Friday 22 July 2016
I wasn’t afraid.
I took a stand
in Baton Rouge because
enough is enough.
‘When the armored officers rushed at me, I had no fear. I wasn’t afraid.’ Ieshia Evans protesting in Baton Rouge. Photograph: Jonathan Bachman/Reuters
The image of me protesting travelled around the world. I was there because the slaughter of our people by police officers had opened my eyes
____________________
JULY 20, 2016
Global 2016 And The
Radical Imagination
“We have a duty to fight for our freedom. We have a duty to win.”
– Assata Shakur
A demonstrator protesting the shooting death of Alton Sterling is detained by law enforcement near the headquarters of the Baton Rouge Police Department in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, U.S. July 9, 2016. © Jonathan Bachman / Reuters
Watching the endless footage of police murders of black and brown people can take a tremendous psychic toll. Already traumatized by the carnage, people of color and anti-racists risk slipping further into despair with each shattered body that flashes across their screens. That feeling of hopelessness—the sense that racism is inevitable, that we are doomed to spend our lives in the clutches of white supremacy—has political implications, as well. Among other things, such a perspective can cause would-be activists to lose faith in the possibilities of meaningful social change.
One function of state violence under racial capitalism is to suppress the most exploited and potentially rebellious elements of society. And few instruments of suppression are as effective as mass despair. Police, the violent arm of the ruling apparatus, exist mainly to insulate the dominant order. (“Law enforcement,” in the strictest sense of the phrase, is an almost ancillary task.) Thus it is necessary for police to both intimidate and demoralize surplus populations, or those people that capitalism has deemed disposable.
This is why Black Lives Matter and other grassroots movements have encountered such intense repression. The tanks, the semiautomatic weapons, the riot gear—all the trappings of authoritarianism arrayed against protesters testify to the deep fear of popular dissent on the part of governing elites. What is especially terrifying to the establishment is the sheer élan of street action. The spirit of revolt is contagious. And the growing audacity of Black Lives Matter demonstrations threatens to spread to other oppressed groups, precipitating a mass rising—a general strike—that exposes once and for all the cowardice and vulnerability of the organized defense of capital.
The problem for the forces of repression in this country is the same problem faced by all colonialist occupiers throughout history; the more inhabitants of the native quarter they maim and kill, the more unruly the subjugated population becomes. Each new attempt to instill fear (with fists, batons, tear gas, bullets) elicits greater defiance. If enough people become sufficiently alienated from the status quo, while confidence in the capacity of the masses to force change from below grows, then something remarkable happens: the inevitability of the reigning order melts away and a potentially revolutionary situation takes hold.
No one knows whether such circumstances will emerge in the U.S. But there are promising signs. Long-festering resentment against corporate greed and massive inequality is generating popular resistance, from the “Fight for 15” minimum wage crusade to the recent Verizon strike. These and other campaigns must be understood as part of a growing call for a new social contract, rather than as isolated battles for incremental gains. The grassroots Bernie Sanders movement is another manifestation of this underlying discontent. Though Sanders appears to have capitulated to the neoliberal machinery of the Democratic Party, a large swath of his supporters refuse to do so. They remain a galvanized mass, estranged from the duopoly of American electoral politics and hungry for alternatives.
Protesters gathered at Place de La Republique in Paris. Credit Eric Feferberg/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
A glance beyond the continental U.S. offers more evidence that a potentially transformative shift is underway. Taken collectively, sovereignty battles in Puerto Rico, educational and social justice movements in Oaxaca and South Africa, and anti-austerity revolts in France and other parts of Europe may signal the coming of a new age of rebellion. Though racism and xenophobia furnished much of the impetus for Brexit and the rise of Donald Trump, both projects draw on populist rage against oligarchy and its relentless assault on the economic security of the working class. Ironically, rapacious globalization is the source of both the refugee crisis and many of the social anxieties of nativist workers.
Let’s be clear. What we are witnessing are insurgencies on the right and the left—a rising tide of racism as well as a groundswell of anger against predatory capitalism. Far too often, the two seem to overlap. But there is cause for optimism. Ordinary people are being politicized. They are proving far more intractable than their rulers assumed them to be. They are refusing to remain within the bounds of permissible politics. Some are developing an awareness of themselves as historical actors. As their consciousness awakens, they will likely intensify demands for a reorganization of modern life.
What is the role of the radical thinker in such restless times? First, we must seek analytical clarity. In the U.S., for example, we must reject the notion that a choice between neo-fascism (Trump) and multicultural neoliberalism (Hillary) constitutes an acceptable range of democratic possibilities. At the very least, democracy requires the dismantling of a system that degrades black and brown life, punishes workers, and defiles the planet. Second, we must keep the faith. While we need sober assessment of reality, we must continue to believe that another world is possible and that popular self-activity can lead to transformation.
Finally, we need revolutionary optimism. As our grassroots movements mature, and as we attempt to deepen their antisystemic elements, we must combat resignation and nihilism. Perhaps we have not yet entered a revolutionary moment. The struggle is no less exhilarating. Let us not be paralyzed by hopelessness. Let us not squander this momentum. If the old order remains intact, at least “Global 2016” has already offered a collective defense of the radical imagination.
