Organizers Behind Pre-Cop Shooting Protest Postpone Their Next Event

Next Generation Action Network, the primary organization behind the July 7 protest against police brutality that preceded five Dallas police officers being shot to death by Micah Xavier Johnson, has, for the second time since the shooting, postponed the march scheduled for this week.

The head of the network, Dominique Alexander has decried the violence that happened two weeks ago, but kept up the rhetoric since the shooting.

The march was cancelled and rescheduled for a week from Friday. Alexander told the Observer late Thursday night that the March was rescheduled because logistics needed to be worked out, but it's worth noting that as of Thursday, fewer than 100 people had committed to attend the event, compared with more than 1,200 who said that they would come to the march on July 7.

Initially, Alexander scheduled a silent march to coincide with President Obama's arrival in Dallas on July 12, in order to take his group's concerns about the relationship between Dallas' African-American community and the police directly to the president.

Alexander cancelled that march, deciding a couple of hours after scheduling that the appearance of protesting what was effectively a funeral service for the five officers would not have been a good look for his organization.

"Everybody in this country should have the opportunity to mourn their loved one and I do not want our movement to be in the position to have to explain why we protest a memorial for an officer," he said on Facebook at the time.

After Texas Governor Greg Abbott proposed something called the Police Protection Act, a bill that would make cops subject to hate crime protection and stiffen penalties from crimes committed against cops because they were cops, Alexander rescheduled the silent march for Thursday night, July 21. He wanted to continue making the case that Dallas' police chief David Brown, whose indispensable leadership helped Dallas pull through the aftermath of the shooting, needed to do more to heal the relationship between the police department and Dallas' black residents.

"We aren't protesting because there aren't enough officers, we're protesting because there is not accountability for the bad officers," Alexander said Monday. "We want to be able to keep these rogue officers off our force when they violate someone's basic civil liberties in America."

Update 1:30 p.m.: Alexander gives further clarification about those "logistics" that caused the march to be postponed. The Dallas Police Department requested that Alexander and his group hold off on the march so as to allow officers who attended Michael Krol's funeral in Michigan earlier this week plenty of time to get back and plan for the demonstration, Alexander says. He expects full details for how DPD will handle the march next week.