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Racism has no borders

An interview with the Justice 4 Nzoy campaign in Switzerland


On August 30, 2021, Roger Wilhelm, a 37-year-old Black man–known to friends and family as “Nzoy”–was killed by police in Morges, Switzerland. Tempest members William Gifis and Haley Pessin talked to Evelyn Wilhelm, who is Nzoy’s sister and runs the Justice 4 Nzoy Switzerland campaign to win justice for her brother.

The uprising sparked by the 2020 police murder of George Floyd inspired calls for racial justice around the world. Internationally, protesters stood in solidarity against police brutality and anti-Black racism in the U.S., as well as highlighting systemic racism in their own countries.

On August 30, 2021, Roger Wilhelm, a 37-year-old Black man–known to friends and family as “Nzoy”–was killed by police in Morges, Switzerland. Nzoy was having a psychological episode when he got off a train in an unfamiliar city, prompting someone to call the police. The police claimed that Nzoy had approached them with a knife, but eyewitnesses contradicted their account, saying that Nzoy may have been holding a rock. Meanwhile, video of the incident showed that four officers confronted Nzoy as he was praying, drew their guns, and shot him three times. The police then handcuffed Nzoy as he lay on the ground; they did nothing for four minutes until a passerby called an ambulance.

Members of Nzoy’s family, along with activists in Switzerland, organized protests in Zurich, Lausanne, and other parts of Switzerland in the aftermath of the killing and on the anniversary of Nzoy’s death last year, using the hashtag #Justice4Nzoy. These demonstrations have also drawn attention to the problem of police brutality and racism in Switzerland more broadly: as of April 2022, Nzoy was the fourth Black man in five years to be killed by police in the Swiss canton of Vaud, where Morges is located.

Tempest members William Gifis and Haley Pessin talked to Evelyn Wilhelm, who is Nzoy’s sister and runs the campaign to win justice for her brother.


How you can help:

Please donate to the Justice 4 Nzoy GoFundMe page to help Nzoy’s family cover legal costs and other fees associated with the investigation into his death.

You can also visit https://justice4nzoy.org/ and follow @justice4nzoy on Instagram for updates on the campaign.


(Content warning: The interview quotes racists’ use of the “n-word.”)

Haley Pessin

: Can you start by telling us a little bit about Nzoy? Tell us a bit about your brother.

Evelyn Wilhelm

: My brother was a loving person. He loved people, he was outgoing, happy, and friendly to everybody. He always had a smile on his face. He was
a very loving character.

HP

: What I saw on the campaign website and Instagram is that music and his religion were very important to him.

EW

: Yes. He was very blessed with talent, playing with words. He loved music, hip-hop was his passion, especially Tupac was his hero. And yes, he was a strong believer. He gained his faith from believing in God.

HP

: I know this is difficult, but could you tell us about the time after your brother was killed by police on August 30, 2021? Is there anything important you think that people should know about what happened?

EW

: He was there on the railway. He prayed. He was not feeling well. He had a crisis. I think he was feeling very, very bad because he took the train to Geneva.
He said, “I have family in Geneva. I want to go to Geneva. I want to meet some people.” And then, on the next train back to Zurich, he got off in Morges. He also had friends in Lausanne, which is just a little closer to Zurich. It wouldn’t have happened there. It’s more of a multicultural place. I can’t tell you why he got off in Morges–an hour later, two hours later, he would’ve been in Zurich, where people could have understood him, where he had friends, where he could go to, where he could cry.

His mentor is a priest and he could go there and get help in any kind of way. Why did he get off in Morges? We don’t know, but he must have been very, very disturbed.

HP

: And my understanding is that the police were called by a rail worker because he was on the tracks.

EW

: Yes, he was hiding on the rails between trains. He was hiding, finding his peace. and he was praying.

The rail workers called the police and told them that a disturbed man was there on the railway. And they came and killed him.

HP

: I also remember you told us that there was a discrepancy between the police report, which said that they had immediately assisted your brother after he was shot, but in fact, that was not true.

EW

: In their first major press release, they said that they had immediately helped him after they shot him. But then in the videos, one saw that they didn’t help him; they handcuffed him after they shot him. And then they kind of controlled him as if he had a weapon, with their feet.

