Once again, we are here mourning the loss of a young black man whose life was cut brutally short. The scenario is all too familiar, particularly in the South. A young black man was perceived as a threat based off of a spurious claim, chased down by three white men of which two were wielding firearms in the back of a pickup truck, and shot like a dog on the side of the road. After the shooting, the police and two district attorneys, all of whom swore an oath to uphold the law, saw no cause to apprehend these white men or investigate their actions, going so far as to justify their actions as reasonable and moral. His murderers and those who aided them, saw Ahmaud Arbery as a born criminal, 3/5s of a man, a wild beast that had to be put down. We, the National African American Gun Association, condemn this murder and the failure of the local government to properly investigate this case. We grieve for Mr. Arbery and his family. A young man is gone forever and a family is diminished. Though he lost his final battle, he did not go quietly and fought for his life the only way he could.

This murder would be all too common if one read about it in a newspaper in 1950. However, this is 70 years since that time. This goes to show how we have a long way to go as a country. Many would like us to believe that such violence and the pathology that justifies it no longer exists. We know better than to believe such an obvious lie as this murder and the murders of countless other young black men before clearly demonstrate the falsity of such a claim. In fact, while we should be justifiably outraged, we should not be surprised. It is no secret to African Americans that the country has not changed nearly as much as society would like us to believe. At the end of the Civil Rights Movement in the late 1960s, laws changed but many institutions and people did not. The same white supremacists that terrorized black folks and ran the local government were not kicked out their jobs. They were not arrested. They paid no damages to the communities they victimized. They were merely told that it was no longer polite to openly oppress and terrorize. This polite warning is exhibited in law and policy that is not enforced when it would ensure justice for black people. It is exhibited in school curriculums that talk about state’s rights as the cause of the Civil War while dismissing the very words from the secessionists who saw it as a crusade to protect white supremacy. It is exhibited in black communities that have hookworms and sewage in their yards right next to white communities that have modern plumbing infrastructure. It is in exhibited by an economy that sees black wealth plummeting to zero by mid-century while at the same time white wealth climbs to record highs. It is exhibited in white politicians that see no way to pay reparations to African Americans despite this country’s history of paying reparations to oppressed groups. We see murders such as Ahmaud’s which rightfully outrage us, but we often fail to recognize the previously stated circumstances that laid the groundwork for such murders to occur and continue to occur.

The Black Tradition of Arms dictates the use of armed self-defense to address the circumstances in which the government will not protect you because of incompetence, moral cowardice, or outright malice towards African American people. Practitioners of this tradition such as Robert F. Williams and Fannie Lou Hamer effectively used it as a strategy to advance the cause of black enfranchisement and protection under the law. This strategy supported other strategies such as voting as a block, boycotting, and organizing and presenting a black agenda to local government. While as individuals we can and should join this tradition to protect ourselves against immoral violence, we must take part in collective action to enact the deep structural changes that are necessary to truly change the circumstances that create and sustain the cycle of these tragedies. As a community, we must re-engage with the political process and uproot those that do not serve our best interests from their positions of power. We must collectively determine what are the laws and policies we want to see and present them to our local government. We must take back our churches and civic organizations and demand that they do the hard work of promoting a real black agenda. We must groom and support candidates from within our community to carry forth our interests. We must show up on election day to choose the policies and politicians that we want to represent us. And lastly, we must hold all of our public servants accountable for they are supposed to serve us and if they are not doing so we must use all legal measures possible to remove and replace them.