Category Archives: Guns, Gun Violence and Gun Policy

Every 28 Hours: Operation Ghetto Storm: 2012 Annual Report on the Extrajudicial Killings of 313 Black People by Police, Security Guards, and Vigilantes

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Monday, April 8, 2013
Contact:  Kali Akuno /  404.567.5938 / kaliakuno@mxgm.org

 For Immediate Release: New Annual Report reveals that 313 Black People were killed in 2012, averaging one every 28 hours.  

Every 28 hours in 2012 someone employed or protected by the US government killed a Black man, woman, or child! This startling fact is revealed in Operation Ghetto Storm: 2012 Annual Report on the Extrajudicial Killings of 313 Black People by Police, Security Guards, and Vigilantes.

“When we started this investigation in early 2012, we knew a serious human rights crisis was confronting the Black community”, says Kali Akuno, an organizer with the Malcolm X Grassroots Movement (MXGM). “However, we did not have a clear sense of its true depth until we compiled and examined the annual figures. We have uncovered outrageous rates of extrajudicial killings–rates, that when they are found in countries like Mexico or Brazil, are universally condemned.  The same outrage inside the U.S. also demands immediate action.”

Given recent revelations in the case of Floyd et al v New York City that challenge “stop-and-frisk”, our study demonstrates that NYPD violations of human rights are endemic throughout the U.S. For example, racial profiling that singles Black people for looking, driving or behaving “suspiciously” leads to at least 43% of Black peoples’ fatal encounters with police. Only 13% of those who were killed were involved in allegedly violent criminal activity that physically threatened others’ lives. These and many more of the Report’s findings reveal the deadly impact of systemic racism in the U.S.

Akuno further points out, “Operation Ghetto Storm follows the trail of extrajudicial killings to the rise of militarized police forces and their occupation of Black communities. And explores how systemic racism has led to increased militarization and militarization, in turn has exacerbated the human rights crises devastating Black communities.”

He added, “This Report breaks new ground by going beyond reliance on police department press releases and investigating as fully as possible the context and consequences of each killing. This investigative journalism serves as an example of respect for Black life so often neglected in public conversations.”

Arlene Eisen, member of the Malcolm X Solidarity Committee and the author of the Report, explained, “Any one of these people killed could have been my son or your husband or daughter. Regardless of education, class, behavior or dress, nowhere is a Black person safe from potentially-fatal racial profiling, invasive policing, constant surveillance and overriding suspicion.”

Based on a year of research, Eisen concluded, “police departments and government agencies throughout the United States go to great lengths to hide the data on extrajudicial killings, particularly the race of the murder victims. I am quite sure that there were more than 313 Black people killed by the police in 2012. Social movements in the United States must demand this information and must demand an end to these killings.”

Operation Ghetto Storm is issued by the Every 36 Hours Campaign and the Malcolm X Grassroots Movement and can be downloaded at www.mxgm.org.

DOWNLOAD THE REPORT HERE

Please share this report with comrades and friends.

kintestrip

Operation Ghetto Storm:

2012 Annual Report on the Extrajudicial Killings of 313 Black People by Police, Security Guards, and Vigilantes

Excerpt

Preface by Kali Akuno

The Context for Operation Ghetto Storm


The facts presented in OperationGhetto Storm: 2012AnnualReport on the Extrajudicial Killing ofBlackPeople present us with a deeper understanding of the utter disregard held for Black life within the United States. Operation Ghetto Storm is a window offering a cold, hard, and fact‐based view into the thinking and practice of a government and a society that will spare no cost to control the lives of Black people. What Operation Ghetto Storm reveals is that the practice of executing Black people without pretense of a trial, jury, or judge is an integral part of the government’s current overall strategy of containing the Black community in a state of perpetual colonial subjugation and exploitation.

In July 2012, in the tradition of “On Lynching” by Ida B. Wells‐Burnet and “We Charge Genocide” by William L. Patterson, the Malcolm XGrassroots Movement released a critical report that exposed the fact that in the first six months of the year a Black man, woman, or child was summarily executed by the police, and a smaller number of security guards and self‐appointed vigilantes, Every 36Hours! But, the July 2012 report did not tell the whole story. Further investigation revealed a more accurate and gruesome number of extrajudicial killings during the first six months of the year. And true to form, the assault on Black life stayed consistent for the last six months of the year, resulting in the extrajudicial killing of at least 313 Black people in 2012, or one Every 28Hours!

Setting the Record Straight
If not for our investigation, this gruesome reality would largely be ignored. The United States government has no interest in revealing these facts and police unions actively suppress them. The corporate media is so permeated with white supremacist and capitalist assumptions and rationalizations that reporters and editors deem these killings unworthy of note. With one important exception: They use the stories of “officer‐involved killings” to reinforce a stereotypical, but strategic depiction of the most dispossessed sectors of the Black working class as criminal commodities, fit for disposal.

This demonization of Black “targets” reinforces the insidious propaganda of the United States government and its supporters, that the United States is the most democratic and socially liberated country on Earth. But, any critical observer and thinker must ask, how can the supposedly “most democratic” country on Earth be the largest jailer on the planet? What types of “legitimate” democratic processes result in nearly half of the countries prison population being Black, while Black people only comprise 13% of the total population of the United States? What types of resources, planning, coordination and programmatic Any critical observer and thinker must ask, how can the supposedly “most democratic” country on Earth be the largest jailer on the planet?

“Operaton Ghetto Storm”, issued by mxgm.org, was last updated on April 4, 2013 3 of 130 Preface: The Context for Operation Ghetto Storm implementation go into arresting, convicting, imprisoning or deporting over 10 million people annually? And what can possibly justify the extrajudicial killing of at least 313 Black people in one year? Genuine and healthy democracies do not spend more than 50% of their budgetary resources on their militaries, domestic “law enforcement” agencies, and prisons.

The fact that the United States government spends this amount demonstrates that the United States is neither a genuine democracy nor a “healthy” society in any form or fashion. The United States is a European settler‐colonial project that has erected a racial state to enforce and maintain a rigid order of white supremacy, colonial occupation, and capitalist exploitation.  As the facts presented herein attest, the United States is one of the most repressive and brutal societies in the world, particularly to oppressed peoples like Blacks, Native Americans, and Latinos. The rates of extrajudicial killings on the US rival only those perpetrated against the Indigenous people of Palestine, Mexico, Guatemala and the Amazonian region, and African‐descendants in Brazil and Colombia.

The Full Report Here

For More Information About the MXGM

In Conversation with Dr. Gerald Horne l Commentaries On the Times Radio l Thursday, February 21, 2013

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“Commentaries On the Times Radio” with Playthell Benjamin

 

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In Conversation with Dr. Gerald Horne John J. and Rebecca Moores Chair of History and African American Studies at the University of Houston

 

Gerald Horne is an African American historian who currently holds the John J. and Rebecca Moores Chair of History and African American Studies at the University of Houston. He received his PhD from Columbia University and a J.D. from theUniversity of California, Berkeley. He is a frequent contributor to Political Affairs magazine.

He is a prolific author, Horne has published on W. E. B. Du Bois and has written books on a wide range of neglected but by no means marginal or minor episodes of world history. He specializes in illuminating previously obscure or misrepresented struggles of humanity for social justice, in particular communist struggles and struggles against imperialism, colonialism, fascism and racism. Individuals whose lives his work has highlighted in their historical contexts have included the blacklisted Hollywood screenwriter John Howard Lawson, Ferdinand Smith (Jamaican-born communist, sailor, labor leader), the perplexing Lawrence Dennis, an African-American fascist and racist who passed for white, and the feminist, anti-colonialist, internationalist intellectual Shirley Graham DuBois whose own career was overshadowed by that of her famous husband. While many of Horne’s books use a celebrated, intriguing or politically engaged individual as a prism to inspect the historical forces of their times, Horne has also produced broad canvas chronicles of infrequently examined periods and aspects of the history of white supremacy and imperialism such as the post-civil war involvement of the US ruling class—newly dispossessed of human chattels—with slavery in Brazil, which was not legally abolished until 1888, or the attempts by Japanese imperialists in the mid-20th century to appear as the leaders of a global war against white supremacy, thus allies and instruments of liberation for people of color oppressed by Anglo-American Empire.

Manning Marable said, “Gerald Horne is one of the most gifted and insightful historians on racial matters of his generation.”

 

02-21 2nd amend Commentaries2

PREMIERING Thursday, February 21, 2013 10 pm ET LIVE  Joins TruthWorks Network

TruthWorks welcomes Playthell Benjamin with “Commentaries On the Times Radio” to our exciting Black Voice Collaborative line up.

This weekly program features the best of the writings of Playthell Benjamin with commentary from his renowned virtual magazine, “Commentaries On the Times”http://commentariesonthetimes.wordpress.com/.

