Time is Short: Ferguson, Missouri: Seeing Clearly

by | Aug 18, 2014 | White Supremacy

By Will Falk / Deep Green Resistance San Diego

We need to be clear about what is going on in Ferguson, Missouri.

Let’s pretend, just for a moment, that your people were stolen from their ancestral homes and stacked like lumber in the hulls of filthy ships to be sold half a world away. Millions of your people drowned in their own piss, shit, and vomit on these ships, were murdered when they resisted those stealing them, or threw themselves to the sharks when finally seeing the light of day on the ships’ decks. Your people’s reward for surviving the nightmare of the slaving ships was the nightmare of being sold into slavery.

Let’s pretend, just for a moment, that as slaves your peoples were subjected to psychological, spiritual, and physical tortures to ensure their complicity in the slave system. When a slave refused to comply he or she was whipped, starved, placed in collars, or even killed. If a slave escaped, the nation’s first police forces were established to hunt the slave down and return the slave to the nightmare. If your people organized into true resistance, taking up arms to defend themselves from the horrors of slavery, the nation’s first police forces – comprised of white men – arrived to brutally put down the resistance executing every slave involved.

Let’s pretend, just for a moment, that the justification for your enslavement was something as arbitrary as your skin color. Europeans with white skin spend centuries telling your people, Africans with black skin, that you are less than human. After over three centuries of slavery, some white people decide that your people should no longer be enslaved. Another group of white people deny your people’s right to freedom and the nation’s bloodiest war is fought over your freedom. 620,000 soldiers die to decide your fate.

Let’s pretend, just for a moment, that white people are angry about the war fought on your people’s behalf, are angry about your newfound freedoms, are just plain angry and looking to take it out on someone. For the next hundred years, your people are routinely lynched, shot, beaten, and raped for perceived slights to these white people. A system develops, called Jim Crow, where white people decide that just because slavery is ended it does not mean white people have to share space with your people.

Let’s pretend, just for a moment, that your people produce leaders that undermine the Jim Crow system. Some preach a peaceful approach to empowering your people. Those leaders are assassinated. Some preach an approach that includes every available tactic. Those leaders are assassinated, too.

What if we didn’t have to pretend? What if this was your reality? What if, when you looked into your ancestral past, you were met with pictures of the crisscrossing puffy scars of flogged backs? What if, when you thought of the way your people arrived on this continent, you could only think of those slave logs that demonstrated the way to maximize “cargo space” by the most effective means of stacking human bodies? What if, when you noticed the lightness in your skin color, you could not help but wonder if one of your ancestors was raped by a white man?

What if we didn’t have to pretend?

We all know the truth. We do not have to pretend. A black man is killed every 28 hours by police or vigilantes in this country. [1] There are more black men in prison right now than there were enslaved in 1850. [2] The life expectancy for African-Americans is four years shorter than white Americans.

Now, what if another young black man in your community was killed by a white cop? What if you wanted to know the name of the cop who shot him? What if they wouldn’t tell you? What if you were so heart-broken, so angry, that you demanded justice and the cops responded by pointing machine guns at you? What would you do?

***

Make no mistake, police forces exist as the domestic arm of occupying colonial governments. Stanley Diamond, the brilliant anthropologist, wrote, “Civilization originates in conquest abroad and repression at home.” This analysis helps us to understand that police forces do not exist to protect oppressed classes. It should be obvious as we see the white men pointing machine guns at black demonstrators in Ferguson that police forces exist to ensure the oppression of oppressed classes.

In order to understand what is going on in Ferguson, we must get to the roots of the problem. The problem is civilization. I define civilization as groups of humans living in concentrations large enough to require the importation of so-called natural resources for survival. When groups of humans require the importation of resources for survival, they will do whatever it takes to acquire those resources. Eventually, as Diamond’s quote illustrates, civilized groups will develop armies of conquest to ensure access to the resources required. Civilized groups will also develop domestic armies – police forces – to ensure that domestic labor follows the will of those in power.

This was true for the earliest examples of civilization like the ancient Sumerians who developed a system of slavery for ensuring labor for necessary irrigation and the ancient Romans who simply could not maintain control over the flow of resources they required for their empire before it collapsed. This is true for the United States today with conquering armies demonstrating power through violence in oil-rich countries to ensure access to fossil fuels and police forces terrorizing domestic citizens to ensure the established social order.

It is my view that other systems of domination that developed later are essentially expressions of civilization. European colonization of the rest of the world became necessary as resources in Europe dwindled. The current model of racism, prevalent in the United States today, was developed to ensure the labor force civilization depended on to avoid collapse. Racism, of course, must be eradicated to keep a black man from being murdered by the state’s domestic army every 28 hours, but racism is best understood in material terms. It follows, then, that the roots of racism exist in the material necessities of civilization. Undo civilization, and the civilized addiction to other’s resources – and the racism supporting the addiction – will collapse.

