Black Agenda Report
Black Agenda Report
News, commentary and analysis from the black left.

  • Home
  • Africa
  • African America
  • Education
  • Environment
  • International
  • Media and Culture
  • Political Economy
  • Radio
  • US Politics
  • War and Empire
  • omnibus

Spies of Mississippi: Mayor Lumumba’s Cops Put Public Under Spyglass
Adofo Minka
25 Nov 2020
Spies of Mississippi: Mayor Lumumba’s Cops Put Public Under Spyglass
Spies of Mississippi: Mayor Lumumba’s Cops Put Public Under Spyglass

Jackson’s supposedly “radical” Black mayor wants to make surveillance great again in Mississippi.

“’Virtual policing’ means an all-seeing eye will be fixed on Jackson’s majority poor and working-class residents.”

In recent weeks, Mayor Lumumba proposed and the Jackson City Council approved a 45-day pilot surveillance program that will enlist tech companies to tap into the Ring surveillance camera footage of ten homes and businesses who volunteer to collaborate with the expansion of Jackson’s police surveillance state. The Ring camera footage will be tapped directly into the Jackson Police Department’s (JPD) Real Time Crime Center and available for viewing by JPD at all times as everyday citizens casually go about their routines. 

JPD’s Real Time Crime Center is a surveillance hub for various cameras installed during Lumumba’s tenure to provide what they mayor has termed “virtual policing.” Virtual policing means that 365 days a year, 24 hours a day, an all-seeing eye will be fixed on Jackson’s majority poor and working-class residents. Like the surveillance cameras that Mayor Lumumba boasted about being placed south Jackson’s mainly working class and unemployed communities, this Ring surveillance pilot program will not be aimed at capturing the crimes of the more affluent who reside in the exclusive neighborhoods of northeast Jackson.   

“An all-seeing eye will be fixed on Jackson’s majority poor and working-class residents.”

In the early stages of the development of the Real Time Crime Center, the “radical” mayor made it incandescently clear that he does not think anything is wrong with surveilling Jackson’s more than 80 percent Black population, who he calls “our people.” The freedom fighting mayor has stated, “…virtual policing is no more intrusive than the world we already live in. Where every camera, everywhere you go there is a camera pointing at you from some private entity or gas station or something else.” The use of surveillance cameras by an individual business owner to monitor activities within a given vicinity that an individual chooses to frequent is much different than when the State employs surveillance to monitor unsuspecting citizens going about their daily lives. There is overlap between the interests of individual capitalists employing surveillance and the State doing so because both have an interest in protecting private property relations. But history has shown that the State also has an interest in tracking the activities of citizens in an effort to snuff out any emerging rebellious activity before it can gain momentum to upset the status quo. 

Edward Snowden, Chelsea Manning, Terry Albury and Jeffrey Sterling all have revealed to the public that police state surveillance is not as benign as Mayor Lumumba would have us believe.  They all have paid the hefty price of torture, imprisonment, and being labeled enemies of the state for doing so. Mayor Lumumba is part of the Center for American Progress’s Mayors for Smart Crime Initiative, which appears to think it is a genius idea to subordinate the multitudes more efficiently through police state surveillance. Mayor Lumumba intends to surveil Black people while denouncing the FBI’s COINTELPRO. Is this what Mayor Lumumba meant by making Jackson the most radical city on the planet? 

“Police state surveillance is not as benign as Mayor Lumumba would have us believe.”

The Lumumba regime is faced with a crisis of legitimacy on the question of crime and violence in Jackson. As the number of homicides increase in the city and his 2021 re-election bid looms closer, he and his advisors are scrambling to make it appear that they can solve a problem that the very nature of the state perpetuates. A city-state, like a nation-state, is a social class hierarchy whose cornerstones are social inequity, exploitation, and competition. In a scramble for survival, the exploited and degraded often cannibalize one another instead of eating the rich and ruling elites who maintain us in our suffering and degradation.

The actions of the Lumumba regime continue to expose the fact that ordinary people have no representation in hierarchical government. The Lumumba administration serves the interests of capital and is on the side of the permanent slaughter. Any pretense of Black radicalism by those who rule above society is mere branding to get the multitudes to place a stamp of approval on their being conquered in the name of Black power.    

“The Lumumba administration serves the interests of capital.”

Lumumba and his ilk hold the masses in contempt and are always to looking to repress the multitude’s instincts toward direct democracy (majority rule). And ultimately, this is what the expansion of the surveillance state in Jackson is about. Lumumba’s jabbering in the media about using surveillance to capture evidence of crimes is merely smoke and mirrors. Some are so caught up in a civil liberties discourse around 4th Amendment violations that they can’t see the forest for the trees either. 

Rulers fool the people with talk of solving problems that are legitimate concerns, such as crime and violence. But in the words of the hip-hop artist Cool Breeze, “you better listen your corner and watch for the hook.” The same surveillance gadgetry the rulers claim is for the people’s protection will be used to suppress the multitudes when they rise up to throw off the yoke of their oppression. 

During the Civil Rights Movement the Sovereignty Commission was sanctioned by the State to surveil and suppress the social motion aimed at subverting the white racial state’s oppression of Black people in Mississippi. Many prominent figures in the Black community volunteered to be its tools.  Today, in Jackson, the Black-led government is at the forefront of making government espionage great again in Mississippi. I know some won’t like my saying this, but it’s the truth. 

“The same surveillance gadgetry the rulers claim is for the people’s protection will be used to suppress the multitudes.”

Mayor Lumumba is a part of the “new left” that seeks to restore a crumbling American empire through Black faces in high places. He dons African accoutrements that stupefy many as he presides over the police state that surveils, conquers, and kills ordinary people in the interest of restoring the legitimacy of the empire of capital. 