That process took four minutes. They didn’t do anything. Four minutes. After one minute, the woman police officer handcuffed him, and then four minutes later, a random person who was a nurse on their way home came and gave him a heart (cardiac) massage.

And then they started to move him. They moved his body with their feet.

HP

: Wow, that’s so dehumanizing.

EW

: Totally. No respect for anything. At that time, my brother was dying. I can’t tell you how it was to see that the first time. It was like when they shoot an animal.

A good size crowd of protestors is marching on a street in Geneva, Switzerland in front of a large church and near a traffic light. Some of them are holding signs including a few people carrying a large black banner with white text that reads across three lines the following: Stop Violences Policieres in French on the first line (translated to Stop Police Violence in English) Herve, Lamine, Mike, Nzoy on the second line (the names of four Black men killed by Swiss police) Stoppt Polizeigewalt in German on the third line (translated to Stop Police Violence in English.
Protestors carry a large banner at a demonstration in Geneva, Switzerland last year calling on “Stopping Police Violence” in both French and German with the names of four Black men (Herve, Lamine, Mike, and Nzoy) who have been killed in recent years by Swiss police. Photo Credit: Justice4Nzoy.

HP

: You also told us that when the police finally did call in to say that they’d killed someone, the very first thing they said was that they killed “a man of color.” That was all they said.

EW

: Yes. This police officer called the police. He said, in French, that he had shot “un homme de couleur,” a man of color. They didn’t say where he was injured or if he was still breathing. Just, “un homme de couleur.”

And then afterward in their court hearings, they said, oh, they’re color blind. I mean, this is just laughable. And the prosecutor asked this police officer, did you say that? And the police officer said, “I don’t know any more.” And he got away with it!

William Gifis

: It is my understanding that In Europe, police do not normally carry guns. Is it normal for the police to carry guns in Switzerland?

EW

: No. In some areas, or some cantons, they have different laws. For example in Zurich where we lived, they have tasers. In the canton where my brother was killed, they had dum-dums, those bullets that explode in the body, which makes medical efforts to rescue you very difficult.

HP

: You’ve shared that your brother was aware of the danger of the police and concerned enough that he would always carry his Swiss passport with him.

EW

: Racial profiling is a huge issue. He always made sure his passport was in good order. I remember that when it was expiring, he was totally nervous. He went on Sunday to the emergency place where you can get a passport quickly, which costs much more. So he always had a current passport in his pocket, always.

Afterward, the press said that he was a Swiss citizen, proven by his passport.

His dad is Swiss and his mom is South African. After apartheid, you could actually apply for a South African passport, which he never did. He always kept his Swiss passport. He was born in Switzerland.
There was a time when he was stopped by a police officer in Zurich and then he showed his passport and the police officer there said, “Oh! I’m sure you stole your passport.” So that was always kind of an issue.

HP

: And because the police questioned the validity of his citizenship, he was concerned enough to carry the passport. Is that something that a lot of men in Switzerland, men of color or people of color, do?

EW

: Yes. After the death of my brother, I realized that lots of Black men in Switzerland have this problem.

In women’s cases, it’s more the sexualization of Black women, which comes up, like “Oh, you are exotic” or assuming you’re a sex worker. For men, it’s always this kind of criminalization: You’re a drug dealer, a thief. They are afraid of Black men.

WG

: Even an act of praying is perceived differently when it’s a Black man praying versus a white man praying.

EW

: Exactly. And everybody realized that he was not in good shape mentally. And then the police officers came running with their guns in their hands, trapping him. I mean, already that says everything about the situation when it comes to Black men.

HP

: Can you tell us what the reaction was in Switzerland following your brother’s death?

EW

: I must say the reaction of the people was very, very poor. Nothing. Of course, we immediately said that if he had been white he would still be alive. Which is a clear fact. Look at all of those examples. They did not even try to save him. He was dying right there on the rail. Morges has a hospital. Why didn’t he die at the hospital, as a human?

He died right there in front of everybody. Yes, another Black person died and Switzerland is kind of covering itself and no one took an interest.

HP

: So it wasn’t seen widely as an instance of racism in Switzerland?

EW

: No. No.

WG

: And this was the fourth person of color who has been killed by police in the last five years in Switzerland.

