Meanwhile Life Outside Goes On

Via NY Transfer News * All the News That Doesn't Fit

source - Ron Jacobs <rjacobs@zoo.uvm.edu>

Meanwhile, Life Outside Goes On

While the United States (including Cincinnati, I assume) keeps its
eyes on the Pentagons preparations for war and its nose in the air
fearing some kind of biological or chemical attack by unnamed
terrorists, the men in blue just got away with another murder. The
officer who shot 19 year-old Timothy Thomas in Cincinnati, Ohio last
spring after discovering he had several misdemeanor warrants out on
him, was acquitted of reduced manslaughter charges by a municipal
judge on Wednesday, September 26th.  While the media feeds us stories
of hero police officers in Manhattan (although I find the
firefighters, medical personnel, rescue workers, and civilians giving
their time to be greater heroes) and GW Bush and Attorney General
Ashcroft try to tear up the Bill of Rights in the name of security,
the terrorism against the African-American community by law
enforcement continues its shameful history over the bodies of unarmed
Black men and women.

If one recalls, this murder caused major unrest in Cincinnati last
spring.  Unrest which has been repeated on a smaller scale in the
wake of this verdict.  There will be those who decry this violence as
inappropriate in the wake of the terrible bloodshed perpetrated on
New York City and the Pentagon September 11th by terrorists assumed
to be connected with the anti-American terrorist Osama bin Laden. 
While they may have a point, it is important to recall the terrorism
which has been visited on people of color in this country since its
founding, especially as regards African-Americans.  The legacy of
slavery and second-class citizenship, of which police murders are but
the most obvious examples of in todays world, are a legacy which not
only influences Americas actions in the legal realm, but in all
facets of life.

If the war that many in the Bush administration is pushing for occurs
and U.S. soldiers find themselves fighting an unending war with U.S.
deaths higher than they have been since Vietnam, one can be certain
that a large number of those deaths will be African-American.
Unfortunately, many of those who come back alive will be subject to
the same type of policing that killed Timothy Thomas.  The freedoms
African-American men and women have been told they are fighting for
in every war since the end of the Civil War have been elusive upon
their return to the United States.  From baseball hero Jackie
Robinsonwho served as an officer in World War II, came back to the US
and found himself in trouble because he opposed the racism he found
stateside both on and off baseto Black Panther Geronimo jiJaga
Pratt--who returned a battle-decorated veteran from Vietnam and found
the racism and police treatment of African-Americans so distasteful
he became a revolutionary who ended up being framed and imprisoned
for 27 years on false charges of murderthe story of African-Americans
being used by the U.S. government to fight its wars only to find that
nothing changes once the uniform is off is an all too familiar one.

There those in the movement against the Vietnam war who sought to
link the war and racism at home together, some even making the claim
that these two wars were actually the same.  This conclusion does not
require any real extension of the imagination.  Indeed, the attacks
on New York and the Pentagon have brought out some of the worst
racism against Asian and Middle Eastern peoples ever known in this
country.  The growing movement against war and for peace has been
careful to address this in its slogans and literature, calling for an
end to discrimination against Arab-American and Muslim peoples.  It
would do well to include in its struggle a call to end the seemingly
never-ending war against African-Americans who, despite the systemic
and individual racism they face every day, grieve as deeply as all
other U.S. citizens for the innocents killed on September 11, 2001,
and who will most likely die in numbers beyond their proportionate
ratio of the U.S. population should the Bush war on terrorism get out
of hand.

Peace, Ron Jacobs
 
=================================================================
  NY Transfer News Collective   *   A Service of Blythe Systems 
           Since 1985 - Information for the Rest of Us          
              339 Lafayette St., New York, NY 10012             
  http://www.blythe.org                  e-mail: nyt@blythe.org 
=================================================================
 
nytrc-10.01.01-16:58:19-4508