Expanding the government’s capacity to surveil and crush any embryonic movement that has the potential to point toward a new beginning, a new society that is based on mutual aid, cooperation, and the subversion of hierarchy, domination and exploitation will not address interpersonal violence. Ordinary people determined to arrive on our own authority can accomplish the task of ensuring our collective safety and security. We relinquished our power to elite rulers and blindly trusted them to accomplish this task in which they have failed miserably. We must reclaim our power and seize the time. 

Adofo Minka is a criminal defense attorney. He can be reached at [email protected]

COMMENTS?

Please join the conversation on Black Agenda Report's Facebook page at http://facebook.com/blackagendareport

Or, you can comment by emailing us at [email protected] 

Police Repression

Trending

Elizabeth Warren Wants Green Bombs, not a Green New Deal
Parallels Between Black and Palestinian Struggles
Cory Booker Hates Public Schools
Bill Cosby Should Have Been Denounced by Black America Long Ago
The Black Wall Around Barack Obama: Who Does It Protect Him Against?
How Complacency, Complicity of Black Misleadership Class Led to Supreme Court Evisceration of the Voting Rights Act

Related Stories

Police Shouldn’t Tag Students as Potential Criminals 
Priyam Madhukar
Police Shouldn’t Tag Students as Potential Criminals 
20 January 2021
When cops create lists of kids “at risk” of falling into crime, it becomes a self-fulfilling indictment.
Notes Toward a National Defense Organization Against Racism and Political Repression, 1973
Editors, The Black Agenda Review
Notes Toward a National Defense Organization Against Racism and Political Repression, 1973
10 December 2020
Few records survive of the birth of a national anti-police repression organization formed by supporters of Angela Davis – but government spies pres
Superpredator: The Media Myth That Demonized a Generation of Black Youth
Carroll Bogert
Superpredator: The Media Myth That Demonized a Generation of Black Youth
25 November 2020
By the end of the 90s corporate journalists were feverishly dehumanizing young blacks in news stories, editorials and commentaries.
Torture Survivor Jackie Wilson Exonerated in Pandemic Murder Trial
Flint Taylor
Torture Survivor Jackie Wilson Exonerated in Pandemic Murder Trial
18 November 2020
Wilson’s 40-year ordeal has ended, but his attorneys hope to make Chicago prosecutors pay for their crimes.
Black Cops Don’t Make Policing Any Less Anti-Black
 Bree Newsome Bass
Black Cops Don’t Make Policing Any Less Anti-Black
11 November 2020
The idea that we can resolve racism by integrating a fundamentally anti-Black institution is the most absurd notion of all.
Cops Kill People in Psychiatric Crisis
Jinette Jimenez and Anya Milberg
Cops Kill People in Psychiatric Crisis
04 November 2020
The Police Reform Organizing Project (PROP), a New York City-based policy analysis and
Twitter Surveillance Startup Targets Communities of Color for Cops
Sam Biddle
Twitter Surveillance Startup Targets Communities of Color for Cops
28 October 2020
Insiders say Dataminr’s “algorithmic” Twitter search involves human staffers perpetuating confirmation biases, searching specific neighborhoods, st
Nigeria SARS Protests: Amnesty Warns of “Escalating Attacks” 
BBC staff
Nigeria SARS Protests: Amnesty Warns of “Escalating Attacks” 
21 October 2020
Protests mount against Africa’s most populous nation’s most feared police unit, the Special Anti-Robbery Squad (SARS).
A Public Letter to Mayor Lightfoot: A Call for Leadership
by Signatories from the Use of Force Community Working Group
A Public Letter to Mayor Lightfoot: A Call for Leadership
21 October 2020
The Chicago Police Department’s new use-of-force policy input process is a sham, designed only to create the illusion of community engagement.
The NYPD Unleashes Its Most Brutal Cops On Protesters
Ali Winston
The NYPD Unleashes Its Most Brutal Cops On Protesters
21 October 2020
The police unit most likely to bust protesters’ heads is full of cops with long misconduct histories.

More Stories


  • Trump as Othello in a Corporate Theater
    Glen Ford, BAR Executive Editor
    Trump as Othello in a Corporate Theater
    21 Jan 2021
    Trump the straw man has finally been knocked down, giving the Democrats a victory that costs their corporate masters nothing.
  • The Left Lens: Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and American Empire, with Ajamu Baraka
    Danny Haiphong and Margaret Kimberley
    The Left Lens: Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and American Empire, with Ajamu Baraka
    20 Jan 2021
    Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s birthday is often celebrated without any regard for his radical political legacy.
  • Freedom Rider: Why the Left Don’t Protest
    Margaret Kimberley, BAR senior columnist
    Freedom Rider: Why the Left Don’t Protest
    20 Jan 2021
    The worse the political and economic crisis becomes, the more lethargic the US left behaves – as if generations of collaboration with corporate Democrats has sucked the life out of the left.
  • Return to the Source: Democracy is Dead
    Editors, The Black Agenda Review
    Return to the Source: Democracy is Dead
    20 Jan 2021
    By what stretch of the imagination can the US be a democracy when ordinary citizens have virtually no influence over what their government does? 
  • Uganda: Bob Wine Rocks the Vote but Museveni Claims Victory
    Ann Garrison, BAR Contributing Editor
    Uganda: Bob Wine Rocks the Vote but Museveni Claims Victory
    20 Jan 2021
    Ugandan pop star turned presidential candidate Bobi Wine is not Sankara or Lumumba, but he has risked his life to mount a fierce challenge to the 36-year dictatorship of President Yoweri Museveni.
  • Load More
Subscribe
connect with us
about us
contact us