We can give the date, time, location and details of Sonya Massey’s lynching, but this is shared information. We can state the obvious that her life mattered and she should still be alive, yet that sentiment is being echoed across the nation. 

Sonya Massey, along with Alberta Spruill,  Eleanor Bumpurs,  7-year-old Aiyana Stanley-Jones, 92-year-old Kathryn Johnston, Deborah Danner,  Aaliyah Anders, Sandra Bland, and Breonna Taylor were all murdered by the colonial state; and these women are only a few named. 

The police are a violent occupying force in the African community.  They do not come to protect and serve, they come to dominate and occupy. It should come as no surprise that African women, who are part of the colonized African masses along with the rest of African people, experience the same violence from the state that often leads to injury or death. 

African women have been beaten, sexually assaulted, profiled, harassed, and murdered by the colonial police who, nine times out of ten, aren’t held accountable for their crimes. This treatment is a continuation of the initial attack on Africa that rendered African people property and made the special oppression of African women the norm. These heinous interactions have not changed as African women of all ages, economic status, hues, with mental issues or without continue to suffer at the hands of the police.

African women are tired of our people being killed and are screaming for police reform.  However, reform does not end police killings or insure our freedom. Instead, it puts us in negotiation with a state apparatus that exists only to maintain power over us. 

It begs the question, how much longer should we wait for the oppressor to criminalize itself? When will African women or our whole people, for that matter, gain freedom in “the land of the free and  home of the brave?” 

The truth is that we will never be free or safe under U.S. domestic colonial terror. One cannot wear enough chucks or pearls, or be the black face of U.S. imperialism, or be a basketball playing negro President and think that these things will bring us freedom. 

Freedom is won through the blood, sweat, and struggles of the people fed up with an oppressor that constantly takes from us – our lives, our money, our labor and so much more.

The solution is to do as our ancestors have done in every generation since Africa was attacked and its people became the perpetual victims of colonialism. That is to fight, organize , and  fight some more, but this time we don’t stop until this monster is slain.   

The African National Women’s Organization (ANWO) is an organization of African women who understand that the treatment of African women everywhere is a direct result of colonialism, which is the antithesis of human development and self-sufficiency. 

The police are not killing African women because of racism – the ideas of superiority in white people’s heads.  We are being killed because of the colonial mode of production, which requires violence and the domination of the struggling oppressed masses.

Colonialism reinforces imperialism,  feudalism, slavery, and patriarchy therefore it is necessary to destroy the colonial mode of production. In other words, we need to create spaces for us, by us to fight for freedom and liberation in the name of Sonya Massey and so many others who’ve been martyred by the colonial state. 

We must commit to end the political and social oppression and economic exploitation of African women and all African people.

We call on all African women to join the revolutionary vanguard organization for African women, ANWO. Contribute your efforts to forwarding the African revolution to liberate African women from our special oppression and free all African people.

Join today.