Bay Area United Against War: Our activist-oriented San Francisco-based newsletter.
6/23/2015
BAUAW NEWSLETTER, TUESDAY, JUNE 23, 2015
Aboriginal Communities in Australia call for Solidarity June 26, 27 and 28 http://www.sosblakaustralia.com/
In mid-May, I put out a commentary stating, "Stop the forced
closures of Aboriginal communities in Western Australia and all across
Australia." This is Jaan Laaman, your political prisoner voice, coming
to you from the federal prison in Tucson, Arizona.
Let me
share some new information from Human Rights and social justice
activists and from Indigenous leaders in Australia, about the ongoing
government attacks against Aboriginal communities.
Early
this year the Australian government, especially the State of Western
Australia and its Premier Colin Barnett, began shutting down all
services, that is: water, electricity, schools and health care
facilities in Aboriginal towns and communities located more than 100
kilometers from large urban areas. This policy is only directed at
Indigenous communities. No white towns or stations are being shut down.
It has been widely speculated that by driving out the Indigenous
people from these remote towns, this will open up these lands for
mineral exploitation. Colin Barnett and his Western Australian
government have close ties to huge mining corporations.
Whatever the full reason might be, the reality is that Aboriginal people
and their communities are once again under direct attack by government
policies and forces.
Aboriginal people and communities are
resisting this latest colonial attack on their lands and lives. In
fact Australians of all backgrounds have come forward to rally and
demonstrate against these outrageous policies. Tens of thousands of
people have rallied in cities all across Australia. In late May and on
June 1st, there were also a small number of solidarity rallies in Europe
and Asia.
Aboriginal leaders and Australian activists are
mobilizing for an upcoming weekend of protests, and are asking people
around the world to support them. This is part of the call from
Australia, "With Aboriginal communities, culture and land under the
threat of forced closures, we are calling on all communities, friends
and allies around the world to stand together as one, on June 26, 27 and
28."
Go to www.sosblakaustralia.com, to find out more information.
Time is short, but why not organize or join an action in support or our Aboriginal friends.
This is Jaan Laaman, until next time, remember, Freedom Is A Constant Struggle!"
On
Sunday, June 28th, join Courage to Resist and the Chelsea Manning
Support Network in this year’s 2015 San Francisco Pride Parade!
March
for our heroic WikiLeaks whistle-blower Chelsea Manning and show your
support for Chelsea, whistle-blowers, and government transparency.
In
2013, the Chelsea Manning contingent was awarded the highest honor,
“The Absolutely Fabulous Overall Contingent”. That contingent was the
largest non-corporate group with well over 1,000 people! And last year,
Chelsea Manning was honored as an official Parade Grand Marshal! With
Chelsea’s legal appeals beginning soon, she needs your support more than
ever!
* Help lead the Chelsea Manning parade contingent by holding our lead banner!
* Wave from the motorized cable car!
* Cheer on our Flash Mob Dancers!
* Help staff the Chelsea Manning booth at the TransMarch
Volunteers
are urgently needed to attend a one hour contingent monitor training
prior to parade day. Contingent monitors walk (or ride) along with us
during the parade to double-check everyone is following the parade rules
and being safe. SF Pride requires each contingent to provide their own
monitors to participate, and we’ll need about 20 monitors to
participate.
Organized by the Chelsea Manning Support Network and
Courage to Resist – Please contact us to list your organization as an
endorser! To RSVP, volunteer, and/or become a monitor, please contact:
melissa@couragetoresist.org / 510-488-3559
On Thursday, August 6, 2015 please join us for the Hiroshima
commemoration, rally and nonviolent direct action, 8 AM at Livermore
Lab, corner of Vasco Road and Patterson Pass Road in Livermore.
As we approach the 70th Anniversary of the U.S. atomic bombings of
Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan, Daniel Ellsberg, Country Joe McDonald,
Taiko drummers, A-bomb survivors and hundreds of peace advocates will
gather at the Livermore Nuclear Weapons Lab to shine light on the true
cost of the nuclear age. On this major anniversary, we will confront the
human, ethical, environmental, social and financial price that nuclear
weapons are extracting from us – and, indeed, from all life on earth.
And, together, we will act to change the future!
There will also be a pre-action organizing meeting in Berkeley on Saturday, July 11 at 10 AM.
For August 6 action and pre-action info…
We have downloadable fliers and more information on the web at:
http://www.trivalleycares.org/new/SaveDate.html
We have a Facebook page at:
August 6 Hiroshima Commemoration and Action at Livermore Lab
Please join us, let us know if your group would like to cosponsor the
August 6 commemoration, and help us publicize the event with your
members and friends.
More information, Tri-Valley CAREs, (925) 443-7148
www.trivalleycares.org
marylia@trivalleycares.org
Starting this September, Rising Tide
North America is calling for mass actions to shut down the economic and
political systems threatening our survival.
Already, hundreds of
thousands are streaming into the streets to fight back against climate
chaos, capitalism and white supremacy.
This wave of resistance
couldn’t be more urgent. To stop climate chaos we need a phenomenal
escalation in organizing, participation and tactical courage. We need a
profound social transformation to uproot the institutions of capitalism,
colonialism, patriarchy, and white supremacy, the systems that created
the climate crisis. And we need to link arms with allies fighting for
migrant justice, dignified work and pay, and an end to the
criminalization and brutal policing of black and brown bodies.
We need to #FloodTheSystem.
In
the lead up to the United Nations climate talks in Paris, in December,
we will escalate local and regional resistance against systems that
threaten our collective survival. Together, we will open alternative
paths to the failing negotiations of political elites.
This is
not another protest. It is a call for a massive economic and political
intervention. It is a call to build the relationships needed to sustain
our struggles for the long haul. To build popular power along the
intersections of race, class, gender and ability. To collectively
unleash our power and change everything.
The Story So Far
Over the past year, hundreds of thousands of people have flowed into the streets to fight back.
Fast
food workers in over a hundred cities went on strike, with thousands
arrested demanding $15 an hour and a union. Young people in Ferguson,
protesting the murder of Michael Brown by Darren Wilson, showed us the
power of sustained action as they fought back against state violence for
weeks, reinvigorating a national movement for Black liberation.
Hundreds of thousands of climate activists marched at the People’s
Climate March in New York, and the next day Flood Wall Street shut down
the heart of New York’s financial district.
Across the country,
and the world, powerful movements are using nonviolent direct action to
to disrupt business as usual and demand lasting systemic change.
