Category Archives: Anti-Black Terrorism

The Forked Tongue Files of Electoral Poly-Tricks: November 2024

The country holds its breath as Election Day approaches. The major candidates hold massive rallies in a last-ditch effort to mobilize voters in their favor, even as they confidently predict victory for themselves and their followers nervously watch the early vote totals and crunch the latest poll numbers. People in the electorate struggle to sort out fact from fiction in the face of a constant onslaught of disinformation (complete with “deep fake” videos and posts on X), they speculate among each other about the latest developments, they argue in favor of their preferred candidates, or they debate the merits of participating in the electoral process at all. For someone trying to understand the political intrigues and make an informed voting decision, things can get quite confusing.

In the final week leading up to the November 5 general election, the main antagonists decided to give the public a little push, making their “closing arguments” in an effort to secure as many votes as possible by providing a peek as to how they plan to move the country forward (or backward).

One Last Appeal to the Voters

On Sunday October 27, former president Donald Trump held a rally at Madison Square Garden (MSG), at which a comedian referred to Puerto Rico as “a floating island of garbage” among other racist and otherwise xenophobic remarks from a variety of speakers (https://www.npr.org/2024/10/28/nx-s1-5167948/the-offensive-rhetoric-used-at-trumps-madison-square-garden-rally; https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2024/10/trump-madison-square-garden-rally/680424/). Trump acolyte and political advisor Stephen Miller continued the authoritarian language (“America is for Americans and Americans only”; https://forward.com/opinion/668440/miller-trump-madison-square-garden-immigrants/) he had used to threaten opponents of the Trump administration years ago when Trump was in the White House. And Trump himself, when asked later to apologize for the rally’s more divisive and xenophobic rhetoric, instead tried to disavow any knowledge of such hateful rhetoric and insisted that the event was an “absolute lovefest”, reminiscent of his insistence that the January 6, 2021 insurrection at the Capitol was “a day of love”. Critics and analysts compared this event to a Nazi rally at the same Madison Square Garden on February 20, 1939 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1939_Nazi_rally_at_Madison_Square_Garden). Trump’s MSG rally came within a week of former Fox News host Tucker Carlson’s manic and misogynistic “Daddy’s home and you’ve been a bad girl” screed at an October 23 Turning Point Action rally in Duluth, Georgia (https://newrepublic.com/post/187485/tucker-carlson-daddy-trump-spanking-speech). The level of vitriol at these rallies led Puerto Rican musician Nicky Jam, who Trump had referred to as a “Black music superstar” and misgendered as “she” at an earlier rally, to withdraw his endorsement for Trump, stating that Puerto Ricans “deserve respect.”

On Tuesday October 29, vice president Kamala Harris derided Trump as “deranged and unhinged” at a rally she held on the same grounds where Trump had delivered his January 6, 2021 speech that had helped incite the insurrection and attack on the US Capitol, and made what has been billed as her “closing argument” in which she formally asked for the votes of the American people. She touted the planks of her agenda designed to protect women’s reproductive rights, provide tax breaks to middle class and working families, and lend an ear to those who disagree with her policies, in contrast to Trump’s claims that he would seek to prosecute and imprison those who oppose him as “the enemy from within”.

Propaganda and Scuttlebutt

Harris has been derided by her political opponents for her supposed lack of intelligence, a claim that frankly does not hold water, as well as her alleged support for “putting ‘illegals’ up in five star hotels” (a charge that has been repeatedly disputed) and providing sex-change operations for prisoners (a charge made repeatedly with carefully selected video snippets in commercials approved by Trump). Others have questioned her Blackness, spurred on by Trump’s claim at a National Association of Black Journalists event earlier this summer that Harris, a graduate of Howard University and a member of Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority “suddenly became Black”, and she has been pilloried by some in the Afrikan-American community for allegedly not planning any policies that would specifically benefit Black Americans. While these claims have also been disputed, and she has herself increased her outreach to Afrikan American groups and announced a number of policies (homeowner credits, child tax credits, assistance in starting small businesses) that, if implemented, would assist Black voters, this has not convinced a number of her critics whom it has been alleged have held her to a higher standard of proof than her Republican opponent.

Meanwhile, Democratic supporters point to Trump’s embrace of international autocrats (Viktor Orban of Hungary, Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey, Mohammed bin Salman of Saudi Arabia, Kim Jong Un of North Korea, former Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro, former Philippines president Rodrigo Duterte and Russia’s Vladimir Putin); his romanticizing of historical dictators (his former Chief of Staff, John Kelly, recently recounted Trump’s comments that he wished he had “Hitler’s generals” working for him); his comments about being “a dictator for one day”, getting rid of the Constitution and jailing his political opponents; and the policies that have been directly espoused by Trump (which many of his supporters claim is their motivation for voting for him): mass deportations, a return to “stop-and-frisk” policing, elimination of the Department of Education, expansion of the ban on abortions that was started by the Supreme Court’s striking down the historic 1973 Roe v. Wade case on June 24, 2022, and an increase in “drill baby drill” oil exploration in deep water locations, Indigenous territories and protected ecosystems among others. Project 2025, the “Mandate for Leadership wish list” produced by The Heritage Foundation, is most often referenced in this regard; its 922 pages are an intimidating read for many, but a more abbreviated version can be found on Trump’s own Web site in his Agenda 47, or his “promises to the American people”.

Check out The Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 here: (https://static.project2025.org/2025_MandateForLeadership_FULL.pdf)

Read Donald Trump’s Agenda 47 at his Web site here: (https://www.donaldjtrump.com/platform/)

Read the Democratic Party’s political platform here: (https://democrats.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/FINAL-MASTER-PLATFORM.pdf)

Blotting Out Third Parties

In the meantime, the voices of Green Party presidential candidate Dr. Jill Stein and independent candidate Dr. Cornel West, both of whom have made reparations for the descendants of enslaved Afrikans, environmental stewardship and justice for Palestinians currently cowering under a genocidal assault from Benjamin Netanyahu’s Israeli Defense Forces major planks in their presidential agendas, are being silenced by the mass media’s obsession with the two-party race between the Donkey and the Elephant. And the platform of the Party for Socialism and Liberation (PSL), whose candidate is Claudia De La Cruz, gets even less attention, to say nothing about that of the Libertarian Party’s Chase Oliver.

