West Philadelphia: Another bout of terror
On Monday, October 26th, the African community in west Philadelphia that was once home to the MOVE organization, was terrorized again with yet another brutal police murder of an African man.
Twenty-seven-year-old Walter Wallace Jr. was shot and killed in the bright sun in cold blood on Monday at 3:45 in the afternoon. Police responded to a 911 call from Wallace’s family seeking help from paramedics while he was suffering a mental health crisis.
Just 35 years after the state of Philadelphia dropped a bomb on the MOVE house at 6221 Osage Avenue, killing 11 men, women and children, the Philadelphia police department slayed another member of the community just six blocks away, on Locust.
Family, friends and neighbors stood by in the street calling for police not to shoot and citing Wallace’s unstable mental health conditions. Their pleas were ignored as cops fired “at least two rounds each,” recalls one neighbor, killing Wallace instantly.
Hundreds of years of struggle amassed
Wallace, like so many Africans, suffered from bipolar disorder and other mental health illness created by the harsh colonial culture and lack of resources in the community.
Being born and raised in neighborhoods with such deep histories of trauma and police violence only magnifies the daily oppression the vicious, white-power, colonial system has on our communities.
Despite Philadelphia housing at least 20 healthcare facilities around the city, access to care for Africans is not easy. Lack of health insurance and transportation are just two of the many barricades keeping us from well-being.
Even those who are covered under Medicaid struggle for basic healthcare checkups as the amount of doctors who accept Medicaid is narrowing.
As Africans, we are born into a colonial hold—where there is consistent, violent oppression with the white rulers’ hands around our necks.
Since white Europeans kidnapped and brought Africans to the Americas, the only thing that has been tendered is the maintenance of our stolen, free labor at the expense of anyone that gets in the way.
This inherited trauma combined with accumulative colonial distress is hindering our emotional, physical and mental health and rather than help, we are met with bullets.
We must call on our community beyond protest and voting!
The only real solution to these countless, repulsive police murders is to rid our communities of these vile colonial killers and replace our streets with Black Power!
As long as this dangerous, blood-sucking force remains in power under this current bi-partisan imperialism, our communities will continue to be brutalized as they struggle just to survive.
We must support the African People’s Socialist Party’s demand for Black community control of the police. Murders like Walter Wallace Jr. will never stop unless this occupying military force is extinguished in Philadelphia and all over the country.
We must call for the demand for the right to hire, fire, train and discipline those who police our own communities. If the cops who responded to his mother’s call were members of the community and knew their neighbors, Walter Wallace would still be alive today. So would Breonna Taylor, George Floyd, Tamir Rice and so many more Africans who were callously murdered.
Join us in defending the right of African people to resist. Unite with the demand for reparations to the black community for state-sanctioned murder, gentrification, mass imprisonment and overall colonial conditions imposed on African people.
Black Community Control of Police!
Join the Righteous African Resistance!
Black Power now!
Reparations now!