These
moments show that broad mobilization and disruption are ways that we
can transform our society. It is time we move beyond conventional
strategies. Its time we connect across movements and #FloodTheSystem.
Rising
Tide North America and its allies call on communities, networks,
affinity groups and organizations across the continent to join together
this Fall to rapidly escalate the pace and scale of the anti-capitalist
climate justice movements.
We need to wash away the root causes
of climate change -- capitalism, white supremacy, patriarchy and
colonialism. These systems enable the domination of people and Earth.
They place gains for the elite before the well being of our communities.
To build the scale of movements necessary to take on this
challenge, we need everyone. Using sustained, coordinated direct action
we can bring more people into a movement for radical social
transformation than ever before.
The upcoming United Nations
meeting of the Conference of the Parties in Paris (COP 21) at the end of
the year provide us with an opportunity. Framed as climate negotiations
they are really about capitalism and the corporate elites. We have an
opportunity to focus the debate on capitalism itself as negotiators
wedded to and benefiting from the status quo refuse to discuss the
systems that drive the crisis. This is a natural moment to preemptively
highlight community resistance and radical alternatives in advance of
another colossal failure of international leadership. Through our
combined action we can turn the failure of these critical talks into a
moment in which the systemic nature of the crisis moves to the center
and in which our movements begin to connect and collaborate.
In
the past, the climate movement has repeatedly tried days of action and
one-day marches. While these have built important relationships, they
have not created the sustained movement swells we need. To lay the
groundwork for exponential movement growth we are asking groups to
convene Action Councils, like those forming in the Pacific Northwest,
California, Montana, Northeast and elsewhere, with the intention of
coming together to organize sustained actions beginning in late Summer,
continuing through November and beyond.
With luck, waves of
mobilizations breaking across the continent and world will build off
each other to create a flood of resistance to fossil fuel extraction,
capitalism and colonialism.
Vision
#FloodTheSystem invites the Rising Tide network, the larger climate
justice movements, and other non-climate focused groups to create a
flood of massive economic and political disruption of the systems that
allow the climate and economic crisis to continue to escalate. This is not a simple call to action or day of action, it’s a long-term process. We want to organize a series of actions that would:
Build a more robust anti-capitalist movement that clearly defines
climate change as a symptom of capitalism. Specifically, we hope to
support and catalyze regional organizing networks and relationships to
challenge extreme energy infrastructure and the systems of oppression
that enable it.
Build long term local, regional and continental networks that can
continue to coordinate, build connections between movements, and
escalate these fights in 2016 and beyond.
Begin to work closely with other movements through the analysis of
where our struggles intersect and through a commitment to
anti-oppressive organizing practices.
Share, implement and gain experience in innovative models of
horizontal movement structures and mass democracy in organizing that
will serve radical forces for the long haul.
Create a flood of energy within regions that inspires others to join
in with organic, spontaneous actions and organizing. Regional blocks of
escalating action are already planned that will lead into, and play
off, each other. More emerge everyday.
Preemptively highlight community resistance and real alternatives to
the fossil fuel economy ahead of the inevitable colossal failure by
global elites at the United Nations climate negotiations in Paris.
Principles
#FloodTheSystem will organize and act according to the following principles.
Anti-capitalism/colonialism/racism/patriarchy - We see the climate
crisis as a symptom of hierarchical social systems based upon domination
and exploitation of lands, and predominately people of color.
Addressing the crisis at its roots means joining with and supporting
those who are fighting for liberation from these and other oppressive
systems, and for their replacement with relations based upon equity,
mutual aid, and ecological stewardship.
Grassroots Led, NGOs in Support Role - Non-profits and NGOs often
function to co-opt and defuse resistance into reform-based avenues which
are amenable to the social systems we are ultimately seeking to
dismantle and replace. The priorities of this mobilization should be
driven by groups grounded in and accountable to the communities most
impacted by white supremacy, capitalism, and settler colonialism, with
NGOs in a support role -- not the other way around.
Community-Based Alternatives - Corporations, nation-states, and
multilateral institutions like the United Nations are integral pillars
upholding global capitalism and colonialism. We see alternatives to
extreme energy and the climate crisis arising out of social struggles
which challenge and seek to replace these institutions and their logics.
However, we recognize that there may be important defensive struggles
within the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, such as fighting
the expansion of carbon markets or advancing state recognition of
Indigenous land rights.
On
June 8, 2015 a federal judge granted Louisiana prisoner Albert Woodfox
unconditional release. Albert's conviction had already been overturned
three times - most recently in 2013 - yet every time the state has
appealed.
Today, Albert is still
behind bars after spending four decades in cruel, unjust solitary
confinement. He believes that he and fellow prisoners, Herman Wallace
and Robert King, were first placed in solitary confinement in
retaliation for their activism. All three men were members of the Black
Panther Party. Together, they came to be known as the Angola 3.
It
is time for the State of Louisiana to stop standing in the way of
justice. Call on Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal to ensure Albert's
cruel and unjust confinement is not his legacy.
Learn more
Amnesty for all those arrested demanding justice for Freddie Gray!
Amnesty for ALL those arrested demanding justice for Freddie Gray!
Sign and distribute the petition to drop the charges! Spread this effort with #Amnesty4Baltimore
"A riot is the language of the unheard" — Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
An
estimated 300 people have been arrested in Baltimore in the last two
weeks. Many have been brutalized, beaten and pepper-sprayed by police in
the streets, and held for days in inhumane conditions. Those arrested
include journalists, medics and legal observers.
One
individual arrested for property destruction of a police vehicle is now
facing life in prison and is being held on $500,000 bail. That's
$150,000 more than the officer charged with the murder of Freddie Gray.
The
legal system has made it clear that they care more about broken windows
than broken necks; more about a CVS than the lives of Baltimore's Black
residents.
They showed no hesitation in arresting Baltimore's
protesters and rebels, and sending in the National Guard, but took 19
days to put a single one of the killer cops in handcuffs. This was the
outrageous double standard that led to the Baltimore Uprising.
Sign the petition to drop the charges on all who have been arrested.
Petition to Baltimore Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake
Mayor Stephanie C. Rawlings-Blake
City Hall, Room 250,
100 North Holliday St.,
Baltimore, MD 21202
Dear Mayor Rawlings-Blake:
I stand in solidarity with those in Baltimore who are demanding that
all charges be dropped against those who rose up against racism, police
brutality, oppressive social conditions and delay of justice in the case
of Freddie Gray. The whole world now recognizes that were it not for
this powerful grassroots movement, in all its forms, there would be no
indictment.
