By Chief Watacame

In middle school, Fridays were a late start, classes started at 9 AM instead of 7:50. None of our parents spoke english so it was an unwritten rule to not tell our parents. We would all meet at school and walk to McDonalds. At the time McDonalds had “kitty cones”, 25¢ ice-cream cones. Everyone would spend all week just looking for a quarter or any coins to make up the 25¢. We all looked forward to Fridays for the walk, the laughs, the ice cream; we looked forward to this tiny window of being children with no worries about our livelihood, affiliations, family problems or anything else the colony threw at us. We would do almost anything to have these windows of innocence and we loved and were loyal to everyone who was a part of them. 

Those moments of innocence kept us going.  They were breaks from watching our parents working multiple jobs or stressing about not finding one.  A break from dealing with how our parents dealt with their problems. 

Those moments saved our hearts, those moments allowed us to be kids, even if it was only for a little while.  Those moments saved our hearts and gave us the space to find who we were outside of the life we had and to create our core identity that is vital for getting us through anything life throws at us.  We were able to dream about the life we wanted, how we wanted to help our families and what we wanted our lives to be.  Getting to find who we are, what we stand for, and who we want to be was life saving so the loyalty to the people involved in those moments came naturally.

That loyalty is unmatched. It’s the type of loyalty that you bet your life on.  It’s the type of loyalty that you’d do anything to uphold.  Loyalty that is based on the fact that no one but your people know what you’re going through because they’re going through it too. 

So why do we turn on those same people who helped us survive?  Or on other Colonized people who have been subjected to the same way of life we so desperately want to get out of?  Why does horizontal violence exist?  Divisionism. 

The white power state has manufactured circumstances in our communities that make us compete for basic, bare minimum resources.  Sometimes the fight for survival causes us to hurt each other.  Again, that is not a demonstration of who we are but a product of the colony they’ve created.  The colony created the issues that drive our people to violence and then criminalized and use them to further enslave us through the criminal injustice system. 

No one chooses violence. At least not Colonized people. Real choice can only come with power, with control, with dictatorship, as Colonized people, we don’t fully have any of those things, yet. Especially not the kids in the hoods where their only way to live is through the bastardization of gangs that the federal government created.

Gangs were used as a way for Colonized people to defend themselves from the state and all forms of white power. The federal government pitted them against each other using bogus race division, drug and weapon competitions by being the supplier, etc. This makes our people “criminals” which then gives the government the power to imprison and further enslave and attack Colonized people. In neighborhoods where gangs are the norm and a way of life, joining a gang and participating in all activities is a matter of survival, not of choice. 

Crime is NOT a demonstration of character, it is a symptom of circumstance. So much so that kids who grew up running away from cops together, sleeping under bridges, in parks and abandoned fields together, who stole bread for each other are now looking each other in the eye and pulling the trigger. All because of profit from drugs, territory, or anything else.

We just want to be happy. We just want to have food, shelter, and hot water for ourselves and our own. Gangs and “criminal” activity are sometimes the only choice our people are given. Choice can only happen when all the options are presented and the colony has not done that. But Black Hammer will. We are giving our people a choice to fight for themselves and all Colonized people around the world. We are giving them the choice of taking their power back, of choosing to fight with each other instead of against each other. 

The system has destroyed so many of us, we’ve lost so many of our loved ones not only to gang violence but to all forms of horizontal violence. For them, we must fight back, for them and so no kid is forced into the circumstance we’ve been forced to live through, we must unite under our 4 Principles of Unity to ensure that they get justice and so we build a world where no one lives at the expense of another.

To take your power back and to give full dictatorship to all our people worldwide, join Black Hammer todayto defend your community.

For Armando, Miguel, Oscar, Jose, Abril, Chris, Manny, Anthony, Sergio, Sofia, Pedro, Pablo  and everyone we’ve lost to horizontal and state violence, 

LAND BACK!!

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