By Kofi Mawuli Klu joint ISN Coordinator & Co Vice Chair of Stop The Maangamizi Campaign
We believe in peacefully doing "whatever it takes" by way of Non Violent Direct Action to raise awareness about the Climate and Ecological Emergency. This includes arrestable actions by those voluntarily willing to do so out of their own convictions, conscientiousness and commitments.
The Stop the Maangamizi: We Charge Genocide Ecocide! Campaign recognise this and vigorously support and shall defend this uncompromisingly, as among the success factors for XR. Such strategies are part of Black Radical Traditions of Afrikan Heritage Communities of Resistance and wider. Not only Martin Luther King but also Osagyefo Kwame Nkrumah, Funmilayo Ransome-Kuti, Nelson Mandela, Nomzamo Winnie Madikizela-Mandela, Mangaliso Sobukwe, Steve Biko, Marcus Garvey, Dedan Waciuri Kimathi, Claudia Jones, Malcolm X, the Black Panthers, Olive Morris, MoAfrika Kenny Doshane Motsamai, Angela Davies, Assata Shakur and many other Sheroes and Heroes have been arrested for a cause they believed in.
To put the matter as if Afrikan, Black and other Racially Marginalised Peoples (RMPs) must never have their own traditions of engaging in arrestable actions of Resistance drummed up by XR for our current International Rebellion is unacceptable to those of us in the Stop the Maangamizi Campaign! "We Are Our Own Liberators" and "By Any Means Necessary" and "Nothing About Us Without Us" are very popular slogans being resounded by our Afrikan Heritage Communities of Resistance throughout the continent and diaspora of Afrika today (as they have long been resounded for centuries!).
Accordingly, our freedom fighters have never and still are not, running away from arrestable actions in our resistance. We only insist upon doing so by our own collective and individual choices, at times when we ourselves decide to do so, by our own very well informed decisions and prioritised causes, upon our own terms and in our own ways.
Many of us will take that step when it becomes necessary at the points of Rebellion we deem it individually and collectively necessary to do so, as demanded of us, by our own vision, values and principled commitments to Pan-Afrikan Freedomfighting and Global Justice Internationalist Solidarity!