Black Lives Matter protesters kneel and raise their hands in London’s Oxford Street – 8 July 2016. Credit: Flickr/Alasdair Hickson. CC BY-NC 2.0.

When I read this in the morning paper, my heart stopped: Just 40 minutes away from me, the white mother of black children in New Jersey was repeatedly harassed via Facebook by a stranger, who told her that her children should be hung.

Kentucky police arrested the young white man on Oct. 18, as he was backing out of his driveway with weapons, 200 rounds of ammunition and plans for shooting up a nearby school. The authorities thanked the mom — Koeberle Bull of Lumberton, New Jersey — for alerting them.
I’m the white grandfather of a family of mostly black children. Someone armed and active is so offended by a mixed-race family that he wants to kill children like mine. Supported by my white daughter Ingrid, I allowed the terror to move through me while I raged and cried.

After a while, when the intensity of my feelings lessened, Ingrid asked, “Isn’t it time to go on the offensive against racism?”

I needed to access positive energy. While I was still identifying with the New Jersey mom and immersed in the feelings of fear, the ideas running through my head were all about defense.

That’s the intention of terror, after all, whether it’s expressed in packages of bombs sent to prominent people or conducting a massacre in a Jewish synagogue in Pittsburgh. I was gripped by my human programming: When under attack, defend!

When I released enough fear to be able to think again, I could hear Ingrid’s question and access my strategy brain. Strategy urges the opposite of fear’s reactivity. Mohandas K. Gandhi, observing Indians reacting against the British Empire, urged his people to go on the offensive. Military generals agree with Gandhi: Wars can’t be won by staying on the defense.

For its part, folk wisdom couldn’t be clearer: “The best defense is a good offense.”

Despite this, many Americans at this moment — perhaps especially activists — are locked into reactivity and defense. I see the resulting frustration when I observe activists attacking each other. Going on the offense has different outcomes: It builds healthier movement cultures and shifts our focus to winning over allies in an expanding struggle.

What an offensive against racism looks like.
I often heard Bayard Rustin, a senior strategist for Martin Luther King Jr., say at the height of the civil rights movement, “We’ve got to change our economic system or in 50 years we’ll still have ugly racism!”

He’s backed up by a trio of political scientists who recently studied polarization in the United States. They found that polarization was directly linked to economic inequality. In other words, the economic elite that makes the basic decisions in the United States has, since the Reagan revolution, dramatically increased inequality and therefore accelerated polarization.

But what does polarization have to do with the violent expression of racism?

Even though racism is an integral part of American culture, how strongly it is felt and expressed varies on a spectrum, from subtle stereotyping and micro-aggressions on one end to the would-be Kentucky shooter on the other. That means there is always some racial hatred around; we need to just face that. What usually keeps people from violently acting out their hatred is the social context.

Polarization releases people to act out their hatred. In the 1920s economic inequality deepened, polarization grew, and the Ku Klux Klan was everywhere. It’s not only racism that’s released by polarization. As society heats up movements on the left grow, too. That’s why we saw powerful movements for progressive change in the 1930s, even while the American Nazis were busy recruiting.

The biggest mistake 1930s activists could have made was going on the defensive because, as it turns out, it was exactly the time to go on the offensive. Thankfully, that’s what they did. The result was the biggest decade of gains for American progress in the first half of the 20th century. Historic breakthroughs on racial integration of industrial unions were made in that very period.

In the 1960s, bombings of Mississippi black churches became epidemic, along with killings of black people and their white allies — even in broad daylight. Nonviolent civil rights leaders understood this dynamic.

King and his comrades were clear that the remedy is to take the offensive, and the movement won gains that, at the time, appeared to be impossible. The economic emphasis of Rustin and A. Philip Randolph also gained support. The 1963 March on Washington — dreaded by President John F. Kennedy and most Democratic Party leaders — significantly named itself the March for Jobs and Freedom, attracting significant trade union support.

King modeled for all of us what offensive strategizing looks like, as illustrated in the outstanding film Selma. He felt his feelings about the latest outrage, but instead of letting his feelings control his behavior he channeled the energy into action aimed at changing institutions. The more that vicious attacks targeted him and his people, the more clearly he saw that injustice is reinforced by the economic structure. Increasingly he linked racism and poverty to capitalism.

As the current political turbulence swirls around us, the need grows for models of grounded campaigns that take the offensive and make the racial and economic connections. One example is the Power Local Green Jobs campaign in North Philadelphia, which incorporates a strong racial and economic justice dimension.

Most activists can find ways to connect the dots even if their primary issue is gun control, sexism, incarceration, rights for trans people, peace or raising the minimum wage. Progress on many issues is opposed by the economic elite, whether acting through Donald Trump or Congress or state governments. The only way to break this opposition is to push the economic elite out of its position of dominance, so we can make the required changes toward equality (both economic and racial) and enjoy the social peace that results.

Three steps help put us back on the offensive.
The good news is that activists, by taking three strategic steps, can dramatically increase our power and effectiveness. The steps are not rocket science — in fact, they are perceived by people outside the activist bubble as common sense steps to take.

1. Shift away from reactive, one-off demonstrations. Protests can be emotionally satisfying, but they rarely produce change. Again, the black-led civil rights movement showed its strategic brilliance by focusing on campaigns rather than episodic protests. A campaign has a specific demand for change, a target (the deciders who can yield to the demand) and an escalating series of actions that build the campaign. Campaigning doesn’t guarantee winning, but it increases the chance of success from near-zero using one-off demonstrations to a chance that’s better than even.

2. Link the network of campaigns on an issue into a movement. That movement can result in the movement winning in the big picture, even if some specific campaigns within the movement don’t win. The military analogy is that generals don’t expect to win every battle, but if they retain the initiative they do expect to win the war.

Linking campaigns into a movement also promotes the learning curve of the campaigners, by comparing themselves to each other. They learn how to figure out the opponent’s vulnerabilities and how to sustain themselves over time.

3. Create a vision of what justice looks like. While the Occupy movement changed the conversation, it was held back partly by its lack of a concrete vision of what should replace the unjust status quo. Fortunately, the Movement for Black Lives issued a vision draft in 2016 that has gathered endorsements by many national and grassroots groups.

The hope for a movement of movements that can amass enough power to push the 1 percent out of dominance lies, I believe, in taking at least these steps. A series of nonviolent direct action campaigns that stay on the offensive can build vision-led movements that — finding themselves facing the same opponent — create a coalition and win.

That is the shift that can make possible, at long last, a decisive win against racism.

George Lakey has been active in direct action campaigns for six decades. Among many other books and articles he is author of “Strategizing for a Living Revolution” in David Solnit’s book Globalize Liberation (City Lights, 2004). His 2016 book is “Viking Economics,” and in December 2018 Melville House will release “How We Win: A Guide to Nonviolent Direct Action Campaigning.”
 