Read the Green Party platform here: (https://www.gp.org/platform)

Check out Dr. Cornel West’s platform here:. (https://www.cornelwest2024.com/platform)

Read the Party for Socialism and Liberation’s platform here: (https://votesocialist2024.com/about-the-candidates)

The Libertarian Party’s platform can be found here: (https://www.lp.org/platform/)

Historic (and Ahistoric) Implications

To be sure, this election carries historic implications even if one’s tunnel vison keeps one focused only on the two major political parties and their standard bearers. Kamala Harris may yet become the first woman US president in history, accomplishing the feat that former First Lady, Senator and Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton had failed to accomplish in 2016 (though she actually did beat Trump by several million votes, losing only because of the slave-era Electoral College and its arcane method of allocating a disproportionate number of electoral votes to the southern states). Harris would follow former president Barck Obama as the second president of Afrikan ancestry (her father is Afro-Caribbean) and make history again as the first president of East Indian ancestry (her mother was East Indian). Meanwhile, Trump would establish a somewhat dubious historical precedent himself, becoming the first president (or one of the first) to win the White House, lose it somewhat resoundingly in the following election, then win it back later; he could also become the first president who had been impeached twice and indicted for a number of felonies (including inciting an insurrection) before and after winning the White House a second time.

The implications of this election have been emphasized (some would say hyped) in classic dualistic, good-vs.-evil fashion. Some examples:

  • Abortion (“pro-choice”) versus anti-abortion (“pro-life”): women’s reproductive rights versus going back to the days before Roe v. Wade when women bled to death in alleys, only this time dying because of a wider ban on reproductive care of practically any kind, including in cases pf rape, incest or when the life of the woman is in danger. (Anti-abortion activists might consider this a reasonable trade-off, while abortion-rights activists have recently pointed out that in some states, a woman is not allowed to abort a pregnancy until she is literally at death’s door; a compromise might involve protections for a fetus past an agreed point in a pregnancy but not cause undue risks to the health of the mother.)
  • Environmental stewardship versus a return to “drill baby drill” and the elimination of electric car mandates, though Harris has herself stated that she will not stop hydraulic fracturing or “fracking”, which is a particularly devastating procedure involving injection of toxic chemicals into the ground to facilitate extraction of natural gas.
  • Establishment of a legal pathway to citizenship for immigrants versus mass deportations. Trump supporters accuse Harris of trying to import millions of illegal immigrants and use them to illegally vote her into office. Opponents of Trump point to the singularly cruel practice of separating children from their families during his presidential term. Between 500 and a thousand of these children still had not been reunited with their families as of earlier this year, and critics have stated that, concerning the Trump administration policy, “the cruelty was the point.”
  • Police review boards versus “stop and frisk” and qualified immunity for police officers who abuse citizens. Despite Trump’s attempts to paint the January 6, 2021 insurrectionists, who had injured numerous Capitol Police that day, he continues to support the brutal actions of police across the country, at least when they brutalize “others” (Afrikan Americans, immigrants and the “libs” that he and his supporters want to “own”).
  • Expansion of voting rights versus voter suppression in the name of “ballot security” and “stopping voter fraud” (cases alleging this, largely in Afrikan American districts, have been dismissed in courts across the country).
  • Embracing democracy versus supporting international autocrats, living and dead, including Adolph Hitler.
  • The Death Penalty. While this issue has not received as much attention as perhaps it should, it must be pointed out that, when the execution of Marcellus Williams was debated in the Supreme Court in September, the six Republican-appointed justices (Alito, Thomas, Cavanaugh, Coney-Barrett, Gorsuch, Roberts) voted to execute him, while the three Democratic-appointed justices (Sotomayor, Brown-Jackson, Kagan) voted to block the execution. As a result of the Supreme Court decision, Missouri’s Republican governor Mike Parson, attorney general Andrew Bailey and the Missouri Supreme Court proceeded with the execution of Williams on Tuesday, September 24, over the public objections of the victim’s family (who simply did not want him executed) and the original case’s prosecuting attorney (who was now convinced Williams might have been wrongly convicted). This is somewhat consistent with the trend among Republican governors, presidents and judges in favor of “hang ’em high” capital punishment regardless of evidence of possible innocence. (https://www.scotusblog.com/2024/09/supreme-court-allows-marcellus-williams-to-be-executed/)

Dr. Ron Daniels, founder and president of the Institute of the Black World (IBW), posted a commentary (Democracy in Danger: Black Led Rainbow Wave to the Rescue – Dedicated to Rev. Jesse L. Jackson on His 83rd Birthday, by Dr. Ron Daniels, October 8, 2024) that essentially urged readers to go to the polls in unprecedented numbers to support Harris, based largely on the critical need to prevent a Trump presidency that could usher in a dark chapter in the United States of autocracy, repression and White Supremacist terrorism. (Read the article here: https://ibw21.org/commentary/vantage-point-articles/democracy-in-danger-black-led-rainbow-wave-to-the-rescue/?sourceid=1041761&emci=86dbe1e0-9c85-ef11-8474-6045bda8aae9&emdi=8889e938-bd85-ef11-8474-6045bda8aae9&ceid=10955336)

Electoral Poly-Tricks

As we have mentioned above, all of this has obscured information on the other “third party” candidacies of Dr. Cornel West, Dr. Jill Stein, Claudia De La Cruz and Chase Oliver. As a result, we careen into election season with limited to no knowledge about our full plate of options. Some would say that this helps to crystallize the real issues because the likelihood that anyone other than Harris or Trump will win the election is practically nil. Still, it has been stated often that a well-informed populace is necessary to a healthy democracy, and in many ways we as an electorate are often anything but well-informed. This article is admittedly late to the party, since a large percentage of the electorate has already voted early or by mail, but those who plan to go to the polls on Election Day and have time to follow some of the above links might gain some perspective that they did not have before. Our concern is that people go to the polls with some perspective, and that we think before we make a knee-jerk voting decision.

On Saturday, October 12, a Pan Afrikan Community Town Hall Meeting was held at the Temple of New African Thought (TNAT) on Harford Road in East Baltimore. The panel included Dr. Ausar Winkler, a trauma expert, counselor and founder of TNAT; Bro. Everett Winchester, co-president of the UNIA-ACL Division 106 Barca-Clarke in Baltimore; and Bro. Nnamdi Lumumba, founder of the Ujima People’s Progress Party (UPP), which is building a Black worker-led political party in Maryland. The topic of the Town Hall was “Electoral Poly-Tricks”, designed to discuss the community’s understanding and approach to the electoral process and not to hold a candidate’s forum or push any particular political platform. The panelists discussed their different political positions, whether they involved the community’s specific issues, reaching out to the grassroots or supporting third parties. The attendees, in person and on Zoom, expressed their support for Kamala Harris (most importantly to “stop Donald Trump”), their interest in candidacies like those of Dr. Cornel West and Dr. Jill Stein, their unfamiliarity with the issues proposed by PSL’s De La Cruz, or their ambivalence about voting altogether. (It was acknowledged that the attendees would be less likely to vote for Trump or even the relatively conservative Libertarian candidate, Chase Oliver.) They also stressed the need for us as Afrikan People to do a better job of connecting the activists with the grassroots community and to establish our own Pan Afrikan Agenda, linked with an independent political organizing body, separate from Democratic, Republican or other outside influence, built to represent the people’s needs. (Read our report on the October 12 Town Hall here.)

