Why is Black August important to The Bronx?

Our communities are hyper-surveilled yet intentionally under-resourced. Our elected officials routinely neglect our infrastructure, which is all bought out by luxury real estate developers and so-called “law enforcement” (the empire’s foot soldiers trained to suppress people’s rebellions). We have seen Extra Judicial executions of Bronxites from Eleanor Bumpurs, Kawaski Trawick, Ramarley Graham, and Deborah Danner, just a few names of the many massacred by the New York Pig Department.

Black August to Bronxites signifies organizing material actions to advance breaking off the chains of colonialism, imperialism, capitalism, and white supremacy. It is a month of honoring our martyrs and advancing the movement to free our prisoners and smash all forms of carceralism in this prison house of nations.

Black August is a time to dedicate ourselves to waging a protracted struggle against the ruling class who exploit and subjugate the racialized, colonized, and laboring masses.

Black August is internationalist. We do not differentiate between political prisoners abroad and those inside the imperial core: same struggle, same fight. We echo the Swaziland National Union of Students (SNUS), which demands the immediate release of Mayibongwe 'Pupu' Nyawo, Bongeka 'Mavundla' Bhembe, and Bonginkhosi 'Bongo' Nkhambule who have been kept behind bars by the monarchy of King Mswati since January 2024 on charges of terrorism. This came after the comrades were part of the Scholarships and Jobs for All campaign organized by SNUS in 2022 (Follow on Swaziland National Union of Students on Facebook)

Palestinians in the occupied West Bank are abducted and imprisoned by the "israeli" occupation, such as human rights and women’s rights activist and comrade Khalida Jarrar, who faces unbearable living conditions while held in solitary confinement in "Neve Terzia" isolation in brutal and inhumane circumstances. (Follow the struggles of heroic prisoners in zionist and PA prisons on ​​Telegram: @RNN_Prisoners)

These parallels from Swaziland to Palestine are the same forms of state violence experienced in The Bronx, Haiti, Sudan, Atlanta, Puerto Rico, and anywhere United States imperialism lays its terrorist, colonizer hands. These are not just connections in name but materially connected struggles that we actively must engage with and oppose.

Black August is not merely the abolition of prisons but also a call for abolishing capitalism, the economic system that requires these institutions. Abolishing capitalism is how we end mass incarceration and the fascist police state in the United States.

We will see all our political prisoners free, as all prisoners are political.