We have had several months to reflect on the life and legacy of Nelson Mandela. Since his death, world leaders have attempted to coopt this legacy. It is especially interesting to see how many who once branded Mandela a terrorist are rushing to pay their respects. [1]
His freedom fighter past has been quietly forgotten. Mainstream writers, intellectuals, and politicians prefer to focus on his life after prison. A simple Google search for Mandela is dominated by articles about tolerance and acceptance.
But often lost in discussions of Mandela are the details about why he was sent to prison by the Apartheid Government. He rose to leadership in the African National Congress (ANC) against Apartheid and his role in the creation of its militant wing, the Umkhonto We Sizwe (MK) which means “Spear of the Nation” in Zulu and Xhosa.
Mandela’s autobiography Long Walk to Freedom is very well written bringing the reader on Nelson’s journey with him. He dedicated his life to the struggle to create a South Africa where all are equal.
Mandela came from a privileged background and was groomed to council the leaders of his tribe. He received an excellent ‘western’ education. He moved to Johannesburg and trained as a lawyer. In Johannesburg, he came into contact with ANC members. His radicalisation began as he attended ANC meetings and protests.
On page 109 of Mandela’s autobiography he explains that he cannot pinpoint the moment when he knew he would spend his life in the liberation struggle. He states that any African born in South Africa is politicised from birth with the oppression and inequality Africans in South Africa suffer. “I had no epiphany, no singular revelation, no moment of truth, but a steady accumulation of a thousand slights, a thousand indignities and a thousand unremembered moments that produced in me an anger, a rebelliousness, a desire to fight the system that imprisoned my people.”
In 1948, the Nationalist (Apartheid) Party won the general election and formed a government that remained in power until 1994. Following the election, the ANC increased activities resulting in deaths at protests by the police. In response, the government introduced legislation that steadily increased the oppression on Africans in South Africa.
The ANC National Executive including Mandela discussed the necessity for more violent tactics in the early 1950s but it was decided the time was not yet right. Mandela consistently pushed the ANC to consider using violent tactics. During the forced eviction of Sophiatown in 1953, Nelson gave a speech.
As I condemned the government for its ruthlessness and lawlessness, I overstepped the line: I said that the time for passive resistance had ended, that non-violence was a useless strategy and could never overturn a white minority regime bent on retaining its power at any cost. At the end of the day, I said, violence was the only weapon that would destroy apartheid and we must be prepared, in the near future, to use that weapon.
The fired up crowd sang a freedom song with the lyrics ‘There are the enemies, let us take our weapons and attack them’. Nelson pointed at the police and said “There are our enemies!”
Mandela saw that the Nationalist government was making protest impossible. He felt Gandhi had been dealing with a foreign power that was more realistic than the Afrikaners. Mandela knew non-violence resistance works if the opposition is playing by the same rules but if peaceful protest is met with violence then tactics must evolve. For Mandela “non-violence was not a moral principle but a strategy; there is no moral goodness in using an ineffective weapon.”
This is a lesson that should be learned for the current resistance to the destruction of our world. The current strategy of non-violence in the environmental movement is simply ineffective.
The Sophiatown anti-removal campaign was long running, with rallies twice a week. The final eviction was in February 1955. This campaign confirmed Mandela’s belief that in the end there would be no alternative to violent resistance. Non-violent tactics were met by ‘an iron hand’. “A freedom fighter learns the hard way that it is the oppressor who defines the nature of the struggle. And the oppressed is often left no recourse but to use methods that mirror those of the oppressor. At a certain point, one can only fight fire with fire.”
Following the Sharpville massacre in March 1960, where 69 people were murdered by the police and then the ANC was declared an illegal organisation in April 1960, the National Executive agreed that the time for violence had come:
At the meeting I argued that the state had given us no alternative to violence. I said it was wrong and immoral to subject our people to armed attacks by the state without offering them some kind of alternative. I mentioned again that people on their own had taken up arms. Violence would begin whether we initiated it or not. Would it not be better to guide this violence ourselves, according to principles where we saved lives by attacking symbols of oppression, and not people? If we did not take the lead now, I said, we would soon be latecomers and followers to a movement we did not control.