Our take at the October 12 “Electoral Poly-Tricks” Pan Afrikan Community Town Hall was, and is, this: choose to vote or choose not to vote, but as long as one is working in some way to lift up our community, their personal belief should not be denigrated. It comes down to a personal choice whether one votes for Harris, votes for a third party, votes for Trump (though it appeared no one in attendance was voting for Trump, and his platform, with all of its self-professed misogyny, racism and autocracy, does seem to us to be completely inimical to Pan Afrikan uplift) or chooses not to vote at all.

We recognize that, for some, they see little difference between Harris and Trump: both will allow extractive industries to continue, both oppose reparations for enslavement, both will support Netanyahu and Israel even as their actions in Gaza, the West Bank, Lebanon and now Iran skirt international law and even break it altogether. Some of us will refuse to support imperialism from either a Harris or Trump administration, and that principled stand is honorable. Others, however, see the differences, many of which have been listed above, but most importantly, the embrace of international dictators and domestic White Supremacist terrorists by Trump, and the efforts to eliminate all form of reproductive freedom by the Republican Party in general, which has become a political party in full thrall to the Orange One.  Those who are focused on these contrasts see “stopping Trump” and preventing the United States from plunging into a possible full-blown dictatorship that could endanger the entire planet as Priority One, to be pursued before any of the other issues that we have with both political parties can even be confronted.

Whatever your motivations are and whatever your political calculus is, the important thing is that you think about your voting decisions and not simply make them by rote, for convenience or out of pure emotion. Know why you are casting a ballot for one candidate or another, or refusing to cast a ballot at all. But also know this: whoever becomes the next president of the United States is not your savior, especially if you are a person of Afrikan descent. We all hailed Barack Obama as our hero when he was elected in 2008. The Rev. Jesse Jackson cried on camera. We danced in the streets, jubilant that Our Hero had won and would sort everything out. We were in a Post-Racial America, the pundits said. Then the drone attacks in Afghanistan increased. Then the whistleblowers were increasingly prosecuted instead of heeded. Then the 2009 follow-up review sessions of the 2001 World Conference Against Racism were minimized and even snubbed. Then, in March of 2011, Libya, once one of the most literate nations in the world and the African Union’s largest single benefactor, was bombed into the last century by the US and NATO, and Muammar Gadafi, the onetime Pan-Arab supporter of terrorist organizations who had apologized for his past, made reparation to the survivors and families of the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, pledged to suppress Arab terrorism and converted to a position of Pan-Afrikanism, was killed by rebels in Libya as a result of the US and NATO strikes, resulting in Libya becoming the basket case it is today and its military arsenal falling into the hands of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Labat (ISIL) and Nigeria’s Boko Haram, the abductors of the Chibok Girls less than a year later. These things occurred under the Obama administration, and we can expect other objectionable actions by the US to occur under a Harris administration, or even a West or Stein administration, and certainly under a Trump administration.

The point is this: a “president of the United States” is going to do “president of the United States”-type things. Some of those things will be reprehensible, and we must be ready to fight them. No matter what decision you make in this election, know that you will have to be ready to resist and fight whoever wins, even the candidate you support. Our great mistake as a people has been that we either go to sleep when “our hero” is elected, expecting them to handle everything for us, or we run and hide when “the enemy” wins, waiting for the storm to pass in four years, instead of asserting our Constitutional right as American citizens to use our voice and leverage our right to free speech to oppose those deeds that go against the people and against truth, justice and righteousness.

Vote or don’t vote. But do something to lift up your community, and if you do vote, know who and what you are voting for, know what the consequences will be of your decision, and be ready to continue to organize our community for the time that we will need to raise our voices. For rest assured, that time will come.

 

 

 

 

“Black August” Black Women’s Defense Cooperative Town Hall Set for Saturday, August 24 at TNAT in East Baltimore (Updated)

UPDATE: A list of confirmed presenters has been added.  See the updated flyer in this post for details.

Black August is here.  This is an important time of year for the Black Struggle and for Pan Afrikan Organizing, and there is much to inspire us and to shake us out of our collective slumber in the month of Black August.  The Haitian Revolution began on August 22, 1791.  Nat Turner’s Rebellion was launched from August 21-23, 1831 in Southampton County, Virginia.  We celebrate the birthday of The Honorable Marcus Mosiah Garvey on August 17, 1887.  (We will share the announcement of Marcus Garvey Day in Baltimore, Maryland, which is organized every year by Baba Charlie Dugger and Camp Harambee The People, when that announcement is made.  The anticipated date for Marcus Garvey Day in Baltimore is Saturday, August 17, the actual birthday of The Honorable Marcus Garvey.)  We also remember Black Panther Party Field Marshal George Jackson, who was assassinated on August 21, 1971.  And so much more.

“Black August began in the 1970s to mark the assassination of the imprisoned Black Panther, author, and revolutionary George Jackson during a prison rebellion in California. It is a time of reverence to honor political prisoners, freedom fighters, and martyrs of the Black freedom struggle. This month, we celebrate all the political prisoners who have helped us understand that prison is political and that our collective freedom depends on abolishing the state’s capacity, through incarceration, policing, and surveillance, to disrupt communities and diminish principled struggle against the unjust status quo. The month of August is also rich with the history of Black resistance outside, from the Haitian Revolution to the Watts rebellion and the Ferguson uprising. Black August is a reminder of the power in unity, and a mandate to continue joint struggle.”

– from Black August – A Celebration of Freedom Fighters Past and Present | Center for Constitutional Rights (ccrjustice.org)

“As detailed on the Black Collective website, ‘Black August is honored every year to commemorate the fallen freedom fighters of the Black Liberation Movement.’ Rather than simply being retrospective, the month is intended to be forward-looking, encouraging participants ‘to call for the release of political prisoners in the United States, to condemn the oppressive conditions of U.S. prisons’ and to engage in other liberation-aimed political activities.”

