No justice no peace, Solidarity with the family of Mark Duggan

The disgusting scenes yesterday of the jury in the Mark Duggan inquest ruling that he was lawfully killed whilst being unarmed sparked fury inside and outside of the Royal Courts of justice in London. Understandably the family of Mark are outraged and this will do little to help race relations in the area and relations with the police which are at an all time low I should expect today. If you believe any of the news reports he was a thug and “one of the most dangerous criminals in Europe” and there was no choice but to take him out. Except... The gun he was accused of holding, there was no evidence of his DNA on it. The jury were specifically told this. Mark’s DNA was on the box that was allegedly carrying this gun but not on the weapon itself. The jury concluded that he was unarmed when he was murdered but it was still lawful to kill him. They believed he threw the gun from a taxi before the police standoff. An eye witness was able to confirm Mark was not in possession of the gun but was holding a mobile phone in his hand. He testified that it appeared Mark was about to surrender when he was cruelly executed by the Met. The taxi driver that had driven Mark to the scene, his testimony was disregarded also. As @justinthelibsoc put it “The #Duggan taxi driver wasn't believed. The anon witness who claimed it was an execution wasn't believed. I wonder what they had in common.” An all-white jury sat in for this case (led by a South African – let’s think in the language of our oppressors for a moment) and chose to believe witness statements by the police over the damning eye witness statements by PoC. We are not surprised, we are livid. The disgusting news coverage by the BBC parroting police lies and trying to make out Mark was this violent criminal where in fact Stephen Fry has a worse criminal record than Mark dangerous and violent I think not… This incident describes perfectly the way ethnic people are treated in society. It is the most brutal and extreme examples but it is perfectly allegorical. A person of colour is identified as a problem. They are monitored and treated suspiciously, feared even cos of course many people do believe we are still in the savage stage. The white oppressors make a plan to take said coloured person out, in this instance it was an execution but for many of us it’s being sacked, it is being denied opportunities, it is being ministered and silenced and they create the narrative around you and your character, people will believe them when they say you are a liar or aggressive because of course non-white people just aren’t civilised. Evidence to the contrary doesn’t even hold water in court! Institutional racism is endemic at every level of British society. The courts, the police, we must not trust them. The journalists, the BBC, we must not trust them. Bosses, doctors, nurses, some of our friends; we cannot trust them. It doesn’t matter what we do, they will use our words to hang us if we dare to challenge this racism in the state. I do feel Brittan is still very racist reading a lot of the twitter comments last night it was a lot of white privileged people assuming he must be guilty as apparently he had a gun and he was black so he must have been up to no good. Such deep set in stone prejudices are hard to smash and break down. I believe the truth will out in the end as it has done with Hillsborough but for now we stand shoulder to shoulder with the family of Mark Duggan and all others who have been murdered by the police and the state. No justice no peace.