>via: http://www.aaihs.org/global-2016-and-the-radical-imagination/
It was 1am in Queens, New York. I was 18 years old. My roommate and I just wanted to buy some juice on our journey home from working night shifts in Manhattan. But as we came up to the busy corner store, a white police officer stopped me. He searched me and asked for my identification. I didn’t understand why.
“I just need to make sure that you’re not a prostitute,” he said, projecting his voice so that all the customers in the store could hear. Their jaws dropped. I was so embarrassed. We went home without the juice.
Would this have happened if I were a white woman? I don’t think so. I wasn’t dressed in a provocative way. You have the right to wear whatever the heck you want – in New York, it’s legal for women to go shirtless – but still: I was wearing a knee-length skirt and a dark blazer. I wasn’t hanging on a corner. My head was not stuck inside a guy’s car.
I had been blinded to the fact that this, and so much worse, was going on in America. That racism, whether subtle or blunt, is systemic.
It is in our neighborhoods, which are structured for the failure of our people. Here is your liquor store; here is your church; here are your overcrowded schools with books stuck together with scotch tape. And very little else.
It is in our media, where the light-skinned black woman with the green eyes and softer-textured hair is the one all over the billboards. Where there is uproar over a black man, his white wife and their interracial child featuring in a simple Cheerios commercial.
And it is in the abuse of power, not just by police officers but the entire judicial system, against black people. Abuse that culminates in the deadly shootings of men like Alton Sterling, whose killing in Baton Rouge drew me to Louisiana earlier this month.
When Ferguson, Baltimore and other protests broke out, I would make selfish excuses. I couldn’t travel. I had to work in my job as a nurse, because I had to pay the bills. I remember the guilt of feeling that I should be there.
This time, enough was enough. I had to do something.
Too many people are being slaughtered by those who are employed to serve and protect us. It is becoming the norm. Our government is not doing anything for us. So we’re going to have to do something for ourselves. Baton Rouge was enlightening. It opened my eyes. I had been sleeping for years. I have been sleeping and now I’m awake.
When the armored officers rushed at me, I had no fear. I wasn’t afraid. I was just wondering: “How do these people sleep at night?” Then they put me in a van and drove me away. Only hours later did someone explain that I was arrested for obstructing a highway.
They took our possessions and fingerprinted us. Then they stuck four of us women in a room together and had four officers strip-search us. We were all ordered to take off everything, to bend over, and to cough. There was no privacy, no dignity. We were treated as if we were murderers or child molesters. It was degrading. It angered me. These were black female officers, and they were treating us as if we were criminals.
People call us African Americans. But really we are Africans living in America. How can we call ourselves Americans when what is supposed to be our national constitution did not recognise us as human beings? We were not people – we were property. And despite the amendments, things have not really changed.
White Americans told Africans: “We’re going to kidnap you, we’re going to strip away your identity, then slowly give you back the rights you had from birth, and make you feel like they’re something special. We’re going to keep you stupid by making it illegal for you to read, or write, or go to school. So all you’ll know will be the lies we are force-feeding you.” We were force-fed another culture, another religion, other rituals, another language.
Barack Obama being elected president eight years ago was overwhelming. It was my first time voting. “We actually matter now,” I thought. But it was just a setup. And when that reality hits you, it’s harsh.
It is like being a child on a farm. You have this baby piglet and think it is an amazing thing. Then you have a couple of years with it, and grow to love it. And then finally it hits you that this pig is only on this farm to be slaughtered and harvested for its resources.
When you really think about it, what has Obama done for black people? What laws or rules has he passed for us? When the police kill someone, his first instinct is to try to pacify us. To talk about how we shouldn’t riot, that we should keep the peace, and that it’s a tragedy. Yes, it’s a tragedy, so what are you going to do about it? He’s done so much more for the LGBT community than he has for the Africans living in America.
Obama chose politics over his people, and it’s sad. He has let us down. Where is his uproar? Why isn’t he marching? Why isn’t he protesting? Doesn’t he feel strongly enough about the future of his daughters? Sandra Bland: that could have been one of his children.
I have a six-year-old son, Justin, and I fear more for his life than I do for my own. How should I raise him? To be afraid? To keep his head down and not get in trouble, to not look the police in the eye because they might mess with him? Or do I raise him in strength, to embrace his color, to know his rights and to know that he’s not breaking the law or doing anything unjust, that he’s going to be fine, and that no one should take away any of his civil liberties? Parents have a responsibility to wake the hell up and realize what’s going on.
The presidential election campaign has been disgusting. I won’t be voting; I refuse. It is in Donald Trump that the true colors of much of America are coming out. They hid behind all these veils, inside all these closets, for so long. And now the racism is right there.
And I don’t care what Hillary Clinton does to try to prove that she’s for black people. We are not going to forget it was her husband, blindly supported by a lot of black people, who put in place the system that has taken so many black men from their families and put them in prison for carrying the same weed that states are now legalizing.
Now she wants to disassociate and say, “Well, that was my husband.” Yes, well: you were there in the background, cheering him on.
Justin hasn’t seen the picture of me in Baton Rouge. Explaining what happened was difficult. I told him that Mommy got arrested and he said: “Why? I thought only bad people get arrested?”
I was stumped for a little bit. And then I just said: “You know what? That’s not always the case.”
>via: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/jul/22/i-wasnt-afraid-i-took-a-stand-in-baton-rouge-because-enough-is-enough?CMP=share_btn_fb