This new military movement would be a separate and independent organisation, linked to the ANC but fundamentally autonomous. The ANC would still be the main part of the struggle until the time for the military wing was right. “This was a fateful step. For fifty years, the ANC had treated non-violence as a core principle, beyond question or debate. Henceforth the ANC would be a different kind of organisation.”
The parallels with the modern environmental movement’s commitment to non-violence over the last fifty years are uncanny.
The military organisation was named Umkhonto we Sizwe (The Spear of the Nation) or MK for short. Mandela, now underground hiding from the authorities, formed the high command and started recruiting people with relevant knowledge and experience. The mandate was to wage acts of violence against the state. At this point, precisely what form those acts would take was yet to be decided. The intention was to begin with acts least violent to individuals but more damaging to the state.
Mandela began reading and talking to experts especially on guerrilla warfare. In June 1961, Mandela released a letter to the press explaining he continued to fight the state and encouraged everyone to do the same. In October 1961, Mandela moved to Liliesleaf Farm in Rivonia, where the Umkhonto we Sizwe constitution was drafted.
In planning the direction and form that MK would take, we considered four types of violent activities: sabotage, guerrilla warfare, terrorism and open revolution. For a small and fledgling army, open revolution was inconceivable. Terrorism inevitably reflected poorly on those who used it, undermining any public support it might otherwise garner. Guerrilla warfare was a possibility, but since the ANC had been reluctant to embrace violence at all, it made sense to start with the form of violence that inflicted the least harm against individuals: sabotage.
Because Sabotage did not involve loss of life, it offered the best hope for reconciliation among the races afterwards. We did not want to start a blood-feud between white and black. Animosity between Afrikaner and Englishman was still sharp fifty years after the Anglo-Boer war; what would race relations be like between white and black if we provoked a civil war? Sabotage had the added virtue of requiring the least manpower.
Our strategy was to make selective forays against military installation, power plants, telephone lines and transportation links; targets that would not only hamper the military effectiveness of the state, but frighten National Party supporters, scare away foreign capital, and weaken the economy. This we hoped would bring the government to the bargaining table. Strict instructions were given to members of MK that we would countenance no loss of life. But if sabotage did not produce the results we wanted, we were prepared to move on to the next stage: guerrilla warfare and terrorism.
DGR is following a similar strategy in the hope that we can transition to a truly sustainable society. We think that its unlikely that those in power will allow this. So phase four of the DGR strategy Decisive Ecological Warfare calls for decisive dismantling of all infrastructure.
On December 16th 1961, MK carried out its first operation. “Homemade bombs were exploded at electric power stations and government offices in Johannesburgh, Port Elizabeth and Durban. On the same day, thousands of leaflets were circulated around the country announcing the birth of Umkhonto we Sizwe. The attacks took the government by surprise and “shocked white South Africans into the realization that they were sitting on top of a volcano”. Black South Africans now knew that the ANC was no longer a passive resistance organisation. A second attack was carried out on New Year’s Eve.
Nelson was arrested in 1962 for inciting persons to strike illegally (during the 1961 stay-at-home campaign) and that of leaving the country without a valid passport. During this trial he gave his famous ‘Black man in a white court‘ speech. Nelson was sentenced to five years in prison.
In May 1963, Nelson and a number of other political prisoners were moved to Robben Island and forced to do long days of manual labour. Then in July 1963, Nelson and a number of other prisoners were back in court, now charged with sabotage. There had been a police raid at the MK Rivonia farm during a MK meeting where they had been discussing Operation Mayibuye, a plan for guerrilla warfare in South Africa. A number of documents about Operation Mayibuye were seized.
What become known as the Rivonia Trial begin on October 9th, 1963 in Pretoria. Huge crowds of supporters gathered outside the court each day and the eleven accused could hear the singing and chanting. The Crown concluded its case at the end of February 1964, with the defence to respond in April.
Right from the start we had made it clear that we intended to use the trial not as a test of the law but as a platform for our beliefs. We would not deny, for example, that we had been responsible for acts of sabotage. We would not deny that a group of us had turned away from non-violence. We were not concerned with getting off or lessening our punishment, but with making the trial strengthen the cause for which we were struggling – at whatever cost to ourselves. We would not defend ourselves in a legal sense so much as in a moral sense. We saw the trial as a continuation of the struggle by other means.
