For thinkers, community activists, clergymen and defenders of civil rights, the insurrection of the mob of white supremacists in the Washington Capitol with alleged collaboration of police officers has as a common denominator “hatred , collusion and attempts to perpetuate slavery “of African Americans and racial minorities.”
During a virtual press conference, they highlighted that, from Skid Row, where thousands of homeless swarm Blacks and Latinos, until the attack on Berlinda Nibo in downtown Los Angeles and the assault on the Capitol, “white supremacists continue to inflict violence on our communities in various ways.”
“As religious leaders, we condemn the false and dangerous prophecy of the self-proclaimed Christian“ prophets ”who claimed that God told them that Donald Trump would win a second term,” said Reverend Cue Jn-Marie, founder The Row LA – also called “The Church without Walls”. “The coup on the nation’s Capitol on Wednesday, January 6, 2021 was an attempt to make this false prophecy come true.”
Violence in Washington killed five people, including police officer Brian Sicknick.
This Wednesday the suicide of Officer Howard Liebengood, of 51 years, who had been assigned to the Senate Division during the coup attempt by supporters of President Donald Trump. Liebengood took his own life on Saturday, announced Barry Pollack, the family’s attorney.
At the same time as Trump’s second impeachment vote is being held for “incitement to the insurrection ”, less than seven days before new president Joe Biden takes office, Sen. Tammy Duckworth, a Democrat from Illinois, demanded that the Pentagon investigate allegations that retired troops and military played a role in the January 6 assault on Capitol. The involvement of at least one agent from the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) and other agencies is also suspected.
Other officers under FBI investigation belong to departments Police of New York, Philadelphia, Seattle, Virginia, Texas and Washington.
“I think the message is clear when we see the evidence that an LAPD member and other forces collaborated and colluded,” said Dr. Tabatha Jones Jolivet, assistant professor in the Department of Higher Education at Azusa Pacific University. “It was not a surprise, especially when they teach you that there will never be reforms to the system That takes people’s lives. ”
Until now, Michel Moore, head of the LAPD, ordered one of his officers to explain to FBI agents about his attendance at the demonstration in favor of Trump.
For issues of this nature, the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement has “demanded to defund the police,” he added Dr. Jones Jolivet.
“Prevention and non-intervention in mental health, housing and security is what our communities need,” he said. “What we saw at the national level is a system of collaboration and collusion with supremacist targets and that is why we want to dismantle them; we want to end a military state for one that protects the lives of African Americans and dark people ”
In fact, the underfunding of the LAPD began in November of 2020 when a $ 150 million budget cut was announced that will force the LAPD to shift to a total of 234 officers to patrol, reduce office hours at their stations, cut special deployments and stop staffing teams that cover homeless problems.
“The collaboration of the law enforcement authorities during the insurrection is nothing new for us,” said Ingrid Villeda, a member of the Unión del Barrio civil rights organization. “Now, there is already evidence that racists are infiltrated everywhere.”
Miguel Tinker Salas, professor and historian at Pomona College, commented that for leadership in the United States United “it was impossible to think that the Anglo-Saxon white would challenge the State, but it is not surprising, because it reflects the hegemonic vision of the European white race and born here as the depository of identity [del país]”.
Within that perspective, he elaborated: “Republicans reaped the hatred they sowed not only with Donald Trump, but from the times of [Richard] Nixon and the Bushes, father and son, with the strategy of the silent majority, where Afro-descendants are analyzed as criminal beings. ”
In Twitter, President Trump believed he represented the “silent majority” of the country, “against a radical and dangerous minority.” During his failed reelection campaign, he tried to attract that “majority” with speeches adapted to his own interests to preserve power.
“That is the legacy of a policy where the issues of race and white privilege were manipulated in order to exploit it politically, ”he said. “That has been the long project of manipulating racial issues.”
For his part, the Reverend James Thomas, newly elected president of the National Association for the Advancement of People of Color (NAACP), in the San Fernando Valley branch and member of Black Lives Matter, told Real America News that it is “so shocking the fact that in the summer they beat us and people believed that it was justifiable , as long as racism and hatred were normalized in the country. ”
In fact, Reverend Thomas denounced that, in six different places in Sylmar, vandals painted messages on walls racists against African Americans, incidents that the LAPD’s Mission Division is already investigating.
“That shows what’s in people’s hearts,” said Reverend Thomas.
