Statement on Atlanta and Palestine

The Black Response stands in solidarity with the people of Atlanta and Gaza in their resistance to militarism and colonial violence. 

As we work to create communities free of the inherent violence of policing here in Cambridge, we must recognize our connection to struggles for liberation from state violence around the world. The forces which seek to surveil and police us here at home are the same forces which seek to clear the Weelaunee Forest and seek to ethnically cleanse Palestinians from their native lands. 

We recognize that all of these forces are rooted in a larger system of settler-colonial violence. 

The IDF’s current genocidal practices in Palestine are just the most recent manifestation of a 75-year settler-colonial death-project funded by the United States. We reject the white supremacist logic employed by the United States government and Western media that frames Palestinian resistance to this colonial settlerism and genocide as terrorism while justifying Israeli state terror and the murder of thousands of Palestinians in the open air prison of Gaza. We condemn Israel’s colonial practices and our government’s complicity in the genocide of Palestinian people. 

We recognize that these same white supremacist tools of colonial-state violence are used to perpetuate the state-sanctioned killing of Black, Indigenous and other marginalized people in our own communities. 

In Atlanta, police too have demonstrated their commitment to kill and cage anyone who attempts to challenge their power. The murder of freedom fighters like Tortuguita and the charges against the 61 protesters in the sham Cop City case represent a threat against all of us who work to eradicate the systems of domination which prevent us from living full, flourishing lives.  

The perpetrators of violence recognize their interconnectedness. Billions of dollars are poured into the violent repression of dissent from Atlanta to Israel to here at home. Police arrest anti-war protestors and protect weapons manufacturers here in Cambridge, and for more than three decades, police forces in Atlanta have traveled to Israel to get trained in the violent tactics of surveillance and policing.

We, like June Jordan, Malcolm X, Toni Morrison and Black revolutionaries throughout history, must too recognize the interconnectedness of our struggles and learn from the resistance efforts of fellow freedom fighters from Atlanta to Palestine. 

We take inspiration from their resilience and commit to fighting in solidarity with their struggles.