Malik recently shared some thoughts he had about the murder of Tyre Nichols and the public response.
I feel the response has been lackluster, like the response when the Kentucky pigs got off and Louisville didn’t do anything. It’s really saddening to me. I’ve been enraged being in here unable to do anything. I feel more helpless than ever. I don’t think the family calling for peace helped any. Know this: if anything like that happens to my family or myself, I DO NOT want peace. And if it was you or yours, I’m going to war for you as well. Nobody should need the videos to get active, that’s a shame, but I’m for whatever gets peoples fires alight.
People talk about how police training is good and getting better and we can “reform” with better practices and standards, but this all bullshit because the reality is, THIS is how pigs react. Traffic stops while black are a scary fuckin thing. Jesse and I had an incident when I was leaving the VA hospital in the middle of the night for my back issues and got pulled over coming put of the parking lot and I had gun pulled and shoved through the window in my face and prolly would have been killed if Jesse didn’t scream and reach over and push the cops gun… So thankfully there was a white woman in the car because if another black person did that we’d both be shot. And it was all because the cops didn’t communicate that I had a gun in the car LEGALLY (I had it in the glove box) and the one cop said it was still OK for me to reach in and grab our registration but the other cop freaked when he saw it.
My family doesn’t even call the police for things, they call me because they know how cops are and I tell em if something happens to y’all, I’m going to go to war. Not a single one wearing blue will be safe. Videos of the brutality won’t bring change, policies won’t, pleading with politicians and praying for someone else to save us won’t be the answer. They’re steadily increasing the police state militarizing and practicing to fight us in our neighborhoods. We need to do the same. We need to become militant and train and one day bring the fight to them. Freedom from oppression and state violence and classism cannot be given, it can’t be begged for or demanded from our politicians, it can only be taken.
I’m so tired of seeing our live taken. The young person shot during the cop city protest made me cry and when I saw them protest I wished I was out there helping organize and steering things, but I’m here and all I can do it continue to study and plan and plot and prepare my mental and spiritual for getting out and picking up.