African-Americans facing colonial terror at hands of US police: Analyst

Press TV has conducted an interview with Jesse Nevel, with the African People's Solidarity Committee from Saint Petersburg, to ask for his take on a recent protest by African-Americans at University of Yale, Connecticut, over inaction over racism on campus.

The following is a rough transcription of the interview.

Press TV: We have seen rallies with respect to this proportionate use of violence by the US police against the African-American community. But this is a whole different can of worms. What is going on, on these college campuses?  

Nevel: Greetings to you Press TV. Thank you so much for having me on and greetings on behalf of African People's Solidarity Committee.

I think that these protests on the campuses are really inspiring and this is the latest former resistance coming from colonized and oppressed African or black population inside the US that, as you mentioned, not only faces colonial terror at the hands of the police that function as an occupation army in their community, but also face anti-black-violence hostility within their education system and we just saw that with the Spring Valley HS…, you see in university of Missouri, Berkeley high school over there have been protests.

And the truth is that African people are faced white hostility and violence within school system ever since the first 9 black children were forced to integrate into a white school in 1957 where the National Guard was brought in. So this is the latest chapter in the struggle of resistance by African people to their colonial pressure within this country.    

Press TV: And what kind of reform are the students hoping to see on the campuses take place?

Nevel: Well I think that the students you know have been calling for changes within the administration, but ultimately, I think these protests are part of a way of a resistance that goes beyond these reforms will be implemented within the campuses and ultimately are calling for a whole social transformation for African people who have liberation in power over their own lives.

And I just want to say that as a white person who stands in solidarity with African people on their struggle for liberation; I just want to make a call to white students that these universities need campuses to unite with these rights struggles and to go further become part of Uhuru Solidarity Movement and call for reparation to African people, to the black community.  

Press TV: It has been a long time since the Civil Rights Movement that took place in the US almost three or four decades ago. Is it that enough has not been done over last three or four decades? Or What needs to be done for the African-Americans feel that their voice matters in America?

Nevel: Well what happened after the Civil Rights Movement, the rise of the black liberation struggle, was crushed by the US government, by the US military and two generations have gone by since then and what we have seen in this period is that the African liberation struggle has sparked once again from Ferguson to Baltimore and for it on.

So this is a struggle that will not end until this system of colonialism is overturned; this system that was built on slavery and genocide is done away with and reparations are paid to the African people for hundreds of years of oppression that built white society and put America and Europe at their expense. 

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