In every instance, the loss of life for any reason other than extremely old age should be unacceptable to each of us. This is true whether its a bombing in Bangladesh, Nigeria, France, Somalia, or Belgium. Whether its a shooting in Orlando, South Carolina, or Oregon. No one can refute that these are all tragedies and that the losses experienced should be respected, reflected upon, and changes need to be made to help avoid any tragic loss of life from taking place in the future. We all must agree to those words. The reason things start to break down from that point forward is because capitalism is the dominant economic system in the world today. That means, each and every one of us live under a class system which is based on valuing some lives over others. This hierarchy of value results from capitalism's 500 year justification of subjugation. That's why you know very little about Africa today, even if you were born in Africa this is still usually true. The lack of information about Africa paves the way for misinformation about Africa. The people are primitive. They are violent. They are not equipped to govern themselves. They need Europe, Israel, Australia, and America to civilize them. This type of world view dehumanizes the African masses and justifies our exploitation and subjugation. It also makes it much easier to stomach harm coming to us, even up to us being brutally murdered on a regular basis. The blueprint for this was established a long time ago. If hundreds and thousands of us could be violently wiped out during colonialism in Africa or slavery in the Western world on a regular basis, then the dye was set for no one to be to inconvenienced when we are shot down like dogs by the representatives of the state e.g .the police.
The death of five police officers in Dallas last night is actually a sad example of this disparity of life. For the next several days, media everywhere will be talking about how stressed police are. The police victims in Dallas will be provided extensive coverage that humanizes them and paints them as positive contributors to the society, and it is entirely possible that some or all of them were all of that. We don't know them so we have no desire or interest in denying their humanity. What we object to is we know that in the course of humanizing them with portraits of their families and their lives, if there was questionable behavior by any of them as it relates to how they carried out their duties, that information will never be exposed, unless activists bring it out or push for it to be revealed. Darren Wilson, the cop who killed Michael Brown in 2014 had a history of working for a police department that was so racist it had to be dismantled before he came to work in Ferguson, Mo, but most people know nothing about that. On the opposite side, the victims of police murders immediately have any element of their past which could be used to justify their cold blooded murder (as if this is possible) hashed and rehashed. 2016 is little over half way finished and police have already killed almost 600 people across the U.S. just this year. Only a handful of cops have been killed during this time. In fact, many more commercial fishermen and highway workers have died already then police will be killed this entire year. Yet, the five slain cops will be discussed as if war has been declared on police. There is no evidence that war has been declared on police, but there is substantial evidence that war has been declared by the state against African people.
Despite the fact capitalist media will connect the shootings in Dallas to the movement for justice for African people, there isn't a strong connection. I know there isn't because our movement isn't organized enough to have an armed component operating on that level. That won't stop the connection from being made by the same people who will fight tooth and nail to reject that police that kill Africans in cold blood are a part of an organized system to repress the African masses. They will continue to argue that those cops represent "a few bad apples." In fact, since yesterday, I have heard variations of that statement about "a few" bad police at least five different times. Its a great sounding argument, but it doesn't stand up to analysis. If you study police shootings, they take place universally. Actually, police shootings of African people take place systematically and consistently across the entire U.S., Canada, Britain, France, Australia, and Israel. Hardly the type of results that reflect "a few bad apples." If the majority of police were honest people then where are all the police who should be calling out their colleagues for their racist behaviors? Where are all the police speaking out to contradict the lies being told by these cops who are putting out concocted stories of how these shootings are taking place? Many of these shootings are taking place with more than one cop present. Often, in front of several of them. Never do any of them step forward to tell the truth. Instead, we have plenty of occurrences when they have been caught protecting the lies and even coaching each other on how to maintain the lies. This is all ill-refutable without even talking about the fact even the racist Federal Bureau of Investigation had to recently release a report that acknowledged that police departments across the country are infiltrated, and in many cases dominated, by white nationalists, supremacists, and organized racists. This is nothing new. This is actually how police departments were originally organized 150 years ago.
So these blatant contradictions are the reasons you won't hear me denouncing the Dallas shootings. In a society that responds immediately to violence with violence as policy, its dishonest to me for anyone to walk around acting today like you should be shocked that people would respond by taking aggressive action against the police. Just because I say that, don't twist it to try and say we are advocating snipping at police. We aren't because that tactic is extremely limited and will do nothing to advance our struggle. It is an act of desperation by individual(s). We seek organization as our solution to our problems. That means a massive political education campaign that is designed to help people, including police, understand that our real enemy, no matter who we are, is the state and our freedom and liberation is only possible when the capitalist system is destroyed. This is the message for African activists, community members, Trump supporters, and everyone else. Once we develop that type of political education campaign, our goal is to get police to start stepping up and refusing to be a part of the oppressive machine they work for. Stop participating in the blue wall of silence. With that level of organization, we can isolate the most problematic and violent elements who repress us and deal with them accordingly. That's organization, not adventurism.