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Outside in public: Smiling, dressed real fine, manners on point. I am well schooled on how to be respectful, how to take up space, how to use silence when necessary. Travelling home on transit listening to music to drown out my day — filled with injustices from the minute I left my “sanctuary” ten hours earlier. Fumbling for keys, nearly pushing the door down to my home. All I experienced outside threatens to crash down my door and engulf my insides and swallow me whole. My breath struggles to calm itself. Grief shadows me through the hallway. I self-talk my way into the kitchen, slipping my armour off; my thick silver bangle hits the floor, the sound awakening me to reality. I am home. I sit still for a minute and contemplate how I will go out again to face the monster of anti-Black racism. I drink my tea quickly, and begin to make dinner. – Feb 9, 2018, author’s journal

Health impacts from anti-Black racism and anti-Indigeneity are often dismissed or kept silent by health scholars and health care workers. Shutterstock

Witnessing and hearing stories about racism can impact your health. The feelings evoked can make you ill if not processed.

The recent news of Tina Fontaine’s trial and the acquittal of Gerald Stanley, a white farmer accused of killing a young Indigenous man, Colten Boushie, of the Red Pheasant First Nation are examples of the Canadian legal system’s commitment to the Indian Act and colonial dominance.

This ongoing colonial dominance has a transgenerational trauma impact on the health of Indigenous and colonized peoples.

Two recent examples that indicate the kind of violence that Black people experience: A school that allowed police to shackle a Black six-year old girl’s wrists and ankles; a children’s aid system that put a child refugee from Somalia into foster care yet never applied for his Canadian citizenship, so years later he received deportation orders to a country where he does not speak the language.

The impact of this colonialism and anti-Black racism on the health of Black and Indigenous peoples is elongated and insidious. We navigate systems, structures and communities that perpetuate abhorrence towards us in all aspects of our lives.

Experiencing and fighting such systems for justice for our children, ourselves and our community members has devastating effects on our health.

As a health and human rights researcher, therapist and professor who has explored the deep implications of racism, I would like to share some insights into the impacts of racism on our health.

My hope is that by doing so I create dialogue and encourage communities to continue to voice their experiences of violence and racism — in order to demand changes and ultimately create more supports.
 

Violence is a continuum

Health indicator statistics of Indigenous communities report increasing disparities between Indigenous and settler populations. Systemic racism affects Indigenous population’s health in various ways, this includes limited healthy food choices, inadequate living conditions and substandard health care. The infant mortality rate within Indigenous communities is almost 12 times that of settler communities.

The statistics, usually presented by state authorities, come without context or consideration to the broad range of causes — one of which is the continued exposure to state violence on a daily basis.

Family and supporters of Thelma Favel, Tina Fontaine’s great-aunt and the woman who raised her, march on Friday, Feb. 23, 2018, in Winnipeg the day after the jury delivered a not-guilty verdict in the 2nd degree murder trial of Raymond Cormier. THE CANADIAN PRESS/John Woods

We have anecdotal evidence: We see loved ones, friends, ourselves and respected community leaders struggle with the emotional and physiological impacts of racism on a daily basis. While anti-Black racism’s effect on the health of Black communities is documented, studies from the U.S. are more illustrative.
In one U.S. study, researchers studied 1,574 Baltimore residents of which 20 per cent reported that they had been racially discriminated against “a lot.” This same group had higher systolic blood pressure than those who perceived they had been discriminated against very little. Additionally, over a five-year period the group that felt they had been discriminated against “a lot” had higher declines in kidney function.

In a 1997 to 2003 study on racial discrimination and breast cancer in U.S. Black women, researchers found that perceived experiences of racism resulted in increased incidents of breast cancer, especially among young Black women. In 2011, a pivotal study on the impact of racism on health scholars linked lifetime experiences of discrimination to higher prevalence of hypertension in African Americans.
 

Biases in research

These are just a few examples of some studies being done on the impact of racism on health. However, most studies have been conducted in the U.S., the U.K., New Zealand and Australia. Canada does not yet collect race-based health or experiences of racism on health data through any formal mechanism. This poses a problem when scholars are asked to produce “scientific data” to prove that racism impacts health inequities and disparities. How do you provide “statistically significant evidence” on the impact of anti-Black racism when systemic issues limits your access to collecting this same data? My future research proposes to support the collection of increased health data on the impact of anti-Black racism in Canada and globally.

In Black communities no one is immune from racism — from our unborn to our school age children to our elderly. Consciously and unconsciously our health becomes obstructed.

The impact on health intensifies for those in Black communities who are women, working class, lesbian, gay, bisexual or trans (LGBT), dis(abled), refugees or newcomers. Here, the combination of oppressions creates additional stress on mental and physical health and well-being. I call this intersectional violence.
For example, the massacre of Muslims in a Québec mosque and anti-Islam policies continue to further impact the health of marginalized, often surveilled communities. Two victims of the Québec massacre were Black. This fact is hardly mentioned. This is an example of anti-Black racism within communities of colour.

Health impacts from anti-Black racism and anti-Indigeneity are often dismissed or kept silent by health scholars and health-care workers. The findings challenge the illegitimacy of systems of dominance and question the humaneness and accountability of colonial power. As such, research on the health impact of anti-Black racism is underfunded and under researched.

The “realness” of health impacts related to racism interrupts narratives of the “disadvantaged,” the “poor,” the “lazy” and the “needy.” Such stereotypes re-victimize and further aggregate health inequities. Yet understanding racism as a determinant of health is important to understanding economic and social barriers to success.
When we fail to address the real impact of racism on Black communities’ health, we not only lose our community members to often preventable disease, illness, institutionalization and ultimately death, we also lose our opportunity for redress and to energetically participate in transnational anti-oppression movements.

Protesting against white supremacy and racism in downtown Chicago on Aug. 21, 2017, after the tragedy in Charlottesville. Shutterstock
 

Health impacts

Experiencing racism throughout our lifespan can overwhelm our health functionality. Repetitive acts of untreated trauma and violence lead to debilitating health issues.

The impact of anti-Black racism within our educational system is well documented by our lived experiences and “unexplained” drop-out rates. The effect of prolonged injustice from junior kindergarten through to post-secondary education, can lead to exacerbated health conditions.

The under-recruiting and under-hiring of African/Black and Indigenous peoples in medicine, psychology, education, health and in academia directly affects the impact of racism on these same communities.

Adversely, the over-hiring of African/Black community members as personal support workers, health aids and child care workers with little opportunity to move into positions of power in these fields directly establishes a division between the “helper” and “the helped,” resembling enslavement roles where Africans served whites while living in conditions that gravely impacted their own health.

The impact of the over-representation of our children in state care on the health of Black families due to separation and transgenerational trauma is never measured.

As our children and elders endure acts of violence during vulnerable times in their lives, without protection or support, their grief response becomes hidden or dissociated. This leads to challenges in seeking and receiving health care which increases despairing health results.

The myth that Black people do not seek mental health therapy comes from a falsified notion of “super resiliency” instead of the reality of under-funded and purposely delayed services that prevent health and wellness in our communities. This leads to many community members suffering and seeking services in silence and isolation.

The burden on Black and colonized folks’ bodies, minds, spirits, health and wellness is all-encompassing.

Experiencing racism throughout our lifespan can overwhelm our health functionality. Shutterstock
 

Possibilities for change

Having a provincial anti-racism directorate and local Toronto anti-Black racism action plan indicates a way forward. Much activism over many years resulted in these strategies getting put into action.

The directorate’s effectiveness will be measured in its implementation, the diversity of its members and its power to eliminate health disparities and address the health impacts of racism and violence on the daily lives of Black, Indigenous and racialized peoples.

