Unarmed and Killed by the Police

*Streets and Beats was a forum on NPR hosted by award winning journalist Michel Martin

Streets and Beats/Police Shootings

Even the smallest light can pierce the greatest darkness, for that reason I appreciated the Streets and Beats forum. However, the reach of a small light in the midst of great darkness is limited to the space directly next to it, and for that reason I was left wanting by the forum. There was so much that went unsaid and unaddressed. I heard the usual rhetoric about categorizing the shootings of unarmed people in understanding the cops’ decision making process under the life and death pressure of seconds, what I feel is misplaced optimism about the future, a misrepresentation of the past and present, and the usual scapegoating of personal perceptions and mental health. So although the intent may have been to further the conversation and begin processing toward an answer to the far too frequent killing of unarmed people, the outcome was a microcosm of the stalemate that exists between the shooters and those being shot.

From tweets to comments made by the deputy sheriff I heard about the dangers of the streets, the daunting weight of the heat of the moment, human nature, and police officers’ personal fears. As I listened I wondered in what other profession could such tragic outcomes be overlooked and/or justified by the overwhelming demands of that profession. Could firefighters justify leaving people in burning and collapsing buildings because people are naturally afraid of fire and they have a fear of dying? Could teachers walk out of class rooms and refuse to teach because their personal beliefs cannot tolerate disrespectful hard to reach children or children they are afraid of? Could people in the military run from or refuse to go into battle because they have a fear of dying or being shot at? Could surgeons justify letting people die during surgery because they have a fear of blood or of contracting a bloodborne pathogen? The mere stating of the questions sounds ridiculous. But we have police officers claiming that they are making mistakes because of the extreme demands of their jobs and they are still employed. Why?

More frequently I am seeing reports where civilians are put through police training where many, if not all of them, have shot unarmed people during simulated exercises. This is usually followed by the civilians stating how hard making split second decisions to shoot or not to shoot are. Then the police reiterate how difficult their jobs are and how people in general would shoot unarmed persons in the same situations. To me this is ironic and insulting to my intelligence. I am blatantly being told I should excuse, or at least understand, the shooting of unarmed people by trained police officers because untrained civilians would have done the exact same thing. If trained officers are no better at doing their jobs than untrained civilians then there is clearly something inadequate about police training and/or officer selection. What other skilled professional could justify their unsatisfactory performance by claiming they are at least performing at the level of their unskilled peers?  The admission of similar responses and outcomes to that of the general public is one of the scariest things I have heard in my life. I now know for sure that I have no better odds of surviving an intense encounter with police than I do with a random armed stranger.

As a male of color I have lived by a code of conduct common to most of my peers since I was a child. My goal since I can remember dealing with the police was not to avoid being arrested, it was make it home alive. The current events caught on tape have been common place my entire life and were expressed to me in words of warning and concern by the adults who raised and reared me.  It upsets me that the rash of police shootings are being treated like they are a new phenomenon. People of color have been dying at the hands of the police since before I was born. The problem was that it was the police’s word against ours and the police were given the benefit of the doubt while we the victimized were labeled as liars, complainers, and haters of the police and the law.

I learned of Emmett Till at an age where I looked like him. I was ushered from the parking lot of a Mississippi mall by friends because I was walking with my arm around my friend, who was a white girl, and people had begun stopping and staring at us. I watched in fear as a police officer put a gun to my brother’s head and threatened to blow a hole in it. When my brother replied to the officer that he was just doing what the officer instructed him to do, the officer replied “next time tell me before you are going to do it.” And all this came about because we were stopped for looking suspicious. What did we do that looked suspicious? We were two of five young black males in a car with out-of–town license plates driving down a known “drug street.” That was the only justification given when we were stopped for about 25 minutes and surrounded by at least 8 to 10 police officers. When I was clearly a grown man I was stopped for speeding and then called “boy” repeatedly by a white police officer and told what I wouldn’t do again in “his town.”

