By Malcolm Shore
In opening his 2003 speech “Revolution:
Why It’s Necessary, Why It’s Possible, What It’s All About,”
Bob Avakian-the chairman of the Revolutionary Communist Party (RCP)-traced
the rivers of Black blood that feed the ocean of American history.
After angrily recounting some of the most horrific instances of lynching
that occurred on U.S. soil, Avakian quoted an author who had written
a book about the subject as saying: “It is doubtful that any Black
male growing up in the rural South, in the period from 1900-1940, was
not traumatized by a fear of being lynched.”
A few minutes later in this talk, Avakian
updated the author’s observation to reflect modern U.S. society. “Today
it is mostly the police- who openly, as the police- carry
out brutality and terror against Black youth and Black people in general,”
Avakian said. “Applying that author’s statement on lynching to the
present, we could put it this way: “It is doubtful that there is a
young Black male growing up in the US today – in the south or the
north- who does not have a very real fear of being brutalized or even
murdered by the police.””
It is has been very difficult not to
hear the echo of Avakian’s words in the days since April 25. That
was the date, of course, when the American “criminal justice” system
reminded us that police execution of Black people is legal in the United
States of America.
Is this too extreme a characterization
of the acquittal of NYPD Officers Marc Cooper, Gescard F. Isnora, and
Michael Oliver in the killing of Sean Bell, a 23-year-old Black male?
If it seems that way at first, perhaps this is because the major media,
and large sections of the American public-even those sincerely outraged
by the verdict -would be highly reluctant to frame Bell’s killing
in those terms. “That’s going too far,” would come the refrain.
Murder
– Plain And Simple
But really, imagine you are Sean Bell.
You are out with friends celebrating, before getting married the next
day. You get into your vehicle, preparing to leave a party, when
suddenly several men draw their guns on you. Neither you nor anybody
in your vehicle has a weapon, or is even breaking the law. And yet the
men fire 50 shots. 50! For a moment, imagine what it would sound
like, feel like, and look like if 50 bullets were fired at you.
Imagine the sensation of 11 of those bullets striking you in the face,
shoulders, and legs (Bell’s friend Joseph Guzman), or four fatal shots
entering your arms, lungs, and liver (Bell himself).
Now imagine you are the parents of Sean
Bell. You frantically arrive at the hospital, aware that something horrible
has just happened to your loved one. But doctors will not let
you see your own son, or even tell you what is going on. Then,
when finally you do see him, he is lifeless. And – like his bullet-riddled
friends – he is handcuffed. To a gurney.
What would you possibly call this, if
not an execution? And when- after a two-month legal proceeding
in which Bell’s friends were put on trial rather than the officers
who shot at them-a Judge declares that the killers are guilty of literally
nothing wrong, what conclusion can you possibly draw other than that
the American legal system finds no fault in the execution of Black people?
To arrive at a different summation than
that, you would basically have to argue one of two things: Either (1)that
Sean Bell and his friends did something that gave police justification
to shoot them 50 times, or (2) That while the killing of Sean Bell and
the acquittal of the three officers indeed represents an outrage, this
travesty is an exception to the rule of what usually happens to African-Americans
in the “criminal justice” system.
Well, on the first of those two points,
let’s start by considering the NYPD’s version of what happened outside
the Club Kalua on November 25, 2006: Officers on the scene hear Guzman
say, “Yo, get my gun!” during the course of an altercation with
a group of men at the club. These officers proceed to follow Guzman,
Bell, and their friends to their car, allowing the vehicle to leave
the establishment before blocking its further advance on a nearby street.
Officers then draw their guns and clearly identify themselves as police.
Bell and his friends try to drive away, therefore their car lurches
forward towards police. Police begin firing.
