Parallels of Struggle

The parallels between Police Brutality against Black and Brown youth globally

At this moment our country is going through a movement of racial reckoning: bringing to light centuries of injustice, brutality, and inequality against Black and non-Black People of Color. This past week, 17 year-old Arab-American teen Hadi Abutaleh was brutally beaten by three policeman outside of Chicago, Oak-Lawn, Illinois. The beating has left Hadi hospitalized with back and facial fractures along with severe internal bleeding.

Video submitted by a witness show three police officers holding Hadi down continuously punching and kicking him across his body. However, police cam footage still has not been released, even at the family’s request.

Akin to this struggle is the decades long suffering of Arabs in the Occupied Areas of Syria and Palestine as well as Nigerians peacefully protesting to #EndSars. In both cases, Black communities, and Arabs, are buried up to their necks in a history of police brutality.

With the murders of George Floyd, Ahmaud Arbery, & Breonna Taylor as a result of police intolerance and lack of social work education, a movement erupted calling on law makers for change. These tragedies show that the systems of law enforcement and criminal justice are ingrained with deep systemic issues in how we view color. In fact, 1 in every 1,000 Black American man can expect to be killed by the police. Seeing the constant brutalization of my people abroad, I recognize the rage, frustration, and sadness over the trauma of seeing your people and communities changed forever.

It is easy to see that there is not a single moment in the life of Arabs, Nigerians, or Black Americans whose life is not disrupted by institutionalized violence. In both cases, there in an entangled parallel of struggle that connects Global Africans with Arabs in the Occupied Levant. The cries for justice can be attributed to the increasing militarization of police in the United States, and the training of U.S. police by the Israeli Defense Force (IDF).

Being trained by the IDF puts US Police forces at the ends of a military police system who have racked up documented human rights violations for centuries. There, the military regime has carried out unlawful killings and torture against children in military detention. A shoot to kill policy has even been normalized, enforcing the idea our lives are not worth taking the time to ask questions.

The Black Lives Matter movement has indicted all forms of discrimination globally, but with Palestine, they are mirror images. - even naming this transformational time as the American Intifada.  In Nigeria, it has been two years since the #EndSars movement to stop police violence, yet President Muhammadu Buhari has not fulfilled his promise to reform the broken system or bring justice to the victims of atrocities committed. While people have taken to the streets throughout the West, demanding and creating change, many do not have that opportunity. Although the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights has called for an investigation into the death of Shireen Abu Akleh, Palestinians know that any responsibility by the IDF will be evaded. Palestinians face the reality under occupation that discrimination and excessive force with impunity.

The wave of global unrest and injustice has put the Israeli, Nigerian, and American governments in an awkward place as they put on facades of “reform”, while they each actively contribute more to their policing and prison systems. In fact, some of the largest cities in the U.S. like New York and Los Angeles, are increasing their budgets for law enforcement.

There is such a deep dehumanization that no one can be silent on. We need to challenge our authorities and ask the difficult questions: “Why are Black Americans dying at higher rates?”, “Why are we training our police systems this way”, “Why are Palestinians being lethally shot for no reason?”, and “How can we dismantle oppressive systems?”.

We must decry the police brutality that took place against Hadi, and we must organize against the broader systems that allow this violence to take place. The projects of incarceration and policing have long waged war against Black and Brown people in this country with impunity. Under qualified immunity, police officers who commit such violence routinely face no consequences for altering the lives so many.

All human beings are born free, but not all are born equal. From Black Lives Matter to Palestinian Justice to #EndSARS, to deny those their human rights is challenging humanity. As a Palestinian American, I sympathize with activists around the world, but I also recognize the need for change. We need to reform our criminal justice systems, introduce social work into police education, and give everyone their inalienable right to live unafraid.