– from Blavity News and 5 Things To Know About Black August: An Unforgotten Part Of Black History (yahoo.com)

“Black August was first established in the 1970s by incarcerated Black activists who were fighting against systemic racism and oppression in the United States. These activists wanted to create a month-long tribute to the Black freedom fighters who had come before them, and to draw attention to the ongoing struggle for Black liberation.

“Today, Black August is celebrated in various forms by communities and organizations across the United States and around the world. It is a time to reflect on the rich history of the Black community, and to celebrate the strength, resilience, and creativity of Black people in the face of ongoing challenges and struggles.”

– from The Origins and Principles of Black August: Understanding its Significance | Black August (black-august.com)

The time is now to get to work organizing our community.  In fact, the time has been “now” for as long as we have been aware of the concept of time.  But many of us have been asleep or hunkered down in our homes and our safe spaces, especially since the onset of the COVID Pandemic.  Now it’s time to come out of our safe spaces and get back to organizing.  We’re following up on our recent July 13 Pan Afrikan Community Town Hall Meeting in Baltimore to continue the momentum that we’re building post-COVID. 

Pan Afrikan Community Town Hall Meeting: Saturday, August 24, 12 Noon, Temple of New African Thought

The next Pan Afrikan Community Town Hall Meeting of the Maryland Pan Afrikan Cooperative Coalition (MPACC) will be held on Saturday, August 24 at the Temple of New African Thought (TNAT), 5525 Harford Road in East Baltimore.  The Town Hall is scheduled to begin at 12:00 Noon and will conclude between 4:00 and 5:00 PM.

The topic will be the building of the Black Women’s Defense Cooperative, featuring presentations from Sisters of Pan Afrikan (Black) Communities of Baltimore, Philadelphia and the surrounding area.  Issues concerning personal self-defense, community defense and security, and general emergency preparedness will be addressed.

For more information, email cliff@kuumbareport.com.

Below is a “printer-friendly” version of the flyer:

 

 

 

Tyre Nichols, Police Brutality and the Black Cop

Black cop!! Black cop Black cop Black cop
Stop shootin Black people, we all gonna drop
You don’t even get, paid a whole lot
So take your M-60 and put it ‘pon lock!
Take your four-five and you put it ‘pon lock!

Lookin for your people when you walk down a block
Here in America you have drug spot
They get the Black cop, to watch the drug spot
The Black drug dealer just avoid Black cop
They’re killin each other on a East Coast block
Killin each other on a West Coast block
White police, don’t give a care about dat
Dem want us killin each other over crack
Anyway you put it it’s a Black on BLACK …

Black cop!! Black cop Black cop …

Thirty years, there were no Black cops
You couldn’t even run, drive round the block
Recently police trained Black cop
To stand on the corner, and take gunshot
This type of warfare isn’t new or a shock
It’s Black on Black crime again nonSTOP
Black cop!! Black cop Black cop …

Here’s what the West and the East have in common
Both have Black cops in cars profilin
Hardcore kids in the West got stress
In the East we are chased by the same black beast
The Black cop is the only real obstacle
Black slave turned Black cop is not logical
But very psychological, haven’t you heard?
It’s the BLACK COP killin Black kids in Johannesburg

Whassup Black cop, yo, whassup?!
Your authorization says shoot your nation
You want to uphold the law, what could you do to me?
The same law dissed the whole Black community
You can’t play both sides of the fence
1993 mad kids are gettin tense

Black cop!! Black cop Black cop Black cop
Stop shootin Black people we all gonna drop
You don’t even get, paid a whole lot
Take your four-five and you put it ‘pon lock!
Take your M-60 and put it ‘pon lock!
Take your uzi, put it ‘pon lock!

Black cop Black cop Black cop

— from Boogie Down Productions – “Black Cop”

Many of us were heavily traumatized by the graphic video of five Memphis police officers beating Tyre Nichols to death as he cried out for his mother. After years of recent high profile police killings of Afrikan Americans that started to gain worldwide attention with the killings of Michael Brown, Tamir Rice and Trayvon Martin and the resultant Movement for Black Lives, perhaps some of us had become numb to these atrocities. For those of you who became so inured to this that you fell asleep, here is your wake up call. Again.

Police body camera video (the ones that were actually turned on) showed police cursing at Mr. Nichols as they violently snatched him from his car immediately upon making the stop, a clear indication of immediate and unprovoked excessive force. This is what it has come to. The fact that the police were wearing body cameras that would supposedly record their actions apparently meant nothing to them. These police officers clearly seemed to be acting on the assumption of their own impunity and displayed no awareness of the atrocity they were committing or even of the trouble they should be in as a direct result of their actions. Pose for a selfie while you’re at it, fellas.

The limitation of body cameras was shown not only in the fact that they did not prevent this behavior on the part of the Memphis police or the fact that several of the cameras were conveniently turned off during parts of the altercation, but also the fact that the pole-mounted video camera provided key visual evidence the body cameras could not. That camera, mounted high on a lamp post, provided a wide-angle view that clearly showed several officers holding Mr. Nichols, who was already slumped over, barely conscious and not resisting, in an upright position so some of the officers could take turns kicking him and striking him with fists and batons.

According to the video evidence, not one of the five main defendants nor the other police officers who ultimately responded to the scene tried to stop the beating. There was no timely call for medical attention, and the medical personnel who did respond also failed to provide timely care to Mr. Nichols. Many, if not all, of the involved parties have been fired or disciplined, though it is unclear if any charges will be made against them. So much for protect and serve.

Some people were quick to point out that these were Black police officers dispensing this brutal “street justice” upon a Black motorist. This argument is what some analysts would refer to as a “red herring”. Police brutality has always been not so much about the race of the officers as about the race or economic standing of the victim (Black or Brown or poor). While the results from studies of the effect of Black police officers on reducing discretionary stops, harassment of citizens and acts of brutality are mixed, some critics have pointed out that Black police can sometimes be more violent against Black suspects than their White coworkers, perhaps out of overzealousness to “clean up the community” or even an effort to prove that they perceive their color as “Blue” and not “Black”.

