white terrorism continues to claim lives, nia wilson deserves justice #sayhername

Yesterday, the devastating murder of Oakland’s Nia Wilson, 18, and the stabbing of her older sister, Lahtifa Wilson, 26, at the hands of white supremacist Lee Cowell, a paroled felon, at a local BART station stunned the community. And in the wake of this senseless violence, countless members of the community are organizing a massive protest to bring Nia’s killer to justice. Cowell was arrested by police last night nearly 24 hours after stabbing Wilson and her sister in what police described as “prison-style attack” after an anonymous caller tipped police off to Cowell’s whereabouts. BART Police Chief Carlos Rojas described the stabbings among “the most vicious” he had ever seen during his 30 years on the force.

Predictably, police have hesitated to label the attack as race-motivated, but have not ruled that out as possible motivation for the attack at this time. “While we don’t have any facts that suggest he’s connected with any white supremacist group, we are going to explore all options,” says Rojas.

If police are waiting to find ISIS-like affiliations between Cowell and white supremacist groups before declaring his calculated killing and attempted killing of black women a hate crime, they can forget it. What’s clear is that these two women were targeted in public for either being women or being black, but more likely being both. What seems to allude to the conversation about white terrorism is the fact nothing is random. Like the anti-muslim attacks in Portland, white men who commit acts of violence and terror in our communities aren’t doing so in a vacuum. Their victims are not random. They coincide with white nationalist thinking that devalues and dehumanizes certain members of our society, like black women and Muslims. It is impossible to view acts of white terrorism in a way that’s divorced from that reality.

#SayHerName