Good evening everyone, I am an organizer with Pan-African Community Action (PACA). On behalf of PACA, we appreciate the opportunity to speak to you all tonight. And we want to extend our appreciation to the family and friends of the victims of police violence who were willing to share their stories and reflect on their struggles in fighting for justice. Thank you. 

Many of us have been directly impacted by police brutality and violence. Some of us have lost loved ones and friends at the hands of the police, a traumatic and shattering experience that has altered the course of our lives.

Even for those of us who have not been directly affected, we have witnessed the multitude of highly publicized police murders in Black and Brown communities across the country over the past decade. Names like Michael Brown, Alton Sterling, Eric Garner, Laquan McDonald, George Floyd, Breonna Taylor and countless others come to mind. 

Here in DC, we have our own names as well. We remember Alonzo Smith, Terrence Sterling, AnTwan Gilmore, Alaunte Scott and now Justin Robinson, and many others who were tragically murdered by the police. 

Over the years, we have created coalitions, built organizations and participated in mass actions centered around justice for the victims of police violence. During that time we have shared and learned from each other’s experiences, formed relationships and built community through collective struggle. 

For Pan African Community Action, our involvement in this work began in 2015 with the start of the Justice for Zo Campaign, a movement that began after the murder of Alonzo Smith, a DC youth educator and father of 3, who was murdered by DC Special Police. 

But the question of justice still remains…how do we get justice for the victims and families of police violence? What does justice even mean in the face of a system designed to exterminate us? Is a monetary settlement justice? Is the incarceration of some cops justice when there are still thousands more occupying our communities, under the control of an oppressor class? PACA contends that community justice requires that we organize to win community power. 

We must be clear that the police harassment, brutality and terror inflicted upon our communities goes beyond any individual case or victim of police violence. The police are not exterminating us because we belong to a particular family. 

Our communities are subjected to a constant and ongoing police occupation. The incarceration of our families, the systematic targeting and profiling of our youth, and the police murders of our people are a function of the callous disregard that the United States government has towards our communities. When they’re not out to murder us, they’re out to lock us down. Since the beginning of this country, African and Indigenous people are only to serve as cheap labor for the rich. Otherwise we are expendable. 

We must be clear that justice requires us to have a precise and unwavering understanding of who our enemy is and their intentions. 

The police, the DC government and the entire US settler colonial state by and large view Black and Brown working-class people as enemy combatants. In every city in the U.S, police murders are the collateral damage from the perpetual war and criminalization of Black working class people. PACA contends that we are a colonized people, subject to the same forms of subjugation, terror and oppression as our brothers and sisters in struggle all around the world. 

The same government that funds and arms Israel’s genocide of the Palestinian people and endless neo-colonial wars in Africa, is arming local police departments with military grade fire power and technology to surveil, neutralize and destroy us. 

(Even now, we are surrounded by dozens of heavily armed officers, prepared to arrest us and repress our actions.) 

In this city alone, billions of dollars have been spent to construct stadiums, fund corporate real estate projects, and police our communities while the root issues—- poverty, homelessness, addiction, food insecurity and many others are routinely ignored. As of 2024, MPD’s police budget is $572 million dollars. The U.S. Capitol Police Budget is $840 million. 

Instead of real solutions, we have received empty rhetoric and excuses from self-serving politicians. In March, DC passed a repressive and draconian crime bill that gives the police more leeway to profile, detain and arrest us with impunity. At the same time, the racist, corporate media machine continues to demean and disregard the lives of our youth, blaming us for the systemic issues that this nation created. Real justice requires that we create our own solutions to address the systemic issues facing our community. The police do not keep us safe because their job is to protect and serve settler colonialism and capitalism. Their job is to enforce the laws of the colonizer over the colonized. Instead of looking to the police to protect us, we must create people(s)-centered alternatives that are tasked with defending our communities. Sonya Massey, Justin Robinson and many others may still be alive if they could have called upon a force directed by the democratic decision making of an organized community. 

Creating alternatives to the established institution of policing would allow us to remove these illegitimate police occupation forces and adequately address community issues, such as safety, crime, and other concerns. 

To that end, PACA calls for community control over police, a transformative vision that empowers the Black and Brown working class to redefine community safety and security. Real and permanent solutions to the systemic atrocities our communities continue to suffer are achieved by shifting power into the hands of the people. 

Justice requires that we organize for power and self determination… that is the only way to end police violence 

Thank you