More Than Frontlines: Black Solidarity Beyond SACRIFICE

The nation watched in horror as videos of Renee Good being shot by ICE agents in Minnesota circulated around social media. Protests (rightfully) erupted across the country, but Black folx didn’t show up in our usual numbers. In fact, many called for us to stay home. Not because we didn't care about state violence or ICE overreach. But because we're tired.

Tired of being America's moral compass.

Tired of bleeding for every cause while our own suffering gets footnoted.

Tired of organizers asking, "where are the Black people?" every time there's a new crisis, as if our presence on the frontlines is a given, as if we haven't been carrying this weight for generations.

Online, the debates were fierce: Is the fight against ICE and this fascist administration ours to carry? Should we hold the hands of White Americans who are just noticing what we've known all along? Some Black folx are saying: not this time. Not me. Get someone else to do it. I understand why. The ADOS and FBA movements are naming something valid: We've carried enough. We've bled enough. We've sacrificed enough in the name of "progress."

Let me be clear about what ADOS and FBA are naming, because a broke clock is right twice a day.

Black Americans—descendants of people enslaved on this soil—have a uniquely toxic relationship to this country. We built it. We've bled for it. We've been the moral conscience of every liberation movement while our specific claims for reparations, for land, for restitution get endlessly deferred. We marched for everyone's rights while our communities crumbled. We organized against the Muslim ban while police kept killing us with impunity. Black folx of all identities but especially Black women, Black queer folx, Black trans people, Black disabled folx—we've been on the frontlines of all of it. The 2020 uprisings. Immigrant rights. LGBTQIA+ liberation. Women's rights. Labor organizing. Yet, every time—every single time—when it was our turn to be centered, folx got quiet (*cough cough* Keith Porter). Gone are the days White Americans sit passively while we take the brunt of the fight.

And there's a deeper critique here about Pan-Africanism itself. My politics are informed by this tradition (no relation to Dr. Umar), and I believe what we have in common outweighs the differences. On the flip side, I understand the skepticism. For decades, Black Americans have been told we're part of a global African diaspora, but that solidarity has often felt one-sided. We fight for all Black people—showing up for immigrant rights, defending refugees, building with diaspora communities here. But when we need support—for reparations specifically for descendants of American slavery, for police abolition, etc.—where's that same energy? Instead, we're told we have no culture, that we're "lost" with nothing of our own, while African and Caribbean artists/writers/influencers/etc. build careers off the Black American aesthetic we created.

I respect this analysis. I understand the impulse but it's incomplete because it misidentifies the source. The true culprit is imperialism, white supremacy, and capitalism deliberately pitting Black communities against each other. The same systems that terrorize us are terrorizing them. The question is: “Do we let the system divide us or do we build the power we need together?"

I will not chastise Black folx who don't want to offer their bodies as sacrifice, but I urge you not to divest completely. Not because we owe America anything (we don’t). Not because we need to hold white people's hands (with a napkin) through their reckoning with fascism. But because the communities under attack right now are our communities. Black immigrants are a part of the Black community. The machinery being built to target them is already being used against Black American citizens.

The Machinery Targets All of Us

In 2018, Peter Sean Brown—a Black man born in Philadelphia—turned himself in to Florida authorities for a probation violation. The Monroe County Sheriff's Office held him for ICE, claiming he was Jamaican and subject to deportation. For weeks, Brown told anyone who would listen that he was a U.S. citizen. He offered his birth certificate. His jail file said Philadelphia. He had a Florida driver's license.

None of it mattered. Officers mocked him, sang him the Fresh Prince theme song—"West Philadelphia born and raised"—and laughed. He was transferred to ICE detention, three days away from deportation to Jamaica, a country he'd visited once on a cruise.

In 2020, Brian Bukle—a Black man from Riverside County who'd been a U.S. citizen for over 50 years—finished serving a prison sentence. He was supposed to go home for Father's Day. Instead, California's Department of Corrections reported him to ICE for deportation because officials suspected he was "foreign-born." He told them repeatedly he was a citizen. They ignored him. He was detained for 36 days during a COVID outbreak.

Just a few days ago, on New Year’s Eve, Keith Porter- A Black man in LA- was gunned down by an off-duty ICE agent. Despite local coverage, many of us did not learn of his death until after Good’s.

Between 2015 and 2020, ICE arrested 674 potential U.S. citizens, detained 121, and deported 70 Americans. And these are just the cases we know about—ICE doesn't systematically track these encounters and under the current administration we cannot trust the reports they publish.

So here's my question to Black folx who want to sit this out: What makes you think your birth certificate will protect you when Peter Sean Brown's didn't? What makes you think your citizenship will save you when Brian Bukle's fifty years as a citizen didn't? The infrastructure being built to target Black immigrants—the databases, the workplace raids, the collaboration between local police and ICE—is the same infrastructure that's already being used against Black American citizens. Do your papers make you feel safe?