Research funding needs to be increased. Universities need to hire scholars from communities who are directly impacted by racism and whose work address these health inequities — to support communities impacted by these same injustices.

What if the Afrocentric Alternative school, the only one in Canada, was well resourced and supported as a health strategy to combat the early stigmatization and violence experienced by school-aged Black children?

What if, in the case of the killing of the late Colten Boushie, the jury was not all white?

What if we looked to Black Live Matters as a public health racial justice movement trying to prevent further health atrocities?

What if we collected health data on the impact of racism – using both informal and formal research methods – empowered, developed and implemented by Black and colonized communities to create health equity programs and strategies to address our health disparities?

Roberta K. Timothy, Assistant Lecturer Global Health, Ethics and Human Rights School of Health, York University, Canada

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

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What next? EPA/Michael Reynolds

Time Magazine’s February 2017 cover will feature the Women’s March on Washington (WMoW), with the caption, “The Resistance Rises: How a March Becomes a Movement”.

The WMoW has rapidly become an umbrella protest for a variety of causes, and now shows signs of becoming a movement not just for protest, but to advance women’s rights and effect policy changes. But successful social movements don’t effect change simply via polite organised marches in Washington; they disrupt the status quo and pressure lawmakers into making changes with real consequences. And unlike certain other movements at work in the US today, the WMoW marchers are in a privileged position to make this happen.

After the WMoW on January 21, President Trump took to Twitter to demonstrate his approval: “Peaceful protests are a hallmark of our democracy. Even if I don’t always agree, I recognise the rights of people to express their views.” This is in stark contrast to Trump’s statements about Black Lives Matter (BLM).

Just before the election, he singled out a BLM protester at one of his rallies and said he should be “roughed up”. He has called the movement divisive. His new administration has added a new page to the White House website entitled Standing Up For Our Law Enforcement Community which states:

The dangerous anti-police atmosphere in America is wrong. The Trump Administration will end it … Our job is not to make life more comfortable for the rioter, the looter, or the violent disrupter.

Many in the BLM movement have read this as a threat to protesters. So why the apparent double standard?

One obvious explanation is that the women’s marchers were, in Trump’s terminology, “peaceful” – no clashes between police and protesters, no violence, no rioting or looting. Indeed, many who supported the WMoW took to social media the next day to pat themselves on the back for executing a peaceful protest during which no-one was arrested.

But unsurprisingly, many BLM activists argued that white privilege played a major role in how the protest was perceived by the public and handled by the police. The Washington march itself was attended overwhelmingly by white women and was far less radical in tone than a BLM march despite their common goals.

Clearly, the two movements are disconnected. Two viral photos from the WMoW demonstrate the distance between them.

This image of Angela Peoples has received widespread attention. It’s a fair point: 53% of white women in America voted for Trump, and while the estimated 500,000 women protesting in Washington most likely didn’t, most of their peers did.

In this second photo, protester Amir Talai draws attention to the divisions between WMoW organisers and attendees about the role of race in the protest. As some women of colour began criticising their white allies, they started to make them feel alienated from the cause – and the sometimes heated dialogue between white women and women of colour on the WMoW Facebook page is testament to the tensions that persist.

While the WMoW’s white protesters are willing to accept women of colour in support of their cause, many aren’t willing to return the favour by supporting BLM: only 51% of white Americans aged 18-30 support BLM, and far fewer actually show up at protests.

It would be a huge wasted opportunity if these movements couldn’t bridge the gap between them. We should expect more and more protests during the Trump Administration, and the time is right for action.

Clearly, WMoW has something to learn from BLM. Here are five core lessons.

1. Be inclusive

The WMoW must be inclusive of all women, regardless of race, class, religion, age, political beliefs, sexuality, or their possession of a vagina (yes, trans women are part of this movement too). BLM has done this very well: spearheaded by LGBT women, many of the movement’s leaders are to this day young, queer, and trans women of colour. If the WMoW wants to succeed as a movement, it will have to live up to that standard.

2. Act local

The key to mobilising a movement beyond one march is to organise self-sustaining sub-groups across the country. This will include local organisations coming together under the banner of one name, whether the WMoW, the “Resistance” or something else. It also means lobbying local and state politicians. Activists can do this by asking their mayors to designate their cities as sanctuary cities for immigrants, or by calling state representatives to oppose legislation that would limit women’s reproductive health options.

3. Be political, but not partisan

BLM has deliberately represented itself as “revolutionary” in political orientation, often supporting left-wing candidates but not aligning itself with a particular political party. That helps it push candidates harder. From before the primaries even began in early 2016, its protesters were highly visible throughout the campaign, making their demands a constant issue. If the WMoW wants to match its power, it will have to step away from partisan alignment and push policy demands across the spectrum – especially once the 2018 midterm elections start to ramp up.

4. Civil disobedience works

A variety of nonviolent civil disobedience and peaceful protests must be used to have the greatest effect. Civil Rights campaigners in the 1960s used civil disobedience to resist Jim Crow segregation by sitting at whites-only lunch counters, resisting efforts to remove them; today, BLM protesters have taken to stopping traffic on busy highways. In short, peaceful protests are fantastic for bringing awareness to a problem, but they don’t disrupt the status quo or bring pressure on lawmakers to make changes.

5. Keep going

Angela Peoples’ photo speaks a very particular truth: many of these white middle-class American cisgender women are new to protest politics. That is not a bad thing – but if the WMoW is going to effectively challenge the Trump Administration and Congress on women’s rights, they are going to have to keep showing up. Even when they don’t feel like it. Even when it’s inconvenient. Even when they might get arrested for civil disobedience. Successful social movements are not all sunshine and “pussyhats”; much of the work is tedious, tiresome, and thankless.

BLM protesters understand this. They show up day in and day out to have their voices heard. The Resistance, or whatever we’re calling it, will have to do that, too.

(Laura Graham is Assistant Professor of Sociology, Trinity College Dublin)

This article was first published on The Conversation.
 

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Thomas Hawk/Flickr. Some rights reserved.

In what are now tragically familiar scenes, America, and much of the world, was rocked by two more videos of US police officers shooting and killing unarmed black men. Only a day later, it stood in shock as police officers and civilians were gunned down in Dallas, in what appeared to be retaliation. In little more than a week, three police officers would be shot dead and seven more wounded in Baton Rouge, Louisiana – where earlier that month police were recorded killing the black citizen Alton Sterling with seemingly little cause. 

The primary focus has been on the continuing history of racial violence by law enforcement – particularly against black citizens. From slavery to Jim Crow to the present, the country’s racial divisions have been preserved through official and unofficial terror. It also brought to the forefront rising fears (whether or not statistically justified) that this will only escalate racial tensions and violence while creating a hostile and deadly social climate for law enforcement.

However, they also reflect a deeper racial discourse of “policing” that permeates US politics and culture more generally. Notably, it frames US authority as having to constantly protect the country against national and international “threats” to its order. This leads to a top down pre-emptive justification of “lawful” force, especially against stereotyped populations. Thus soldiers and police officers alike view themselves on the frontline and dangerous edge of preventing terrorist and criminal attacks, respectively. The results of this “policing” culture are as fatal as they are racist – creating a perpetual cycle of violence and reaction both at home and abroad.

