The following text was written for the February 17, 2024 Global Day of Action for Palestine. In Indianapolis and over 100 other cities throughout six continents, the ANSWER Coalition (Act Now to Stop War and End Racism), Jewish Voice for Peace, Party for Socialism and Liberation- Indianapolis, Palestinian Youth Movement, and others organized coordinated protests outside and inside of the Lucas Oil Stadium as the city hosted the NBA All-Star Weekend. As lead organizers played the recorded statement, the cheers from the audience grew louder than the speakers You can listen to Shaka read the statement below.
You can also read the Chinese translation, published as part of our 2024 Black August series, here.
The colonization of a people, the theft of a people’s land, and/or the theft of a people before imposing second-class citizenship upon them are crimes against humanity and International Laws that so-called Civilized Nations are supposed to be governed by.
You have a government that—through political, economical, and/or military domination—oppresses, kills, and dictates the quality of life under the guise of being the chosen people, under the guise of Zionism, under the guise of white supremacy, maintaining security and a host of other bogus reasoning: that is an outlaw government, a Terrorist State, a government that is guilty of genocide and committing crimes against humanity.
It’s interesting how there are so many similarities between colonial oppression and occupation in Palestine and the Ghetto Colonies throughout Amerikkka.
Both the United States and Israel came to exist as settler colonial powers predicated upon the genocide and erasing of Indigenous Peoples and communities. As well as the enslaving and slaughtering of Afrikan and New Afrikan People while occupying other people’s land.
You have Gaza and the West Bank, where soldiers and settlers maintain and enforce that colonial domination and racist/Zionist policies and the same in Black and Brown communities throughout this Imperialist Empire.
In occupied Palestine land, has been seized and redistributed. It is the same with New Afrikans and Indigenous folks, such as Native Americans, and all throughout the South within the National Territory where Black folks worked/slaved, shed blood and tears, and engaged in war, only to have their National Territory occupied, seized, confiscated, and redistributed, despite promises of 40 acres and a mule. Only to be denied the right to self-determination, only to be denied the right to nationality while having one imposed upon you and amending you as a people into a Constitution.
Just as in Palestine, you have soldiers and settlers policing the colonized, engaging in extra-judicial legal murders, and protected by the “law.” You have the George Zimmermans, the cases of Sandra Bland, George Floyd, Brotha Aubrey, and too many others to name. You have instances where settlers and u.s. security forces have murdered unarmed civilians, same as in Palestine. Throw a rock and get murdered. Join a political or militant formation and challenge occupation and have your family evicted and your home blown up by a missile strike.
In contrast, live in the projects, so-called affordable housing, and/or live on reservations and get caught hustling to survive, get caught challenging oppressive neo-colonial power, and your family is evicted—grandma and everybody.
Live in a high-rise project and be subjected to prison-style lockdown as Kops (Kolonial Occupational Personnel) and tactical units and soldiers rush in with battering rams and carry out search-and-destroy operations!
Look at the Gaza Strip and West Bank during the protests and rebellions against colonial violence and you see tear gas, the firing of rubber bullets and live rounds, you see military vehicles and militarization. It kind of looks like Ferguson, when Mike Brown was murdered or Minnesota when George Floyd was murdered or Nashville when Breonna Taylor was murdered, or Watts or Compton or Crenshaw or Florence and Normandie after the kops got off for beating Rodney King.
No, We don’t have F-16s and gunships strafing our communities like in occupied Palestine, We got ghetto birds doing 24-hour surveillance and dropping IED Bombs on homes full of womyn and children. Example: On A MOVE Philly, May 13, 1985. Bombs dropped, murdering New Afrikan Revolutionaries and burning down an entire Black community. MOVE were called terrorists also!
No, We are not getting bombed by gunships, instead, We are getting saturated by chemical and biological warfare agents. We are victims of a racist ass Medical-Industrial-Complex that allows New Afrikan womyn to die in massive numbers during childbirth or from breast or ovarian cancer, and a ton of other illnesses, many of which are preventable or curable.
No, Our children and men (increasingly more and more womyn) are being ethnically cleansed from our communities into the Prison Industrial Complex.
These are just a few of the reasons that those of Us who represent the New Afrikan Independence Movement and the Black Liberation Movement stand in Solidarity with Palestine and all Neo-Colonized Peoples fighting against Genocide and Struggling to Free The Land!!!
Listen to Shaka Shakur Read The Statement
Free The Land!!
Shaka A. Shakur
New Afrikan Political Prisoner
