Anonymous
PRESS CONTACT: [email protected] | 646-856-9847
Photo credit: hrw.org
On June 4th the FTP formation launched #FTP4, the fourth in a series of
militant actions exposing the every day brutality of the U.S. police state.
This action would come to be known as Bronx Bloody Thursday because
of the overwhelming response by NYC government officials, and a
federal and local police military operation. From Selma’s Bloody Sunday
to Bronx Bloody Thursday every generation has had to risk direct
confrontation with the most powerful police state in the world to earn
recognition of the human rights violations done by the U.S.
In response to our active resistance, Human Rights Watch wrote a report
accusing the U.S. of international human rights violations. Missing is the
acknowledgment that Bronx Bloody Thursday clearly illustrates that
whether we are violent or peaceful police will still brutalize us. This is not
because of our actions but because we are Black and our movements
are Black led. These spiritual and material conditions have never
changed for us and will not be solved by reform, voting, or the outcome
of Nov 3rd. But the fight for liberation is in our blood and is worth more
than any reward white supremacy, charitable billionaires, and foundation
grant money could ever give us.
While we intentionally began our march by engaging community
members with PPE and food we were still met with violence. So we
denounce any attempt to divide us from protestors who are non-peaceful
or who liberate the ill gotten gains and excesses of capitalism. The real
looters are in the White House. While oppressed people were forced to
carry entire cities on their backs as essential workers; we watched
Democrats join hands with President Trump to give billions to
corporations, preventing millions of working class people from paying
rent, or having basic essentials to survive.
The human rights community privileges legal observers over organizers
and the ordinary Black and Brown community members that face state
violence as a normal course of life. A major outlet also held a discussion
on Bloody Thursday without speaking to any residents of the NYCHA
Millbrook Houses, where some residents had not had gas for months, or
any members of the Black Legal Observers Coalition (BLOC) that led
legal support for #FTP4. The liberal concern over the regular brutal
tactics of the police during Bloody Thursday only rose to human rights
violations when white lawyers, doctors and DeBlasio cabinet members
faced some of the consequences BLACK men, women, children, trans
and gender non-conforming people face daily.
HRW and organizations like NLG would not be outraged if instead of
kettling us before curfew the NYPD had the liberal sensibility to wait until
8:05pm. This would please liberals but mean absolutely nothing to Mill
Brook Houses who, daily, live the brunt of the US police state. As Black
people we do not have to wait until one of us dies to rise up. We must
build power to sustain solidarity and take action anytime one of our
sisters, brothers, trans, or gender non-conforming family members are
violated by the state or anyone.
Now we are not the first Black organizers to declare that the U.S. is
committing genocide and we will not be the last. This is an opportunity
for Black people to join grassroots struggles independent of the state,
capitalist economy, and the non-profit industrial complex. These systems
can not be reformed. We present our case not to HRW, the UN, or any
other international court but to Black people around the world. We
extend solidarity to the millions fighting for Black liberation in Haiti,
Trinidad, and across the Caribbean; we join our people in the
Democratic Republic of the Congo, Kenya, and Nigeria whose resources
are pillaged, the Garifuna who continue to be dispossessed in Central
America, to Palestine, to Cuba and wherever Black grassroots struggle
continues to rise. It is our duty now to connect our struggles with Black
people across the globe, and to fight for Black liberation by any means
necessary.