It is an outrage that peaceful protesters have been brutalized,
beaten and pepper-sprayed by police in the streets, and held for days
in inhumane conditions. Those arrested include journalists and legal
observers.
Even the youth who are charged with property destruction and looting
should be given an amnesty. There is no reason a teenager -- provoked by
racists and justifiably angry -- should be facing life in prison for
breaking the windows of a police car.
The City of Baltimore should work to rectify the conditions that led
to this Uprising, rather than criminalizing those who took action in
response to those conditions. Drop the charges now!
Dear President Obama, Senators, and Members of Congress:
Americans
now owe $1.3 trillion in student debt. Eighty-six percent of that money
is owed to the United States government. This is a crushing burden for
more than 40 million Americans and their families.
I urge you to take immediate action to forgive all student debt, public and private.
American Federation of Teachers
Campaign for America's Future
Courage Campaign
Daily Kos
Democracy for America
LeftAction
Project Springboard
RH Reality Check
RootsAction
Student Debt Crisis
The Nation
Working Families
Mumia
Abu-Jamal's will to live and his commitment to telling the truth is
matched by our collective resolve to see him well and free.
Please
take action again. Please know that your calls, letters, emails, and
faxes (even the ones that they hang up on or seem to ignore) are the
only reason that he was given diagnostic testing. Mumia is still weak,
in a wheelchair, and his legs are bandaged heavily. He has still not
been given a diagnosis or a treatment plan. Mumia needs a plan that will
address the underlying causes of his chronic and potentially life
threatening conditions. Please know that his mind is clear, and his
energy is returning. He sends his love and his understanding- that
because you took action, he is alive.
Mumia spent nine days
Geisinger Medical Center in Danville PA, and is now back in the
infirmary at SCI Mahanoy. Our actions today will ensure that Mumia
receives the urgent diagnosis and medical treatment.
In the
latest outrage, the Pennsylvania Department of Corrections is refusing
to release Mumia's medical records. Their excuse- that Bret Grote from
the Abolitionist Law Center and co-counsel Bob Boyle went to federal
court to demand that his lawyers and family be allowed to advise and see
him while he was hospitalized. Holding Mumia's medical records is
simply retaliation for exercising his constitutional right to access to
the courts.
And It is a direct attack on his ability to get
expert advice and care. They are preventing Mumia and his doctor from
seeing these critical records, at a time when his condition, while
stable, remains serious.
Act Now.
1. Call the Prison, the Governor, and the DOC. Demand that they release Mumia's medical records immediately (see numbers below).
2.
Make a Gift to Prison Radio. We took a risk: we fronted $4K dollars so
that we could place a full page Ad in The Nation Magazine. It appears in
the June 1st issue. Stand with us as we amplify this message. Please
give now. Then sign this important letter.
3. Make a gift to
Mumia Abu-Jamal's Medical and Legal Fund. Help us get independent
medical care for Mumia. We are still in need of funds for life
sustaining advocacy and care. Click here to give.
Call, write and fax today!
John Kerestes, Superintendent SCI Mahanoy
Address: 301 Morea Road, Frackville, PA 17932
Phone: 570-773-2158 x8102
Fax: 570-783-2008
Secretary John Wetzel, Pennsylvania Department of Corrections
Address: 1920 Technology Parkway, Mechanicsburg, PA 17050
Phone: 717-728-4109, 717-728-2573
E-mail: ra-crpadocsecretary@pa.gov
Pennsylvania Governor Tom Wolf
Address: 508 Main Capitol Building, Harrisburg, PA 17120
Phone: 717-787-2500
Fax: 717-772-8284
Email: governor@pa.gov
Your
support of Prison Radio allowed us to recently record: Mumia Abu-Jamal,
Kenneth Hartman, Reverend Edward Pinkney, Shaka Zulu, Jane Dorotik,
Bill Dunne, Bryant Arroyo, Troy Thomas, Mondo We Langa (David Rice), and
more.
Mumia's and other commentators' searing truth is needed on the radio. Listen to these commentaries at prisonradio.org.
Mumia Abu-Jamal:
137 Shots (2:00)
Kenneth Hartman:
Stop Strip Searching My Mom (4:21)
Bryant Arroyo:
The Unconstitutional AEDPA (11:06)
As
you know, we are pulling out all the stops to free Mumia and keep him
alive. Together with International Concerned Friends and Family of Mumia
Abu-Jamal & the Free Mumia Abu-Jamal Coalition (NYC) we placed this
full page Ad in The Nation Magazine. Please print it out and share it
with friends. Please sign it at bit.ly/OpenLetterForMumia. Please help
us print this Ad. It is costing $4K to design, print and motivate.
Please take a moment to help Prison Radio make it happen, by sending a
gift now.
Support Prison Radio
$35 to become a member.
$50 to become a member and receive a beautiful tote bag. Or call us to special order a yoga mat bag.
$100 to become a member and receive the DVD "Mumia: Long Distance Revolutionary."
$300 to become a member and bring one essay to the airwaves.
$1,000 (or $88 per month) will make you a member of our Prison Radio Freedom Circle. Thank you!
Support Prison Radio
To give by check:
Prison Radio/Redwood Justice Fund
PO Box 411074
San Francisco, CA
94141
Stock or legacy gifts:
Noelle Hanrahan
(415) 706 - 5222
Prison Radio is a project of the Redwood Justice Fund a CA 501c3 non profit.
Prison
Radio has recorded Mumia and other political prisoners for over 25
years, and we are pulling out all the stops to keep these voices on the
air.
Please donate today to amplify prisoners' voices far and wide beyond the bars:
Support Prison Radio: prisonradio.org/donate
Defeat SB 508: bit.ly/defendfreespeech
The Labor Action Committee to Free Mumia Abu-Jamal Mobilizes Support Internationally:
No Execution by Medical
Neglect!
International Unions Demand Decent Medical Treatment for Mumia
Abu-Jamal
June 2, 2015
Mumia Abu-Jamal was recently sent back
to prison after having been hospitalized for the second time. There
are some reports that his health is improving. He said to Suzanne
Ross of the International Concerned Friends and Family of Mumia
Abu-Jamal that “if there had not been an international outcry about
the lack of appropriate treatment, in fact AGAINST the 'treatment'
that was bringing him so close to death, he was sure he would not be
alive today”.
