If you are truly interested in non-violence then you will ask and expect it from everyone. The government, the community, the police, the national guard, the KKK, the protesters. But if you are only asking for non-violence from the protesters and are ok with violence on the part of the state then it isn’t non-violence you really want. It is obedience.
As we listen to Obama’s and others’ predictable platitudes about “staying peaceful” and how violence is not the answer and all that, please remember this: Violence is ALWAYS the answer when it is the State that is delivering it and it is ALWAYS denounced by the power structures when it is directed against them.
Obama: “We need to accept that this decision was the grand jury’s to make.”
100 years ago would he had said the same thing about the Dred Scott v. Sandford decision, that we need to accept that it was the supreme court’s to make?
Legalized injustice is still injustice and it must never be accepted.
(Partial) Police Blotter for one week in August 2014
Aug. 6th: Beavercreek OH police shoot and kill John Crawford inside a Walmart. John was apparently looking and handling an air rifle that is sold by Walmart.
Aug. 7th: A police officer shot and killed Jeremy Lake in Tulsa OK. Jeremy was dating the officer’s daughter and was walking up to the officer’s car to introduce himself when the officer shot him.
Aug. 9th: A Ferguson MO police officer shoots and kills Michael Brown.
Aug. 11th: A New Orleans police office shoots and injures Armand Bennett during a traffic stop. NOPD doesn’t disclose the shooting until after it was reported in the papers two days later. The officer who shot Armand had turned off her body camera shortly before the shooting.
Aug. 11th: Los Angeles police officers shoot and kill Ezell Ford. Ezell was known to the neighborhood and the police for having ongoing mental health issues. Witnesses say police shot him while he was on the ground.
All shooting victims were young, male, black and unarmed. These are facts. It is also a fact that many of us have only heard of Michael Brown’s death, and that had there not been massive protests we would most likely not even had heard of Michael Brown. But the facts remain.
Six days.
Five young black unarmed men shot by police.
Four of them are dead.
When greek police shot and killed 15-year old Alexis Grigoropoulos on December 6, 2008 the 42-day uprising that followed was fueled by the knowledge that Alex was not just some random kid, just somebody else’s kid. He was *our* kid. The cops had killed one of our kids. It didn’t matter if we had ever met him, if we knew him before December 6th. He was still one of our kids. And the cops had killed him.
Grief and rage.
It is a normal response of sentient humans when they kill one of our kids. The people of Ferguson know that Michael wasn’t just somebody else’s kid. He was their kid. If we learn anything from the people of Ferguson I hope we learn that Michael wasn’t only their kid. He is our kid too. As is John and Jeremy and Armand and Ezell, as are Oscar and Trayvon and Alonzo and Kimani and Amadou and the countless others who have been shot and killed by police. They are all our kids. And it is well past time that we stop accepting their deaths in the hands of those who claim to be our servants and protectors, and we start doing whatever we can, whatever we need to, so that no more of our kids are killed by police.
To all of us guys out there:
This is the time for us to take a deep breath and listen. Keep breathing and keep listening. If we hear anger and frustration and rage, then let us listen to the anger, the frustration, the rage. There is a reason why those emotions are there. In at least some small way (and probably bigger way than we are aware) we have all contributed to them. Keep breathing, keep listening.
And to all the guys who are inclined towards the #NotAllMen response to the#YesAllWomen campaign: Unless you have spent most of your life also saying NotAllMuslims and NotAllArabs and NotAllBlackMen and whichever else would be the appropriate response to when media and society at large demonize an entire group of people based on the actions of a few, then your cry of “but I am not like that” is at best defensiveness but more likely a misguided (even if subconscious) attempt to keep on to the male privilege of shaping the direction of the conversation and making everything about us.
We have had the floor for a very long time. Time to let it go, at least for long enough to be able to really listen. I think we will be better humans, and better men, for it.
The media have no problem naming the attack on the Jewish Museum in Brussels as the vile act of anti-semitism that it seems to be. I wish they would be just as willing to name the attack at UCSB as the vile act of misogyny that it clearly is. And to recognize the grounds where misogyny is bred and fostered.
http://thinkprogress.org/justice/2014/05/26/3441585/anti-woman-site-predicts-more-deaths/