[News] Black Struggle Is Not a Sound Bite: Why I Refused to Meet With President Obama

[Anti-Imperialist News]

    Black Struggle Is Not a Sound Bite: Why I Refused to Meet With
    President Obama

Thursday, 18 February 2016 By Aislinn Pulley 
<http://www.truth-out.org/author/itemlist/user/51943>,
*/http://www.truth-out.org/opinion/item/34889-black-struggle-is-not-a-sound-bite-why-i-refused-to-meet-with-president-obama/*

On February 18, civil rights activists and leaders from around the 
country were invited to the White House for what the Obama 
administration has called a "first-of-its-kind" intergenerational 
meeting to discuss "a range of issues, including the administration's 
efforts on criminal justice reform" and "building trust between law 
enforcement and the communities they serve." The event's guest list 
includes high-profile civil rights leaders like Al Sharpton, student 
organizer DeShaunya Ware and others.

As the cofounder of Black Lives Matter Chicago, I was issued an 
invitation to this event, and various news outlets have already listed 
me as an attendee. But as a radical, Black organizer, living and working 
in a city that is now widely recognized as a symbol of corruption and 
police violence, I do not feel that a handshake with the president is 
the best way for me to honor Black History Month or the Black freedom 
fighters whose labor laid the groundwork for the historic moment we are 
living in.

I respectfully declined the invitation to the White House to discuss 
criminal legal reform and to celebrate Black History Month. I was under 
the impression that a meeting was being organized to facilitate a 
genuine exchange on the matters facing millions of Black and Brown 
people in the United States. Instead, what was arranged was basically a 
photo opportunity and a 90-second sound bite for the president. I could 
not, with any integrity, participate in such a sham that would only 
serve to legitimize the false narrative that the government is working 
to end police brutality and the institutional racism that fuels it. For 
the increasing number of families fighting for justice and dignity for 
their kin slain by police, I refuse to give its perpetrators and 
enablers political cover by making an appearance among them.

If the administration is serious about addressing the issues of Black 
Lives Matter Chicago - and its sister organizations that go by different 
names across this nation - they can start by meeting the simple demands 
of families who want transparency, and who want police that kill Black 
people unjustly to be fired, indicted and held accountable. A meeting 
arranged to carry this out is one that would be worthy of consideration. 
Until this begins to happen on a mass scale, any celebrations of Black 
history that go on inside the walls of the White House are hollow and 
ceremonial at best.

Dialogue around the issue of the criminal legal system (and the 
injustice of this system) is crucial to the struggle against 
anti-Blackness. But when we confront issues of policing and 
incarceration, we must be very intentional about who is framing such 
dialogues, and what agenda that framing serves.

When we talk about criminal "justice" reform, we must first consider 
that which we are defining as "criminal." In Chicago, under Mayor Rahm 
Emanuel's reign, we must ask why he is not considered a criminal for 
closing half of the city's mental health-care centers. We must ask why 
he is not considered a criminal for conducting the largest public school 
closing in US history. We must ask why the State's Attorney Anita 
Alvarez is not considered a criminal for conspiring to keep hidden for 
over 400 days the videos of the killings of Laquan McDonald and Ronald 
Johnson. We must consider who is criminal and what the criminal legal 
system is when Dante Servin - the Chicago police officer who gunned down 
Rekia Boyd - can be acquitted of involuntary manslaughter on the grounds 
that her murder was an intentional act, and leave a courtroom with his 
job intact. We must consider who is criminal when Emanuel, the Obama 
administration's former chief of staff, let the Dyett High School hunger 
strikers 
<http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/32650-when-not-to-listen-to-a-columnist-the-dyett-hunger-strikers-must-be-heard> 
starve for 30 days while fighting to save the only high school in their 
South Side neighborhood from closing.

We must consider what is criminal when Chicago State University, the 
city's only predominantly Black university, may close due to the state 
government's inability to pass a budget.

We must consider what is criminal justice when not one officer, 
including former Commander Jon Burge, has been held responsible for the 
torture of over 100 Black and Latino men that occurred for over 30 years 
in the city of Chicago - a city where torture continues today in places 
like Homan Square 
<http://www.truth-out.org/art/item/30792-one-morning-in-homan-square>.

