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| Akoben, literally "war horn". Adinkra symbol of a call to action.Credit: The Adinkra Dictionary, by Bruce Willis. |
No Justice, No Peace!
Thousands March to Say Enough is Enough!
By Grisso
An interesting thing happened during the "Enough is Enough!" March on Washington which took place April 3.
Just as the March reached the entrance to the capitol, one of the organizers announced that Rev. Fauntroy, key organizer of the march, wanted people to sing "We shall overcome". Another of the march organizers picked up the megaphone at that point and led the march in singing that song which was hallowed during the civil rights struggles of the 1960s, a movement in which Rev. Fauntroy was one of the stalwarts. The song was picked up for all of two minutes.
It was clear that the marchers were not in the mood for the mournful, pitiable strains of "We shall overcome". Some protested loudly. I overheard one of the marchers, a 30ish American African woman who broke ranks rather than take up that mournful refrain, say mockingly to her female companion who had also broken ranks, "We are well be-ha -a -aved!", evoking the derisive laughter that was intended. Another marcher, overhearing, commented, "this stuff is OLD!"
It was clear that the old staple marching song of the civil rights era was not about to do a reprise. Wrong vibration, wrong mood, different era. There is too much about it of the supplicant seeking integration, assimilation, and, above all, seeking to reassure the white overlord with whom integration is sought that the negro supplicant intends no harm and indeed is quite harmless. Not any longer. The marchers were soon back to chanting "No Justice, No Peace!" accompanied by foot-stomping movements which might almost have made a Zulu warrior proud, except for the fact that most of the marchers were not quite supple or fit enough to do justice to a full-fledged foot-stomping war dance. But the spirit was there.
It was billed as a march to say "Enough is Enough!". The reference is to police brutality, and follows directly from the police killing of Ahmadou Diallo, an African immigrant from Guinea, in the Bronx, NY, several weeks ago. The police killing of Mr. Diallo may have been the final indignity that has sparked what seems to be growing into a nation-wide movement.
The scene of protest has now expanded beyond New York City. Rev. Al Sharpton, who has led the protest in New York, spoke also at the march in Washington DC. He was eloquent as usual. His is a voice of rolling thunder, honed in the American African Baptist preacher tradition. Even among the many great orators that come out of that tradition, Rev. Sharpton has few peers. He promised to take the protest nationwide, because the problem of police brutality is indeed a nation-wide problem. We must "connect the dots," he said.
Enough is truly enough. People are angry, and this movement seems set to catch on like a wild fire, and blaze across the country, fuelled by pent-up anger and grief at the police killings all over the country that occur under inexcusable circumstances, and in which the victims are invariably non-white, mostly of African extraction, and the perpetrators, in contrast, are invariably white.
The emotional high point of the rally in front of the US Capitol came when mother after mother came forward to tell their respective tales of pain and anguish. Truly there is no pain, no anguish, quite like that of the mother who has lost a son or daughter to a brutal, inexcusable killing, only then to be frustrated by official denial, cover-up and stonewalling in their quest for justice. Typical, perhaps, was the case of Archie Elliot, III, a young American African man who was stopped by Prince George's County, Maryland, police for driving "erratically." After he failed, according to the police, a sobriety test, he was patted down for weapons, then handcuffed behind his back, placed to sit in the front seat of the police cruiser, and strapped in. He was wearing only shorts at the time. Still, the officers claim that one of them thought they saw him point a gun, so strapped in and handcuffed as he was in the front seat of a police cruiser, he was killed in a fusillade of bullets fired by the officers. The grand jury declined to indict the officers involved. Archie Elliot, III, in a twist of irony that seems to apply only to Africans in America, was the son of a judge, and his mother a teacher.
As these mothers told their painful, horrific stories, the tears welled up in my eyes, and despite trying, I couldn't stop some of the tears from rolling down my cheeks. One Ethiopian lady sitting to my right was moved to an even greater flow of tears than I was.