EW

: Yes, exactly. Four. Four in the last five years. Switzerland doesn’t see that they have a structural racism problem.

They deny it from top to bottom. ”Ah, no, no, it’s not like that.” But how much more can you say? The police called the ambulance saying it was a man of color without mentioning how he got hurt. I mean, this is proof enough. I thought that people would be touched and say they don’t want to have police officers like that. Somehow they just swallowed it.

There was a protest [shortly after Nzoy’s death], but it was small.

WG

: In the U.S., local media will often operate as public spokespeople for the police. Whatever the story is, they’ll basically rerun the police’s story as if it’s an article of fact in the news. What has the reaction of the press and elected officials been like?

EW

: So there was one article in the press that called this a suicide by cop, that he wanted to kill himself that way, which is [absurd]. And they discussed the police having tasers, not guns. They recommended that the police officer be given mental help and hoped he is not hurt. And we lost our loved one. No, sorry. No, sorry. They said, the police were the victims and my brother was the murderer. And it was the other way around. He did not kill or attack anyone.

HP

: In the U.S. there’s a pretty big conversation happening about the intersection of mental health and police racism, because here, people who are mentally ill are significantly more likely to be killed by the police. And the issue is, who do you call when you’re having a mental health crisis?

EW

: I guess it’s the same thing in Switzerland as in the U.S. You call the police, and that’s a very, very big mistake. You have to call an ambulance. The police are not taught to deal with mental illness. They don’t have this education. It is interesting that last weekend I went to a forum and met a paramedic assistant who said they were trained to deal with those kinds of issues. She said they were trained to calm people down.

Society has to learn that when someone is in trouble not to call the police. The role of the police is not to save somebody. The paramedic assistant said that if they had gotten there first, “your brother would still be alive, because we know how to calm people down.

If the police come, the situation gets out of control. When facing people with mental illness they start to panic. Then things get out of control. So we have to educate people: Don’t ever call the police first. Call the paramedics first, and they will decide if they need the police to calm the person down or not. Never, ever call the police.

WG

: I can just speak from personal experience, as someone with mental illness myself, that when I’m having a bad day or having panic attacks or anxiety, to be confronted by the police in that situation is the completely worst thing possible at that moment. And people with mental illness are more likely to be a victim of a crime than they are to be a perpetrator of a crime.And as Haley stated earlier are more likely to be killed by the police. And so insisting that we should call the police only reinforces that people with mental illness are a threat, that we are dangerous.

EW

: You can just have a bad day, but that’s not a crime. You didn’t do anything. So why do the police have to be called in this kind of scenario? As a society, we have to rethink the role of the police. It hasn’t changed. It’s always the Wild West. And although society is changing, the institution of the police is not changing.

 

A white protestor in a sizable crowd at a demonstration against police violence in Lausanne, Switzerland last spring is holding a sign in English that asks the question “Who do we call when the police murders.”
A protestor holding a sign in English asking an important question at a demonstration in Lausanne, Switzerland last spring. Photo credit: Justice4Nzoy.

HP

: I want to switch gears a little bit. You said that the response has not been what you wanted it to be or what it should have been, but there is a Justice for Nzoy campaign. I wondered if you could speak to who’s involved in that. What groups have been active and what is the campaign demanding in terms of justice for your brother?

EW

: Justice in Switzerland is a little bit difficult because the police and the prosecutors are working in the same space. So to get justice is a very long fight. In three other cases that are still open, it has taken ten years. It goes mostly to the European Supreme Court and that can take ten years.

In my brother’s case, you see that the police officer didn’t help him for four minutes after they shot him, which was a criminal act.

And the prosecutor denied it and called witnesses who said, “We couldn’t do anything.” The police and the prosecutors are working very closely together, so for us, for the victims, the families, it’s very, very hard to get justice.

If you go to those courts it is a money question. And the more money you have the farther you can go. Otherwise, you have to wait. The Nzoy campaign has to show that this Swiss system is functioning, and that we actually have to work on that. It’s not about justice; it’s about who has the money to survive these ten years. We are now at one-and-a-half years. This is not easy.

As a family, you think, with justice, you can heal. But this is not actually what happens. I heard about other families in Europe, for example, there is one case of a police killing when they held the victim’s body for an autopsy for six months. For six months. How then can you move on?