Beyond “Good Policing”

In the wake of these latest filmed outrages, there was renewed public outcry for better policing. Indeed this year alone over a hundred black citizens have been killed by police officers, a statistic that reinforces how necessary and urgent it is to ensure that black lives matter.   

Such calls only intensified after the killings in Dallas – though they took on a decidedly different, more pro-law enforcement tone. The attempt to paint all police officers as “racist” or “bad” was not only supposedly wrong, but also downright dangerous.  

Bubbling to the surface was a troubling social division pitting “cops” and against angry and victimized “civilians.”  It was no long a matter of a professional police force serving the public. It was now entrenched partisans groups with calls for “Black Lives Matter” on one side and “Blue Lives Matter” on the other.

Between these extremes are supposedly “moderate” and “sensible” voices seeking to understand the exact police culture that is giving rise to this toxic environment of death and retribution. In the words of a former black police officer:
“Because of this legacy of racism, police abuse in black and brown communities is generations old. It is nothing new. It has become more visible to mainstream America largely because of the proliferation of personal recording devices, cellphone cameras, video recorders — they're everywhere. We need police officers.  We also need them to be held accountable to the communities they serve.” 

While informative, these perspectives still ignore a fundamental problem. They fail to fully grasp how the very modern concept of “policing” is contributing to these ongoing tragedies. It is the same mentality of paranoia and aggression that is fueling the seemingly perpetual war on terror. The US needs to do more than stop bad police – it must also put an end to its broader politics and culture of race-based “policing” both inside and outside its borders.

The War at Home

The attacks on September 11th dramatically altered US and global politics. Finding and rooting out “terrorists” domestically and internationally became the top priority for the world’s biggest military superpower. 

At the heart of these policies was a fresh vision of authority at all levels. The primary responsibility of all those in power – whether the military, police or politicians – was to prevent terrorist violence. It created a mindset in which threats were waiting behind every corner, forcing the government to be ever vigilant against hidden terror wherever it may be lurking. It has become “terrorized by the War on Terror”.

This led to the justification of pre-emptive attacks and extra-juridical killing – from the disastrous invasion of Iraq to the current policies of assassination and drone bombings. The target of this aggression has been “radical Islam,” a code word used far too often for terrorizing entire non-white Muslim societies. While official rhetoric has tried to downplay this racial connection, the narrative of crusade and a “clash of civilizations” stoked domestic racism. Calls to ban Muslims from entering the country and building a wall to stop Mexican “criminals and rapists” at the border reveals this worrying politics of terror and scapegoating.

Less discussed, perhaps, but no less significant has been the spread of this terror mentality to the domestic police force. One obvious change is the pronounced “militarization” of modern law enforcement. Cops on the street increasingly look like soldiers patrolling foreign territory.

The similarities go far deeper than armored uniforms and advanced weaponry. They extend to the very ways in which they police. Officers were already divided between whether they were “warriors” or “guardians.” In this new era of terror, they are now crusaders actively defending the sacred security of law-abiding, “free” citizens.  They are literally “preserving the peace” of their communities, now against the “extremist” elements that supposedly imperil them. 
It is in this heightened world of mass paranoia and racial prejudice that these murders must be understood. Philando Castile was shot by police only days before the Dallas attacks. Previous to this fatal encounter, he was stopped 52 times. This was not the scrupulous action of a traditional police force. It was the putting in place of mobile checkpoints against an oppressed population presumed to be armed and dangerous. 

Here the difference between terrorism and crime disappeared into a larger mission to protect the safety of good “American citizens” menaced by the barbarism of homegrown drug dealers and gangbanging. Je suis the Suburbs.

Just as every Muslim is a potential suicide bomber, every black male is a possible gun wielding thug. The thin racial line between privilege and prejudice has become ground zero for terrorist prevention. The War on Terror has come home. 

America’s Deadly Terror Policing

The police have thus taken on a new and dangerous role as part of a global security force against terrorism. Just as international law can be contravened for the sake of international security, so too can legal niceties such as due process and judicious restraint be forsaken when confronted with a potentially perilous criminal element.

On the surface it seems utterly preposterous that Castile should have died for having a “wide set nose” that linked him spuriously to an armed robbery. However, this makes complete perverse sense when placed within the extreme calculus of terror. Former British Prime Minister Tony Blair exemplified this misguided thinking in rationalizing the Iraqi invasion, declaring 

“The crucial thing after September 11 is that the calculus of risk changed … it is absolutely essential to realise this: if September 11 hadn’t happened, our assessment of the risk of allowing Saddam any possibility of him reconstituting his programmes would not have been the same … The point about [9/11] was that over 3,000 people had been killed on the streets of New York, an absolutely horrific event, but this is what really changed my perception of risk, the calculus of risk for me: if those people, inspired by this religious fanaticism could have killed 30,000, they would have” 

The hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilian deaths exist alongside the thousands of black deaths at the hands of police as collateral damage in the ongoing struggle to protect 'civilization' safe from destruction.

The Black Lives Matter movement remains a simultaneously restrained and progressive response to this policing terror. Their attempted marginalization by many with the at best naïve proclamation “All Lives Matter” only fans the flames of an already volatile situation. Sadly the Dallas shootings – stained with both police and civilian blood – were an all too predictable consequence of a world war that is now invading American shores.

The immediate response by Dallas officials has only reinforced this climate of terror. They referred to the suspect – not coincidentally a veteran of the Afghanistan war – as connected to black extremists while many in the media as well as politicians falsely associated this action with the Black Lives Matter movement. It is crystallizing a fatally familiar 'us versus them' narrative of good 'authority' versus evil 'radicals'. The recent shooting in Baton Rouge – though the full details of the case remain unknown – speaks to the precipice the country finds itself on. America is a nation teetering on the dangerous edge of sectarian violence between a population that believes they must seek their own justice after the courts have failed them and a besieged occupying police force fearful not only for their authority but their lives.

Instead this escalating violence must be a wake up call for the US to end such a divisive and repressive mentality, to challenge its doublespeak belief that 'policing is peace', and to see that the real terror is rooted in its own fears and racism. The US must understand that its embrace of terror policing will ultimately lead to its self-destruction, leaving a trail of black and blue tragedy in its wake.

(Peter Bloom is a lecturer in the Department of People and Organisations at the Open University. His primary research interests include ideology, subjectivity and power, specifically as they relate …)

Courtesy: Open Democracy
 

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PAUL JAY, SENIOR EDITOR, TRNN: Welcome to the Real News Network. I'm Paul Jay in Baltimore.

On Monday night at the Republican National Convention in Cleveland, the face of American policing as presented by the Republican Party was Sheriff David Clarke. He's the sheriff of Milwaukee County. Here's a little bit of what he had to say there.

DAVID CLARKE: What we witnessed in Ferguson and Baltimore and Baton Rouge was a collapse of the social order. So many of the actions of the Occupy movement and Black Lives Matter transcends peaceful protest, and violates the code of conduct we rely on. I call it anarchy.

JAY: That was Sheriff David Clarke at the Republican Convention. Now joining us to discuss Sheriff Clarke, and more broadly the reaction of American policing to the recent shootings, first of all, from Baltimore is Michael Wood, Jr. He's a former sergeant for the Baltimore police department. Is now a national leader on civil-led police reform.

