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April 29, 2015<br>
<b><small><small><a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://www.counterpunch.org/2015/04/29/baltimore-and-the-human-right-to-resistance-2/">http://www.counterpunch.org/2015/04/29/baltimore-and-the-human-right-to-resistance-2/</a></small></small></b><br>
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<div class="subheadlinestyle"><b><big><big>Rejecting the Framework
of the Oppressor </big></big></b></div>
<h1 class="article-title">Baltimore and the Human Right to
Resistance</h1>
<div class="mainauthorstyle">by AJAMU BARAKA </div>
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<p>Anti-Black racism, always just beneath the surface of polite
racial discourse in the U.S., has exploded in reaction to the
resistance of black youth to another brutal murder by the agents
of this racist, settler-colonialist state. With the resistance,
the focus shifted from the brutal murder of Freddie Gray and the
systematic state violence that historically has been deployed to
control and contain the black population in the colonized urban
zones of North America, to the forms of resistance by African
Americans to the trauma of ongoing state violence.</p>
<p>The narrative being advanced by corporate media spokespeople
gives the impression that the resistance has no rational basis.
The impression being established is that this is just another
manifestation of the irrationality of non-European people – in
particular, Black people – and how they are prone to violence.
This is the classic colonial projection employed by all white
supremacist settler states, from the U.S., to South Africa and
Israel.</p>
<p>The accompanying narrative is that any kind of resistance that
does not fit the narrow definition of “non-violent” resistance
is illegitimate violence and, therefore, counter-productive
because – “violence doesn’t accomplish anything.” Not only does
this position falsely equates resistance to oppression as being
morally equivalent to the violence of the oppressor, it also
attempts to erase the role of violence as being fundamental to
the U.S. colonial project.</p>
<p>The history of colonial conquest saw the U.S. settler state
shoot and murdered its’ way across the land mass of what became
the U.S. in the process of stealing indigenous land to expand
the racist White republic from “sea to shining sea.” And the
marginalization of the role of violence certainly does not
reflect the values of the Obama administration that dutifully
implements the bi-partisan dictates of the U.S. strategy of full
spectrum dominance that privileges military power and oppressive
violence to protect and advance U.S. global supremacy. The
destruction of Libya; the reinvasion of Iraq; the civil war in
Syria; Obama’s continued war in Afghanistan; the pathological
assault by Israel on Palestinians in Gaza and the U.S. supported
attack on Yemen by the Saudi dictatorship, are just a few of the
horrific consequences of this criminal doctrine.</p>
<p>Race and oppressive violence has always been at the center of
the racist colonial project that is the U.S. It is only when the
oppressed resist — when we decide, like Malcolm X said, that we
must fight for our human rights — that we are counseled to be
like Dr. King, including by war mongers like Barack Obama.
However, resistance to oppression is a right that the oppressed
claim for themselves. It does not matter if it is sanctioned by
the oppressor state, because that state has no legitimacy.</p>
<p>No rational person exalts violence and the loss of life. But
violence is structured into the everyday institutional practices
of all oppressive societies. It is the deliberate
de-humanization of the person in order to turn them into a
‘thing’ — a process Dr. King called “thing-afication.” It is a
necessary process for the oppressor in order to more effectively
control and exploit. Resistance, informed by the conscious<br>
understanding of the equal humanity of all people, reverses this
process of de-humanization. Struggle and resistance are the
highest expressions of the collective demand for people-centered
human rights – human rights defined and in the service of the
people and not governments and middle-class lawyers.</p>
<p>That resistance may look chaotic at this point – spontaneous
resistance almost always looks like that. But since the internal
logic of neoliberal capital is incapable of resolving the
contradiction that it created, expect more repression and more
resistance that will eventually take a higher form of
organization and permanence. In the meantime, we are watching to
see who aligns with us or the racist state.</p>
<p>The contradictions of the colonial/capitalist system in its
current expression of neoliberalism have obstructed the creation
of decent, humane societies in which all people are valued and
have democratic and human rights. What we are witnessing in the
U.S. is a confirmation that neoliberal capitalism has created
what Chris Hedges called “sacrificial zones” in which large
numbers of black and Latino people have been confined and
written off as disposable by the system. It is in those zones
that we find the escalation of repressive violence by the
militarized police forces. And it is in those zones where the
people are deciding to fight back and take control of their
communities and lives.</p>
<p>These are defining times for all those who give verbal support
to anti-racist struggles and transformative politics. For many
of our young white comrades, people of color and even some black
ones who were too young to have lived through the last period of
intensified struggle in the 1960s and ‘70s and have not
understood the centrality of African American resistance to the
historical social struggles in the U.S., it may be a little
disconcerting to see the emergence of resistance that is not
dependent on and validated by white folks or anyone else.”</p>
<p>The repression will continue, and so will the resistance. The
fact that the resistance emerged in a so-called black city
provides some complications, but those are rich and welcoming
because they provide an opportunity to highlight one of the
defining elements that will serve as a line of demarcation in
the African American community – the issue of class. We are
going to see a vicious ideological assault by the black middle
class, probably led by their champion – Barack Obama – over the
next few days. Yet the events over the last year are making it
more difficult for these middle-class forces to distort and
confuse the issue of their class collaboration with the white
supremacist capitalist/colonialist patriarchy. The battle lines
are being drawn; the only question that people must ask
themselves is which side they’ll be on.</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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