Statement From Hibaaq Osman on Police Violence in The US
The Arab Regional Network for Women, Peace and Security express their support for protests in Ferguson, MO in 2014
It is impossible not to be angered by the ongoing scenes of police brutality in the United States, a violence born from injustice and inequality.
I have witnessed civil unrest and recognize the call of those denied a voice demanding that they be heard. Yet again, American streets are turned into open wounds, as black men are killed with impunity by the authorities tasked with protecting them. Once again, it is not a “shining beacon” but a burning wreck.
The rhetoric of the United States has never been true to the reality, but its promise was that it could one day fulfill its potential. Free at last.
But if any progress has been made, it has not come soon enough for Michael Brown, Eric Garner, Sandra Bland, Breonna Taylor, George Floyd and so many others.
The words that “all men are created equal” ring as hollow now as they did in 1776. Just as the establishment has refused to live up to its own credos, it has appropriated the words of the great civil rights leaders, depoliticizing them, stripping them of their radicalism. You could be forgiven for forgetting just how hated Martin Luther King Jr. was by all those who feign praise for his name today.
Figures who balked even at the entirely peaceful protest of Colin Kaepernick now wring their hands at the violence visited upon American cities.
Amid so much insincere analysis, words have slipped their meanings, metaphors have come crashing into reality: the White House lights are off, and nobody’s home. There is no leadership on the issues of race, injustice, inequality in the US, and there has been none for generations. Administration after administration has failed, and they have not been held to account for it.
Members of the Karama network ‘take a knee’ in 2016
For many years, American civil society has reached out to the Global South in friendship and partnership. It has looked out, but too often it has not looked inward, overlooking the urgent work on its doorstep. Some feminist organizations have been more alive to the discrimination and hardships faced by African women than they have with those faced in the United States by African American and Latin American women.
“Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.” These are not just words to me, they are a way of organizing, mobilizing, and taking action against the injustices that we see in the world. They remind me that I cannot remain silent on injustices in the land of my children any more than I would for those in my homeland.
Those protesting against the injustices they and their fellow citizens face must use the political momentum they have created to bring change, to end injustice, and deal with the root causes. Activists across the world took a knee in solidarity, now we stand with those challenging police brutality and all other symptoms of racism, injustice and inequality.
Hibaaq Osman, June 2020