“I must deal immediately and at some length with the question of violence. Some of the things so far told to the Court are true and some are untrue. I do not, however, deny that I planned sabotage. I did not plan it in a spirit of recklessness, nor because I have any love of violence. I planned it as a result of a calm and sober assessment of the political situation that had arisen after many years of tyranny, exploitation, and oppression of my people by the Whites.”
“We of the ANC had always stood for a non-racial democracy, and we shrank from any action which might drive the races further apart than they already were. But the hard facts were that fifty years of non-violence had brought the African people nothing but more and more repressive legislation, and fewer and fewer rights.”
“During my lifetime I have dedicated myself to this struggle of the African people. I have fought against white domination, and I have fought against black domination. I have cherished the ideal of a democratic and free society in which all persons live together in harmony and with equal opportunities. It is an ideal which I hope to live for and to achieve. But if needs be, it is an ideal for which I am prepared to die.”
Eight of the eleven, including Nelson were sentenced to life imprisonment on Robben Island. These eight had been expecting the death sentence. Nelson was released after 27 years in prison on February 11th, 1990.
He was aware that his family suffered because of his focus but knew that the needs of the many in South Africa were more important than the needs of the few. It is important to remember that Nelson Mandela and his family are only human, with faults and issues. His first wife accused him of domestic violence, which he always denied. His second wife is accused of ordering a number of brutal acts while Mandela was in prison. And some of Mandela’s children found him difficult. [2]
It is true that Mandela embraced non-violence upon his release from prison in 1990. But, he did this once he felt the disintegration of Apartheid was inevitable. Despite what the vast majority of media coverage would have us believe, a combined strategy of violence and non-violence were necessary to bring down Apartheid.
DGR is committed to stopping the destruction of the world. We recognize that combined tactics are necessary. As Mandela did, we need a calm and sober assessment of the political situation. It is a situation that is murdering the world. We need to leave every tactic on the table whether it is violent or non-violent. There simply isn’t enough time to restrict ourselves to exclusively non-violent tactics.
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
It’s often said that where there is oppression and brutalization, there is resistance; that resistance is fertile, and that it inevitably takes root in the cracks between the building blocks of exploitation and injustice. Even as industrial civilization drives indigenous peoples from their homelands and destroys what little remains of the living world, there is resistance. Even as men abuse and violate women, there is resistance. Even as whites oppress and exploit people of color, there is resistance. We continue to find determined resistance in the places we would think it least likely to survive in.
But there is another truth, a corollary to the undeniable will of resistance; where there is resistance, there is repression. Whenever and wherever people fight back, those in power—those higher on the social hierarchy—go to whatever lengths they deem necessary to protect their power and privilege. If resistance is inevitable, so is repression. Those of us determined to see justice need to be prepared for it, and use it to our advantage as much as possible.
This is becoming all the more immediately relevant as resistance against industrial extraction begins to enter a new phase of confrontation and action against those who would dismember the planet for profit. Across North America (and around the world), activists are increasingly turning to nonviolent direction action, having tired of the failures of legislative & administrative strategies. While this certainly represents a step in the right direction—that of physically confronting and stopping atrocity—it is also beginning to shed light on the way that power operates, and the means it will use to prevent dissent and resistance.
You may have heard about the anti-forest defense bills which are currently on the table in the Oregon State legislature. House Bill 2595 makes it a mandatory misdemeanor for the first charge of disrupting government forest practices, and a mandatory felony and minimum 13 months imprisonment for a second offense. House Bill 2596 essentially makes it easier for private entities to file suit against forest defenders. The laws come in response to direct action protests—including sit-ins, tree-sits, and blockades—by forest defense groups, including Cascadia Forest Defenders and Cascadia Earth First!, which stymied attempts to log the Elliot State Forest. Both bills have already been passed in the House and are now moving onto the senate.
Obviously, these bills are a blatant attempt to intimidate those who would act to defend the forests they love. It’s telling as well that the phrase “eco-terrorism” has been central in dialogue around the bill; labeling peaceful protesters using nonviolent tactics as “terrorists” is clearly an attempt to justify their political repression.
