Statement on Antioch Shooting
In light of the tragic shooting incident at Antioch High School, the Black Alliance for Peace Nashville City Wide Alliance and the Middle Tennessee Black Gun Club (MTBGC) extend our deepest condolences to the family of Josselin Corea Escalante, the youth of Nashville, and the community impacted by the events.
This tragedy is a stark reminder of the deep rooted violence that exists within our schools, which, in context, is a symptom of the violence that infects our communities. During our search for solutions, we enter a cycle of never-ending commentary that, though partially well-intentioned, leads back to reinforcing the pre-existing violent structures that produce these tragedies.
BAP Nashville & MTBGC believe it’s important to remember the context in which we exist. The State of Tennessee is the birthplace of Andrew Jackson, the President who led the charge for the genocidal Trail of Tears. This is also the birthplace of the Ku Klux Klan and where Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated. Currently; we are ruled by a GOP supermajority who wantonly strip our schools of public dollars through vouchers and call special sessions to strengthen ICE. It is also a major hub for small-arms manufacturers in the U.S.
As the state capital, Nashville is a neoliberal stronghold that often reinforces the actions coming from the Governor and Tennessee General Assembly. This is best exemplified through institutions such as Oracle, CoreCivic, and the Fraternal Order of Police, who all have headquarters based in Nashville. The city being the residence of right-wing talking heads ( Candace Owens, Ben Shapiro, Jason Whitlock, and Tomi Lahren) further reinforces the reactionary character of the city’s power structure.
In contrast, the Music City also holds a beautiful history of resistance. Nashville is the birthplace of Callie House, Mother of the Reparations Movement for formerly enslaved Africans. It is also the location of the first large-scale, organized student sit-ins that led to the city being the first in the South to desegregate its public facilities. When Dr. King visited the students, he referred to their work as one of the most disciplined student movements in the country.
With this larger context in mind, it is no surprise that we have a local environment where fascist thinking, i.e. thinking that reinforces the legacy of chattel slavery and colonialism writ large, reigns supreme, actively shaping the thinking of our youth. Reports of ICE raids, hostile online conversations between Black and Latinx communities, defunding our public schools, and a city government pushing for increased surveillance all served as catalysts for the tragic event on January 22nd. Antioch, the location of the shooting, is a part of Metro Nashville with a significant Black and non-white immigrant population that had already been traumatized by a mass shooting tragedy in a Waffle House in 2018.
[Following at least one previous incident threatening another student, isolation, consumption of neo-Nazi reddit media, and posting Nazi-esque statements about his life, 17 year old Solomon Henderson fatally shot 16 year old Josselin Corea Escalante, injured another student, and proceeded to shoot himself in the head]. As we've seen in media cycles following previous mass shootings, conversations about the causes are reduced solely to easy access to firearms and isolation, with some casual references to Solomon’s embrace of online white nationalists’ propaganda. The danger of this discourse lies in the refusal to take seriously the aforementioned historical context and current shifting of the masses within the U.S. empire farther to the right, which includes Black communities.
As a consequence of this increasingly rightward shift, we can expect more ICE raids, increased surveillance, and continued criminalization of Black & Latinx youth, all proven to be effective in destroying, not creating, community safety. Only through mass political education and struggle for power through revolutionary organization can there be any hope for the youth of Antioch, Nashville, and Tennessee writ large.
The Black Alliance for Peace’s campaign, the Zone of Peace, is informed by the historic Black Radical Peace Tradition that examines the structures and interests that generate state violence; we fight to expel those nefarious forces from our city and our state. An aspect of the Zone of Peace is Community Control; we believe our communities should have the self determination to decide what’s best for their communities, and we seek to empower communities to take charge of our own affairs.
The Middle Tennessee Black Gun Club is urging our communities to Take the Pledge to train. Above all else, we keep us safe FIRST. Community Control of Defense is also in the spirit of the Zone of Peace. We believe it’s important for communities to be empowered to protect our communities by learning how to maneuver and navigate these oppressive structures around us until we bring them down. We offer firearm safety training, Stop the Bleed training, home and personal defense, pepper spray, and a multitude of other skills that communities can learn to take our safety in our hands.
A grounded analysis is needed at this moment. BAP Nashville & MTBGC reject any attempt to strengthen the structures that perpetuate the violence in our communities. The people of Nashville, especially the youth, have the right to build their own futures, free of fascistic state legislatures and complicit neoliberals.
TAKE THE PLEDGE
NO TO SURVEILLANCE, NO TO FUSUS
BUILD A ZONE OF PEACE
Banner photo: Reunification site at Ascension Saint Thomas Medical Partners Antioch following Antioch High School shooting, Jan. 22, 2025"