It’s Time for Black Liberation, Not Liberalism | Bobby London Wordpress
As people begin to ask themselves how we can make this movement sustainable we must take into account the various layers of our struggle. We must make sure that we are working towards more than just momentary change, but for true liberation of all black people. The usual route of playing the game of respectable politics needs to stop. Organizations and community leaders are beginning to take it upon themselves to speak for the movement. With their list of demands, their lectures on the proper way to protest and the condemnations they give of all uncontrolled actions that have been taking place. Their solutions are focused on policy change that is dependent on institutional will. It is important that as black people we make sure that our political tactics are not being dominated by white supremacy.
As we all know, no justice was found for the Brown family or the community that watched Darren Wilson murder Michael Brown in cold blood. Instead, we’ve seen Darren Wilson rewarded, profiting off of murdering the young black teenager. After, we saw the same failure of justice in New York with the documented murder of Eric Garner. The failure of the prosecution shifted the debate on whether or not police cameras would help skew back against police brutality. This however, did not stop Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti from purchasing 7,000 body cameras for the notoriously violent LAPD.
It should be clear now that our problem in this country is bigger than these two grand juries alone failing to prosecute these police officers. It is bigger than these incidents – there is a pattern of systemic abuse by a justice system that has continued to fail, time after time, death after death. The debate in regards to police violence against black lives is more complicated than the binary of reform versus abolition. The problem is this white supremacist, capitalist, hetero-patriarchical system, and there is no amount of “die-ins” that will change that.
There are currently 2.5 million black people being incarcerated. Police use simple infractions to target and profile blacks. The justice system works as a funnel for the prison industry. If the justice system is a funnel, then the role of the police is to obtain property for the justice system into funnel. I apologize for the triggering language as referring to black lives as property, but its important to realize that prisoners become exactly that, property of the state.
Now, white supremacy and anti-blackness would like us to believe that it is our own fault that got us in those prisons in the first place. That we are genetically created to steal, sell drugs, rape, and murder. This along with a constant barrage of images that are reflected in media, Hollywood, and the music industry. In reality the United States government has been criminalizing being black ever since they decided to transition us from plantation slavery to wage slavery.
The government whose legal system put certain laws in place with the intention of criminalizing blacks specifically. The most known example of this is with the disparitybetween the sentencing of rock cocaine versus when it is in powder form. Rock cocaine which was once 100-to-1 ratio was changed to 18-to-1 in 2010. What has recently been confirmed but was known by communities affected by this assault, the illegal substance was purposely being placed in their communities by both the Reagan administration and CIA. The effects of that certain operation deployed by the Reagan presidency are still present in the black community today.
George Stinney Jr., was 14 year old who was wrongfully sentenced to the death penalty for beating two white girls in the racist state of South Carolina. The state, 70 years later, has now decided to exonerate him. What’s the point of exoneration after 70 years of being wrongfully murdered? I don’t know. What I do know is that this is not an isolated example of blacks being executed for crimes they did not commit, lets not forget Troy Davis.
I explain all of this to convey, that it is naive to believe that a justice system that has been consistently waging violence against our community could ever be trusted to give us the justice that we deserve. The constitution and these laws were not created for us, it was born opposed to us, and the laws were created to solidify white supremacy and anti-blackness – how can we trust an institution that saw us a 3/5-ths as human?
Police Reform vs. Abolishing the Police
This conversation is more nuanced than an either or argument, even though I have framed it in such a way. When discussions are had on this it is discussed usually around what is attainable. Now, if you’re only talking about superficial institutional reforms like body cams, special prosecutors, and community advisers, then sure, you can achieve any legislation that does not threaten the current practices of the police. But if you are talking about real institutional reforms which would have an effect on the power of the police state, such as: defunding and demilitarizing, which I agree that if we are going to talk about reform then we should start there; then the question I must pose is: do you believe the United States government, one of the most militarized empires in the world, will allow their domestic military to be pacified? I also ask the same to those who believe that we can abolish the police without abolishing the whole governmental institution.
Recently, the head of the police union in New York, declared war on both the Mayor of New York, and the black community. The way I like to look at government is that it is made up of various factions, each with their own interests at play. The police force, who currently has a closer relationship to the government of Israel than the current presidential administration, has become it’s own international entity. William Bratton has ensured the militarized autonomy of the police through years of training and relationships built with one of the world’s largest weapons suppliers, Israel. The police have acted with impunity and have been one of the largest standing mafia-type organizations in the United States and they will not give that power up willingly.
Let’s not forget that the “cops and the klan go hand and hand” either, so what happens to all those weapons even if we are to disarm or abolish the police? Do they get locked away in some facility where only the community led commission has some magic key? No, they go into the hands of those former officers and into their own private militias. Fusion reported, “184 state and local police departments have been suspended from the Pentagon’s ‘1033 program’ for missing weapons or failure to comply with other guidelines. We uncovered a pattern of missing M14 and M16 assault rifles across the country, as well as instances of missing .45-caliber pistols, shotguns and 2 cases of missing Humvee vehicles.”
Also, what about the privatized police who are not under institutional control? When talking about the police state we must first understand why it exists — to enforce white supremacy and protect capital. Whether or not these are governmentally funded forces is irrelevant, the reality is that there will be someone to enforce these power structures.
The conversation of the value of black lives has been centrally focused on black men. It would be presumed that only black male lives are being murdered at an astounding rate. But, because anti-blackness affects ALL black people, we are also seeing the alarming rate of black trans and black women’s lives being killed as well. Which we’ve failed to produce the same sort of call to action as there has been for black men. It is important that we understand that as black people we are all being attacked by white supremacy, but some are being attacked by white supremacy and hetero-patriarchy as well. Black trans women have been murdered, raped, and attacked more than trans women of other races. This needs to be as much of a black concern as cis black women, who are also being beaten, raped, and murdered.
