When I was marching with peace activists in Washington, DC and Pittsburgh the police blowing a whistle moved everyone aside to remote streets away from traffic. Anti-war or anti-unruly cop movements suppress the right to speak out. The concerned public end up expressing their grievances only to the same chorus. Holding back marchers with tape is serious suppression. It has seen its last days. The power of people has now gained strength to be heard.
Dear Ones,
While listening to leaders speak before the march, I remember sitting on the ground in front of Cindy Sheehen who was talking before the crowd. I looked down and found a four leaf clover and give it to her when I met her afterwards. This was a symbol of good luck in her efforts for peace. Her message to G. W. Bush while she and hundreds of other activists demonstrating at his Texas ranch was–"What's the glory in your war, president?" Her son was killed in Iraq.
Where's the glory in rogue cops attacking American African youths? Good cops use the rule of law and order instead of law and attack. When a person violates civic rules it's not the job of the police to lynch in order to prevent the accused from having a trial by executing the young person. It may not intentional, but a gang of cops knocking someone to the ground and cuffing him is dangerous to all concerned. This is beastly behavior and must stop.
People say these recent cases are not racial, while at the same time pegging human beings with racial color-coding. Even today the former evil of slavery is still affecting all Americans in the United States. Following the Civil War slave owners were afraid of African Americans killing them in revenge of the brutality of being captured for human bondage. Yet freed people fought for the North during that war.
After President Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation those who had enslaved the victims were still afraid they would turn on them and kill their captors. This didn't happen since they were disfranchised with Jim Crow injustice and had no power. The police and young American Africans are still afraid of each other because they don't understand or know the long history of lynching that's still going on through police force executions.
Those who are at last permitted education and the right to read and write know all about these atrocities against American Africans for centuries of time. Psychologically and emotionally many fear and rebel from police force because of past unlawful deaths and what they now know through documented history that is gruesome and inhumane. If non-Africans had been brutalized for centuries, they would act in the same way or even worse.
Now we are seeing the epitome of built up power and inherent human rights coming to an apex in justice. This is just the beginning after eons of injustice and equality.
Today the descendents of people held in slavery and those of their masters all march together, holding hands and shouting, "Hands up!" "And I can't breathe!–eleven times." In 1995 the people chanted "Killer cops" when Jonny Gammage from Syracuse, NY was smothered and lynched because he braked while passing a traffic patrol station. He was driving his cousin's Jaguar in Pittsburgh. What we are seeing on TV is now recorded for posterity. History didn't happen yesterday. It happens now.
Quite amazingly in these recent upheavals over injustice and inequality the crowds progressed from the usual bottle and brick throwing, looting, burning police cars and businesses, to organized controlled marchers. We can thank the parents who've lost their children and President Obama using reason power and respectful voices instead of condoning violence and terrorism.
May the gods help us all. Palms up to show we are all the same light color from evolution, with sunshine not reaching palms or soles from the beginning of humanity. First people lived near the equator, free of ice sheets. The ice age was a difficult and uncomfortable, if not impossible, place to survive.
We are all one, with no divisive, rival color-coding necessary. This hierarchy of separation has only caused wars and violence from human classification in the 1700s. It is so graphically obvious when everyone puts up their hands to show police violence is no longer tolerated. With this gesture, the proof is there before our very eyes. All palms land soles look the same! It's all a matter of protective pigment. Let's all grow up and smell the roses.
Mame,
helenesmith1.blogspot.com author of Cry Out For Peace (Create Space) and founder of Erase Black-White Labeling (EBWL)