My mother was taken out of a retail store by police because she reportedly fit the description of a notorious shoplifter.  She was handcuffed, taken to the police station, and processed. Now I will rewind and fill in important gaps. The store clerk identified my mother to the police as a valued and known customer. My mother had a store issued credit card. My mother had a host of ID including her social security card, driver's license, credit cards, and her postal employee ID. At the time she was head of procurement for the entire Chicago Post Office. According to the police that wasn't enough to rule her out as the wanted shoplifter and therefore it was necessary to  handcuff her and take her to the police station. So when I see videos of shootings and police misconduct it looks overly familiar, brings back painful memories, and reminds me how not much if anything has changed, except now the world knows we are telling the truth and they still are taking the side of the police.

Which is why I was so surprised when the entire panel expressed optimism about police maleficence, stating it has decreased and the state of affairs has improved. As they were saying this I was taken back to the recent story where a man was facing prison time for allegedly eluding police, resisting arrest and aggravated assault on an officer. Later it was found out through video that the man was assaulted by the police including having his window busted open and being pulled out of the car as he sat in it with his hands up in plain sight.  It is easy to come to optimistic conclusions when each occurrence is looked at as an isolated unique incident and facts and habits are ignored and replaced by personal desires and hopes; but no one considering history, current trends, and the facts could be optimistic without being delusional.

The buzz words I have extracted from the conversation are fear, threat and danger. The overarching theme  I've extracted is "legitimate." Together the concepts, in my opinion, paint one of the most convincing arguments for the existence of inherent racism and prejudice ever made. Consider the next scenario. A grown man healthy and strong walks out of a room claiming he is in mortal danger because the person that was in the room means him harm and ill intent. Then you walk in the room to find a six month old child in diapers playing with toys. At that point not only does the man's judgment get called into question, but also his intelligence and grasp of reality. The reason being is that an infant does not possess the ability or wherewithal to do an adult harm or act with ill intent. For anyone to honestly validate the man's fears they would have to first honestly believe the baby has the capacity for harm and ill intent and that there is a real danger and a chance of the man being harmed.

It is the same in the cases of the police shootings. For anyone to say the police are justified in shooting unarmed people there has to be an honest belief that an unarmed person poses real danger and potential harm to multiple trained and armed police officers, even when handcuffed face down on the ground with an officer holding down the person's head; officers who also have nightsticks, handcuffs, and tasers. This is nothing more than the racist characterization of black men as dangerous animals. The fictionalization of some uncontrollable rage and fury that has to be met with deadly force.  The implication is that facing an unarmed angry black man is a dangerous life threatening event that justifies shooting and killing him even before he has made an aggressive gesture directly targeting the police officers. Would this be an acceptable defense if police officers and race were not involved. Would two white men armed with sticks, tasers, and guns be acquitted for shooting an unarmed angry and aggressive white man because they were afraid, and without the reason for their fear being brought into question? Of course not. It is the blanket justification of unarmed people of color being viable threats to multiple trained and armed officers that highlights the racial prejudice and bias that is not being addressed.

Equally disheartening is the scapegoating of those with mental impairments: the claiming or implication that the victims' mental capacity validated police fear and the subsequent use of deadly force responses. There is a mental health profession which is unarmed and  deals daily with people labeled by society as "crazy" and/or "insane" and there is no common or accepted practice of killing them when they escalate or act aggressively. Neither is there a trend of mental health professionals dying in the line of duty. When a person with mental impairments becomes a danger to self or others they are hospitalized, which is called a 5150. Key in this process is that the person must be a clear threat to their self or others with clear intent and viable means, yet they still are not shot and killed in fear.  When hospitalized people with mental impairments have psychotic breaks they are confronted by unarmed individuals who assist the mental health professionals with de-escalating and controlling the situation.  Again no one is shot or killed. If unarmed non-tactically trained individuals can deal with people with mental impairments and make it out alive without killing anyone, then how much more should tactically trained and armed officers be able at least subdue someone with mental impairments who is unarmed without killing them.  The difference between the two professions is training and experience with the given population. Just like mental health professionals should not start policing, police should not be required to do the job of mental health professionals or use their lack of expertise as mental health professionals as justification for killing people.