This sort of rhetoric and political repression extends far beyond the battle for forests in the Pacific Northwest. In Oklahoma and Texas, TransCanada—the corporation behind the Keystone XL pipeline—has filed lawsuits against individuals and organizations to stop them protesting and using nonviolent direct action to stop construction of the pipeline. It’s a blatant attempt to stamp out any interference or meaningful opposition to the pipeline.
In Canada, state security forces—including the Royal Canadian Mounted Police and the Canadian Security Intelligence Service—have begun viewing and approaching nonviolent protests, especially against the oil and gas industries, as “forms of attack” and “national security threats”.
Of course, this isn’t by any means a new or recent phenomenon, nor are these repressive measures outstandingly horrific. Take for example, the Counter-Intelligence Program (COINTELPRO) conducted by the FBI against indigenous, Black, Chicano, and other radical movements in the 1950s, 60s and 70s, which aimed to discredit, disrupt and destroy those social movements and political organizations. COINTELPRO used infiltration, psychological warfare, legal harassment, and illegal state violence (among other tactics) to tear apart movements and render them ineffective.
While it certainly succeeded in its diabolical mission in many regards, COINTELPRO and other forms of intense repression were a key factor and motivation in driving many revolutionaries into underground and militant action and organizations. As Akinyele Omowale Umoja argues in his study Repression Breeds Resistance, when aboveground factions of the Black liberation movement came under increasingly heavy political repression, they turned to underground militancy to more effectively carry on the struggle. In his words, “Due to the intense repression against the BPP [Black Panther Party] and the Black liberation movement, it was necessary to go underground and resist from clandestinity.”
The potential of repression to fuel the formation and growth of underground resistance is also a trend to which Robert Taber speaks, in his 1965 study of guerrilla warfare, War of the Flea. In his survey of different guerrilla movements, Taber identified several prerequisite conditions that must be met for militant guerrilla struggle to be effective, among them the presence of “an oppressive government, with which no political compromise is possible.”
Political repression is a terrible thing; it has destroyed countless lives, families, communities, and movements, and continues to do so today. It is of course undeniable that repression hurts movements—and usually aims to destroy them, but it is also true that it can push them into new and much needed directions. One unintended effect of measures such as the Oregon House bills or TransCanada’s lawsuits may be to bolster support for and acceptance of militant & underground resistance. Certainly, we should not be surprised if this is the case, and rather than lament the means to which people resort in defense of the land, we should celebrate such action.
It should be clear that when nonviolent and aboveground means of fighting for justice & sustainability are criminalized, those who would otherwise limit themselves to legal means are motivated to take up more militant forms of action. It should be clear to anyone paying attention that political repression is going to get worse, the reins on acceptable political action continuously tightened, and the list of legally allowed responses to atrocity to be constantly shrinking. But this may very well (and very likely, if history is anything to go by) encourage and facilitate more serious and determined militant and underground action.
Time is Short: Reports, Reflections & Analysis on Underground Resistance is a biweekly 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
By Lorenzo Kom’boa Ervin / Memphis Black Autonomy Federation
To grasp what happened at the March 30, 2013 Klan demonstration, you need to understand what led up to everything. The Klan said it came to Memphis to protest the renaming of the racist Memphis Confederate Parks system. Of course, all police preparations and media reporting claimed that the cops “had” to create a downtown police security zone of 10-12 square blocks to “keep the peace”, and not repeat the so-called anti-Klan “riot” of 1998, which was blamed on protesters then, but actually was a police riot as a result of an order by then-Mayor Willie Herenton to gas and beat protesters because they were approaching the Klan through breaks in the police line.
So, using that mantra of “preventing a riot”, and also the media propaganda that this was a “new” Klan group, in response to critics who asked why the Klan was being allowed to protest at all, they put together a police army of 600 cops, 4 military armored cars with machine guns, a chain link fence to separate protesters from Klan, and confined the residents of Memphis behind a line of paramilitary riot police to “protect” the Klan from the people. Of course, the obvious reflection was that this happened over 15 years ago and that the anti-Klan protest movement was “new” as well, did not penetrate the prevailing myth circulated by the cops and the lapdog media.
