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I;
I am;
I am alive;
I am conscious and aware;
I am unique
I am who I say I am; I am the value UQOBO (essence)
I forever evolve inwardly an outwardly in response to the challenge of
my nature;
I am the face of humanity;
The face of humanity is my face…
-The Zulu Personal Declaration
“It is criminal,” Malcolm
said, “to teach a man not to defend himself when he is the
constant victim of brutal attacks” (March, 1964 Press Statement).
Malcolm did not advocate violence; he spoke directly about
the systematic violence perpetrated against Black Americans
by the U.S. government. He advocated common sense self-defense
against “unjust” and “unlawful” attacks. He advocated self-determination
rather than accepting integration into an American imperialism
dependent on racialized terror and its expansion as a way
of maintaining white American supremacy in the world.
As Joy James
rightly notes, the criminalization of Black Americans is
offered as a “spectacle
of racialized state violence” (Resisting State Violence). White
Americans have extracted and exploited the labor of Black
bodies, while at the same time stood in fear of bodies Black
in color. “In racialized societies such as the United States,
the plague of criminality, deviancy, immorality, and corruption
is embodied in the black because both sexual and social pathology
are branded by skin color (as well as by gender and sexual
orientation).” Black bodies, consequently, require “panopticism
and the policing gaze.” They require regiments of discipline
and punishment, James writes, “not to expiate or repress
but to ‘normalize’” bodies that “cannot be normalized no
matter how they are disciplined.” In Nazi Germany, the “abnormal” bodies
of Jews, Blacks, gays, Gypsies, communists, James explains, “were
to be sterilized, euthanized, or eradicated” for they were
considered “defective or a subspecies of humans; they could
not be normalized under state ideology.” It is no accident
that Nazi Germany reviewed documents on the U.S. enslavement
of Africans.
As the “historical victim
of state violence,” Blacks have been “portrayed as the aggressor,” James
notes. In the post-bellum period, the role of the Black as
the “aggressor” represents the progression of the imaginative
narrative of Southern Chivalry, in which the “pastoral” South
was littered with “gardens” where “patriarchs” tended their
docile “bondmen and bondwomen” who, in turn, were, as Lewis
P. Simpson writes, “gardeners in the garden” (The Dispossessed
Garden). This charming justifying narrative of violence
warped into the Gothic narrative of the nightmare with the
Haitian Revolution and the appearance of Denmark Vesey. The
ungrateful “gardeners” wanted their freedom from bondage.
The thought of unfree human beings, held in bondage, wanting
freedom - wanting to disrupt the narrative of white supremacy
and the environment it provided - was unthinkable. Unless,
sterilized, euthanized, or eradicated, the Blacks were to
be represented in the narrative of white supremacy as ungrateful
and therefore dangerous aggressors.
Uncivilized,
we qualified for slavery; inferior, we qualified for disenfranchisement;
uppity, we qualified for lynching. James characterizes lynching
as “a sadistic fixation on the body” - the Black body. The “predatory” Black
male body and the exposure of Black women’s sexual parts
fueled the white imagination with a mesh of horror and pleasure,
culminating in dangling bodies. Ultimately, lynching afforded
a display of unilateral, citizen to citizen, state-sponsored
terrorism “to control an ethnic people subjugated as an inferior
race.” Police have picked up the slack and serve as stand-ins
for the average American citizen concerned with “safety.”
The spectacle
of lynching, in its various forms, now continues against
the ungrateful,
dangerous aggressors who dare to be witnesses to state violence
against Black Americans. The “constant interrogation without
end” in prisons and the “penal executions,” James writes,
are no less the spectacle of police surveillance in the Black
communities or the “deadly spectacle of police beatings” because
they are shielded from view. These events “function as a
punitive spectacle…projected” into the consciousness of the
citizenry.
Bobby Seale
and Huey Newton drafted the foundational “Ten Point Platform and Program” for
the formation of the Black Panther Party after Malcolm X’s
death. As Seale explains in Seize
the Time the Story of the Black Panther Party and Huey P.
