As we end of one of the most widely contested and covered election cycle, this country has done it it again. The campaigns of the two major party candidates presented Hillary and Trump as heroic figures who would take on all of our problems and solve them. This narrative, not unlike the fiction which portrays law enforcement as heroic, from the perspective of many in my community, is pure fiction.
While entertaining and exciting to see a Black man in this role, I shudder at the deeper meaning it communicates. Our society transmits an extraordinary amount of psychic energy on others to address the deepest concerns that each member of our society, by virtue of our mutual humanity, shares collective responsibility to engage. Politicians, police and the power elite in this society are vested with superhuman responsibility and power.
No one is coming to save us. We have to do it ourselves.
The reality is that many Black and Brown folk as well as those in the margins don’t trust police and are afraid to call 911 even when urgent attention is needed. The U.K. reporter Tim McCarthy Guardian writes about how trust given to police by many white folk is surprising given the availability of videos showing police violence. Given the sick state of things, it makes sense that one Massachusetts judge said Blacks are justified to run from the police given the violence that might occur during an interaction.
Given these experiences, a hero like Luke Cage (and Hillary as the savior from Trump) has been welcomed for all the reasons that he should be. Super heroes emerge from the collective social imagination as a way to respond to deep existential anxiety from impending doom and threats to safety and existence. For instance, Golems emerged in Jewish mysticism to protect their communities in the face of violence throughout Europe.
Luke Cage is the heroic fantasy we collectively conjured. Politicians and the wealthy elite with false narratives of self-reliance that don’t account for preferential admissions at elite universities, inheritances and other social capital associated with being white and wealthy, are often mythologized as heroic. Law enforcement, who protect this narrative and the status quo that maintains the power elite, are vested with the most lethal power- immediately impacting our very existence. While I hate to be the spiller of sour milk, I believe we don’t need heroes, especially when the strength of most heroes is in the use of violence (despite the mythology the violence will be used for good).
Yet fantasy is fantasy. The answer, I’m pretty sure, is not the Dallas police chief who suggested protesters join police to be a part of the “solution”. Many communities around the country have responded to police violence and the structural racism and violence it emerges from in a myriad of different ways. From Chosen For Change’s youth support programming, Ferguson Response Network’s community engagement, Hands Up United’s - Books and Breakfast, Sophia Project, the Truth Telling Project, Artivists STL, Cop Watch, A Conscious Conversation STL, Justice League NYC, Million Hoodie and Yarn Mission in St.Louis to the Movement for Blacks Lives there are organizations that have been responding and working to build something different so that we can be our own heroes.
I don’t advocate weapons or violence and that’s personal because sometimes dehumanized communities use whatever means available. I also know that a singular hero arising to take on the ills of our community is not coming and on this election day we should not expect to elect one.
I’m feeling some type of way. I’ve felt a kind of existential anxiety at its deepest level arising since before the murder of Michael Brown Jr. It’s a sense of anxiety that arises from what W.E.B. DuBois described as double consciousness. Double consciousness is a framework created by DuBois to describe to internal turmoil between how we are viewed by the broader society, the pretext that the laws created protect and are applied equally and fairly. While we are told that we can be inspired and confident in our work and contribution to American society, we are continuously treated inhumanely in the criminal justice system, employment and everyday encounters with overt and micro-agressive racism. Double consciousness is the lens through which Black folk hold this contradictory experience in the world.
The other side of double consciousness is bad faith which Sartre in Being and Nothingness later described as objectification. Professor Lewis Gordon translates bad faith which see the gaze that inform policies against Black, People of Color, or anyone considered ‘other’ as anti-black racism. For example, I remember being accused of plagiarism by a professors because she could not see me, despite my good work and efforts, as a serious student. The anxiety emerges from the false narrative this society tells us, in the face of the objectifying power-holding gaze of whiteness only views you as a criminal or unqualified. How long before the perception of you catches up with your treatment? DuBois, Derrick Bell and Kimberle Crenshaw, in this mix of the bad faith gaze, articulate the utter confusion between the equality we demand (and supposedly codified by law) and the reality of treatment encoded in legal and criminal justice systems affect our intersectional (poverty, gender, ability and race for instance) encounters.
The most disturbing encounters have to be people murdered after seeking help when injured disabled or in a need of roadside assistance or otherwise. The most basic duty as part of the Judeo-Christian ethic (for which our legal system is based) is treatment of the poor, socially marginalized, and visitors as the good Samaritan parable noted. Michelle Lee Shirley, Deborah Danner, Terence Crutcher, Rene’ Davis Quintonio LeGrier, Kenneth Chamberlin, Renisha McBride ,Jonathan Farrel, Kevin Davis, and most recently Alfred Olango were all murdered while impaired, seeking help or otherwise. In general, police murders violate the most basic sense of human decency and those tasked to ‘protect & serve’, but continuously violate the most marginalized people and communities.