Even so, there have been Black police officers who have spoken out against police brutality in their community. Many of them have paid a price for their honesty, forthrightness, honor and activism. Back in the mid to late 1990s, I had the opportunity to meet Dr. DeLacy Davis, then a Sergeant in the East Orange, New Jersey police department and the founder of Black Cops Against Police Brutality, several times as he was attending community meetings in Philadelphia, New York and Baltimore to discuss the issue of police brutality and misconduct. His activism led to harassment, assaults and death threats — from police. He participated in the town hall meetings that were held by the Rev. Walter Fauntroy and Martin Luther King III in the summer and fall of 1999 to bring attention to the issue, as documented in several reports at the time, including KUUMBAReport Newsletter, available here:

Support Your Local Sheriff?: Report on the SCLC’s Hearings on Police Brutality, KUUMBAReport, August-September 1999
https://kuumbareport.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/KuumbaReport-12-August-September-1999-Support-Your-Local-Sherriff-PDF.pdf

Dr. Davis still advocates against police brutality, and his work can be followed through his Web site, https://drdelacydavis.com/.

Other efforts to combat police brutality, corruption, racism and abuse include The Marshall Project, https://www.themarshallproject.org/. Other articles pertaining to the Tyre Nichols case, police brutality in general and efforts to stop it are included in the links at the end of this article. One article in particular is the following:

Tyre Nichols’ Death: How Black Officers Alone Can’t Stop Brutal Policing – The Marshall Project
https://www.themarshallproject.org/2023/01/28/tyre-nichols-memphis-black-police-brutality

And now, we can expect more hand-wringing and excuses over the issue of police brutality. Once again, politicians are going to be concerned about “violence in the streets” in response to this violence in the street. Right wing “conservative” pundits will express concerns about impending new calls to defund the police. And police officers themselves will no doubt be on higher alert for individuals who may choose to vent their rage against law enforcement by targeting police officers themselves for violence. Police brutality and misconduct not only endangers the citizenry. It endangers those police officers who actually do take their responsibility seriously and do their jobs with a degree of honor and integrity. But the failure of police leadership, including the police unions, and the politicians who unconditionally back every misdeed of law enforcement personnel, to rein in police abuse, racism, corruption and violence, endangers all police, including the truly dedicated ones who joined the force to serve their community.

The Legacy and Life of Keona Holley, Baltimore Police Officer Targeted by Violence
https://www.facebook.com/59109969606/posts/pfbid022esH3ZdGkDFgBU8e1ANpgwocXBuPGgNXNM6iQqUDNtctjuSpSFciA5KqPn7RApu5l/?sfnsn=mo&mibextid=6aamW6

The usual “suspects” will come forward with the usual arguments in an attempt to explain or even justify police misconduct. Analysts will again pose the question: where did their training go wrong? I have stated on several occasions that police brutality is not a training issue: training imparts a knowledge or a skill; it does not build character or morality. As someone who has 30 years of experience in both employee recruitment & selection and employee training, I have often stated that this is an issue of selecting bad people to be cops and failing to correct bad behavior through progressive discipline before it becomes catastrophic, not an issue of how well these officers were trained.

But then again, maybe it is a training issue. If that is the case and the training of police is the problem, it could be that often police were too well trained: trained in how to plant evidence, trained in how to falsely set the tone for a defense in court (repeatedly yelling “Give me your hands” a total of 71 times in 13 minutes as the video was running, making statements such as “he tried to take my gun” and speculating that “he must be on something” for the body camera video), trained in how to deactivate several of the body cameras at the appropriate time, trained in what to say in court in an effort to escape criminal prosecution (such as “we feared for our lives”, “he was clearly on drugs”, “he was driving recklessly”, “he tried to take my gun”). In short, trained in how to successfully blame the victim.

The police apologists will once again insist that “these are just a few bad apples” and that “99.9 percent of police do their jobs honorably and with respect for citizens.” How is it, then, that people of Afrikan descent seem to so often encounter that 0.1 percent of police who are violent, corrupt and racist? How was Oscar Grant killed while he was handcuffed, face down, on a Bay Area Rapid Transit platform as he was telling his friends to comply with police? How was Philando Castille gunned down in his own car, in front of his lady and their child, for politely informing the officer that he was in legal possession of a firearm according to Minnesota’s gun laws? How do we wind up with cases such as those of Abner Louima (who survived being sodomized in 1997 by four New York police officers in a precinct bathroom), Amadou Diallo (who was shot 19 times and killed February 4, 1999 — 24 years ago practically to the day — by plainclothes police for entering the apartment building where he lived), Breonna Taylor (killed in her sleep in a hail of bullets), Sandra Bland (killed in a jail cell after a bogus traffic stop), Tamir Rice (killed for playing with a toy gun alone in a park), John Crawford III (killed for shopping in the gun aisle at an Ohio Walmart), Elijah McClain (injected with ketamine and killed by officers who accosted him for Walking While Black) — and these are just some of the victims who never posed any threat to police and were not even breaking the law — and so many others? How was Ronald Madison, a 45-year-old developmentally disabled man, shot multiple times in New Orleans in the wake of Hurricane Katrina by a police unit that then tried to cover up their crime by claiming he was a violent drug dealer who shot at them first? How was Rayshard Brooks shot in the back as he was running from police in an Atlanta, Georgia fast-food drive-thru? How was Walter Scott shot in the back in North Charleston, South Carolina as he was running from a police officer? How did we end up with Eric Garner being strangled with an illegal chokehold on a New York City street by Daniel Pantaleo and over half a dozen other police as he cried “I can’t breathe” and George Floyd’s throat being crushed by Derek Chauvin and three other Minneapolis police as he begged for his life? How did Freddie Gray end up dying from a broken neck for simply running from Baltimore City police when they stared at him? And now, how did five Memphis police get it into their heads to beat Tyre Nichols literally to death? No, these are not just a few bad apples. To paraphrase a 1990 commentary about racist right-wing politicians by Dr. Julianne Malveaux, this is five rotten apples that have not fallen far from a rotting tree.

So, what is the tree’s root?

This is part of the Slave Patrol legacy, that group of vigilantes who were dispatched to apprehend runaway slaves and who, along with the Pinkertons who crushed worker strikes on behalf of their corporate employers, were a major part of the genesis of the modern-day police force.

On a more contemporary level, the current apparent upsurge in police murders of unarmed civilians is a result, in part, of the culture wars that have been stoked for decades (and actually longer than that, but people’s memories are short, and who has time to read history anyway?) by right-wing, law-and-order, police-are-always-right politicians and media pundits who have refused to hear the cries of police brutality victims since before the Black Panther Party started calling attention to these atrocities in the Sixties.

