On this important 'International Day for the Right to the Truth concerning Gross Human Rights Violations and for the Dignity of Victims...' It is important to point out the truth concerning violence, its acceptable usage, and who is violently targeted in our society. On such a day, I think it important that I share a few thoughts on what I see as truth.
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| Militarized Policing in Ferguson |
While the murders of Michael Brown, Eric Garner and Tamir Rice have awakened the eyes of many to police violence, recent news and our experience tells us that this is only the tip of the iceberg. This interactive map points out that between 2000 and 2014 approximately 4,285 people were killed by police. This year we have seen more men, women and children of color gunned down by police. What is not often discussed is that while police are explicitly responsible for such egregious violence, structural racism--which thrives on economic injustice is violent and police are allowed to use violence directly and unquestioningly against our communities because a strong and vocal part of the majority believe, profit from and help paint Black and Brown folk as criminal.
Ask yourself if you benefit from criminalization of people of color? Does your portfolio have investments in for-profit-prisons, weapons manufacturers, military contractors, polluters, large banks that were guilty of predatory lending, etc...? Where do you bank at? Do you shop at Walmart? Walmart costs the US taxpayers more in closing local businesses (reducing the tax base) and essentially forcing low wage earning employees into public assistance. Do you know that many products like Sabra Hummus benefits the illegal occupation of Palestine? How are you complicit?
Policing in communities of color has become indistinguishable from the occupying military armies. The internal logic of policing/military is that without their force, society would quickly devolve into chaos. For many, more police equal safer communities and that violence wielded is appropriate in every conflict encountered. For instance, why would armed officers be appropriate for citizens with disabilities or mental illness? Does the presence of an armed officer escalate these conflicts? As described by Jesse Singal, the militarization of police can increase violence. Our tax dollars support this kind of policing abroad and domestically. Even worse, police target People of Color for minor infractions, often supporting large portions of municipal budgets from policing that often, according to recent reports, fails to prevent and even ignores real crime. The approach of police throughout the US, has become increasingly militarized, broaching the question of legality.
Just wondering, isn't it unconstitutional to have standing armies in our American cities?
The problem continues to be that there aren't enough meaningful employment opportunities for the vast majority of Americans and people around the world. As well, the ONE PERCENT was bailed out after 2008 market crash, instead of citizens badly in need of assistance and a kind of 'workers project' toward full employment. Even more, both Bush's and Obama's administrations failed to hold parties criminally liable or responsible. The subprime scandal decimated black communities. The crash affected my family's North St. Louis neighborhood (leaving many vacant houses, increased crime, broken families), my parents retirement, my employment at the time, and many experienced even more disenfranchisement. I believe measures, such as the confiscation of corporate property and profiteer's ill-gotten profits, must be left on the table to restore confidence and respond to such disregard for the public good. Instead the executives contract guaranteeing exorbitant bonuses are considered sacrosanct while pensioners in Detroit recently saw their retirement contracts raided.
How can the competitive-predatory nature of capitalism foster or even be associated with democracy? The problem is that the rich keep getting richer at our expense and those standing armies in our cities protect the 1% and that wealth is made on the backs of ordinary Americans. Yet, many ordinary Americans vote in ways that uphold laws like Citizens United, which treat corporations as individuals- even though these 'individuals'/ corporations have yet to face the crimes for which they are responsible. Americans have bought into the myth that they too can and have the right to have more than others.
Because resources are scarce, to have more is not sustainable. Even more, the consumption and greed that underlies capitalism is closely connected to criminality and poverty, since there has to be winners and losers.
Recently UC Berkeley study points out that wealthy people are more likely to break the rules, which includes theft, lying, cheating... etc. When the core values of a society revolve around the musings of insider traders who declare 'greed is good', there are serious moral implications and we all should be asking who we are and who do we want to be? Many who claim affinity to the philosophy of Adam Smith conveniently avoid his conclusion that a society with consumptive behaviors and values will implode upon itself.What some will do to win...
So at the core of America is an existential anxiety or fear of loosing what can easily be lost. Money and material goods, as many of experienced in 2008, can disappear. What we see in the broader society is acceptance of a criminalized class, the 'losers' or 'scapegoats' who threaten property through theft or otherwise. The police are empowered by the broader society to use violence in protection this fear of our scapegoats, insecurity that is reassured through greed, selfishness, the right to have more than others and for the protection and theft of what belongs to all people-- i.e. clean and healthy environment, free drinking water and breathable air and land from which human life might be sustained. Black and Brown lives are imprisoned, as one police pointed out to me, to do what you liberal people don't want to do.
Does the overpopulating of prisons with Brown and Black people decrease crime? According to Juan Thompson and the study by the Brennan Center for Justice, it doesn't. Essentially Black and Brown folk in the U.S., are criminalized and demonized by the media because it serves the need to exclude some from the moral community. In that exclusion, we have been denied the G.I. Bill, mortgages-that built much of the wealth in America, equitable justice, which alludes us even when evidence shows that Black and Brown people are brutalized in the light of day (Tamir Rice, Eric Garner, Martese Johnson of UVA and others). This view of People of Color is rooted in the foundation of American society, and it justifies, for many, this violent and inhumane treatment by police.
We need complete systems change and what the Truth-Telling weekend March 13-15 pointed out was, how police violence is only part of the context of broader economic, political and moral inequality that people of color face daily. Even more, Pastor Cori Bush, Dr. Fania Davis, Mohammed El Naiem, Mahder Etuma, Kristin Famula, Dr. Tony Jenkins, Dr. Benard Lafayette, Dr. Imani Scott, Reverend Sekou, Reverend Stoneking and others pointed out during the weekend that there is need for Truth-Telling and Truth-Seeking toward structural transformation, so that some kind of reconciliation is possible.
Truth and Reconciliation involves the documentation of our experiences to have a record of this vast history of abuse, systematic and structural racism and racists acts against people of color in the US, so that we can learn from it, write our own history, open the eyes of all Americans to demand change of ourselves and hold accountable the institutions that benefit from our oppression. But, we must hear, listen and act on these truths first. Speak your truth, upload a video to thetruthtellingproject.org. Your voice is needed to guide us toward change.
Which side are you on?
by David Ragland
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