PJ Solidarity Statement for CAAAV and Chinatown

May 16, 2011

The following is Peoples’ Justice member org, CAAAV Organizing Asian Communities’, descriptionan NYPD of beating and arrest of a man in Chinatown:

On Mother’s Day last Sunday, Yi Zhuo Wu, a Chinese immigrant, was pinned down by four NYPD police officers who beat him bloody and then handcuffed him in Chinatown’s Columbus Park. Wu, a musician, is a member of the Street Musical Club, a group that has played music regularly in Columbus Park for more thanfour years. Aggravating the situation even further, as the community was watching Mr. Wu being arrested and calling for him to be released, a police officer threatened to mace people who did not move back.

According to the police, the Street Musical Club did not have a sound permit. In a statement to reporters, the NYPD has characterized this as a misunderstanding, that this would not have happened if people in the community knew that they needed a sound permit to play instruments in the park. Their solution is to hold a community information session to let people know what procedures they should follow. 

Peoples Justice for Community Control and Police Accountability (PJ) condemns this and all other unjust and violent actions taken by the NYPD against low-income communities in New York City. Unfortunately, the kind of harassment and violence against elderly residents demonstrated by the NYPD on May 8^th is all too familiar. PJ understands this incident to bean example of the way in which the NYPD enforces gentrification and the criminalization of communities of color in NYC.  Developers, landlords, city officials, and new residents rely on the police to protect the process of creating of new, wealthy communities and displacing long-term working-class ones, a push out enforced with intimidation, harassment, batons, guns, and mace.  What were once public parks, playgrounds and streets, are now privatized and fenced spaces that require sound permits and annualmembership dues.

We, the PJ member organizations, know well that the push-out policing that leads to violence in Chinatown is the same as that in Washington Heights, East Brooklyn, Bed-Stuy, Bushwick, Brownsville, Sunset Park, the Chelsea piers, Harlem, and the Bronx. We recognize the violent impact of policing across all our communities, be they Black, Latino, Asian, Native American, immigrant, lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender youth, elderly, poor and/or low-income.  Police violence is a systemic problem that effects us alland must be addressed as such.

New York City deserves a police department that is accountable to all residents – and we demand an end to the violence.

The member organizations of Peoples Justice for Community Control and Police Accountability stand in solidarity with the Asian communities in Chinatown, and urge all New Yorkers concerned with policing to attend a Know Your Rights training.  Email: This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it for information about up-coming trainings.

In struggle,

The Peoples Justice for Community Control and Police Accountability

(Audre Lorde Project, CAAAV Organizing Asian Communities, Justice Committee, Make the Road New York, Malcolm X Grassroots Movement, and Nodutdol for Korean Community Development)