In Nanterre (a popular suburb of Paris) a 17-year-old has been shot at point blank by police officers after being hit multiple times behind the wheel of his car during a police stop. The police tried to create a story where he tried to run them over with his car but a video proved wrong the day of the murder. Since then, all working-class suburbs have been lit by the fires of riots and clashes with the police.

ABMN would like to show our support to the people and share a local antifascist organisation’s – AFA77‘s – statement.

In France, many books, movies, documentaries, news articles, and social worker warnings have made the public aware of the problems of suburban police control since the 1980s. Adding economic exclusion and ghettoization, the state’s systemic violence became part of everyday life for the people of our suburbs. A population despised, considered by many as sub-citizens. Police and its endemic systemic racism (the national police was founded during the state’s collaboration with the nazis’ invasion in 1941) have always been covered and excused then justified by far-right police unions as a colonial force in our neighbourhoods. Colonial forces transformed our suburbs into police violence laboratories in the complicit silence of other parts of society. We had to wait for these violent police techniques to hit big social movements and white people protesting for it to be denounced by politicians. With complex racists mechanism reproduced over decades by the State, they excluded the people of our suburbs.”

“That is why the explosion of anger against this oppression is legitimate. The vengeance for another police murder sounds like a no-brainer. Once the public emotion of some private property was destroyed in the wrath of the clashes against the police, we can make an analysis that this anger targeted political places: Police officers, police stations, public buildings (city halls, post office…), public transportation, shops and buildings representing the State. All of which represent symbols or partakers of social and economic violence in our suburbs. The political and media discourse seeks to minimize the intelligence and the mutual organization of the riots. But this revolt is not just blind anger. Let’s not erase the legitimate anger of an insurgent youth, underestimating the activism it represents. How can we not see a class uprising in those riots? Left-wing politicians, some unions and even people from the yellow jacket movement never stopped asking for the suburb’s youth to participate in their struggles. But our neighbourhood is already fighting since the 1980s. The violence of mass social movements is only seen as legitimate when it is white.

As antifascists and revolutionaries, we must show solidarity with this uprising.

Against racism and state violence, let the people revolt!