Now, before we continue, several things
need to be pointed out or asked: 1) Guzman has emphatically
denied telling friends, “Yo, get my gun.” He stated in court,
“That’s not a good bluff where I come from.” 2)
If officers really thought Guzman or someone in his party had a gun
and were concerned he was about to use it, why would they allow him
to get in a vehicle and drive away from the Kalua Club? 3) Bell’s
friends and other witnesses dispute that the undercover officers identified
themselves as cops. 4) If Bell’s friends are telling
the truth that the police did not identify themselves as such, who
wouldn’t drive away when guns are drawn on their car? 5)
A stripper from the Kalua club testified during the trial that, in actuality,
Officer Oliver fired on Bell and his friends as soon as his vehicle
crashed into Bell’s car, as Oliver moved to block off its exit route.
But, in spite of all that, for the sake
of argument, let’s assume the police are telling the truth. Yes, for
a second, let’s pretend there is no history of cops systematically
lying to justify abuse or murder against people of color. Let’s pretend
that those nail holes inside Fred Hampton’s apartment really were
bullet holes; that former LAPD detective and current Fox News commentator
Mark Fuhrman never bragged on tape about planting evidence on people
of color; that the Rampart scandal- proving the existence of many
more Mark Fuhrmans in the LAPD – never happened; that the Chicago
PD was not found to have repeatedly tortured African-Americans from
the 1970s to the 1990s in an effort to get confessions. Let’s
say, in other words, that there were no reason to doubt the NYPD version
of what happened to Sean Bell, and let us temporarily take the police
account of events as unquestioned fact.
Even according to their rendition of
events, police officers fired 50 shots-enough gunfire that they had
to stop to reload -at men who had no weapons and were not even breaking
the law.
In what universe, then, was the shooting
of Sean Bell justified?
Hardly the First
” or Second “or Third Time
But is Bell’s fate really emblematic
of how Black Americans are treated in U.S. law and society?
Or is his death merely a testament to a few rogue cops and one corrupt
judge?
Ask that question to the families of
Nicholas Heyward, a 13-year-old boy killed by the NYPD while playing
with a toy gun in 1994 ” or Michael Ellerbe, a 12-year-old boy killed
by Pennsylvania state police in 2002.. or Paul Childs III, a developmentally-disabled
15-year-old boy killed by Denver police in 2003″ or Timothy Stansbury
Jr., a 19-year-old Black child killed by the NYPD in 2004″ or
Devin Brown, a 13-year-old boy killed by the LAPD in 2005″
or DeAunta Farrow, a 12-year-old child killed by West Memphis police
in 2007, again while playing with a toy gun. In all of these cases,
the children killed were Black. In none of these cases were the
officers involved even tried, much less convicted.
If you want to gain an even deeper sense
of how often this happens, here’s a quick experiment: Simply Google
the words “Police shoot unarmed boy.” Take note of how
many results surface; of how many of these murdered children were
not persons of color; and of how often the police officers in these
instances were charged. And remember that these are only the incidents
that are known about, that are retrieved by Google, and that involve
children.
And, as the quote from Avakian at the
beginning of this article speaks to, just as lynchings terrorized
Black Americans as whole- and not merely the thousands who were actually
hung from trees-so too does the impact of police murder extend
far beyond those whose lives are literally taken by law enforcement.
Millions of Black and Latino youth wake up each morning with the knowledge
that there is nothing to protect them from being gunned down just like
Sean Bell was.
And those who are able to escape this
fate are faced with the constant threat of physical and psychological
harassment at the hands of police, even while performing simple rituals
of everyday life such as walking in a park or traveling to the corner
bodega for a soda: The NYPD stops-and-frisks hundreds of thousands of
Black and Latino males each year, and the vast majority of them are
committing no crime: In 2006, of more than 500,000 stops made
by the NYPD on the streets of New York City, 90 percent resulted in
no summons or arrest. The vast majority of those stopped were Black
or Latino. This is another reality that no person of color can escape,
whether they themselves have been stopped 20 times, ten times, or zero
times by the police.
In the Immediate Aftermath of the
Verdict…
In the two weeks immediately following
the acquittal of the officers who killed Sean Bell, two incidents occurred
that serve as particularly powerful reminders of how non-isolated
an incident his murder truly is.
