Over 30 sheriff deputies lined the courtroom walls, eyes trained menacingly on a single African man. Undeterred by this flimsy intimidation tactic, Rodney Hinton stared right back and fearlessly held his head up as he was escorted before the judge. Just five days prior, on May 1, 2025, 18-year-old Ryan Hinton—Rodney’s son—was brutally gunned down by Cincinnati police.
“He had a gun!” exclaimed the police, pulling from their standard list of justifications.
“The officer felt threatened for his life!” he continued.
Upon the release of the police’s bodycam footage, the truth was revealed—Ryan Hinton had no gun and was shot down in cold blood by Cincinnati police.
African people have seen this movie many times before. The next scene would be the cops being put on paid leave, followed by the scene where the media attack the character of the dead African child, with the movie ultimately culminating with the killer cops being let off scot-free and released back into the African community.
Rodney Hinton, however, opted for an alternate ending—one which reflects the growing trend of fierce, fiery resistance that is blazing through the entire African world. One day after the release of the police footage, Rodney hopped in his car and ran over the first cop he saw, killing him.
As this African father walked through the courtroom, defiantly staring down the slew of cops surrounding him, it became clear to all that a shift was occurring. Upright, uncompromising and courageous, Rodney Hinton represents the end of the era of the docile African.
The docile African is long dead
He died when police were let off the hook for the murders of Tamir Rice and Breonna Taylor. If not then, he was surely trampled under the feet of the Africans chanting, “kill the police!” in Ferguson, Missouri, after the murder of Mike Brown. Either way, he is dead.
And in his place has risen a generation of bold, determined, take-no-mess Africans who aren’t waiting for the police, the court system or Al Sharpton to bring them justice. They are striking out for themselves and taking their own justice.
This shift has taken this system by surprise because, historically, African people have been expected to just endure all manner of disrespect, brutality and attacks on our humanity.
This is normal. Police gunning down our children for any reason or no reason at all is normal. Rodney Hinton saying goodbye to his son one morning and then never seeing him again is normal. But what this social system is struggling to come to terms with is the fact that a new normal is being established.
Fierce African resistance has become the norm.
This can be seen not only in the courage of Rodney Hinton but also young African Karmelo Anthony, who, after being assaulted by a white football player, struck back, and his attacker didn’t get back up afterwards.
Beyond Karmelo, this era of unabashed, bold resistance has swept across the African continent through the leadership of Ibrahim Traore and the Sahel states who have organized under the simple mandate: kick the colonizer out.
This fire of resistance has ignited African people all over the world, but has burnt the docile African to a crisp. In 2025, we are no longer asking, begging or bargaining. Africans ain’t playing. We are taking back what is ours.
And quiet as it’s kept, there has never been a time that there was no African resistance—from the time that the first Europeans attacked the African continent, kidnapping Africans to force us to labor to build wealth for them until now. That is what a Nat Turner, a Jean-Jacque Dessalines, a Huey Newton, a Dessie Woods or a Lovelle Mixon was.
The military defeat of the Black Revolution of the ‘60s may have ushered in a period where masses of African people were demoralized, but resistance has always been below the surface and bubbling up into open resistance periodically.
The sanity of African resistance
Rodney’s fearless action against the police represents such a deviation from what is considered normal that the media has begun to call Rodney crazy. Imagine being called crazy when resistance to colonial violence could only be the act of a logical, lucid mind.
These are the same people who saw enslaved Africans trying to escape from the plantation and diagnosed them with “drapetomania”—the “mental illness” made up by the colonizer to explain why enslaved Africans wanted to be free. These Africans were considered crazy because slavery was normal, therefore, resisting it was abnormal.
This is why they are saying that Rodney must be crazy. Regular, daily, minute-by-minute African death is normal under colonial-capitalism. But when our normal has been over 500 years of theft, rape, starvation and murder, to expect Africans not to resist is profoundly insane.
The State killed Ryan Hinton because it has to
Rodney understood that the murder of his son was not an isolated incident by an isolated cop. He understood that the police operate as a military occupying force in the African community that regularly torments, harasses and, at any moment, kills African people. The police have operated this way since their beginnings as slave catchers chasing escaped African slaves (those they say were afflicted with drapetomania) and hauling them back onto the plantation.
The police have historically functioned this way and always will because they are a tool of the State. The State is a collection of institutions such as the police, courts, jails, even the medical, education and other institutions that all work together to keep African and other oppressed people impoverished, miseducated, sick and dead.
Whether it has a gun in its hand or a gavel in its hand, the State’s role is to keep African people down. The theory of African Internationalism explains that the State has to function this way because this system of colonial-capitalism that has produced all of the wealth for the white world requires for its existence that African people stay in a state of brutal, unending repression in order to exploit our labor and resources.
Ryan Hintons being killed every day is required for this system to exist. This is why it didn’t matter that the cop Rodney ran over wasn’t the exact cop who pulled the trigger on his son. The State is the State, and its sole purpose is pulling the trigger on African children—any African child, your African child.
In the same way that the police make no distinction between an African child with a gun pointed at him and an African child without one, Rodney made no distinction between the police who killed his son that day and the police who might have done it next week. The State is the State, and when an oppressed person meets a hostile violent force in their community with the same violence that it imposes on them, it can only be seen as a justified response.
Be bold like Rodney and get organized!
Point 8 of the Working Platform of the African People’s Socialist Party demands: “We want the immediate withdrawal of the U.S. police from our oppressed and exploited communities.
“We believe that the various U.S. police agencies which occupy our communities are arms of the U.S. colonialist state which is responsible for keeping our people enslaved and terrorized. We believe that the U.S. police agencies do not serve us, but instead represent the first line of U.S. defense against the just struggle of our people for peace, dignity, and socialist democracy. Therefore, we believe the U.S. police is an illegitimate standing army, a colonial army in the African community and must withdraw immediately from our community, to be replaced by our liberation forces whose struggles in defense of our community and against our oppression demonstrate their loyalty to our community and their willingness to serve in its interest.”
Rodney was clear on the role that the police play in our community. African people are also clear, and this can be seen in the near $100,000 that the African community has raised for Rodney’s defense, despite GoFundMe removing every single fundraiser related to Rodney off of their website (an example of the State at work).
We salute Rodney’s courage and call on you to be bold like Rodney, hold your head up like Rodney and join the African Revolution.
This vicious system that requires Ryan Hinton to be gunned down in order to exist will only be overturned through building the African Revolution.
The unyielding resistance of African people today finds its leadership in the 50-year struggle of the African People’s Socialist Party and Uhuru Movement and we call on you to join this struggle.
From Karmelo to Rodney to Ibrahim Traore and the Sahel states to the international African Revolution being led by the African People’s Socialist Party, it is evident that Africa is on the move, and you can either move with us or get run over.
Join the African resistance at APSPUhuru.org
Let’s Get Free!