Where race becomes the most divisive, in my opinion, is in the marginalization and usurping of the suffering of people of color. People of color have been complaining about injustice, brutality, and unfair treatment at the hands of the law and police for centuries and for centuries the complaints were challenged and disputed. However these complaints are not acknowledged until the aforementioned issues become indelible public spectacles or widespread societal problems. At which point society admonishes people of color for trying to racialize or politicize human suffering, or minimizes the grossly disproportionate suffering. People of color are then labeled as separatists, exaggerators, opportunists, or the like for continuing to point out that injustice, brutality, and unfair treatment under the law and by police are predominantly matters of race. Then they are urged to join together under banners such as “all lives matter.” Missing in the banners are the unspoken words “…as long as the lives of people of color aren’t the only ones being affected.” 
When suffering is limited to people of color or manages to avoid the public view and discourse, black lives don’t matter. So let me clarify the true meaning of the statement “black lives matter.” It simply means that black lives matter all the time and not just when other lives are affected. It means black lives are sufficient in and of themselves to justify the public interest, action, and outrage when they alone are the brunt of injustice and denial of constitutional rights. When society pays attention to problems they previously ignored and now claim as public domain, they do what I call the “Christopher Columbus:” claiming that what already existed did not exist until they became of aware of it and now claiming it as their own. This is a condescending and contempt eliciting behavior common in the American discourse, and as long as it exists and persists, racial relations in the country will be tumultuous at best.  

Anthony C. Rucker
Doctoral Student

Author of The Relationship Cookbook
Anthony@relationshipcookbook.com

Regulation: The Systemic Dismantling of Our Inalienable Rights

According to the declaration of independence life, liberty,and the pursuit of happiness are inalienable rights. The fact that they are rights means they are supposed to be guaranteed; however, regulations have systemically revoked theses rights and turned them into paid privileges. Consequently, our rights have been usurped under the guise of protecting them.

To live a person needs food, water, shelter, and clothing. This sounds simple until it is considered that to get food one has to hunt, gather, or fish and these are regulated. To hunt and fish a license is required; therefore unless everyone becomes vegetarian there no longer exists a right to food. However, the state is proprietor of all property not privately owned and that makes all unauthorized occupants trespassers and anyone gathering fruits and vegetables thieves, which means being a vegetarian is no longer a right either.

As far as shelter goes, people need building permits, inspections, etc. So shelter is no longer about acquiring the needed materials and building. Shelter is about zoning, inspector approval, building codes, and the ability to pay property taxes. Therefore shelter is no longer a right, it is a privilege people pay for. The fact that taxes have to be paid on property means that only two entities can own property: governments and non-profit organizations. Ownership is the legal right of possessing something, therefore if a person has to pay to maintain possession of something they are renting it, not possessing it. The result is shelter is not only no longer a right, it is no longer an option. We will pay for our “right” to shelter our entire lives or end up homeless.

Let’s say a person wants to pursue happiness in another country, but doesn’t want to get a passport. That person will not be allowed to pursue their happiness. Although this is an international regulation, it still holds that our government has revoked the right for its people to freely travel. If passports had existed in times of exploration, there would be no new world. The king would have simply revoked the passport of everyone he did not trust to uphold and enforce his interests.

I know I am addressing regulations in a different form than the video, but the principal is the same. Regulations have been put in place, and so have regulatory bodies to monitor them. The cost of maintaining the regulations and regulators are then passed down to the people that both were created to protect. The result is now rights have become paid privileges and some people can’t afford to exercise their rights because they can’t pay the fees being charged by the people who were hired to ensure their rights. Consequently capitalism has become our economic premise and our primary political system. And as seen with our right to a free public education and the current educational system, when the economic belt gets tightened the only rights that will be guaranteed are the ones we can pay for.