In some good news, he was also told by the
prison doctor that his biopsy results came back negative.
However, neither Mumia nor his wife,
lawyers or consulting doctors have been seen the actual medical
reports detailing his condition. The Department of Corrections
refuses to hand over his medical records, claiming that they don't
have to hand them over because there is litigation to have them
released! Denying Mumia and his family his medical records is an
outrage!
We would like to inform you about some recent actions
taken by unions around the world on behalf of Mumia.
- Unite,
the largest union in the UK, representing over 1.4 million members,
wrote letters to Governor Tom Wolf, Department of Corrections
Secretary John Wetzel and Legal Counsel Theron Perez protesting
Mumia's treatment.
- The International Dockworkers Council,
representing 90,000 dockworkers from affiliated unions around the
world, wrote an appeal to the labor movement calling for action on
behalf of Mumia.
- The
Inlandboatmen's Union of the Pacificsent
a protest letter to Department of Corrections Secretary John
Wetzel.
We hope that you will continue to take action on
behalf of Mumia. Please call and email Department of Corrections
Secretary John Wetzel and demand the following:
1) Mumia
Abu-Jamal is an innocent man! He should be freed immediatel
2)
Confirm what Mumia's medical condition is. Release his medical
records to his family and lawyers!
3) Allow Mumia to be given
medical treatment from a doctor of his choice. His doctor should be
allowed to conduct an on-site medical examination, to communicate by
phone with Mumia, and to communicate freely with prison medical
staff.
4) Allow Mumia daily visits from his family, friends
and lawyers!
5) Conduct an independent investigation of
healthcare treatment inside the Pennsylvania prison
system!DEPARTMENT
OF CORRECTIONS, SECRETARY JOHN WETZEL 717
728 4109
We are also
attaching a sample union resolution for you to use as a template.
Please consider submitting it to your union and asking them to take
action on behalf of Mumia. We would also be happy to work with you
and make a presentation to your union or community group about his
condition.
JANUARY
1, 2015—The prosecutor has run away from (almost) every issue raised in
my PCRA by begging the Court to dismiss everything as “untimely”. When
they don’t do this, they suggest that me and my lawyers were
“defamatory” towards either my former prosecutor Christopher Abruzzo or
Detective Kevin Duffin, in our claims they withheld, misused or hid
evidence of my Innocence, in order to secure an unjust conviction in
this case. If I charged, a year ago, that about a dozen AGs (attorneys
general) were involved in circulating porno via their office computers,
people would’ve laughed at me, and seen me as crazy.
But,
guess what? During 2014, we learned that this was the truth. How can it
be defamatory to speak the truth? Notice the OAG (Office of Attorney
General), never said the obvious: That AG Abruzzo didn’t inform the
Defense about the relationship between his Motive Witness and his head
detective (Victoria Doubs and Det. Duffin); that Det. Duffin doesn’t
deny Doubs was his god-sister, and that she lived in his family home, or
that he assisted her whenever she got into trouble.
Why
not? Because it is true. How can you defame someone who defames
himself? Mr. Christopher Abruzzo, Esq., when a member of the higher
ranks of the OAG, sent and/or received copious amounts of porno to other
attorneys general and beyond. What does this say about his sense of
judgment? He thought enough about his behavior to resign from his post
in the Governor’s Cabinet. If he thought that his behavior was okay,
he’d still be sitting in the Governor’s cabinet, right? The OAG cannot
honestly oppose anything we’ve argued, but they try by seeking to get
the Court to do their dirty work, how? By denying an Evidentiary Hearing
to prove every point we’ve claimed.
The prosecution is
trying desperately to avoid dealing with the substance of my claims in
Com. v. Lorenzo Johnson. So, they slander my Legal Team and blame them
for defaming the good AG’s and Cops involved with this case. They try to
do what is undeniable, to deny that they hid evidence from the Defense
for years. They blamed me for daring to protest the hidden evidence of
their malfeasance and other acts to sabotage the defense. They claim
that they had an “Open File” policy with my trial counsel. But “Open
File” is more than letting an attorney read something in their office.
If it’s a search for the truth it must include what is turned over to
the attorney, for how do we really know what was shown to her?
They
say it is inconceivable that an attorney would read a file, beginning
on page nine (9), and not ask for the preceding eight (8) pages. Yet, it
is conceivable if trial counsel was ineffective for not demanding the
record of the first eight pages. Pages that identify the State’s only
witness as a “SUSPECT” in the murder for which her client was charged!
How could such an attorney fail to recognize the relevance of such an
issue, barring their sheer Ineffectiveness and frankly, Incompetence.
By
seeking to avoid an evidentiary hearing, the prosecution seeks to avoid
evidence of their wrongdoing being made plain, for all to see. If they
believe I’m wrong, why not prove it? They can’t. So they shout I filed
my appeal untimely, as if there can ever justly be a rule that precludes
an innocent from proving his innocence! Not to mention the fact that
the prosecution has failed to even mention the positive finger prints
that ay my trial they said none existed. Don’t try to hide it with a
lame argument about time. When isn’t there a time for truth? The
prosecution should be ashamed of itself for taking this road. It is
unworthy of an office that claims to seek justice.
After
the trial verdict The Patriot-News (March 18, 1997) reported, “Deputy
Attorney General Christopher Abruzzo admitted there were some serious
concerns about the strength of the evidence against Johnson and praised
the jury for doing a thorough job.” I guess he forgot to mention all of
the evidence he left out to show Innocence.
Now, more than ever, Lorenzo Johnson needs your support.
Publicize his case; bring it to your friends, clubs, religious
On
December 15, 2014 the Rev. Edward Pinkney of Benton Harbor, Michigan
was thrown into prison for 2.5 to 10 years. This 66-year-old leading
African American activist was tried and convicted in front of an
all-white jury and racist white judge and prosecutor for supposedly
altering 5 dates on a recall petition against the mayor of Benton
Harbor.
The prosecutor, with the judge’s approval,
repeatedly told the jury “you don’t need evidence to convict Mr.
Pinkney.” And ABSOLUTELY NO EVIDENCE WAS EVER PRESENTED THAT TIED REV.
PINKNEY TO THE ‘ALTERED’ PETITIONS. Rev. Pinkney was immediately led
away in handcuffs and thrown into Jackson Prison.
