On August 3 in Lackawana, NY, a suburb of Buffalo, volunteer firefighter Kenneth Walker’s house was burned down. Walker is the only Black firefighter in the department. Two days earlier, on August 1, Walker had received a letter that said, among other things, “N******s are not allowed to be firefighters. No on wants you in this city. You have until the end of the week to resign your position or you will regret it…”
Although the family was out of the house at the time, their two cats perished and everything they owned was destroyed in the fire.
The next day a neighbor and former Tonawanda firefighter, Matthew Jurado, was arrested after admitting to setting fire to the house. He claimed he was disgruntled after being dismissed from the fire department for “not meeting minimum training requirements” according to Tonawanda fire chief Joseph Sikora. Jurado claims he did not write the racist note and that the act of arson was not race related, but the evidence suggests otherwise.
Although an arrest has been made, the impact on the family’s life is irreversible. The Buffalo, NY community has come together to support the Walkers in this time of need and to help them get back on their feet.
This incident comes a year after the massacre at the African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, NC by self-proclaimed apartheid advocate Dylan Roof that was followed by a series of arson attacks against Black churches throughout the South. This incident, however, shows that racist violence is not confined to the states to the south of the historic Mason-Dixon line.
Many people with racist sympathies feel emboldened by the campaign of Donald Trump and his crypto-fascist rhetoric. Only through working class solidarity and a bold, united resistance to fascism and racism will the people defeat the threat of racist terrorism in our communities.
