On the Poison of Prison and Community as the Antidote

Another year has come and gone; another year of writing and teaching and blogging and talking and thinking and learning about the socially-constructed, political notion of "race." One new idea that was put on my radar this year is the idea that White Supremacy is "toxic" in nature and that everything emanating from White Supremacy is, ipso facto, "toxic" as well.

It's a no-brainer, I suppose. You can't rub poison on something and not poison it, along with everything else it touches. And certainly, the word "toxic" has been used in recent years to describe all manner of physical, psychological, and social aspects of our daily lives. Yet when I heard the term applied to the so-called "correctional system," a topic I have been deeply concerned with for nearly fifty years, I found it something of a surprise. I shouldn't have. I know full well by now that oppression breeds creative responses to it. And the prison system in this country -- federal, state, and local -- takes oppression to a level more nightmarish than most of us would ever be able to imagine.

As far as I know, the folks that first connected the term "toxic" to prisons in America can be found working as a part of the Campaign to Fight Toxic Prisons. So I jumped at the chance to help bring one of their spokespeople, Jordan Mazurek , to our campus the end of October and managed in the planning process to get to know him and their work a bit. We talked about how to organize a Louisiana Network for Criminal Justice Transformation. One of FTP's organizers Skyped into my Social Movements and Social Action course one class period. Jordan met with and inspired the members of the new Justice4All student group my department birthed last semester. And I have maintained the connection since then to the point that he dragged a group of young organizers into the small town where I live yesterday morning just so we could all have breakfast together and brainstorm social change issues face to face before they headed back to the highway on their way to their next stop eight hours away. These folks are the real deal.

In any case, as part of Jordan's presentation in October, he included tape recordings of incarcerated individuals talking about the subject they know better than anyone. One of those featured was Clinton "Nkechi" Walker* and I was so impressed with what he had to say on surviving toxic prisons that I asked about it later and Jordan told me that Nkechi's statement had been published on the Fight Toxic Prisons' website, where I could find it to re-post it here. I am delighted to do so, although I must warn you that it is a painful read. Be prepared to reach a new level of conscious awareness on the toxicity of prison life in the United States and the brilliance of some of those who make up the community of humans who must -- and do -- endure it. 

The Personal Is ALWAYS Political

I've always heard that Emmett Till, at 14 years of age, was lynched in ghastly fashion because he whistled at a White woman. Actually, the trial transcript says she testified in court -- meticulously and in detail -- that he grabbed her hand and then grabbed her body, telling her outright that he wanted to have sex with her. Now she says she lied.

"The Slave Detective of the South"

When you've been blogging for twelve years, you get a lot of emails from all sorts of strangers. They're all promoting some product or entertainer or idea and most of them I just delete based on what's in the subject line because they're not a good fit for what I publish. But a few months ago, I got one from VICE, a digital media and broadcasting company and when I opened it, I discovered that it offered a 20-minute video featuring a woman I've known for a decade. In fact, I had only been in Louisiana a few months when Antoinette Harrell approached me, put me on television, and undertook the project of educating me about the "old" and "not-so-old" South.

She remains not only one of my heroes, but a primary inspiration to me. Sort of a cross between a saint and a locomotive. You don't want to get in her way.

I've written so much about Antoinette and her work through the years that I'm not going to bring you up to speed. Besides, anything I write today will be old news tomorrow. But if you're interested, you can find out more by reading what I've written in the past. Just be ready to spend some time because you'll be a minute.

Anyway, I'm glad VICE found this woman and did her justice. She deserves every bit of spotlight she gets. She never lets up no matter what. And I, for one, am honored to call her my friend. Regardless, though, I'm posting the film VICE did with reverence. Antoinette Harrell will be joining Harriett Tubman and the other greats one day and you'll want to be able to say she touched your life, as she has mine.

 

Public Service Announcement: Cointelpro 2.0

In the early 1990s, when I was in grad school, a young El Salvadoran revolutionary came to campus to talk about why she had joined the guerilla forces fighting to overthrow the repressive right wing government that had already killed more than 70,000 of her fellow citizens. One of the students in the audience raised her hand and said timidly, "I'm uncomfortable with the idea of using violence to create social change. How do you know when to pick up a gun?"