This is not to say, however, that bigotry and hate will not persist after the collapse of civilization. As civilization collapses, we will see intensified violence visited upon communities of color. This is why it is absolutely essential that members of privileged classes assert their solidarity with communities of color right now. The sooner we come to the support of targeted communities like Ferguson, the stronger those communities will be as they face the escalation of violence.

***

I woke up this morning to a plea from the American Civil Liberties Union to sign their petition titled “Our Communities Are Not Warzones.” The petition asks the Department of Defense, Homeland Security, and Justice to “stop funding the siege on communities of color.”

Whether we like it or not, our communities ARE war zones. How else do we account for a black man being killed by cops and vigilantes every 28 hours? How else do we account for more black men in prison than were enslaved in 1850? How else do we account for the fact that one in four American women will be raped in her lifetime? How else do we account for the fact that in America a solid percentage of rape perpetrators are cops? How else do we account for 100 – 200 species a day going extinct? How else do we account for carcinogens in every mother’s breast milk? How else do we account for the 250 trees – with lives as valuable to them as your life is valuable to you – cut down around the world a second?

Our communities ARE war zones. It is only through great privilege that we are allowed to think that they are not. I support every effort to undermine the power of the police, but we cannot downplay the severity of what is going on. This plays right back into the hands of our oppressors and entrenches the violence being delivered upon us by hiding it.

The ACLU wants to send a signed piece of paper asking those in power to stop providing weapons and equipment to police forces. There is only one way to make sure police forces stop getting these weapons and equipment, and that is to physically stop their access to these weapons.

I am not in Ferguson. I am not privy to conversations in the resistance community there. I cannot say what is best for oppressed peoples.
I support a wide-variety of tactics they may decide are necessary for justice in their communities. I refuse to participate in the current efforts to shout down the righteous anger or condemn angry actions by members of the oppressed African community in Ferguson. I am not arguing for specific tactics, but I do want to break open a space to discuss every tool in the toolbox. If peaceful civil disobedience is the way to go, great. If more militant actions are needed, I stand ready to support. This is a war, after all.

References

[1] http://mxgm.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/Operation-Ghetto-Storm.pdf

[2] http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/10/12/michelle-alexander-more-black-men-in-prison-slaves-1850_n_1007368.html

[3] http://www.webmd.com/heart-disease/news/20130718/us-blacks-still-lag-whites-in-life-expectancy-study

Time is Short: Reports, Reflections & Analysis on Underground Resistance is a bulletin dedicated to promoting and normalizing underground resistance, as well as dissecting and studying its forms and implementation, including essays and articles about underground resistance, surveys of current and historical resistance movements, militant theory and praxis, strategic analysis, and more. We welcome you to contact us with comments, questions, or other ideas at undergroundpromotion@deepgreenresistance.org

Study suggests U.S. Army tested radioactive chemicals on poor black neighborhoods

Study suggests U.S. Army tested radioactive chemicals on poor black neighborhoods

by | Oct 4, 2012 | Toxification, White Supremacy

By David Edwards / The Raw Story

A college professor from St. Louis, Missouri has released research claiming that the U.S. Army conducted secret Cold War tests by spraying toxic radioactive chemicals on cities like St. Louis and Corpus Christi.

St. Louis Community College-Meramec sociology professor Lisa Martino-Taylor told The Associated Press that her research showed that the Army may have sprayed radioactive particles with zinc cadmium sulfide while claiming that it was testing a smoke screen that could prevent Russians from observing St. Louis from the air.

Those tests were concentrated in predominately-black areas of the city, which Army documents called “a densely populated slum district.”

In 1994, the Army confirmed to Congress that St. Louis was chosen because it resembled Russian cities that the U.S. might have to attack with biological weapons.

“The study was secretive for reason,” Martino-Taylor explained to KDSK last month. “They didn’t have volunteers stepping up and saying yeah, I’ll breathe zinc cadmium sulfide with radioactive particles.”

Documents showed that the Army used airplanes to drop the chemicals in Corpus Christi, but sprayers were mounted on station wagons and buildings in St. Louis.

“It was pretty shocking. The level of duplicity and secrecy. Clearly they went to great lengths to deceive people,” Martino-Taylor observed. “This was a violation of all medical ethics, all international codes, and the military’s own policy at that time.”

“There is a lot of evidence that shows people in St. Louis and the city, in particular minority communities, were subjected to military testing that was connected to a larger radiological weapons testing project.”

Doris Spates lived in one of those impoverished St. Louis neighborhoods as a child and has survived cervical cancer. But four of her siblings and her father weren’t as lucky. All five have died of cancer.

“I’m wondering if it got into our system,” Spates told the AP. “When I heard about the testing, I thought, ‘Oh my God. If they did that, there’s no telling what else they’re hiding.’”

Last month, both Missouri Sens. Claire McCaskill (D) and Roy Blunt (R) demanded that Army Secretary John McHugh come clean about the testing. For its part, the Army refused to comment on the matter until it had responded to the senators, the AP reported.