Also joining us from Baltimore is Neill Franklin. Neill's the executive director of Law Enforcement Against Prohibition, otherwise known as LEAP. He's a 33-year-old police veteran who led multi-jurisdictional, anti-narcotics task forces for the Maryland state police, and ran training centers for the Baltimore police department and the Maryland state police.

And also in Baltimore joining us is Kwame Rose. Kwame has been an activist. He's a defendant now in a First Amendment trial against the Baltimore sheriff department, and he's just begun as a producer at the Real News Network. Thanks so much for joining us.

Now, Neill, let me start with you. First of all, before we get started, let me show you one more clip of David Clarke being interviewed on CNN. Let's roll that.

CLARKE: First of all, this whole anti-police rhetoric is based on a lie. There is no data. And you know this. There is no data, there is no research, that proves any of that nonsense. None. Even–.

SPEAKER: You have to be more specific about what data and what nonsense you're talking about.

CLARKE: That law enforcement officers treat black males different than white males in policing in these urban centers.

SPEAKER: There is data that supports it.

CLARKE: There is not data.

JAY: So, Neill, do you think that Sheriff Clarke is speaking for a broad section of police public opinion? And what do you make of the remark?

NEILL FRANKLIN: I sure hope not, because if he were we would be in far more trouble than what we're currently in in this country regarding policing.

I don't know, maybe I've been asleep over the past few decades or whatever, but I've never known policing in this country to be anything other than treating blacks different than white. And here's my point. Historically in this country we've had a problem with policing and race. I mean, you only have to go back as far as the 1950s and '60s, and internally in policing black people couldn't even drive police cars. You know, you couldn't even get jobs in some police departments. And it's only been recent that we've been able to do that.

Internally in policing we still have a lot of racial issues and concerns, to where black embers of policing had to form their own organizations in order to feel like they were getting a fair shake, and in many cases had to sue police departments. If we're having these problems internally in policing, I mean, how can he sit there and say we're not having them in our communities, which we are? Blacks are arrested at higher rates, convicted at higher rates, and sentenced at higher rates than their white counterparts. And there's plenty of data to indicate that.

And I'll end my initial comment with this, Paul. One piece of data that needs to be collected and analyzed, which we haven't done yet, at least not to my knowledge, is the times that plainclothes black police officers are either fired upon or mistreated–but I say mainly fired upon, and in many cases, unfortunately, killed by their counterparts. New York City has had this problem. We've had it here in Baltimore City. And when–and I can't remember recently any cases involving white plainclothes officers who were killed by friendly fire. I know there are probably one or two out there. But when you compare that number to the number of black plainclothes police officers that are either fired upon, friendly fire by their counterparts compared to whites–I mean, it is a significant difference. And we need to collect that data and analyze that data. That way people cannot say that, well, it was criminal activity going on, or this person was doing this, that, and the other. It's one of your counterparts. And I guarantee that data's going to show something very important.

JAY: Are you suggesting that they actually know that they're plainclothes? Or that they're shooting at them because they're black men and they turn out to be undercover cops?

FRANKLIN: Because they're black and they turn out to be undercover cops wearing plainclothes. That's a clear indication that we in policing, unfortunately–and don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that all of this is intentional. It's just that we view blacks different. And not just in policing in this country, but unfortunately we as a people in this country view the black male differently. We view the black male as a danger to society, and that's because of the rhetoric that we have been fed over the past few decades in this country.

Even in the Nixon administration, John Ehrlichman spoke about this. John was one of Nixon's closest aides, and when he got out of prison for Watergate he spoke about this, that it was a plan for the Nixon administration in dealing with the Vietnam War protesters and in dealing with the civil rights movement, to vilify them by using, for instance, the war on drugs. You can't go after the protesters for the First Amendment rights, you can't go after the civil rights folks for being black anymore. So we go after them for what they do, hence the war on drugs. And we'll vilify them on late night TV. And that's what we've done in this country, and that's why we have some of the problems that we have.

JAY: And just one more quick question to you, Neill. I have heard in Baltimore the black cops in the past–and I don't know if it's still true–have been told they can't arrest white people in the more wealthy, well-to-do white neighborhoods. Is that true?

FRANKLIN: Well, I don't think you're going to see–whether you're black or white–see, when you're in policing, for the most part, the main color is blue. And we do not go into Guilford or Roland Park and police the way that we do in other parts of the city. I guarantee you, no police officer is going to take a drug dog into any of those communities and start scanning cars along the street, which is perfectly legal to do. And I guarantee you, you'll find a lot of drugs if you do that.

JAY: Michael, you were a Baltimore cop. And Baltimore is one of the police forces that's been accused of having a particularly violent and even racist culture. What do you make of the reaction of police–and maybe Clarke is a more exaggerated reaction. But does he speak for a lot of cops across the country?

MICHAEL WOOD: Well, I mean, I'm not even going to say that I speak for cops across the country. I mean, I have my own nuanced views. But Sheriff Clarke is a contradiction to his own statement within himself. The only reason he's infamous is because he's a black sheriff that's been elected in a white county, and because that's so damn rare. So why he doesn't see that as standing on the surface is preposterous.

And then to go on to say that the only people in this country that truly care about black lives are the police. It's not the victims, it's not–it's not the people that feel like they're under tyrannical pressure from an oppressive police regime. It's the cops that actually do it. The ones that retort with blue lives matter, and have disproportionate killing of black men. I don't know, why people can even take him seriously is completely preposterous. I don't even like the idea of giving his statements any credibility. There's no science, there's no data, there's no nothing that's coming out of him other than rhetoric because that's what gets him elected in a racist white neighborhood. [Say it.]

JAY: But his reaction that this is an unfair vilification of police, that they do go into very dangerous situations and that to target police as the problem is creating an atmosphere that somehow justifies these attacks on cops, what do you make of that?

WOOD: Nobody is vilifying policing in a broad perspective. They're vilifying police brutality and things like doing regressive taxation on poor communities, and the system of bail, and disproportionate killing. Nobody is going out there and saying that we are anti-police in any of these movements. What we are saying is anti-police brutality. So we're not criticizing police. We're criticizing police tactics, and the implicit bias, and the things that go through that we don't recognize and take care of how that affects communities, especially marginalized communities.

So like, what he's saying is completely without merit. It's like, he may as well be arguing that the Earth is flat. I don't know, how do you have a logical argument with somebody with such a position?

JAY: A week, week and a half before the convention, President Obama spoke about the shootings of police in Dallas. And it was a bit of a defense of the police, but also a bit of a critique of the Black Lives Matter movement, and not certainly the way Clarke did. Here's what Obama said.

BARACK OBAMA: And then we tell the police: you're a social worker. You're the parent. You're the teacher. You're the drug counselor. We tell them to keep those neighborhoods in check at all costs, and do so without causing any political blowback or inconvenience. Don't make a mistake that might disturb our own peace of mind. And then we feign surprise when periodically the tensions boil over.

We know those things to be true. They've been true for a long time. We know it. Police, you know it. Protesters, you know it. You know how dangerous some of the communities where these police officers serve are. We pretend as if there's no context. These things we know to be true. And if we cannot even talk about these things, if we cannot talk honestly and openly, not just in the comfort of our own service, but with those who look different than us, or bring a different perspective, then we will never break this dangerous cycle.

