Jacobia Grimes, an African man from New Orleans, LA, faces 20 years to life in prison for stealing $31 of candy.
On December 9, 2015, Grimes was at a Dollar General store when the store manager supposedly saw him take the candy.
Grimes is being charged under Louisiana’s habitual offender law; he allegedly had taken from other stores on separate occasions. His arraignment hearing took place on March 31, 2016 and he is due back in court on April 6th.
In 2010, he sentenced and served 4 years in prison for allegedly taking a pair of pants and socks from a Dollar General store.
A month before Grimes was arrested, in November 2015, the New Orleans pigs put out a missing persons bulletin for him.
The bulletin said Grimes “suffers from a medical condition and is in need of his medication.”
The State continues to oppress Africans
This is just one instance in which the State continues to oppress Africans across the world.
Although white ruling class media may try to treat this case as separate than other cases where Africans are treated unjustly, it is no different.
Africans have done less than Grimes and been killed or imprisoned by the State.
Young Kalief Browder spent three years in Rikers prison concentration camp for no crime at all. He was not even charged during his entire imprisonment.
Mike Brown in Ferguson, MO was killed by pig Darren Wilson for walking in the middle of the street.
Africans are forced into conditions of poverty as a result of colonialism and the theft of our resources. As a result of poverty, Africans may be forced to take back resources which are being looted from them everyday.
The fact that Grimes would spend one day in prison for taking clothes or candy from a store, while the State steals and loots resources from Africans worldwide is the real injustice.
Africans Charge Genocide!
The State has declared war on Africans. This is genocide.
That is why Jacobia Grimes can be sentenced to life in prison for taking a few candy bars from a store.
African people are colonial subjects––not citizens––in this country. We are subject to laws enforced by foreigners and aliens who create these laws to further our oppression.
The mass incarceration of Africans over these white ruling class-enforced laws is not only illegitimate, it’s genocide.
We must call it as it is––we must charge the U.S. government with genocide of African people.
The African People’s Socialist Party (APSP) lead by Chairman Omali Yeshitela recognizes that power must be in the hands of the African people over our own lives. African people can be locked up for stealing candy because we have no self-determination over our own lives.
We must make the struggle for Black Power and overturn this rotten system of colonialism.
Africans Charge Genocide!
Black Power Matters!
Touch One! Touch All!
Sign the petition at www.AfricansChargeGenocide.org
