The International People’s Democratic Uhuru Movement (InPDUM) hosted a political action in Largo, FL on Thursday, July 21st 2016 to demand justice for the three teen girls: La’Niyah Miller, Ashaunti Butler and Dominique Battle, who were murdered at the hands of the Pinellas County Sheriff’s Department in March of this year.
African People’s Solidarity Committee (APSC) member Jackson Hollingsworth was invited to speak at the action about the responsibility of white people to pay reparations and join under African leadership to overturn colonialism.
Here is the political statement made by Jackson:
Uhuru! My name is Jackson, and I am the West Coast Regional Representative of the Uhuru Solidarity Movement.
I am here from San Diego, California to stand in solidarity with Kunde Mwamvita and all Africans the world over, who are an oppressed nation of people.
I am here to stand in solidarity and demand that Sheriff Bob Gualtieri resign, that Howard Skaggs and the other deputies who drowned Dominique Battle, Ashaunti Butler and La’Niyah Miller be prosecuted for murder, that reparations be made to the families of these children, and to demand Black Community Control of the Police.
The Uhuru Solidarity Movement (USM) is the organization of white people formed by and working under the leadership of the African People’s Socialist Party (APSP) with the mission of going into the white community to organize white people to stand in solidarity with African people in the U.S. and abroad.
“White people, we need to take responsibility”
It is with our permission, whether through silence and complicity or through open approval and even hero worship of law enforcement, that the State carries out the murders of Africans every 28 hours.
There are two faces of the police: The police may protect and serve us, but they attack and murder Africans―including these children.
There are two Americas, and the one for white people is at the expense of the suffering imposed on African people.
The white world invaded Africa 600 years ago, and it has never left.
It destroyed great civilizations, stole their wealth and their knowledge, enslaved and dispersed its people, and continues still to this day. Africans inside the U.S. are colonial subjects.
It is because of colonialism that Kunde Mwamvita has to work 14 hour days and take the bus to and from work, while so many white families such as mine, own several cars―cars made from stolen materials and running on stolen oil, made by colonized hands but sold by colonizer hands and driven by colonizers.
It is because Dominique, Ashaunti and La’Niyah were colonized that they were targeted.
It is because I am a colonizer that I have never once been pulled over. Because the police protect me, my interests, my supposed property, and oppress the Africans from whom all I have was stolen.
My ancestors came to this country for a better way of life so that they didn’t have to be lowly serfs in Europe anymore.
That better way of life was built on the land stolen from Indigenous peoples.
That better way of life was built on stolen land which was worked by stolen people from Africa.
That better way of life was created from stolen resources―from the cars we drive to the diamonds on our left hands to the coltan in our cell phones.
“White people, we have blood on our hands”
Regardless of how often we pray, regardless of how loving we are, regardless of whether we are women or gay or bisexual or transgender or Jewish or Irish or working class.
Regardless of whether our ancestors owned slave plantations or not.
We have a responsibility to pay reparations, and we have a responsibility to get on the right side of history and stand in solidarity with the African working class.
Those girls were terrorized, they were chased into a graveyard, they were pushed into that pond, and those who protect and serve the white community casually stood there while those African girls screamed for their lives and drowned.
And those heroes of the white community had no remorse in murdering African children.
We know the media is slandering these girls, saying that they stole a car.
Not only is this slander of murdered children appalling, but we know that the real thieves in this country are not these three poor, powerless, impoverished Africans.
The real thieves are we, white people. We stole African people and enslaved them to build this system.
We stole this land from the Indigenous people. We steal resources from Africa and the rest of the world every single day to fuel our white lifestyles.
We dream of white picket fences and white diamonds, but who builds the fences and who mines the diamonds?
We must demand that Howard Skaggs be fired and that he and the other sheriff’s deputies who drowned these girls be prosecuted for murder.
The police are an invading and colonizing force in the black community, and they justify their terrorizing of Africans by saying that it is to protect us white people.
We must not let this brutality and these murders continue in our name.
Join the Uhuru Solidarity Movement and show white solidarity with Black Power!
Uhuru!
