Community Ready Corps is organizing to protect Black spaces & communities from racist intimidation, harassment, and violence, and to provide security & self defense trainings.
Emboldened by the election of Donald Trump, White Nationalists with genocidal aspirations against Black people are organizing in the Bay Area. The Alt-Right is attempting to create a culture of fear that will intimidate their target groups into silence and submission. As the community’s fear grows, the Alt-Right only becomes more emboldened. The cowardly, opportunistic nature of the Alt-Right is best exemplified by Dylann Roof, who murdered 9 African-American pastors & churchgoers in Charleston, NC in 2015. Roof told police that he targeted the Church because he knew that there would be Black people gathered there and that they would be unarmed.
So-called “Free Speech” rallies in Berkeley have been followed by the windows being shot out of Black-owned businesses. In Charlottesville, some of these same groups terrorized the Black community by surrounding a Black Church with torches, trapping community members inside. Kyle Chapman of the Proud Boys, a white supremacist who is based in Daly City, has been spotted beating counter protesters at Bay Area rallies, and posted these pictures of “bacon dipped” bullets (to be used to kill Muslims) on his Facebook profile.
We take these threats extremely seriously and are mobilizing to defend Black community, religious and cultural spaces from these violent hate groups. Doing nothing is not an option! We must stand against white supremacy in all its forms. Our call in this moment is to defend our spaces and our people.
Targeted communities must develop the capacity to protect themselves from the most violent extremists of the Alt-Right. We will provide personal self defense and security trainings that will empower our most vulnerable neighbors to keep themselves safe. Communities that are direct targets of the Alt-Right should not have to face this threat alone. We will organize our communities and allies into a Community Watch Network that can rapidly mobilize to document Alt-Right harassment and terrorism. The display of Nazi & other racist symbols and the use of racial epithets can quickly escalate into physical violence, but if communities can be mobilized to document and bear witness to these intimidation tactics, they can often be squashed quickly. Finally, we will establish a Hostile Threat Protection Unit to provide specialized security services to public figures targeted by the Alt-Right, preventing assassinations and other forms of political violence.
