African people have a right to resist!

The New Year’s Day murder of young Oscar Grant who was shot at point-blank range after he was subdued by BART police in Oakland sparked large demonstrations expressing popular outrage.

Grant’s brutal murder followed on the heels of countless instances of police murder, harassment, profiling and general disrespect directed towards the African community in Oakland and throughout the U.S.

On March 21 in Oakland twenty-six-year-old Lovelle Mixon decided that he would not be a victim. For what ever reason he fought back against the oppressive police force bearing down on his community.

The police murders, torture, brutalization, harassment and frame-ups of thousands of African men and women in this country are not the result of a few bad cops.

Many police may be friendly, nice, religious, gay or female.

Whether a cop ever actively participates in the brutalization of the African or other community or not, is irrelevant.

Every cop is an arm of the U.S. state. The state is the institution of violence and coercion of the ruling class. The purpose of the state is to protect the status quo and maintain existing relations of wealth and poverty, power and oppression.

Other fronts of the state are the U.S. army, the courts and the prisons.

The state works to maintain a monopoly on violence.

We live in a country whose state was built on the enslavement of African people, on the genocide of the Indigenous people and theft of their land.

The U.S. state and capitalism itself are built on a pedestal of colonialism, the domination of oppressed peoples inside this country and around the world for the benefit of the white power system.

All branches of the U.S. military carry out the interests of the U.S. state abroad. All branches of the U.S. police carry out the interests of the State inside U.S. borders.

Both the U.S. military and the U.S. police carry out popularly-supported wars of aggression against oppressed peoples, enabling the U.S. to continue to plunder their resources, land and labor.

Every police officer in this country is a soldier of the imperialist state, no less than a U.S. marine in Afghanistan or an Israeli soldier in occupied Palestine.

The African communities of Oakland and the U.S. are communities under siege, occupied by a hostile, military force, just like the communities of Gaza or Fallujah.

Police in East Oakland are trained in the same Special Ops and counterinsurgency tactics as military forces in Iraq.

SWAT teams break down doors intimidating families, the elderly and children alike, while helicopters circle above. Police profile, beat and murder citizens. Discriminatory sentencing and Three Strikes laws lock up young African people for life.

In New York City last year the police stopped and searched five hundred thousand people last year, eighty percent of whom were African and Latino men.

Just like a soldier in the unjust U.S. army occupations abroad, a cop in the U.S. domestic force must prepare for the possibility of returning home in a body bag as the result of the resistance of the oppressed.

To denounce the resistance of the oppressed African community is to uphold the state’s right to a monopoly of repressive violence against the African community.

The African People’s Solidarity Committee supports the right of African and oppressed peoples to national liberation.

If their land, labor, oil, diamonds or coltan have been stolen from them through the violence of the imperialist state, they have a right to get it back.

The U.S. state violently enforces the interests of a parasitic system where 50 percent of the world’s resources are enjoyed by white society—only 5 percent of the world’s population.

The current economic crisis of imperialism makes it clear that this parasitic system built on the enslavement and oppression of most of humanity for the benefit of the tiny minority is not viable.

Peace and sustainability on this planet are only possible when Africans and all other oppressed peoples of this earth once again regain power over their lives, destinies and resources.

For white people there is no future for us in our self-imposed alienation from the rest of humanity.

We have lived on a pedestal at the expense of others, a privileged gated enclave surrounded by armed security guards.

Such an unjust arrangement doesn’t work for long.

All people on this earth have a right to self-determination, land, resources and a future for their children. As Malcolm X said, they will ultimately take that back “by any means necessary.”

African and other people are fighting for the right to forge their own destinies in a way that benefits the collective whole. Only in the process of liberation from this oppressive system will the oppressed peoples of the earth create a new and better world.

Join in solidarity with the movement for African national liberation—the movement that is actively bringing about positive transformation for everyone on the planet.