Our movement, the Memphis Black Autonomy Federation, had created a broad-based group called the Ida B. Wells Coalition Against Racism and Police Brutality to bring out Memphis residents, but also anti-fascist activists from throughout the Southern and Midwestern regions. We tried at first to have a meeting at city hall, but this was refused by a groups of businessmen, then the city permit office refused a permit for the same area as the Klan, which was at the courthouse itself, just a few hours before. Then, the cops wanted to not allow any more than 100 people from the community come to the event, but we fought that, and they apparently allowed everyone to go in, including white supremacist supporters and anti-Klan activists. This latter decision was a recipe for disaster, we felt, and we did not initially feel that it would be safe to go inside. If someone got to fighting a Klan supporter, they could be shot and we all would have been in danger. We decided to press on anyway.
If we had not applied for the city parade permit, no one would have been allowed to protest at all, and we would not have even known of their security plans at all. Only because we kept prodding the city to back off on at least some of its security precautions, did they agree to allow the protest. They then issued the permit at the last minute, and the lapdog media dutifully reported it, including the city’s denial that it had ever denied our permits. This little media report would prove to be the undoing of the city’s plans for total denial of the event, and its plans of discouraging any protest through media saturation by the Mayor and government officials who time and again tried to frighten, scold, and intimidate people from coming down to an anti-Klan event. Just the fact that people knew that there was going to be a protest made them come down to the event, even if they were totally unfamiliar with our movement.
The day before the event we were concerned about being pushed into a “protest pit” as was done at many other events in other cities and was used to crush the anti-globalization movement, and because the original plan called for us all to be shoved into a small space on the side of the courthouse itself, we decided that it would be a threat to our security to go in that space, and we called for an activist General Assembly at a nearby park, which was outside the police protest zone, to discuss options. So about 150 of us met at Court Square park, and talked about going to the Forrest Park and attacking the statute itself, but then the cops came up and told us that we “had” to go to the “security zone”, and we feigned going there, but in fact we had prepared a number of signs saying “Cops Stifle Free Speech!” and about 150 of us marched down to police lines and protested the police state methods of controlling the protest.
The cops were perplexed, and a small number of them tried to chase us around or steer us into the barbed wire area, but we refused to go. It was a standoff, but they did not arrest anybody or beat us up. It was clear that they did not want to break their ranks to try to arrest all of us, so we took advantage of the moment and kept protesting. Then we moved towards the park, but there was a split between those who wanted to go inside the police lines, and those who did not. The group started splintering. After much soul searching, we decided we would go inside. So we headed for the entrance, and many followed us. The cops had everybody head through TSA style metal detectors, empty our pockets, and searched us. They seized all papers, pamphlets, protest signs, and denied you entry if you were wearing “radical” t-shirts of Che Guevara or Huey Newton, but also Jefferson Davis or N.B. Forrest attire. They seized our bullhorns, but returned one of them as we were entering the event.
When we got inside, everyone seemed subdued, and there was no chanting or screaming, everyone was just looking for signs of the Klan to show. The Klan was kept 2-3 football fields away from us, who were behind barbed wire. There was a long line of riot police inside arrayed as a gauntlet we had to pass, then there were police snipers on the roof, and a line of police standing across from us, about five deep and then others on horseback. They never moved for five hours, just stared ahead at us in military formation.
What made us feel good about going inside is that there was in fact a large number of people already inside waiting on us. They kept streaming in. These were not the usual white middle class activists or the old civil rights deadheads, these were working class Black people of every age. They were angry as hell because the Mayor had brought these “Ku Klux Kowards” to town, and had put us behind barbed wire and coddled the Klan. The Klan came on special city buses, only about 60 of them, which contained riot police and a special security wing of Memphis police and Shelby County Sheriffs.
On March 30th, sixty-five Ku Klux Klan members gathered at the steps of the Shelby County Court House and marched in response to the recent name changes of three previously confederate parks in Memphis. One of these parks, formerly known as Bedford Forest Park, was renamed Health and Science Park. Nathan Forest was the first grand wizard of the Klan and was responsible for massacring over three hundred black people during the Civil War.
