Welcome back to #Fuck12Friday!! It’s 1pm (CP time) and we hope everybody is hype for the Black, Indigenous Solidarity Rally today at Buckingham Founta! facebook.com/events/5806116…
Wondering what Black, Indigenous solidarity has to do with the police? We got you...follow this thread! #Fuck12Friday
From the moment the colonizers set foot on the shores of Turtle Island, the struggles of Black and Native people have been linked. #Fuck12Friday
At the same time the colonizers were beginning to set up exploitative trading relationships with the African kingdoms, they had just learned of a massive and bountiful land to their west #Fuck12Friday
This land was populated by a multitude of peoples and nations, who over time had learned to care for it properly #Fuck12Friday
In "A Short Account of the Destruction of the West Indies", Bartolomé de las Casas recounted firsthand how in 50 years, the Spanish lust for gold manifested in the brutal exploitation and genocide against the Taino people #Fuck12Friday
After the Spanish murdered all but 200 of the 400k native people in their first colony, colonizers were concerned. Not with the atrocities though. Where would they get their free labor from? #Fuck12Friday
And so rather than stopping the ongoing genocide of natives, the colonizers began the large-scale robbery of Africans to do the work the natives had died doing. There has NEVER been a people more deserving of the label "savage" than the Europeans. #Fuck12Friday
The first slave revolt on Turtle Island was in 1521, when some of the African slaves and the colonized Taino rose up together and fought the colonizers for 15 years! This solidarity has been from day 1 #Fuck12Friday
The imperial colony that later became "The United States" was created by wealthy elites in fear of the combined power of the Native and African people that built it #Fuck12Friday
The elites created each institution of this colonial project to maintain their power and greed. Desire for more land, resulted in a military whose primary job was the ongoing genocide of Natives. A desire to keep slaves resulted in a police #Fuck12Friday
When did these institutions--the army, the police, this country--become something worth keeping? #Fuck12Friday
Zhigaagoong (Chicago) is an example of this exact phenomenon. This city is built on land taken by force from nations including Ojibwe, Odawa, Potawatomi, Miami, Ho-Chunk, Sac, Fox, and Kickapoo. The first three of these nations were united into Niswi-mishkodewinan. #Fuck12Friday
First the US Army (Fire Nation) attacked. Our favorite slavers, Lewis and Clark, and president-to-be slaver William Henry Harrison were present in the US delegation for the 1795 Treaty of Greenville. Slaver George Washington signed it. #Fuck12Friday
The Treaty forced the Western Confederacy (composed of many of the above nations) to cede most of modern-day Ohio and allow US army forts in strategic locations, including modern-day Chicago, for just $20k worth of goods. And so Fort Dearborn was constructed. #Fuck12Friday
In 1830, slaver Andrew Jackson signed the Indian Removal Act, which decided that the US would declare war against any Native nation east of the Mississippi River. So, 2 years before Chicago became a city, CPD was formed to help the US Army enforce genocide. #Fuck12Friday
And we don't need to explain that CPD is also anti-black, do we? #Fuck12Friday
Since it needs to be reiterated, not only was the Indian Removal Act overtly genocidal, it was just one of dozens of times the US colonizers had already broken their own word in its 64 years as a country by violating extant treaties #Fuck12Friday
And fun fact -- our modern-day city sits on unceded Niswi-mishkodewinan land. The natives signed a treaty ceding all land up to lake Michigan, but then lake Michigan receded with the river reversal. In 1917 Williams v. Chicago, SCOTUS ruled against the natives #Fuck12Friday
Colonization, genocide, and slavery are the original technologies of America's violence. These techonologies persist today in the form of land seizure & environmental destruction, erasure of Indigenous peoples, and policing and prisons #Fuck12Friday
Therefore, undoing the legacy of America's original crimes requires that we prioritize Black and Indigenous autonomy. We must resist the tools of violence uniquely designed to subjugate these communities #Fuck12Friday
Similar to Black people, Indigenous communities are targeted and hyper-surveilled by police. The First Nations Community Garden run by Chi Nations Youth Council is CONSTANTLY harassed and stalked by cops #Fuck12Friday
Today, Native women have the highest incarceration rate of any other women in Illinois. Overall, Natives are second only to Black people in racist targeting by the carceral system. This oppression is now as it is then. #Fuck12Friday
In 1968, police brutality against Native people in the Twin Cities led to the American Indian Movement. Today, Natives are being killed at the highest rate of any racial or ethnic group. #DefundThePolice #DecolonizeZhigaagoong #Fuck12Friday
And if you don't know about AIM or the attempts at Alcatraz and Wounded Knee by indigenous activists trying to hold the US to its word, READ UP. These were beautiful actions of liberation and essential to understanding this country #Fuck12Friday
If Black, Indigenous oppression is intertwined, then so is our liberation. We fight against police harassment of our Native siblings the same way we fight for ourselves #Fuck12Friday
Our oppression demands that we oppose colonialism everywhere. When we see Israel repeatedly disregard treaties to seize more land by force, we condemn its genocidal colonization the same way we condemn the US #Fuck12Friday
When the US continues to occupy the rightfully sovereign territory of Puerto Rico and allow capitalists to exploit it while leaving the people to die, we condemn that colonialism. #Fuck12Friday
Today, one of our demands is #DecolonizeZhigaagoong. This means:
Rematriate all unceded lands, Make the First Nations Garden a permanent space & open more green spaces, and Abolish C*lumbus Day & Denounce the Doctrine of Discovery #Fuck12Friday
All land East of Michigan Avenue is unceded Niswi-mishkodewinan territory. It is occupied only by white supremacist entitlement and a collective delusion of ownership. #DecolonizeZhigaagoong #Fuck12Friday
We are also demanding that the City of Chicago #DefundCPD and #AbolishPolice. This means:
Immediately begin the cut CPD's budget and reinvest in non-carceral social servies #Fuck12Friday
Terminate plans to build a police academy in West Garfield Park #NoCopAcademy #Fuck12Friday
Remove CPD from CTA, CPS, and all other public institutions #Fuck12Friday
Close Homan Square and all other CPD black sites #Fuck12Friday
We reject the authority of this settler colonial government and the police that exist to maintain it's perverse social order #Fuck12Friday
You don’t want to miss this! Come dance, party, and chant with us at the Black Indigenous Solidarity Rally #DefundCPD #DecolonizeZhigaagoong #Fuck12Friday
Join us at Buckingham Fountain today at 5pm!!
