www.newsandletters.org
|
|
NEWS & LETTERS, MAY 2003
Lead Article
Black America's challenge to Bush's war and repression
by Gerard Emmett and Nouveau Toussaint In the everyday war that rages on the streets of
America, on April 17 several hundred residents of Chicago's Cabrini-Green
housing projects surrounded the Near North District police station, pelting
officers with rocks and bottles. This came after a routine traffic stop ended in
a beating for construction worker Rondell Freeman. He didn't open his car door
fast enough, so police broke all his windows, drew their guns, and beat, maced
and arrested him along with three others. The people of the community objected to this thuggish
behavior and took action. This most recent rebellion is a typical event in this
area which also recently saw protests erupt over the police murder of Michael
Walker. Cabrini-Green remains a volatile community. In regard to the better publicized war in Iraq that has
been in the news, while the polls have changed in recent weeks as the Bush
administration has claimed victory, one thing has remained constant: the
greatest opposition to the war remains among African Americans. While opposition
among all Americans sometimes reached high poll numbers, that came with
qualifications and demurrals--such as "only with UN support." The
"successful" war has now undermined that kind of opposition, but the
polls still show levels of 70% to 80% opposition among Blacks because of their
unique historical vantage point for judging American civilization. Police killings and beatings, frame-up trials, the
prison-industrial complex and racist death penalty, and simple everyday
disrespect are the measure of this pretentious "civilization" which is
now reaching its greatest-ever imperial extension in Iraq. IN DEFENSE OF AFFIRMATIVE ACTION Another measure of the U.S.'s state of human relations
could be seen in Washington, D.C. on April 1, when up to 40,000 marchers
descended upon the Supreme Court to demand the continuation of affirmative
action programs in school admissions. The mainly Black marchers were challenging
the expressed wishes of the Bush administration in the midst of a war and
declaring that they wanted no return to the era of Plessy vs. Ferguson, when
"separate but equal," racist Jim Crow laws were codified by the court
in 1896 at the birth of the U.S.'s overseas imperial expansion. Thousands chanted, "Jim Crow, hell no!" and
"Two, four, six, eight, We don't want to segregate!" The messages were
directed at President Bush who allowed his Department of Justice to go against
the University of Michigan's undergraduate and law school diversity programs in
cases on the Supreme Court docket this year. "Baby" Bush benefited from "Papa"
Bush being a Yale alumnus, and Grand Daddy, too. He went to Yale on a
"C" average. So President Bush in so many words says, only his
relatives and friends should benefit; everyone else, you're on your own. The opposition to affirmative action is only a part of
the Bush administration's attack on education for the poor and working class.
Even schools for military personnel serving in the war on Iraq are being told to
get ready to do without resources. There are education problems throughout the
U.S., but the administration claims there is not enough money to solve them. But
$80 billion (to begin with) can be found for the war on Iraq. Meanwhile Bush
proposes cutting child nutrition programs by $5.8 billion over the next ten
years. This could leave 2.4 million low-income children without school lunches. The Bush administration's argument against the
University of Michigan's affirmative action program, which awards extra
admissions points to Blacks, Latinos, and Native Americans, is that it fails to
apply so-called "race neutral" methods to promote diversity. The truth
is that minority admissions have dropped significantly where affirmative action
programs have been suspended, as in Texas and California. The current cases on
the docket constitute the most serious challenge to the concept of affirmative
action in 25 years. This struggle goes far beyond the question of academic
admissions. "Affirmative action is the most conservative, the most modest,
the most minuscule response to a horrific history that we've had,"
explained Harvard Law School Professor Charles Ogletree. He added, "We
cannot let even a favorable Supreme Court decision delude us into thinking that
we won something. We've won case after case and we still didn't win. If you
think I'm lying, ask Amadou Diallo...ask Abner Louima." WAR OPENS DOOR FOR RIGHTIST ATTACKS This caution is surely justified at this moment. It was