The program will broadcast Thursday, 10 pm ET. “Commentaries On the Times“, a compilation of many years of essays, commentary and analysis of world and domestic issues. They include commentary with carefully researched historical background of the issues of day, including Black history, art, music and current events and people.

Benjamin brings a scope of 40 years of outstanding journalism and broadcasting to TruthWorks. As a former pioneer in the development of Black Studies programs and pundit broadcasting, he comes to a microphone with tremendous knowledge, insight and passion. Of his products, he labels his wordsmith products as, “Praising Saints, Celebrating Heroes, Unmasking Charlatans, Defending the Defenseless and Chastising Scoundrels”. We expect that his show will be no less.

With a lively wit to compliment a broadly learned mind, Playthell is a great guest on television or radio and has shared the mike with some of the biggest host in television, including Geraldo Rivera and Bill Mahr, which can be soon viewed on You Tube. At Present he is completing two books :Quantum shift: Commentaries on the Obama Phenomenon and Jazz at Lincoln Center: Magic Moments In the House Of Swing, a collaboration with the renowned photographer Frank Stewart. Playthell has held a professorship in History/Afro-American Studies at the University of Massachusetts and recently held an adjunct professorship in journalism at Long Island University.

His essays on music criticism have appeared in a wide variety of publications and his interest range from classical music to Jazz to Latin and Hip hop. He writes program notes for Jazz at Lincoln center concerts and is an accomplished Latin percussionist who can be viewed playing with the group Zon Del Barrio on You Tube.

A regular reader of ”Commentaries On the Times” recently commented on one of his essays, “READ the top notch researched work that Brother Playthell George Benjamin is providing for Us. It doesn’t get any better and knowledge is a beautiful thing to share with your family and friends! Several hundred articles await your READING COMPREHENSION and you get what I consider a full PHD worth of knowledge nuggets. Go get that information and become the intelligent person you’ve always wanted to be amongst your crew of friends. Speak with intelligence and knowledge to support your points of view. In spoken and written dialogue, The FACTS tell who you are and as my grandmother used to say, “All Things in Life Change, but Not The TRUTH!” Let’s tell Our Story! I salute YOU Brother Playthell George Benjamin for “Enlightening Us All With Your Knowledge” in so many fields of Interest”.

playthellABOUT PLAYTHELL BENJAMIN

Playthell George Benjamin is the producer of “Commentaries On the Times”, which he writes and delivers on WBAI radio in New York City, and a producer with The Midnight Ravers, a long running show exploring the world of art and politics which has won several radio awards for excellence in programming. He is an award winning journalist who has been nominated for the Pulitzer Prize in two different categories: Explanatory Journalism, Village Voice 1988, and Distinguished Commentary, New York Daily News1995. As part of the production team for The Midnight Ravers, Mr. Benjamin won a 2011 award for excellence in radio programming, given for The Curtis Mayfield Special.

Playthell has won several prizes ranging from The Unity Award presented by the School of communications at Lincoln University in Missouri for distinguished commentary on race relations; the Griot Prize for excellence in covering a story requiring an exploration of African American history and culture: “Who is Listening to LouisFarrakhan?” It was awarded by the New York chapter of the Association of Black Journalist in December 1989. In 1991 Mr. Benjamin won the NYABJ Magazine Awards for Feature Stories,and in 1996 he won the first Annual Tom Forcade Award “for honesty and accuracy in drug reporting” awarded by High Times magazine for his columns on drug use and abuse in the New York Daily News.

His book, “Witnessing the Motion of History” is expected to publish in the Summer of 2013. His e-magazine covering analysis, commentary and presentation of issues and events is available here: http://commentariesonthetimes.wordpress.com/

On Christopher Doner, the former LAPD officer, he recently wrote,

A REAL LIFE DJANGO? As I write a black gunman is terrorizing the Los Angeles Police Department, wreaking murder and mayhem upon the cops and their loved ones. Judging from comments online a growing number of people are beginning to see him as a real life Django Unchained! The broadcast media has been treating him like the crazy white boys who are going off all over the place – the macho paranoids like Dirty Dick Popolovsky in Pittsburgh, or pootbutt nerds suffering from pant worm and need a gun to feel like a man. But Christopher Dosner is neither one. When I saw his military record and the fact that he was once a member of the LAPD, I decided to do some investigation, beginning with reading his “Manifesto,” then reading a variety of materials on him. It was a revelation. I think it is a representative anecdote on the state of racism, corruption and brutality in contemporary police community relations in the great American cities. Here is my take on the man and what motivated his murderous mission. See: More Dangerous than Django! And he’s All the Way Live!!!!

As a former pioneer in the development of Black Studies programs and pundit broadcasting, he comes to a microphone with tremendous knowledge, insight and passion. Of his essays and commentaries, he labels these tremendously illuminating wordsmith products as, –

“Praising Saints, Celebrating Heroes, Unmasking Charlatans, Defending the Defenseless and Chastising Scoundrels”.
. . . Commentaries on the Times Radio will be no less.

Commentaries On The Times Radio with Playthell Benjamin
TruthWorks Network
Premiering Thursday, February 21, 2013 10 pm ET

Like us on Facebook https://www.facebook.com/CommentariesOnTheTimesRadio
On the Web/Program Notes http://www.commentariesonthetimeradio.wordpress.com/

The lessons of black history and gun violence l Salim Muwakkil l Chicago Tribune

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The lessons of black history and gun violence

Collective impotence on gun violence is connected to refusal to acknowledge America’s history

by Salim Muwakkil

Annette Freeman, the mother of Dantrell Davis, 7, slain in 1992. (Tribune archive photo / May 29, 2008)
By Salim MuwakkilFebruary 19, 2013

President Barack Obama’s visit to Chicago on Friday brought an increased focus on the chronic problem of violence in the black communities of urban America. There is some serendipity that this sharpened national focus is happening in February, the month set aside to observe black history.

History, after all, is an important component of this violence plague. In fact, I believe one of the reasons we’ve been unable to halt this destructive dynamic is the refusal to acknowledge history’s consequence.

The problem of interpersonal violence is distressingly persistent in the history of black Americans. Indeed, W.E.B DuBois, the Harvard-educated African-American scholar who is often called the 20th century’s most influential black intellectual, carefully chronicled the problem in his 1899 book “The Philadelphia Negro.”

As a journalist, I’ve been a personal witness to some of that history, especially recent history. I covered the 1984 funeral of Benjamin “Benji” Wilson at Rainbow PUSH headquarters and heard the tearful pleas to stop the violence. The city had just passed 700 murders that year.

Even then, I was not new to issues of urban violence, having worked for The Associated Press in violence-plagued Newark, N.J., before arriving in Chicago. However, Chicago was in a class of its own.

That perverse exceptionalism was reinforced by the 1992 death of 7-year-old Dantrell Davis, murdered on his way to school in Cabrini-Green by gang-related gunfire, and the tragic story of Robert “Yummy” Sandifer, the 11-year-old gang member assassinated by fellow members in 1994.

I covered those funerals as well and, aside from biographical specifics, the words spoken were remarkably similar. Unfortunately, those solemn ceremonies often become public rituals that, in their redundancy, only reveal our collective impotence.

We beguile ourselves with a routine choreography that keeps us spinning around the core of the problem. Like now, the focus is on the important, but peripheral, issue of gun control. We can sharpen our focus by exploring the problem’s historical roots.

We are now in the middle of Black History Month, a time dedicated to looking back at a history forged in the extraordinary crucible of human bondage. This period of civic introspection, conceived by Chicago historian G. Carter Woodson, offers a unique opportunity to explore the historical context of black life in the U.S..

Were it taken seriously and socially reinforced, this civic observation would reveal the trajectory from the plantations that transformed African captives into enslaved African-Americans, to the beleaguered communities of Englewood, North Lawndale, et al. Instead, we have transformed the designated month into a rote celebration of historical personages, or a showcase of black history’s greatest hits.

After a professional lifetime of examining the causes, consequences and attempted solutions of urban violence (framed by study of black history), I am increasingly convinced that only a comprehensive, compensatory effort will show any real success.

This is not a novel conclusion. Black activist and civil rights groups long have called for such policies. The nomenclatures have ranged from “urban Marshall Plan” to “comprehensive affirmative action” to “reparations,” but they embodied the same reasoning. Descendants of enslaved Africans are victims of an exceptionally destructive historical injury that requires exceptional economic investment in public repair.

This is the kind of repair referred to by retired cop and 20th Ward Ald. Willie Cochran when he said, “If we are not going to address the traumatic and social and emotional issues, if we are not going to address the economic issues, if we are not going to address the education issues in an honest way, then we are going to continue to have these problems.”

