Thanks
Jesse Williams. It took a lot of bravery for you to get up at the BET
Awards Ceremony and give a speech filled with anger and rage at the
system— and the way that the killings of Black people are being
televised as if each event were a public lynching. But in my opinion
you didn’t go far enough. I begin with the Comment I put onto
Facebook the day after your remarks: “I'm not so sure about the
speech Jesse Williams gave the other night... It's full of exciting
rhetoric and a good analysis of the system... But there was no call
to action. You could have told the audience… "Let’s
call on President Obama to end the Federal 1033 Program that gives
military weapons to local police forces—like in Ferguson—to
kill our people. Let’s demand Jobs or Income Now for our people
and not be afraid of public welfare programs that we have earned.
Let’s cut police spending in every city by 50 percent now! And
let’s cut U.S. emission of greenhouse gases by 50% now as
well.” A good organizer doesn't simply get people riled up—
You always need a call to action and very specific demands.”
While
I think Jesse’s remarks are a great beginning, as an organizer
trying to make specific demands on the system in the hopes of
liberating all Black people, it is sad to see entertainers getting
more support for general statements while movements such as ours are
being suppressed by the L.A. Times and even Democracy Now for the
real work that we’re putting in.
The
problem, however, isn’t simply Jesse Williams; the problem is
mainly us, and our tendency as a generation to get our priorities
mixed up. We’re living in a moment where with social media, if
we wanted to, we can literally talk over broadcast media. So why,
with all of that power, are we using it to simply have entertainers
go viral. And just to be clear, NO, Social Media will not lead the
revolution against the U.S. Imperialist State, and for the little bit
of the time we do go viral, it doesn’t mean that the revolution
is beginning, but using the media power of social media is a great
beginning for all of us.
Paul
Potter, then the president of Students for a Democratic Society, in
1965, said in his speech at the March on Washington to End the war in
Vietnam:
“We
must name that system. We must name it, describe it, analyze it,
understand it and change it. For it is only when that system is
changed and brought under control that there can be any hope for
stopping the forces that create a war in Vietnam today or a murder in
the South tomorrow or all the incalculable, innumerable more subtle
atrocities that are worked on people all over—all the time.”
I
love this quote for its revolutionary vision, strategy, and
militancy, and for its timelessness. Yes he’s speaking about
the Vietnam War, and comparing what the U.S. was doing at the time
oversees and to what’s going on at home. He named the system
and told you that the systems strategy is to gain power over the
entire world, unless if we stop it. Not much has changed, we’re
still living in a time when the system maintains the power it has
always had. We must name the system; that is U.S. Imperialism, and we
must name some of the Democrats holding the role as guardians of the
system; that is President Barack Obama among others. We must put
specific demands on the system tied to real organizers and real
organizations on the ground. Only then can we free the 1 million
Black people from the Prison Industrial Complex. It is only when we
use this strategy can we stop the U.S. Genocidal Climate Crimes (as
Eric Mann phrases it in Katrina’s
Legacy Volume 2) against our siblings in the global south.
In
the Labor Community Strategy Center, we study Black Revolutionary
Thought and History. We learned about how Dick Gregory, Nina Simone,
James Baldwin and Harry Belafonte joined the Black Liberation
Movement. They worked with the Student Non Violent Coordinating
Committee, Dr. King, Malcolm X, and the Black Panthers. They followed
the tradition of W.E.B DuBois and Paul Robeson, who joined the
Communist Party and had their passports taken away while communists
went to jail for calling for Black liberation, Socialism, and
Revolution.
Nina
Simone put her whole career at risk when she made “Mississippi
Goddam”. James Baldwin brought civil rights leaders into the
white house to give then Attorney General Bobby Kennedy a view of the
people involved in the civil rights movement. Dick Gregory
participated in the Open City Drive in Atlanta Georgia to “Make
Atlanta an open city” by integrating its Dobbs and Toddle House
restaurants. Muhammad Ali risked going prison for his opposition to
the war in Vietnam. Harry Belafonte, James Baldwin, and Loraine
Hansbury used their celebrity to publicize the work of the Student
Non-Violent Coordinating Committee, the Southern Christian Leadership
Conference, Fannie Lou Hamer, and others by name.
