Oakland—On Sunday, Feb 3, the International Peoples Democratic Uhuru Movement (InPDUM) returns to the airwaves with its internet television show African Resistance Now! The show, hosted by InPDUM President Diop Olugbala, will air at 4PM EST on
inpdum.org
Within five days on the week of Jan 20-26, two cops were shot in Oakland, a feat of the African community reminiscent of the heroic resistance of Lovelle Mixon in 2009, when he killed four cops in less than one hour.
The Oakland Police Dept (OPD) would want the people to believe that these cops were shot in process of “fighting crime” and “protecting and serving” the African community. However, to pass judgment on this claim all one needs to do is look at the explanation the police are providing for the shootings, along with the real history of the relationship the OPD has with the African community.
According to the OPD, the second shooting, which happened on Friday, January 26, came about as a result of the police stopping a man walking down the street openly holding a gun in his hand. The story goes like this: minutes before the police confronted this “gunman” he had tried to steal a bicycle from an unidentified man and his nephew. The OPD says that this man tried to steal the bike, even firing shots, only to come up empty handed. Apparently the uncle and his nephew were willing to risk their lives to keep their bike. They didn’t even get hit! And so furious that he couldn’t come up on a bicycle, the man just kept walking down the street with a gun in his hand. When he saw the police, he suddenly learned how to shoot and hit the pig in the leg. Ok.
Four days before that happened, an undercover pig was shot, apparently during the aftermath of a car collision. Basically, the police say that one of the people in one of the cars that collided tried to flee the scene, was confronted by an undercover cop and began shooting at him. This pig got hit as well.
Both stories are hard to believe. The only thing that is undeniable is that two cops were shot last week. For this, the OPD must come up with some kind of explanation.
The pigs’ way of explaining this reality is that they are getting shot at because they are fighting crime and trying to protect all of us from the “criminals” in our community.
However, the truth is that the OPD has always been the force in the African community responsible for the violence and crime. It is the OPD that kidnaps, brutalizes and murders thousands of Africans every year. In fact, the OPDs tactics became so extreme that it was summed up by the white ruling class as a “rogue” police department, to the extent that the federal government had to take direct control to avoid mass rebellion.
So, we know that OPD forces are not all of a sudden risking their lives in the name of defending the African community from bike thieves and hit and run accidents.
More evidence of the OPD’s disregard for the well being of the African community was its immediate response to both shootings. The OPD imposed a collective punishment on the entire African community – the same people whom it claims to be protecting. Following the first shooting, the SWAT TEAM locked down the entire section of East Oakland, preventing people from leaving/entering their own homes and neighborhoods. As a result of this invasion of the African community, 5 men have been arrested on the charges of shooting the cops.
The fact is that the fairy tales the OPD came up with to explain the fact that two of its troops are laid up in the hospital with gun wounds are being used to hide the real reason that Africans are shooting at the police: AFRICANS ARE ENGAGED IN RESISTANCE AGAINST THE POLICE BECAUSE THE POLICE ARE AN OCCUPYING COLONIAL ARMY IN THE AFRICAN COMMUNITY, RESPONSIBLE FOR POVERTY, VIOLENCE AND THE DISTIRBUTION OF DRUGS IN OUR COMMUNITY.
There is little difference between the manner in which the OPD functions in East Oakland and the U.S. Marines function in Afghanistan.
The Oakland uncle time city council has proven itself to be just as colonial in nature as the police they work with. It is the city council that approved a city budget that spends 40 percent of a $500 million budget on police, jails and courts, while it continues to close down schools in the African community.
We cannot overlook the fact that the shootings have occurred at a time where there is heated struggle between the masses of the people and the neo-colonial, uncle tom city council over the issue of brining William Bratton a red necked, tobacco chewing white nationalist counterinsurgency expert from the LADP named to come to Oakland to “advise” the OPD on how to more effectively repress the African population, including his promotion of the heavy handed tactic stop and frisk, a policy which has even been ruled unconstitutional in the state of New York.
It is clear that these shootings represent the armed wing of the mass resistance against not only this most recent attack on the African community, but a decades long all-out campaign of terror and violence that the OPD has waged against the African community of Oakland.
These most recent shootings are a response to the intensifying OPD repression of the African community, just as Lovelle Mixon’s heroic stance of resistance occurred just months after Oscar Grant was executed by the BART police force in 2008.
INPDUM holds up this heroic resistance being waged against the colonial occupation of the African community.
InPDUM believes in theory and in practice, that the African community and all oppressed people, have a right and a responsibility to resist colonial oppression and exploitation.
We call for not one, not two, but many Lovelle Mixon’s to emerge from the African community, to resist the colonial occupation of our communities – from East Oakland to East Africa!
Further, we call on the entire African community to join InPDUM and unite with the call for the building of revolutionary organization to get the power to protect and defend our own, wherever we may be, whoever we may be.
We call on the African community of Oakland to attend the upcoming international InPDUM convention, scheduled for March 23-24, where we will build an international commission for African community control of police.
We call on all of our allies and members to watch the Sunday, Feb 3 episode of African Resistance Now on inpdum.org at 4PM EST. The theme of this upcoming episode is “Lovelle Mixon Lives! African Resistance Against Stop and Frisk Results in 2 Cops Shot in One Week!”
We call on other activists, revolutionaries and anti-imperialists to unite with us in this call.
On a concrete level we demand the following:
1. The immediate release of the 5 Africans currently being detained by the OPD for the shooting of a cop.
2. Economic Development for the African community of East Oakland in the form of a farmers and flea market to be established in the parking lot of Eastmont Mall – a one time shopping center that has since the 90’s been converted into a military police station from which the OPD launches its assaults on the African community
3. The immediate withdrawal of the colonial police and military forces from our oppressed and exploited communities.
4. Immediate overruling of the Oakland City Council decision to employ William Bratton. NO STOP AND FRISK!
Build for Bread, Peace and Black Power in the 21st Century!
Build the InPDUM!