In Defense of Black Lives and the Future We All Deserve

By Luis Sanchez

Our communities are heartbroken and enraged. As anger and pain weigh heavy on our hearts, this moment calls on us to listen, reflect, and take action to affirm that Black Lives Matter.

The murder of George Floyd, along with Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor, Tony McDade, and countless others lost by state-sanctioned police violence and white vigilantes has erupted an uprising that is being met with brute force and repression. The anger and rage we see on the streets is collective grief over a system that has long been broken and yet another painful reminder of just how deeply entrenched racism and white supremacy are in America.

Entire generations are defined during moments of unrest and resistance like the one that is unfolding today. I was 17 years old during the 1992 uprising in Los Angeles when thousands took the streets to demand justice for Rodney King and an end to police violence against Black people. One of my closest cousins had just been locked up and I began to understand the injustice in our system and the internalized racism in our communities that prevented us from creating the cross-racial solidarity needed for real transformation.

As a young person, the righteous resistance and solidarity I saw in my community deeply politicized me. Growing up on the Eastside, LA was one of the poorest and most segregated cities in the country. We were all heavily impacted by the underfunding of our communities that impacted the quality of our education and housing. In 1992, I vividly recall seeing working class Black, Latinx, and Asian people in the streets together in what many consider America’s first multi-ethnic uprising.

This era as a whole was devastating as we watched Pete Wilson govern California with a racist agenda that paved the way for harmful policies like three-strikes laws that increased criminalization and incarceration in our communities. But our communities resisted and organized, leading to the rapid and widespread politicization of an entire generation of young people like myself that would birth organizations and movements to dismantle racist systems and serve Black and Brown communities. The growth of our movement today shows what is possible in the aftermath of rebellion and what is possible as we begin to work toward a more just world.

Young people are entering a new reality at this moment. While globally we’ve been hit hard by a pandemic, some of our nation’s oldest wounds have also reopened. While COVID-19 threatens our health, white supremacy threatens our existence. The systemic racism in our broken healthcare and police system have led to a disproportionately large loss of Black lives.

Young Black, Indigenous, and people of color have always been on the frontlines of our movements and their leadership cannot be ignored. They are fed up with the disregard and devaluing of Black lives and are skeptical of our government’s ability to protect and care for them when they cannot stand for justice and hold police accountable. Los Angeles is again an epicenter of today’s uprising where I witness young people taking action to push the Mayor to address anti-Black police violence and the deep history of disinvestment in Black communities.

The voices of young people are central in demanding and building equitable infrastructure and institutions that actually care for us and keep us safe. We’ve seen student-led marches in some cities turn out more than 10,000 people together demanding that police violence must stop. There is no place for violent policing toward Black people in the future we want to build. We must listen to young people and join them as they show us another world is possible.

As a multi-racial organization representing young people of color in communities heavily impacted by police violence, Power California stands firmly in the defense of Black lives and in our commitment to Black liberation and resistance. We need to build a future where we value and center Black lives and Black futures as foundational to all of our organizing.

We will continue to fight racism and anti-Blackness in all forms — from racist policing and violence against Black people to the racist policies of divestment that force Black people to live in communities without affordable housing or access to healthy food and where young people attend underfunded schools. We must confront the underlying roots of this injustice that has plagued our world for centuries and center Black communities to reimagine a different world.

Our liberation is woven together and we must come together in unity and with courage to transform unjust systems and build power until we are all free. Just like we stand with Latinx communities in demands to abolish ICE, we must also amplify the demands from Black communities to DEFUND the police. We must invest in vital services that meet the needs of our communities. We must stand together for a future where young people can live without the fear of violence, families can stay together, and nobody is left behind or treated as disposable.