This effort requires an investment of resources that seems increasingly unlikely in our economically troubled nation. Nevertheless, I contend we have no choice if we are to avoid the growing problem of social fragmentation.

Moreover, addressing those issues is a logical response to black America’s embattled history. After all, the hybrid identity of African-Americans itself was a product of race-based, chattel slavery.

With an economy based on enslaved labor, American society had a stake in white supremacy and instituted a rigid racial hierarchy that excluded blacks until the civil rights revolution of the 1950s.

What’s more, the self-loathing instilled by a culture dedicated to black debasement may have been just as damaging as racist exclusion. The popularity of products designed to alter the skin color, hair texture and other endogenous “black” features to better resemble “white” features, for example, reveals a self-abnegation that extends far beyond the cosmetic realm.

Black Americans have been severely crippled by centuries of economic deprivations and a long socialization for subservience. Acting as if this troubled history has nothing to do with current racial disparities and community disintegration is ignoring decades of rigorous scholarship noting the contrary. Moreover, it points to the urgent need for Americans to understand the lessons of black history.

Salim Muwakkil is a Chicago writer and host of the “Salim Muwakkil Show” on WVON-AM.

“The Ashes of A Manifesto: The LAPD and the Deaths of Christopher Dorner and His Victims” l February 16, 2013 l 10 pm ET

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OUR COMMON GROUND with Janice Graham

dornergun“The Ashes of A Manifesto: The LAPD and the Deaths of Christopher Dorner and His Victims”

OPEN MIC

February 16, 2013 10pm ET

LIVE and Call In

“His self-definition could not survive separation from the institution that became his personal nemesis. In the end, he was as lonely as Rambo in First Blood, and just as politically lost.

A public death belongs to the public. Dorner’s fans, his African American public, whom he did not serve but who would inevitably embrace his weeklong death-throe defection from the LAPD, imbue him with qualities they wish were reliably available to the struggle: a Nat Turner, a Spook Who Sat by the Door. The Bronx, New York dope dealer, Larry Davis, who in1986 succeeded in shooting six of seven cops who came to his sister’s apartment to arrest or assassinate him, achieved similar fame. Davis eluded capture for 17 days, negotiated a surrender at his public housing hideout as residents chanted “Lar-ry! Lar-ry!” – and beat the charges of attempted murder of cops. (William Kunstler and Lynne Stewart were his lawyers.) His fans forgave Davis’s dope dealing ways, just as Dorner’s fans forgave his previous service to the Los Angeles Occupation Army.

The enduring lesson of Dorner’s saga is that the transformation of the LAPD into a majority-minority police force does not change its nature as an army of occupation whose mission is racist to the core, regardless of its ethnic composition. That fact finally dawned on Christopher Dorner – and it killed him.”
– BLACK AGENDA REPORT

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OUR COMMON GROUND with Janice Graham

“Speaking Truth to Power and Ourselves”

BROADCASTING BRAVE BOLD BLACK

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More Dangerous than Django! l Commentaries on the Times l Playthell Benjamin

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More Dangerous than Django!

Christian Jordon Doner - black avenger

The Happy Bush Whacker

 

And he’s All the Way Live

“Good name in man and woman, dear my lord, Is the immediate jewel of their souls:
Who steals my purse steals trash; ’tis something, nothing; ‘Twas mine, ’tis his, and has been slave to thousands; But he that filches from me my good name Robs me of that which not enriches him And makes me poor indeed.”   William Shakespeare

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Political officials in southern California have just announced that they are placing a million dollar bounty on the head of Christopher Dorner the 270 pound angry black man who is an ex-cop, naval officer and military sharp shooter that is terrorizing members of the Los Angeles police department.  Described by his former “brothers in blue” as “a trained assassin,” Dorner is accused of having gunned down the daughter and future son-in law of his former superior in the LAPD, and opened fire on a squad car killing one officer.

Yet in listening to the statements from politicians and police officials, one finds no plausible explanation for this murderous outburst from a man who has dedicated his life to the defense of this nation and its citizens, at home and abroad.  And the press is not doing a much better job at it.   The gaps in reportage was noted by that indefatigable media watchdog and great American writer Ishmael Reed, who did a content analysis of a CNN report on the shooter, but he pointed out that it never mentioned the charges of racism, anti-Semitism and abuse of police powers made by Dorner.

According to Christopher Dorner it was his attempt to expose these practices by blowing the whistle on offending officers, who appear to be white that led to a conspiracy by fellow officers, in cahoots with police brass, to drive him out of the LAPD.   According to Dorner his problems with the LAPD began with the following incident:

In 8/07 I reported an officer (Ofcr. Teresa Evans/now a Sergeant), for kicking a suspect (excessive force) during a Use of Force while I was assigned as a patrol officer at LAPD’s Harbor Division. While cuffing the suspect, (Christopher Gettler), Evans kicked the suspect twice in the chest and once in the face. The kick to the face left a visible injury on the left cheek below the eye. Unfortunately after reporting it to supervisors and investigated by PSB (internal affairs investigator Det. Villanueva/Gallegos), nothing was done. I had broken their supposed “Blue Line”. Unfortunately, It’s not JUST US, it’s JUSTICE!!! “

Mr. Dorner goes on to tell an incredible tale about what followed.

“In fact, 10 months later on 6/25/08, after already successfully completing probation, acquiring a basic Post Certificate, and Intermediate Post Certificate, I was relieved of duty by the LAPD while assigned to patrol at Southwest division. It is clear as day that the department retaliated toward me for reporting Evans for kicking Mr. Christopher Gettler. The department stated that I had lied and made up the report that Evans had kicked the suspect. I later went to a Board of Rights (department hearing for decision of continued employment) from 10/08 to 1/09. During this BOR hearing a video was played for the BOR panel where Christopher Gettler stated that he was indeed kicked by Officer Evans (video sent to multiple news agencies). In addition to Christopher Gettler stating he was kicked, his father Richard Gettler, also stated that his son had stated he was kicked by an officer when he was arrested after being released from custody.”

Then Dorner describes what must have seemed like a surreal experience, and it destroyed his faith in the integrity of the LAPD, as he describes all of the cronyism, chicanery and double dealing in the process that led to his demise:

“This was all presented for the department at the BOR hearing. They still found me guilty and terminated me. What they didn’t mention was that the BOR panel made up of Capt. Phil Tingirides, Capt. Justin Eisenberg, and City Attorney Martella had a signigicant problem from the time the board was assembled. Capt. Phil Tingirides was a personal friend of Teresa Evans from when he was her supervisor at Harbor station. That is a clear conflict of interest and I made my argument for his removal early and was denied. The advocate for the LAPD BOR was Sgt. Anderson. Anderson also had a conflict of interest as she was Evans friend and former partner from Harbor division where they both worked patrol together. I made my argument for her removal when I discovered her relation to Evans and it was denied.”

From all that I have heard from those who worked with him, most of whom don’t want to appear on camera for security reasons, Dorner loved his job as a cop; he was what we used to call in the military “gung ho.” And I have seen no compelling evidence of wrongdoing that would justify the LAPD kicking him to the curb.  Alas until the police department addresses this question in a convincing manner, I shall be forced to rely on Mr. Dorner’s version of the story.

Dorner says he has resorted to violence because the LAPD has besmirched his good name and smeared his reputation with invented lies.  He has demanded only two things: an apology from the LA Chief of Police, and that the press investigates his charges of racism and corruption in the LAPD.  Thus far neither request has been met.  The Police Chief Beck, responded to questions about Dorner’s complaints at his press conference with this arrogant comment: “This is a homicide suspect who has committed atrocious crimes. If you want to give any attribution to his ramblings on the Internet, go ahead, but I do not!”

Hence it is reasonable to conclude that the killings will go on until they catch him. He tells us in an eleven page manifesto that he posted online the importance he places on his good name…which he claims the LAPD callously destroyed to conceal its crimes against citizens of that that city.

“The question is, what would you do to clear your name?   Name; A word or set of words by which a person, animal, place, or thing is referred to. Synonyms: reputation, title, appellation, denomination, repute.  A name is more than just a noun, verb, or adjective. It’s your life, your legacy, your journey, sacrifices, and everything you’ve worked hard for every day of your life as an adolescent, young adult and adult. Don’t let anybody tarnish it when you know you’ve live up to your own set of ethics and personal ethos.” 

After telling a round unvarnished tale of whole sale violation of the rights of citizens, especially non-whites, whom the white officers regularly called “niggers” while inflicting physical abuse, Dorner goes on to observe in his manifesto:

“Terminating me for telling the truth of a Caucasian officer kicking a mentally ill man is disgusting. Don’t ever call me a fucking bully. I want all journalists to utilize every source you have that specializes in collections for your reports. With the discovery and evidence available you will see the truth. Unfortunately, I will not be alive to see my name cleared. That’s what this is about, my name. A man is nothing without his name. Below is a list of locations where I resided from childhood to adulthood.”

