Justice for George Floyd
Joint statement on the murder of George Floyd from All African People’s Party - New Mexico and Pueblo Action Alliance.
The institution of policing in the United States was created to control, criminalize, and brutalize African and Indigenous peoples on stolen land. Modern Amerikkkan police descend directly from slave patrols and settler militias formed in the 18th and 19th centuries. In the present day, their ranks are riddled with outright fascists and white supremacists. Police and armed US state agents like those of ICE, the DEA, the FBI, DHS, and the US military are working today as they've always been designed to - as tools of racist settler-colonial capitalist and imperialist violence, hand in hand with white vigilante terrorists.
The latest example of these agents of settler-colonial capitalist violence - Derek Chauvin - is not only the murderer of our African brother George Floyd but also took the life of our Indigenous brother Wanye Reyes (Leech Lake Band of Ojibwe, Anishinaabe) in 2006. Derek Chauvin is the same man who is being protected - at his home - 24 hours a day by over 70 Minneapolis police in riot gear. The same man who has been seen pictured standing next to Trump. The same man whom vice presidential Democratic nominee hopeful Amy Klobuchar declined to prosecute in 2007 - a year after he killed Wayne Reyes and 13 years before he murdered George Floyd. It is important to understand that Derek Chauvin is not an aberration, but rather a perfect representative of a criminal system designed to carry out an ongoing campaign of violence against colonized people here in the US and all over the world.
The targeting of African, Indigenous, Chicano, and colonized people by police is rooted in the white supremacist, settler-colonial capitalist American project. Violence against us is built into the foundation of this empire and is indeed required for this empire to function. Though the latest cases of police terrorism are what’s currently catching the headlines, it’s important to understand that we are victimized by every structure of this empire. We must not forget precisely who is dying the most from COVID-19 is, who is systematically denied access to medical care and subjected to medical racism when we do get access, who has deadly pre-existing conditions due to colonial violence and environmental racism, and who is considered to be an ‘essential’ worker worthy of sacrificing to save a dying capitalism - African and Indigenous people. But just as we must acknowledge that these systems are built to enact violence against us as colonized people, we must also acknowledge that our peoples have fought back against all forms of settler colonial violence continuously - since before the birth of the US empire. Our peoples have always resisted the colonial land grab of indigenous territories, have always resisted the enslavement of African peoples, and have always resisted the attempt to kill off our histories and cultures and then assimilate us into this nation’s dysfunctional mythology.
The police and all agents of settler-colonial state violence uphold the oppressive institutions generated and motivated by the systems of white supremacy, European settler-colonialism, and global capitalism. The police are enemies of all oppressed peoples fighting to liberate ourselves from colonial power. They are the enemy of living free, the enemy of protecting and defending our human dignity, the enemy of community and the enemy of all African and Indigenous people. We call for African and Indigenous solidarity against police terrorism and all forms of capitalist, imperialist, and settler-colonial violence.
#justiceforgeorgefloyd #blacklivesmatter#AfricanandIndigenousSolidarity#nojusticenopeace All African People's Revolutionary Party - New Mexico - New Mexico @aaprpnewmexico @puebloactionalliance