We are living in perilous times, times of change,
transformation and fear. We are living
in the midst of an empire of white supremacy and privilege built on the backs
of Black people, people of color, poor people and those on the margins over a
period of three hundred years in a state of gradual decay. I believe that some of the symptoms of this gradual
decay are increasing poverty, increasing class inequality, the emergence of a police
state, and a school to prison pipeline, governmental surveillance, homophobia,
transphobia, rampant racism and patriarchy. While these concerns have shaped
life in the U.S. since its founding a shifting demographics, globalization, an
economic system which works for fewer and fewer people, voter suppression and a
President who is Black has shaken an empire meant for white privilege to its
core causing it to double and even triple down on its strategies of oppression.
In the
midst of these perilous times I believe that the activist has a great opportunity
to do the needed work to liberate real bodies from oppressive visions. Activism in a real sense becomes a means to a
love supreme and as such reflects a great love for all. Reflecting on the life of Ella Baker, one of
the founders of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) and the
Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), I am reminded that love is the
imperative and life its witness. Life
continues because love is the imperative must be the ground of a revolutionary
movement.
My goal
with this work is to contribute to the imperative to love, to humbly add my
voice to the conversation, to assist in the manifestation of a different vision
for humanity. Mindful of the work of Rev.
Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Angela Davis, Malcolm X, Ella Baker, and the
coalitions which represented the dreams of Black people I seek a way forward
from this present situation, within A Thoughtful Solidarity framework with Latino
people, people of color, those in poverty and people on the margins, and, if
the arc of the moral universe bends towards justice then I am compelled to
experience myself and those similar as that critical presence within that
arc. My thoughts on A Thoughtful
Solidarity emerge out a meeting with other Black Activist Scholars who live Black
Life in America.
My objective
with this work is to develop a space of activist scholarship regarding the
present situation of Black life in America and its implications to a larger
conversation on injustice. Through
analysis of personal, i.e. Prayers in the midst of Helicopters, and societal
narratives, i.e. the Eric Garner case, I will lift up some, not all of the
underlying issues which signify an empire in gradual decay and those
opportunities to build movements of A Thoughtful Solidarity for the freedom and
liberation of all people.
Writing, similar to
planting seeds gives great productive outlet to a righteous anger.
Sitting in
Church on a Sunday evening in prayer I began to hear helicopters overhead. Hearing the helicopters, my heart began to
race, adrenaline began to flow ever so briskly and memories of my South Central
Los Angeles neighborhood began to crowd my mind. These memories swirling in my mind, I was
mindful of the people protesting in Berkeley because of the injustice
perpetrated on Black men and boys with implications far beyond Black life in
America. Later after a conversation
with a friend and colleague that evening I reflected upon the protests in New
York, Ferguson, Oakland, San Francisco, and Los Angeles, and now Berkeley,
historical hotbeds of dissent. In those
centers of protest I saw people holding hands and protesting injustice across
color lines. The perpetration of injustice upon Black life has galvanized
people across the nation into movements of A Thoughtful Solidarity.
A
Thoughtful Solidarity, as an organizational structure, is framed in an ethics which
has as its core value love and respect for all people and their desires as
incarnations of the divine. Within this ethics
hope becomes a profound transformative move which allows a divine presence to
move in the midst of our greatest concerns.
I believe that A Thoughtful Solidarity can be a provocative means to
encounter, in fullness, the injustice which seeks, more and more to shape and
contour daily life. This becomes evident as people of different
races, nationalities and ethnicities, who, marching in A Thoughtful Solidarity, encounter
police and their helicopters and even drones, paid for with tax dollars, as
tools of the establishment for the protection of that establishment. A Thoughtful Solidarity is a powerful
response to unjust laws which disproportionately target Black, Latino people,
people of color, and people on the margins.
The death
of Eric Garner, a Black man, husband and father of six at the hands of New York
City police, after telling the police eleven times, “I can’t breathe” for selling loose cigarettes, a law put
in place by politicians in Albany, New York, from my perspective, reflects the agenda
of the establishment grounded in the agenda of white supremacy and privilege becomes
a significant means to oppress and sequester voices it deems as dangerous to
its agenda. In an interview with Ron
Paul (R-KY), in Newsweek magazine of December 6, 2014 entitled, “Garner
Killing: Cops shouldn’t be policing
cigarettes[1], Paul
points out
“New York City's total cigarette tax is $5.85
per pack (the $4.35 state excise tax plus the $1.50 local tax). State and local
officials enacted the tax to discourage smoking, but the hardest hit by high
cigarette taxes are the poor, who are more likely to smoke and, unlike middle-
and upper-class tobacco users, can't afford healthier alternatives.”
On the
surface we have a Black man breaking the law yet when we look deeper and
systemically what we have is law that reflects an agenda which is
disproportionate in its enforcement and oppressive as those in poverty, now considered criminal, cannot afford to escape a narrative developed and designed by
politicians, i.e., agents of the establishment.
