from the brilliant Malkia Cyril: The thing I love most about this blossoming young movement against anti-black racism is that the innocence and humanity of our martyrs is not based on their perfection. They dont have the status of religious leaders like Martin or Malcolm. They werent political leaders like Eldridge, Huey, or Assata. They were criminals. Criminals in the way we all are criminals, simply by being Black in a society built to dehumanize Blackness. Criminals before they broke this systems laws. Criminals without breaking a single law. Criminalized. Even as children, sleeping. Even as accident victims, asking for help. With their hands up. Saying I cant breathe. Were the products of the New Jim Crow, and the current police state under which we live represents the resurgence of Black Codes. The more advanced capitalism becomes, the more brutal its need for social control. Just as American slavery represented a transition from a feudal economy to a different stage, I think were in a similar moment. Maybe thats why this feels to me like a slave rebellion. Those who keep saying there arent clear demands fail to hear the very concrete demands articulated in almost every media interview Ive heard. But honestly, some demands extend beyond the parameters of the current system, and the limits of imagination thus far. The demand to be treated as a human being with basic rights certainly has policy hooks, certainly has an electoral strategy, is certainly embedded in political and long term organizing campaigns-- but its also more than that. This thing thats happening is the result of a combination of Black genius and Black rage. It is a combination of Black strategy and organic widespread resistance to a militarized policing that affects us all. In a racial hierarchy organized around the social control of Black people for economic gain-- migrants, poor and working class white folks, native people, Asian-Americans, Arab-Americans, the Black middle class, and all who have both benefitted from and suffered as a result of anti-black racism and a slave economy that has never recovered from its brutal beginnings, are beginning to realize that the mass incarceration, murder, and overall destruction of Black life is also what mobilizes anti-migrant immigration policy, land grabs, poverty, the breaking in half of democracy, on and on. That experience of waking up is a cultural shift. My commitment is to demand, build, and use cultural platforms, policies, and practices that help us re-organize this wayward system. That help us win. That leave no hiding place. The conditions have changed. And Im changing with them. #JustSaying #StudSense #ICantBreathe #ShutItDown #ThisStopsToday #BlackLivesMatter #TheWholeDamnSystemIsGuilty #WhichSideAreYouOn
Posted on: Mon, 08 Dec 2014 04:25:26 +0000
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