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The African People’s Education and Defense Fund thanks all of our friends and
supporters who have voiced their concerns about the position taken by the Uhuru
Movement on the March 21 killings of four Oakland policemen and twenty-six year
old Lovelle Mixon.
We unite with your interest in dialog and resolution to this situation and in
building unity among the various communities in Oakland through genuine social
justice.
The Uhuru Movement has always understood that our friends may disagree with some
of our positions — positions that always uphold justice for the African
working class community.
We understand and unite with your concerns that the tense situation in Oakland
must be resolved.
It is unfortunate that it takes a situation like this to bring Oakland’s real
problems to the surface.
We have to take the March 21 events in the context of the long history that the
Oakland police department has had with the Oakland African working class
community.
It was the infamous brutality of the Oakland police that gave rise to the Black
Panther Party for Self Defense in the 1960s.
There has been the exposure of the notorious Oakland “Riders,” whose brazen
violence, harassment, racism and dishonesty are well known.
There have been relentless police murders of African community members young and
old, such as Casper Banjo, an elderly African man and well-known, respected
artist who was blatantly shot by the police last year.
There are hundreds of African and Mexican working class people who have been
murdered by police over the years, real human beings whose names fade from the
collective memory so quickly. Many of these victims have been blatantly
slandered in the media, doubling the pain of the grieving families.
The recent cold-blooded, point blank BART police murder of young Oscar Grant was
only unusual because it was caught from many angles on video.
But it is much more than this. Oakland has a very clear publicly supported
policy of police containment, implementing an incessant martial law with
ever-present SWAT teams and police helicopters circling over neighborhoods
daily.
California’s prison population is the fourth largest in the entire world and
the OPD does everything possible to feed young African men and women from
Oakland into that system for their entire lives.
Discriminatory legislation such as Three Strikes locks up countless African
people as young as 14 years old for things that white people get to go to rehab
for.
It has long been documented in articles by journalist Gary Webb in the San Jose
Mercury News, for example, that the US government is responsible for imposing
the devastating crack cocaine plague in African communities, and it is well
known that the police have and continue to facilitate this.
The Uhuru Movement does not support the loss of life of any person. But the loss
of life at the hands of the police in the African community of Oakland has been
going on for half a century.
The “tensions” in Oakland are caused by the police, not by an impoverished
community struggling to survive.
Even the mainstream media sources such as the New York Times and National Public
Radio have had to mention in most reports that many in the African community do
not support the police’s position in this case, and understand that Mixon’s
actions were the result of years of oppression of a whole community which has
come to a boiling point.
Lovelle Mixon’s life, like that of thousands of young African men in the
impoverished neighborhoods of Oakland, was over long before he was killed by
police. He faced a hopeless dead end of joblessness, poverty and criminalization
by a society that would rather lock up young African men than make college or
jobs available to them.
The police are not social workers; they are a military force with the assignment
to carry out a violent containment policy against a whole community. The purpose
of the police is to maintain power for the status quo and uphold the relations
of poverty and wealth in the city.
If we want to move forward and “build bridges” as a city there is only one
road to do so. We have to truly understand the calls of a community under siege
and demand an immediate end to this completely failed public policy of police
containment, this war without terms waged against the African community of
Oakland.
We have to demand a policy of genuine economic development for the African
community — development that truly benefits and uplifts the deeply
impoverished African working class of this city, and is not just another cover
for gentrification and dispersal of the oppressed.
We appreciate your continued support of the Uhuru Movement and urge you to take
an active stand in transforming Oakland into a model city of shared prosperity
and true social justice.
Uhuru!
In the wake of the Oakland Police Shooting, the Sister of Lovelle Mixon was arrested for a drug charge posted in 2008. Apparently from the Channel 7 report, the Oakland Police are working to determine what the family knew about Mixon's weapons possession. My guess is not much and they're probably just as much in shock over the whole matter as the rest of Oakland. Now, they're going to be judged in a way that's really unfair and I hope they over come this. What's happening is that truth and fairness could give way to anger: by the Oakland Police and by a small group of Oaklanders who have some really screwed up views of the police. More on that soon.