To describe this man as a common criminal is obviously a misnomer, although one can readily see why it is convenient to do so. That way they don’t have to investigate his charges; they can simply dismiss them.  However if Christopher Dorner were a common criminal he would probably be conducting a clandestine robbing spree and living it up in anonymity; knocking off a cop whenever he wanted and not getting away with it. Instead he chose to commit acts of public violence against the police force…a decision that he clearly believes will end in his destruction…in fact he predicts it in his Manifesto.

This is not the behavior of a criminal; these are the acts of a man who wishes to make a political statement that will be impossible to ignore.  And he has lost all faith in the American justice system, which he had dedicated his life to defending, to grant him justice.  Hence he has declared war on those who enforce the system, and he has his former colleagues wetting their pants when they take a leak, because they are holding their Johnson in one hand and their Roscoe in the other, and both hands are shaking.

If any substantial part of Mr. Dorner’s story is true it is clear that the LAPDs racist behavior has pushed him to the point that revenge.  He insists that he is the victim of a racist plot that no self-respecting Black man could silently endure.

“I have exhausted all available means at obtaining my name back. I have attempted all legal court efforts within appeals at the Superior Courts and California Appellate courts. This is my last resort… The LAPD has suppressed the truth and it has now lead to deadly consequences. The LAPD’s actions have cost me my law enforcement career that began on 2/7/05 and ended on 1/2/09.

They cost me my Naval career which started on 4/02 and ends on 2/13. I had a TS/SCI clearance (Top Secret Sensitive Compartmentalized Information clearance) up until shortly after my termination with LAPD. This is the highest clearance a service member can attain other than a Yankee White TS/SCI which is only granted for those working with and around the President/Vice President of the United States. I lost my position as a Commanding Officer of a Naval Security Forces reserve unit at NAS Fallon because of the LAPD.

I’ve lost a relationship with my mother and sister because of the LAPD. I’ve lost a relationship with close friends because of the LAPD. In essence, I’ve lost everything because the LAPD took my name and new I was INNOCENT!!! Capt Phil Tingirides, Justin Eisenberg, Martella, Randy Quan, and Sgt. Anderson all new I was innocent but decided to terminate me so they could continue Ofcr. Teresa Evans career. I know about the meeting between all of you where Evans attorney, Rico, confessed that she kicked Christopher Gettler (excessive force.” 

Then Dorner announced with the deadly finality of judge and executioner:“Your day has come.”  After detailing what had been unjustly taken from him, Dorner once more reminds us of his real character; emphasizing that he does not fit the racist stereotypes that his white colleagues hold of young black men.

I’m not an aspiring rapper, I’m not a gang member, I’m not a dope dealer, I don’t have multiple babies momma’s. I am an American by choice, I am a son, I am a brother, I am a military service member, I am a man who has lost complete faith in the system, when the system betrayed, slandered, and libeled me. I lived a good life and though not a religious man I always stuck to my own personal code of ethics, ethos and always stuck to my shoreline and true North. I didn’t need the US Navy to instill Honor, Courage, and Commitment in me but I thank them for re-enforcing it. It’s in my DNA. “

His fellow cops may claim not to understand Dorner’s motives, which is what whites always do when they are called out on their institutionalized racist practices – they know that they have created a formidable killing machine, and their lives and those of their family and friends are in danger every minute he remains at large.  For Dorner is clear in his purpose, which he clearly spells out in his declaration of war.

“I will conduct DA operations to destroy, exploit and seize designated targets. If unsuccessful or unable to meet objectives in these initial small-scale offensive actions, I will reassess my BDA and re-attack until objectives are met. I have nothing to lose. My personal casualty means nothing. Just alike AAF’s, ACM’s, and AIF’s, you can not prevail against an enemy combatant who has no fear of death. An enemy who embraces death is a lose, lose situation for their enemy combatants.  Hopefully you analyst have done your homework. You are aware that I have always been the top shot, highest score, an expert in rifle qualifications in every unit I’ve been in. I will utilize every bit of small arms training, demolition, ordnance, and survival training I’ve been given.

Do you know why we are unsuccessful in asymmetrical and guerrilla warfare in CENTCOM theatre of operations? I’ll tell you. It’s not the inefficiency of our combatant commanders, planning, readiness or training of troops. Much like the Vietnam war, ACM, AAF, foreign fighters, Jihadist, and JAM have nothing to lose. They embrace death as it is a way of life. I simply don’t fear it. I am the walking exigent circumstance you created.

The Violence of action will be HIGH. I am the reason TAC alert was established. I will bring unconventional and asymmetrical warfare to those in LAPD uniform whether on or off duty. ISR is my strength and your weakness. You will now live the life of the prey. Your RD’s and homes away from work will be my AO and battle space. I will utilize every tool within INT collections that I learned from NMITC in Dam Neck. You have misjudged a sleeping giant. There is no conventional threat assessment for me. JAM, New Ba’ath party, 1920 rev BGE, ACM, AAF, AQAP, AQIM and AQIZ have nothing on me. Do not deploy airships or gunships. SA-7 Manpads will be waiting. As you know I also own Barrett .50′s so your APC are defunct and futile.”

It is no wonder that the officers named in this manifesto are cringing in their hiding places under armed guards.  This guy is their worst nightmare.  He is akin to a killer Robot who has rejected the orders of its programmers then disappeared, and is now stalking them with all of the death dealing capacity the programmers have given it.  Dorner, a 270 pound bruiser, conjures up images of the “bad nigger” that has haunted the consciousness of many whites since Thomas Jefferson observed his slaves working in the fields one day and said: “I shudder when I reflect upon the fact that God is just.”Dorner is the kind of dude described in the old Afro-American folk ditty about Stagolee:”He got a tombstone disposition/ and a graveyard mind / He’s a mean motherfucker /and don’t give a fuck about dying!”

While the end of this story is already written, it’s anybody’s guess what kind of drama we will witness until they finally kill him.  We will follow the case closely here, and all of us should demand that his very specific charges of racism, brutality and corruption in the LAPD be seriously investigated by the national press…I, for one, am not interested in police reports on this matter because I believe they will all be self-serving.  I would welcome an investigation of the US Department of Justice!

Already there are Facebook pages and Web sites going up that present Mr. Dorner as an avenging hero who is giving the LAPD just what they deserve…one booster is even touting him for President!  And there are a lot of young black and Hispanic males in LA who view Dorner as a real life Django, as they are smoking blunts and pouring spirits in his honor.  Given his growing folk hero status Dorner might prove very hard to find because many are willing to give him aid and comfort as he scrambles to escape the widening police dragnet, which ironically was the location of the famous 1950’s  radio and television cop series Dragnet – which tempts on to wonder if life is imitating art.

Ready to Rumble

Christian Gorner

The LAPD done created a Monster!

“

*************************

 

Playthell G. Benjamin

Harlem, New York

February 11, 1013

THE OTHER FACE OF GUN VIOLENCE: KEEPING GUNS FROM HIGH-RISK INDIVIDUALS l Jamye Wooten, Kinetics LIVE

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Suicide-Gun-Violence

THE OTHER FACE OF GUN VIOLENCE: KEEPING GUNS FROM HIGH-RISK INDIVIDUALS

By Jamye Wooten | NEWS & VIEWS

 “The staggering toll of gun violence—which claims 31,000 U.S. lives each year—is an urgent public health issue that demands an effective evidence-based policy response.”– The Case for Gun Policy Reform in America

“There’s a world of difference between truth and facts. Facts can obscure the truth.”– Maya Angelou

There has been a lot of attention given to gun violence, since the day Adam Lanza armed himself with hundreds of bullets and took the lives of 20 children and six adults at Sandy Hook Elementary in Newtown, Connecticut. This tragic story has gotten the attention of corporate media, the nation, and even a President who hails from one of the deadliest cities in the country. “We won’t be able to stop every violent act, but if there is even one thing that we can do to prevent any of these events, we have a deep obligation, all of us, to try,” stated President Obama.

English: New York Mayor, Michael R. Bloomberg.New York Mayor, Michael R. Bloomberg.

New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, co-founder of Mayors Against Illegal Guns, also joined the chorus launching  Demand a Plan, a celebrity backed PSA campaign to reform gun laws.

Mayor Bloomberg has been supportive of the controversial, “Stop and Frisk” program of the NYPD that has resulted in over 4 million stops and street interrogations of mostly Black and Latinos in New York City since 2002. According to New York Civil Liberties Union (NYCLU) guns are found in less than 0.2 percent of stops, prompting concerns over racial profiling.

