Being a youth of color student in America has never been easy.
In the past, we dealt with restrictions on where we could go to school as children. We’ve been shut out of colleges and universities for having the wrong skin color.
In our communities, we have always been a favorite target of racist police who used their power to abuse us and keep us in a state of fear.
If all of that wasn’t enough, local, state and federal governments starved our communities for jobs, public services and foodstuff, leaving many of us and our families hungry.
What did we do about these conditions? We started sit-ins, organized boycotts, protested on campuses and in some cases, engaged in armed struggle with police and other oppressive forces such as the Ku Klux Klan.
The outcome was protection for students seeking higher education, decent schools for our communities, some control over abusive police forces and resources for our communities to be able to feed itself.
The youth has always served as the spark of change in our communities, being the first out on the front lines and often the first to say that something is wrong.
The time for another spark is overdue
Today our youth face some of these same conditions as well as fates much worse.
Our communities are under siege by racists, the police and the state, all in an effort to break us.
We as youth are the favorite target of police forces and destructive forces within our own community.
Our so-called schooling teaches us nothing about ourselves, sets us up to fail and ultimately to become free labor for the prison industrial complex.
In our communities, the violence of our oppressor has become imprinted on our peers.
For those of us who make it to college, there is a whole other nightmare waiting for us.
With rising unemployment, many of us spend four years in school and come out jobless.
Added to that, there has been a massive attack on student aid, loans and grants, which makes college education only accessible to the richest of our community with all the rest having to saddle up 20, 50, or even $100,000 in loans for an unsure shot at earning a higher income for ourselves.
And with that, many of us are pushed right back into the “ghettos” and “hoods” where the rest of our people are being abused and oppressed.
With the possible re-election of the first black president, the above is the state of our youth and our communities.
It is a silent genocide of our people, and I call on you to break the silence!
November 3 and 4, 2012, the Black is Back Coalition will be marching on Washington DC to break the silence about the undeclared wars on our communities and especially our youth and students.
We need the voices of our communities’ youth and students to be added to this conversation on the survival of our communities. We need your boots on the ground to help organize our people and be that spark for change that we have been so many times in the past.
In other words, we need you to be at Break the Silence!
Nov 3, 2012 10AM – March and rally @ Malcolm X Park 16th St & Euclid St NW Washington, DC
Nov 4, 2012 12 Noon- Conference @ Soul 57 1326 Florida Avenue NE Washington, DC
