'It is not illegal to kill Black people in America': Black Lives Matter Movement grows stronger
While police tactics and accountability measures are being examined, many black people are also questioning their safety and place in society. They worry about the next time they interact with police, and about the difficult conversations they must have with their children.
We’re just a bullet away from being a hashtag.
— Mistah F.A.B.
— Mistah F.A.B.
Hearing my son say to the officer, “You shot me,” it pierced my heart.
— Wanda Johnson
— Wanda Johnson
I’m 61 years old, and I have been stopped by police 53 times in my life.
— John William Templeton
— John William Templeton
As a physician I watch these videos and I see health care infractions.
— Dr. Tiffany Chioma Anaebere,
— Dr. Tiffany Chioma Anaebere,
I’m not ready to have the conversation with my daughters.
— W. Kamau Bell
The San Francisco Chronicle, July 31, 2016
August 11, 2016 — Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal. This article will appear in the Sept ember-October issue of Against The Current — The quotes above came from Black residents living in the liberal San Francisco Bay Area. The statistics on police stops of Blacks and violence mirror other cities, especially in the Midwest and South. San Francisco has a six percent Black population — which suffers 40 percent of the city’s shootings by cops.
The two major party conventions occurred in July and showed the powerful impact of the three-year Movement for Black Lives. At the Republican Party convention that nominated demagogue Donald Trump, the theme was that only white and blue lives matter. Black Lives Matter movement leaders were demonized and called violent, anti-cop and evil.
At the Democratic Party convention that nominated war hawk Hillary Clinton, the theme was to emphasize “unity.” While nodding to Black Lives Matter, the focus was “All Lives Matter.” Whenever the question was asked to delegates on the floor, the reply was to downplay a reality that Black lives for 400 years have mattered much less than whites.
Only the radical wing of the Bernie Sanders campaign mentioned the positive impact of the Black Lives Matter Movement (BLM) and defended its demand for real reform to the police and criminal justice system.
Anti-Black code words
“All Lives Matter” is code to attack Black Lives Matter and defend the status quo. It is in line with the worst traditions of America’s long racist origins. African Americans who have suffered oppression and systemic discrimination are told to wait for change — “tone it down.”
In the South, under legal segregation, “states’ rights” were enforced to deny Blacks the right to vote. It is being done again since the Supreme Court gutted the 1965 Voting Rights Act.
The ongoing daily police violence against Black men and women is an extension of a long racist history that is rarely taught in schools. Whites and Blacks are not educated in true racial history. It is whitewashed. Cops are rarely arrested or convicted. This is why the Movement to defend Black bodies continues to grow stronger, and the demand “No Justice, No Peace” is heard from Oakland to Chicago to Dallas and New York.
One of the most prominent business magazines, Bloomberg Business Week, ran a prominent article and a photo on the front page of the August 8 issue by Alicia Garza, a co-founder of the BLM. “If we want to get to the place where all lives matter,” she said, “then we have to make sure that Black lives matter too.”
When the parents of a fallen Muslim soldier (Humayun Khan, an Army captain killed in Iraq in 2004) spoke out against Trump for his smearing of Muslims and plan to ban them from entering the country, Khizer Khan, made a rare point that few understand: it is the 14th Amendment to the Constitution that gives citizenship rights to all Americans. It includes equal protections to all citizens.
That amendment was adopted after the Civil War and guaranteed former slaves their citizenship. It cannot be taken away easily, he said, even by an authoritarian figure like Trump as president.
His wife, Ghazala Khan, added that Islam is a religion of peace, that terrorists are not following the religion and that Muslims are as patriotic as other religious citizens.
Founding fathers knew
The founding fathers who wrote the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution knew that the documents — including the Bill of Rights (the first 10 amendments to the Constitution) — only applied to whites. The Declaration’s famous “all men are created equal’ was exclusionary — Africans were considered property like any other livestock.
Women were raped, children born and sold. Genocide and ethnic cleansing of Native tribes was legal.
It was not until after the Second American Revolution (known as the 1861-65 Civil War) that a radical change to the Constitution occurred with the 13th, 14th and 15th amendments.
Blacks have always seen “American exceptionalism” and the founding fathers differently than whites. On July 5, 1852, Frederick Douglass gave a speech at an event commemorating the signing of the Declaration of Independence. He said, "This Fourth of July is yours, not mine. You may rejoice, I must mourn." And he asked them, "Do you mean, citizens, to mock me, by asking me to speak today?"
Some Blacks did fight in the Revolutionary War hoping for freedom. Others fought with the British colonialists. Ironically the British banned slavery in the Empire between 1833-38. It compensated slave holders for their economic losses.
Yet the U.S. federal government rejected this course as the slaveholding states incorporated their right to keep slaves in the Constitution. It declared independence from the union when they saw this “right” under attack.
The Abolitionist example
The Black Lives Matter Movement stands on principles in the tradition of the Abolitionists who refused to compromise or tone down their demand to immediately end slavery. They were threatened by slaveholders and pro-slavery sympathizers.
