Brazil Black Women's March: Message of Solidarity from the Black Feminisms Forum Working Group

In recent times we have witnessed increased visibility in Anti-Black violence and repression that has impacted communities across the African Diaspora.  

The contexts in which Black feminists are organising continue to be increasingly difficult globally. In Colombia, Black women have been in permanent assembly in the offices of the Ministry of Interior of Giralda since November 27, 2014 as part of their fight to protect their lands and territories from mining, to end the war on their bodies and to resist displacement.  In Madagascar, peasants and farmers resisted massive land grabs, their uprisings leading to an overturn of government. In the Dominican Republic, Haitian migrant workers and Dominicans of Haitian descent face Anti-Black ethnic cleansing, denial of citizenship and proposed mass deportations of worrisome proportions. In the US, a Black person is murdered by the State or ‘security’ apparatus every 28 hours and 64,000 Black women are missing. 

In Brazil, we have witnessed murderous violence by an increasingly militarized police force targeting primarily poor and working peoples, indigenous and immigrant people.  Between 1980 and 2010, one million people were killed, with the dramatic increase attributed, for example, to rising inequalities and greater access to weapons.

At the same time as Anti-Blackness unleashes itself on the African Diaspora, African people on the continent continue to be the harvest for bodies and labour, land and resources for the ever expanding neoliberal economic and social regimes. Everywhere, the concerted integration of anti-black, capitalist and patriarchal structures continue to dispossess us and leave us without autonomy over our bodies, our lands and natural resources.  The fight against land grabs in Africa is a fight for Black life and survival, for self-determined development.

We witness the attempt to disappear Black women and queer lives and life from the very narrative of African identity.

Anti-Blackness is global and so is our resistance! 

As African feminists from around the world we stand in solidarity with Black women, trans* people and girls in Brazil fighting against violence and racism and for their wellbeing. 

We are by your side every inch of the way as together we march for liberation and self-determination, for full economic justice and sustainable livelihoods, for rights to control our bodies and whom we love, and to construct our lives and our communities based on creativity, genuine security, and love.

Pamoja! Aluta Continua, Victoria Acerta! Onwards!