Twelve hundred people turned out to the counter protest demonstration against the Klan despite the alternative event across town put on and promoted by Mayor A. C. Wharton Jr. and city officials with live music and Easter festivities in efforts to discourage people from going to the rally site. The majority of those in attendance were residents of Memphis, however many organizations came from outside of Memphis including Florida Anti-Fascists, KC IWW from St. Louis, IWW, Deep Green Resistance, Black Autonomy Federation from Memphis, Concerned Citizens for Justice Team from Chattanooga, TN., Chattanoogans Organized for Action, Black Bloc Chicago, Anti Racist Action, Memphis Black gang members rep, Let’s Organize the Hood, and Direct Action Memphis.
Many of those who gathered marched down the streets, but were latter funneled into “Free Speech” zones where they could not see or get near the Klan. Hundreds of police in militarized gear lined the streets of downtown Memphis and lined the fences of the gated designated protest area. Lorenzo Ervin, a founding member of the Black Autonomy Federation and a main organizer of the counter protest wrote in a note entitled “Memphis Anti-Klan Demonstration: Protesting in a Police State“: “…in response to critics who asked why the Klan was being allowed to protest at all, they put together a police army of 600 cops, 4 military armored cars with machine guns, a chain link fence to separate protesters from Klan, and confine the residents of Memphis behind a line of paramilitary riot police was used to “protect” the Klan from the people.”
Thirty one year old Cedric Moore of Tipton County (twenty miles from Memphis) stated that “if the KKK had a real point to prove they wouldn’t need these police”. His sister, thirty-five year old Porteia More who is also a resident of Tipton County expressed her reasoning for coming out to the counter demonstration: “They came here years ago and I wasn’t able to come… I made it a point to be here on today but I did not know we would not have a chance to see them. I wanted to understand why they were here and marching… I understand they don’t want the symbol to be changed but it’s time for everyone just to get along.”
When asked what her opinion was of the police response to protestors she responded: “I think it’s just too much going on. We see many police out in uniform versus the KKK… I think it’s too much.” Twenty-year-old Lando from Horn Lake, Mississippi echoed similar sentiments: “It looks they are treating us like the enemy… They have police from all counties out here. All this money invested in some KKK.”
JoNina Ervin, standing chair of the Black Autonomy Federation and organizer of the counter protest, took issue with the permit process and what she views as an overall violation of people’s right to free speech. The Black Autonomy Federation had to apply three times to hold their protest and were finally approved only two days before the march. In the past, authority to approve permits lay in the hands of the city council, but it was changed to the police director the 19th of March two days before they applied for their first permit. “We thought the procedures to get the permit were unconstitutional,” stated JoNina.
“Once we find an attorney we want to go to court to challenge the city ordinance. We were told we could not bring any leaflets, flyers or posters into the protest area… I noticed at the Klan rally through videos they had posters. Our free speech has been restrained. How can you voice your first amendment rights when you’re being intimidated? Pretty soon we won’t have any free speech rights unless we challenge these policies.”
No one was hurt that day, and only one arrest was made.
If you would like to get in contact with the Black Autonomy Federation or offer support, please contact them at Organize.the.hood@gmail.com.
On March 15th the International Day Against Police Brutality was observed for the first time in Memphis, Tennessee by the Black Autonomy Federation. People came to the event from as far away as Iowa, Ohio, and Denver. People gathered first outside city hall and spoke. Cardboard coffins were lined up facing out from city hall representing 13 of the 14 people killed by the Memphis Police Department in the last thirteen months.
Women have also been sexually assaulted by the Memphis police officers. JoNina Ervin, acting chair of the Black Autonomy Federation stated that they have been told by a number of women that there are police in Memphis that arrest women and force them to have sex with them, “That’s the kind of police we have here. This is a corrupt police department and a police department out of control.”
Lorenzo Ervin of the BAF stated that “We have out right atrocities that no one of these people can defend but the authorities here, the city authorities as well as the state prosecutors are engaged in a conspiracy to cover up and not to prosecute these crimes by the police, the authorities and others working in concert with them. This is why it is important for us to bring attention to the city of Memphis, Tennessee.”
