On Saturday, May 5, 2012, the Oakland Freedom Summer Project committee, under the leadership of the International People's Democratic Uhuru Movement (InPDUM), will be holding the Court for Black Justice, where we will put the Oakland Police Department (OPD) on trial for colonial genocide of the African community.
The court will be preceded by a protest in front of the Eastmont station of the OPD and a march through the streets of East Oakland that will end at the doorsteps of the Uhuru House—the location of our Court.
The march will begin at 73rd and MacArthur Blvd, in Oakland, California at noon and proceed to the Uhuru House, 7911 MacArthur Blvd, where the Court will begin at 2 pm.
We are calling on every African woman, man and child who has ever been a victim of or witness to police murder, brutality, rape, kidnapping, extortion and drug dealing to come and testify at the Court for Black Justice.
There will also be special testimony provided by veterans of the Black Power Revolution of the 1960s and the African People's Socialist Party-led movement for the resurrection of Black Power in Oakland during the 1980s.
These testimonials will serve to expose the consistent role the OPD and the State have played in the military crushing of our movement for freedom.
Take the police to our court!
We are holding this very much needed court because the U.S. government and white power has never had to answer to African, Mexican and oppressed people for its long history of colonial crimes against our oppressed communities.
The inability of the state to even provide justice around the case of Trayvon Martin is evidence of this.
The OPD is no exception to the rule. In fact, the OPD was founded a couple of years after the signing of the treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo—which was the symbolic document that sealed the U.S. government's theft of this land from the Mexican people, and its renaming of the land to "California."
The Oakland Police assumed the role of repressing the Mexican population from whom the land was stolen.
In the 1940s and 50s, Africans were brought to Oakland from the South for the same reason we were taken from Africa: to be slaves for forceslike Kaiser, a prominent family within the white ruling class who made its fortune off the theft of black labor.
Our people built a ship per day for the U.S. military during World War II.
Since those days, Oakland has been a "plantation" and the police have always played the role of “overseers” in our community to make sure Africans remain under the control of white power.
Today, the police have the license to kill, brutalize, frame up, kidnap, extort, rape and distribute drugs in our community — all in the name of protecting the same colonial and parasitic relationship that white power has had with our people since slavery.
The statistics don’t lie:
· 40% of Oakland’s half a billion dollar annual budget is spent on police.
· Only HALF of 1% is spent on economic development.
· Africans are 5% of California’s population, but over 50% of its prison population.
· 1,000+ complaints are filed with OPD internal affairs department each year.
· The BART cop who killed Oscar Grant is walking free today, as is the OPD officer who killed Gary King.
Court to provide leadership to the white community
The loyalty of the OPD and other police departments throughout the country to the white ruling class has become clear even to various sectors of the white population who, now as a consequence of their own challenge of current imperialist policy, have begun to experience the lash of the imperialist whip at the hands of the police.
The recent shooting of a white man in Occupy Oakland by the OPD and the mass arrest of over 400 Occupy protesters on January 28, 2012 are but two examples of this process of accelerated political education being received by the “Occupiers.”
The Uhuru Movement is clear that the oppressed and exploited masses of the planet Earth will never receive true justice until the power over courts, police and prisons is taken away from the imperialists and placed in the hands of African and colonized peoples ourselves.
It has been our 400 year long oppression that has made it possible for the entire imperialist nation, including the white kids who are now protesting the policies of their own government, to prosper.
Through the Court for Black Justice for African people, under the leadership of the Uhuru Movement, we are taking power in our own hands and building our own court!
This process will surely bring an end not only to imperialism as we know it, but imperialism and parasitic capitalism as a whole, which was born out of slavery and colonialism—not budget cuts and high interest school loans.
The white left and Occupy is not capable of indicting imperialism as a whole.
That is to say, a slave master cannot condemn the system of slavery without first uniting under the leadership of the slave.
Therefore, the Uhuru Movement is calling on the Occupy Movement to help build and testify at the Court for Black Justice, at which they can see their struggle against police brutality in the context of a much greater struggle against colonial domination of oppressed peoples.
Court for Black Justice Must Result in Struggle for Black Power
As Omali Yeshitela, Chairman of the African People’s Socialist Party and founder of the World Tribunal for Reparations to African People has clearly stated, “The only difference between our court and the court of imperialism is that the imperialists control state power — in the form of police and prisons. We do not yet have that power, but we have our court. Therefore, we now know what the next task is!”
The unorganized resistance of the masses must become a part of the organized struggle for seizure of State power to which the Chairman refers.
The resistance of Lovelle Mixon, an African man who killed four officers from the occupying army that is known as the OPD just months after Oscar Grant’s murder, must contribute to the goal of achieving power.
In order for that to occur, African people ourselves must believe in the justness of our resistance against colonial occupation. We must believe in the justness of our struggle for independence.
Concretely, the Court for Black Justice will culminate in the form of a people’s verdict.
Should that verdict be guilty, the Court will provide a people’s sentence in the form of revolutionary national democratic demands that call for the rectification of various components of colonial policy in Oakland, among which will include reparations to ALL victims of police terror, an end to the public policy of police containment and its immediate replacement with a public policy of economic development for the African community on the terms established by the African community.
The various economic programs being led by the Oakland Freedom Summer Project, including Uhuru Jiko — a commercial kitchen — and community garden must be held up as the template for African community led economic development.
March for Black Justice! Put the State On Trial!
Occupation for Self Determination!
All Power to the People! Black Power to the African Community!
Forward to the Oakland Freedom Summer Project!
March details:
When: Sat, May 5, 12PM.
Where: Gather at the bus terminal at Eastmont Mall (73rd & MacArthur), Oakland, California. March to travel east on MacArthur and end at the Uhuru House, 7911 MacArthur Blvd, where the Court will begin at 2 pm.
Court details: At 2 pm, after the march we will hold the Court for Black Justice. Come testify if you have had your rights violated or if you have witnessed the police violating the rights of our community.
For more info call: 510-569-9620
Visit: uhurusummerproject.org
