The Emancipation Support Committee of Trinidad and Tobago expresses unwavering solidarity with the parents of Michael Brown, African Americans across the US, youth and other concerned citizens of the United States and the larger global community, as we stand together shocked and deeply pained at the verdict announced on Monday 21st November at 10:00pm, like a thief in the night .
Michael Brown, an 18-year old African American was shot to death, while unarmed, by a white police officer in Ferguson, Missouri on August 9th, 2014. His killing sparked heavy unrest in Ferguson and nationwide protests against police brutality, particularly the violence directed at African American males. The ESC notes that the US justice system has proven itself, once again, to fall far short of earning the trust of the African American community, whose interests it has not served, from the time of the nation’s founding. The disproportionate representation of African Americans in the prison system, the harsher sentencing to which they are subject, and the laws and legal loopholes that enable African American lives to be violently extinguished with little to no accountability for perpetrators, has been compared to the modern day lynching of the Black male.
The ESC notes that even in our own society, it is easy to attach derogratory labels to young African males, and by such labeling for youth and their communities to be alienated, excluded and eventually criminalized.
The ESC sees the struggle of the African American for dignity and equity in their own nation as part of the global struggle against the legacy of colonialism and chattel slavery that we also work to combat. We urge our own citizens to reognize that failure to uphold the rights of Africans anywhere, and particularly the rights of young African males, is a threat to the dignity of Africans everywhere and a threat to equality and justice for everyone.