Late Monday, Nov 24, 2014 it was announced that the grand jury in Missouri would not indict white Ferguson police officer Darren Wilson in the racist killing of Michael Brown, an 18-year-old Black youth.
We know that for many in our communities, our families, for our peers and the young people we work with, this comes without much surprise. Still, even the most unsurprising things can hurt deeply.
The injustice system tells us our hurt is imaginary and outrage not justified but we know that we live in a system that relies on the mass denial of the harm caused by the historic scars and existing structures of colonialism, white supremacy, capitalism, sexism, and heteronormativity. We hold the ghosts of loved ones, ancestors, and heroes who have been assassinated by racist police, state tolerated vigilantes, and other repressive state entities.
We know that there are anti-black, anti-migrant policies that criminalize Black and Brown youth from the cradle to the classroom to our workplaces to the streets. We know that a lack of jobs, opportunities, and the school-to-prison-pipeline are stealing a generation of Black and Brown young people from our communities.
Even so, we know that from Ferguson to North Carolina, Black, Brown, poor, and working class communities are fighting back. We have nothing but unrelenting solidarity for whatever ways that criminalized, dehumanized, occupied, and oppressed communities choose to do to respond. We believe in the power of Black, Brown, poor, and working class communities to shut down and transform the systems that harm, exploit, and divide us.
We see those we’ve loved and lost living on in the resistance of youth of color in Ferguson, in Durham, in Raleigh, in Cleveland. Chuy Huerta lives. Mike Brown lives. Tamir Rice lives. Renisha McBride lives.
We have witnessed unrest, resistance, and rebellion in Ferguson and all over the country since August. Over 100 consecutive days of protesting, marching, and taking to the streets has built tremendous power that has radiated from Ferguson to communities across the nation. As we look to y’all over there we are continuously reminded about the possibility of transformation and justice we define for ourselves.
From North Carolina to Ferguson, from Youth Organizing Institute to Ferguson, we say without hesitation that Black Lives Matter and we are fighting for this to be our lived reality in the classrooms, in the courtrooms, in the streets, in our workplaces, in our neighborhoods, in our cities, in this country, in this world.
We are witnesses to y(our) grief, y(our) anger, y(our) undeniable power. We are with you.