Gun Policy Summit

The staggering toll of gun violence—which claims 31,000 U.S. lives each year—is an urgent public health issue that demands an effective evidence-based policy response.

The staggering toll of gun violence—which claims 31,000 U.S. lives each year—is an urgent public health issue that demands an effective evidence-based policy response.

Last month, I attended a two-day Gun Policy Summit hosted by Mayor Bloomberg and the John Hopkins University School for Public Health. I was interested in hearing what sort of gun policy recommendations would be proposed and their potential impact on the Black community.

According to the research there are over 31,000 incidents of gun violence each year in the United States, but while homicides often make the headlines, there is a less known fact when dealing with issues of gun violence.

Out of the 31,000 lives lost due to gun violence, every year 19,000 or almost 2 out of every 3 are suicides. White males accounted for over 80% of gun related suicides in 2010. And according to the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention, yearly medical costs associated with suicide, is nearly $100 million and 90% of people who die by suicide have a diagnosable and treatable psychiatric disorder at the time of their death.

Every night we watch Black men on the nightly news who have been involved in gun violence. Gun violence in urban America is a serious issue and Black youth are disproportionately victims of it. When addressing the high rates of homicide in the African-American community, Dr. Linda Frisman told the audience at John Hopkins “that being African-American and Hispanic are really proxies for social and economic disadvantage.” This is something that most Blacks understand. Addressing gun violence in urban America will not be solved with more police and school resource officers as President Obama has recommended or by adding additional security cameras to our schools that stream live to patrol cars and police precincts. If we are serious about reducing gun violence, we must address the social and economic disparities in communities of color. Strong economically secure communities that provide family sustaining wages, affordable housing, culturally relevant and enriching education that equips children with skills to succeed in the 21st century, and love will make schools and neighborhoods safe for our children. Successful faith and community-based programs should be rewarded with additional funds with less money being poured into Police departments that normally respond punitively when dealing with our children.

Another forty white men have killed themselves tonight

I begin to think, what if each night the local nightly news began by stating, “Another forty white men have killed themselves tonight?”

There are studies for every social pathology in the Black community, and policy responses crafted by “experts,” that are often punitive and never seem to be systemic. But for some reason, you can’t find much research on white males and why they are killing themselves at an alarming rate, or why there is a fascination with weapons. What if we began to take the same data and create policy around it? What would it look like? Would it stigmatize white males? Would we have to dispatch mental health professionals to workplaces every time they were laid off? Would we need to send the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) to their homes to search and remove their guns? How safe would White women and children feel when their husbands and fathers were laid off? Would white men be considered a High-Risk group for firearm ownership? Or would there be a stop and frisk policy implemented for White men over the age of 50?

In October of 2012, leading experts from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health produced a report entitled, “The Case for Gun Policy Reform in America.” Many of the policy recommendations from the expert reports concentrated on Firearms Prohibitions for High-Risk Persons. Though suicide is the leading cause of death by firearms, with White males accounting for over 80%, they were not mentioned in the high risk category.

Well, who are the High Risk groups that should be prohibited from owning firearms? Under the section entitled, Why Firearms Prohibitions for High-Risk Persons Should be Broadened the categories include Criminals, Substance Abusers (Illegal Substances) and Youth Under Age 21.

Criminal Prohibitions

“We believe the evidence above justifies an extension of firearm prohibitions for persons with a history of criminal behavior to include persons convicted of all misdemeanor crimes of violence, as well as individuals who have committed felony crimes as a juvenile.”

Substance Abusers

“The number of drug abusers prohibited from possessing firearms might be increased significantly by revamping these regulations to, for example, expand the period following a drug conviction for which a person is prohibited from possessing firearms.”

Youth Under Age 21

“Restrictions on youths’ ability to purchase and possess firearms should be broadened. Although federal law and most state law allows youth 18 to 20 years of age to legally possess a handgun, youth of these ages have some of the highest rates of homicide offending.”

These policy recommendations are about narrowing access to who can legally own a firearm, by identifying the most high-risk persons. The criminal prohibitions and substance abusers recommendations would narrow the number of Black people who have access to guns. Not because Blacks use illegal substances at higher rates than Whites. According to the NAACP, “5 times as many Whites are using drugs as Blacks, yet the Black population, especially men are sent to prison for drug offenses at 10 times the rate of Whites.”  The NAACP Criminal Justice Fact Sheets states that “in 2002, despite that fact that more than 2/3 of crack cocaine users in the U.S. are white or Hispanic, blacks constituted more than 80% of people sentences under federal crack cocaine laws.”

It is also important to remember, as Dr. Matthew Miller pointed out, the vast majority guns that kill are handguns and legally owned.

United Nations Conference on the Arms Trade Treaty

Internationally the United Nations appears to be pursuing the same policies. In March of this year they will convene the United Nations Conference on the Arms Trade Treaty (ATT). The conference is designed to tighten import, export and transfer of conventional arms. The UN states that ATT “will not aim to ban any weapon.” And why would they? White men control the most deadly arsenals of weapons of mass destruction in the world. Instead, the conference wants to make sure weapons don’t fall “into the hands of terrorists, drug traffickers, and criminal cartels.”

Drug traffickers and Criminal cartels? I think you already know who the target groups are. This sounds very familiar to the language in the Hopkins report. Identify high-risk populations, mostly communities of color and limit their access to acquiring weapons while leaving out the highest risk group, White men. No group has manufactured, proliferated or used more weapons of mass destruction than White males, yet they conveniently label communities of color as “terrorists” or “high risk.”

They will beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks. Nation will not take up sword against nation, nor will they train for war anymore. – Isaiah 2:4

I pray for the day when we will beat our swords into plowshares and study war no more. But until then, we must make an honest effort to make sound gun policy. We must make sure that the War-on-Guns does not unfairly target people of color in the same way the War-on-Drugs have devastated our community.

READ MORE on Kinetics LIVE

Can Anything Pass? 6 Things in Obama’s Gun Plan l Crew of 42

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Can Anything Pass? 6 Things in Obama’s Gun Plan

What in the President’s gun plan can actually pass Congress? It appears not much.

Gun control is an issue where it would pay to have a few friends in Congress. President Obama has few — which is clearly one of the reason VP Biden was handed the reigns. Can Biden’s strengths overcome resistance from gun manufacturers who have given money to 60% of Congress?

Much of the gun related policy due to be announced at noon today has already been introduced in Congress in recent years and has failed. Last night, the White House briefed lobbyists on the gun plan. Almost none of what is likely to announce today can pass the GOP controlled House.

1. The Assault weapons ban / limit high capacity magazines — Feinstein, McCarthy, DeGette offered this bill after Aurora shooter James Holmes shot 70 people in a movie theatre with a high capacity ammo loader attached to a Bushmaster. The President is set to re-announce the same ideas today.

2. Prohibition on gun trafficking — This is NYC Mayor Mike Bloomberg’s idea. Mayors against guns has pushed this for years. NY Sen Kirsten Gillibrand offered legislation last year. It died.

3. Criminal background checks/eliminating the gun show loophole — Sen Frank Lautenberg along with Rep. Peter King offered legislation on this in 2009. Mayor Bloomberg and the Brady campaign have pushed this for years.

4. Bullying — This is a favorite topic of the LGTB community and Michelle Obama. The White House has held serval forums on the issue. Sen. Al Franken and Rep. Jared Polis’ bullying bill is most likely the language here.

5. Boosting mental health services — This is in here to kiss the ass of NRA and represents the Republican answer to everything on guns — let’s see where the $ comes from. The same Republican who want to de-fund Obamacare are the same ones who keep focusing on mental health issues after mass shootings.

6. Straw gun purchases — PA Gov Tom Corbett signed a straw purchase bill last last week and NY Gov Andrew Cuomo signed one yesterday. O’Malley is soon to follow. No one has offered federal legislation on the issue.

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Emmett and Trayvon l Washington Monthly

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January/ February 2013

Washington Monthly

Emmett and Trayvon

How racial prejudice in America has changed in the last sixty years.

By Elijah Anderson

 


A tale of two teens: After their tragic and premature deaths, both Emmett Till, 14 (left), and Trayvon Martin, 17 (right), became symbols of the unique challenges that have faced young black men in America.

Separated by a thousand miles, two state borders, and nearly six decades, two young African American boys met tragic fates that seem remarkably similar today: both walked into a small market to buy some candy; both ended up dead.

The first boy is Emmett Till, who was fourteen years old in the summer of 1955 when he walked into a local grocery store in Money, Mississippi, to buy gum. He was later roused from bed, beaten brutally, and possibly shot by a group of white men who later dumped his body in a nearby river. They claimed he had stepped out of his place by flirting with a young white woman, the wife of the store’s owner. The second boy is Trayvon Martin, who was seventeen years old late last winter when he walked into a 7-Eleven near a gated community in Sanford, Florida, to buy Skittles and an iced tea. He was later shot to death at close range by a mixed-race man, who claimed Martin had behaved suspiciously and seemed out of place. The deaths of both boys galvanized the nation, drew sympathy and disbelief across racial lines, and, through the popular media, prompted a reexamination of race relations.