In the end, it's not about finding policies that work. It's about forging consensus. And fighting cynicism. And finding the will to make change.

JAY: Kwame, how do you respond to President Obama? It's kind of the other side of the argument, or a softer delivery of the argument of Clarke's. But the, the point of, one, the police are in very difficult circumstances, I think is true. You can't, I don't know how one can argue with that, that they have to police in areas where there's long-term chronic poverty. And two, I'm interested, his last sentence. It's not about policies that work, it's about having will. How do you respond, Kwame?

KWAME ROSE: You know, I think that the President's comments were made on the assumption, and in the suggestion, that Black Lives Matter activists, as well as the police, should be willing to meet in the middle and walk away with solutions. But I think for you to make a statement like that you would have to assume that the police want to change.

And what's very, very frightening is that a lot of police officers feel a certain type of way that reflects what Sheriff Clarke said. You don't have enough police officers speaking up saying that what we have done in the past is wrong. What happened to the victims of police brutality that have led to people marching in the street, that was wrong. Not enough police officers have stood up. But what you do have is a lot of police officers standing up and saying, well, y'all shouldn't be protesting us because we're all not bad, when you won't speak up yourself against the bad individuals.

JAY: But, Kwame, I think part of what Obama's saying–although personally I don't think he actually gets to a solution that's meaningful–but he's partly chiding Black Lives Matter for not being aware enough of the difficult situation that the police are in, and that–.

But I think there's another piece to this which Obama doesn't say, which is that it's the police, police within the set of a legal framework, that reinforces the chronic poverty that creates such a dangerous situation. And when, at the end when he says it's not about policies that work, it's about just having the will, well, no. It is about policies in whose interest. And if you have economic policies that don't do anything to alleviate the poverty, then this is just a question of some psychological hangup everybody has, and if they could just get over it.

ROSE: Yeah, exactly. I mean, in areas that are predominantly black and poverty is predominant in those areas, you have a lot of police officers. So the root cause is not the fact that they're police officers. The root cause, ultimately, is the fact that there's not opportunity, economic investment, or education investment in those areas. Police are just sent there as kind of the scapegoat to basically babysit poor black people.

And so, I don't think Obama ever addresses the fact that you have to have effective solutions and ulterior methods of investment into these communities, which ultimately will limit police violence, police brutality. Because the more opportunity individuals inside of communities where poverty is high, the more opportunity is presented to those individuals, the less crime actually happens, the less of a need there is for police.

JAY: Neill, you've done training–and I'm not suggesting you did, necessarily, what I'm about to say. But when you go to boot camp for the army, for the Marines, we've interviewed soldiers who have been through this. One of the things you get trained to do is, obviously, be willing to live with killing people. You're going to go into a war zone and you're going to be shot at. You're going to have to shoot back. We've–I've interviewed Marines who were in boot camp where they actually had to go through exercises where they–in returning fire, they might have to be willing to shoot women and children. And if you weren't able to, you didn't actually pass the test.

But it seems to me the, our society, and certainly the elites that have power in our society, they need and want police forces with a culture that will use force, and lethal force, if necessary, because they don't really want to do anything about the fundamental social conditions. So you gotta, you gotta contain it.

We had someone working at the Real News whose father was a cop, and we had this discussion with him once. And he said, you know, you've got a choice. You want your police forces to hand out flowers, or you want them to be a hammer? And it's pretty clear we're being told to be the hammer. So I mean–the culture of this use of force that, yes, sometimes goes too far–but the culture itself, isn't that what police departments are actually being asked to be?

FRANKLIN: It certainly appears that way. Now, in training, you know, unlike what you explained, we teach from a defense posture, not an offensive posture. So even, even our, some of our courses, like defensive tactics–so it's about defense, primarily, not so much about offense.

But the things that we're seeing–and this is even related to the policy piece–and what we're asking our police officers to do is culturally putting them in a place of being offensive. Of taking a posture of, which appears to be, I'm going to shoot first. You know, my life is more important, so I'm going to be offensive in order to survive. But that's not, at least where I was in training and what I was doing with the Maryland state police and Baltimore City, again, we were teaching folks how to make good judgment decisions. And we were integrating them, doing our best to integrate them with the community. Because we were bringing so many people from outside of the community, which is also extremely important.

But let me end with this: that that policy piece, when you referred to the president, you know, him saying it's not about so much about the policy. It's about the will for consensus and to work. The policy is central to this, because the policies regarding economics and dire conditions within poor communities–economics, health, education, and that whole long list of policies–including policies like the war on drugs drug prohibition that creates this conflict among the citizens who are poor and trying to make money by selling drugs and becoming a member of this crew or that crew or that gang, which leads to conflict and shootings and then retaliation from there. Making our communities more dangerous.

It is so much about all of these policies that separate us, preventing the consensus from occurring, and literally draining the will out of people to move in a better direction and position. So it is so much about policy, I say first and foremost, before we can get to a place of consensus-building and instilling the will in people to move in the right direction on all sides of this.

JAY: Michael, I talked to a friend of ours, a cop. He's very progressive politically. I believe he would have voted for Bernie Sanders. He's against NAFTA, he's against inequality, he would support all kinds of reforms that would weaken the concentration of ownership and power of the billionaire class, and so on. On issue after issue he would be very progressive internationally, against the Iraq War, so on and so on.

But he–and he's still an active cop. He was feeling very defensive about the critique coming from Black Lives Matter, from the point of view that it is about the social conditions. It is about the chronic poverty. It's about who runs the society and who has real power. And to have so much focus on the police as the enemy, which in his opinion was happening in the city he's in. That was unfair, and it was kind of, you know–he was even arguing that the number, you know, with the number of cases police have to deal with every year, you know, the tens of thousands of cases, that the number of people that get shot or killed is actually a small number. The number of killings that we've seen that seem completely unjustified, these killings that we see on videotape from time to time, while completely unacceptable, he would argue, is still a rather small number.

And even he's feeling defensive about this sort of broad–what he sees attack on cops. What do you make of that?

WOOD: Well, the first thing I have to make of that, Paul, is that there's about 50 things in there to unpack. And I'm never going to be able to do that in this quick snippet of an answer, here.

But I have to go back real quick to what President Obama said. I didn't hear that before, and I found that really striking. His statement to keep those neighborhoods in check sounds a hell of a lot like bring them to heel. I don't see the difference in that. And then he's acting like we should–the answer is to protect the cops more, instead of actually solving the problems that make a dangerous community. That doesn't make any sense. And the policy issue–I am not the only scholar that works on policy issue day in and day out on how to solve these problems. There's tons of scholars working on policy issues.

And like Neill was just saying, the drug war is a primary one. It's what got us into this problem, so it takes policy to get us out. As a manager one thing that I say is I'm concerned with human behaviors. So I can't control what people think. I'm not going to be able to solve racism, and I'm not going to be able to change our culture, but I am going to be able to put in policies that regulate and put checks and balances on what is implicit bias and human nature and things like that that we have to address.