When it comes to police violence, clocks are moving slower and differently. But there are organizations in Zurich and Geneva who are fighting for justice for Nzoy. We are building it up to last for the next ten years.

HP

: Can you just explain a little more about the ten years?

EW

: We don’t know that for sure. It’s just the experience of the other cases. For example, there is the case of Herve Mandundu [a 27-year-old Black man who also suffered from mental health issues] in Bex, Switzerland. We have the same lawyer. He died, and his case has already been going on for four years. And then it went to court. He was shot in his house. He was a young boy shot in his house. He had been experimenting with drugs in his own house, and the police came and shot him. He was a boy. The police came and shot him and one of the officers got a better job. This case is at four years.

Cases start in the Supreme Court and then go to three other courts: the supreme court, the superior court, and then go to three other courts in Switzerland. And then you have the last chance of the European court. This process from beginning to end takes 10 years because the prosecutor and police are working so closely together. Otherwise, it would be three. I think that after three years we will go to court and they will say it was self-defense. The police officer can go. Of course, we can’t accept this. We’ll take it to the next step. And this way will take us ten years.

HP

: And to be able to go to each level, you need to be able to pay for it.

EW

: Exactly. Exactly. That’s the point.

If you are on the top level, Swiss law says that because you had two chances to prove that the courts were right, you now have to pay for everything yourself. And if you don’t have money, you get the lawyer paid by the state, and so on. But past a certain level, you have to pay all by yourself.

For example, the prosecutor is bringing up experts like the head of police HR who excused the police because of their training, so of course it’s not in our favor. We don’t see it like that. So we have to bring our own experts and for these experts, we have to pay. We have to raise a lot of money in order to hire these experts.

WG

: And, of course, the wealthier you are, the less likely you are to be killed by the police. It’s poor families that are the ones who carry this burden.

EW

: Yes. And there are other families living in Africa. They are foreigners. How will they have the chance to build a campaign?

We are privileged because I know how it works. I’m living here, but for my other half of the family in Africa, how could they do that?

WG

: And you can speak the languages and you were educated in Switzerland.

EW

: Exactly.

The process happens in the French part of Switzerland, and we are living in the German part of Switzerland. Already we have language barriers. The whole process is in French.
You would have to study French in school for years. It’s not your mother tongue and then you have to follow this all. It’s a different language. It’s not required in schools.

HP

: So there are all of these barriers.

EW

: Exactly. It was the same thing when the police came onto the scene, my brother was speaking to them in English. One worker said that he was speaking a language nobody understood. He told the railroad worker, “Go away, leave me alone.” He was speaking English. So he was pushed into that corner of, “He’s a foreigner. We don’t understand him.”

WG

: And has there been any kind of push or conversation about reforming the system or getting a more independent investigative process?

EW

: No. Well, there is an organization called Border Forensics, and this is something very, very new. They do their own investigation on the case. We just know nothing beyond what the media has, and the information we get is very poor. And, as I said, the prosecutor is not interested in getting more video material or whatever because he wants to close the case. It was six o’clock in the evening and people were filming the scene with their cell phones.

And the media as well. I contacted the media, for example, 20 Minutes Romandie [a French-Language news outlet]. They have video material that is not in the file of the prosecutor. And I wanted it, and they said they couldn’t give it to me because they have to protect their sources.

So the media has more material than the case itself. They wouldn’t give it to me. They kind of put pressure on me. 20 Minutes Romandie then said that we could discuss it further if I gave an interview. It was a high-pressure situation. But then they did kind of a trailer overviewing the year, and the shooting of my brother was in that. They used it, but they can’t give it to me as a family member to see what happened.
HP: I wanted to ask you about some of the protests, because there have been some very important protests. And I think, importantly, they’ve been in different parts of Switzerland, in the French-speaking part, in the German-speaking part. And one of the moments that I thought was very powerful last year was a video where there was this big crowd and everyone took a knee for four minutes to represent the time that police left Nzoy without medical assistance.

This was very similar to some of the massive protests we saw in the U.S. around George Floyd, and even before that. Do you see connections happening between these racial justice protests internationally? Are you finding ways to build solidarity?