Newton, the “platform
was completed on October 22, 1966” and focused on “full employment,
decent housing, education that taught African Americans their
true history, an and end to the exploitation of our black
community, preventive health care, fair trials, and the enforcement
of our constitutional rights.” The Party also placed an emphasis,
Seale continues, “on our right to defend ourselves from any
vicious racist attack.”
Rob Jacobs
notes that there are few groups who have experienced a history
of murder,
beatings, lies and frame-ups as did the Black Panther Party
(“The FBI’s War on Black Liberation: COINTELPRO and the Panthers,” October
20, 2007). This history of violence and COINTELPRO, Jacobs
writes, continues today. The “interrogation without end” and
the jailhouse torture generate the spectacle of frame-ups,
arrests, and trials.
“This case against eight
former Panthers and Panther supporters charged with the murder
of a San Francisco policeman in 1971 was thrown out of court
in 1975 because the evidence used by the prosecution was
obtained by torture,” writes Jacobs. Of course, Jacobs injects,
if “the purpose of torture is something other than the procurement
of credible evidence or confessions, then it doesn’t really
matter as to its effectiveness.”
As Jacobs
argues, the goal of COINTELPRO and its current campaign against
Mumia abu
Jamal and the San Francisco 8 is to destroy the Black Panthers.
The Black Panthers were considered “radical,” argues writer
Sergio Rodrigues, not for its call for armed self-defense,
but “rather because it expressed the bankruptcy of the capitalist
system in a way that threatened its stability” (“Arrest of
Former Black Panthers.”)
I see the
goal of COINTELPRO as not only an effort to destroy the physical
bodies of these
individuals, but also to destroy the very embodiment of the
collective spirit of resistance. How have Black Americans
best “expressed the bankruptcy of the capitalist system” in
America? Eradicate the body that would dare defend itself
and thus advocate fearlessly for the self-determination of
Black Americans - and still, that spirit of Sojourner Truth,
DuBois, Ida B. Wells, Diane Nash, Kwame Ture, Malcolm X and
many others is present, exposing the injustice and inequality
in America.
“If
we must die, let it not be like hogs
Hunted and penned in an inglorious spot,
While round us bark the mad and hungry dogs,
Making their mock at our accursed lot…”
Richard Brown,
one of the San Francisco 8, told me that “everything” about the case “was
illegal.” He was originally tried in his hospital room! After
thirty seven years of the harassment of arrest, torture,
and trials, Brown, now “of the age to file for social security,” must
contend with further harassment. Released in October, 2007,
after his re-arrested on charges related to the 1971 killing
of police Sgt. John V. Young, Brown has had to endure the
government delays or just “evaporation” of his prescriptions
and Medicaid funds due him. He was told that the disappearance
of his Medicaid “shouldn’t have happened,” and that he should
re-apply. “I have had to re-sign up for everything,” and
he was told he would have to pay over six hundred dollars
if he needed dental work. In the meantime, Brown’s social
security check was cut by two hundred dollars because he
supposedly owed the government $30,000. “For what.?” he asked.
Brown didn’t receive an answer. In August, 2007, Brown’s
bail was reduced to $420,000! In addition, he suffers from
narrow-angle glaucoma that can lead to a reduction of his
vision if he does not receive the treatment he needs. Brown
has lost vision in one eye and has a reduction of vision
in the other.
Brown said
that the Monday, December 3, 2007 court proceeding should
focus on “prior
motions like the use of shackles or double jeopardy for Harold
Taylor,” who is being charged again for the same crime. The
judge could also rule on the original use of torture to obtain
confessions. Whatever the judge rules, some of us will know
it is an attempt to “normalize” what cannot be “normalized,” as
in deadened or eradicated, as in lost forever.
“It is nothing but a legal
lynching,” said Brown. But it is “nothing compared to the
things I’ve accomplished. If I had to do it all over again,” he
said, “I will do it again. It is a small price to pay for
the things I have done” in and for the community. Brown has
worked for six years as a community activist in the San Francisco
District Attorney’s office, serving as a Community Court
Arbitrator.
