Call to Mobilize Following the Rittenhouse Acquittal
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
The National Alliance Against Racist and Political Repression’s Executive Director, Frank Chapman, issued the following statement after the verdict today in the trial of Kyle Rittenhouse.
On Friday, November 19th, 2021, the jury in the trial of racist vigilante Kyle Rittenhouse acquitted him of all charges stemming from his killing rampage at Black Lives Matter protests in Kenosha, Wisconsin after the shooting of Jacob Blake by Kenosha police, last year in August 2020.
This acquittal gives a green light to racist vigilantism and the forces of white supremacy and reaction everywhere, that have sought to repress our voices and deny our democratic right to protest with our demands for justice. They have politically repressed our movement for justice through outright violence such as in the case of Rittenhouse. However, we will not be deterred in our fight to overthrow the chains of white supremacy, and fight for black liberation.
As we’ve said previously, it is clear the system of white supremacy is acting to protect its own. Racist murderers, such as Rittenhouse, and what is even clearer is that they are protected by a racist criminal injustice system that refuses to hold racist criminals accountable while it routinely keeps survivors of police torture and wrongfully convicted Black and brown people incarcerated and locked up for decades.
We are demanding that US Attorney General Merrick Garland and the Department of Justice file federal charges against Kyle Rittenhouse for the racist vigilante killings in Kenosha.
We are calling on all our branches and affiliate organizations and all who cherish justice to take to the streets in the following days and plan demonstrations at federal courthouses nationwide to demand that the Department of Justice act.
We demand Justice for Jacob Blake, Justice for Ahmaud Arvery, Justice for Anthony Huber, Anthony Huber and all Kyle Rittenhouse’s victims as well as justice for all those who have been killed by white supremacists.