Manning Salazar

Manning Salazar

Template:TOCnestleft Manning Salazar...is a Miami Florida activist. Worked at Giral Media Production. From Rio de Janeiro.

Education

• Studied Computer Science and Political Science at Florida International University.
• Went to Christopher Columbus High School.
• Went to EARJ.

Progressive Student Union

Manning Salazar led the Progressive Student Union at FIU in the 1980s.

FRSO connection

Circa 1988 Freedom Road Socialist Organization compiled a "Nationality Contact" list. It comprised of people Freedom Road would like to work with or to recruit, mainly through racial issues.

The list included Manning Salazar of Miami.

Committees of Correspondence

In July 1994 Manning Salazar Florida was appointed as one of several youth reps to the National Co-ordinating Committee of Committees of Correspondence at CoC's founding conference in Chicago.

CoC NCC member

In July 1996 Manning Salazar was a member of the National Co-ordinating Committee of Committees of Correspondence.

ACLU anti-police work

Manning Salazar has been an industrious board member of the ALCU’s Greater Miami Chapter for many years. Salazar is hard-pressed to pinpoint just one or two pressing civil liberties issue on which our chapter needs to focus more attention: immigration reform, police oversight, freedom of speech, separation of church and state, and marriage equality are all in his sights. But in recent years, Salazar has channeled his energy to his work for the chapter’s Police Practices Committee (PPC).

Salazar, born of Cuban parents and raised in the United States and Brazil, has always held strong views regarding the protection and defense of civil liberties. His formative years were spent in Brazil living under a military dictatorship, an experience he credits as giving him a first-hand understanding of a society bereft of basic civil liberties. Once he moved to Miami in 1980, Salazar’s eyes were opened to this community’s struggles with censorship, racial strife, and violent retaliation against people and groups with unpopular positions.

But it was the passage of the Patriot Act following the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks that Salazar viewed as a call to action with regard to his involvement with the ACLU. The ACLU, he recalls, was the one civil liberties organization at the national level that stepped up to the plate and actively pushed back against the erosions of civil liberties wrought by the passage of the Patriot Act. So when then-chapter president John de Leon approached Salazar about joining the board of the Greater Miami Chapter, Salazar did not hesitate. Since then, Salazar has been an active participant in several committees whose work is vital to the heart of the ACLU’s endeavors.

Salazar’s efforts devoted to the PPC are ongoing; the committee’s work is seemingly never-ending given the persistency of civil liberties issues relating to police misconduct in our community. Salazar acknowledges that he never envisioned an interest in a committee created to oversee police misconduct and law-enforcement policy. But as a resident of Miami Beach, he became more and more concerned about unduly aggressive law-enforcement actions during the annual Urban Beach Week, an event taking place every Memorial Day that attracts primarily African-Americans from all over the country. As Salazar argues, “locking down Miami Beach” and creating a “police state” for an entire weekend is no way to welcome visitors or to ensure community safety during Urban Beach Week. He, along with other members of the PPC, are working with Miami Beach authorities to instill a different mind-set among law enforcement and to provide a safe, yet welcoming, experience for Memorial Day visitors in the years to come.

References

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