The danger
with the San Francisco 8 case is that the public will not
understand the
connection between this case and Democratic Rep. Jane Harman’s
H.R. 1955: Violent Radicalization and Homegrown Terrorism
Prevention Act or Democratic Senator Feinstein’s S 456: Gang
Abatement and Prevention Act 2007 in which the eight men
could be charged as a “gang” or “terrorists.” Both bills
would expand the powers of a COINTELPRO agenda against Black
people in general and particularly compound the efforts of
Black activists working on behalf of their communities. In
the Joint Statement from the San Francisco Eight, the eight
men directly address their representation as “aggressors”:
We vehemently
reject that labeling, as the government attempts to characterize
the
San Francisco 8 as "terrorists," "criminals," and "wanton
killers." They will never say the SF8 were political
activists and progressive civil/human rights organizers.
They will never say they sought to relieve the community
of all forms of state-sponsored terrorism that is often found
in Black, Asian and Latino communities today. They will never
admit to the unconstitutional practices of the FBI COINTELPRO
activities, despite the 1974 Senate Church Committee findings
condemning those practices. Furthermore, they will never
seek to establish remedies for those who are victims of the
illegal FBI and local police actions under COINTELPRO, and
now under the Patriot Act, if we don't demand they do so.
An international call was
issued Friday, November 30, 2007 to free the San Francisco
8. Among those calling for the release of these men are:
The
Most Reverend Dr. Desmond Mpilo Tutu, Nobel Peace Laureate
1984;
Mairead Corrigan Maguire,
Community of Peace People, Northern Ireland, Nobel Peace
Laureate 1976;
Betty Williams, Community
of Peace People, Northern Ireland, Nobel Peace Laureate
1976;
Darryl Jordan, Director-American
Friends Service Committee Third World Coalition (Nobel
Peace Laureate 1947);
William Wardlaw, Executive
Director's Leadership Council, Amnesty International (Nobel
Peace Laureate 1977);
Marie Dennis, Co-President,
Pax Christi International and Director-Maryknoll Office
for Global Concerns;
Lois M. Dauway, Women's
Division, Global Ministries, United Methodist Church and
Central Committee member, World Council of Churches
The charges and continuous
harassment of these men should end and the government should
recognize this case as an example of narrative violence of
representing Blacks as criminal, thus allowing for ultimate
spectacle of American injustice. The charges and harassment
of Richard Brown and all the men of the San Francisco 8 should
be dropped.
In addition, the San Francisco
8 and the Committee for the Defense of Human Rights are calling
for the following:
Investigate the use of
torture in the U.S. criminal system and pass Anti-torture
legislation
Re-open COINTELPRO hearings
Begin a Truth and Reconciliation
Commission
These are our immediate
kinsmen who need our support and our political awareness.
Most of all, they need to be uplifted by our collective spirit
of resistance!
O kinsmen we must meet
the common foe!
Though far outnumbered let us show us brave,
And for their thousand blows deal one deathblow!
What though before us lies the open grave?
Like men we'll face the murderous, cowardly pack,
Pressed to the wall, dying, but fighting back!
-Claude McKay
Please support the FREE
THE SAN FRANCISCO EIGHT!, Committee for the Defense of Human
Rights, P.O. Box 90221, Pasadena, CA 91109, (415) 226-1120.
Additionally,
see Democracy Now!, Amy Goodman’s interview with Jessica
Lee (Indypendent Media) and Kamau Karl Franklin (Racial Justice
Fellow at
NYU Center for Constitutional Rights), November 20, 2007
program, Homegrown
Terrorism Prevention Act Raises Fears.
BlackCommentator.com Editorial Board memberLenore Jean Daniels, PhD, has been a writer, for over thirty years of
commentary, resistance criticism and cultural theory, and
short stories with a Marxist sensibility to the impact
of cultural narrative violence and its antithesis, resistance
narratives. With entrenched dedication to justice and equality,
she has served as a coordinator of student and community
resistance projects that encourage the Black Feminist idea
of an equalitarian community and facilitator of student-teacher
communities behind the walls of academia for the last twenty
years. Dr. Daniels holds a PhD in Modern American Literatures,
with a specialty in Cultural Theory (race, gender, class
narratives) from Loyola University, Chicago. Click
here to contact Dr. Daniels.
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