In the aftermath of Martin’s death last February, a handful of reporters and columnists, and many members of the general public, made the obvious comparison: Trayvon Martin, it seemed, was the Emmett Till of our times. And while that comparison has some merit—the boys’ deaths are similar both in some of their details and in their tragic outcome—these killings must also be understood as the result of very different strains of racial tension in America. The racism that led to Till’s death was embedded in a virulent ideology of white racial superiority born out of slavery and the Jim Crow codes, particularly in the Deep South. That sort of racism hinges on the idea that blacks are an inherently inferior race, a morally null group that deserves both the subjugation and poverty it gets.

The racial prejudice that led to Trayvon Martin’s death is different. While it, too, was born of America’s painful legacy of slavery and segregation, and informed by those old concepts of racial order—that blacks have their “place” in society—it in addition reflects the urban iconography of today’s racial inequality, namely the black ghetto, a uniquely urban American creation. Strikingly, this segregation of the black community coexists with an ongoing racial incorporation process that has produced the largest black middle class in history, and that reflects the extraordinary social progress this country has made since the 1960s. The civil rights movement paved the way for blacks and other people of color to access public and professional opportunities and spaces that would have been unimaginable in Till’s time.

While the sort of racism that led to Till’s death still exists in society today, Americans in general have a much more nuanced, more textured attitude toward race than anything we’ve seen before, and usually that attitude does not manifest in overtly hateful, exclusionary, or violent acts. Instead, it manifests in pervasive mindsets and stereotypes that all black people start from the inner-city ghetto and are therefore stigmatized by their association with its putative amorality, danger, crime, and poverty. Hence, in public a black person is burdened with a negative presumption that he must disprove before he can establish mutually trusting relationships with others.

Most consequentially, black skin, and its association with the ghetto, translates into a deficit of credibility as black skin is conflated with lower-class status. This deficit impacts poor blacks of the ghetto one way and middle-class black people another. While middle-class blacks may be able to successfully disabuse others of their negative presumptions, lower-class blacks may not. For instance, all blacks, particularly “ghetto-looking” young men, are at risk of enduring yet another “stop and frisk” from the police as well as suspicion from potential employers, shopkeepers, and strangers on the street. Members of the black middle class and black professionals can usually pass inspection and withstand such scrutiny; many poorer blacks cannot. And many blacks who have never stepped foot in a ghetto must repeatedly prove themselves as non-ghetto, often operating in a provisional status, in the workplace or, say, a fancy restaurant, until they can convince others—either by speaking “white” English or by demonstrating intelligence, poise, or manners—that they are to be trusted, that they are not “one of those” blacks from the ghetto, and that they deserve respect. In other words, a middle-class black man who is, for instance, waiting in line for an ATM at night will in many cases be treated with a level of suspicion that a middle-class white man simply does not experience.

But this pervasive cultural association—black skin equals the ghetto—does not come out of the blue. After all, as a result of historical, political, and economic factors, blacks have been confined in the ghetto. Today, with persistent housing discrimination and the disappearance of manufacturing jobs, America’s ghettos face structural poverty. In addition, crime and homicide rates within those communities are high, young black men are typically the ones killing one another, and ghetto culture, made iconic by artists like Tupac Shakur, 50 Cent, and the Notorious B.I.G., is inextricably intertwined with blackness.

As a result, in America’s collective imagination the ghetto is a dangerous, scary part of the city. It’s where rap comes from, where drugs are sold, where hoodlums rule, and where The Wire might have been filmed. Above all, to many white Americans the ghetto is where “the black people live,” and thus, as the misguided logic follows, all black people live in the ghetto. It’s that pervasive, if accidental, fallacy that’s at the root of the wider society’s perceptions of black people today. While it may be true that everyone who lives in a certain ghetto is black, it is patently untrue that everyone who is black lives in a ghetto. Regardless, black people of all classes, including those born and raised far from the inner cities and those who’ve never been in a ghetto, are by virtue of skin color alone stigmatized by the place.

I call this idea the “iconic ghetto,” and it has become a powerful source of stereotype, prejudice, and discrimination in our society, negatively defining the black person in public. In some ways, the iconic ghetto reflects the old version of racism that led to Till’s death. In Till’s day, a black person’s “place” was in the field, in the maid’s quarters, or in the back of the bus. If a black man was found “out of his place,” he could be punished, jailed, or lynched. In Martin’s day—in our day—a black person’s “place” is in the ghetto.

If he is found “out of his place,” like in a fancy hotel lobby, on a golf course, or, say, in an upscale community, he can be treated with suspicion, avoided, pulled over, frisked, arrested—or worse.

Emmett and Trayvon

Elijah Anderson is the William K. Lanman Jr. Professor of Sociology at Yale University. His latest book is “The Cosmopolitan Canopy: Race and Civility in Everyday Life.”

Violence, Demonization, & Apocalyptic Aggression l Chip Berlet l The Spirit House Project

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Violence, Demonization, & Apocalyptic Aggression

Chip Berlet

Wed Aug 22, 2012

Anders Behring Breivik, being sentenced on Friday for his 2011 terror attacks in Oslo, Norway, sees himself as a Christian Warrior. Breivik grabbed many of his Islamophobic and anti-socialist conspiracy theories off the Internet. These theories are still promulgated by right-wing groups in the United States, especially Christian Right ideologue William S. Lind, formerly director of the Center for Cultural Conservatism at the Free Congress Foundation.

The recent attacks on a Sikh Temple near Milwaukee, an Islamic Mosque in Joplin, Missouri, and the Christian Right Family Research Council in Washington, DC, illuminate a central tension within Christianity. Progressive Christian activist Ruby Sales calls this the struggle between Empire Christianity and Liberation Christianity.

The former represents an apocalyptic view built around subjugation of enemies and use of violence. The latter sees the apocalypse bringing justice and peace.

Sales wants to:

unveil the lies of White Christian Conservatives so that Black folk understand that these lesbian and gay hating folk come out the same tradition of the people who threw Emmett Till’s body in the Tallahatchie River. Their teachings birthed and fermented the hatred that poisoned the minds and spirits of the killers of Samuel Younge and Jonathan Daniels.
Most mainstream media discussions about the recent wave of violent attacks dismiss the idea that political, cultural, or economic hierarchies and tensions, when coupled to the demonization of an “Other,” can encourage violence. When the Right demonizes the Left and the Left Demonizes the Right, sometimes an individual or group decides to take action to stop the evildoers before it is too late. This type of apocalyptic aggression can be carried out by people who are legally sane or insane; and whose political ideas come from the Left or Right or somewhere outside of rational thought.

I oppose acts of violence or terrorism to achieve political goals. My analysis of vilification, demonization, and apocalyptic rhetoric in the United States today, however, compels me to conclude that it comes overwhelmingly from the Right, especially apocalyptic rhetoric from the Christian Right. Nevertheless, we need to pay more attention to the linkages of demonization, apocalyptic aggression, and violence, no matter what part of the political spectrum employs this dynamic…wittingly or unwittingly.

Apocalypse is a word common in popular culture, what with the 1979 film “Apocalypse Now” and the heroics of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Buffy stopped the Apocalypse on a weekly basis in a television series from 1997-2003. (reruns are easily discovered online and off). Buffy and her team were stopping evil from taking over the world. Nothing wrong with that.

The word “apocalypse” is often misunderstood. The words apocalypse, prophecy, and revelation are all related, and in the broadest sense an “apocalypse” is an upcoming struggle between good and evil during which hidden truths will be revealed and the world dramatically reshaped forever.  So an apocalypse can bring bad news—or good news. Apocalyptic rhetoric that warns of an evil plot by “Them” can be interpreted as a call to act “before it is too late.”

Vilification by demagogues anywhere on the political spectrum can lead to incidents of directed violence by individuals who adopt a superhero complex to save “Us” from “Them.” This dynamic was first thoroughly analyzed by Hannah Arendt and Gordon Allport in the 1950s. The process involves the theory of Constitutive Rhetoric in which a leader creates (interpolates) an actual constituency in society.

Almost a decade ago I was invited by Ruby Sales, founder of the Spirit House Project, to have a public conversation in Washington, DC at a forum on the demonization and scapegoating common in the Christian Right. My focus was exploring how apocalyptic demagoguery prompted not only Christian Right political activism but sometimes acts of apocalyptic aggression and violence. We were demoralized in 2004 by the second term of George W. Bush, and we felt there needed to be more analysis of how the Christian Right was pursuing a path toward theocracy frequently based on apocalyptic conspiracy theories that vilified and targeted named “Others.”

