Introduction
This statement by New Afrikan political prisoner Shaka Shakur was recorded hours before the “All Eyes on Rafah!” protest that disrupted the NBA All-Star Weekend in Indianapolis on February 17. Written specifically for this event, Shakur’s speech received wild applause as the event’s organizers emphasized the need to continue the long legacy of Black-Palestinian solidarity. Yet the speech also serves as the basis of a wider discussion about struggles against colonialism, neocolonialism, white supremacy, and imperialism more generally. (You can listen to the recording below)
Similarities of occupation and domination with Palestine and the New Afrikan (Black) Nation
The colonization of a people and the theft of a people’s land or the theft of a people and imposing second-class citizenship upon those ppl are crimes against humanity and International Laws that so-called Civilized Nations are supposed to be governed by.
When you have a govt through political, economical, and/or military domination oppressing, killing, and dictating the quality of life under the guise of being the chosen ppl, under the guise of Zionism, under the guise of white supremacy, maintaining security and a host of other bogus reasoning, that is an outlaw government, a Terrorist State, a government that is guilty of genocide and committing crimes against humanity.
It’s interesting how there are so many similarities between colonial oppression and occupation in Palestine and the Ghetto Colonies throughout Amerikkka.
Both the United States and Israel came to exist as settler colonial powers predicated upon the genocide and erasing of Indigenous Peoples and communities. As well as the enslaving and slaughtering of Afrikan and New Afrikan People while occupying other peoples’ land.
You have Gaza and the West Bank where soldiers and settlers maintain and enforce that colonial domination and racist/Zionist policies and the same in Black and Brown communities throughout this Imperialist Empire.
In occupied Palestine land has been seized and redistributed. The same with New Afrikans and Indigenous folks such as Native Americans, all throughout the South within the National Territory where black folks worked/slaved, shed blood and tears, and engaged in war, only to have it occupied, seized/confiscated and redistributed, while promising 40 acres and a mule. Only to be denied the right to self-determination, only to be denied the right to nationality while having one imposed upon you and amending you as a people into a Constitution.
Just as in Palestine, you have soldiers and settlers policing the colonized, engaging in extra-judicial legal murders and protected by the “law,” you have the George Zimmermans, the cases of Sandra Bland, George Floyd, Brotha Aubrey, and to many others to name. Instances where settlers and u.s. security forces have murdered unarmed civilians. Same as in Palestine. Throw a rock and get murdered. Join a political or militant formation and challenge occupation and have your family evicted and your home blown up by a missile strike.
In contrast, live in the projects, so-called affordable housing, and/or on reservations and get caught hustling to survive, get caught challenging oppressive neo-colonial power and your family is evicted, grandma and everybody.
Live in a high-rise project and be subjected to prison-style lockdown as Kops (kolonial occupational personnel) and tactical units/soldiers rush in with battering rams and carry out search-and-destroy operations!
Look at the Gaza Strip and West Bank during protests and rebellions against colonial violence and you see tear gas, the firing of rubber bullets and live rounds, you see military vehicles, and militarization. It kind of looks like Ferguson when Mike Brown was murdered or Minnesota when George Floyd was murdered or Nashville when Breona Taylor was murdered or Watts or Compton or Crenshaw or Florence and Normandie after the kops got off for beating Rodney King.
No, we don’t have F-16s and gunships strafing our communities like occupied Palestine, We got ghetto birds doing 24-hour surveillance and dropping IED Bombs on homes full of womyn and children. Ona Move Philly May 1985, Bombed dropped murdering New Afrikan Revolutionaries and burning down an entire Black community. They were called terrorists also!
No, We are not getting bombed by gunships, instead, We are getting saturated by chemical and biological warfare agents. We are victims of a racist ass medical industrial complex that allows New Afrikan womyn to die in massive numbers during childbirth or breast cancer or ovarian cancer and a ton of other illnesses, many of which are preventable or curable.
No, like Palestine our children or men (increasingly more n more womyn) are being ethnically cleansed from our communities into the Prison Industrial Complex.
These are just a few of the reasons that those of Us who represent the New Afrikan Independence Movement and Black Liberation Movement stand in Solidarity with Palestine and all Neo-Colonized Peoples fighting against Genocide and Struggling to Free The Land!!!
Free The Land!!
Shaka A. Shakur
New Afrikan Political Prisoner
Shaka speaks!
Featured photo: Huey P. Newton stands with two young Palestinian fighters on his second visit to meet the Palestinian Liberation Organization in 1980, with an outline of the New Afrikan Republic on the left and Palestine on the right.