EW

: Yes, I think we are on the way to building solidarity. I think that it’s different for the U.S. When it comes to what’s happening in Europe, it takes a long while until it gets outside of Europe. We are not used to those kinds of protests, and somehow maybe we still have to learn how to protest. George Floyd’s story was all over and we protested.

The protests here are smaller. And it was always easier to point to others outside of Europe than to look at what happened in Europe itself and, kind of, clean our own carpets first.

WG

: To that broader point, Switzerland has developed an international reputation as this kind of neutral, impartial country when it comes to international relations. The end of wars is negotiated in Switzerland. Treaties on human rights are negotiated in Switzerland. Rules of war are negotiated there. How does it square with a recent UN report that pointed to what you have been discussing about their structural racism? How does that square with the reputation that Switzerland has built internationally?

EW

: Exactly. This is something that Switzerland doesn’t want to have, which they totally deny. Officially, they say that there are just a few cases when it comes to racism, but, it’s not a few cases. Racial profiling, racism in Switzerland, is really a huge, huge topic when it comes to people who are affected by it.

We are affected on a daily basis, and Switzerland denies that. They say that we are too sensitive. We are crazy. We are just a small group who experienced that. They say that we have to integrate more. How can you integrate more if you are born here, speak the language, and have a job?

There is a limit to integration, but they are always putting it this way: You have to integrate more, and you have to be more accepting of society. It’s your fault. You experience racism in Switzerland, and it’s your fault.

HP

: One thing that makes me think of is, whenever there’s a police killing, when we talk about police racism, that’s usually the tip of the iceberg in terms of how racist the society is. Can you talk a little bit about the laws in Switzerland around hate speech and racism?

EW

: It’s ridiculous. I was affected by racism in my working space. I wanted to report it. And they said, “Listen, you can’t report it because it was private.” It was in a working environment. Actually, it was a U.S. company I was working for, and I could only report it to the company. I could not go to the police because they won’t take it as racial harassment if it’s not in public. If somebody on the street, let’s say on the railway station, shouts at me, then I can go to the police if I am a victim and say, that happened to me. Otherwise, there is no chance. It has to be public and there have to have witnesses.

On the first of August, it’s like the 4th of July in the U.S., Swiss Nationality Day. And there, I went to the spot where Switzerland actually was built. It was a nightmare. There’s a friend of mine, a Black woman. She’s from Kenya originally, but has been in Switzerland for 13 years. And she sang there. And I heard—I don’t know, but I was traumatized afterward—I don’t know how many times I heard “nigger” there. “There’s so many niggers. So many niggers.”

Of course, she invited all her friends. People commented, “So many niggers in this place. We never saw niggers there, niggers there.” And this was public, during the day. It’s just normal.

And then we have a lot of traditional things. We have a sweet called Mohrenköpfe. And this word is the German name for “nigger.” So you have these sweets called, “Nigger Heads,” and people were protesting. Black people were protesting: “No, this is racism.” And the traditionalists came to say, “No, this is culture. We have to keep it.”

So when it comes to racism in Europe, it’s a very, very difficult topic. To say, “Oh, okay, we had those colonized issues and statements, and now we have to change.” It’s always like, “I know this is our culture, but it’s not the culture to be a racist in the next generation.” We can learn from that. But there as well, especially, Switzerland is very, very picky when it comes to changing the names of streets named for colonial generals. “It’s a culture we have to keep.” Whatever it is.

WG

: Are there people in Switzerland who deflect charges of racism saying it’s not as bad as it is in other countries like the United States? That kind of deflection exists, too, in the United States, where people in the north will say it’s better in the north than it is in the southern United States or it’s better in the city.

EW

: Exactly. They kind of push racism out of their life. “It’s not so bad in our area, and I’m not racist.” But they are still using those kinds of terms. They are going to the shops and ordering more of what we call “chocolate apes.”

And they always say, yeah, if you are integrating yourself, then you don’t have a problem with racism. And this is just not true. You have a problem with racism every time, even though I speak Swiss German fluently. Every time I enter a room with people who don’t know me, they start to speak high German because they think I’m not fluent in the language.

So it’s like English slang, I speak fluent slang because I was born here and raised here, and then you speak to me in English like a school child. And this happens to me in every place, every day.

