CHIRLA STANDS WITH BLACK LIVES, PROCLAIMING KENOSHA VIOLENCE FUELED BY STATE BIAS

Police shooting paralyzes black man, white armed man kills two protesters, and nation seethes over systemic race violence.

As the national debate over systemic racism and state violence again flares in the Jacob Blake shooting and aftermath, the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights (CHIRLA), the largest immigrant rights organization in California, continues to stand with black lives in Los Angeles and across the nation.

The familiar pattern has unfolded since Sunday: unjustified police violence that sends a father of three to the hospital with seven bullet holes in his back; delayed accounting from police and city officials; days of protests by people of color; the far right fanning the controversy as a white zealot shows up Tuesday with an assault rifle, killing two people and injuring a third. But when police arrest him, they don’t seem concerned that he is a threat, despite a documented record of previous violence.

“This is a painful, terrible time in a long history of traumatic race attacks in our nation. This is why the Black Lives Matter protests have again gone national, why athletes are boycotting games, why the calls to defund police continue,” said Angelica Salas, CHIRLA executive director. “It is just not possible to paper over the injustice anymore. It literally bleeds through, and all Americans, the world, can see it.”

Blake, shot by police in Kenosha, WI as he tried to break up an argument between two women, remains in the hospital, paralyzed. On Wednesday night, police arrested Kyle Rittenhouse, 17, and charged him with first-degree murder — but not at the scene, where police cars passed him by as others warned he was shooting. They arrested him at his home in an Illinois town the next day.

“It is clear that police did not see Rittenhouse’s assault rifle as a threat because he is a white man, but they felt the need to shoot a black man seven times in the back, no questions asked, no accountability given,” Salas said. “When law enforcement draws those color lines, our communities become killing fields. They do not protect us, they target us. This is not the America of freedom, life, and liberty for all every one of us aspires to live in. The state-sanctioned murdering of people of color must stop.”