Rage Against the Machine shared a statement regarding the verdict that acquitted Kyle Rittenhouse last Friday, the 19th. The 18-year-old white youth was acquitted of all charges stemming from a fatal shooting during a Black Lives Matter in Kenosha, Wisconsin, in the United States.
Rittenhouse left his home in Illinois to go to Kenosha (about 30km away) with a group of pro-police friends who had organized on social media to summon activists opposed to the protests. There, he fired an AR-15 rifle and killed two people, Joseph Rosenbaum and Anthony Huber , and injured Gaige Grosskreutz, all white. At the time, he was 17 years old. The shooting occurred during a demonstration linked to the death of Jacob Blake , a 29-year-old Black man who was shot and wounded by a white police officer with four shots fired into his back while police were attempting to arrest him. He was shot when he opened his car door and leaned inside. Three of Blake's children were in the back seat. Three months earlier, George Floyd had been murdered by another white police officer.
Tom Morello 's band posted a photo on their social media of Rittenhouse crying at the trial, while claiming he acted in self-defense, with the following caption: “What defines innocence [in the United States of] America? Tamir Rice was executed by the police for playing with a toy. No one was indicted. Ahmaud Arbery was jogging down the street and was murdered in broad daylight.”
“Kyle Rittenhouse armed himself and killed people who were fighting for racial justice. He claimed self-defense. This is the logic of the colonizer of the founding myth [of the United States of] America: whiteness must portray itself as a victim to justify its violence against those who resist its oppression. Welcome to the 'Land of the Free, Home of the Brave'.”
The final excerpt is a reference to the US national anthem, which translates as "land of the free and home of the brave," symbolizing the values that are theoretically fundamental to the country. Morello's speech and the band demonstrate how these values are merely theoretical.
