This week, the loved ones of victims of police violence from across the U.S. will convene in Woodlawn for an inaugural anti-police brutality conference. The weekend-long gathering, which kicks off on Friday, April 24, through Sunday, April 26—hosted by Families Demanding Justice and Dare To Struggle—will bring together impacted families, activists and supporters at First Presbyterian Church of Chicago for a series of panels, workshops and roundtable discussions on how to fight to end police brutality.
Families Demanding Justice is a national network of impacted families, while Dare To Struggle is a national activist organization involved in the movement against police brutality.
Samaria Rice, a police brutality advocate and the mother of Tamir Rice, is among the featured keynote speakers on Friday. Rice’s 12-year-old son, Tamir, was killed in Cleveland, Ohio, by former police officer Timothy Loehmann in 2014. Tamir was playing with a pellet gun at a local park when Loehmann fired at him twice just seconds after arriving on the scene.
Loehmann was subsequently fired by the Cleveland Police Department in 2017 for lying on his police officer application. A state grand jury declined to indict him. In 2020, the U.S. Justice Department announced that it would not bring federal criminal charges against Loehmann and his partner, Frank Garmback. In 2025, Loehmann was fired from his position as a ranger in West Virginia.
Topics of discussion at the conference, which is titled “Re-Build the Movement Against Police Brutality & Against the Grifters,” will center on questions such as: What will it take to build a sustained mass movement against police brutality that seeks to end it? How can we involve large masses of people in the movement against police brutality? What can we do to ensure the movement will not be steered by opportunist lawyers and activists, or by politicians using it for personal gain?
Other speakers include author and professor Joy James, police-brutality activist Charlotta Pritchett, and other special guests. The conference will begin at 3:00 p.m. on Friday at First Presbyterian Church of Chicago, located at 6400 S. Kimbark Avenue.
Conference organizers and attendees will also participate in a special ceremony to memorialize all represented families and their loved ones.
Registration and details for the conference can be found here.
