Protected by the liberties afforded to us through the sacrifices and exploitation of millions of black, indigenous and other groups of color throughout the history of this country, we manifest.
Using this space, we remember and call others to remember the lives and tragic, preventable deaths of:
Trayvon Martin
Tamir Rice
Breonna Taylor
George Floyd
Michael Brown
Eric Garner
Justin Howell
Sean Monterrosa
Jamel Floyd
We exercise this freedom to protest and organize as a collective of foreign born residents, Americans, intellectuals, creatives who claim this country to be their home. We use this freedom to protest the unapologetic racism in which we live, which has its most visible face in the economic, legal and health segregation of black citizens, indigenous peoples and people of color.
We plan to use the privilege and protections of our intellectual trade and educational background to do our part. In the following weeks we will highlight the contributions and history of persecution of black, indigenous and other marginalized people of color in the US and Latin America.
To achieve these objectives we will continue to follow our own mission and directives, but we will also:
1.Dedicate the following two weeks of our blog, Hemisferia, to a series of pieces discussing contemporary and historical forms of racism against black people and indigenous communities in Latin America.
2. Continue to actively recruit black, indigenous and other individuals from marginalized groups as contributors and members of our collective organization.
3. Organize a fund to support the research of junior and unaffiliated researchers of color, particularly those who actively contribute to the decolonization of society in general, and academia in particular.
We urge other collectives and individuals in academia and elsewhere, who find themselves in position of power or influence to make use of the tools they have acquired over the years and use them to change the insidious chain of exploitation and disregard for human life we have subtly termed institutional racism.