in the months immediately following the first Gulf War in 1991 that the assault
on "political correctness" began on campuses around the country. The
ideological Right felt that it had won a great victory and took the opportunity
to press its advantage. In the current climate of repressive legislation like
the US PATRIOT acts and the institutionalization of the Department of Homeland
Security, and in the wake of Bush's military victory over Iraq, the attacks that
are sure to come upon the freedom movements here in the U.S. will likely be much
broader and more intense. Now the police have been given the wide range of power
to do as they will with anyone who protests peacefully. Your property can be
taken from you with no chance of it being returned to you. At the anti-war
protest in Chicago on March 20, at which over 500 people were arrested,
individuals were held with their belongings (cell phones, and so on) taken,
never to be given back. African Americans and others were treated like this with
the media present. Chicago has been a prime example of the politics of
hypocrisy lately. It was widely reported around the world that the Chicago City
Council, with the approval of Mayor Richard M. Daley, passed a resolution
opposing the war with Iraq. It has not, perhaps, been as widely reported that in
the recent period the Chicago Police have been responsible for the shootings of
numerous Blacks and Latinos. This is a better measure of the supposed
progressivism in this city government than the anti-war resolution which wasn't
very strongly worded to begin with and which Mayor Daley in effect retroactively
revoked in his recent statements. As one Black woman in Chicago said, "It makes no
sense. These people here are confused and they don't really know what's going
on. One minute you have a group of them who are anti-war and then the next
minute they become 'patriots.'" The way the government here doesn't exist to serve the
people, to enhance our lives and help to humanize our environment, is a lesson
soon to be learned by the people of Iraq. One U.S. military officer in Iraq
recently admitted that moving from "liberation" to "restoring
order" was like "stepping through the looking glass." This is
indeed because the true measure of American civilization is not the so-called
"liberation" brought through machines of war or the profits made by
carving up the earth's natural resources until they dry up and blow away, but
the lives of the most oppressed people here and their struggle for freedom. The people of Iraq have been most brutally oppressed by
Saddam Hussein's fascist regime. They have their own stories to tell and they
will be heard. As the U.S. military recruits the old Ba'athist police to help
them to "restore order" (an "order" that never in fact
existed, not for one single moment, in Saddam's Iraq) there will be new stories
to be learned. The Iraqis will receive a fast crash course in American
"civilization" and the strict limits of our democracy. As another Black woman here remarked, "Some Iraqis
may see the U.S. as a symbol of freedom because they got rid of Saddam, but I
don't know what the U.S. has planned for them. They could just get a similar,
U.S.-appointed president." It is not Bush and Rumsfeld who represent us, but Mumia
Abu-Jamal, Damien Williams, Jose Solís, Khalfani Khaldun, Richard Flood, Aaron
Patterson, Robert King Wilkerson, the framed, slandered and humiliated who keep
fighting back unbowed. It is not Exxon or Royal Dutch Shell we fight for, but
Abner Louima, Timia Williams, LaTanya Haggerty and Robert Russ, Kelsey Hogan,
Kevin Morris, the beaten, oppressed, murdered, whose families and friends and
communities raise the banner of their names when they fall. These are our
brothers, our sisters, and we measure our freedom by their lives. This is our
side of the looking glass. WATCH OUT FOR YOUR VOTING RIGHTS We should take nothing for granted. One thing that
should be on the minds and agenda of the Congressional Black Caucus is getting
the Voting Rights Act not only to pass, but to become law. President Lyndon B.
Johnson signed the Act in 1965. President Ronald Reagan amended it in 1982 for
another 25 years. This means that in four years, if "Baby" Bush wins
or steals the next election, he could legally settle with African Americans by
not renewing the Act. |
|
Home l News & Letters Newspaper l Back issues l News and Letters Committees l Dialogues l Raya Dunayevskaya l Contact us l Search Published by News and Letters Committees |