People later chanted and marched to the Memphis police department and the Shelby County Jail. Activists and family members of those murdered spoke out. In attendance was the family of Delois Epps and Makayla Ross who were killed on August 26th leaving from a family get-together by a police officer Alex Beard. Thirty- three year old family member Shaquitta Epps asks “Why wasn’t he charged?” When asked if she was surprised by the response of the city and police department towards her family members death she responded “No it happens all the time but I never thought it would happen to my family. You see it in the paper and on the TV but you never really know until it happens to your family.”
Martin Ezsutton brother of twenty-two year old Rekia Boyd who was killed in Chicago by police officer Dante Servin stated that “The police were highly disrespectful.” Servin is not being charged with the murder and is being paid working a desk job that pays 90,000 dollars. “He just got a promotion for murdering my sister!…Who is going to take responsibility? They failed to prosecute him for his actions.”
Unfortunately the deaths of black people by the police in Memphis and across the country are not a rare occurrence with a rate of one black person every 36 hours being killed by the police in the United States (“Report on the Extrajudicial Killings of 120 black people” Malcolm X Grassroots Movement, July 2012)
The next day a conference was held to discuss how to organize against police brutality and killings with activists from various communities. The BAF discussed the ongoing police killings and brutality in the context of the capitalist state. Lorenzo states that “ We understand we are not just fighting the police we are fighting fascism.” The BAF is calling for an international boycott against the town of Memphis until it “stops persecuting and killing poor working class black people and consorting with the KKK.”
On March 30th the Black Autonomy Federation are organizing a counter protest against the KKK. The Klan are prompted to come because of a name change of Nathan Bedford Forest Park to Health Science Park. Forest was the first grand wizard of the Klan. According to JoNina Ervin the city has been uncooperative with their efforts to organize an anti Klan rally. “There is a media campaign telling people to stay home, don’t come out, ignore the Klan, and the line they are using is that any person that comes out is crazy. They want to criminalize the people who are protesting the Klan when the Klan are the real criminals.”
According to members of the BAF the NAACP has been collaborating with the state in this. “The head of the NAACP in Memphis said on TV, people should stay home and wash their cars and shook hands with the Sons of the Confederacy. The constitution gives people first amendment rights they will have police to protect them but people opposed to the terrorism of the KKK are just supposed to shut up that day. They want us to be off in a corner some place. The city has been in collaboration with these neo confederates for so long.” For JoNina and others in the BAF, it is crucial for people in Memphis and from all over the country to come and take a stand against the Klan, “If you don’t let the Klan know that you’re here and opposed to their white supremacy, that gives them free range to keep on coming back here and that is why they keep coming back.”
If you would like to get in contact with the Black Autonomy Federation or offer support, please contact them at Organize.the.hood@gmail.com.
As a radical black male living in the most hegemonic culture to ever exist, I consistently find myself keenly aware of instances in daily life to recognize and critique white supremacy. I have experienced firsthand this culture’s systemic racism. From the racist and sexist police department which harassed and conspired against my mother while she worked for them, to the fairly routine instances of micro-aggressions, racial profiling and predatory business practices all people of color endure in this culture, I have a personal relationship with oppression informing my analysis of racism. So when whites accuse people of color of being unable to let go of the past, they are missing some critical considerations.
Many whites have a difficult time accepting any attempt to redistribute wealth and resources to historically oppressed classes because they fail to see the reality of life as a person of color in this society. And when our stories are silenced, the dominant narrative of this culture can proliferate.
So I want to speak directly to whites who honestly believe society is post-racial and that they are being oppressed. I want you to listen and try to understand if you can.
One of white supremacy’s more insidious aspects is that it has perfected the art of double-speak. While it appears you are saying society is post-racial and we are all equal now, and therefore any redistribution of resources to historically oppressed classes is reverse racism, what you are really saying is the comfort and safety which was a result of a historically privileged position in society as leech members of a parasitic class of people is being challenged, and that makes you uncomfortable.
You want to know what I mean with that statement. Dominant classes of people are parasites, because they feed on the oppression of others. Whether or not you realize it, if you are a member of a dominant class, you are benefiting from the oppression of another class.
As a man, I benefit from patriarchy and misogyny. Members of my class of people are leeches, and that makes me a leech as well. It is my responsibility as an aspiring male ally to women to constantly critique my own participation in this culture and to do whatever I can to deconstruct the sexist and misogynistic tendencies I possess from this culture’s indoctrination. That is the minimal task of an ally, and the same applies to whites who wish to ally with people of color to combat racism. You must first admit your complicity in it.