This is also police paranoia and police gang mentality, bolstered by the “Thin Blue Line” and an “us versus them” mentality among too many cops, and further fueled by the unspoken but often-demonstrated attitude that police not only enforce the law, they are above it as well. That mentality was only encouraged and amplified by the glorification of Special Weapons And Tactics (SWAT) and Police Paramilitary Units (PPUs), so-called “elite” units who were provided with military-grade weaponry, provided with simulated urban-warfare training centers (like the one in Atlanta that has been the target of guerilla-style protests by environmentalists and critics of increased police power) and granted broad authority to enforce order, often however they saw fit. This is where units like Memphis’s SCORPION (“Street Crimes Operation to Restore Peace In Our Neighborhoods”), the Baltimore Gun Trace Task Force and Red Squad, and so many other “elite” police units derived much of their authority and discretion, which they exploited to empower them to commit acts of violence such as this.

How will this latest act of police brutality impact “The Talk” that so many of us have felt the need to have with our children, especially our young men? How will this impact the recommended strategy of compliance and non-resistance with police who may abuse and kill you anyway? What impact will this have on building a more revolutionary Pan-Afrikanist agenda within the Black community, particularly in those cities and neighborhoods where police already had a strained relationship with the people?

And how much harder will it make the jobs of those who actually do become police officers out of what some might regard as a naive commitment to do good for their community?

These questions are often difficult to answer, but one thing is certain.

As long as we continue to react to these atrocities instead of proactively organizing the activists of our community, our oppressors and enemies will continue to tolerate, cover up, ignore, encourage, defend, approve, plan and personally commit these heinous acts. Our continued dis-organization and collective in-action expresses, in an activist context, what Dr. King described on a personal level: “There comes a time when silence is betrayal.” (from Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break the Silence, April 4, 1967) We must begin to truly organize as a people, and it must start with our activists, organizers and self-described leaders. And it must start now. No more egos, no more “you must follow me”, no more ideological rigidity and arrogance. Start talking to each other and planning together or get used to seeing more and more of atrocities like this.

Some links to related articles about Black victims of police brutality

Black Atlantans Terrorized by Memphis Police Speak Out: “They’d Beat Your Ass”
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/other/black-atlantans-terrorized-by-memphis-pd-chief-s-old-unit-speak-out-they-d-beat-your-ass/ar-AA175ksR

Full List of 229 Black People Killed by Police Since George Floyd’s Murder
https://www.newsweek.com/full-list-229-black-people-killed-police-since-george-floyds-murder-1594477

Know Their Names: Al Jazeera
https://interactive.aljazeera.com/aje/2020/know-their-names/index.html

Tyre Nichols Beating Raises Scrutiny on Elite Police Units
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/tyre-nichols-beating-raises-scrutiny-on-elite-police-units/ar-AA16XQaJ?ocid=msedgntp&cvid=8d91eadaadc24dae8c23667120850a31

Opinion: The Deplorable Reason Memphis Police Stopped Tyre Nichols
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/opinion-the-deplorable-reason-memphis-police-stopped-tyre-nichols/ar-AA16XWCI?ocid=msedgntp&cvid=370ab24232f544188e6432e5900eea0a

MSN: Memphis cops reportedly gave Tyre Nichols 71 commands in 13 minutes: ‘So far out of the norm’
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/crime/memphis-cops-reportedly-gave-tyre-nichols-71-commands-in-13-minutes-so-far-out-of-the-norm/ar-AA16WxLb?ocid=msedgntp&cvid=8d91eadaadc24dae8c23667120850a31

MSN: Double amputee, 36, shot dead after attempting to run away from cops
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/crime/double-amputee-36-shot-dead-after-attempting-to-run-away-from-cops/ss-AA16XqQX?ocid=msedgntp&cvid=8d91eadaadc24dae8c23667120850a31#image=2

MSN: Memphis police seen beating another Black man and forcing his face to the ground, while detaining him [VIDEO]
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/crime/memphis-police-seen-beating-another-black-man-and-forcing-his-face-to-the-ground-while-detaining-him-video/ar-AA16Zsou?ocid=msedgntp&cvid=10ed80a77022425aa171e7694cfed8ce

Nichols Death Proves Elite Police Units Are A Disaster: Real Clear Policy
https://www.realclearpolicy.com/2023/01/30/tyre_nichols_death_proves_elite_police_units_are_a_disaster_878531.html

“Elite” Police Units Face More Scrutiny as Memphis SCORPION Unit Disbanded over Tyre Nichols Death: DemocracyNow!
https://www.democracynow.org/2023/1/31/radley_balko_warrior_cops_elite_units

Do ‘elite’ police teams like Memphis’ SCORPION unit do more harm than good?: On Point
https://www.wbur.org/onpoint/2023/02/01/specialized-police-units-tyre-nichols

Opinion: Tyre Nichols’s Death Proves Yet Again That ‘Elite’ Police Units Are a Disaster – The New York Times
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/29/opinion/tyre-nichols-police-scorpion.html

Memphis SCORPION Unit Deactivated
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/crime/tyre-nichols-live-updates-scorpion-unit-permanently-deactivated/ar-AA16O2sg?ocid=winp1taskbar&cvid=0c5f1ce054814fbbae9d20cbe5265857

Memphis man says he was assaulted by same Scorpion officers charged with Tyre Nichols’ death
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/memphis-man-says-was-assaulted-scorpion-officers-charged-tyre-nichols-rcna68860

What Tyre Nichols’ Death Reminds Us About Black Suffering: Medicine’s racist history bleeds into today’s medical practices, by Mengyi “Zed” Zha, MD February 2, 2023
https://www.medpagetoday.com/popmedicine/popmedicine/102934?xid=nl_popmed_2023-02-03&eun=g1701093d0r&utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=PopMedicine_020323&utm_term=NL_Gen_Int_PopMedicine_Active

The Legacy and Life of Keona Holley, Baltimore Police Officer Targeted by Violence
https://www.facebook.com/59109969606/posts/pfbid022esH3ZdGkDFgBU8e1ANpgwocXBuPGgNXNM6iQqUDNtctjuSpSFciA5KqPn7RApu5l/?sfnsn=mo&mibextid=6aamW6

Remembering Officer Keona Holley: Baltimore officer ambushed, shot in patrol car a year ago December 16, 2022, CBS Baltimore
https://www.cbsnews.com/baltimore/news/remembering-officer-keona-holley-baltimore-officer-ambushed-shot-in-patrol-car-a-year-ago/

Why Diversity Hasn’t changed Policing – Christian Science Monitor
https://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Society/2023/0203/Why-diversity-hasn-t-changed-policing

How common are killings by police? How often are officers prosecuted?
https://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Justice/2023/0202/How-common-are-killings-by-police-How-often-are-officers-prosecuted?icid=mkt:web:exitd-related

Tyre Nichols’ Death: How Black Officers Alone Can’t Stop Brutal Policing – The Marshall Project
https://www.themarshallproject.org/2023/01/28/tyre-nichols-memphis-black-police-brutality

Maybe They Should Have Cried

The week leading up to the traditional Thanksgiving holiday served up a mixed buffet to those who abhor racism, White supremacy and wanton vigilantism and who have cried out for justice against these scourges on society.

