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dir="ltr"> <font size="-2"><a id="reader-domain" class="domain"
href="https://www.counterpunch.org/2017/06/20/the-body-count-rises-in-the-u-s-war-against-black-people/">https://www.counterpunch.org/2017/06/20/the-body-count-rises-in-the-u-s-war-against-black-people/</a></font>
<h1 id="reader-title">The Body Count Rises in the U.S. War
Against Black People</h1>
<div id="reader-credits" class="credits">by <span
class="post_author" itemprop="author"><a
href="https://www.counterpunch.org/author/cuxere/"
rel="nofollow">Ajamu Baraka</a> - June 20, 2017<br>
</span></div>
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<p>Before we can even process the <a
href="http://www.latimes.com/opinion/opinion-la/la-ol-castille-charleena-lyles-police-shooting-20170619-story.html">acquittal
of the murders of Philado Castile</a>, we hear about
another murder of a black person by the police
occupation forces. This time the victim, <a
href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/her-name-was-charleena-lyles_us_5947c4f0e4b06bb7d27479c8">Charleena
Lyles</a>, is a black woman who was also five months
pregnant.</p>
<p>Again, there is anger, confusion and calls for justice
from the black community of Seattle, where the latest
killing took place. Many might remember that it was in
Seattle where two members of the local black community
attempted to call out the racist and hypocritical
liberal white community during <a
href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/bernie-sanders-black-lives-matter_us_55c68f14e4b0923c12bd197e">a
visit by Bernie Sanders</a>. The black activists were
subsequently shouted down by a majority of Bernie’s
supporters. One of the issues that the activists wanted
to raise was the repressive, heavy-handed tactics of the
Seattle Police Department.</p>
<p>Some have argued that this rash of killings of black
people caught on video or reported by dozens of
witnesses is nothing new, that the images of police
chocking, shooting and beating poor black and
working-class people is now more visible because of
technological innovations that make it easier to capture
these images. They are partially right.</p>
<p>As an internal colony in what some refer to as a prison
house of nations that characterizes the U.S. nation
state, black communities are separated into enclaves of
economic exploitation and social degradation by visible
and often invisible social and economic processes. The
police have played the role not of protectors of the
unrealized human rights of black people but as
occupation forces. In those occupied zones of
repression, everyone knows that the police operate from
a different script than the ones presented in the cop
shows that permeate popular entertainment culture in the
U.S. In those shows, the police are presented as heroic
forces battling the<br>
forces of evil, which sometimes causes them to see the
law and the rights of individuals as impediments. For
many viewers, brutality and other practices is forgiven
and even supported because the police are supposedly
dealing with the evil irrational forces that lurk in the
bowels of the barrios and ghettos in the imagination of
the public.</p>
<p>It was perfectly plausible for far too many white
people in the U.S. that a wounded Mike Brown, already
shot and running away from Darwin Wilson the cop who
would eventually murdered Michael, would then turn
around and run back at Wilson, who claim he had no other
choice but to engulf Michael in a hail of bullets
killing this “demon” as Wilson described him. And
unfortunately, many whites will find a way to understand
how Charleena, who called the police herself to report a
burglary, would then find herself dead at the hands of
the police she called.</p>
<p>But the psychopathology of white supremacy is not the
focus here. We have commented on that issue on numerous
occasions. The concern is with some black people who
have not grasped the new conditions that we find
ourselves in—that black people don’t understand that
there will never be justice as defined by the cessation
of these kinds of killings. Why? Because incarceration,
police killings, beatings, charging our children as
adults and locking them away for decades, all of these
are inherent in the logic of repression that has always
characterized the relationship between the U.S. racist
settler-state and black people.</p>
<p>In other words, if Black people really want this to
stop we have to come to the difficult conclusion, for
some, that the settler-colonial, capitalist, white
supremacist state and society is the enemy of black
people and most oppressed people in the world. Difficult
for many because it means that Black people can no
longer deny the fact that we are not equal members of
this society, that we are seen as the enemy and that our
lives, concerns, perspectives, history and desires for
the future are of no concern to the rulers of this state
and for vast numbers of ordinary whites.</p>
<p>That is why Charleena Lyles joins Mike Brown, Sandra
Bland, Tamir Rice, John Crawford and Philando Castile,
just a few of the names of our people victimized in the
prime of their lives by the protectors of white power
wearing police uniforms.</p>
<p>She will not be the last.</p>
<p>The logic of neoliberal capitalism has transformed our
communities and peoples into a sector of the U.S.
population <a
href="https://www.counterpunch.org/2015/09/04/until-we-win-black-labor-and-liberation-in-the-disposable-era/">that
is no longer needed</a>. This new reality buttressed
by white supremacist ideology that is unable to see the
equal value of non-European (white) life has created a
precarious situation for black people, more precarious,
than any other period in U.S. history.</p>
<p>African (Black) people are a peaceful people and
believe in justice. But there can be no peace without
justice. For as long as our people are under attack, as
long as our fundamental collective human rights are not
recognized, as long as we don’t have the ability to
determine our own collective fate, we will resist, we
will fight, and we will create the conditions to make
sure that the war being waged against us will not
continue to be a one- sided conflict.</p>
<p>The essence of the People(s)-Centered Human Rights
framework is that the oppressed have a right to right to
resist, the right to self-determination, and the right
to use whatever means necessary to protect and realize
their fundamental rights.</p>
<p>Charleena, we will say your name and the names of all
who have fallen as we deliver the final death-blow
against this organized barbarism known as the U.S.</p>
</div>
<p class="author_description"> <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="http://www.ajamubaraka.com/">www.AjamuBaraka.com</a></em>
</p>
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