We are already deemed economically expendable, with large numbers of our disabled people forced into homelessness and many of us forced into dangerous subsistence living through the underground economy where our attempts to feed our families are arbitrarily criminalized. Murder by law enforcement and vigilantes was already a leading cause of death for us. These health, economic, and punitive disparities are a direct result of our people’s continued colonial relationship to the United States. Because of the deep structure of our colonized state of being, our human right to make decisions in the best interests of our people has been violated time and time again. Thus, thousands of Black lives will be lost to this plague and the aftermath of the social and economic calamity it leaves in its wake. The U.S. government’s response to this global disaster shows us that they cannot be trusted and that we need to rely on ourselves to survive. The United States has once again proven that they are unfit to make decisions on the behalf of the people they govern. The southern region of the U.S., the region identified as the Black Nation’s national territory, is under the political control of a Neo-Confederacy that utterly dominates every aspect of life for colonized Black people in the region. This same Neo-Confederacy, with its tendency towards fascism, has become the leading faction of the U.S. ruling class and has taken control over the federal government. They have been aggressively rolling back hard-won social movement gains, first in the South and now on the federal level for years. They have dismantled vital government services and institutions for years in the service of neoliberalism. These same Neo-Confederates are poised to use this disaster to further attack our people through unleashing the full force of the domestic military apparatus on us through Martial Law and containment strategies like they did in New Orleans during and after Hurricane Katrina and the Gulf Coast disaster.
Photo Credit: The Atlantic
According to The Atlantic’s COVID Tracking Project about one in 10 deaths in the United States from COVID-19 have occurred in Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, and Georgia; with New Orleans, Louisiana on pace to become the next global epicenter of the pandemic. These are 4 out of the 5 states that have been identified as the national territory of the Black Nation. We need medical resources and testing to be made immediately available to Black people en-masse in a holistic manner that takes into account the full reality of our people’s
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By Any Means Necessary