North America

“Are you trying to kill us?” This is the question raised by Demetrius Young, a city commissioner in Albany, GA, the center of the COVID-19 outbreak. The state of Georgia has begun to ease its lockdowns and allow some businesses to open up as of April 24.

We, the African People’s Socialist Party (APSP), led by Chairman Omali Yeshitela, denounce yet another brutal police murder of an African man, George Floyd in Minneapolis. In response our Party is holding an international mobilization in support of African people to resist the colonial State and to fight for power over our lives.

COVID-19 news stories dominate headlines around the world, including its deadly impact on prisoners on lockdown in California. Headlines read, “California prisons report 194 coronavirus cases, plans to bunk inmates in groups of eight” or “70 percent of inmates tested have COVID-19: Bureau of Prisons.” 70 percent of the state prison population is African and Mexican.

At the height of the COVID-19 pandemic in New York City, a white nurse released a video charging that African people were being “murdered” by hospital workers.

The COVID-19 disease is wreaking havoc on African, Mexican and Indigenous communities. The U.S. government is bailing out Wall Street banks with trillions of dollars. New York, home to the center of white world capitalism, has reported more COVID-19 deaths than 97 percent of all the world’s countries.

“As many as 200,000 people could die from COVID-19 in the U.S.”⁠—double the current government estimate⁠—if there are no measures taken to stop the rampant COVID-19 pandemic sweeping through the colonial U.S. prison system, according to a recent study by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU). 

“We are hungry, we got no jobs and we can’t pay our rent and bills!” 

Editor’s note: Bub Myers from the Uhuru Furniture store in Philadelphia has been locked down in the clutches of the colonial prison system in Pennsylvania for over a year for a minor parole violation with no trial or conviction.

The Southeastern Pennsylvania Transportation Authority (SEPTA) has the sixth largest U.S. rapid transit system by ridership and the fifth largest overall transit system. Sixty-four percent of its workforce is African, as well as forty-eight percent of its overall ridership of 4 million people.