ON SUNDAY AFTERNOON April 11, 2021, an African couple, mother and father were stopped by Brooklyn Center Police in Brooklyn Center, Minnesota, U.S.A. allegedly for an expired registration. The driver’s name was Daunte Wright. The pig (police) Kim Potter, the president of her police union, shortly thereafter assassinated Daunte Wright. Daunte was 20 years old and a father of one, a brother, a son, a cousin, and he was murdered by the police.
The Brooklyn PD, in a press conference, made the excuse that “She thought she was pulling her taser, but pulled her weapon.” That same day, they flew a “thin blue line” flag outside of their station.
The police are showing here that they are not sorry and they are not remorseful. They are just serving their function as an occupying army in African communities. Their mission is to brutalize us and to ensure the continued theft of our labor by the interests of parasitic capitalism and the petit bourgeoisie (sell-outs) of community.
While meant to engender sympathy, the dry colonial lie of “I meant to grab my taser” should sound familiar. It was the same lie trotted out when Johannes Mesherle, a pig, murdered Oscar Grant in Oakland, California U.S.A . in 2009. There the police claimed to be stopping a fight which had already been broken up on a Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) light rail line. The murderer was convicted of involuntary manslaughter (equivalent to the crime of “culpable homicide”), sentenced to serve two years but only served 11 mohnts of his sentence. This is how the system protects itself.
Therefore, it should not surprise you that the colonial police have murdered people in the U.S. The same excuse for murder by the state was used in the killing of African Eric Harris in Tulsa, Oklahoma in 2015, and the 2019 shootings in Lawrence, Kansas of African Akira Shaunell Lewis and of White North American Brian Riling in New Hope, PA, by colonial police. In all instances, the officers involved were either not prosecuted or served under 2 years in prison.
If the colonial police wished to prevent mistaken use of guns in the place of tasers, they would have. They have not. It is more than fair then to come to the conclusions that 1. Not only does the colonial state not care that murder of the marginalized working classes happened but also that 2. They are willing to entertain any excuse possible to justify it, no matter how implausible or tired it may be.
Particularly in the State of Minnesota, this is the case. Since 2000 there have been 207 reported “police-involved deaths” , 27% of those being African People, 46% percent of those being non-white people. This number is wildly disproportionate when you consider that according to 2019 census estimates, 83.8% of the population is white.
The brazen murder of George Floyd in 2020 by pig Derek Chauvin is well known. However the murders of Dolal Idd, Jamar Clark, Philando Castille are still fresh in our memories despite them often being left out of the conversation of police brutality. The omission of all the names of our beloved slain at the hands of the pigs serves to hide the truth of the matter – the fact that the colonial police have been an integral part of the genocide of African People in the U.S. since we were first brought to work lands for the colonizer. InPDUM’s “Africans Charge Genocide” campaign highlights the absolutely criminal nature of the treatment of African people in the U.S. according to international law based on the finding of the African National Reparations Organization’s tribunals held in 1982.
The African People’s Socialist Party continues its work in carrying out Points 8 and 10 of its 14 Point Platform which state that the colonial forces must be expelled from our communities and replaced with the Party’s own liberation forces which will strive to maintain the safety and dignity of our people.
Black community control of the police must be the slogan demand of any movement aiming to end the violent war waged by the colonial forces in the African community. This is why the Midwest region of the APSP and InPDUM has been dispatched to Brooklyn Center, MN to carry out the Party’s mandate to organize the masses of people currently resisting the pigs. Our liberation is upon us. We will unite as one African Nation to fight back against every force and means the colonizer uses to keep us in servitude.