“It is
true that the police have exercised a degree of discipline in handling the
demonstrators. In this sense they have conducted themselves rather
‘nonviolently’ in public. But for what purpose? To preserve the evil system of
segregation.”
– Martin Luther King, Jr.,
Letter
from a Birmingham Jail
After half
a century, Martin Luther King, Jr.’s words to his “fellow clergymen” in the
South still ring true. From behind bars in that Birmingham city jail, MLK keeps
writing to us, and his words resonate loudly and clearly with the American
people of the 21st century. His words yet give us cause to scrutinize
and rectify what remains so terribly and obviously loathsome about America’s
centuries-long war on its Black community: Not all lives matter equally. Ultimately,
we cannot afford to stop listening to King. Although many believe rightfully
that “all lives matter,” the lived reality of this sentiment does not remedy
the fact that injustice and oppression are very much afoot. So, we must listen,
and we must continue to respond to King’s letter because Black Lives Matter.
King and
others took to Birmingham because injustice was there. For related but
different reasons, Americans take to the streets today. We pour out across all different
neighborhoods, towns, cities, and states, and we do so because injustice is
everywhere. Despite cultural and regional differences, America’s justice
seekers and concerned denizens occupy bridges, shut down freeways, and march
down miles of metropolitan avenue. The anger and the outrage that drive us are
righteous, and we communicate and coordinate online and through social networks
because popular media refuses to abet us. There is unity amidst the variegation
of dissent because oppression is diverse. Thus, it requires manifold responses.
Furthermore, Americans everywhere resort to organically democratic methods; the
people of this nation are communicating what we believe mostly peacefully. In
doing so, we reaffirm our belief in the wisdom that MLK so keenly penned just
five short decades ago: “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.”
We no longer accept sitting idly by when, as King declared
of himself years ago, folks today grow more and more “cognizant of the
interrelatedness of all communities and states.” Who can forget the numerous
other global citizens continents and oceans away who coalesced and raised signs
to declare their solidarity with Ferguson protestors, and those in New York
City, Oakland and elsewhere? MLK was right! Americans are “caught in an inescapable
network of mutuality,” and that network has become irreversibly global. To
forget this is to forget a power that no government can suppress: solidarity.
Moreover, the communication and osmotic networking and reporting amongst Americans
only strengthens this trend; and in 2015, we can no longer stomach that anyone
living within the United States be treated, as MLK said, like an “outsider
anywhere within its bounds.”
Though many comfortable
bystanders today clearly disapprove of the demonstrations taking place across
the nation, it is nevertheless important to recall that many bigots also
deplored the demonstrations that took place in Birmingham. Perhaps worse is the
indifference of those today, who, like yesterday’s apathetic and privileged
citizens, consign themselves to inaction because the issue “doesn’t concern
them.” But, like King, we regret to inform critics that their current disdain
for protests and civil disobedience absolutely “fails to express a similar
concern for the conditions that brought about the demonstrations” in the first
place. Indeed, their preferred social analysis does not get at the root of the
problem; so, they should expect no apology for the inconvenience of dissent and
protest. They should expect not apology any of the democratic expression of
late.
Under what American politico-cultural
umbrella does the flood of Black Lives Matter and anti-police violence protests
fall? From his jail cell, MLK redacted that what was “even more unfortunate”
than the demonstrations in Birmingham was the fact that “the city’s white power
structure left the Negro community with no alternative.” We cannot ignore that
there persists the exclusion of, and a paucity of access for, the Black
community in America. More unfortunate than protesting America’s
state-sponsored terrorism of the Black community in the 21st century
yet remains this country's unending disenfranchisement of its Black community. Oppression,
exclusion, and terrorism all continue.
The media, with whatever lip service
it gives demonstrations, protests, and recent victims, does only the bare minimum
to cover the unrest, and it does so in the hopes of escaping complicity in a
conspiracy to espouse an overt blackout. Despite the absence of necessary
publicity, protest grows. Far, far from a simple curiosity or cultural anomaly,
peaceful protestors are hopefully determined to fulfill that selfsame necessity
today which King reasoned fifty years ago:
“Just as
Socrates felt that it was necessary to create a tension in the mind so that
individuals could rise from the bondage of myths and half truths to the
unfettered realm of creative analysis and objective appraisal, so must we see
the need for nonviolent gadflies to create the kind of tension in society that
will help men rise from the dark depths of prejudice and racism to the majestic
heights of understanding and brotherhood.”
Marching for sorority,
occupying for fraternity, and organizing in solidarity with the Black community
was an intense motivation of some Civil Rights activists decades ago. It
remains so today. Furthermore, the “need for nonviolent gadflies” that MLK
invoked has been a pillar in the edifice of Western Civilization’s philosophy
of justice for millennia; it is essential to a thriving, inclusive, and critical
democracy in America. And for all lives to matter, it must continue without
pause!
In his Letter from a
Birmingham Jail, King delineated the “four basic steps” to a nonviolent
campaign: “collection of the facts to determine whether injustices exist;
negotiation; self purification; and direct action.” Activists undertook these steps
with regards to Birmingham and soundly concluded that there could be “no
gainsaying the fact that racial injustice” engulfed that city. In 2015, America’s
deep racial injustice yet engulfs it. As MLK said of Birmingham five decades
ago, America’s “ugly record of brutality is widely known,” and with every
public lynching of Black souls today, the record grows distortedly ugly and ever
more notoriously intolerable. It is more than just “important” to recognize
that injustices yet exist, and that certain parties are averse to dialogue; it
is imperative! While “purification” remains a personal matter in this campaign
against racially driven systematic injustice, many exhibit willingness for
sustained action.
