killed.”

The International Aiyana Alliance is also organizing a march on the U.S. Department of Justice in Washington, D.C. in the near future to demand a stop to no-knock raids.

“At the heart of the Washington march will be a demand for the Justice Department to pull money and grants from local police departments that are using them to carry out no-knock raids,” Allison said. “These raids are only carried out in poor neighborhoods of color, which don’t have the means to fight back, not in rich white suburbs.”

Many Detroit leaders have claimed that a general atmosphere of violence in Detroit led to Aiyana’s death.

But Allison put the blame squarely on the police.

“We as Black people are powerless as relates to any type of real violence,” she said. “The whole system needs to be renovated. The recession has caused mass unemployment, which linked with internalized self-hatred results in violent crime within our communities. Black people are only 12 percent of the population nationally, and Black women make up the majority of that. What you have left is maybe five percent of the population being Black males, and they want us to believe they are all strapped and violent and a threat to the country. That is ridiculous.”

Makeisha Harris, a young Detroit mother who is head of “Healing Detroit,” led a grass roots march of hundreds throughout the city in May to bring community members together in the wake of Aiyana’s death. Harris participated in the I.A.A. march, as did Joyce Johnson, a leader of the City Airport Renaissance Association (CARA), which is calling attention to the unsolved murders of twelve women in that east-side neighborhood.

Also present were members of the grass roots organization Call ‘em Out, the Detroit Coalition Against Police Brutality (DCAPB), and other local organizations. Many protesters who came from other parts of the country had just attended the U.S. Social Forum, held June 22-26 at Cobo Hall in downtown Detroit.

Myla Johnson of Gary, Indiana, who leads the Central District Organizing Project there, brought her six children to the USSF and the march.

“How come this officer has not been charged?” she asked. “He’s not God, to take a life like he did. It’s becoming so common, and the police just get a pass. We have our share of police-instigated violence in Gary. I am so happy that we were able to come out to support Aiyana. Everyone in Gary has heard about her case and we are devastated by it.”

Luther Allen of Providence, Rhode Island said, “I think it’s disgusting to see law enforcement not held accountable in the killing of this child. The police culture itself is responsible. I just can’t believe they did this because they wanted to be on TV.”

“Racist police brutality and harassment are happening all over the country,” said Hoku Jeffrey of Los Angeles. “A mass community campaign against the police killing of Oscar Grant succeeded in getting his killer tried for murder.”

Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) officer Johannes Mehersle shot the unarmed Grant, a 22-year-old father, in the back in 2009. Cell phone photos and videos of Grant’s murder which went world-wide led to three community rebellions in Oakland and murder charges against the officer. Mehersle’s trial is currently ongoing.

Detroit Police Chief Warren Evans and Wayne County Prosecutor Kym Worthy handed the investigation of Aiyana’s shooting over to the Michigan State Police (MSP). MSP Second District Commander Harold Love said he had “no comment” on the progress of the investigation.

Detroit Mayor Dave Bing has since temporarily suspended permits allowing reality shows to follow Detroit police crews. However, ABC will air a new cop drama, “Detroit 1-8-7,” starring Michael Imperioli, previously of “The Sopranos,” as a lead homicide detective, this fall. Bing has welcomed this show into the city.

The June 26 and national marches were endorsed in the Alliance’s founding flier by Allison, Rev. Omar Wilks of Unison Pentecostal Church and Rev. Darryl Young of the Siloam Presbyterian Church in New York, Jaylaco Media, The Native Detroiter Magazine, and Salaam Ismial, President of the National United Youth Council & Street Organizing Coalition.

Speakers at the rally which concluded the march included Wilks, Detroit poet Aurora Harris, Ron Scott and Sandra Hines of the DCAPB, Abiyomi Azikiwe of the Michigan Emergency Committee against War and Injustice, and Carl Dix of the New York based Oct. 22 Coalition Against Police Brutality, Repression and the Criminalization of a Generation.

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By Diane Bukowski For further information email Coordinator Jewel Allison, President of International Aiyana Alliance (I.A.A) at stealingpeace@aol.com