The young revolutionary didn't hesitate a moment as she replied matter of factly, "When they start shooting at you."

The audience laughed, but it is unlikely that any of them -- all being  young and White, as I recall -- were considering the possibility that their government, their military, their local and state law enforcement officers would boldly and unapologetically turn on them one day. Sitting there, thinking back to experiences I had twenty years before, I recalled seeing blood shed in just such confrontations in the streets of America. And I recalled the four students killed for demonstrating at Kent State in 1970. But when that happened, the shock ripples were palpable from coast to coast.

The deaths (even the blatantly public deaths) of People of Color, however, and most particularly Black people, haven't historically created the same reaction. And this is what I'm blogging about today.

Can A Nation Divided Against Itself Stand?

I was recently criticized for “rushing to judgment” against cops in general by calling Alton Sterling’s death “untimely and wrongful” and then accused of doing this to benefit myself. The person who brought the criticism missed the whole point of a letter to the editor I had written, which was not anti-cop at all, but only meant to invite White people to join me in trying to address a system based on an ideology that is clearly threatening our common good as a nation.

I’ve worked with, talked with, interviewed, and counted as friends too many police officers to lump them all into one basket. They’re humans just like the rest of us. They bleed when they’re shot. They get scared when they go on a call. Some bring more skills to the table than others. Some make mistakes. And some break the law.

My critic said I should have mentioned that they also die in the line of duty. And certainly what happened in Dallas last week demonstrated that in horrifying fashion. In truth, 26 officers have been killed so far this year. But research tells us that even though 8 out of 10 of those cops were killed by White men, police officers are far, far more likely to kill Black people – men, women, and children, often unarmed and unarrested – than they are White ones. In fact, police officers in America have killed upwards of 150 Black people in 2016 alone (roughly one every 31 hours), which is 24% of those killed, though African-Americans make up only 13% of our country’s population.

Police officers are professionals. It’s not difficult to find film clips or photographs showing them doing a remarkable job of not killing people who are threatening or even shooting at them – as long as they are White. And anyway, according to The Badge of Life, a highly respected police organization, more than twice as many police officers died by suicide in 2015 than were killed by felons.

Regardless, my letter wasn’t about any of that. It was about White Supremacy.

So What Are We To Do?

I'm launching my book on race Saturday. The press release appeared in the daily newspaper last Sunday and the flyer is making the rounds. I put up a Facebook event page for it. Then, when I found out about Alton Sterling this morning, I fired off a letter to the editor. Sterling was killed 45 miles from the little town where I live, so I decided to make Saturday's launch an opportunity to invite White townspeople who want to become part of the solution to show up. I don't know if the editor will print it. It might be seen as somewhat confrontational (a-hem!), which was not my intention. I just thought maybe a few folks might be ready to answer a call to action. Though I have no control over who all might show up...

Regardless, I'm not posting about Alton Sterling's murder because the news is unfolding every two minutes and there are many ways to get it faster. Besides, I'm pissed and depressed and feeling helpless and hopeless. And everybody's being whipped to a lather already on social media anyway, but I do need to write something about what we can do to stop this.

Conway & Lutalo on Violence and Counter-Violence

Focusing on how White Supremacy as a system uses "law enforcement" to brutalize -- or even kill -- those who resist its power can leave us shaking in our boots. Yet there has always been resistance by Africans, other colonized People of Color, and those who fight for justice alongside the members of those groups. Here Chris Hedges gives us an opportunity to learn from Eddie Conway, former member of the Black Panther Party in Baltimore, and Ojore Lutalo, member of the Black Liberation Army, both of whom have now been released after spending long stints in prison because of their commitment to the people's struggle. They have earned our undivided attention. And we need to know what they have to tell us. Listen up.

Senator and Pastor Clementa Pinkney: From The Grave

May all People of Color be comforted in the knowledge that the act of killing this man and eight others at Mother Emanuel A.M.E. Church in Charleston, South Carolina, day before yesterday will fuel in millions of Americans an ever deepening commitment to root out White Supremacy and plant respect, love, and justice in its place.

