op-ed: from brazil to the u.s.: we need solidarity in the african diaspora against police brutality

On July 17, 2014 at around 3:30pm in Staten Island, New York City, Eric Garner, 43, was murdered by the New York City Police Department. Earlier that same day, before 8am in Rio, Brazil, Pedro Ivo, 19, was murdered by Military Police from the Riot Police Battalion…

By Fire Angelou*, AFROPUNK contributor

Pedro was talking to his friend Lucas, 17, in his neighborhood when police opened fire. Pedro and Lucas were both shot and their bodies fell close together. According to witness reports, Pedro was still alive and calling for help when one officer said: “You’re going to die, scum!”

                         Helena, Pedro Ivo’s mother, holds her son’s picture. Acari, Rio de Janeiro, 05/26/2015.

  Eric was allegedly selling loose cigarettes in front of a beauty supply store and was put into a chokehold during his arrest. While the officers restrained Eric face-down, he repeatedly stated, “I can’t breathe!” An hour later, at the hospital, Eric was pronounced dead and his death was later ruled a homicide by compression of the neck.

                                      Eric Garner and his wife, Esaw, during a family vacation in 2011

Two young black men on different lands with the same fate.  

How is it that two young black men in entirely different countries were treated with the same disregard by separate police forces? This is not just happening in your city. It is happening in mine. It is happening nearly everywhere where black bodies are existing. We can no longer approach police brutality as a city, state or nation issue. It is the globalization of anti-blackness through colonialism. As author and activist, Neely Fuller said, “if you don’t understand white supremacy/racism, everything that you do understand will only confuse you.”

In Brazil, 56,000 people were killed by police in 2012. According to Amnesty International, 50% of the homicide victims were aged between 15 and 29, 90% were men, and 77% were black. In the United States, 1,307 people were killed in 2015 and almost no one was held accountable. American cops are indicted in less than 1% of civilian killings.This is a genocide across seas.

Someone is killed by police every 7 hours in the United States of America and every 10 minutes in Brazil.

While the numbers are different, the sentiment is the same: there is a global war against the black body and has been since an estimated 10.7 million of us disembarked to our temporary homes in North America, South America and The Caribbean.

“We are like the enemies of the state, we are the target,” says Robin Batista, co-founder of Afroguerrilha, a Brazilian media outlet focused on African culture, race and class. Batista and five other Brazilians, were inspired to start Afroguerrilha after five young black men were murdered in Rio last year. They were brutally murdered inside a car by Rio de Janeiro military policemen. 111 shots were fired into the car. For Batista, brutality is too soft of a word to describe the police brutality in Brazil. “This is not brutality, this is terrorism, this is a war.”

It is easy to think that we are alone and that our struggles are singular and isolated. It is easy to believe that wherever we are in the African Diaspora — U.S.A, Brazil, U.K, Cuba, and a host of other countries —  that our conditions are only what is in front of our eyes. People of African descent are in similar conditions across the globe, no matter how varying the population size, language or culture.

You are not alone in this war.

Two weeks ago, when I arrived to Havana, Cuba, to study Yoruba Culture with the University of Baltimore, I did not speak much Spanish, but there was one phrase that transcended language barriers.

“Fuck the police.” A universal sentiment.

The war strategy against black bodies is similar. In Brazil, there are two types of police: the civilian police and the military police. Using the narrative of the “war on drugs”, military police often hyper-police poor Brazilian neighborhoods called favelas. The lack of clear regulation on the use of heavy weapons and armoured vehicles, called caveirãos, increases the risk of police brutality against young black youth. Batista, who lives in favela, agrees, “the war on drugs is the narrative to invade poor black neighborhoods and kill people.”

                                                                            A caveirão in Brazil.

   In June 1971 in the United States, President Nixon declared a “war on drugs” in which he dramatically increased the size of federal drug control agencies, mandatory sentencing, and no-knock warrants. This initiative lead to the Pentagon offering millions of dollars in military equipment to local police departments. A former Nixon White House adviser, John Ehrlichman, even stated in an interview that the “war on drugs” was actually a political tool to crush leftist protesters and black people.

As peoples forced from our native soil, what nation fights for the African Diaspora? Who comes and offers aid to victims of police brutality? Who offers resources for those, who even through the brutality of slavery, are still saving the scraps of West African culture? Who has declared war on the American Empire, Brazil, or other diasporic nations on behalf of displaced Africans? What nation do we have for refuge? What army does the African Diaspora have to fight in this war? We are at the mercy of our colonizers and we have no nation-state to protect us.

From Baltimore to Brazil, we are vulnerable, and most importantly, we are hated.

And the hatred against us has become very normalized. Batista says that the movement in Brazil would be much stronger if more people saw police brutality as a problem. “They don’t engage in a movement because they consider it natural. A police killing a black man is very natural.” While many countries are beginning to hear the cries of the Black Lives Matter movement in America and offer their voices in solidarity, we need more.

We need to be learning, building and organizing with each other. We need to remember that where we are is not our home. We need to love each other, and ourselves, enough to connect and build.

                       A woman holds up a placard with the slogan “Black Lives Matter” as people march in Brixton,

                                                                     south London to protest.

 Solidarity among the many places of the African Diaspora is required to understand and organize against the global condition of black people. In Salvador, Brazil, there is a mural of Freddie Grey and Michael Brown, two African American men murdered by police. Solidarity requires that we widen our scope of police brutality beyond our cities and nations. According to José Miguel Cruz, research has shown that young black males are the most frequent victims of police brutality in countries as different as Brazil, Chile, and Russia.

We are victims of police brutality in the favelas of Brazil, the projects of Baltimore and in the streets of London.

                      A mural in Salvador, Brazil for Freddie Gray and Micheal Brown. Courtesy Nia Hampton.

  Why haven’t countries in the African Union offered citizenship to displaced Africans as an act of solidarity? Displaced Africans need to build a nation seeking economic, social and political independence from colonial regimes. We cannot continue to accept economic and political enslavement nor can we accept emotional and spiritual enslavement as we are constantly fighting against fear of our current nations or fighting for freedom within it.

Understanding our global condition should prompt a different response from individuals and as a collective.

I have come to love myself enough to fight for our freedom. I have come to understand colonial history enough to know that it does not matter if we speak English, Spanish, Portuguese, French, or Dutch, because the language that speaks louder is brown skin. I have come to learn that we cannot seek freedom alone because our enemy is global. We cannot expect to rebuild, divided.

We came on these ships together and it is our duty to dismantle them together.

*Fire Angelou is a truth-teller who flips fear into strength. She celebrates blackness, uses the personal as political and ain’t got time for enablers of white supremacy. She enjoys drumming, twerking and making black people smile. Follow her daily slaying @fireangelou or visit her blog at www.fireangelou.com