Walk To End All Hostilities
Oakland, CA – Organizations came together on March 29 for a caravan from East Oakland to City Hall promoting the AEH street program, aka Artivists Ending Hostilities. Initiators included a number of former prisoners who participated it in the 2011 and 2013 hunger strikes in California, as well as the organization of currently incarcerated people P.E.P. Talk - Pre-Entry Platform. Former prisoners of CDCr spoke at the rally on the need to bring the message of peace from the original AEH (Agreement to End Hostilities) to the streets. Organizers distributed and read the text of original AEH and a recent message from Cellblock 2 Cityblock.
Kat Brooks of the Anti Police Terror Project was one of the speakers who really got to the heart of things:
“The state creates the conditions in our communities that they know creates violence.”
Ey went on to condemn Amerikan koncentration kamps as a form of violence, saying the carceral state is the most violent institution in the world. Another comrade read from/paraphrased the intro of the Communist Party of Aztlán’s essay on homelessness, making the connection that homelessness is also a form of violence that we must come together to end.
Of course, it is up to the oppressed to change our conditions. Youth from Lulu’s House participated in the event, speaking on their own recent transformations from petty criminals to active community members. One said:
“We gotta push the movement too, it starts with us.”
While another pointed out:
“If you’re scared of the youth you’ll never understand them.”
One of the adults present who wasn’t scared to help these youth change was a BART cop (Bay Area Rapid Transit). This “officer friendly” approach is a well-known counter-insurgency strategy of the occupying forces. They hire cops to do community work, who aren’t involved in the violent repression work, but do intelligence gathering for the state while helping to divide the occupied community.
Independence is one of the principles of the United Front for Peace in Prisons for this very reason. There is no progress towards liberation in the united front if it is working with the very imperialist state that is oppressing us.
Minister King X echoed this principle of independence when speaking about learning from the elders released from prison while the U.$. government is smashing the Department of Education. We must learn from the struggles of oppressed people.
Minister King X was one of the MC’s and organizers of the event, representing the Artivist Kadre trying to engage the youth and the oppressed in the movement through artistic expression. Ras Kass was also there representing the Artivist Kadre from Los Angeles. They were sporting patches promoting the New Afrikan Revolutionary Nationalist (N.A.R.N.) ideology and the AEH. The Artivist Kadre are working with P.E.P. Talk, BOSS (another release support program) and others to address racism, fascism, sex trafficking and more in California.