This is an outrageous charge. It is an outrageous conviction. It is an even more outrageous sentence! It must be appealed.
With your help supporters need to raise $20,000 for Rev. Pinkney’s appeal.
Checks
can be made out to BANCO (Black Autonomy Network Community
Organization). This is the organization founded by Rev. Pinkney. Mail
them to: Mrs. Dorothy Pinkney, 1940 Union Street, Benton Harbor, MI
49022.
Donations can be accepted on-line at bhbanco.org – press the donate button.
For information on the decade long campaign to destroy Rev. Pinkney go to bhbanco.org and workers.org(search “Pinkney”).
We urge your support to the efforts to Free Rev. Pinkney!Ramsey Clark – Former U.S. attorney general,
Cynthia McKinney – Former member of U.S. Congress,
Lynne Stewart – Former political prisoner and human rights attorney
Ralph Poynter – New Abolitionist Movement,
Abayomi Azikiwe – Editor, Pan-African News Wire<
Larry Holmes – Peoples Power Assembly,
David Sole – Michigan Emergency Committee Against War & Injustice
Sara Flounders – International Action Center
MESSAGE FROM REV. PINKNEY
I
am now in Marquette prison over 15 hours from wife and family, sitting
in prison for a crime that was never committed. Judge Schrock and Mike
Sepic both admitted there was no evidence against me but now I sit in
prison facing 30 months. Schrock actually stated that he wanted to make
an example out of me. (to scare Benton Harbor residents even more...)
ONLY IN AMERICA. I now have an army to help fight Berrien County. When I
arrived at Jackson state prison on Dec. 15, I met several hundred
people from Detroit, Flint, Kalamazoo, and Grand Rapids. Some people
recognized me. There was an outstanding amount of support given by the
prison inmates. When I was transported to Marquette Prison it took 2
days. The prisoners knew who I was. One of the guards looked me up on
the internet and said, "who would believe Berrien County is this
racist."
Background to Campaign to free Rev. Pinkney
Michigan
political prisoner the Rev. Edward Pinkney is a victim of racist
injustice. He was sentenced to 30 months to 10 years for supposedly
changing the dates on 5 signatures on a petition to recall Benton Harbor
Mayor James Hightower.
No material or circumstantial
evidence was presented at the trial that would implicate Pinkney in the
purported5 felonies. Many believe that Pinkney, a Berrien County
activist and leader of the Black Autonomy Network Community Organization
(BANCO), is being punished by local authorities for opposing the
corporate plans of Whirlpool Corp, headquartered in Benton Harbor,
Michigan.
In 2012, Pinkney and BANCO led an “Occupy the
PGA [Professional Golfers’ Association of America]” demonstration
against a world-renowned golf tournament held at the newly created Jack
Nicklaus Signature Golf Course on the shoreline of Lake Michigan. The
course was carved out of Jean Klock Park, which had been donated to the
city of Benton Harbor decades ago.
Berrien County
officials were determined to defeat the recall campaign against Mayor
Hightower, who opposed a program that would have taxed local
corporations in order to create jobs and improve conditions in Benton
Harbor, a majority African-American municipality. Like other Michigan
cities, it has been devastated by widespread poverty and unemployment.
The
Benton Harbor corporate power structure has used similar fraudulent
charges to stop past efforts to recall or vote out of office the racist
white officials, from mayor, judges, prosecutors in a majority Black
city. Rev Pinkney who always quotes scripture, as many Christian
ministers do, was even convicted for quoting scripture in a newspaper
column. This outrageous conviction was overturned on appeal. We must do
this again!
To sign the petition in support of the Rev. Edward Pinkney, log on to: tinyurl.com/ps4lwyn.
Contributions for Rev. Pinkney’s defense can be sent to BANCO at Mrs Dorothy Pinkney, 1940 Union St., Benton Harbor, MI 49022
New Action--write letters to DoD officials requesting clemency for Chelsea!
Secretary of the Army John McHugh
President Obama has delegated review of Chelsea Manning’s clemency appeal to individuals within the Department of Defense.
Please
write them to express your support for heroic WikiLeaks’ whistle-blower
former US Army intelligence analyst PFC Chelsea Manning’s release from
military prison.
It is important that each of these
authorities realize the wide support that Chelsea (formerly Bradley)
Manning enjoys worldwide. They need to be reminded that millions
understand that Manning is a political prisoner, imprisoned for
following her conscience. While it is highly unlikely that any of these
individuals would independently move to release Manning, a reduction in
Manning’s outrageous 35-year prison sentence is a possibility at this
stage.
Take action TODAY – Write letters supporting Chelsea’s clemency petition to the following DoD authorities:
Secretary of the Army John McHugh
101 Army Pentagon
Washington, DC 20310-0101
The Judge Advocate General
2200 Army Pentagon
Washington, DC 20310-2200
Army Clemency and Parole Board
251 18th St, Suite 385
Arlington, VA 22202-3532
Directorate of Inmate Administration
Attn: Boards Branch
U.S. Disciplinary Barracks
1301 N. Warehouse Road
Fort Leavenworth, KS 66027-2304
Suggestions for letters send to DoD officials:
The
letter should focus on your support for Chelsea Manning, and especially
why you believe justice will be served if Chelsea Manning’s sentence is
reduced. The letter should NOT be anti-military as this will be
unlikely to help.
A suggested message: “Chelsea Manning
has been punished enough for violating military regulations in the
course of being true to her conscience. I urge you to use your
authorityto reduce Pvt. Manning’s sentence to time served.” Beyond that
general message, feel free to personalize the details as to why you
believe Chelsea deserves clemency.
Consider composing
your letter on personalized letterhead -you can create this yourself
(here are templates and some tips for doing that).
A comment on this post will NOT be seen by DoD authorities–please send your letters to the addresses above
This
clemency petition is separate from Chelsea Manning’s upcoming appeal
before the US Army Court of Criminal Appeals next year, where Manning’s
new attorney Nancy Hollander will have an opportunity to highlight the
prosecution’s—and the trial judge’s—misconduct during last year’s trial
at Ft. Meade, Maryland.
Help us continue to cover 100% of Chelsea’s legal fees at this critical stage!