From The Raw Story: http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2012/10/04/u-s-militarys-secret-experiment-sprayed-radiation-on-low-income-housing/

Nuclear plants in United States experienced fifteen “near-misses” in 2011

by | Feb 29, 2012 | Toxification

By Environment News Service

The Union of Concerned Scientists has documented 15 “near-misses” at 13 U.S. nuclear plants during 2011 and evaluates the response of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to each event in a report released today.

The second in an annual series of reports, “The NRC and Nuclear Power Plant Safety 2011 Report: Living on Borrowed Time” details 15 special inspections launched by the federal agency in response to problems with safety equipment, security shortcomings, and other troubling events at nuclear power plants.

The overview is provided by David Lochbaum, the director of UCS’s Nuclear Safety Project. He worked at U.S. nuclear plants for 17 years and was a boiling water reactor technology instructor for the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.

“While none of the safety problems in 2011 caused harm to plant employees or the public, their frequency – more than one per month – is high for a mature industry,” Lochbaum writes.

In the 40 years that the Union of Concerned Scientists has evaluated safety at U.S. nuclear power plants, “We have repeatedly found that NRC enforcement of safety regulations is not timely, consistent or effective,” the report states.

The UCS says its findings match those of the agency’s internal assessments, as well as of independent agents such as the NRC’s Office of Inspector General and the federal Government Accountability Office, which is the investigative arm of Congress.

Many of these 15 “near misses” occurred because reactor owners either tolerated known safety problems or took inadequate measures to correct them, Lochbaum finds.

For example, the owner of the Oconee nuclear plant in South Carolina installed a backup reactor core cooling system in 1983. However, in 2011 – more than a quarter-century later – workers discovered a problem with the system that would have rendered it useless in an accident.

Another significant safety-related event in 2011 occurred at the Braidwood and Byron nuclear plants in Illinois. Workers at those plants had instituted a practice in 1993 of deliberately draining water from the piping to a vital safety system. They did so to reduce corrosion caused by the drawing of untreated lake water into the system. However, writes Lochbaum, “their solution would have prevented this vital safety system from functioning properly during an accident.”

In addition to “near misses” at these three nuclear plants, 12 others are documented in the report.

  • At Callaway in Jefferson City, Missouri, operated by Union Electric Co., routine testing of an emergency pump intended to prove that it was capable of performing its safety functions during an accident actually degraded the pump. The pump’s manufacturer recommended against running the pump at low speeds, but this recommendation was ignored during the tests.
  • At Cooper in Nebraska City, Nebraska, operated by the Nebraska Public Power District, workers replacing detectors used to monitor the reactor core during low-power conditions were exposed to high levels of radiation when they deviated from the prescribed procedure.
  • At Millstone Unit 2 in Waterford, Connecticut, operated by Dominion, despite a dry run of an infrequently performed test on the control room simulator and other precautionary measures, errors during the actual test produced an unexpected and uncontrolled increase in the reactor’s power level.
  • At North Anna in Richmond, Virginia, operated by Dominion, an earthquake of greater magnitude than the plant was designed to withstand caused both reactors to automatically shut down from full power.
  • At Palisades in South Haven, Michigan, operated by Entergy, when a pump used to provide cooling water to emergency equipment failed in September 2009 because of stress corrosion cracking of recently installed parts, workers replaced the parts with identical parts. The replacement parts failed again in 2011, disabling one of three pumps.
  • Also at Palisades, workers troubleshooting faulty indicator lights showing the position of the emergency airlock door inadvertently shut off power to roughly half the instruments and controls in the main control room. The loss of control power triggered the automatic shutdown of the reactor and complicated operators’ response.
  • At Perry in Cleveland, Ohio, operated by FirstEnergy, problems during the replacement of a detector used to monitor the reactor core during low-power conditions exposed workers to potentially high levels of radiation.
  • At Pilgrim in Plymouth, Massachusetts, operated by Entergy, security problems prompted the NRC to conduct a special inspection. Details of the problems, their causes, and their fixes are not publicly available.
  • Also at Pilgrim, when restarting the reactor after a refueling outage, workers overreacted to indications that the water inside the reactor was heating up too rapidly, and lost control of the reactor. The plant’s safety systems automatically kicked in to shut down the reactor.
  • At Turkey Point Unit 3 in Miami, Florida, operated by Florida Power and Light Co., a valve failure stopped the flow of cooling water to equipment, including the reactor coolant pump motors and the cooling system for the spent fuel pool.
  • At Wolf Creek in Burlington, Kansas, operated by the Wolf Creek Nuclear Operating Co., workers overlooked numerous signs that gas had leaked into the piping of safety systems, impairing the performance of pumps and flow-control valves.

The report also cites instances when onsite NRC inspectors made “outstanding catches of safety problems” at the Fort Calhoun, Hatch, and LaSalle nuclear plants before these impairments led to events that required special inspections, or to major accidents.

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