Rittenhouse Walks

First, on Friday, November 20, 2021, Kyle Rittenhouse, 18, was acquitted on all charges in the shooting deaths of Joseph Rosenbaum, 36 and Anthony Huber, 26, and the wounding of Gaige Grosskreutz, 27, in Kenosha, Wisconsin, on August 25, 2020, after Rittenhouse, who could not legally possess a firearm in Wisconsin, nonetheless crossed state lines from Illinois with a banned AR-15 semiautomatic rifle to “protect businesses” in Kenosha during protests against the police shooting of Jacob Blake earlier that year.

The verdict sent civil-rights and anti-police brutality activists reeling, and sent “a frightening message” according to Kathryn N. Cunningham, writing for the Taunton Daily Gazette (https://news.yahoo.com/opinion-rittenhouse-verdict-sends-frightening-094903058.html).  Anthea Butler, writing as an opinion columnist for MSNBC (https://www.msnbc.com/opinion/kyle-rittenhouse-s-not-guilty-verdict-gives-protesters-new-threat-n1284416), Kyle Rittenhouse’s not guilty verdict gives protesters a new threat to worry about: Vigilantism, not protesting, is becoming the preferred form of dissent in America, Nov. 23, 2021, states the following, among several other points she makes in a longer article:

During the civil rights movement, protesters had to fear fire hoses, dogs and tear gas. Now, with the acquittal of Kyle Rittenhouse, not only will protesters continue to fear excessive police force, but because a Wisconsin jury found Rittenhouse not guilty in the killing of two protesters and the wounding of another, random gun-toting vigilantes with their idea of “law and order” also present another very present danger.

In this sobering moment for the American justice system, the Second Amendment has outweighed the First. Because of the unwillingness of politicians or the courts to deal with the proliferation of guns in America, despair, disdain and distrust continue to permeate our everyday lives. Vigilantism, not protesting, is the preferred form of dissent in America.

Rittenhouse’s acquittal is representative of the primacy of the Second Amendment. His killing of Joseph Rosenbaum and Anthony Huber at a racial justice march in Kenosha and then his being found not guilty send a clear message: White lives who protest for Black lives matter don’t matter. Bringing a gun to a protest is OK, especially if you feel threatened by the protesters’ message. And if you say you feared for your life as you killed someone, you will be exonerated — if you are siding with the police and not those protesting the police.

The Rittenhouse case can’t be separated from race and racism. After Rittenhouse pleaded not guilty, he posed for a photo with the far-right group the Proud Boys. White evangelicals were among those raising money for his bail and his legal defense. Those groups’ support makes it pointedly clear that Rittenhouse is a hero in those circles. For the gun-toting, God-fearing masses, Rittenhouse’s tears on the stand were proof of his innocence.

The case also highlights how differently people who claim self-defense are treated. Chrystul Kizer, accused when she was 17 of killing a man in Kenosha who she says trafficked her for sex, had to fight to a Wisconsin appellate court to even be allowed to use what amounts to a self-defense claim. Her case has been compared to that of Cyntoia Brown, who was a teenager in Tennessee when she killed the man she said was sex-trafficking her. Brown, who, like Kizer, is Black, was sentenced to life before the governor commuted the sentence. Those two cases are among the many that give the context to a tweet that went viral after Rittenhouse’s acquittal: “Women rotting in prison for killing their abusers would like a word.” …

Some may ask, as have some friends of mine: What does this case have to do with People of Afrikan Descent?  This was a case of a White boy shooting three White men.  My answer to this is not so much about the ethnicity of the victims (three White men) as that of the defendant (a 17-year-old White boy).  The racist double-standard screams out to all of us.  Black boys younger than Rittenhouse have seen the proverbial book thrown at them for less severe crimes.  And when a gun is involved (or imagined to be involved), the price paid by even Black boys is often their lives, on the spot, by summary execution.  Michael Brown is shot dead in the street and left there for hours in Ferguson, Missouri.  Tamir Rice is gunned down while playing with a toy gun, alone, in a park by police officers who gave him no time to even acknowledge them.  Philando Castille is shot in front of his fiancee and child in his own car for politely informing the officer that he was in possession of a legally licensed firearm in Minnesota.  John Crawford III is killed for shopping in the gun aisle of an Ohio Wal-Mart.  Jacob Blake is shot in the back after he retreated to his car; fortunately, he survived, but he is now paralyzed from the waist down.  Breonna Taylor is killed in her bed during a questionable police raid of her apartment.  Trayvon Martin is killed by an armed vigilante who stalked him with a gun for apparently “not belonging” in the neighborhood, armed with an apparently dangerous bag of Skittles.  Korryn Gaines is shot in the back in Baltimore County while defending her home and child with a shotgun.  And Kyle Rittenhouse travels across state lines to Kenisha, Wisconsin, armed with an illegal AR-15, to defend a community he doesn’t belong to, brazenly brandishing his proud weapon in the street as a form of intimidation against protesters and “looters”, and reacts with fear and violence when he is challenged by activists who see him as a threat.  Add to this the likely impact of his acquittal and subsequent canonization as a hero by the likes of Donald Trump (welcomed him to Mar-A-Lago), Matt Gaetz (offered him a Congressional internship) and Marjorie Taylor-Greene (nominated him for the Congressional Gold Medal), and the right-wing nuts may soon be coming out of the woodwork to make the “Unite the Right” White riots in Charlottesville, Virginia in 2017 look like a re-enactment of Woodstock.

We will see exactly how the so-called “conservative” right-wing responds to this verdict in the weeks to come, especially in light of the second course that was served up the following week.

Ahmaud Arbery’s Killers are Convicted

Just when progressives and anti-racist activists were reaching for antacids over the Rittenhouse verdict, the trial for the February 23, 2020 murder of Ahmaud Arbery came to a close.   Guilty verdicts for all three of the defendants.

The following information comes from a New York Times article by Patrick J. Lyons, written on November 5, 2021, Here are the charges that the defendants face (https://www.nytimes.com/2021/11/05/us/charges-arbery-killing-trial-defendants.html).

Travis McMichael, 35, was convicted on all nine counts as follows:

COUNT 1: Malice murder
This crime is defined in Georgia law as causing a person’s death with deliberate intention, without considerable provocation, and “where all the circumstances of the killing show an abandoned and malignant heart.” It is punishable by death, or by life imprisonment with or without possibility of parole.

