African American

Additionally, as a people, we have always known that it is impossible for us to exercise our individual rights within a context of more generalized social, economic, and political oppression. Individual rights are necessarily rooted within a larger social context. Civil liberty concerns take a back seat to putting food on the table and to survival more generally. To guarantee our individual rights as black people, we know that we must address broader social concerns. We don’t have the luxury to ignore this fact. For others not to understand this reality is to foreclose on any opportunities to recruit more black people to the cause of dismantling the surveillance state.