I won't call 911! Don’t call 911, Public Enemy warned us that 911 is a joke. The people coming may give you substandard treatment because of your race. In our society, 911 is the what we dial when situations go beyond our control. One protester recently shared (in the most recent podcast episode We Stay Woke) how police appeared in her home, when her father was being attended to by emergency medical services. As police stood with their hands on their side arms, she demanded they leave and EMS told her they called the police for their protection. Describing the past mental breakdowns of her father, she could only feel the rage and fear as all of her agency drained away in this most vulnerable moment.
The protests around the nation inspired by the Ferguson Uprising, while appealing to the world, showed both the limitations and power of civil disobedience. The activism that emerged from Ferguson appealed to the broader society sense of fairness in the face of state sanctioned police violence and militarized occupation of our communities.
Some protests appealed to law enforcement to police themselves. Even I initially advocated for body cameras. Now the police have them, some refuse to use them, claiming cameras malfunction, or they simply turn them off as they prepare to kill us. As well, I believe at the policy level, there is lopsided advocacy for body cams and additional technology - but this only transfers policing dollars to militarized tech manufacturers', increasing in police budgets rather than supporting communities. Increasing amounts of police and skyrocketing law enforcement budgets don’t fix the root causes of structural racism and poverty. While funds could be used for education and employment building a green infrastructure, communities languish with officers who often don’t live in the neighborhoods they police; adding no value to the local economy.
The appeal for a hero has to be to us, people of color, black folk and white folk who know this is wrong. This appeal was trail-blazed by the Black Panthers’ who created a survival program that focused on constructive community building, beyond self-defense, but in the face of the crushing heel of poverty, violence and racism.
It is time to appeal to ourselves, our networks and organizations to connect with each other and firmly take up mantle saving ourselves. I’m not saying anything new. Gandhi too, while focused on noncooperation, believed a ‘constructive program’ was necessary to create self-reliance and relocate power into community hands.
In many ways, the movement for black lives policy vision provides a road map of possibility, and many other organizations are building cooperatives and systems to cope with direct violence and structural racism while working toward system transformation.
I propose a national hotline, where Black, POC or any people in need of attention, be it medical or otherwise, who would call police, should instead call us. Upon calling, you would be routed to on-call professionals, who would evaluate your situation and needs and then route you to the person or persons who could help you and your family member with an issue of diminished capacity or otherwise. I’m essentially proposing a “National People’s Infrastructure” funded by people who understand we have to do something now to take power over our lives, and to take power away from police and institutions that care nothing for us.
I know what you are thinking. What capacity do we have? Well the fact is, there are activist and protesters around the country who have developed infrastructures emerging from organizing around issues and protests to deal with legal concerns, emergency medicine, and nonviolent conflict de-escalation. While protests are important and necessary in dramatizing issues and demands, we can no longer afford letting our protest dollars fund the (in)justice system through bail-funds after widespread arrest.
This is in part an effort to move from just making demands toward self-determination pushed by Marcus Garvey, Ella Baker, Malcolm X, Harriet Tubman and many others. While we still have to make demands and arrests are at times necessary if connected to strategies and movement goals, we also must stop police violence, which emerges from occupation by police, and the borders that are created by self-hatred that humiliates and withers our dignity. We can be reactive, no longer
A People’s National Infrastructure would have at its reach a national network of restorative justice, violence de-escalation, conflict resolution, mental health and social work practitioners. There would also be rape counselors, and national listings to build and train new folks want to help build our capacity for self-reliance people’s first responder. This idea is not new, there are communities from Chicago to California working with local citizens. An example might be We the People of Detroit, who created a water hotline to deal with the water shutoffs, connect community members and simultaneously raise the alarm on its connection with gentrification and human rights violations.
A People’s National Infrastructure would connect and support groups like We the People of Detroit and the Rapid Responders Network, as well as call for a nationally recognizable network that people know they can call to deal with issues from A-Z resulting from structural racism; especially since heroes are not available at this time.
Every city with a protest infrastructure has medics, nonviolence de-escalators who would be our first line of defense. This infrastructure would not necessarily take the place of police, it would be part of the mechanisms to help us transition away from a criminal justice system that profits from the misery of the most vulnerable people in our society. I recall being told by an administrator who works for NYC courts, ‘police don’t want crime to end, its our bread and butter’. Our work must refocus and limit the authority and capacity of police, who are essentially civil servants, to wield unchecked violence and serve the interest of an status-quo maintaining police-state-security complex, rather than the people.
I believe and know we have to do more than “like” a facebook post or create a hashtag. Let’s build an alternative people’s national infrastructure since neither politicians nor police, who are often our first responders don’t respond well to Black and People of Color in need.
If you believe we need an alternative to 911 and police in the form of a people’s national infrastructure, join and support one of the organizations listed above or send an email to drdavidjragland@gmail.com with your your name, skill, training or refer a friend to be a part of building systems we need to survive and flourish.
The outcome of this election suggests that many are looking to Trump, a very wealthy individual, for some heroics. At least in my communities, I know for a fact, we have to do it ourselves.