As I look more in-depth I find that the Eric Garner case presents
significant implications towards the dismantling of civil rights by a police
state deputized by a white supremacy that is increasingly fearful and as such blatant
in its abuse of people like Eric Garner and their civil rights.
Gathering with
Black activists, ministers, theologians, professors and scholars in Sacred Black
Space to process what it means to be Black in America today, to pray and to vision a
way forward, I sat in righteous anger thinking of how to respond to white
supremacy and privilege. I sat in righteous
anger because of the pervasive and profound oppression inflicted upon Black
people throughout U.S History. That
said I am compelled to consider the concept of idolatry in this matter simply
because white supremacy and privilege have been constructed to be that all
pervading communal presence of economic necessity. This idolatry sequesters humanity for the
sake of its own consuming evil, seeking to devour blackness, its soul and its
spirit again, and again.
 |
| Cartoon by Kirk Anderson for Public Research Associates |
The implications
of the inconsumable are a particular fear, loathing and hatred embodied in the
idolatry of white supremacy and privilege, witnessed in the death of Black life
at the hands of that idolatry, becomes a compelling call for A Thoughtful Solidarity. Ideas and concepts on A Thoughtful Solidarity emerge out of an engagement of activists
and scholars such as bell hooks, Sojourner
Truth, Cornel West, Michael Eric Dyson, Tim Wise, Audre Lorde, Mayra Rivera,
Simone Weil, Michele Foucault and others.
A Thoughtful Solidarity develops as historical-critical cognizance,
borne out of honest conversations of the heart take root displacing thoughts
emerging from the idolatry of white supremacy and privilege. From a postcolonial perspective A Thoughtful
Solidarity becomes a means towards encountering one’s humanity, an authentic
sacred space of being and in this sense it is a calling to a new and different
horizon, where authenticity and imagination come face to face with oppression. In comparison to Solidarity which only engages
the external concerns and issues, A Thoughtful Solidarity embodies postcolonial
desires, which in the midst of those external concerns, to somehow escape a
humanity shaped and contoured by the desires of economic necessity first formed
on the plantation of Southern Slaveocracy.
Its intent is transformational.
A
Thoughtful Solidarity is composed of progressive coalitions, alliances,
organizations, groups, and voices of the unaffiliated with like minds, on the
margins, “its leadership is group-centered rather than leadership-centered”[2] and as
such a serious challenge to the narrative idolatry. This challenge embodied in a thoughtful A
Thoughtful Solidarity is magnified as those elements of A Thoughtful Solidarity
in concert and collaboration develop strategies which have as their goal a
constant, steady strain of transformative intent. I do believe that long term transformative intent
requires significant reflection as the establishment daily bombards those
living in A Thoughtful Solidarity.
A
Thoughtful Solidarity rests on a dynamic spiritual foundation. A strong dynamic spiritual foundation rooted
and grounded in prayer maintains the path for a project of A Thoughtful
Solidarity as well as for the one who longs for real systemic even
revolutionary change. Prayer must be
the starting point of any endeavor which engages empire and those notions of
idolatry. A Thoughtful Solidarity is also
bound together by a core spiritual belief in the inherent value of all people
as incarnations of the divine with intent, purpose and the gifts to manifest
that intent. That said, life continually
seeks liberation and as such the discourse that undergirds A Thoughtful
Solidarity is liberative. Beyond prayer
this is the most significant component within A Thoughtful Solidarity framework.
Most
importantly there are times when issues of sectarianism deny the very
liberation sought. As such A Thoughtful
Solidarity must transcend Christianity, Islam, Buddhism, Jewish
or Pagan or any other form of religious sectarianism and politics It must have a
holistic spiritual ground which reflects a divine cosmic spirit. A Thoughtful Solidarity can only contribute
to the gradual decay of the empire through love for all people as incarnations
of the divine. As such identity and what
it means to be human in the context of A Thoughtful Solidarity framework is a
matter of intimate togetherness in the midst of difference as espoused by Jesus
in his Sermon on the Mount and the thoughts of 13th century mystic and poet Jalaluddin
Rumi. This runs counter to empirical
notions of identity and existence immersed in popular fears.
The great
strength and determination of the movement rests in the heart of the person
longing for liberation from their oppression and in this sense a love sustainable for all must be the core vision
of A Thoughtful Solidarity.
[1]
Newsweek Magazine December 6, 2014 entitled, “Garner Killing: Cops shouldn’t be policing cigarettes by Jason
Pye. http://www.newsweek.com/garner-killing-cops-shouldnt-be-policing-cigarette-market-289711
accessed December 8, 2014.
[2] M.
Bahati Kuumba. Background and
History: The Case Studies in Comparative
Gender Perspective in Gender and Social Movements (Lanham, MD, Rowman &
Littlefield Publishers, 2001) 35.
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