First, on May 2, Douglas Zeigler-the
highest-ranking Black officer in the NYPD-was sitting in his car in
Queens when two white officers confronted him and attempted to force
open his car door; even after he identified himself
as the head of the NYPD Community Affairs Bureau. Zeigler may
have been a superior to the two cops, but that apparently was of far
less importance to the officers than the fact that he is Black. The
NYPD has admitted that the officers were “discourteous” towards
Ziegler.
State Senator Eric Adams said of the
incident; “The only difference between Sean Bell and Chief Zeigler,
I believe, is that Chief Ziegler didn’t make a move towards his glove
compartment. If he would have done that, he would have gone to the same
destination and went to the morgue instead of going home.”
Then, on the night of May 6, Philadelphia
witnessed what could fairly be dubbed Rodney King II: A gang
of 10-15 police officers were caught on video tape pulling three Black
men out of their car and relentlessly kicking and beating them with
their batons, as the men lay utterly defenseless on the ground.
The tape is unbelievably sickening, and you really have to see it (http://abcnews.go.com/TheLaw
to fully appreciate how heinous it is. Had the beating victims been
dogs instead of African-Americans, there would no doubt be a deafening
national uproar.
Currently, the three men who were beaten are in jail on attempted
murder charges. The cops who beat them are walking free.
What more proof do you need that police
violence and cruelty against Black people is woven tight into the American
fabric?
A Vengeful Rise in Old-Fashioned,
Violent White Supremacy
But the larger picture framing Sean Bell’s
murder is bigger even than systematic police brutality against people
of color. Rather, his death is part of a social, cultural, and
political landscape in which violence against Black Americans-both
physical and psychological-is becoming increasingly commonplace and
legitimized.
Consider the case of Megan Williams,
a name that is still foreign to the average American-even within progressive
circles.
Last fall, Williams-a 23-year-old Black
woman in West Virginia-was kidnapped by a mob of whites and subjected
to a weeklong nightmare. During her imprisonment, she was raped and
beaten repeatedly; forced to eat rat feces; scalded with hot water;
choked with a cable; and stabbed in the leg while her captors called
her “nigger.” When she was found by police, she cried,
“Help me.”
Prosecutors offered the defendants a
plea bargain, instead of seeking the maximum sentence. Two of the defendants
in the case were sentenced to ten years, while two others were given
longer sentences but have the possibility of getting out on parole within
ten years. Megan Williams and her family have expressed outrage
with the sentences as well as the fact that prosecutors offered her
torturers a plea deal; Wiliams and her family have called for protest.
But, astoundingly, there has been no
significant public outpouring of anger, nor sustained major media coverage,
of Megan Williams” story. In fact, most people in this country
have probably never heard of her.
Roughly two months after Williams was
kidnapped and tortured, African-American NFL quarterback Michael Vick
(who is Black) was sentenced to 23 months in jail for killing and torturing
dogs. Guess which case generated more media coverage and public
outrage?
Think of everything else we have seen
in the past three years. In August 2005, thousands of Black Americans
are left to drown or starve in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina,
their desperate rooftop screams for help ignored for days. Thousands
of residents who try to cross the Mississippi River Bridge to the mostly-white
town of Gretna-in order to escape the flood-ravaged city- are turned
away at gunpoint by law enforcement. Those who break into stores to
acquire the food and water the government will not provide them-or
who have been driven to temporary insanity by the horror of what surrounds
them-are identified as “looters,” and Louisiana Governor Kathleen
Blanco gives the National Guard “shoot to kill” orders.
Blackwater -yes that Blackwater-patrols the streets of New
Orleans with machine guns. To add further insult to incredible injury,
Barbara Bush assesses the masses of evacuees at Houston’s Astrodome
by saying: “So many of the people in the arena here, you know, were
underprivileged anyway, so this is working very well for them.”
Representative Richard H. Baker sizes up the hurricane by saying: “We
finally cleaned up public housing in New Orleans. We couldn’t do it,
but God did.” Last winter, the city of New Orleans
begins demolishing four public housing units that provide roughly 4500
affordable housing units, predominantly for people of color.
