Have Black Lives Ever Mattered?. Mumia Abu-Jamal
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a gang member is beaten by persons unknown in a mixed neighborhood, and the black gangs begin terrorizing whites, it is called racism, a bunch of cops can ride through black neighborhoods all day beatin’ ass, and call it law, when a bunch of blacks beat one of these cops’ ass it’s called mob violence.”
—John Africa
A young woman, engulfed in a diabetic coma while sitting in her car, is repeatedly shot by a corps of cops, who say they are threatened by her. Tyesha Miller, of Riverside, California becomes a statistic.
A young man sitting in his car in North Philly is surrounded by a phalanx of armed cops whose guns are pointed at him from all points. He is ordered to raise his hands. When he does so, he is shot to death by one of the cops, who insists he thought he saw a gun. The 18-year-old is unarmed. Dontae Dawson becomes a statistic.
An emigrant from the West African nation of Guinea comes to America, taking an apartment in New York’s Bronx Borough. When four NYPD cops approach his door, reportedly because of a suspected rape (he was not a suspect), he is shot at 41 times. Nineteen shots hit him. Amadou Diallo was unarmed, and will never return to West Africa.
In case after case after case, in city after city, from coast to coast, such events arise with alarming regularity, worsened by the realization that, in most cases, cops who have committed these acts, which if committed by others would constitute high crimes, will face no serious prosecution, if any prosecution at all.
They are, the corporate media assures us, “just doing their jobs,” “under an awful lot of pressure,” or “in fear,” and therefore justified in what they do. In the language of the media, the very media that make their millions off of the punishment industry calling for the vilest sentences known to man, turn, in the twinkling of an eye, into paragons of mercy, who lament that the “fine young men” who “served their community” are in “trouble,” or have “suffered enough.”
The suffering of the slain, because they are young, and Black, are all but forgotten in this unholy algebra that devalues Black life while heightening the worth of the assailants because they work for the state.
The worse lie that is often trotted out when such cases occur is the term used by politicians and the media singing the praises of such people, who call them, by virtue of their jobs, “public servants.” Since when have servants (of any kind) acted in the vile, arrogant, monstrous manner that many of these cops do in Black, Hispanic, and poor communities? Since when have such servants been in the position to slaughter, shoot, humiliate, and imprison the very public that they are sworn to serve?
They are servants, if at all, of the political structures of which they are a part, not of the people. They are servants, if at all, of the state. They serve the interests of capital, of the wealthy, of those who run this system from their bank vaults and corporate offices.
They do not serve the poor, the powerless, nor the un-influential.
They never have.
They are an armed force organized to protect the interests of the established, and those who own capital. The history of labor in this country is splattered by the blood of trade unionists who were beaten, shot, and crushed to the earth for striking against the trusts, combinations, and mega-corporations of capital. Who did the beating? The shooting? The crushing? The cops, who served the interests of a state that declared, as did the U.S. Supreme Court, that unions were “criminal conspiracies” and that the Constitution “was based upon the concept that the fundamental private rights of property are anterior to government and morally beyond the reach of popular majorities.”13
Capital’s voice (the media) and their agents (the politicians) unite in a chorus of support for their legalized killers, who bomb babies with impunity (remember May 13, 1985, in Philadelphia?), who shoot unarmed kids in their cars, and unarmed African emigrants, whose only capital crime is being Black in modern-day America.
This legalized violence proves that violence is not a problem for the system—when it is their own, against the people.
This awful crime must cease.
THE FOLLY OF CALLING THE FBI
April 18, 1999
“When are you Black folks gonna throw off the KILLERS that are JAILIN’ you for murder?”
—John Africa
When Black folks are beaten down by cops all around the United States, and when they are shot down in their cars as in the cases of Dontae Dawson of Philadelphia,14 or Malice Green of Detroit, or the beautiful young sister, Tyisha Shenee Miller, who was shot more than 15 times in her car in Riverside, California, recently—we can go on and on—one of the first things that many Black leaders do is to announce that they are asking for the FBI to come in to “solve” the case. What such an announcement means, of course, is that they recognize that local police are in no position to meaningfully investigate such heinous crimes, as their interests are in protecting “their own.” But why the FBI?
Such a call sounds strange when one considers that the FBI played a significant and openly oppressive role in the history of African American struggles for freedom in America, and they were deadly enemies of such leaders as Martin Luther King Jr., Malcolm X, Marcus M. Garvey, and of such groups as the Black Panther Party, RAM, the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, the Republic of New Afrika, and the like. In truth, the history of the FBI shows that they have waged a secret war against Black America, and frankly, it seems counterproductive to look to them for relief from other state forces who are waging a part of their long, white supremacist war against Black folks.
James Forman, the former head of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, after being beaten by white supremacists and Klansmen while demonstrating for civil rights throughout the South, constantly requested FBI protection from the violence. Instead, they would turn up every time he was beaten, stand by, and take notes, never stopping any of the violence, but instead helping to gather dirty and derogatory personal information on civil rights workers. He finally concluded that the FBI was a part of “the governmental structure,” and were, in effect, “the enemy of Black people.”15 Forman noted:
We did not say it that way in 1963, but we did know that the FBI was a farce. It wasn’t going to arrest any local racists who violated any and all laws on the statute books. Instead, it would play a game of taking notes and pictures. The files in Washington must have been growing thick even then with documents from the civil rights movements and with photographs of us all—doing everything but screwing, and maybe even that.16
Former FBI chief J. Edgar Hoover found it intolerable that “Negro” men would “want to be addressed as ‘Mr.’”17 Scholar Kenneth O’Reilly writes that the job of the FBI was, in large part, to stifle Black unity:
Division Five also worked to “prevent the rise of a ‘Messiah’”—someone “who could unify, and electrify, the militant black nationalist movement.” Malcolm X had been the most likely candidate, but his assassination removed that threat. Malcolm was simply “the martyr of the movement today.” Muhammad was hardly a more viable threat “because of his age.” In the final analysis, Division Five said, [Stokely] Carmichael and [Martin Luther] King were the only serious candidates. They both dreamed of becoming a messiah and had “the necessary charisma.” Not even [William C. Sullivan, head of Domestic Intelligence] considered King to be a militant, but that was beside the point. “King could be a very real contender for this position should he abandon his supposed ‘obedience’ to ‘white, liberal doctrines’ (nonviolence) and embrace black nationalism.”18
History has taught us that the state has its interests and the people have another; and they do not coincide.
Now, with much of the nationalist movement in pieces, some aligned with the Democratic party, some involved with community organizing, and others involved in various areas of social and cultural life, it is somewhat surreal to read of community calls for the FBI every time that a young person is murdered by cops.