This other officer–. There's a saying that when your paycheck depends on it, like, your willful ignorance is hard to break, and your cognitive dissonance. And maybe there's a level of Stockholm syndrome, because officers are getting pressure from command to do these type of things. They're being told from somebody to go into these communities and be an occupying force to lock somebody up for the very same thing that President Obama doesn't change the policies to fix that he did himself. So he's locking up tons of black males through policies that make that officer the enemy.

So he has to understand that it feels odd, and he has power on the streets, but he's no more than a pawn in this system. The problem is is that that pawn has incredible amounts of power. So when they are acting out that power, our oath and what makes us heroes and courageous is to stand up for what is right for those neighborhoods, to protect those neighborhoods. And that's protection from policy, that we've got to look inside ourselves and take a real moral stand on what we think service means.

JAY: Kwame, similar question to you. Do you think there's some validity that amongst black activists there is too much focus on police and not enough focus on the bigger, systemic issues that create such a police force?

ROSE: No, I mean, I actually think that in a large part the rest of society kind of limits the Black Lives Matter movement, or those who believe in Black Lives Matter, to just police brutality. And from what I've experienced in meeting hundreds of people from across the country and having thousands of conversations in the last year and a half is that there are multiple people doing–trying to solve the problem multiple ways on different levels. There's people tackling the issue of lead paint poisoning in the inner cities. People who are working on the educational front. So people who are working for, who work for a [developing] front.

Because I don't think that police brutality is just the root cause of the problems and living conditions of black people in this country. And I don't think that Black Lives Matter–that is what got us into the street to protest, that is what the media talks about–but it's not the one focus of Black Lives Matter. Black Lives Matter as a movement, it's not a monolithic movement.

So even if you have individuals gathered for protesting the death of Philando Castile, it's also about protesting the neighborhood protesting the living conditions in which he might have grown up in. You know, Freddie Gray had a long rap sheet. He was killed by the police. But his long rap sheet was because he wasn't afforded the same opportunity to go to, to have adequate education, adequate health, adequate access to being able to live and go to work from 9-5.

And so I think that, no, I don't think that we're all just focusing on police brutality. I just think that the other actions of other activists just don't get as much attention.

JAY: All right. Well, this clearly is just the beginning of the conversation, and I hope to have all three of you back soon. Thanks for joining us.

And thank you for joining us on the Real news Network.

DISCLAIMER: Please note that transcripts for The Real News Network are typed from a recording of the program. TRNN cannot guarantee their complete accuracy.

Courtesy: The Real News

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Image: startribune.com

In 1961, President John F. Kennedy established The Presidential Commission on the Status of Women, a formal body that collected evidence and made recommendations on many of the challenges facing women in the modern American economy, polity and society. No such body has ever been established for the status of African Americans.

It is now time to do so, but its remit should be much wider.

Last week, we witnessed the high profile killings of two young black men: Alton Sterling in Baton Rouge Louisiana and Philando Castille in St. Paul Minnesota. Both killings were captured on video and widely shared on social media, raising significant questions about the use of force by the police and the role that race has to play in such encounters.

Shortly after these two incidents, Micah Xavier Johnson killed five police officers and wounded six others in Dallas, causing mass panic during an otherwise peaceful protest led by the Black Lives Matter social movement. The events in Dallas once again underlined the challenges surrounding race, rights and the ready availability of high-powered weaponry, with all sides of the debate advancing different political agendas.
 

Press Association Images/John Minchillo (All rights reserved)
 

A Black Lives Matter protest, July 10, 2016, in Cincinnati, USA.

Since the 1961 Presidential Commission, so-called “truth commissions” have proliferated across the world. These commissions have mandates to provide thorough accounts of “past wrongs” that have taken place during prolonged periods of conflict (e.g., El Salvador, Peru, Guatemala, Sierra Leone), foreign occupation (e.g., East Timor), and authoritarian rule (e.g., Argentina, Brazil, Chile, and South Africa). In the United States, the total number of deaths from gun violence over the last three decades far exceeds the totals reported in these truth commissions and other civil wars around the world in the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s.

Based on the Military Tribunal in Nuremburg after World War II, truth commissions typically collect different kinds of evidence using different kinds of methods—such as case studies, public hearings and survey data—and then issue reports on their findings. The South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission is probably the most well known, as it documented more than 21,000 reported killings during the period of Apartheid. The Peruvian Truth and Reconciliation Commission, using more advanced statistical techniques, estimated that between 61,007 and 77,552 people were killed between 1980 and 2000. These and other statistical findings raise awareness about the true nature and extent of violence, the kinds of people who become victims, and findings on the perpetrators of the killings.

There is much debate about the structure, design, outcomes, and impact of truth commissions. They are time consuming and expensive, and they are often better at revealing truth than providing justice. In addition, their findings can be controversial as they illuminate inconvenient truths or new evidence that challenge long-held beliefs and dominant narratives. They do have value, however, in providing a public acknowledgment of past wrongs and a national reckoning, which seeks to be inclusive of all stakeholders, victims, survivors, and their families and friends. Participants and observers have learned many lessons through these commissions. Different countries have adopted different models, while debates in countries such as Spain and the UK (i.e., Northern Ireland) continue as to whether such a body would be appropriate. Indeed, it was only in the past few years that Brazil decided to establish its own truth commission to address the period of military rule between 1964 and 1985.

In the United States there is also a precedent for using this model. The Greensboro Truth and Reconciliation Commission sought to understand and explain violence that took place in November 1979 as a result of conflict between The Communist Workers Party and the Ku Klux Klan. The independent commission sought truth and healing for a city that had been left divided and weakened.
 

An American Truth Commission

What would an American Truth Commission look like? Like Greensboro, it would need to be independent and have either appointed or democratically elected commissioners, ranging from lawyers, academics, prominent religious leaders, leading media representatives, and members of the general public. It could be established by executive decree (as Kennedy did with the Commission on the Status of Women) and hosted by the US Institute for Peace (USIP), which was established by Congress and has carried out analysis and support for truth commissions around the world. The International Centre for Transitional Justice, a leading non-governmental organisation that has also supported truth commissions worldwide, could assist this process.

It would provide a moment of pause for America to listen to itself. The American Truth Commission should examine the period from the promulgation of the War on Drugs in 1971 to the present day. Its focus should be on the social, economic, legal, and political status of all groups in America. It should be inclusive of all main political factions and bear witness to all groups affected by the cycle of violence, poverty, and division in American society. It should carry out rigorous and systematic epidemiological analysis of gun violence, focusing on the true nature and extent of the violence. It should hear testimony from the gun lobby, gun control lobby, health professionals, the police and other law enforcement officials, as well as civil liberties groups and other parties with a view on violence in America.

Such a commission would take time and would produce a significant number of volumes, like the truth commissions mentioned above and much like the Chilcot Inquiry into the Iraq War published last week in the United Kingdom. It would provide a moment of pause for America to listen to itself. To its own voices. To its own people. To its own pain. The outcomes and impact for any such commission would vary according to the initial mandate. Systematic and rigorous analysis, complemented with real human stories, can alter collective consciousness about root problems in society across a wide range of issues and can lead to new legislation on key policy areas. Indeed, in The Justice Cascade, Kathryn Sikkink demonstrated through a cross-national analysis of countries in Latin America that the presence of some form of transitional justice mechanism (of which truth commissions are one example) has a positive impact on the status of human rights in the years that follow.

