Forbes's mother, Ella Forbes, thanked rally participants for taking part in the protest against the police murder of her son and ongoing assaults on African-American people. "Erin is another statistic. There have been a number of cases, some of which don't get into the news," she said.

Two weeks earlier, some 40 people picketed the police station in a protest organized by the family's church. Ella Forbes is a professor of African-American studies at Temple University. Her husband, Lorenzo, is a microbiologist.

On February 22, Forbes's parents filed a lawsuit in U.S. District Court charging that he was the victim of unreasonable and excessive force and summary punishment and demanding $100,000 in damages. The lawsuit also seeks court-ordered policies to avoid racial profiling or other forms of racial discrimination.

On February 18, U.S. Rep. Chaka Fattah wrote Attorney General Janet Reno asking the Justice Department to launch an investigation into the shooting.

Lower Merion Township is a wealthy, predominantly white suburb of Philadelphia. According to Marie LaForest, Forbes's fiancé, Forbes had to drive through there on his way home from a midnight shift job. His parents bought him a new Hyundai "because the used cars he was driving kept breaking down. The cops kept stopping him," LaForest said. "He told his aunt Jackie Caleb 'it was a good week if he was only stopped three times by the police.'"

Police claim that Forbes stole $4 from a convenience store, clubbed the clerk, and then fled by car. Their story is that several officers stopped Forbes's car after a chase. Forbes then jumped from the car brandishing a three-foot walking cane at Officer John Salkowsi, leaving the cop no choice but to open fire.

The family says Forbes was unarmed and still wearing a uniform from his overnight job as a security guard when he was stopped. The suit charges the slightly built 150-pound college student was surrounded by several policemen who had mace, bulletproof vests, nightsticks and semiautomatic weapons. It denies Forbes was carrying a weapon, posed a threat to the safety of himself or others, or resisted or evaded arrest.

Forbes was shot shortly after 5:00 a.m. Although he was carrying his driver's license, military identification, and car owner's card with him, his family was not notified of his death until 3:00 p.m. that afternoon.

Lower Merion Police Superintendent Joseph Daly has refused to comment on the case until a probe by the Philadelphia District Attorney's office is completed, which he told the Forbes family could take up to six months. Forbes's family, working with several churches in the area, has called for another protest at the Lower Merion police department for March 9 at 4:00 p.m.

In January, while a student at Temple and chairperson of the Philadelphia chapter of the Young Socialists, Forbes was part of a delegation of young people to an International Youth Brigade in Cuba. Later, Forbes did a stint in the army. When he got out, he tutored elementary school students for the Bright Lights Project. He attended the Temple of the Black Messiah. At the time he was shot, he was active in the New Black Panther Party and was enrolled at West Chester University intending to major in education.

In a statement to the February 24 protest, Forbes's family announced that "by seeking this civil suit, they are continuing Erin's activism by challenging a system which holds Black life to be of little or no value, a system that allows law enforcement officers to believe that they are not bound to respect the rights of African-Americans, a system which allows racial profiling and the perpetrators of racial profiling to use the excuse that the Black people they target constitute a danger to their safety as justification for summarily acting as judge, jury and executioner.

"Erin is dead," the statement says, "because those officers of the law, sworn to protect and serve citizens, clearly did not feel bound to respect his rights as a citizen when they approached him with their guns drawn. Racial profiling allowed them to feel justified in abridging Erin's rights and taking his life."

Pete Seidman is a member of United Steelworkers of America Local 8264.  
 
 
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