The liberals of the day including President Abraham Lincoln were opposed to human bondage. But they still respected the rights of slave holders. The Emancipation Proclamation of January 1, 1863 was a tactic to defeat the Confederacy. It only applied to slave states in rebellion. It did not immediately free all slaves in non-rebelling border states (for example, Maryland).
The capital in Washington D.C. was built primarily by slave labor. When First Lady Michelle Obama made this simple point at the Democratic Party convention the far right attacked her including a leading Fox commentator, Bill O’Reilly, who said slaves were fed well and had decent housing. (Their wages went to their owners!)
Khan’s point about the 14th Amendment is extremely important. It set the framework for the next 100 years of struggle for full equality. He correctly explained that no religion — neither the Bible nor the Koran — can be a replacement for the Constitution, unless those amendments are repealed.
Blacks were not legal “Americans” until the late 1860s. Former slaves then faced organized violence by the state governments to take away that citizenship. The police, Congress and courts kept Black people in the segregated South and the entire country as second class.
The battle for life and respect has been a central feature of the Black freedom struggle. It is why the middle class and more wealthy Blacks (forced to live in segregated communities) had little choice but to join the movement or become agents of the oppressors.
Class divisions within the Black community widened after the victory of the civil rights revolution. The upper class Blacks can now (a good thing) live in areas that previously excluded them. It is why they generally represent the “tone down” critics of the BLM.
Violent state counter- offensive
The state has pushed back hard to limit freedoms for African Americans. In the early 1900s, the ruling class had no problem with Booker T. Washington, the leader of those who accommodated with the racist status quo. The NAACP (National Association for the Advancement of Colored People) and other new civil rights groups challenged the perspective of accommodation. The leaders faced hostility from the government, even though their main demand was to end lynchings.
The most concerted attacks were against the rising Black Nationalist formation led by Marcus Garvey. The Garvey urban-based movement (sometimes called “Back to Africa”) fought for freedom by demanding reparations and an end to police violence. Garvey’s movement was strong not only in the Black communities but in the Caribbean where he was from. He was later deported to Jamaica.
The mass protests in the urban Black communities struck fear in the minds of whites and the ruling class. The present-day FBI began in the 1920s with two dirty campaigns: against Garvey’s nationalism and the “Red Scare” against socialists.
In the 1930s with the deep economic depression and rise of militant labor struggles, African Americans were not explicitly covered in the “New Deal.” Franklin D. Roosevelt’s party included the segregationists of the South who resisted any law that weakened white power.
Big unions formed white-only locals in the South. Northern labor downplayed racism under the guise of “unity” to win economic issues.
Housing discrimination was enhanced under the new Federal Housing Administration. Low- cost real estate loans (the way most working class whites created wealth) excluded African Americans. In the Second World War, white women could get hired in war plants ahead of Blacks, who organized protests to get some of those jobs.
A March on Washington Movement in 1941 pressed for jobs in the war industries. President Franklin D. Roosevelt and his wife Eleanor did express sympathy for Blacks — a change in attitude more than in practice.
The military was segregated because most whites did not trust the loyalty of Blacks to “their” country. The end of military segregation happened after World War II. It was done by an Executive Order by President Harry Truman. Congress would never have adopted such legislation.
Mass action tactic
The modern civil rights movement used mass peaceful protests. Martin Luther King Jr understood that visible peaceful protests were key to facing down violence from southern city and state governments and extralegal terrorist groups (like the Ku Klux Klan) that murdered Blacks without fear of arrest.
The mass action tactic of previous battles set the stage for today’s Black Lives Matter movement. Militant organizations like the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee and the Black Panther Party, and the League of Revolutionary Black Workers in the Detroit auto plants, sent fear into the ruling class.
Malcolm X, who was assassinated in 1965, had a big influence on the younger generation of activists who saw legal rights not dealing with structural racism of society. Many became socialist-minded.
In the 1970s a Republican president, Richard Nixon, backed legislation for affirmative action, Title IX for women in sports and supported school desegregation laws. Nixon was no vocal friend of Black rights. He acted because of the anti-Vietnam war movement, the legacy of the civil rights victory, and a rise of other social movements (Chicanos, Puerto Ricans, Native peoples, women, and gays).
The political pushback and reversals began with presidents Ronald Reagan, George Bush and Bill Clinton. The first Black president, Barack Obama, has never sought to reverse these losses as he hailed the leadership of Reagan.
Movement for Black Lives platform
The vanguard leadership of the young women who started the Black Lives Movement with the hashtag #Blacklivesmatter on Twitter, after the killings of Trayvon Martin in Florida and Michael Brown in Missouri, continues to advance and has led to similar formations in other countries.
As in the past, the police, courts and state institutions have targeted these activists. The propaganda is classic obfuscation — like saying “reverse racism” to attack Black Power, now it is “All Lives Matter” and “Blue Lives Matter” to belittle the idea that Black Lives do matter.
The power of the movement is its breadth and the role of dynamic women and men in leadership. There is a simple objective — justice and respect for Black bodies and arrest and prosecution of criminal cops.
After the two major party convention, leaders from a coalition of grassroots BLM groups drafted a Platform for going forward as a movement. It is a strong document (see https://policy.m4bl.org/platform/)
The preamble outlines the aims of the Platform: