It was already a tense situation for her. Nineteen-year-old Renisha McBride had just been in a car accident on the morning of November 2 in Detroit suburb Dearborn Heights, Michigan, and she went to the door of a nearby house to ask for help.
Instead of lifesaving help, Renisha was greeted with a shotgun blast to her face. Theodore Wafer murdered Renisha in a most gruesome way, then claimed that he was defending himself from the injured young black teenager who was just asking for help.
If the story sounds familiar, it’s because you’ve heard it before. Maybe you heard it a couple months ago when police murdered Jonathan Ferrell who was asking them for help after he was in a car accident. Maybe you heard it in the story of Trayvon Martin who was chased down and murdered by a white nationalist vigilante thug named George Zimmerman.
Or maybe you heard the stories of any number of other Africans who are murdered in the U.S. every 28 hours by police or regular white people.
It is not a new story, and as is usually the case, the path that the State is pushing this case through the colonial court system is one that ends with the justification of the murder of this young African.
Like in the case of Trayvon Martin, the police didn’t even arrest Wafer at the scene after he murdered Renisha. The media, in lock-step with the State, wouldn’t even release the name of the murderer.
Only after two weeks of demonstrations and calls for justice did the state attorney even charge Wafer with second-degree murder and manslaughter.
Some have stated that the reason this occurred was because Michigan has a “Stand Your Ground” law. Of course, that makes no sense because Africans are killed frequently in states where there are no “Stand Your Ground” laws in place.
The “Stand Your Ground” laws are just one way the State justifies colonial violence against African people. In other cases, they just use rap sheets or outright lies—often times not even believable ones.
The real problem is the colonial relationship wherein everything in African communities is under somebody else’s control, and all our work goes to create wealth and value for somebody else.
African people have to take control over our own communities, including control over our own defense. We cannot depend on the same State that murders African people like it’s going out of style to turn around and defend African people.
The state attorney has finally pressed charges against Theodore Wafer reluctantly, but we cannot assume that the struggle for justice for Renisha or any other African ends there.
African people have to get organized in our own interests and build an organized capacity to defend our own communities and our own people. We have to build the International People’s Democratic Uhuru Movement on the ground—not only in Dearborn Heights, but everywhere where African people are.
As long as the State or individual white nationalists can attack and murder African people without paying a price, Africans will continue to suffer these attacks.
We require more than an indictment of Renisha McBride’s killer. African people must demand justice for our murdered sister!
Build the International People’s Democratic Uhuru Movement!
Justice for Renisha McBride!
