Oscar Grant’s killer cop appeals his conviction. InPDUM & the Campaign for African Community Self-Defense ain’t havin’ it!

 
On Tuesday, May 9, 2012, the white Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) cop who was the perpetrator of the infamous New Year’s Day murder of 22-year-old African, Oscar Grant, filed an appeal in attempt to clear himself of any wrongdoing.
 
On January 1, 2009, Johannes Mehserle shot Grant in his back while Grant lay handcuffed face down on the BART platform at the Fruitvale station in Oakland while a group of his friends and numerous BART passengers witnessed.
 
The execution of Grant was caught on multiple cell phones and video cameras and uploaded to YouTube for the entire world to see what is a common occurrence facing African people.
 
Oscar Grant has come to symbolize the ongoing reality of police terror in our oppressed African communities.
 
This imposed terror is part of the U.S. war of counterinsurgency being carried out against the African community to put down our ability to resist colonial conditions.
 
The police are America’s front line of offense against the masses of African people.
 
The murder of Oscar Grant was deliberate
 
Mehserle's lawyer Dylan Schaffer told a state appeals court that Johannes Mehserle made a "colossal and tragic and horrible error" in mistaking his gun for a Taser but did not act with the criminal negligence required for manslaughter.
 
The International People’s Democratic Uhuru Movement (InPDUM) is clear that the murder of our people has nothing to do with good or bad training.
 
Police killings of Africans occur in order to put down the growing resistance of African people to U.S. colonial occupation of our communities.
 
Although the police kill African people on a regular basis, Mehserle is the first cop in California’s history who has ever been even charged with murder.
 
The police killings of African men in Oakland—including those of Casper Banjo, Derrick Jones, Raheim Brown, Jody "Mack" Woodfox, Gary King Jr. and even Lil' Bobby Hutton—occurred without the benefit of cameras, and in each of these cases, the State justified itself.
 
Once again, the State is attempting to justify this counterinsurgency by offering Mehserle the opportunity to reverse his conviction.
 
This is happening at the same time that the masses of African people are becoming organized under the leadership of InPDUM, an organization that represents the African working class.
 
The seizure of state power is the final solution
 
On May 6, just two days prior to Mehserle’s attempt to appeal his conviction, the Oakland Police Department shot and killed another 18-year-old African named Alan Blueford just blocks away from the Uhuru House.
 
Immediately, Alan Blueford’s family and the African community held a vigil and rally after marching to the Eastmont Police Station.
 
Hundreds of African people joined this march to raise up the chants of the International People’s Democratic Uhuru Movement: “Jail the Killer Cops!” , “Justice for Alan!” and “Lock up Mehserle, OPD’s the Enemy!”
 
The Campaign for African Community Self-Defense
 
The Campaign for African Community Self-Defense (CACSD) is an international campaign of InPDUM.
 
The CACSD is a response to the intensifying colonial violence that African people throughout the world are experiencing at the hands of white power, both in the form of the imperialist State apparatus and the general white population itself.
 
On Sunday, May 13, InPDUM held a town hall meeting to organize for African Community Control of the Police.
 
At our town hall meeting, Cephus “Uncle Bobby” Johnson, the uncle of Oscar Grant, stated his unity with the campaign for African Community Self-Defense and African Community Control of the Police, and stated: "Nowhere in the process in doing what we thought was right have we gotten justice. The change is going to happen when we establish an African Community Defense. It's time we defend our own community. It's not just family you violated, it's the community, its African people."
 
Regardless of the outcome of Mehserle’s attempt to clear himself, the InPDUM-led African working class mobilization will not relent in its struggle to challenge colonial police occupation and terror, with the ultimate solution to colonial violence being the seizure of revolutionary national democratic state power in the hands of the African community itself–aka Black Power.
 
Such state power will result in the ability for Africans to conduct our own trials and hearings in the quest for justice within our colonized communities and achieve justice in issues between Africans and the U.S. colonial state and citizens.
 
All Power to the People! Black Power to the African Community!
 
Build the International People’s Democratic Uhuru Movement and Forward to the Oakland Freedom Summer Project from July 9-29!
 
Join InPDUM!

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