The alternative to having such a commission is further division and a cycle of violence that will only result in more citizen deaths. Many commentators worry that America is now at a significant tipping point, where unresolved differences, a highly contested and fraught electoral campaign, and the continued access to guns provides the foundations for a failed state and a downward spiral into civil war, or at least a chilling echo of the societal unrest that characterised America in 1968.

Only by stepping back, coming together, sharing stories, and once again connecting in ways that recognise our common human dignity, can we find the much-needed foundation for peace, reconciliation, and a secure future for our children.

Todd Landman is the Pro Vice Chancellor at the Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Nottingham.

Courtesy: Open Democracy

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Riots in Harlem, 1964. Wikimedia Commons

After the killing of five police officers in Dallas last week by a lone gunman, where does the Black Lives Matter movement go?

Black Lives Matter co-founder Alicia Garza answered this question, saying she anticipated that the Dallas shooting would “create the conditions for increased security, surveillance and monitoring of protesters … an expansion of the police state, rather than reduction of one.”

As Garza points out, the failure of the dash cam and body cameras to document what happened in the killing of Alton Sterling in Louisiana highlights the limitations of technology as the centerpiece of reform. It had even been the focal point of Al Sharpton’s 2014 National March Against Police Violence.

As Garza argued, “There has to be something bigger than that.”

As a scholar of 20th-century African-American history and social movements, I have focused my research on community activism in the 1950s and 1960s against police brutality in major cities such as Los Angeles and New York. Police violence often opened a space for organizing people of color from across the religious and political spectrum around core issues facing their communities. But these coalitions were often tenuous. And the idea of police reform being the most important issue within the larger black freedom struggle has always been contentious.

The challenge facing us now is twofold. First, how can we think about addressing the problem of racialized police violence beyond professional and mechanical reforms?

And second, how can the national spotlight on police brutality be used as an opportunity to make broader changes that answer the fundamental question posed by Black Lives Matter: What does it look like to value black life?

The challenge of black unity

This tension was at play more than a half-century ago in a brief coalition formed in Harlem called the Emergency Committee for Unity on Economic and Social Problems. The organization was founded in the summer of 1961 by civil rights and labor organizer A. Philip Randolph.

Philip Randolph. Library of Congress/Gordon Parks

The group was originally formed to protest housing discrimination and the rise of unpoliced drug use in Harlem. The committee represented a wide swath of the Harlem activist community, including national civil rights figures like Bayard Rustin and black nationalists such as Lewis Michaux, “Pork Chop” Davis and Malcolm X.

The Emergency Committee for Unity on Economic and Social Problems was built on the premise of black unity around three action programs: unemployment, housing, and law and order enforcement. The Pittsburgh Courier immediately hailed it as a “beacon of light for other communities.”

But just months after its founding in August 1961, the subcommittee on law enforcement resolved to disband if the Emergency Committee for Unity on Economic and Social Problems would not focus on the issue of police brutality. Among the subcommittee’s recommendations were a civilian review board that would include representation from the community, a greater representation of African-Americans and Puerto Ricans within the police department and intensive human relations training on race within the police department.

By the following year, these and other political divisions led to a fracturing of the committee. Randolph turned his focus to organizing the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom at which Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his “I Have a Dream” speech. However, the march only loosely touched upon calls for police reform and marginalized both women and black nationalists from its program. Instead, it focused on ending school segregation and job discrimination, establishing a nationwide minimum wage and public job training, and enforcing the 14th Amendment to protect the voting rights of southern blacks.

Meanwhile, Malcolm X had moved to Los Angeles following a case of police violence which left one Muslim man dead and another paralyzed after an attack on the Nation of Islam’s mosque. No officers were indicted, and 14 men were charged with assault and resisting arrest, nine of whom were eventually convicted.

Police reform

Los Angeles was rife with discrimination and accounts of police brutality in communities of color. In 1962, the NAACP published a 12-page report documenting 10 major cases of brutality in the city. Roy Wilkins had even compared the police in Los Angeles “next to those in Birmingham, Alabama.”

Yet, the Los Angeles Police Department maintained a national reputation as one of the modern exemplars of policing during the 1950s. Meanwhile, the ACLU and NAACP had been fighting for police reform in Los Angeles for over a decade, including repeated calls for a civilian review board.

In part, Police Chief William Parker’s vision for a modernized police department appeared to reflect those called for by community activists, then and now. This included human relations training and a more diverse police force serving in these communities.
But Parker’s understanding of “diversity” was that everyone could be a “minority group member… any of which can be, and often has been discriminated against.” Training bulletins even illustrated this concept to police officers by showing them how it would feel to be called by derogatory phrases such as “fuzz” and “cop.”

Professionalization meant training police officers to eradicate racist ideas through practice. As Parker proudly told a police chief conference in 1955:

“Intolerance has become a victim of enforced order – habit has won out over belief.”

Modernization meant using empirical data to justify racist outcomes. The heavy use of police in communities of color, he explained, was simply “statistical – it is a fact that certain racial groups, at the present time, commit a disproportionate share of the total crime.”

Beyond police reform

Policing in Los Angeles became even more emblematic of the modern police state after the violent arrest of a young black man led to the Watts uprising in 1965. The sheriff’s department demonstrated the use of helicopters during the rebellion, and in turn earned the largest Office of Law Enforcement Assistance grant ever (US$200,000) for an air surveillance program. As historian Elizabeth Hinton writes, “A new era in American law enforcement had begun.”

Today, the left-leaning Bernie Sanders has called for police to “demilitarize” from this buildup of tanks, riot gear and advanced weaponry which began after Watts. Yet, his suggestion to make police departments look like the communities they serve also mirrors Parker’s language of professionalization and modernization from 50 years ago. Calls for citizen review boards, still seen as radical by many police departments, are simply attempts at accountability and lawfulness for those charged with enforcing the law.

The relationship between police reform and other broader black freedom struggles that were so pronounced in the Emergency Committee for Unity on Economic and Social Problems and the March on Washington continue today. The March on Washington’s call for a national minimum wage in 1963 is still a central point of contention for the Democratic Party in our current presidential primary. The Voting Rights Act, which was one of the chief victories of the civil rights movement, has been significantly rolled back.

So how can Black Lives Matter take us beyond basic questions of police reform?

Black Lives Matters protesters in Louisiana. REUTERS/Shannon Stapleton

Attorney Johnnie Cochran, famous for his role as defense attorney for O.J. Simpson, worked as an assistant on the 1963 trial in Los Angeles involving the Nation of Islam. He later recalled that although such cases were difficult to win, “the issue of police abuse really galvanized the minority community. It taught me that these cases could really get attention.”

The issue at stake, then, is how to take this opening and not only begin to secure justice for the lives lost to police violence, but also to expand on questions about what it means to value black life. This can be done, I believe, by continuing to center trans and queer people of color, by remaining unapologetically black and by joining in solidarity with labor struggles.

In the aftermath of Dallas, when the media will recycle old tropes to make “Black Power” synonymous with violence, Black Lives Matter must continue to think bigger and broader. As Michelle Alexander pointed out several days ago, this is not about fixing police, this is about fixing our democracy.

(Garrett Felber is Ph.D. Candidate in American Culture, University of Michigan).

This article was first published on The Conversation.

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