Reparations: Do We Get It Now?

 

 

With all the atrocities and miscarriages of justice African Americans have complained and marched about from Rodney King to Katrina to Jena Louisiana, I still don’t think we get it.  We think we live in a place other than an America that kidnapped and enslaved us for centuries and has still not admitted that the heinousness of their acts were crimes against humanity genocide and unjustified and that has yet to apologize for them. We also live in an America that has apologized for the internment camps during World War II and called them a result of "...race prejudice, war hysteria, and a failure of political leadership" and paid reparations to surviving internees. As of October 11th the U.S. House Foreign Affairs Committee passed a resolution that labeled the Ottoman Empire’s World War I massacre of Armenians as “genocide.”  In international law a crime against humanity is an act of persecution or any large scale atrocities against a body of people, and it’s the highest level of criminal offenses. Yet to this day the largest known persecution and genocide against any people of any ethnicity has been against us and there has not been one single solitary act carried out to address it.

            Do we get it yet? Our genocide is so wide spread and so deeply entrenched in what is called “the progress of the world” that taking responsibility and paying reparations for it would put a black eye on the morality of the world as well as change the balance of its economic power. Spain, Holland, Denmark, France, and Great Britain would have to ante up. Not to mention the Vatican that said enslaving Africans was spiritually alright and who grew wealthy off African enslavement. In 1998 the Vatican said “...As far as possible, reparation should erase all the consequences of the illicit action and restore things to the way they would most probably be if that action had not occurred. When such a restoration is not possible, reparation should be made through compensation (equivalent reparation)." That means we would get back Africa, the most mineral rich continent on the planet, or its equivalent and the monetary value of 500 years of mass slaughter and kidnapping. Let’s quit fooling ourselves, reparations aren’t ever coming in the form of a willing or legislative act. At most what we should expect is remuneration, a monetary payment that would act as punitive damages for our suffering.

            We are continually ignored and denied the dignity of an apology justice and a returning of what was taken from us because morally politically socially and economically it would condemn everyone who would took part in them, switch the locus of global control to our favor, and totally destroy the ethical and moral high ground that the beneficiaries of these crimes claim as a basis for their position in the today’s existence. If at any point the people of the world acknowledge our enslavement for what is was it automatically acknowledges their guilt and blatant disregard for truth and justice. They have to maintain the idea of us being a mongrel people, minimize our contributions, and globally portray us as less-than to maintain their piece of mind.

 

Do we get it now?

 

 

We can't control our children?

For those of us who believe we can’t control our children, congratulations on giving up our children and speak for yourself. Children are totally at the mercy of adults. Everything they see, experience, hear, and have access to is controlled by adults, especially in a capitalistic society which does not recognize children as full participating members until they are 21 years old. Unless there are adults who cop out and expose children to age inappropriate stimuli and situations because “the child is going to experience it anyway” a child’s interactions with the world can be simple and safe. In 99.9 percent of the instances where a child breaks the rules you can find an adult who helped them do it.

            My mother and father controlled almost every move I made. They monitored and limited what I could watch and listen to and where I could go. If I was not in voice distance I had to let them know where I was going. If I was going to a friend’s house it would have to be a friend whose parents my mother had met, that she had visited before, and that had a phone number. No exceptions. If I went to the store I had a time limit. My room was searched sporadically and I was not allowed to bring home anything that was not bought for me by my parents. One day a friend and I switched jackets and my mother made me walk to his house to return it and get mine. She was the final word on everything from clothes to hairstyles. My father reinforced everything my mother said and of course added his own set of rules. Both of them let me know that privacy and autonomy was not an option until I was taking care of myself and outside of their houses. They also let me know I would fear God or meet him – NO EXCEPTIONS!            