Did
you know that for the last 18 months The Strategy Center and our
Fight for the Soul of the Cities has been fighting the Los Angeles
Unified School District (LAUSD) demanding that they cut all ties with
the Department of Defense including getting out of the 1033 program
that gives military grade weapons to municipal Police Departments.
LAUSD had a MRAP vehicle (a Tank), three Grenade Launchers, and 61
Assault Riffles. Do you know any of the celebrities who supported
that work with all of their access to media and a national platform?
Let me answer that: none. We won that fight on our own without them.
And even after a major victory for the movement Celebrities did not
use their clout to publicize a victory that the system wants to cover
up.
Do
you know that we are the Organizers in LA that just got the Los
Angeles Unified School District to return its military grade weapons
that the district intended to use on it’s students and
community members (Please see the article: “The
Strategy Center—Finally—Gets the Tanks and M-16s Out of
the LA School System”)
Several
months ago we reached out to Jesse Williams to support our work and
so far, he has never responded. If you have an inside line to Jesse
Williams tell him we still need his help and would love to hear from
him. His great sense of oratory and his access to high visibility
platforms could be of such help to us—and many other civil
rights, Black, Latino, anti-war, and climate justice groups in the
U.S. and internationally.
We
need your help for our next fight. MTA is about to put a FOREVER tax
initiative on the ballot so that they can build trains to gentrify,
and re-gentrify Black and Latino neighborhoods over and over forever
until it stops making them money. Their new Measure R2 (my nickname:
Regressive Racists United) is their new way of snatching power from
areas where the government fails to regulate. On the Metro system,
they have their own rules and regulations, where simply putting your
feet up on a chair can land you a ticket and a criminal record, where
Police officers ask for proof that you paid your $1.50 transit fare
with a gun and an attack dog. In the City of Los Angeles and the
County of Los Angeles, there is no such municipal code that says that
“Fare Evasion” is a crime. MTA is a public agency that
gets enough money from your taxes in one year to give everyone in LA
free fares for the next decade. Why is it that of all the tickets
given for “Fare Evasion” in one year, more than 50% are
given to Black People even though we are only 20% of the ridership?
What
are you willing to put in to win this fight?
In
the coming months at The Strategy Center’s Fight for the Soul
of the Cities we’ll be continuing our campaign for No Cars in
L.A. and the U.S. No Tanks in LA and the U.S. We’ll be calling
on the Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority
(LACMTA) to End MTA Genocide against the Black Nation.
Stop the Attacks on Black Riders
— No Stop and Frisk
No Arrests and tickets for “fare
evasion”
No L.A. Sheriffs and MTA Police on MTA Buses
and Trains
Restore 1 million hours of bus
service
stolen from the Bus Riders Union by the MTA
Vote No on Measure R2 and Repeal
Measure R
No Fare — Free Public
Transit
Expand the bus fleet to 5,000
zero-emissions buses
w/ 24/7 Free bus service
1000
buses now
Moratorium on all Rail and
Highway projects
No Cars in L.A. — Bus-only
lanes Auto-free zones, days, and rush hours, Freeway bus service,
expanded bike and pedestrian infrastructure
Support the Crenshaw Subway
Coalitions’ demand to Build the Park Mesa Heights Tunnel The
Crenshaw Light Rail line should be underground for 11 blocks;
from 48th St. to 59th St
We
need your support physically to come out in the streets to organize
with us, and we need your financial support to make sure we win this
fight. Why don’t you begin by sending me your thoughts on this
article. For folks in Los Angeles in particular, come by our office
to join our campaign. Whether you are a garment worker, security
guard, have no job at all, or are an actor of little or great fame—we
need your help.
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