No Cop City in Kansas City!

by Croatia Black

Today is as much about Comrade Tortuguita as it is Marcillus Khalifa Williams- it’s about the woman in Louisville, Kentucky that was giving birth outside, because her RV was impounded- she was given a citation and harassed off the spot she was laying, tucked out of the way in the urban decay. It is about every afraid or enraged citizen- who anticipate and guard off police violence and state overreach at every moment- they steel up to keep safe and it hardens our hearts. We are alert, because the threat is real, like cold metal- like a cold cell. We know it’s as real as death. It’s the lethal injection that they gave our spiritual brother Marcillus- who served twenty four years for a crime he did not commit. It was the denied clemency after thousands of heartfelt requests from the public- who know the truth of justice. It was May 1st, 2023 in Manhattan, around 2:30 when our sibling Jordan Neely was taken from the world. They were a black person, a real person- a person like you or I in the community, a citizen. Officer Daniel Penny killed Jordan Neely on the subway with impunity, a death by choking, an unnecessary act that we might call murder. While the world watched it being broadcast from every independent and legacy media outlet alike- the courts of so called justice and the so called elected officials ignored the people’s plea for addressing the crimes of the state. Officer Daniel Penny, who was acquitted of all charges and attended a luxury suite with Donald Trump and JD Vance at the Army Vs Navy Football Game. The police are rewarded for killing us- through salaries, accolades and trophies.

Tortuguita died protecting the Weelaunee Forest from the construction of a multimillion dollar militarized police training facility- but not in the way that the police report said which claimed that Tortuguita fired four shots from their Smith and Wesson MP Shield 9-millimeter handgun. - A Handgun that you would more expect a police officer to have. They claimed Tortuguita fired this weapon from their tent when they approached it at night. There were suppressors used in the so-called return fire- an odd effort to be quietly deadly- for simply checking the tent to identify who was inside. There is no body cam footage of the alleged event recorded in the official police report, but there is bodycam footage of the officers saying, and I quote “ you fucked your own officer up,” What does it all mean in a world on fire? Where every where you look this year there’s death and misery- death in the congo, death in Palestine, Lebanon, Sudan, Ukraine- and on the border, threatening to go over the border, threatening Mexico, threatening the world-threatening Russia, China- and all of it amounting to extra oppression and pressure on the streets- we are the world, and we are nature defending itself, but we struggle. It is our people’s struggle, and all of our individual communities’ struggles could be intersectional relevant to the oppressors- to fight them. To identify the opposition of the people and work to dismantle the systems of oppression that they operate through. Why should we be less bold? It is our responsibility to commit to a future of equity and responsibility, and maybe even a structural femininity to allow for restorative justice and community accountability throughout. Once we take away the states right away to kill us, we will have had a piece of the victory necessary to win the human future that we all deserve. Once we take away their right to build jails and put the people inside, we will have won another. There are so very many pieces in winning the brighter future that the people deserve- and they all intersect each other here in memory of comrade Tortuguita who was indigenous, a climate activist and also gender queer; an abolitionist in action like not many could claim. To them we give thanks for their life. We people deserve so much more than to be treated like this- treated like we are disposable, and an obstruction to capital- to be made examples of in the stead of justified, to be denied our humanity and have our lives and relationships snuffed out or cut short - unsanctified and disheveled beyond repair- and use that hopelessness as a tool to solidify the social order under capital. Under capital, pretending to be under God- and to all the people’s detriment.

When we called and wrote by the thousands to beg pardon for Marcellus Kalifah Williams, the Missouri Governor Mike Parsons did not listen- Governor Parsons who also allowed for women’s rights and trans rights to be stripped down.. Governor Parsons who did pardon Officer DeValkenrae who we believe murdered another sibling, Cameron Lamb- who was only 26. KCPD was on a soft strike because officer Devalkenrie got a taste of what we get- a cold jail cell and crippled opportunities.

When we went to city hall by the hundreds and begged them to consider that we do not need a new jail, that we don’t need two new jails we don’t need a 22 million dollar a month budget for the KCPD but they didn’t listen. They shrugged us off like we were nothing! They behave this way… when we don’t have room for the homeless and downtrodden, the jobless and the sick. Every day sorta folks can’t even afford to buy groceries out here. Why is it that all the money goes to keeping us down? Don’t they know they need us around? They don’t even let us sit down! We make the bullets they kill us with. We pave the streets they drive their police cars on to run us over and run us down- to break traffic laws with impunity.. They ride in the style of a class traitor to protect the rich and powerful- not the people. The people need more than this. We drive the ambulance when they get hurt, we operate on them when they are sick- we sell them groceries at the store- on and off duty, intermingling with us like they aren’t servants against the people. They are employed to capture you or kill you, to keep the peace of spent money and private property. Spent money and private property that harms the environment around us and far away on a planet desperately struggling with climate change. A planet often literally on fire. There is an answer for us in the intersection of our struggles- where feminism, abolition, environmentalism and antiwar efforts meet- all contained under the framework of class separation- to identify classism, racism and the systems of exploitation to take it down from the inside of the most far reaching and culturally influential imperial cores, together, with one another. To identify that thing that feels like a peoples war, kinda brewing in your chest and behind closed eyelids until the pressure mounts and we find each other in the streets. Now we are here. Now I’m gonna ask you people something— ARE YOU MAD!?

—WHO’S GONNA FIGHT FOR FREEDOM?

ARE YOU GONNA FIGHT UNTIL THE JOB IS DONE?