We must ask when and where justice can be found when just blocks away 
from Homan Square, Black Panther Chairman Fred Hampton and Deputy Mark 
Clark were murdered in cold blood by Chicago police and the FBI 
<http://www.democracynow.org/2014/12/4/watch_the_assassination_of_fred_hampton> 
while they were sleeping 40 years ago last December 4.

We must consider who is criminal when, the day after Christmas, 
19-year-old college student Quintonio LeGrier called 911 three times and 
was hung up on by the operator before Officer Robert Rialmo showed up 
and killed him and his neighbor, Bettie Jones, a mother of five, from 20 
feet away. We must consider who is a criminal when this same officer 
files suit against the young man he killed 
<http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/34808-chicago-cop-s-lawsuit-against-estate-of-slain-teen-might-be-a-first> 
for emotional distress.

Truly, we must ask, who is the criminal and what is justice and who is 
this system for, when George Zimmerman, Darren Wilson, Jon Burge, Glen 
Evans, George Hernandez, Dante Servin, Anita Alvarez and Rahm Emanuel 
walk free? And we must ask, who then has been criminalized, who is 
behind bars and why are they disproportionately Black and poor?

We must ask /what is criminal justice/ when children, the elderly, the 
disabled and everyday working people in the city of Flint, Michigan, 
cannot safely drink their water due to lead contamination which has 
occurred because the local government switched the city's water sources 
in 2014 in order to allegedly save money.

And finally, we ask, what can criminal justice mean in a country that 
houses the most incarcerated people ever recorded in human history?

In Chicago, opposition to the oppression that perpetuates these 
circumstances has happened in the streets, at police board meetings and 
in community spaces. While we continue to live in struggle, battles have 
been won. In 2015, we became the first city in the nation to award 
reparations to police torture survivors. Our young people have protested 
and organized relentlessly. We have a long road ahead, but the gains we 
have made have come through laborious organizing and antagonism of the 
system.

The Cook County criminal legal system, federal and all county court and 
prison systems are corrupt and racist. In order to make substantive 
change, Black Lives Matter Chicago demands an end to cash bail. We 
demand an end to grand juries. We demand an investigation of the Cook 
County state's attorney's office for extensive cover-ups of police 
crimes. We demand an end to all mandatory minimum sentencing. We demand 
the defunding and ultimate closing of the Cook County Juvenile Detention 
Center and Cook County Jail and all juvenile detention centers. We 
demand community control of all police departments with the creation of 
an elected Civilian Police Accountability Council with the power to hire 
and fire police officers and superintendents, by civilian 
representatives voted in by each neighborhood, with mandated inclusion 
of survivors of police violence and torture. We want a redirection of 
funds saved to support free health care for all; we want housing for 
abandoned youth, the homeless and nearly homeless; we want a federal 
jobs program for the unemployed and underemployed; we want a living wage 
for all workers; we want fully funded schools and fully funded crisis 
centers nationwide.

We demand the immediate closing of Guantánamo Bay and the return of the 
confiscated land to the people of Cuba. We demand the return of all 
troops in Iraq and Afghanistan. We demand an immediate end to all money 
going to Israel while the occupation of Palestine continues. We demand 
an immediate withdrawal of all US troops in Africa under US Africa 
Command. We demand an end to the ongoing police violence against 
Indigenous people and that this colonized United States be returned to 
Native peoples. We demand the immediate halting of the deportation raids 
of undocumented people. We demand full reparations for all descendants 
of the trans-Atlantic slave trade.

Finally, we assert that true revolutionary and systemic change will 
ultimately only be brought forth by ordinary working people, students 
and youth - organizing, marching and taking power from the corrupt 
elites. No proponent of this system - Democrat or Republican - will 
upend the oppressive structures that maintain it. To hold the powerful 
accountable for their harmful and oppressive actions, we must continue 
to build power in the streets. We must act in concert and in coalition 
within our communities, because together, we have the power to uproot 
all oppression and systemic violence.

-- 
Freedom Archives 522 Valencia Street San Francisco, CA 94110 415 
863.9977 www.freedomarchives.org
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