Courage to Resist
484 Lake Park Ave. #41
Oakland, CA 94610
510-488-3559
couragetoresist.org
1) Violent History: Attacks on Black Churches
New York Times Interactive
June 19, 2015
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2015/06/18/us/19blackchurch.html?action=click&contentCollection=U.S.&module=RelatedCoverage®ion=Marginalia&pgtype=article
10) For the New Superrich, Life Is Much More Than a Beach
By ROBERT FRANK
11) In Bed-Stuy Housing Market, Profit and Preservation Battle
By GINIA BELLAFANTE
12) In Charleston, a Millennial Race Terrorist
By Charles M. Blow
13) ‘The Condition of Black Life Is One of Mourning’
The murder of
three men and six women at a church in Charleston is a national tragedy,
but in America, the killing of black people is an unending spectacle.
By CLAUDIA RANKINE
14) Risk of Extreme Weather From Climate Change to Rise Over Next Century, Report Says
1) Violent History: Attacks on Black Churches
New York Times Interactive
June 19, 2015
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2015/06/18/us/19blackchurch.html?action=click&contentCollection=U.S.&module=RelatedCoverage®ion=Marginalia&pgtype=article
The killing of nine people
at the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, S.C.,
is among a long list of attacks targeting predominantly black churches
in the United States. A number of past cases involved the burning of
churches by Ku Klux Klan members. Here is a selection of those attacks:
Photo
The burned out Macedonia Church of God in Christ in Springfield, Mass., in November 2008.
Credit
Ángel Franco/The New York Times
Nov. 5, 2008
Springfield, Mass.
Macedonia Church of God in Christ
The predominantly black church, which was under construction, was set
on fire shortly after the election of President Obama. Of the three
white men charged, two pleaded guilty and a third was convicted and
sentenced to 13 years in prison.
Investigators searched for clues in the rubble of the Inner City Church in Knoxville, Tenn., on Jan. 9, 1996.
Credit
J. Miles Cary/Knoxville News-Sentinel, via Associated Press
Jan. 8, 1996
Knoxville, Tenn.
Inner City Baptist Church
A fire destroyed the sanctuary of the church and racial slurs were
painted on the walls. Molotov cocktails, cans of kerosene and gunpowder
were discovered in the rubble.
A group of churches within a six-mile radius — Cypress Grove Baptist,
St. Paul's Free Baptist and Thomas Chapel Benevolent Society in East
Baton Rouge as well as Sweet Home Baptist in Baker — were set on fire on
the anniversary of the sit-in in Greensboro, N.C.
Four former members of the Ku Klux Klan set fire to the church, one
of several burned by arsonists in the mid-1990s. A fire was set the day
before at the Mount Zion A.M.E. Church in Greeleyville, S.C. Macedonia
Baptist was awarded $37.8 million in a decision against the Klan. A jury
believed the Klan's rhetoric motivated the men to set the fire.
The
fire was one of dozens at predominantly black churches across the South
that were investigated as arson. A list compiled by The Associated
Press is here.
The burned station wagon of three missing civil rights workers —
including Michael Schwerner — found in a swampy area near Philadelphia,
Miss., June 24, 1964.
Credit
Jack Thornell/Associated Press
June 16, 1964
Longdale, Miss.
Mount Zion A.M.E. Church
The Ku Klux Klan beat parishioners as they were leaving a church
meeting. The Klan's intended target was a civil rights activist, Michael
Schwerner, who was not there. The wood-framed church, a historic safe
haven for slaves, was burned down.
On June 21, Mr. Schwerner and
two other civil rights workers drove to visit the burned church.
Afterward, they were pulled over, arrested and jailed. After their
release, they were beaten and killed. The mysterious disappearance and
murder of the three men were detailed in the film "Mississippi Burning."
The family of Carole Robertson, a 14-year-old girl killed in the bombing
of the 16th Street Baptist Church, at her funeral in Birmingham,
Ala., Sept. 17, 1963.
Credit
Horace Cort/Associated Press
September 15, 1963
Birmingham, Ala.
16th Street Church
The Ku Klux Klan set off a bomb under the steps of the church,
killing four young girls and injuring more than 20 other members of the
church. The 16th Street Baptist Church served as a civil rights meeting
place in the 1960s and a center for the African-American community in
Birmingham.
The attack brought national and international attention to the struggle for civil rights in Alabama.
The National Low Income Housing Coalition's
annual housing report has been released and it once again shows the
dramatic divide between average housing prices and income in the United
States.
In order to afford a modest, two-bedroom apartment in the
U.S., renters need to earn a wage of $19.35 per hour. In 13 states and
the District of Columbia they need to earn more than $20 per hour. The
Housing Wage for a two-bedroom unit is more than two and a half times
the federal minimum wage of $7.25, and $4 more than the estimated
average wage of $15.16 earned by renters nationwide.
Take a look at the NLIHC maps to see how your state stacks up:
13) ‘The Condition of Black Life Is One of Mourning’
The murder of
three men and six women at a church in Charleston is a national tragedy,
but in America, the killing of black people is an unending spectacle.
By CLAUDIA RANKINE
A
friend recently told me that when she gave birth to her son, before
naming him, before even nursing him, her first thought was, I have to
get him out of this country. We both laughed. Perhaps our black humor
had to do with understanding that getting out was neither an option nor
the real desire. This is it, our life. Here we work, hold citizenship,
pensions, health insurance, family, friends and on and on. She couldn’t,
she didn’t leave. Years after his birth, whenever her son steps out of
their home, her status as the mother of a living human being remains as
precarious as ever. Added to the natural fears of every parent facing
the randomness of life is this other knowledge of the ways in which
institutional racism works in our country. Ours was the laughter of
vulnerability, fear, recognition and an absurd stuckness.
I asked
another friend what it’s like being the mother of a black son. “The
condition of black life is one of mourning,” she said bluntly. For her,
mourning lived in real time inside her and her son’s reality: At any
moment she might lose her reason for living. Though the white liberal
imagination likes to feel temporarily bad about black suffering, there
really is no mode of empathy that can replicate the daily strain of
knowing that as a black person you can be killed for simply being black:
no hands in your pockets, no playing music, no sudden movements, no
driving your car, no walking at night, no walking in the day, no turning
onto this street, no entering this building, no standing your ground,
no standing here, no standing there, no talking back, no playing with
toy guns, no living while black.
Eleven days after I was born, on
Sept. 15, 1963, four black girls were killed in the bombing of the 16th
Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Ala. Now, 52 years later, six
black women and three black men have been shot to death while at a
Bible-study meeting at the historic Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal
Church in Charleston, S.C. They were killed by a homegrown terrorist,
self-identifed as a white supremacist, who might also be a “disturbed
young man” (as various news outlets have described him). It has been
reported that a black woman and her 5-year-old granddaughter survived
the shooting by playing dead. They are two of the three survivors of the
attack. The white family of the suspect says that for them this is a
difficult time. This is indisputable. But for African-American families,
this living in a state of mourning and fear remains commonplace.