            I concede that children who steal are the exceptions to the rule, but barring blatant theft all inappropriate behavior is aided by adults. Children smoke because adults buy and sell them cigarettes. Children drink because adults buy and sell them alcohol. Children dress scantily because adults buy them scanty clothes and give them money and allow them to buy scanty clothes. Children watch inappropriate television programs because adults give them access to the televisions and channels with the inappropriate content. They listen to garbage music because adults buy them garbage music and give them money and allow them to buy garbage music. Barring theft there is no getting around adults. Everything a child has used to from drugs to weapons has been manufactured and distributed by an adult. Even children who steal have been exposed to what they stole before they stole it by an adult.

            If the community participated in the raising of all children there would be no outlets or safe spaces for negative behavior. We wouldn’t have children terrorizing neighborhoods or schools. As for the children I bring into this world, they will be monitored and controlled and any adult who prescribes to the “the child is going to experience it anyway” attitude will be promptly removed from access to them and replaced with an adult who has a spine and sense of responsibility. Lastly, for all those who think my views on parenting are extreme or will alienate children I say what I said to a girl who was a resident of a group home that I was working at, the way your parents raised you got in a group home and the way my parents raised me has me working in one and making money off of what your parents didn’t do. The End.

 

Gangs and Irreverent Children of Color: The False Mythology

I’ve heard many people speak on the gang problem and black on black crime that claim our children are out of control, and worst yet are uncontrollable. Words like epidemic, pandemic, and genocide are thrown out so much that the words are probably tired from overuse. The tragedy of the destruction of lives and community is indisputable, the sorrow of those who have to live through it is immeasurable, and my spirit aches and moans for lack of words and adequate expression; however, I do not share the belief that our children are out of control or are uncontrollable. Our children are making harsh decisions, decisions that they don’t have the experience or understanding to proficiently make, based on the situations they are in and know what they are doing. They understand that for their every action there will be a reaction. Sadly to say our neighborhoods are the places of least resistance and least costly reactions to their inappropriate behaviors so our neighborhoods become the ground zeros for those behaviors.     

            The biggest myth in the world is that of uncontrollable gangs and irreverent children. When anyone uses these terms there stands a person who isn’t willing to reach deep enough into the bags of compassion wisdom and/or whoop-ass to change their conditions. So instead of taking responsibility for their actions they claim to be helpless victims of tyrannical children. Lies and b.s. is all that is. Let’s look at Oakland California, a place where 632 murders took place between the years of 2001 – 2006. I would imagine the three overused words would be used to describe this situation and used repeatedly in any discussions to drive the point home. But then we would look at Piedmont California, a city located in the middle of Oakland. When I say the middle I mean if Oakland was a doughnut Piedmont would be the doughnut hole. You can not get to it with out going through Oakland. The number of murders that took place there between 2001-2006....zero. That’s not a misprint, zero murders took place. How could people who were out of control and were uncontrollable kill 632 times and never once do it in the very center of their city?  Are the murderers afraid they will fall off the edge of Oakland? Are there force fields or great walls separating them? Why no murders in Piedmont?

            Here comes the whammy. There are no murders there for a number of reasons but the main ones are, they are neither tolerated nor accepted. No place is murder free forever but there are places where you rarely if ever have murders and that’s because it is affluent and rich people shop rather than shoot and/or it is known that the price to pay for “disturbing the peace” will be served swiftly with extreme malice and with no apologies. Piedmont is 79% white and the mean income is $134,270. Oakland is 31% white and the mean income is $40,000.  The invisible line is drawn, much like the train tracks that separated rich neighborhoods from poor neighborhoods, and based on your income, color, and social status you knew which side to be on. These fearless children are afraid. They just aren’t afraid of us. Piedmont is not an anomaly. There are Piedmonts in every state in America. The lines are just as distinct and just as defined. Our children don’t go there because they can’t; mentally they are bent on self-preservation and understand that that preservation is not likely to happen if they act up in Piedmont.          