Constitutive Rhetoric prompting Directed Violence fuels the real life and death consequences we are witnessing today, and has prompted similar incidents in the past. The New Hampshire Supreme Court Society recently presented the Life and Liberty Award posthumously to slain 1960s civil rights activist Jonathan Daniels, and a very much alive U.S. Rep. John Lewis of Georgia who is a past chair of the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). Ruby Sales accepted the award on behalf of Daniels. They and many others whose names should be better known are amongst those who put their lives on the line and are Veterans of the Civil Rights Movement. Another activist from the Civil Rights Movement, Ruby Sales, accepted the award on behalf of her murdered friend and colleague, Daniels.

Sheila Zakre, a disability and employment rights attorney wrote that at the ceremony Lewis and Sales “pulled no punches in warning of a rollback in the civil rights they fought to obtain. How fitting that they did so in a state whose legislature seeks to do just that.” In a column in the Concord Monitor, Zakre said:

Shouldn’t we expect our appointed representatives, both federal and state, to appreciate that history teaches us that restrictions on voting are tied to discrimination on the basis of race, class, gender and disability, and that morality teaches us that voting rights is a nonpartisan issue? The warning about history repeating itself may be hackneyed but is nonetheless true. Sadly, the lessons of the civil rights movement can be forgotten even as we venerate its heroes.

Photobucket
John Lewis and Ruby Sales at the presentation of the Third Life and Liberty Award
photo credit David Wolowitz . [View event photos here].

My first encounter with Ruby Sales was over a decade ago at a lecture I gave to a class at the Episcopal Divinity School in Cambridge, Massachusetts. My topic was the challenge to equality posed by right-wing social movements.  During the Q&A with students an older Black women pursued a series of questions about right-wing violence and our response as people of faith. They were sharp questions delivered with intensity but no hint of rancor. After class the professor explained the student was Ruby Sales, a veteran of the Civil Rights Movement, and she suggested I should learn more about her concern with apocalyptic demonization and violence.

I found out that Sales made her life altering choice to stand up against apocalyptic aggression as a teenager in the 1960s when she joined the Civil Rights Movement while a student at Tuskegee University. In 1965 the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee sent Sales with an organizing team to Lowndes County, Alabama—known among Blacks in the South as “Bloody Lowndes.” Sales was arrested with some 20 other activists protesting segregation and conducting a voter registration drive.

Released from jail, Sales and a few others were confronted by an enraged White racist wielding a shotgun. Sales witnessed her organizing colleague and friend Jonathan Daniels, a seminary student, shot to death on the street after he pushed Sales out of harm’s way. Another organizer was seriously wounded. The trauma left Sales literally speechless for seven months, but she persevered, found her voice, and carried on with her activism, eventually attending the same Episcopal Divinity School where Daniels had studied.

Apocalyptic Christian Right activists often link their plans to “take dominion” over the United States to their view of an End Times battle between good and evil; in which godly Christians must struggle against literal agents of Satan. In case it is not clear—those of us who read Talk to Action because we care about social, political, and economic justice are the agents of Satan in this Christian Right script. The overall tendency that seeks to make America a Christian nation is called “Dominionism;” and it comes in soft forms as well as hard forms that produce apocalyptic aggression against the targeted scapegoats.

Author and apocalypse scholar Lee Quinby calls these attacks “rituals of purification.”  The destructive negative form of apocalyptic thinking is in part why the Christian Right blames all of the problems we face in this nation on scapegoats such as gay people, reproductive rights activists, feminists, and folks on the Left in general.

In the narrative of Liberation Christianity the Apocalypse brings an end to systems of oppression and exploitation, and let’s “justice roll down like waters and righteousness like an ever flowing stream.” This quote from the book of Amos was a favorite of the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. But as the Rev. R. William Carroll wrote in his essay on this theme, while Rev. King “spoke as a Christian…in so doing, he appealed to deep longings of every human being for freedom and righteousness, for brotherhood and sisterhood, for what he called the Beloved Community.” Rev. Carroll continued:

How easily do we forget that King’s vision was not limited to ending legal segregation!    How easily do we forget how he confronted our nation with a shining vision of a beloved community that has not yet arrived!   King’s dream was not limited to racial justice, though we should be quick to add that even here, his dream, like America’s promise, remains unfulfilled.   If anything, in the last thirty years or so, we have moved backwards.    King’s dream included peace and justice among nations.   It also included justice and fairness for working people.

An activist for decades, Sales builds communities of compassion, commitment, liberation, and spirit. Her life was indelibly marked as a teenage college student when a friend was shot dead while they were organizing Black voters during the 1960s Civil Rights Movement. Now, more than four decades after this act of apocalyptic violence, Sales devotes her life to demanding justice for all of us. 

Photobucket

Ruby Sales, Spirit House Project

In a number of essays and interviews and activities over many years, Ruby Sales has been on the road to fulfilling the task of building the “beloved community.”  Perhaps the best-known essay by Sales concerning the ongoing struggle for freedom and justice is “Empire Christianity vs. Liberation Christianity.” She wrote it following the contested election of George W. Bush as President in 2004. Conservative Christians played a key role in electing Republicans to public office nationwide that year.

Sales placed the elections in the context of a historic struggle within Christianity—between those who support “Empire Christianity” and those who support “Liberation Christianity.” Sales charged that the “Empire religion espoused by George Bush and his white Christian conservative allies is headed by a God who appears to be white supremacist, patriarchal, and upper class, one who stood on the side of enslavement and the genocide of native peoples throughout the globe, including the Americas.”

Opposed to that form of theology is Liberation Christianity, which “begins with the assertion that God is on the side of the oppressed rather than the side of the Empire,” wrote Sales, who added that “Jesus made clear the radical nature of his mission”:

  • to bring sight to the blind, i.e. to bring a new consciousness that freed his community and others from the false consciousness of identifying with the goals of the Roman Empire
  • to feed the hungry, i.e. a systemic redistribution of resources that is not charity, but systemic economic justice
  • to set the prisoners free, i.e. a recognition that the Empire uses law and order as tools of oppression and domination.”

Sales has a vision of Liberation Christianity that leads her to reach across many divides, not only of spiritual and ethical belief, but also race, gender, and class. She uses a wide range of tools to help prepare people for nonviolent action in pursuit of justice. Sales currently leads the Spirit House Project, “an intergenerational network of diverse people” using “the arts, research, education, action, and spirituality to bring diverse peoples together to work for racial, economic, and social justice, as well as for spiritual maturity.” Sales and Spirit House co-director Cheryl Blankenship oversee the Jonathan Daniels and Samuel Younge Institute for Justice and Nonviolence Fellows Program. This internship program is now based in Atlanta, Georgia, where the organization re-located after years in the Washington, DC area. The intern program:

Supports and prepares a new generation of peace and justice workers who want to discern a call to social justice and nonviolence; strengthens their courage, hope, resolve and reason to do this work; prepares them to play leading roles in public policy debates about issues such as poverty, prison industrial complex, militarism, and the shrinking budget for human needs, voting rights, privacy and judicial issues, and neo-conservatism; and helps grassroots communities meet their urgent need for trained and committed volunteers or staff.

Fellows of the internship program at the Spirit House Project

 

I have been inspired by Ruby Sales, and have written about my experience working collaboratively with her to sort out the tough issues of violence and oppression—the hallmarks of Empire Christianity in the United States that have delayed the promise of equality and democracy for too many for too long. Now in 2012 it is easy to see the forces allied in this country to barricade the path of progress trod by so many before us.

While acts of dramatic violence and the cacophony of hyperbolic election rhetoric snares our attention, Sales reminds us that there is an ongoing wave of police violence against people of color and immigrants. I will cover her views on this urgent matter in a follow-up essay here at Talk to Action.

In a book on “Dispatches from the Religious Left: The Future of Faith and Politics in America” I wrote a chapter explaining that both Sales and I felt compelled by our spiritual beliefs to stand up and speak out in support of justice. “We all have to choose sides in an endless struggle,” I wrote:

Are we on the side of the powerful, the arrogant, the bullies who seek empire? Or are we on the side of the weak, the impoverished, the marginalized, and seek liberation for those who are suffering under the weight of oppression? Which side are you on?

Ruby Sales chose which side she was on at a young age, but it is never too late to make a commitment to justice, especially if you have spirit—no matter how you define that word.

