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by Alagi Yorro Jallow.
“Rosa sat / So Martin could walk / Martin walked / So Barack could run / Barack ran / He ran, and he won so that all our children could fly.” Thanks for singing along, and thanks to Amy Dixon-Kolar for music in a revolution. A hero is Rosa Parks, who challenged the entrenched and lethal forces of racism in the 1950s, Alabama.
The shift in opinion going on right now among white Americans could turn out to be a lasting sea change; if so, it will have significant electoral effects. Here are some recent polling figures. 69% of white Americans support the protests in the wake of George Floyd’s murder. 68% believe systemic police racism exists. 57% disapprove of Trump’s response to the crisis. These are figures just among *whites*, remember. If white Americans are turning against white supremacy, that is terrible news for the party of white supremacy, as the GOP has been since Goldwater and Nixon refashioned it in the 1960s. Polls make clear that, if the election were held today, Trump would lose by a landslide. However, now the cautions you knew were coming. The election is not being held today. A lot can and will happen in five months. Moreover, we cannot be sure that changing white attitudes will stick. Still, there seems to be more opportunity for anti-racist practice in America today than at any time, perhaps, since the death of Martin Luther King.
George Floyd, the man who was killed, death, was the catharsis he needed to be free. Even if it was the president that died, the funeral could not have been louder in glory. The last eight minutes, 46 seconds of his life changed everything for him – and, maybe, for the world. The inexplicable pains of those last ‘unbreathing’ minutes released his reeling soul to triumphal heavens. He would be surprised at his transformation from an unbalanced zero to a perfect hero. At his memorial service on Thursday, the Cable News Network (CNN) was there; Sky News was there; the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) was there. All primary, global channels beamed the service live to the world. When was the last time there was such an unlikely consensus to honor a black man? Grace smiled at him in death. Golfers would say he was punted from nameless peasantry to very loud immortality. For Floyd, the unknown guard, Americans have lowered their guards against coronavirus. Thousands still throng the streets, protesting, yelling, rallying without masks, without physical or social distancing.
Some of you are flying, and looking down at those walking. You are entirely blind to why and how you gained the freedoms that enable you to fly freely. You are saying- look at those silly people taking to the streets to protest, only uneducated people, idlers and criminals do that, and when they get tear-gassed, they complain. You notice that some of those taking to the streets are people in the flying category. They have good jobs, some are well-titled personalities in successful professions, and you say- look at them perfectly sensible people, engaging in time-wasting activism, what an indignity, totally embarrassing.
None of our freedoms ever came without someone’s struggle and great sacrifice. None. Moreover, taking it to the streets has always been a part of that struggle, a relentless pursuit of a goal that shifts the earth beneath the feet of the ogres of our times. Be glad elevated philosophies gave us the weapons of nonviolent revolution. Struggles remain a never-ending process of Sat-Walk-Run-Fly, no matter how civilized our societies become. We hope that we do not have to keep protesting the same issue.
Whatever you choose to do to contribute to a better society, do not look down on those who choose to walk as if they were idle scum of the earth. The best of them are good at it, they have mastered the art of movement leadership, organization, and mobilization, and they have the guts and brains to maneuver the process. They are warriors. It is as lawful as going to court and the lawful in protesting.
The Chinese say, “one step in the wrong direction causes a thousand years of regrets.” A recent report on ‘how one tick bite can ruin your health forever’ came to mind as we watched the world retching over a costly $20 death, a snap of fate which was crudely very unnecessary. When a witch kills the wrong game, it ends its earthly sport. That single stroke of police madness in Minneapolis has ripped open the system, ruptured public peace and stability – and will not stop causing pains and damages in delicate places, especially in the White House.
The first George Floyd memorial service ended today, CNN immediately splashed faces of the fallen policemen on the screen: Their bails had been set at $1 million each. You can imagine the depths of their regrets. Unfortunately, regretting a fatal deed is like chasing after the wind. Why did they go to work that day? Our people would say they went out the day the road was hungry. Or were they the ones hungry and hunting for victims? As those cops knelt on that black neck that unfortunate day, if they had known it was the banana peel of fate they were stepping on, they would have backed off. However, because they were destined for destruction, they did not collectively have a running stomach that day and be off duty. Alternatively, be in the intensive care unit of a hospital somewhere nursing COVID-19. If their mothers are alive, they negligently failed in their duty of protective prayers for their sons. Moreover, if their mothers are late, the dead sadly, that day, overslept in their graves. It was their death day.
We have heard of little sparks igniting big flames. It has taken just twenty American dollars to stop the whole world from breathing and for police forces across the world to be on trial. A $20 bill was used to buy cigarettes in a shop; shop owners suspected the bill to be fake; the police were called in; they came and knelt on a neck, and the world of the United States convulsed. More people have died; fires of anger gut buildings – and felony; white and black businesses have been looted (more may still be emptied). Millions of white and black, people of color (and the colorless), mill everywhere around the world demanding that power takes its knee off all bruised, burdened necks.
Now, do not point at hooligans who callously steal and destroy during protests and tell me that is what nonviolent protest is all about. You can point you to thugs and killers in suits sitting in swiveling chairs in the same skyscrapers you have your office. Would it be fair to say you are one of them?
The killing of a black man by a white police officer did not start with President Trump’s election. In August 2014, in Ferguson, Missouri, an African American teenager, Michael Brown, was shot dead by a white police officer under President Barack Obama. That killing gave rise to the ‘Black Lives Matter’ movement and protests that swept across the United States at the time. “What is true about this moment that was also true in 2014 is that these are the symptoms of a centuries-old virus of white supremacy in America,” said Brittany Packnett Cunningham, co-founder of the ‘Campaign Zero’ movement against police violence, last week.
Although the late civil rights leader, Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. is being quoted profusely, especially by those who deride the looting and arson that accompany some of the current protests, Heather Gray, a former director at the Martin Luther King, Jr. Center for Nonviolent Social Change in Atlanta, puts the issue in a clearer perspective. Borrowing extensively from King’s book, ‘Stride Toward Freedom,’ Gray discusses the difference between the nonviolence that he (King) preached and the pacifism that some now advocate in the face of injustice. She then quoted what King wrote, which is also a warning for a society like ours where moderates are increasingly being ‘radicalized’ by the choices of those who believe temporary power gives them the latitude to misbehave: “It must be emphasized that nonviolent resistance is not a method for cowards; it does resist. If one uses this method because he is afraid or merely because he lacks instruments of violence, he is not truly nonviolent. This is why Gandhi often said that if cowardice is the only alternative to violence, it is better to fight.” While Trump may, therefore, not be directly held accountable for the death of Floyd or the contradictions within the American society that lead to such killings, his rhetoric and body language before and after coming to power have emboldened white supremacists who see his government as theirs. When a leader promotes one ethnic group, race, or religion above another, he/she unwittingly encourages divisions that make progress difficult for any society.