Whiteness is hegemony. To be clear, race does not exist inherently – it is a social construct with no basis in actual biology other than the melanin levels in your skin and its relationship to how your ancestors evolved on their preferred landbase. The creation of race was a direct result of the hegemonic tendency inherent in parasitic classes of people.
“White” is purported to be related to skin color and ancestry, but what is it really? A social class. If race is not actually real, then we must consider more real, tangible indicators of difference and their real effects on the material conditions of our everyday lives. When we search for other indicators, the most glaringly obvious one is privilege and access to resources. By far, without doubt, whites own more land and possessions, earn a higher income, and experience far fewer discriminatory experiences than people of color.
It is important to understand what it means to view racial oppression in the context of class analysis. Whiteness is a class experience, and not based in biological reality. But that does not mean one can just decide to stop being white, just like I cannot decide to stop being a man as long as the dominant culture classes me as a man. As long as you are classed as white, you will continue to benefit from white privilege. This is what allies need to remember.
The identity of persons of color serves the purpose of organizing through common cause. For my culture, black identity is about survival, not about superiority or a desire to exercise power over whites. It is a response to cultural genocide, an example of class consciousness as the starting point in combating oppression. As stated in Racial Formations in the United States:
Whites tend to locate racism in color consciousness and find its absence color-blindness. In so doing, they see the affirmation of difference and racial identity among racially defined minority students as racist. Non-white students, by contrast, see racism as a system of power, and correspondingly argue that blacks, for example, cannot be racist because they lack power.
When people of color are afforded opportunities on the basis of their skin color, this is not racism. It is redistribution of the privilege of access to resources, an attempt to even the playing field that is skewed towards whites.
If you think past racism has no effect on today’s reality, you are in denial. Your ancestors were given a huge head start because they were not enslaved and they did not suffer under white supremacist Jim Crow laws and murderous gangs of thugs in white sheets and hoods. They did not suffer under the tyranny of the White Citizen’s Council, or the 3/5 law, or the Fugitive Slave Law. They did not suffer under the Tuskegee Experiments, the Japanese internment camps, the ghettos and reservations and racist police departments.
To be white in this society is to start ahead, even if you are poor. The poorest white is still privileged in ways the middle class black person is not. Rich, wealthy and affluent blacks are still racially profiled and discriminated against in various ways.
The dominant narrative of this culture – that of the white patriarch – forbids redistribution of resources and privilege, because that would mean the empowerment of historically oppressed classes, affording them a little more ability to even the score. So this culture must adjust the narrative to encourage backlash against resistance to white supremacy, otherwise the narrative of the resistance will proliferate and threaten to turn the tide in our favor. So it convinces privileged members they are being discriminated against, and that they should not consider or listen to or even hear the stories of people of color, because goddess forbid you have your identity challenged for once. You cry reverse racism and deny the presence of the same tendencies of the past because you have never lived in our world.
Of course, redistribution of resources is not the end goal. We must ultimately bring down the capitalist, industrial infrastructure facilitating white supremacist oppression of people of color. We must permanently disable the control mechanisms of the culture – the police, the military and the media – because they all play a role in the subordination of people of color, the theft of their resources and the erasure of their cultures and stories.
A comprehensive anti-racist strategy includes a critique of civilization itself. It recognizes civilization as the interlocking systems of oppression inherent in infinite growth economies. It realizes the colonial, imperialist agenda of empires as being intimately connected to the white supremacist tendency, and as being the stumbling block to real autonomy and self-determination for people of color. And it relates the destruction of the natural world to the destruction of cultural diversity among human populations.
My people are being killed in the streets, incarcerated, enslaved and denigrated, and any analysis avoiding this reality is dishonest and immoral. If we are going to attempt to “speak truth to power,” we had better at least speak the truth, regardless whether or not people are ready to hear it. We do not have time to wait for people to “get it.” We needed militant action a hundred years ago. We are far into complete biotic collapse and continued genocide of non-white cultures. We must act now to rid the planet of this scourge and ensure it never returns.