            Maybe it’s time we stopped making excuses and being afraid of our children and make them afraid of us. Not in the Plantation owner enslaved African way, but in the, I love you and will save you from everyone including yourself way. The, you will fear God or meet God way. Disrespect and ignorance are bought cheap and tolerated to the point of nausea in our neighborhoods. Compassion, wisdom, and whoop-ass should be the most used words in our conversation. When we create options instead of excuses and raise the cost of disturbing our peace to a price our children aren’t willing to pay then we will be able to occupy our time talking about building life instead of struggling to maintain it.

 

 

The Almighty Media

All hail the Almighty Media! It seems the general belief is, the media is influencing the people of the world and shaping how they view events, themselves, and their lives, and there is nothing people can do to stop it. In clinical terms this is called projection. It’s where a person projects blame on something or someone to escape taking responsibility for their actions. The media is not almighty. Mass Media is based on the dissemination of words, pictures, or sounds to an observing audience. The key word in the last sentence is “observing.” Without a willing observer the media becomes the tree that falls in the woods when no one is there and everyone asks does it make a sound. Of course it makes a sound but if no one hears it, no one really cares? We care about what media says because we pay attention to what it says. Media affects us because we make ourselves available to its influences and lies. The power to control the influence of media is not only in controlling what it delivers, but it is also in being able to ignore what it saying.

            Don’t overlook the power of ignoring. If we stopped buying newspapers and magazines that habitually practiced yellow journalism and spin doctoring then they cease to be an influence. If we turn off TV and radio programs that spread lies and cover-ups then they cease to be an influence. For anything to influence us it first has to get our attention and then our consideration. The power to be influenced lies totally on the person who media is attempting to reach. Look at the Amish. With all of the dependence on modern technology, processed foods, pop culture, and mass media the Amish lifestyle has remained intact. You don’t see little Amish boys sagging or little Amish girls hoochifying dresses or going broke buying designer clothes. Because the Amish filter what comes into their communities and thusly filter what comes into their lives. With that filtering they limit the influence that all media has on them.  And believe you me, if the technological gods go crazy and this worldwide web crashes we will be running to them to help us survive, because without all our modern amenities most of us wouldn’t last a month.  It seems there are some benefits to ignoring things.

            What media does is a form of poisoning and for any poison to affect you it has to get inside you. We get poisoned so often because we are quick to swallow before inspecting what we are eating. In this age of the worldwide web we have access to media from around the world. The least we could do is gather information from different sources and compare what they are saying and dig for the truth instead of expecting it to be hand delivered to us. I imagine it’s really easy to tune-in, veg out, and accept everything one sees hears and reads as the truth. I also imagine it is really easy to manipulate and control people who do that; which, explains why most Americans are for prolonging a war in a place they can’t find on a map and that they know absolutely nothing about. Blame the media all you want but it is stupid people not stupid reporters that make the world a worst place to live. It is not the idiot box, but the idiot who can be controlled by a box that needs to be dealt with. Live free or die stupid, it’s your choice.

 

playing politics

How many of us have heard, heard of, or seen Jesse Jackson or Al Sharpton lecture on electoral politics, lobbying, or on the reforming of state policies concerning the electoral college? I don’t mean complain about. I mean instruction on how to use and control. I haven’t, and I think it’s because they haven’t and that’s one or our major problems. How can we seriously run for office when the people we are looking to for support seriously don’t know what they’re doing?  Pride aside, as a people African Americans have to admit we are ignorant of how politics work. I don’t mean the “what” happens. I mean the “how” it happens. Until we master the “how” we will always be playing politics instead of participating. Participating is having a say and influence in the creating, carrying out, and interpretation of law and policies.  Playing is finding out after laws and policies are shaped and then marching, rallying, and protesting when you are harmed by them or find out they will negatively affect you. We play at politics.

