Photos from Friday 's Protest at Harris County Jail : Houston Indymedia

As two members of Texas Death Penalty Abolition Movement and the Howard Guidry Justice Committee walked towards the jail, four white policemen on horses stood on the sidewalk, waiting for them. The lead man asked, smiling, "Y'all here to protest? What are you protesting?"

"Police brutality," the pair responded, and walked on.

Members of the Texas Death Penalty Abolition Movement, the Howard Guidry Justice Committee, the Texas Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty, the Green Party, and other supporters stood on the corner of San Jacinto and Baker for almost two hours in solidarity with the men and women who are brutalized or whose loved ones are brutalized by the prison system. Many passerbys stopped to ask for more information about Howard, to talk about their own loved one's experiences with the racist, inhumane Harris County jail system, or to thank the protesters for coming out and making their unspoken complaints heard.

Njeri Shakur lead the crowd in chanting, "Five White Cops/One Black Man/Equals Zero Justice" and "They give us no justice...We give them no peace" during pauses in her speech linking plantations to prisons.

"We are not isolated," she said, "and Howard Guidry is certainly not the only poor, black man being abused and disrespected behind these very walls. All of us whose loved ones are being treated like animals in these jails and prisons must come together and put our voices together. Alone, we are victims. Together, we are an unstoppable force. Nothing but the organized anger of the people will ever stop these injustices. They give us no justice, we give them no peace!"

One woman paused on her way in to visit her husband and got on the bullhorn. She spoke of the brutal treatment her husband had received at the hands of the Harris County, adding, "The cops were all white. My husband is black," before handing back the bullhorn and walking across the street to wait on line with hundreds of others, mothers and sisters and babies and brothers, all waiting for a fifteen minute visit through reinforced glass with their loved ones.

Gloria Rubac also spoke to the crowd, asking, "Would Ken Lay go to court barefoot, without his glasses, after being sat on by a SWAT team?" She admonished the prison system that brutalizes black, brown, and working class brothers and sisters who can't afford the same kind of justice that Ken Lay and Jeff Skilling can pay for. In English and Spanish, Rubac called for an end to police brutality and demanded that criminals who hide behind badges be put where they belong---behind bars.