8 Minutes and 46 Seconds. This is how long former police officer Derek Chauvin knelt on George Floyd’s neck as he died begging for air on May 25, 2020. The other three officers at the scene—Tou Thao, J. Alexander Kueng and Thomas Lane, aided and abetted this murder of a black man, as they watched and prevented the crowd from stopping this murder. Their act of murdering a black man was driven by the confidence of impunity that has allowed violence against communities of color in the United States of America for centuries.
George Floyd, Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor, Nina Pop, Tony McDade, Steven Taylor, Stephen Clark, Oscar Grant, Eric Garner, Trayvon Martin, Michael Brown, Sandra Bland, Laquan McDonald, Tamir Rice, Alton Sterling, Freddie Gray, Rekia Boyd, Walter Scott—the list of all whose lives have been cut short by police violence and white supremacy is unfortunately too long.
Each individual murdered was a human being—a son, a daughter. A father, a mother. A brother, a sister. Each incident left families broken, lives shattered. White privilege allowed this to happen as it allowed enslaved men and women to be stolen from their families and communities and brought to this country starting in 1619.
Today millions of Americans are rising up, collectively expressing outrage, and demanding an end to racism and violence against black and brown communities. Donald Trump has threatened to invoke the Insurrection Act, a 213-year-old law, to deploy American troops against fellow citizens.
An injury to one is an injury to all. Donald Trump has declared war on all of us.
The 1960, Greensboro sit-in by young African American students at a segregated Woolworth’s lunch counter led to the creation of SNIK, the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, the principal channel of student commitment to the Civil Rights Movement.
Today, the People of Oakland inspired by the youth rise up against the Alameda County Sheriff’s Department’s 8pm curfew order. On Monday, thousands of youth took to the streets to peacefully protest the murder of George Floyd, Steven Taylor, Breonna Taylor and so many more. This peaceful action was met with violence by the Oakland Police Department as they tear gassed the youth following an announcement of a curfew MID PROTEST that the young people knew nothing about.
Today’s response to the curfew is for all #SitInforOurYouth
We at the Oakland Institute say with the others, ENOUGH IS ENOUGH.
We stand together with Black Lives Matter
We Demand #DefundThePolice & #InvestInCommunities
Get Involved and Join the Struggle for Justice and Equity
The Movement for Black Lives: We encourage you to join the Movement for Black Lives (M4BL) for a week of action until June 7th in defense of Black lives. This is an opportunity to uplift and fight alongside those turning up in the streets and online. Today’s call is to work to defund the police.
Black Lives Matter: Black Lives Matter demands acknowledgment and accountability for the devaluation and dehumanization of Black life at the hands of the police. Add your name to the petition to nationally defund the police and to shift investments to sustainable and life-affirming resources for Black lives.
Black Visions Collective: Based in Minneapolis, Minnesota, the collective is working to defund the local police department and remove police officers, known as School Resource Officers, from schools across the city.
Color of Change: Color Of Change is an online racial justice organization that helps people respond effectively to injustice in the world around us. As a national online force driven by 1.7 million members, we move decision-makers in corporations and government to create a more human and less hostile world for Black people in America.
The Anti-Police Terror Project: In light of the disproportionate impact that COVID-19 has had on Black communities in California and across the United States, The Anti-Police Terror Project and Community Ready Corps has issued a set of demands to the Californian cities of Sacramento and Oakland called The Black New Deal, amplify and share their message.
Anti-Racism Resources for White People: This document is intended to serve as a resource to white people and parents to deepen our anti-racism work. If you haven’t engaged in anti-racism work in the past, start now. Feel free to circulate this document on social media and with your friends, family, and colleagues.
National Bail Out is a Black-led and Black-centered collective of abolitionist organizers, lawyers and activists building a community-based movement to end systems of pretrial detention and cash bail that keeps so many people of color in jails and prisons without a conviction, simply because they cannot pay. Since the start of the coronavirus pandemic they have been working to bail out Black mothers and caregivers, and they are also working to bail out protesters who have been arrested en masse over the past several days.
