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<h2>Ferguson Versus the Counter-Insurgency State</h2>
<h3>by BAR executive editor Glen Ford<br>
</h3>
<p><b><small><small><a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://blackagendareport.com/node/14372">http://blackagendareport.com/node/14372</a></small></small></b>
<br>
Wed, 08/20/2014</p>
<h5>“The domestic counterinsurgency army has been methodically
expanded by each successive administration.”</h5>
<p>The corporate media, reflecting their owners’ anxiety at the
failure of Black people to revert to a state of passivity in
Ferguson, Missouri, have arrived at a general consensus on two
counts: the need to “demilitarize” the police (fewer bullets,
smaller armored vehicles?) and, more immediately, to re-establish
some semblance of “calm” (as in comatose) in the neighborhood and
beyond. Corporate-attuned Black powerbrokers and politicians
deliver essentially the same message, counseling (quiet)
introspection and a search for “solutions” (diversions) to the
historical oppression in which they are deeply complicit.</p>
<p>But first, tensions must be reduced, to diffuse the confrontation
– which, we are told, serves no one’s interests but the “agitators
and instigators” (who, apparently, have millions of dollars in
derivatives wagers riding on urban chaos). Fortunately, the
“street” ignores the misleaders. If Ferguson had remained “calm”
in the face of Michael Brown’s murder, nobody outside greater St.
Louis would know the place existed.</p>
<p>De-militarize the police? After 50 years of seamlessly
integrating the local constabulary into the National Security
State and its War on Drugs, War on Terror, myriad and unending
foreign wars, and of funneling millions of Black prisoners into
the world’s largest system of incarceration, where would the
process of demilitarization begin? What, exactly, does it mean to
be militarized? Is it defined by the equipment the troops/cops
carry? Or, by the mission they are assigned?</p>
<p>If the mission of police forces in the United States is to
contain, suppress, hyper-surveil and incarcerate huge numbers of
Black people as a matter of policy, then police departments
require all the tools the federal government has been giving them
since President Lyndon Johnson signed the Omnibus Crime Control
and Safe Streets Act of 1968 – a cornerstone in the construction
of a truly national, integrated gendarmerie, which is defined as
“a military force charged with police duties among civilian
populations.” SWAT teams, first formed in Philadelphia in 1964 and
Los Angeles in 1967 as unabashed counter-Black insurgency units,
have proliferated to the far corners of the land, and are now
standard drill for warrant-serving cops. The domestic
counterinsurgency army has been methodically expanded by each
successive administration, first through the Law Enforcement
Assistance Administration, and ultimately drawing on the stocks
of, not only the Pentagon, but virtually every armed agency of the
federal government. </p>
<p>President Obama, to whom idiots appeal to scale back police
militarization, is as hawkish as any of his predecessors in about
keeping America safe from Black inner city insurgency. The lead
sentence in an item in today’s <a target="_blank"
href="http://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/20/upshot/data-on-transfer-of-military-gear-to-police-departments.html?ref=us&abt=0002&abg=0">New
York Times,</a> blandly titled “Data on Transfer of Military
Gear to Police Depatments,” tells the tale, succinctly:</p>
<h5>“Since President Obama took office, the Pentagon has transferred
to police departments tens of thousands of machine guns; nearly
200,000 ammunition magazines; thousands of pieces of camouflage
and night-vision equipment; and hundreds of silencers, armored
cars and aircraft.”</h5>
<p>Clearly, the U.S. is at war with Black America. </p>
<h5>“Where would the process of demilitarization begin?”</h5>
<p>All the nation’s police departments are following the same drill,
with the same tools and weapons, under the same mandate: keep the
Blacks in check; terrorize them as a matter of policy; provoke
them, when it is politically convenient; and keep them imprisoned
at rates never experienced over time by any group that was not
formally enslaved.</p>
<p>This is not “mission creep,” but the logical fulfillment of the
mandate handed down by the collective political leadership of the
United States in response to the Black Freedom Movement of the
Sixties – a movement whose most militant sector was “militarily
defeated,” as Black Is Back Coalition chairman Omali Yeshitela
points out, by the U.S. <a target="_blank"
href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gendarmerie">gendarmerie’s</a>
counterinsurgency campaign of assassination, disruption and mass
arrests. </p>
<p>The U.S. government was not content to simply crush the organized