None can seriously doubt that
the Black community still experiences “grossly unjust treatment in the courts”
in 21st century America. Philip Stinson, of Bowling Green State
University, found that from 2005 to 2011, a mere 41 police officers were
charged with murder/manslaughter for on-duty shootings. Police kill virtually a
person a day, and they are seldom indicted for on-duty homicide. On 3 December
2014, a New York grand jury failed to indict a white police officer for choking
and killing a Black man, Eric Garner. This failed indictment followed another
grand jury decision in which a white officer was not indicted for killing
Michael Brown, a Black man in Ferguson, Missouri. These decisions still shocked
and angered millions of Americans to protest and organize, and with good cause:
Data shows that Black people are roughly four times likelier to die while being
arrested, or in custody, than are whites.
Not only police-related
murders and shootings, but also the racially charged bombing of the Black
community carries on today. Such terrorism echoes the bombings of Black
churches and institutions throughout America’s history. The Colorado Springs
chapter of the NAACP in Colorado was recently victimized by bomb violence, though
it received unworthy media coverage by major 24-hour cable networks. CNN,
MSNBC, and Fox News did not even bother to respond to some inquiries apropos
their “coverage” of the bombing. King said of Birmingham, “There have been more
unsolved bombings of Negro homes and churches in Birmingham than in any other
city in the nation. These are the hard, brutal facts of the case.” Today, the
many barbarisms waged against the Black community have their roots in the same
oppression that King labeled the “hard, brutal facts of the case” in
Birmingham. In 2015, they remain the facts of the case in America's endless
lynching of its Black sons and daughters.
The effects of protesting
during political elections, and the need to have protest coincide with economic
stonewalling, not only help secure democratically demanded change, but they
also uncover the media’s unwillingness to give attention to or report the
events and issues that the public actually holds dear and indispensable for the
future of its experiment with democracy. MLK
addressed the economic and political importance of direct action employed with
timely strategy and economic acumen in mind. With regards to the mayoral
election in Birmingham, King wrote, "...we decided again to postpone
action until the day after the run off so that the demonstrations could not be
used to cloud the issues." Today, protestors and marchers are still used
as political leverage in order to immure the reasons as to why they take to the
streets in the first place. In addition to marches and demonstrations, we have
yet to actualize the politico-economic power we wield: Consumer spending
predicates more than 70 percent of America’s economy.
To avoid scapegoating and
confusion, apologizing why Americans today converge on public space in
indignation against America's ongoing war on its Black community becomes
imperative. This chapter in America's history of public outrage especially holds
connections to activism and direct action in Birmingham so many years ago,
though the venues and impetuses have changed. Speaking for himself other
activists at the time, King wrote from his jail cell that nonviolent direct
action was necessary "to create such a crisis and foster such a tension
that a community which has constantly refused to negotiate is forced to
confront the issue." We must continue to foster a tension in order to
force the confrontation of the issues that outrage our entire American
community.
Protesters today must not let
up pressure, but we must create tension in our national community to deal with
the issues. If not, the public risks embedded power—which clearly
orchestrates de jure political power in America—overthrowing,
or pretending to delegitimize, the de facto power of the
public. Like the demonstrations in Birmingham, today's protest must also seek
"to dramatize the issue" so that "it can no longer be
ignored," as King said. And we must not let the powers that endeavor to
obscure protest to shanghai and obscure it.
President Obama has said that
distrust between minority groups and police are “deeply rooted in our history,”
but that things are far better for African Americans than they used to be.
Without glossing over or detracting from the epic Civil Rights struggle of
King’s time, and with all due respect, we should still ask if All Lives Matter,
and if Black Lives Matter just as much as others. Is today’s status quo “good
enough” for Black Americans because its “better than it used to be,” or is it
as it ought to be, as America’s Black community deserves it to be?
Understandably, as Obama has
said, we “can’t equate what is happening now to what happened 50 years ago.”
But we cannot forget that these atrocities and that this terrorism today that
drives us all from homes and into the public sphere has a past. From that past
MLK still addresses us and counsels us. And we protest now, in 2015, because
the trajectory of oppression and moral and legal wrongs done against the Black
community have no place in our culture or state any longer. There must be
pressure, as King instructed, and we must remember his words that "it is
an historical fact that privileged groups seldom give up their privileges
voluntarily." American society's privileged capacity to oppress and kill
the Black community's sons and daughters without the pushback, resistance, and
opposition of every American that values freedom can no longer be the American
reality in 2015. There is no more room for moderation. Freedom must be demanded
and wrested. We must all march and protest, and we must not stop.
Mateo Pimentel is an Axis of Logic columnist, living on the US-Mexico border. Read the Biography and additional articles by Axis Columnist Mateo Pimentel.
© Copyright 2015 by AxisofLogic.com
This material is available for republication as long as reprints include verbatim copy of the article in its entirety, respecting its integrity. Reprints must cite the author and Axis of Logic as the original source including a "live link" to the article. Thank you!
|