Black Immigrants Are Our People

When I say we need to protect Black immigrants, I'm not asking you to care because we're all a part of the African diaspora (though we are). I'm not even appealing to Pan-African solidarity as a feeling (though I have those feelings).

The people being targeted in ICE raids right now are Black - period. Diasporic Black folx aren't abstract 'immigrants' in MAGA talking points. They live in Black neighborhoods, attend Black churches, send their kids to schools with our kids, build businesses with our communities.

In Philadelphia, where I organize, ICE is raiding Haitian families who've been here since the 2010 earthquake and Southwest Philly, better known as “Africatown”. In South Florida, they're detaining Haitian Temporary Protected Status (TPS) holders who've built lives here for over a decade. In the Twin Cities, Somali communities are facing intensified enforcement. In New York, African immigrants from Ghana, Nigeria, and Senegal are being detained. In Texas, Afro-Latinx communities are being torn apart.

When ICE raids a Haitian household in Philadelphia, it terrorizes the entire Black neighborhood. When Somali families in Minneapolis are targeted, it affects every Black person in that community who now has to worry about ICE checkpoints.

What does it mean to protect our communitites? Do we let ICE terrorize Black communities or not? Ask the Panthers.

What the Panthers Knew: Protection and Solidarity Aren't Contradictory

I am a child of The Black Panther Party. Their politics inform all my work – even my stance as a Pan-Africanist . My partner lent me his copy of To Die For The People: The Writings of Huey P. Newton* and I went back to it after watching this debate unfold. The Black Panther Party dealt with this same issue fifty years ago, and they showed us it's never either/or—it's and/both. They didn't choose between protecting their communities and solidarity with all oppressed people—they understood these as fundamentally linked struggles.

Their first priority was ensuring the survival of their people through survival programs: Free Breakfast for children, Free People's Medical Clinics, community defense patrols protecting Black neighborhoods from police violence. This was infrastructure built specifically for Black Americans by Black Americans.

At the same time, the Panthers stood in solidarity with Vietnamese resistance to U.S. imperialism. They supported Algerian liberation. They connected with Palestinian freedom struggles. They understood that the same government dropping bombs on Southeast Asian villages were the same ones that would later bomb Black neighborhoods in Philadelphia. Huey Newton called it "revolutionary intercommunalism"—oppressed communities globally share common enemies and should coordinate resistance.

So if we know that the same systems that oppress Black immigrants are being used against us – should we not, at the very least, have mutual vested interest in protecting each other? Where ADOS and FBA fall short is not understanding this duality. We can center all Black communities—American and immigrant—while recognizing the same system terrorizing apart Black immigrants are coming for all us Hue-folx.

*Hyperlink leads to a pdf copy of the book.

Movement Work Beyond Martyrdom

Here's what I want to be crystal clear about: I'm not asking any Black person to sacrifice their physical safety – especially not for America.

White liberals love to call Black folx selfish for not putting our bodies on the line. The same white liberals who watched us get beaten, gassed, and shot by police from their living rooms during the summer of 2020—posting black squares on Instagram. The same ones who cheered from a distance while we bled in the streets. Now they want to lecture us about solidarity? That's bullshit. It's especially cruel—but on brand—to expect martyrdom from Black folx who've already survived generations of state violence. Do not let them guilt you into putting yourself in danger - but our communitites need us.

If you can document and archive—Record what's happening. Make sure Keith Porter’s story doesn't disappear. Make sure when ICE detains Black citizens and immigrants, there's a record.

If you can provide legal support—Connect people to lawyers. Teach know-your-rights workshops. Help people understand what to do if ICE stops them.

If you can build mutual aid—Create networks like We Got Us, my health pop-up series in Philadelphia. Provide food, healthcare, resources. Build the survival infrastructure our communities need.

If you do research and analysis—Track patterns. Understand how these systems work. Produce knowledge that helps people protect themselves.

If you can offer care work—Support the people on frontlines. Make sure they're eating, sleeping, not burning out. The movement needs people who can sustain it.

You can protect yourself and contribute to collective liberation. You can recognize your limits and still find your place in the movement. As Dominique Morgan said, “Let your activism today be that you will be here tomorrow”.

This is resistance work.

What's at Stake?

Let me bring this back to the question that inspired this essay: Should Black folx sit out the fight against ICE? My answer: We can't afford to, but protect ya neck.

Protecting our own means protecting all of us. The Haitian family down the street. The Somali family at your kid's school. The Nigerian nurse at the hospital. The Black American citizen who gets flagged in a database and detained anyway. All of us. We can be strategic about how we fight. We can protect ourselves. We can refuse to be martyrs. We can stay home. But we can't pretend that abandoning Black immigrants will keep us safe.

Find your place. Maybe it's documentation. Maybe it's legal support. Maybe it's mutual aid. Maybe it's just having conversations and refusing to accept that Black immigrants are somehow separate from Black Americans. What did Jay say? “Nobody wins when the family feuds.”

(Note: Eff the Black billionaire part though).