CopWatch : What's your badge number?

CopWatch is a tactical survival defense tool, whose primary job is to evoke a physical presence of multiple groups of camera-persons to watch over instances of civil unrest, protests, parades and community patrols.

Copwatch originally started back in day when common-people were able to get their hands on cameras and document the conditions they lived under.Not really until the late 50's and 60's did a more organized level of CopWatch start to influence movements such as The Black Panthers, The Young Lords Party and The Brown Berets.

Today we're able to look back at those images of police officers chasing black and brown folk with dogs, hosing them down and beating them with their batons.Today folks tend to believe that those days are far gone and racism is no longer as blatant as when mobs of white men corralling elders, women and children.These same racist and blatant images of the same police officers are still true today as CopWatchers document the same conditions that evidently still exist.

The Puerto Rican Day Parade brings millions of people alongside 5th Ave on the east-side of manhattan.Many who return from the main parade continue to celebrate in their neighborhoods as we pour out onto the streets waving flags, salsa music blaring from speakers and conga players drumming those African Rhythms of our roots.

In communities such as Sunset Park in Brooklyn, a mostly Puerto Rican neighborhood, year after year, local youth are all too familiar with the aggressive confrontations of police officers who greet them with shoves and batons to the head.Many are corralled and pushed around from block to block as cops claim that these are disturbances to the quality of life in the community.

for more info go to:

http://www.myspace.com/proyectoautogestion
http://www.proyectoautogestion.org