Also, when it comes to racism, people don’t help each other. You know, they don’t say, ah, I saw that and this is not how it should go. They just walk away and you are alone there. And probably they think, oh, if she would’ve been more integrated, she wouldn’t have that problem. They always find an excuse.

HP

: I have one more question on that. This is a very long process. What do you think it will take to start to build that solidarity so that you can continue this campaign and keep it in the public eye? And what do you think it will take to win, and how can people outside of Switzerland support this campaign?

EW

: Honestly, I think we will win when we have the money. If we have the cash, I think then we have a chance to win, then we have a chance to fight. We can get experts and so on. It’s a money thing.

To keep the campaign going, I have no idea, to be honest. I think about how I can keep the topic visible for ten years. We are living as well in a fast world. News from yesterday is not anymore. For the moment, Nzoy’s case is the last of a person in Switzerland who died out of police violence.

When will be the next one? Those kinds of questions really, really worry me when I think about the future, or, how can I win justice for my brother. Those kinds of questions already worry me. How can I do this?

For sure it’s helpful to have eyes from outside of Switzerland to watch what we do. Switzerland usually does things when it gets uncomfortable for them; then they start to clean up their things. The pressure has to come from outside Switzerland.

Nzoy poses for a picture with his hands slightly raised in a blue hoodie and a yellow shirt with a large image of U.S.-born rapper Tupac Shakur (also known as 2Pac and Makaveli) on the shirt against a white backdrop.
Nzoy poses for a picture wearing a shirt of his musical hero, U.S. born rapper Tupac Shakur (also known as 2Pac and Makaveli). Photo credit: Justice4Nzoy.

WG

: Discuss the position this puts you in. It’s almost like a full-time job to have to advocate for justice, to raise money, and so on. How does it allow you to take the time you need to grieve the loss of your brother?

EW

: I don’t have any time for that. I ask myself, how long can I keep this up? I could not afford to take time off of work. I really had to work. And yes, we had those demonstrations, and money came in, and now it’s actually that we are in a little bit of a position where we have some cash. Now it comes back to me. It’s the second year and it goes on and nothing happens.

Now somehow I feel more sadness and ask myself the question, how should I do that? But if I don’t know what happened to my brother, how can I mourn? How can I let it go? How can I accept that he’s dead? How?

These are difficult questions for me, for his friends, and for his family. When we fight for justice, when we get justice, we can heal. And now somehow I feel we will not get the justice we want. Or in ten years.

And the state portrays the police officer as a victim. He’s getting support from doctors. He has to overcome this tragic day. But we don’t get that. We are left alone and we have to deal alone with how we manage to get over this.

HP

: Are you in touch with the other family members who’ve lost people?

EW

: No. No. This kind of network does not exist. Why? I don’t know, maybe it’s the struggle to keep your daily life, just to survive. It doesn’t allow you to build this network. We don’t have this kind of network here. But, for example, in France, they have it, they work together, they support their families, and so on. Here, absolutely not.

It’s very sad, because you don’t know how to go, where to go. You have no idea. I have built this experience, we have built this experience. I hope it won’t be needed, but we would tell the next family, the first half year is–you can’t breathe. You can’t. You can’t. It’s a shock.

It’s still a shock even now, but after half a year, you start breathing again. You start kind of feeling yourself again, where you are, how you were before. I never thought I would have to bury my younger brother. This was his job. Okay? I’m the older one, so it would’ve never crossed my mind. Never, ever. And then I had to decide how to bury him. Oh, no, no, no. And to make decisions about the case, what lawyer, da, da, da. This was just a nightmare. We made many mistakes by not knowing, because nobody said we have to do it this way or that way.

What I can say now is while I’m talking to others who have the same experience of police brutality, it’s just everywhere the same. I can just, you know, take out and change the names, right? But how they act and react in every country is the same. So, George Floyd in Switzerland would’ve been treated the same way as in the U.S., and the media would have been the same way.

It’s nothing specific to any country. It’s just all over the same, how they deal with the situations. If I had known that, I could have moved maybe better. I don’t know.

We were left alone. And now after one year, actually, we can say we are gathering a network of support from people around, who I really appreciate, who help, who will say the fight will go on; it doesn’t have to end if I have a heart attack tomorrow that nobody will fight for Nzoy again.

