2021.12.17 70th Anniversary of We Charge Genocide

December 17, 2021 marks the 70th anniversary of ‘We Charge Genocide” campaign, when prominent internationalist & cultural icon Paul Robeson joined by organizer William Patterson & Dr. WEB DuBois set out to present a petition to the still-new United Nations. “We Charge Genocide” challenged the global body to take seriously the US human rights violations against people of African descent which are still going on after hundreds of years since the Middle Passage.

In October 2021, an independent Panel of Jurists presiding over a People’s Tribunal found the US GUILTY OF GENOCIDE on counts relating to police killings, mass incarceration, political imprisonment, environmental racism, and health care injustices. In this special witness testimony to the Tribunal, Dr. MaryLouise Patterson, daughter of William Patterson and a leader of the Physicians for a National Health Program, provides an overview as to why “genocide” still fits as a description for what the US does to Black, Brown and Indigenous peoples.