activists, but opted to put Black Americans as a group under a
militarized regime of mass incarceration. That’s the regime that
shot Michael Brown six times, two Saturdays ago, and which has
since sent reinforcements in various uniforms to bolster the
state’s longstanding policy of Black cmes
ontainment. </p>
<p>That’s why Al Sharpton statements on Ferguson are diversionary,
at best: </p>
<p>"America as a nation, Missouri as a state, Ferguson as a city, is
at a defining moment on whether or not we know and are mature
enough to handle policing — whether it goes over the line or
not.... All policemen are not bad; most policemen are not bad. But
all of them are not right all the time. And when they're wrong,
they must pay for being wrong just like citizens pay when they're
wrong.... Looting is wrong. We condemn the looters. But when will
law enforcement condemn police who shoot and kill our young
people? We got to be honest on both sides of this discussion."</p>
<p>We only quote Sharpton because his views are essentially
representative of the Black Misleadership Class, which has
presided over nearly half a century of mass Black incarceration
and containment, yet continues to counsel that African Americans
are only a reform or two away from true “freedom.” Sharpton wants
Black people and the police to understand each other’s
perspectives, which is the common refrain of corporate media, as
well. Fortunately, the defiant activists in Ferguson understand
all too well where the police are coming from. This is not about
bad, rogue cops, but an entrenched system of Black oppression that
the cops are paid and trained to enforce. </p>
<h5>“The election of Black city councilpersons and mayors did not
transform the fundamental relationship between the community and
the police.”</h5>
<p>It was understandable that previous generations of Black people,
who came to political consciousness in the late Fifties and
Sixties, could believe that growing police repression would surely
be overcome by what seemed like the inexorable rise of Black
majorities and decisive voting pluralities in the cities. But the
election of Black city councilpersons and mayors did not transform
the fundamental relationship between the community and the police,
who were even more quickly being integrated into a national
gendarmerie that was sworn to impose what Michelle Alexander calls
The New Jim Crow. Meanwhile, the Black Misleadership Class – the
beneficiaries of the limited, civil rights gains of the Sixties –
spent most of their energies integrating themselves into the
Democratic Party and affiliated corporate structures, while
accepting every gift of guns and gear from the feds.</p>
<p>Black majority rule does not automatically transform the
relationship between cops and citizens. Newark, New Jersey, for
example, has had Black mayors since 1970. Yet, a U.S. Justice
Department review shows that cops violate the rights of residents
in 75 percent of pedestrian stops. There is nothing atypical about
Newark among largely Black cities.</p>
<p>Back in the late Sixties, many believed that an influx of new,
Black and brown police would compel local departments to “protect
and serve” the people, rather than protect white privilege and
serve the rich and powerful. It does generally appear that Black
cops are somewhat less likely to kill or maim Black residents, but
the repressive relationship is not fundamentally altered by their
increased presence on the force. </p>
<p>In New Orleans, which has had a number of Black police chiefs,
about 40 percent of the department is Black. Nevertheless, the
department’s conduct in Black neighborhoods is as savage and
predatory as in any city in the nation. </p>
<p>Back in 1969, it was not hopelessly naïve to believe that the
establishment of civilian review boards to oversee police
departments would make a huge difference in the lives of people at
the other end of the night stick. Today, there are plenty of such
boards, with varied levels of independence and power, but nowhere
can it be said that review boards have fundamentally altered
Black-police relationships in statistically significant ways.</p>
<p>If the people of Ferguson or anyplace else demand more Black
police officers or a civilian police review board, we should all
support them. But, we have the benefit of history to inform us
that such reforms will have only marginal impact on
community-police relations as long as the police mission is to
contain and incarcerate Black people – which is the root of the
militarized police state. The same “army/police” rules everywhere
in America.</p>
<p>There is no liberated territory – not yet. But, that must be the
goal. </p>
<h5>BAR executive editor Glen Ford can be contacted at
<a class="moz-txt-link-abbreviated" href="mailto:Glen.Ford@BlackAgendaReport.com">Glen.Ford@BlackAgendaReport.com</a>.</h5>
<br>
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