 

 

Minister Louis Farrakhan Speaks: Analysis of 2012 and Insights into 2013

by

Minister Louis Farrakhan Speaks: Analysis of 2012 and Insights into 2013

Published on Jan 5, 2013

 

 

 

 

 

(Finalcall.com) – In a wide-ranging interview, Minister Louis Farrakhan gives analysis of 2012 and insight into 2013. Topics include Pres. Obama, the movie, Django Unchained, Tyler Perry

ABOUT MINISTER LOUIS FARRAKHAN

National Representative of the Honorable Elijah Muhammad and The Nation of Islam

The Nation of Islam under the leadership of the Honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan is the catalyst for the growth and development of Islam in America. Founded in 1930 by Master Fard Muhammad and led to prominence from 1934 to 1975 by the Honorable Elijah Muhammad, the Nation of Islam continues to positively impact the quality of life in America.

Minister Louis Farrakhan, born on May 11, 1933 in Bronx, N.Y., was reared in a highly disciplined and spiritual household in Roxbury, Massachusetts. Raised by his mother, a native of St. Kitts, Louis and his brother Alvan learned early the value of work, responsibility and intellectual development. Having a strong sensitivity to the plight of Black people, his mother engaged her sons in conversations about the struggle for freedom, justice and equality. She also exposed them to progressive material such as the Crisis magazine, published by the NAACP.

Popularly known as “The Charmer,” he achieved fame in Boston as a vocalist, calypso singer, dancer and violinist. In February 1955, while visiting Chicago for a musical engagement, he was invited to attend the Nation of Islam’s Saviours’ Day convention.

Although music had been his first love, within one month after joining the Nation of Islam in 1955, Minister Malcolm X told the New York Mosque and the new convert Louis X that Elijah Muhammad had said that all Muslims would have to get out of show business or get out of the Temple. Most of the musicians left Temple No. 7, but Louis X, later renamed Louis Farrakhan, chose to dedicate his life to the Teachings of the Honorable Elijah Muhammad.

The departure of the Honorable Elijah Muhammad in 1975 and the assumption of leadership by Imam W. Deen Mohammed brought drastic changes to the Nation of Islam. After approximately three years of wrestling with these changes, and a re-appraisal of the condition of Black people and the value of the Teachings of the Honorable Elijah Muhammad, Minister Farrakhan decided to return to the teachings and program with a proven ability to uplift and reform Blacks.

His tremendous success is evidenced by mosques and study groups in over 120 cities in America, Europe, the Caribbean and missions in West Africa and South Africa devoted to the Teachings of the Honorable Elijah Muhammad. In rebuilding the Nation of Islam, Minister Farrakhan has renewed respect for the Honorable Elijah Muhammad, his Teachings and Program.

Soon to be 80 years of age, Minister Farrakhan still maintains a grueling work schedule. He has been welcomed in a countless number of churches, sharing pulpits with Christian ministers from a variety of denominations, which has demonstrated the power of the unity of those who believe in the One God. He has addressed diverse organizations, been received in many Muslim countries as a leading Muslim thinker and teacher, and been welcomed throughout Africa, the Caribbean and Asia as a champion in the struggle for freedom, justice and equality.

In 1979, he founded The Final Call, an internationally circulated newspaper that follows in the line of The Muhammad Speaks. In 1985, Minister Farrakhan introduced the POWER concept. In 1988, the resurgent Nation of Islam repurchased its former flagship mosque in Chicago and dedicated it as Mosque Maryam, the National Center for the Re-training and Re-education of the Black Man and Woman of America and the World. In 1991, Minister Farrakhan reintroduced the Three Year Economic Program, first established by the Honorable Elijah Muhammad to build an economic base for the development of Blacks through business ventures. In 1993, Minister Farrakhan penned the book, “A Torchlight for America,” which applied the guiding principles of justice and good will to the problems perplexing America. In May of that year, he traveled to Libreville, Gabon to attend the Second African-African American Summit where he addressed African heads of state and delegates from America. In October of 1994, Minister Farrakhan led 2,000 Blacks from America to Accra, Ghana for the Nation of Islam’s first International Saviours’ Day. Ghanaian President Jerry Rawlings officially opened and closed the five-day convention.

The popular leader and the Nation of Islam repurchased farmland in Dawson, Georgia and enjoyed a banner year in 1995 with the successful Million Man March on the Mall in Washington, D.C., which drew nearly two million men. Minister Farrakhan was inspired to call the March out of his concern over the negative image of Black men perpetuated by the media and movie industries, which focused on drugs and gang violence. The Million Man March established October 16 as a Holy Day of Atonement, Reconciliation and Responsibility. Minister Farrakhan took this healing message of atonement throughout the world during three World Friendship Tours over the next three years. His desire was to bring solutions to such problems as war, poverty, discrimination and the right to education. Minister Farrakhan would return to the Mall on Washington, D.C. in 2000 convening the Million Family March, where he called the full spectrum of members of the human family to unite according to the principle of atonement. Minister Farrakhan performed thousands of weddings, as well as renewed the vows of those recommitting themselves in a Marriage Ceremony.

As part of the major thrust for true political empowerment for the Black community, Minister Farrakhan re-registered to vote in June 1996 and formed a coalition of religious, civic and political organizations to represent the voice of the disenfranchised on the political landscape. His efforts and the overwhelming response to the call of the Million Man March resulted in an additional 1.7 million Black men voting in the 1996 presidential elections. In July 1997, the Nation of Islam, in conjunction with the World Islamic People’s Leadership, hosted an International Islamic Conference in Chicago. A broad range of Muslim scholars from Europe, Asia, Africa and the Middle East, along with Christian, Jewish and Native American spiritual leaders participated in the conference.

Following the September 11, 2001 attacks against the United States, Minister Farrakhan was among the international religious voices that called for peace and resolution of conflict. He also wrote two personal letters to President George Bush offering his counsel and perspective on how to respond to the national crisis. He advised President Bush to convene spiritual leaders of various faiths for counsel. Prior to the war on Iraq, Minister Farrakhan led a delegation of religious leaders and physicians to the Middle East in an effort to spark the dialogue among nations that could prevent war.

Marking a new milestone in a life that has been devoted to the uplift of humanity, Minister Farrakhan launched a prostate cancer foundation in his name May 10-11, 2003. First diagnosed in 1991 with prostate cancer, he survived a public bout and endured critical complications after treatment that brought him 180 seconds away from death.

In July of that year, Minister Farrakhan accepted the request to host the first of a series of summits centered on the principles of reparations. Nearly 50 activists from across the country answered his call to discuss operational unity within the reparations movement for Black people’s suffering in the trans-Atlantic slave trade. Culminating the Nation of Islam’s Saviours’ Day convention in February 2004, Minister Farrakhan delivered an international address entitled, “Reparations: What does America and Europe Owe? What does Allah (God) promise?” stepping further into the vanguard position of leadership calling for justice for the suffering masses of Black people and all oppressed people throughout the world.

On May 3, 2004, Minister Farrakhan held an international press conference at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C. themed, “Guidance to America and the World in a Time of Trouble.” The press conference sought to expose the plans and schemes of President George W. Bush and his neo-conservative advisors who plunged American soldiers into worldwide conflict with the occupations of Afghanistan and Iraq. This international press conference was translated into Arabic, French and Spanish.

In October 2005, after months of a demanding schedule traveling throughout the U.S., Minister Farrakhan called those interested in establishing a programmatic thrust for Black people in America and oppressed people across the globe to participate in the Millions More Movement, which convened back at the National Mall in Washington, D.C. on the 10th Anniversary of the Historic Million Man March. The Millions More Movement involved the formation of 9 Ministries that would deal with the pressing needs of our people. Also in 2005, Minister Louis Farrakhan was voted as BET.com’s “Person of The Year” as the person users believed made “the most powerful impact on the Black community over the past year.”

In April 2006, Minister Farrakhan led a delegation to Cuba to view the emergency preparedness system of the Cuban people, in the wake of the massive failure to prevent the loss of human life after Hurricane Katrina in August 2005.

In January 2007, the Honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan underwent a major 14-hour pelvic exoneration. In just a few weeks, and as a testament to the healing power of God, Minister Farrakhan stood on stage at Ford Field in Detroit, Michigan on February 25, 2007 to deliver the first of several speeches that year with the theme “One Nation Under God.”

On October 19, 2008, after nearly a year of extensive repairs and restoration, Minister Farrakhan opened the doors and grounds of Mosque Maryam to thousands of people representing all creeds and colors during a much anticipated Rededication Ceremony themed “A New Beginning.” This day also served as the commemoration of the 13th Anniversary of the Historic Million Man March and Holy Day of Atonement.

The prayers of spiritual leaders representing the three Abrahamic faiths—Judaism, Christianity and Islam—were offered to bless this momentous affair. Those who were present that day, and who watched live via internet webcast throughout the world, witnessed Minister Farrakhan’s message of unity and peace for the establishment of a universal government of peace for all of humanity.

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