One year later, in the fall of 2006 and
in this same state of Louisiana, a Black student at Jena High School
dares to sit underneath a “whites-only tree” ; yes, “whites only.”
The next day, nooses are hung from the tree. Yes, nooses.
A group of Black students then sit underneath the tree in protest.
Instead of commending their bravery in the face of a hate crime, District
Attorney Reed Walters threatens the students in a school assembly, warning
them, “I can take away your lives with the stroke of a pen.”
White students ambush a Black student at a party, but the stiffest penalty
meted out is that one of the students is placed on probation. Then,
white students pull a gun on a Black student in a parking lot. Charges
are filed-against the Black students, for snatching the gun
away. Ultimately, a fistfight breaks out during which a white
student is briefly hospitalized. Six Black students are charged
with attempted murder. As of May 2008, the Jena 6 are still in
jail.
Soon, nooses begin appearing in cities
and towns throughout the country, including on the door of Black professor
Constantine Madonna’s office at Teachers College in New York City,
in October of 2007. Action has been taken-against Madonna; she
is currently under investigation for plagiarism. No one has been
arrested for hanging the noose outside her door.
In January of this year, on Martin Luther
King day, white supremacists marched in Jena. With guns. Enough said.
During the last past three years, we
have also seen “comedian” Michael Richards repeatedly scream “nigger”
at a Black heckler, while telling him : “Fifty years ago, we”d have
had you upside down with a fucking fork up your ass.”
And we have heard beloved radio personality
Don Imus refer to the predominantly-Black Rutgers women’s basketball
team as “nappy-headed hos”; yep, he’s back on the air.
A
“Culture of Greed, Bigotry, Intolerance, and Ignorance”
I could go on and on, but the point is
this: It is often pointed out that if fascism comes to America,
it will not appear in the literal form of swastika-sporting, goose-stepping
brownshirts. Similarly, if the gains of the Black Power movement
are undone and the United States again becomes the openly white-supremacist
state that it was during the days of slavery and Jim Crow, this will
not take the form of the plantation, the whip, the “colored” water fountain,
or the hanging tree.
No, violent racism against Black Americans
did not begin with the regime of George W. Bush; this phenomenon
was a part of American life for centuries before Bush was even born,
right up to the moment of his first inauguration. And yes, even
following the gains of the 1960s, America has lived in a state of “de-facto
segregation” ; i.e. , severe institutionalized discrimination in the
realms of housing, employment, education, and all facets of society.
In addition, during the past few decades the Black prison population
has mushroomed, with millions of African-Americans forced to rot in
confinement, very often for non-violent crimes of poverty.
However, a passage in the Call-the
mission statement of The World Can’t Wait Drive Out the Bush Regime-does
point to the very significant connection between the Bush Regime and
instances of blatantly murderous racism such as the shooting of Sean
Bell: “Your government is enforcing a culture of greed, bigotry,
intolerance, and ignorance.”
The result of the Bush Regime’s program
of systematic murder, torture, and dehumanization, and of the lack of
massive societal resistance thus far to this program, has been that
forces wishing to take the United States back to the days of lynching
and the Ku Klux Klan have felt an emboldened sense of initiative.
Is the success of these white supremacist
forces inevitable? Absolutely not. The tens of thousands who traveled
to Jena last winter to demand the freedom of the Jena 6, and the thousands
who have bravely and defiantly stepped out to condemn the acquittal
of the officers who killed Sean Bell, are examples of real
“hope” for real “change.”
But resistance to the Re-Klanification
of America-as with resistance to the Bush agenda in general-must
sustain and expand relentlessly. Because the forces on other side will
do anything but relent.
It seems appropriate to close with words
spoken twelve years ago by the rapper NAS:
“I thought I”d never see, but
reality struck.
Better find out, before your time’s
out, what the fuck.”
Malcolm Shore can be reached for
comments on this piece at mshore_35@yahoo.com.