Reasserting Our Humanity in a State of Pre-Liberation
by BAR editor and columnist Dr. Marsha Coleman-Adebayo and Kevin Berends
“We need to re-claim a vibrant and powerful commitment to protecting and defending African life in the face of a society bent on destroying us—by any means possible.”
These observations are offered in advance of the anticipated announcement in the now-familiar case of the slaying of Michael Brown—whatever the Grand Jury's finding. The intervening three months have seen much travail and turmoil. Still, we may think of this period as a sort of cultural purgatory: a finite interval when the sins of the Founding Fathers can be evacuated—much like the body purges itself of viral or other infections—with violent upheavals and expulsions. Were we, as a people, so inclined we would take full advantage of the waiting's groundlessness.
Groundlessness attends all catastrophe, from the moment the planes struck on 9/11 to the realization that our response as a people to those crimes heightened the catastrophe by adding our own excesses to it—in the forms of torture, the blind destruction of the Middle East and the continued incarceration of innocents at Guantanamo. We now see the bastard offspring of our blindness in the ghastly excesses of the Islamic State.
We would do well as a people to remember that the proper response to calamity is grief. Grief, in its many iterations. We may tear our own clothes, howl, torch our surroundings, mass and gather in the street and—depending on which side of the system we find ourselves—stare with hatred and loathing across the racial divide‚ the poor and powerless armed like David compared to the array of hi-tech weaponry of the state's latest incarnation of slave patrols dripping with lethal weaponry and assorted agony machines
In post-racial America, it has come to this.
“In many ways Ferguson meets the prototypical structure of a southern plantation.”
Before we add to the calamity, we would do well to remember as Africans in America—as well as whites—that we were not always reduced to the language that is yammered without thinking. Before Al Sharpton's eulogy for Michael Brown that scolded the victims, he would have done well to remember Malcolm's warning:
"They have a new gimmick every year. They’re going to take one of their boys, black boys, and put him in the cabinet so he can walk around Washington with a cigar. Fire on one end and fool on the other end. And because his immediate personal problem will have been solved he will be the one to tell our people: ‘Look how much progress we’re making. I’m in Washington, D.C., I can have tea in the White House. I’m your spokesman, I’m your leader.’ While our people are still living in Harlem in the slums. Still receiving the worst form of education."
—“The Prospects for Freedom in 1965," the Militant Labor Forum, New York City, Jan. 7, 1965
The accuracy of Malcolm’s assessment applies perfectly to Ferguson. In many ways Ferguson meets the prototypical structure of a southern plantation: slave patrols killing unarmed Africans with impunity; black overseers, (like "Officer Friendly," Missouri Highway Patrol Captain, Ronald S. Johnson, and the newly appointed St. Louis Police Chief Daniel Isom II as new [HNIC—head ni•••• in charge] who is officially titled, State Public Safety Director.) These men accept the latest front jobs that protect their “masters” despite knowing their personal benefit derives from suffering African masses. Fire on one end, indeed—and very dangerous fools on the other.
Yet there are cities all across America where these conditions obtain, where the spate of police slave patrol killings of Africans is unrelenting. So what is it about Ferguson that is different? Why didn’t civil disobedience erupt after the deaths of Vonderritt Myers in St. Louis, Trayvon Martin in Florida, John Crawford, in Ohio, Eric Garner, in New York, or after every one of the nameless black boys and men who have been killed on average every 28 hours by slave patrol police or vigilantes somewhere in America?
At first blush Ferguson seems the anomaly. When we look at the entirety of Africans in America, however, we see that the people's reaction in Ferguson to relentless slave patrol policing is very much in keeping with the reaction of the vast history of Africans who have resisted that branch of American capitalism we blithely refer to as "slavery."
“The rights of human and sex traffickers overshadowed the human rights of Africans.”
From the beginning, it was essential to separate the notion of African achievements from the people who were kidnapped and trafficked to the western world. The attachment of the word “slave” to describe Africans in the mid-1600’s was of political necessity. Plantation owners and the marine industry used the word to define a “new” class of people that was portrayed as devoid of history, culture and all the prerogatives of human existence that would later be memorialized as "inalienable rights" in the Declaration of Independence—so long as those rights were applied exclusively to white men. Forget about women and "3/5-human" negroes. American law made it clear that property was more precious than people. The rights of human and sex traffickers overshadowed the human rights of Africans. Chief Justice Roger B. Taney's pronouncements in Dred Scott in 1857 leaves nothing to the imagination:
"Negroes were seen only as property; they were never thought of or spoken of except as property" and thus "were not intended by the framers of the Constitution to be accorded citizenship rights."
The major political challenge facing the Euro-American human and sexual traffickers—a.k.a. Founding Fathers—was to literally beat the concept of slavery into the skin of Africans who, in thousands of instances resisted it fiercely.
Ferguson—far from being an anomaly—should be seen in the finest tradition of African resistance to white tyranny in keeping with Harriet Tubman, Frederick Douglas and Malcolm X. The anomaly, and it is glaring, is the period from April 4, 1968 to August 9, 2014—what we might call the "Great Black American Complacency"—fifty years of relative obeisance in a black community that had been defeated under the mantra of "We Shall Overcome." That is what is different about the people rising in Ferguson. They reject Al Sharpton's, and Jesse Jackson's, and Eric Holder's entreaties to work within the system. The system is rigged and Ferguson knows it. So do Al, Jesse and Eric.
As we await the decision of the grand jury, this is the time to consider the weapons at our disposal. Just as importantly, we need to re-claim a vibrant and powerful commitment to protecting and defending African life in the face of a society bent on destroying us—by any means possible. If slave patroller Darren Wilson is not indicted, we urge everyone to take to the streets. Find the courage to resist.
Your participating in the activities listed below will demonstrate that “enough is enough.” Please find activities and protests in your area: http://fergusonaction.com.
In the Washington, DC area the "Day After" action will rally at Mt. Vernon Sq. 7pm and then march to Chinatown - the theme: "No More Fergusons!"
Voices of Grief and Struggle: Mothers Come to Washington DC to Demand Police Accountability, hosted by Mothers Against Police Brutality, CODEPINK, National Congress of Black Women and Hands Up DC Coalition. A group of mothers who have lost their children to police brutality will travel to Washington DC from December 9-11 to call for police accountability, policy reform and justice for victims’ families.
Your participating in the activities listed below will demonstrate that “enough is enough.” Please find activities and protests in your area: .
Dr. Marsha Coleman-Adebayo is the author of No FEAR: A Whistleblowers Triumph over Corruption and Retaliation at the EPA, that is available through amazon.com. Dr. Coleman-Adebayo worked at the EPA for 18 years and blew the whistle on a US multinational corporation that endangered vanadium mine workers. Marsha's successful lawsuit lead to the introduction and passage of the first civil rights and whistleblower law of the 21st century: the Notification of Federal Employees Anti-discrimination and Retaliation Act of 2002 (No FEAR Act). She is Director of Transparency and Accountability for the Green Shadow Cabinet and serves on the Advisory Board of ExposeFacts.com. www.marshacoleman-adebayo.com.
Kevin Berends is Director of Communication, www.NoFEARInstitute.org, was co-founder and the first Executive Editor of Lake Affect Magazine and produced the independent television program, Streetlevel. Kevin can be reached at: www.streetleveljournal.com.
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