On Baltimore, Just So You Know

Dizzy Wright: "I Need Answers" featuring Kikkiya

Maybe We Need To Stop Acting White

You already know I quit blogging for months when  Ferguson blew up. And you already know why. But recently, I've begun to realize that something is happening to many of those whose views on life and power and race I most respect. I'm not sure what to call this X Factor I hear in their voices. But it resonates in my soul. And I don't know whether I'm more relieved that I'm not smoldering alone or more concerned about the greater implications of whatever is brewing inside us.

Actually, we are so bombarded by the consciousness of violence on a daily basis in this society, I sometimes worry I'm going to succumb to compassion fatigue and be found in a closet somewhere with my thumb in my mouth. Even if I'm not bleeding, I ache for those who do – all of them. And I’m hardly the only one.

So we're all on the same page here, right? We're all against violence. We abhor the shooting of a legislator, the killing of a little girl because she was in the wrong place at the wrong time, the heart-breaking homicides of one young Black male after another by other young Black males, military veterans returning from war only to commit tragic attacks on their own families, young people committing suicide at unprecedented rates. We hate all this, don't we? Of course, we do!

Which Of These Is Not Like The Others...?

None of them. They're all the same. And they are not the problem.

The problem is White Supremacy. That's what puts men like these in uniforms and gives them permission to kill.

The solution to this problem is to dismantle White Supremacy.

This is not a complicated idea. But the process of doing it may be.

Wanna help?

Federal Judge Goes On the Record About Lynching in Mississippi

Re-posted from National Public Radio:

Here's an astonishing speech by U.S. District Judge Carlton Reeves, who in 2010 became the second African-American appointed as federal judge in Mississippi. He read it to three young white men [on Tuesday, February 10th,] before sentencing them for the death of a 48-year-old black man named James Craig Anderson in a parking lot in Jackson, Miss., one night in 2011. They were part of a group that beat Anderson and then killed him by running over his body with a truck, yelling "white power" as they drove off.

The speech is long; Reeves asked the young men to sit down while he read it aloud in the courtroom. And it's breathtaking, in both the moral force of its arguments and the palpable sadness with which they are delivered...A warning to readers: He uses the word "nigger" 11 times.

John Oliver on the Nazi-fication of the Police in the United States

I am so furious and horrified about what is happening in Ferguson, Missouri, that I can no longer bear to follow the news. But John Oliver got me to watch this 15-minute clip by reminding me that one can tell the truth, make the power visible, and speak the truth to that power, all while making those in power look just as insane as they really are.

Montgomery, Alabama: Then and Now

Mural at Southern Poverty Law Center Civil Rights Memorial Center 

Another Martin Luther King, Jr., Day has come and gone. There was a time on this blog when I posted on every holiday or historical point of interest related to the socially-constructed political notion of "race." There was a time I just "had to" weigh in on every news story featuring a Black person, especially a Black person victimized by White Supremacy. But after 571 posts, it occurs to me now that I've pretty much said a lot of what I have to say. And the same shit keep happening over and over. Other people will cover that stuff and, by and large, I just comment on it on Facebook. Today, I have options. That doesn't mean I'm done as a blogger (obviously). It just means I've come to realize that this process has morphed (as everything does) and I have developed my own little niche in the blogosphere. Or at least that's the way I see it.

Sometimes, I'm busy (as most of us are). Sometimes, I'm going through something (as everybody does from time to time, some of us more often than others). Regardless, if you want to know what I think about some aspect of "race," a summary perusal of this site can help you find it on here somewhere.

But since I think about oppression rather a lot and oppression related to "race" more than most -- especially more than most folks that look like me -- I do still (and probably always will) find things I feel the urge to write about in this manner. Recently (January 18th, to be exact), I found myself in Montgomery, Alabama, and made it a point to tear myself away from the business at hand long enough to make my own little civil rights tour in honor of Martin and all the other predecessors in this on-going struggle for justice. This post is the result.