The
spectacle of the shooting suggests an event out of time, as if the
killing of black people with white-supremacist justification interrupts
anything other than regular television programming. But Dylann Storm
Roof did not create himself from nothing. He has grown up with the
rhetoric and orientation of racism. He has seen white men like Benjamin
F. Haskell, Thomas Gleason and Michael Jacques plead guilty to, or be
convicted of, burning Macedonia Church of God in Christ in Springfield,
Mass., just hours after President Obama was elected. Every racist
statement he has made he could have heard all his life. He, along with
the rest of us, has been living with slain black bodies.
We live
in a country where Americans assimilate corpses in their daily comings
and goings. Dead blacks are a part of normal life here. Dying in ship
hulls, tossed into the Atlantic, hanging from trees, beaten, shot in
churches, gunned down by the police or warehoused in prisons:
Historically, there is no quotidian without the enslaved, chained or
dead black body to gaze upon or to hear about or to position a self
against. When blacks become overwhelmed by our culture’s disorder and
protest (ultimately to our own detriment, because protest gives the
police justification to militarize, as they did in Ferguson), the
wrongheaded question that is asked is, What kind of savages are we?
Rather than, What kind of country do we live in?
In 1955, when
Emmett Till’s mutilated and bloated body was recovered from the
Tallahatchie River and placed for burial in a nailed-shut pine box, his
mother, Mamie Till Mobley, demanded his body be transported from
Mississippi, where Till had been visiting relatives, to his home in
Chicago. Once the Chicago funeral home received the body, she made a
decision that would create a new pathway for how to think about a
lynched body. She requested an open coffin and allowed photographs to be
taken and published of her dead son’s disfigured body.
Mobley’s
refusal to keep private grief private allowed a body that meant nothing
to the criminal-justice system to stand as evidence. By placing both
herself and her son’s corpse in positions of refusal relative to the
etiquette of grief, she “disidentified” with the tradition of the
lynched figure left out in public view as a warning to the black
community, thereby using the lynching tradition against itself. The
spectacle of the black body, in her hands, publicized the injustice
mapped onto her son’s corpse. “Let the people see what I see,” she said,
adding, “I believe that the whole United States is mourning with me.”
It’s
very unlikely that her belief in a national mourning was fully
realized, but her desire to make mourning enter our day-to-day world was
a new kind of logic. In refusing to look away from the flesh of our
domestic murders, by insisting we look with her upon the dead, she
reframed mourning as a method of acknowledgment that helped energize the
civil rights movement in the 1950s and ’60s.
The decision not to
release photos of the crime scene in Charleston, perhaps out of
deference to the families of the dead, doesn’t forestall our mourning.
But in doing so, the bodies that demonstrate all too tragically that
“black skin is not a weapon” (as one protest poster read last year) are
turned into an abstraction. It’s one thing to imagine nine black bodies
bleeding out on a church floor, and another thing to see it. The lack of
visual evidence remains in contrast to what we saw in Ferguson, where
the police, in their refusal to move Michael Brown’s body, perhaps
unknowingly continued where Till’s mother left off.
After Brown
was shot six times, twice in the head, his body was left facedown in the
street by the police officers. Whatever their reasoning, by not moving
Brown’s corpse for four hours after his shooting, the police made
mourning his death part of what it meant to take in the details of his
story. No one could consider the facts of Michael Brown’s interaction
with the Ferguson police officer Darren Wilson without also thinking of
the bullet-riddled body bleeding on the asphalt. It would be a mistake
to presume that everyone who saw the image mourned Brown, but once
exposed to it, a person had to decide whether his dead black body
mattered enough to be mourned. (Another option, of course, is that it
becomes a spectacle for white pornography: the dead body as an object
that satisfies an illicit desire. Perhaps this is where Dylann Storm
Roof stepped in.)
Black Lives Matter, the movement founded by the
activists Alicia Garza, Patrisse Cullors and Opal Tometi, began with
the premise that the incommensurable experiences of systemic racism
creates an unequal playing field. The American imagination has never
been able to fully recover from its white-supremacist beginnings.
Consequently, our laws and attitudes have been straining against the
devaluation of the black body. Despite good intentions, the associations
of blackness with inarticulate, bestial criminality persist beneath the
appearance of white civility. This assumption both frames and
determines our individual interactions and experiences as citizens.
The
American tendency to normalize situations by centralizing whiteness was
consciously or unconsciously demonstrated again when certain whites,
like the president of Smith College, sought to alter the language of
“Black Lives Matter” to “All Lives Matter.” What on its surface was
intended to be interpreted as a humanist move — “aren’t we all just
people here?” — didn’t take into account a system inured to black
corpses in our public spaces. When the judge in the Charleston bond
hearing for Dylann Storm Roof called for support of Roof’s family, it
was also a subtle shift away from valuing the black body in our time of
deep despair.
Anti-black racism is in the culture. It’s in our
laws, in our advertisements, in our friendships, in our segregated
cities, in our schools, in our Congress, in our scientific experiments,
in our language, on the Internet, in our bodies no matter our race, in
our communities and, perhaps most devastatingly, in our justice system.
The unarmed, slain black bodies in public spaces turn grief into our
everyday feeling that something is wrong everywhere and all the time,
even if locally things appear normal. Having coffee, walking the dog,
reading the paper, taking the elevator to the office, dropping the kids
off at school: All of this good life is surrounded by the ambient
feeling that at any given moment, a black person is being killed in the
street or in his home by the armed hatred of a fellow American.
The
Black Lives Matter movement can be read as an attempt to keep mourning
an open dynamic in our culture because black lives exist in a state of
precariousness. Mourning then bears both the vulnerability inherent in
black lives and the instability regarding a future for those lives.
Unlike earlier black-power movements that tried to fight or segregate
for self-preservation, Black Lives Matter aligns with the dead,
continues the mourning and refuses the forgetting in front of all of us.
If the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.’s civil rights movement made demands
that altered the course of American lives and backed up those demands
with the willingness to give up your life in service of your civil
rights, with Black Lives Matter, a more internalized change is being
asked for: recognition.