Still, don't come at us talking about how stressed police are today. What the police feel today we feel as African people everyday of our existence. I'm just the messenger, but I'm telling you right now that until we begin to build organizational capacity to confront these problems, you can expect more of what happened in Dallas last night and you know we will get many, many, more police killings of our people. So, the message is capitalism is unhealthy for all of us, including the police. Still need to know what you can do? Get organized because after the rallies and marches, that's the only way we can build capacity to solve the problems. That's if you are concerned about solving the problem and not just getting to a place where you don't feel bad.
The death of five police officers in Dallas last night is actually a sad example of this disparity of life. For the next several days, media everywhere will be talking about how stressed police are. The police victims in Dallas will be provided extensive coverage that humanizes them and paints them as positive contributors to the society, and it is entirely possible that some or all of them were all of that. We don't know them so we have no desire or interest in denying their humanity. What we object to is we know that in the course of humanizing them with portraits of their families and their lives, if there was questionable behavior by any of them as it relates to how they carried out their duties, that information will never be exposed, unless activists bring it out or push for it to be revealed. Darren Wilson, the cop who killed Michael Brown in 2014 had a history of working for a police department that was so racist it had to be dismantled before he came to work in Ferguson, Mo, but most people know nothing about that. On the opposite side, the victims of police murders immediately have any element of their past which could be used to justify their cold blooded murder (as if this is possible) hashed and rehashed. 2016 is little over half way finished and police have already killed almost 600 people across the U.S. just this year. Only a handful of cops have been killed during this time. In fact, many more commercial fishermen and highway workers have died already then police will be killed this entire year. Yet, the five slain cops will be discussed as if war has been declared on police. There is no evidence that war has been declared on police, but there is substantial evidence that war has been declared by the state against African people.
Despite the fact capitalist media will connect the shootings in Dallas to the movement for justice for African people, there isn't a strong connection. I know there isn't because our movement isn't organized enough to have an armed component operating on that level. That won't stop the connection from being made by the same people who will fight tooth and nail to reject that police that kill Africans in cold blood are a part of an organized system to repress the African masses. They will continue to argue that those cops represent "a few bad apples." In fact, since yesterday, I have heard variations of that statement about "a few" bad police at least five different times. Its a great sounding argument, but it doesn't stand up to analysis. If you study police shootings, they take place universally. Actually, police shootings of African people take place systematically and consistently across the entire U.S., Canada, Britain, France, Australia, and Israel. Hardly the type of results that reflect "a few bad apples." If the majority of police were honest people then where are all the police who should be calling out their colleagues for their racist behaviors? Where are all the police speaking out to contradict the lies being told by these cops who are putting out concocted stories of how these shootings are taking place? Many of these shootings are taking place with more than one cop present. Often, in front of several of them. Never do any of them step forward to tell the truth. Instead, we have plenty of occurrences when they have been caught protecting the lies and even coaching each other on how to maintain the lies. This is all ill-refutable without even talking about the fact even the racist Federal Bureau of Investigation had to recently release a report that acknowledged that police departments across the country are infiltrated, and in many cases dominated, by white nationalists, supremacists, and organized racists. This is nothing new. This is actually how police departments were originally organized 150 years ago.
So these blatant contradictions are the reasons you won't hear me denouncing the Dallas shootings. In a society that responds immediately to violence with violence as policy, its dishonest to me for anyone to walk around acting today like you should be shocked that people would respond by taking aggressive action against the police. Just because I say that, don't twist it to try and say we are advocating snipping at police. We aren't because that tactic is extremely limited and will do nothing to advance our struggle. It is an act of desperation by individual(s). We seek organization as our solution to our problems. That means a massive political education campaign that is designed to help people, including police, understand that our real enemy, no matter who we are, is the state and our freedom and liberation is only possible when the capitalist system is destroyed. This is the message for African activists, community members, Trump supporters, and everyone else. Once we develop that type of political education campaign, our goal is to get police to start stepping up and refusing to be a part of the oppressive machine they work for. Stop participating in the blue wall of silence. With that level of organization, we can isolate the most problematic and violent elements who repress us and deal with them accordingly. That's organization, not adventurism.
Still, don't come at us talking about how stressed police are today. What the police feel today we feel as African people everyday of our existence. I'm just the messenger, but I'm telling you right now that until we begin to build organizational capacity to confront these problems, you can expect more of what happened in Dallas last night and you know we will get many, many, more police killings of our people. So, the message is capitalism is unhealthy for all of us, including the police. Still need to know what you can do? Get organized because after the rallies and marches, that's the only way we can build capacity to solve the problems. That's if you are concerned about solving the problem and not just getting to a place where you don't feel bad.
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