By Nicole Lee, Executive Director, Urban Peace Movement
June 10, 2026
At UPM, racial solidarity sits at the center of our youth organizing strategy. Today, in the face of another profound injustice, we feel its importance at our core.
Last week, we witnessed a South Carolina jury exonerate an Asian American shopkeeper for the murder of 14-year-old Cyrus Carmack-Belton, a Black child he falsely accused of taking water bottles from his store. We are outraged by the verdict, which again exposes the deep racism embedded within the justice system. But there is more to this moment than just our anger at the system.
Moments like this shake us to our core and pressure-test our commitment to multiracial solidarity. They force us to ask a difficult but necessary question: What does it truly look like to show up for one another across race and difference? And what are the consequences if we don’t?
Anti-Blackness and the adultification of Black children show up at every level of society. It is present in the systems we confront as activists — systems that routinely justify the use of pepper spray against kids in juvenile hall, systems that accept when a Fairfield police officer brutally attacks a 16-year-old at school, and, alarmingly, systems that permit the murder of young Cyrus without consequence.
When these unthinkable harms against Black children are carried out at the hands of other people of color, our profound anguish triggers deep introspection. As an Asian American community organizer (and now Executive Director) from Oakland who has committed my life to racial justice, this verdict only deepens my resolve and determination to continue this work and to strengthen our movement rooted in the values of racial justice. In this moment, we each must ask what true solidarity demands of us.
We must confront anti-Blackness wherever it exists. We must work to challenge anti-Blackness within the Asian Community and in every community. We must work to hold systems leaders and the justice system accountable. We must center Black Lives without qualification or exemption.
If we fail to live up to these values, if we turn away from our commitment to build real solidarity, if we forget the system of white supremacy that is at the root of this horrific act, we run the risk of playing into the hands of our opposition who benefit when we are divided.
Solidarity is not the easy choice. It requires honesty, accountability, and courage. But it is the path we must walk together. Our collective liberation depends on it.
About Urban Peace Movement
Urban Peace Movement (UPM) is an Oakland based nonprofit organization that leads campaigns and programs throughout Alameda County. UPM builds youth leadership to transform the culture and social conditions that lead to community violence & mass incarceration in communities of color. UPM leads with a “Healing-Centered Youth Organizing” model because we believe that organizing is healing and healing is organizing.