The organizers estimate 25,000 people attended the march, My own estimate would put the figure in the range 10-20,000. As it came down Independence Ave., the length of the march appeared to me to be about 400 yds, and was four lanes across, about 10 yds, giving us about 4,000 sq. yds of space occupied by the marchers at a density averaging perhaps 3-5 people per sq. yd. As I write this on the day after, I see the Washington Post have undercounted as usual, saying in their article that "hundreds" attended the march, when clearly the figure was in the thousands.
The participants were a truly mixed lot. While it was overwhelmingly attended by American Africans, there were quite a few whites, Asians, and Hispanics. Representatives of the Lakota Sioux nation came all the way from South Dakota to lend their support, and to testify to the police brutality that they, too, have suffered. Even the "trans-gendered" community had a representative speak at the podium. The communists and their surrogate organizations were also out in force, handing out literature. What the communists offer is tired and discredited, but like the ticks on a cow's back-side, they will always be there, seeking to feed off the "masses", especially when the latter seem set to rise from their usual torpor and apathy, goaded into protest by the too-naked exercise of the brutalities and inequities of the Established Order.
Which brings me back to where I started. This movement in protest against police brutality shows no signs of abating any time soon. It is fuelled by anger, grief, and ideological resentment of one stripe or another against what seems to be clear evidence of fascist behavior by police departments all over the country, aided and empowered by such as Mayor Rudolf Giuliani. For such latter-day fascists, the goal of "clean streets" justifies the systematic abuse of civil rights and even the clearly unjustifiable police killings and abuses which we have seen time and time again. Mussolini, fascist dictator of war-time Italy, whose proud boast was that he got the trains to run on time, had a similar moral delusion. Adolf Hitler had an even greater neatness compulsion, seeing the need to "cleanse" Germany of its Jews, Gypsies, homosexuals, and other "undesirables." In America today, the police see themselves as the "thin blue line" that stand between the "undesirables", and the "decent folk" whom they see as those they must "protect and serve." The trouble arises because the police see non-whites, especially American Africans, as being, presumptively, on the wrong side of the "thin blue line," and therefore the standard operating procedure where Africans in America are concerned is that, at the slightest hint of trouble, to shoot first, shoot to kill, and to sort out any misunderstandings later. Also, there can be no question but that there are rogue cops who take it upon themselves to punish those, especially non-whites, who talk back to them, or who even merely assert their constitutional rights. It is also my belief that, since Rodney King, rogue cops will choose their service pistol over their nightstick, and will shoot to kill rather than to disable. Dead victims cannot later testify. What it all adds up to is that an African in America, especially young male ones, is a hair trigger away from police execution whenever he is stopped by a cop, for whatever reason, and regardless of whether he is the son of a judge, or one of the boyz in da 'hood.
The question that I see arising from this state of affairs is this: when are American Africans going to take responsibility for their own communities... the education of their own children, the policing of their own neighborhoods, the control of their own economics?
Until then, no amount of police-investigating-police, whether local-on-local, or federal-on-local, is going to stop the police killings. The foxes would in that case continue to be the ones guarding the hen-house. Why should the Africans of America look to the Federal Government for justice when it was the FBI that conceived and carried out the COINTELPRO program of dirty tricks that undermined the American African struggles of the Sixties? And when it is that the CIA appears implicated in the opening up of American African communities to the ravages of crack cocaine addiction? I do not understand, truly.
But what seems already clear to me is that the reverend pastors who did yeoman service during the civil rights struggles of the Sixties, and who still know how to organize and bring out a march, are nevertheless ill-equipped to take the struggle to the next level. For certain, the pitiable, mournful refrain of "we shall overcome... some day" is not the right energy to bring to the task. Perhaps the more fiery energy of the Zulu warrior in full stomp, or the harsher vibrations of hip-hop and gangsta rap are nearer in tune with the demands of the task at hand.
No Justice, No Peace!
© 1999 TheAfrican.Com®