COUNTS 2, 3, 4 AND 5: Felony murder
This charge applies when a death is caused in the course of committing another felony, “irrespective of malice” — in other words, whether or not the killing was intentional and unprovoked.
The other felonies in this case are listed in Counts 6 through 9 of the indictment; one count of felony murder is linked to each. If prosecutors prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the defendants committed one or more of those crimes and also caused Mr. Arbery’s death in the process, the basis would be laid for a conviction for felony murder.
Like malice murder, felony murder is punishable by death, or by life imprisonment with or without possibility of parole.

COUNT 6: Aggravated assault
One way Georgia law defines this crime is as an assault using a deadly weapon. This count charges the three men with attacking Mr. Arbery with a 12-gauge shotgun. It is punishable by imprisonment of one to 20 years.

COUNT 7: Aggravated assault
Another way Georgia law defines this crime is as an assault using “any object, device, or instrument which, when used offensively against a person, is likely to or actually does result in serious bodily injury.” This count charges the defendants with using two pickup trucks to assault Mr. Arbery. It is punishable by imprisonment of one to 20 years.

COUNT 8: False imprisonment
This charge applies when a person without legal authority “arrests, confines, or detains” another person “in violation of the personal liberty” of that person. Specifically, the defendants are charged with using their pickup trucks to chase, confine and detain Mr. Arbery “without legal authority.”
False imprisonment is punishable by one to 10 years in prison.

COUNT 9: Criminal attempt to commit a felony
Georgia law defines criminal attempt as performing “any act which constitutes a substantial step” toward the intentional commission of a crime — in this case, the false imprisonment charged in Count 8. A defendant can be convicted either of completing a particular crime or of attempting it, but not both.
Because false imprisonment is a felony, attempting it is also a felony, punishable by half the attempted crime’s maximum sentence: in this case, one to five years in prison.

His father, Gregory McMichael, 65, an ex-police officer whose license to carry a police firearm had been suspended, was convicted on all but Count 1, the Malice Murder charge. 

And William “Roddie” Bryan, 52, who would later insist that he wished he had never been at the scene and participated in the murder, was convicted on three of the four Felony Murder counts, Aggravated Assault with a pickup truck (Count 7), False Imprisonment (Count 8) and Criminal Intent to Commit a Felony (Count 9).

Bryan’s “non-confession” (He, like the McMichaels, had pleaded not guilty to the crimes even though he claimed that he was cooperating with the authorities) seems to come closest to the efforts Rittenhouse had made to curry favor and sympathy with his jury by breaking down on the witness stand.  In fact, while the defense attorneys did what they could to try to “dirty up” Mr. Arbery by intimating that he may have stolen items from a truck, may have stolen items from the house that he visited while it was under construction, and even posed a threat to them by briefly struggling with Travis McMichael as McMichael threatened him with his rifle, the one thing these defendants apparently did not do in their trial that Rittenhouse did in his was break down in tears on the stand.  Apparently, they had not read enough of the accounts of the numerous police murder trials, such as the February 2000 Amadou Diallo trial, in which plainclothes New York police officers Sean Carroll, Richard Murphy, Edward McMellon, and Kenneth Boss claimed they thought his wallet was a gun and they “feared for their lives”, or the July 13, 2013 trial of George Zimmerman, in which he somehow convinced a jury that it was Trayvon Martin, not Zimmerman, who was the stalker and the threat to life.  It would seem that their need to maintain their veneer of Righteous White Macho prevented them from displaying the emotion, contrived or not, that Rittenhouse did.  Perhaps we are all fortunate that their pride prevented them from using the one tactic that seems to have saved Kyle Rittenhouse and a whole legion of police officers and police wannabes from meeting justice.

We Are the Mothers of the Revolution: Message to Black Women on International Women’s Rights Day

Mama Julia Wright, Pan-Afrikan human rights champion and daughter of legendary author Richard Wright, wrote the following Message to Black Women for the Million Woman March Movement on International Women’s Rights Day:

We, Black women, are mothers in more ways than one.

We are the mothers or mothers-to-be of our Black daughters and sons.

We nurture our warriors with the hope and the love that is at the root of all resistance.

We are the mothers of the lynched ones – and of all those who died in the struggle but still live in our hearts.

It is to us that their spirits return because there were so often no bodies, no graves, no mourning.

We are the mothers of the Revolution.

I remember a story told by my father, Richard Wright, in “Uncle Tom’s Children” where a Black mother goes to retrieve the body of the son the white supremacists are about to lynch. She meekly carries a sheet outwardly intended as a shroud but secretly hiding a pistol. She is able to shoot down one of her son’s torturers before being slain with her son.

I remember Maimie Till, the mother of Emmett Till, who moved mountains to have her 14 year old son’s lynched remains returned from the oblivion of an unmarked Mississippi grave to Chicago. There she decreed an open coffin for the whole world to see. The child’s innocence and his mother’s love gave birth to the civil rights movement.

I remember Sister Yuri Kochiyama, mother of six, cradling Malcolm X’s agony after he was shot down, ten years after Emmett Till’s lynching, in the Audubon Ballroom.

Yuri’s scribbled notes on the events that night already presciently pointed to Raymond Woods’ implication.

I will always recall going with Yuri and Pam Africa to visit Mumia.

The voice of Chairman Fred Hampton Jr is still scarred by the staccato tempo of the bullets he heard in his mother’s womb.

And how can we forget George Floyd placing himself in his mother’s hands as he takes his last breath.

Mumia’s 39-year long struggle for justice behind bars speaks to the mothers we are.

He is our brother, father, grandfather but most of all he is our revolutionary native son because time froze his freedom prematurely at the age of 27 when he was brutally framed and nearly killed by the most corrupt police force in the country.

What will we Black mothers do for our native son ?

We, Black women, are legion.

Training prosecutors in Pennsylvania were taught to exclude us from their juries because we are said to be prone to anger.

We are demonized, deleted, shunned, raped – so yes we are angry.

Our anger is rooted in our deep capacity to love.

We ,who love Mumia and all he stands for, we who are legion, will know how to seize the time and stand for him as COVID-19 and congestive heart failure put his life at serious risk again in carceral isolation.

As Sister Assata said : “It is too late for Malcolm but we can still save Mumia.”

Let’s bring Mumia Home!

The only treatment now is Freedom!

Let all our elders and political prisoners go!

Message from Julia Wright to the Million Woman March Movement for International Women’s Rights Day

March 6th 2021