[tupocc] CANDIDATE STATEMENT

Black and Brown, TUPOCC Gets Down!

My name is Matt Nelson and I would be honored to serve
as your co-Chair of TUPOCC. It has been wonderful to
meet and to know some of the TUPOCC membership and I
look forward to continuing to walk side by side with
you in the name of FREEDOM.

We, as a United People of Color, stand in front of the
barrel of the Criminal Justice System. I ask, where do
we stand? Will we continue to be shot in the back,
will our children continue to run, or will we stand up
and stop the destruction?

I believe that TUPOCC in alliance with the National
Lawyers Guild can educate, mobilize and deputize
communities of color and conscience to transform and
recreate the system of (in)justice in the United
States of America. Our Alabama manefisto is correct
in that, "The necessity of such an organization is
borne from the historical context of the capitalist
United States where economic prowess is dependent on
the furthered and continued subjugation of people of
color, women, the poor, queers and other oppressed
people."

My resolve is to end police brutality and to free all
political prisoners, especially our sisters and
brothers who are incarcerated for the crime of being
poor, Black, Brown, Native, Woman, Queer, Disabled,
Mentally Ill, non-citizen, or drug addicited.

TUPOCC has the capacity and the heart to advocate and
fight for the public in every interaction with the
criminal justice system and in every stage of the
decent toward imprisionment. Initiatives and
campaigns like Cop Watch, improving the Public
Defenders office, Law Collectives, Legal Observation,
sentencing advocacy, restorative justice, prisoner
support, to the Innocence Proect, can stop the madness
and understand our prospects for justice in a new
America.

I commit to representing our TUPOCC constituencies
across gender, race, class, sexuality, and regional
lines. Again, the Manefesto makes it clear that we
must have equality, dignity, and respect "woven
throughout the fabric of the organization." Our
current co-chairs and the founders of TUPOCC have done
excellent work and have given us both the opportunity
and the responsibility to continue forward. We will
honor our predecessors, and through our actions we
will fight for the 2.2 million incarcerated, and the
millions more who are family to those who are locked
up or who have been killed by police violence. I have
sent a few emails regarding our work in Milwaukee.
You may judge my worthiness as a candidate by those
announcements and I hope you can see and understand
where I stand and what I intend to do about the
barrel.

Thank you for your time and make sure to let the folk
know that they can ride with us or collide with us!

Peace, and respectfully yours,

Matt Nelson

Hide nothing from the masses of our people.
Tell no lies, Expose lies
whenever they are told.
Mask no difficulties, mistakes, failures.
Claim no easy victories.

Amilcar Cabral