SOUL demonstrates against police brutality with Klan outfit

A Penn student dressed as a member of the Ku Klux Klan held hands with another student dressed as a police officer in a staged demonstration on Locust Walk Friday afternoon that was organized by the Students Organizing for Unity and Liberation group.

The demonstration, which took place primarily in front of the LOVE statue, is one of the organization’s weekly “Ferguson Fridays” events that call to attention modern racial issues. The sign accompanying the demonstration stated that “modern American law enforcement originated from Slave Patrols.” The sign also addressed an April 2 incident where two Floridian police officers who were also in the Ku Klux Klan were “arrested by the FBI for plotting to kill a Black inmate.”

“The legacy of the White supremacy policing ideology is prevalent today in the racial profiling, stop and frisk, police brutality, beatings, shootings, and mass incarceration of African Americans,” the sign read.

“SOUL believes it is crucial to understand the historical context of law enforcement and policing of black and brown bodies in America in order to comprehend the unequal, unjust, and brutal treatment of people of color today...” SOUL said in a statement. “Without this understanding it is far too easy to dismiss instances of police brutality towards black and brown people as isolated incidents rather than acknowledge the historically entrenched systems of violence that enable their occurrence and pardon.”

Last week, SOUL held a demonstration in the same location that protested a recent University of Virginia incident in which UVA student Martese Johnson sustained injuries during an arrest by a white police officer. The demonstration portrayed a man dressed as a police officer kneeling over a bleeding black man.

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