.jpg#/media/File:Colombian_Police_(8393823060).jpg){kind=link}
Actor and activist Kendrick Sampson already made the news last summer when he was shown injured by rubber bullets and police batons at Black Lives Matter LA. When he traveled to Cartegena, Colombia the following winter, he was hoping for it to be a “healing trip.”
Unfortunately, he faced the utter opposite.
Months later, in a new op-ed, he’s giving the full details about what happened overseas. After experiencing five stop-and-frisks in the few days he was there, Sampson was stopped again – but this time he was punched, threatened with a gun, and publicly sexually harassed!
But it didn’t stop there.
After handcuffing Sampson, police took him to a “dark, run-down building,” where they tried to force him to sign a document he couldn’t even read! When he described his abuse, the officers denied it.
One even implied he couldn’t be racist because he had a “dark-skinned” wife. Sound familiar?
Sampson says this treatment is nothing new for Afro-Colombians, citing 67 recent police killings.
Recognizing the links between there and the U.S., he’s now calling for international solidarity and Black liberation, stating, “None of us are free until everyone is free. Let’s get free together.”
From the United States to Nigeria to Colombia, Black people are dehumanized and policed across the globe. Like Sampson's call to action, we need to find a common solution together.