Official statement of the Uhuru Solidarity Movement
Weeks of protest and outrage across the world – from St. Petersburg to Stockholm – have gone by since the “not guilty” verdict was announced for George Zimmerman, who shot and killed 17 year old African Trayvon Martin last year in Sanford, FL.
We in the Uhuru Solidarity Movement stand with the peoples of the world in calling for justice for Trayvon Martin. We recognize that the murder of Trayvon Martin was not a deviation from the status quo. It was representative of the daily reality experienced by African people inside the United States, where every 28 hours another black man, woman, or child is murdered by police. This statistic does not even include murder and violence inflicted by self-appointed vigilantes like George Zimmerman.
It is important for us to recognize our responsibility as white people to speak up and take sides not only against Zimmerman the murderer but against the system that produced him and protected him.
This is the time for us to stand up. The rulers of this system who brandish the whip of state power to oppress black and brown people in this country on a regular basis must hear the voices of us in the white community. We say, Hell no! Zimmerman must go! We are in unconditional unity with the demands of the black community for justice, for genuine peace that can only be made possible when black working class people have power in their own hands, power to shape their own destinies.
The Uhuru Solidarity Movement is an organization of white people and other allies of African liberation, formed by and working under the leadership of the African People’s Socialist Party. We organize in the white community and win unity with reparations to African people and support of the programs of the worldwide Uhuru Movement that is uniting African people from across the planet as one people, one billion strong, and organizing for power over their land and resources.
George Zimmerman did not emerge on this planet out of the blue. His existence, his white nationalism, and his acquittal are emanations of a system that was built through the enslavement of African people and the genocide of the Indigenous people.
Zimmerman is an expression of this system.
What the African People’s Socialist Party has struggled for us in the white community to understand is that the system that dominates the lives of Africans and other oppressed peoples is not racism; it is colonialism.
It is a social and economic configuration constructed on the parasitic theft of wealth, labor, and land from the continent of Africa and from the continent now referred to as “America.”
The Chairman of the APSP, Omali Yeshitela has said that Trayvon’s fate was determined hundreds of years ago when the first African was enchained by a European and forced onto a boat, separated from his family, robbed of his culture, religion, language, and freedom and forced to work under the whip for white people and die a brutal death.
We in the white community experience the other side of the reality of this system. There is a direct relationship between the comfort, security and confidence enjoyed by our white children and the terror suffered by black youth across this country.
The Zimmerman verdict was the latest example of a message that this system has been sending to Africans and white people since its existence. To African people the system says: your life is worth nothing. You are here to work for us and nothing more. You are animals and if a white person decides to gun you down like a dog in the street, then so be it.
To white people the system is saying: don’t worry, you can kill black people with impunity because we’ve got your back. The state, the system, the government, America is behind you.
Zimmerman carried out the will of this system. He personified colonialism and colonialism responded in kind, by giving him back his gun and sending him on his way. Meanwhile the family of Trayvon will never see their son again, their brother, their nephew, is gone forever.
Trayvon is one more victim in this ongoing systemic war on the African population by a hostile system created for our benefit.
While we are clear on the fact that “stand your ground” is a colonial law meant to protect white people’s right to murder Africans, the repeal of “stand your ground” would not signal the end of the systematic warfare that led to the death of Trayvon. No piece of legislation or reform within the confines of the existing social and economic order will change this reality. A fundamental transformation of the system itself is required to prevent this from ever happening again.
The African working class, through its revolutionary organization the African People’s Socialist Party, is struggling for power and independence – not reform.
We will never forget Trayvon Martin. And we will never forget Tyron Lewis, Javon Dawson, Oscar Grant, Amadallo Diallou, Kathyrn Graham, Aiyana Jones, and millions of other black men, women, and children who were murdered by this vicious system.
Our call to white people and allies of African people everywhere is that we must protest, we must struggle in the streets, but we must do more than that. A protest is only genuinely meaningful if it is tied to, led and informed by a larger revolutionary strategy of the African working class to uproot the colonial violent system altogether. The African People’s Socialist Party and the Uhuru Movement have the strategy, the organization, the vision, the solution.
When we join the Uhuru Solidarity Movement and organize Days in Solidarity with African People in our communities, we play our role in the white community to advance that strategy through reparations in action, material solidarity with the concrete work of the African working class to reverse the verdict of imperialism, put the system on trial and hold it accountable for its centuries of murder and brutality.
Only when this system is transformed will the Trayvon Martins of this world be able to live without fear, to live full lives with their families in a prosperous and genuinely peaceful world, free from the Zimmermans and the system that let Zimmerman walk free.
****We call on all of our members and supporters to:
1) Join the Uhuru Solidarity Movement. Take a stand on the side of African liberation by becoming a sustaining member at the level best for you.
2) Take the Pledge of Solidarity with African People. Sign your name to the pledge, make a statement, leave a donation and share this pledge with others.
3) Take action: Participate in the many actions and campaigns of the Uhuru Movement. and Get Involved to view the calendar of activites. Contact us to find out what is happening in your area.
The whole system is guilty. Africans have the right to resist.
No more Trayvons. Victory to African people! Reparations Now!
Learn more about what you’re supporting when you Take the Pledge of Solidarity with African People.