Akinyele Omowale Umoja: We Will Shoot Back

The Malcolm X Grassroots Movement turned me onto a set of five YouTube videos showing Akinyele Omowale Umoja discussing his book on Black armed resistance in the southern United States entitled We Will Shoot Back (NYU Press, 2013). Since it's not out in paperback yet, this may be the book that makes me buy a Kindle. Can't wait, can't wait, can't wait to read it. Ooooo-eeee!

All Aboard For Fruitvale Station

Originally, I wasn't going to see "Fruitvale Station," the just released film about the last twenty-four hours in the life of Oscar Grant, who was shot to death by a Bay Area Rapid Transit quasi-cop on New Year's Day in 2009. Fruitvale Station is the Oakland, California, stop Grant, his girlfriend, and their buddies reached after a night of New Year's Eve revelry in San Francisco. It was the end of the line for Oscar Grant and I didn't think I could handle it right now.

I had barely crawled out from under the rotted log the George Zimmerman verdict had dropped on my psyche. And I had things to do. So, when a student messaged me on Facebook asking if I was going to see the film, I responded instantly that I didn't have the emotional and psychological cool to go.

Still, as I jogged that morning before the Louisiana heat and humidity descended, I remembered that, if we don't attend films like this, they won't make them. And people that look like me need to show up in particular because (a) it's good for our consciousness (painful or not) and (b) Black people need to know that some of us give a shit. Sigh.

So I went.

Langston Hughes: Kids Who Die

Kids Who Die
by Langston Hughes

This is for the kids who die,
Black and white,
For kids will die certainly.
The old and rich will live on awhile,
As always,
Eating blood and gold,
Letting kids die.

Kids will die in the swamps of Mississippi
Organizing sharecroppers
Kids will die in the streets of Chicago
Organizing workers
Kids will die in the orange groves of California
Telling others to get together
Whites and Filipinos,
Negroes and Mexicans,
All kinds of kids will die
Who don’t believe in lies, and bribes, and contentment
And a lousy peace.

Of course, the wise and the learned
Who pen editorials in the papers,
And the gentlemen with Dr. in front of their names
White and black,
Who make surveys and write books
Will live on weaving words to smother the kids who die,
And the sleazy courts,
And the bribe-reaching police,
And the blood-loving generals,
And the money-loving preachers
Will all raise their hands against the kids who die,
Beating them with laws and clubs and bayonets and bullets
To frighten the people—
For the kids who die are like iron in the blood of the people—
And the old and rich don’t want the people
To taste the iron of the kids who die,
Don’t want the people to get wise to their own power,
To believe an Angelo Herndon, or even get together

Listen, kids who die—
Maybe, now, there will be no monument for you
Except in our hearts
Maybe your bodies’ll be lost in a swamp
Or a prison grave, or the potter’s field,
Or the rivers where you’re drowned like Leibknecht
But the day will come—
Your are sure yourselves that it is coming—
When the marching feet of the masses
Will raise for you a living monument of love,
And joy, and laughter,
And black hands and white hands clasped as one,
And a song that reaches the sky—
The song of the life triumphant
Through the kids who die.

There Will Be No Peace Until There Is Justice

Atlanta, GA

Boston, MA

Chicago, IL

Detroit, MI

Houston, TX

Kansas City, Kansas

Los Angeles, CA

Memphis, TN

Miami, FL

Milwaukee, WI

Minneapolis-St. Paul, MN

New York City

Oakland, CA

Orlando, FL

Sacramento, CA

San Francisco, CA

St. Louis, MO

Washington, D.C.

Dear George,

I know you think you won last night. When the verdict was read, I'm sure you exhaled for the first time since that fateful night last year when you stood on a patch of grass on a street in Sanford, Florida, and murdered a seventeen-year-old boy named Trayvon Martin. I'm sure you think you dodged a bullet yourself last night. But you didn't. And I'm writing this so you and everybody else will remember that there's no free lunch.

In the grand scheme of things, George, we get away with nothing. No matter how it looks. No matter how much suave and bravado and quasi-sincerity we put out there for the public, deep in our souls, we always know that what we plant grows -- for good or ill. You plant beans, you get beans. And my dear mis-guided fellow human, you have most definitely planted some pretty horrific beans. They're not magic, but they will grow into a vine that will choke you every day for the rest of your woebegotten life.