Tom Mitchell
Template:TOCnestleft Tom Mitchell...
Afro-American Patrolman's League
After being on the police force for about a year, Officer Buzz Palmer experienced the “shoot to kill” order issued by mayor Richard J. Daley during the Black uprisings and looting that occurred on the Westside of Chicago following the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Those events had a significant impact upon him.
Several Black police officers became concerned for the safety of unarmed Black leaders and Black citizens in general, being killed by white reactionaries. Officer Palmer decided to organize Black officers and began with a small cadre who also had not been on the force very long. Renault “Reggie” Robinson, Curtis Cowsen, Willie Ware, Wilbur Crooks, Jack Dubonnet and Tom Mitchell, who was not a police officer and Palmer, became the Afro-American Patrolman’s League. Howard Saffold and others came shortly, thereafter. They met initially in Palmer’s apartment and later, after chipping in, opened their first office on east 63rd Street.[1]
Cuban art trip
Janice Misurell-Mitchell traveled to Cuba[2]for six days in September 2007 with several colleagues as part of a conference on “Useful Art”, or art that includes aspects of social activism.
Sponsored by Cáthedra de Arte Conducta, an arts program hosted by the Instituto Superior de Arte in Havana, the project was conceived by Cuban visual artist and University of Chicago faculty member Tania Bruguera.
Misurell-Mitchell's colleagues were Chicagoans Tom Mitchell, Bernardine Dohrn and Bill Ayers;
- our group, “Team Havana” thus included a scholar, two political activists and an artist.
- Our work was to present lectures and informal sessions, films and videos and performances.
- While Tom, Bernadine and Bill met with visual art students at the offices of the journal Criterio, I presented three sessions to music students at the Instituto Superior de Arte.
References
- ↑ Founding of the Afro-American Patrolman’s League, written by Edward “Buzz” Palmer titled “A Voyage of Discovery” and can be read in its entirety in a publication being written by Dr. Useni Perkins scheduled to be published in 2008 by Third World Press.
- ↑ Cube Circuits Winter 2008 page 1