The truth, as I see it, is that if black
men and women, black boys and girls, mattered, if we were seen as
living, we would not be dying simply because whites don’t like us. Our
deaths inside a system of racism existed before we were born. The legacy
of black bodies as property and subsequently three-fifths human
continues to pollute the white imagination. To inhabit our citizenry
fully, we have to not only understand this, but also grasp it. In the words of playwright Lorraine Hansberry,
“The problem is we have to find some way with these dialogues to show
and to encourage the white liberal to stop being a liberal and become an
American radical.” And, as my friend the critic and poet Fred Moten has
written: “I believe in the world and want to be in it. I want to be in
it all the way to the end of it because I believe in another world and I
want to be in that.” This other world, that world, would presumably be
one where black living matters. But we can’t get there without fully
recognizing what is here.
Dylann Storm Roof’s unmediated hatred
of black people; Black Lives Matter; citizens’ videotaping the killings
of blacks; the Ferguson Police Department leaving Brown’s body in the
street — all these actions support Mamie Till Mobley’s belief that we
need to see or hear the truth. We need the truth of how the bodies died
to interrupt the course of normal life. But if keeping the dead at the
forefront of our consciousness is crucial for our body politic, what of
the families of the dead? How must it feel to a family member for the
deceased to be more important as evidence than as an individual to be
buried and laid to rest?
Michael Brown’s mother, Lesley
McSpadden, was kept away from her son’s body because it was evidence.
She was denied the rights of a mother, a sad fact reminiscent of
pre-Civil War times, when as a slave she would have had no legal claim
to her offspring. McSpadden learned of her new identity as a mother of a
dead son from bystanders: “There were some girls down there had
recorded the whole thing,” she told reporters. One girl, she said,
“showed me a picture on her phone. She said, ‘Isn’t that your son?’ I
just bawled even harder. Just to see that, my son lying there lifeless,
for no apparent reason.” Circling the perimeter around her son’s body,
McSpadden tried to disperse the crowd: “All I want them to do is pick up
my baby.”
McSpadden, unlike Mamie Till Mobley, seemed to have
little desire to expose her son’s corpse to the media. Her son was not
an orphan body for everyone to look upon. She wanted him covered and
removed from sight. He belonged to her, her baby. After Brown’s corpse
was finally taken away, two weeks passed before his family was able to
see him. This loss of control and authority might explain why after
Brown’s death, McSpadden was supposedly in the precarious position of
accosting vendors selling T-shirts that demanded justice for Michael
Brown that used her son’s name. Not only were the procedures around her
son’s corpse out of her hands; his name had been commoditized and
assimilated into our modes of capitalism.
Some of McSpadden’s
neighbors in Ferguson also wanted to create distance between themselves
and the public life of Brown’s death. They did not need a constant
reminder of the ways black bodies don’t matter to law-enforcement
officers in their neighborhood. By the request of the community, the
original makeshift memorial — with flowers, pictures, notes and teddy
bears — was finally removed by Brown’s father on what would have been
his birthday and replaced by an official plaque installed on the
sidewalk next to where Brown died. The permanent reminder can be engaged
or stepped over, depending on the pedestrian’s desires.
In order
to be away from the site of the murder of her son, Tamir Rice, Samaria
moved out of her Cleveland home and into a homeless shelter. (Her family
eventually relocated her.) “The whole world has seen the same video
like I’ve seen,” she said about Tamir’s being shot by a police officer.
The video, which was played and replayed in the media, documented the
two seconds it took the police to arrive and shoot; the two seconds that
marked the end of her son’s life and that became a document to be
examined by everyone. It’s possible this shared scrutiny explains why
the police held his 12-year-old body for six months after his death.
Everyone could see what the police would have to explain away. The
justice system wasn’t able to do it, and a judge found probable cause to
charge the officer who shot Rice with murder. Meanwhile, for Samaria
Rice, her unburied son’s memory made her neighborhood unbearable.
Regardless
of the wishes of these mothers — mothers of men like Brown, John
Crawford III or Eric Garner, and also mothers of women and girls like
Rekia Boyd and Aiyana Stanley-Jones, each of whom was killed by the
police — their children’s deaths will remain within the public
discourse. For those who believe the same behavior that got them killed
if exhibited by a white man or boy would not have ended his life, the
subsequent failure to indict or convict the police officers involved in
these various cases requires that public mourning continue and remain
present indefinitely. “I want to see a cop shoot a white unarmed
teenager in the back,” Toni Morrison said in April. She went on to say:
“I want to see a white man convicted for raping a black woman. Then when
you ask me, ‘Is it over?’ I will say yes.” Morrison is right to suggest
that this action would signal change, but the real change needs to be a
rerouting of interior belief. It’s an individual challenge that needs
to happen before any action by a political justice system would signify
true societal change.
The Charleston murders alerted us to the
reality that a system so steeped in anti-black racism means that on any
given day it can be open season on any black person — old or young, man,
woman or child. There exists no equivalent reality for white Americans.
The Confederate battle flag continues to fly at South Carolina’s
statehouse as a reminder of a history marked by lynched black bodies. We
can distance ourselves from this fact until the next horrific killing,
but we won’t be able to outrun it. History’s authority over us is not
broken by maintaining a silence about its continued effects.
A
sustained state of national mourning for black lives is called for in
order to point to the undeniability of their devaluation. The hope is
that recognition will break a momentum that laws haven’t altered. Susie
Jackson; Sharonda Coleman-Singleton; DePayne Middleton-Doctor; Ethel Lee
Lance; the Rev. Daniel Lee Simmons Sr.; the Rev. Clementa C. Pinckney;
Cynthia Hurd; Tywanza Sanders and Myra Thompson were murdered because
they were black. It’s extraordinary how ordinary our grief sits inside
this fact. One friend said, “I am so afraid, every day.” Her son’s
childhood feels impossible, because he will have to be — has to be — so
much more careful. Our mourning, this mourning, is in time with our
lives. There is no life outside of our reality here. Is this something
that can be seen and known by parents of white children? This is the
question that nags me. National mourning, as advocated by Black Lives
Matter, is a mode of intervention and interruption that might itself be
assimilated into the category of public annoyance. This is altogether
possible; but also possible is the recognition that it’s a lack of
feeling for another that is our problem. Grief, then, for these deceased
others might align some of us, for the first time, with the living.
Claudia
Rankine is a professor of English at Pomona College. She is the author
of five collections of poetry, including, most recently, “Citizen.”