            This leads me to a conversation where a guy told me, it’s not about who is in office it’s about the people who influence them; as if the people who can influence an elected official are not based on whom that official is and what their allegiances are. I said that protest rallies, when they are your only political process, are not politicking they are begging. To which an organizer said, I disagree rallying is effective and it is a political process. Let me clarify, people hold protest rallies when they have been totally ignored by system or have no other recourse. You’ve never seen the democratic or republican parties hold protest rallies. That’s because they control what’s going on, they don’t have to rally. My main problem with rallying is, you need a victim or to be at the end of your political rope for rallying to work and to have a purpose. Absent of an ineffective or unjust political process what would be the need to protest or rally?

            I’m tired of waiting to be victimized to organize and exercise our right to free speech and economic choice. Let’s use over voices before we are bound and duct taped. Let’s exercise our economic muscle and influence to increase our options and possibilities instead of waiting to use it to limit our pain and liabilities. It’s a nice thing to know that we can overcome adversity. It’s a better thing to know we can put ourselves in a position where we most likely won’t have to. Although I think this is basic common sense, as a mentor once said around 1990 common sense ain’t so common any more.

 

Why I'm against and for the Reaction to the Jena 6(5 parts)

 

 

 

Part 1

 

            If you are not familiar with the Jena 6, do a quick Google search and catch your self up on the specifics. In general The Jena 6 is six African American males being unjustly prosecuted in Jena, Louisiana who are facing possibly spending a significant part of their adult lives in prison. The usual players and practices are now being set into motion. Everyone from the NAACP to the Nation of Islam is offering help and “monitoring” the proceedings. The NAACP has even passed an emergency resolution in support of the Jena 6. Michael Baisden is organizing people to go to Louisiana to show support and providing the six males mailing addresses in jail so they will know there are people working for their freedom. I appreciate the effort and concern. There is a national reaction, and the outrage and demand for justice is a sign that there is still life in the myths known as the African American Collective Community and Consciousness.

 

            My issue with all of this is its all reactionary. African Americans(AA)  have seemingly bought into the concept of progress based on the passing of years. I hear all the time “it’s 2007 and I can’t believe this kind of thing still happens.” I still don’t know what the two have to do with each other. There has not ever been a period of time where AA haven’t bled, protested, and died for their so called inalienable American rights, so why do we give so much credit to the passing of years?  Why do we act as if there has been some kind of racial and ethical rebirth of the American Way? America has never stopped killing us, they’ve just changed the way they do it, and these reactionary policies and politics will never change this fact. All that will happen, at best, is the Jena 6 will receive justice and we will live in a state of euphoria and false security until the same scenario plays out again somewhere else. If you think I’m being pessimistic look at our history, it will give irrefutable proof of this. This is not the first case of AA coming together to protest a gross injustice and it won’t be the last. Our actions have to become proactive because in the end a community that doesn't police itself and the politics that govern it will become a victim of its own apathy!

 

            We have to take advantage of local and state politics, where one person has one vote, and put people in office who reflect the change we wish to see in the political and justice systems. If there is a shortage of possible candidates then we who have the vision must become the candidates. Police brutality won’t change unless the people who make up the police dept become intolerable of it. Unfair charges and trials won’t change until District Attorneys and Judges refuse to allow such shortcomings in morality to pass for justice. Sentences will not be fair until our peers register to vote and become eligible for jury duty and deal with us fairly. We must find a way, and where there seems to be no way we must make a way. To quote Paul Robeson “…the equal place to which we aspire cannot be reached without the equal rights we demand, and so the winning of these rights is not a maximum fulfillment but a minimum requirement.” We have reached the mountain but not the mountain top and all the marches, protests, and national movements will not make the changes we need to live fairly and equally in this country. It all comes down to AA people taking responsibility and control of their lives. When we quit making excuses and begging for justice and use the wisdom, strength, cunning, resourcefulness, and unwillingness to go quietly into the night to affect our condition, our condition will change. Short of that, keep your picket signs, political chants, and marching shoes in good working condition. You’re going to need them.

 

(part 2 The truth behind the Black Vote and Politics