Statement from Hannibal Shakur
Oakland, CA
The political nature of my charges cannot be over-stated here. To
give human rights to a mechanical entity constructed solely for the sake
of profit and exploitation is a perversion of those rights and what it
means to be a human being. In Florida, a white man walks for the obvious
murder of a black boy. That young boy, that black child, wasn’t even
given the rights of a dog. When the verdict is released, black people
across America rise up to protest our non-citizen status. What could be
called a riot ensues. A handful of people are arrested with charges of
felony vandalism of whom I am one defendant. When Zimmerman murdered
Trayvon Martin, he wasn’t even arrested. When a window was broken in
Oakland, I was viciously slammed to the ground causing injury to my
legs, arms and head. Even though I’m fighting cancer and the disgusting
conditions of the Santa Rita County Jail are not conducive to healing,
on top of being significantly injured by Oakland Police Officers, I was
not allowed to be OR-ed or released to my Own Recognizance. A window is
made of sand and can be replicated exactly. A rectangle window, of the
dimensions I am being charged with breaking, doesn’t need to be
replicated because the manufacturer keeps spare windows around for
replacement. The United States justice system considers this a serious
crime warranting felony charges.
Trayvon Martin was a human being. There
will only ever be one of him and we have lost him and the joy he
brought to this world forever. A human life is priceless because it can
never be replaced. Trayvon Martin could realistically have grown to be a
political leader who would bring peace to warring nations. He could
have grown to cure AIDS, cancer or diabetes. We know this to be
realistic because the brother was a high achiever in school earning a
3.7 GPA. He could have developed some new treatment for drug addictions.
The point I’m trying to make is, aside from being the pride and joy of
his family and community, he could have made the world a better place
for all of us. He could have stopped wars, cured diseases and got people
off of drugs. At this point we will never know what we have lost aside
from the fact that he was a beautiful young black boy who was loved and
cherished. His murderer was given freedom and even got his murder weapon
back with which, God forbid, he may murder another child with. This is
the impotency of the US justice system, incapable of treating black
people as human beings. In the same token, in Oakland, California, a
place considered to have some of the strongest enforcement of
civil/human rights, we are charged as felons, a charge that could land
us in a penitentiary, for a Men’s Warehouse display window that was
broken, yet caused no injuries to any human beings. While America is
incapable of enforcing the rights of Trayvon Martin, a human child with a
3.7 GPA, corporations have been legally recognized as human beings and
are being protected with the full extent of the law. I’d like to see the
California ID that was issued to Men’s Warehouse.
With the handling of
my case and the endangerment to my vulnerable cancer-ridden body,
combined with the acquittal of Zimmerman, it would appear that the US
justice system has no value for human life or even more troubling, it
has no value for black life. While Obama gives a televised speech on the
oppression of black boys/men I am being railroaded for a broken window.
I am the black life that he claims we need to have a higher value for.
While my own plight is troubling as it is, the idea that we are setting a
new precedent of violence against black men and boys is terrifying when
I think of the kindergartners in Martin Luther King Elementary and the
infants in Highland Hospital. I write this with teary eyes because as a
grown man I understand what I’m facing: but how do we prepare children
to face specific and targeted genocide against themselves?