It has to be a community issue. The community has to say, Hey, we don’t want to have that. We don’t want to live in a world where police kill Black people, especially Black men. This is pure and simple. Stop killing Black people. And this Afro-phobic society. This, we can’t change alone. White people have to as well say, let them live. It’s the only thing we want.

We have to fight this and stand for this together. It’s wherever we are. We just have to hold hands and fight this together. It has gone on too long.

Why can’t we have a secure life? Racism in general has to be fought as a unity. We can change everything. Why can’t we change racism? We can heal cancer. Why can’t we heal this cancer?

HP

: I think what you said about the international piece is really important. The more we can make this work internationally, the stronger we will be. Because you’re right: Police racism is everywhere. It’s a global problem. If you come to Switzerland and you have a bad day and you are in Morges, it could have happened to you as well, right?

WG

: Yes. You don’t get to leave your Blackness behind in your home country.

EW

: But this is a thing that we have to discuss as well, globally. In the U.S., a whole country of many people, there are also threats. And what does that do to you, knowing that? My brother felt hunted. He said, listen, they want to kill me. They want to kill me. And they did. And his reaction to it was just self-defense.

He was hunted by the police because of how he looked. Of course, it wasn’t in his imagination in the end. Actually, it was true. It wasn’t a fantasy. It was reality, as well.

He had a bad day, a very bad day, but his feeling about what was going on was real.

HP

: Because the threat that he was afraid of was actually a legitimate threat. Even for people who have not gone through what you are going through, and I can’t imagine what that is like, I think that for every Black person, if you have family members, especially like me with my younger Black cousins, my fear is always that this could happen to them, right?

That’s why we fight so hard, because we know so clearly this could be any of us. It feels like it’s someone we know.

EW

: My brother always wanted to come to the U.S. He was like, I want to go to California. I said, no, you are not going there. In the last few months, he asked, let me have my holidays in California. And I was like, no, no, you stay here. Here, you are safe. It’s your hometown. You are not going anywhere. The government told us, you are safe here.

It’s not like they told us it would be. You know, for example, when the murder of George Floyd happened, in Switzerland, the reaction was, we are so happy that we don’t have that here.

And by the time George Floyd died, we already had three victims in the same canton, but nobody was crying about those victims. Everybody was going to the street about George Floyd and the American story, which was tragic. But what happened here, was pushed away. The media pushed it away as well. And the media can be really, really powerful in how cases go.

WG

: I think it’s important for white people to listen first to the story you are sharing. Generally, white people take two approaches. We either are racist and don’t care, or we care and we feel like we need to fix it ourselves, and we need to solve it on behalf of you, on behalf of Black people. There’s a kind of white savior mentality that can exist. That in its own right works in its own way in kind of dehumanizing and lowering you, and lowering people of color, making them less equal.

EW

: I think solidarity is most important. White people should reflect on themselves and their own racism.

A lot of white people think, oh, well, I’m not racist at all. But in their daily reactions and actions, they have racist behavior. To reflect on and see that, I think that’s the next step, which somehow has to come. It’s a reflection thing, maybe also a training thing.

My brother always said, during the night, I have problems walking alone as a man. And I said, no, but you are so humble. But then he said, yeah, but you know me. He felt that white people were afraid of him, especially in the dark. Maybe people have to be trained not to be afraid of Black people in the dark.

This is a social issue, for which we all have to work together. This is something that we have to somehow do as a society. This has to be about feelings, about how you feel about other people. And this feeling has to somehow change.


How you can help:

Please donate to the Justice 4 Nzoy GoFundMe page to help Nzoy’s family cover legal costs and other fees associated with the investigation into his death.

You can also visit https://justice4nzoy.org/ and follow @justice4nzoy on Instagram for updates on the campaign.


Featured Image credit: Justice for Nzoy; modified by Tempest.

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William Gifis and Haley Pessin View All

William Gifis is a bisexual, a socialist, a writer, and a mental health advocate originally from Hopewell, NJ. He is also a Co-Chair for the High Peaks chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America and a member of the Tempest Collective.

Haley Pessin is a socialist activist based in New York. She is a member of the DSA Afrosocialist Caucus and of the Tempest Collective.