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November 26, 2014<br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://www.counterpunch.org/2014/11/26/ferguson-and-the-right-of-resistance/">http://www.counterpunch.org/2014/11/26/ferguson-and-the-right-of-resistance/</a><br>
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<div class="subheadlinestyle"><b><big><big>The Fight for Dignity</big></big></b></div>
<h1 class="article-title">Ferguson and the Right of Resistance</h1>
<div class="mainauthorstyle">by AJAMU BARAKA </div>
<div class="main-text">
<p>Barack Obama, the obsequious errand boy for the financial and
corporate plutocrats who own the U.S. government, made a
pathetic appearance on national television to try to persuade
the “natives” to remain peaceful in response to the
non-indictment of the Ferguson killer-cop. His inane comments
extolling the value of non-violence and the rule of law seemed
strangely incongruent with the militaristic rhetoric and
policies of his administration over the last few years.</p>
<p>Yet, Obama’s positions on law and violence are not as
contradictory as they might appear when these positions are
resituated within the context of imperial logic and the
framework of power. Legitimate violence is always determined by
history’s dominant powers and employed as a weapon to maintain
and extend that dominance. Over the last five hundred years
Europe emerged from the backwaters of history and cultural
backwardness to predominance as a result of genocide and land
theft in the Americas, the trans-Atlantic slave trade, and
colonial/capitalist development. The violent establishment of
capitalism, racism, and heteropatriarchy enabled the West to
impose its definitions of legitimacy, including “legitimate”
violence.</p>
<p>Thus when Palestinians resist the theft of the their land and
the killing of their people by Israeli colonists, their response
is defined as illegitimate violence that sparks support for
Israel’s “right to defend itself.” When Africans waged national
liberation struggles to free themselves from European colonial
domination in places like Kenya, Angola, Mozambique, Zimbabwe
and South Africa, the West condemned their efforts as
illegitimate. Furthermore, because those struggles were
determined to be illegitimate colonial powers felt justified to
viciously attack those efforts with the support of the U.S.
government. And when African Americans organized against police
violence and for self-determination and our own definitions of
liberation in the 60s, our efforts were deemed illegitimate. We
were brutally suppressed with the full range of state terror
tactics including beatings,<br>
deaths, infiltration, surveillance, and the jailing of activists
for decades.</p>
<p>Therefore, we should understand the State’s response to our
discontent in the aftermath of the murder of Michael Brown in
this context. The heavy-handed use of violence to deny the
people the human rights to peacefully assemble and freedom of
association is consistent with the historical uses of violence
to control and suppress opposition. And the state’s
determination that more militant forms of popular resistance are
illegitimate helped to shift the attention of the capitalist
media to black resistance and away from the issue of impunity
for yet another law enforcement official who literally gets away
with murder.</p>
<p>The focus on the forms of resistance taking place in Ferguson
is reflective of a shared, cross-class and racialized world-view
that accepts the carefully constructed elite view concerning
what constitutes illegitimate resistance. This hegemonic view
creates a moral myopia that makes it impossible for many in
white America to understand the point of view of the resisters
to this non-indictment. This ideological and even cognitive
disconnect makes the call for more national conversations on
race such a dangerous diversion from the more immediate historic
task at hand.</p>
<p>The task of the African American resistance movement is not to
worry about sitting down with white people infected with the
disease of white supremacy, but to build the capacity of black
poor and working class folks to resist the intensifying
expressions of repressive state power directed at our people.
From that base, we can and should talk about building coalitions
with other oppressed communities and people who are ready to
take on the task of opposing the settler capitalist state at
every level.</p>
<p>So while the corporate media has been somewhat successful in
shifting the focus from the injustice of the non-indictment to
the reaction of protestors, the insights provided by brother
Malcolm X offer a framework for understanding what must be done.</p>
<p>For Malcolm, resistance is not a crime. In fact, the fight for
human dignity and human rights is what makes us human. But he
argued that there is a price that people must be prepared to
pay. According to Malcolm:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>“…you shouldn’t even be allowed around us other humans if you
don’t want to pay the price. You should be kept in the cotton
patch where you’re not a human being. You’re an animal that
belongs in the cotton patch like a horse or a cow, or a
chicken or a possum, if you’re not ready to pay the price
necessary to be paid for recognition and respect as a human
being.”</p>
</blockquote>
<p>And what was the price? “The price is death really. The price
to make others respect your human rights is death. You have to
be ready to die…” “This is all we want—to be a human being.”</p>
<p>In our quest for authentic freedom for ourselves and our
children who are being spiritually and literally murdered,
Malcolm is reminding us that we have to be prepared to make the
ultimate sacrifice. This willingness to sacrifice, as inchoate
and thinly grounded as the mass resistance was in Ferguson,
demonstrated, nevertheless, that many of our young people are
still prepared to pay the price for freedom. We should be proud
that the spirit of struggle, resistance, and sacrifice is still
alive. The experience of Ferguson demonstrated to people around
the world that despite the opiate of credit-based false
prosperity, illusions of system inclusion and Barack Obama –
African Americans are finally awakening from an almost two
decade long sleep and in the process reawakening the spirit of
resistance for everyone.</p>
<p><em><strong>Ajamu Baraka</strong> is a human rights activist,
organizer and geo-political analyst. Baraka is an Associate
Fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies (IPS) in
Washington, D.C. and editor and contributing columnist for the
Black Agenda Report. He is a contributor to “<a
href="http://store.counterpunch.org/product/killing-trayvons/">Killing
Trayvons: An Anthology of American Violence</a>”
(Counterpunch Books, 2014). He can be reached at <a
href="mailto:info.abaraka@gmail.com">info.abaraka@gmail.com</a> and <a
href="http://www.AjamuBaraka.com">www.AjamuBaraka.com</a></em></p>
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