By: Amira Mensah, Development and Communications Associate
“To be a Negro in this country and to be relatively conscious is to be in a rage almost all the time."
- James Baldwin
The evil that is white supremacy continues to prevail. Four hundred years later we are still being lynched. Two hundred years later we are still regarded as less than three-fifths of a human. Forty years later we are still fighting for our civil rights; and for seven years we have been saying our lives matter. This week we have had enough. Our voices will be heard. We are no longer asking for equality, we are demanding it.
As the blood of our brothers and sisters drips from the hands of this nation, we cry out for justice.
The malevolence that is racism is the cause of our genocide. Before we can properly mourn one death in our community, another life is lost. We are being hunted and slaughtered like animals as the rest of the country chooses to do nothing.
Our cries for justice are met with repugnant indifference.
In addition to murder, another cruel injustice we suffer is the violent act of silence.
“Throughout history, it has been the inaction of those who could have acted; the indifference of those who should have known better; the silence of the voice of justice when it mattered most; that has made it possible for evil to triumph.”(1)
The tyranny that is oppression allows for acts of terror to continue. We are being strangled, suffocated and shot by fellow citizens and police officers. With no one to serve and protect us, we are forced to fight for justice by any means necessary.
The rage that fills us is what drives us.
We are committed to dismantling white supremacy, demolishing racism and rising up against our oppressor. With the strength and perseverance from our ancestors, we will continue to march, protest and rally until the day we no longer have to say, stop killing us.
1. Quote from a speech made by Haile Selassie I, Former Emperor of Ethiopia in 1963.