Jameek “Meek” Lowery went to the Paterson, N.J., police station before dawn on January 5 and asked for water and help. Cops at the Frank X. Graves Public Safety Complex refused to give him either.
Lowery videoed the callous response of the police on his Facebook page. Before going to the police station, Lowery was taken by ambulance from his home to the St. Joseph’s University Medical Center. Lowery then left the hospital and went to a police station seeking help before being taken back to the hospital.
Two days later, the 27-year-old African-American father of three children was dead. Lowery had a broken cheekbone and fractured eye socket. People in Paterson want to know who beat him to death.
On Jan. 8, protesters marched in downtown Paterson and demanded answers. Paterson police responded by pepper spraying them and confronting people with nightsticks.
Cops arrested local Black Lives Matter leader Zellie Thomas, a Paterson school teacher, and New York City activist Hawk Newsome. Members of the People’s Organization for Progress and American Muslims for Palestine joined the protest.
No autopsy results for Lowery have been released, but it’s claimed that he died of bacterial meningitis. Five hundred people die in the U.S. annually of this disease. Socialist Cuba has a vaccine for this illness that saves lives, but it’s barred from import to the U.S. by the U.S. blockade of the Caribbean nation.
As deadly as meningitis can be, it couldn’t have caused Jameek Lowery’s broken cheekbone and eye socket. Nor could it have been the cause of his bruises and scratches.
Patterson’s 150,000 people live in a city that historically produced so much wealth yet is now so poor. Known as “Silk City,” thousands of the city’s workers were employed in silk mills, now all closed. The famous 1913 Paterson silk strike was broken.
Real estate sharks are converting former silk mills and other factories into luxury condominiums, like the Silk City Lofts downtown.
People are fighting back against this war on the poor. They are demanding justice for Jameek Lowery and his family.
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