Banner does have a point: today's political situation calls for more than just talking to our friends about being angry. Yet even though no riots broke out like in L.A. after the Rodney King trial, we shouldn't underestimate the anger this is causing and the already-present tensions that it's aggravating. Movements and rebellions often arise after a period of apparent calm. They're the quiet storm brewing, a build-up and eventual explosion of anger, resentment, and rejection of the existing social order. In my mind, the murder of Sean Bell and this verdict should be considered as another notch on the same belt as Katrina and Jena. Depending on how Obama's candidacy moves forward, that could be another decisive notch. Why? Because he carries himself as "beyond" race, as representative of today's supposedly integrated and egalitarian society. The problem is even he can't cover up such egregious offenses as Katrina and Sean Bell.
Essentially, as Banner says, this not guilty verdict was another green light to the NYPD, and police departments all around the country, that they can freely shoot people of color at will. Literally, at will. There's no longer even the pretense that someone has to actually display a weapon or threaten a cop. If someone "looks" suspicious, is hanging out in the "wrong" part of town, if they make the "wrong" move, they can get shot by the cops and the state will do nothing about it. The state and ruling class are so confident in their rule that they no longer even feel compelled to cover up such actions. With this in mind, it makes sense why 20 years after NWA released "Fuck Tha Police", artists like Chamillionaire are still venting about police harassment and violence.
I say this not to be over-dramatic or pessimistic. Yet this is the reality today and it is exactly these experiences, on a national level, that ingrain themselves in people's minds and eventually make people say "Hell no, we won't take no more of this." Emmett Till was the Sean Bell of his time period, albeit in different ways. For young black folks in the 1950s, Emmett Till showed that there was no "peaceful" nor "equal" segregation, and there was no "gradual" desegregation. How are young people today thinking about Sean Bell? Do we think it means black folks are still in the same place as we were in the 1950s? Do we see the contradictions between the U.S. "fighting for freedom" in Iraq, meanwhile mowing down people of color in our own backyard? Are we beginning to conclude that there can be no "peaceful" policing, no "equality" under white supremacy, no "gradual" change?
Most reporters and analysts are clueless as to why there wasn't another L.A. 1992 type response to the verdict. What they don't see is that it's not that people don't want to act or rebel, but rather that the organizing going on right now is being held back by a middle class politics (as publicly embodied by Al Sharpton) that is going nowhere. Sharpton proclaims after the verdict that black folks will take action through "economic withdrawals" -- presumably boycotts? I'm not clear. I wonder, why not a walkout? Why not a citywide strike? Get all the black youth out of school for a day (or longer) or all black adults walk out of work for a day (or longer), and then march on 1 Police Plaza. Have transit workers go on strike; or public school employees or hospital workers, etc., on strike. Don't "hurt" the city, shut the city down. Get organized with the community and keep the cops from even coming into any black communities. Set up roadblocks or whatever else is necessary and physically prevent the police from entering. Set up popular committees in those same communities so black folks can protect their own neighborhoods, rather than trigger-happy cops.
These wouldn't be easy to organize, but there are some folks doing important work to get out from under the confines of the likes of Sharpton. Whatever other possibilities there are for organizing in such a situation, it's important to try to understand how people are making sense of this. Banner is wrong. People aren't cowards; we are not only victims, we are rebels too. We're constantly trying to find ways out of the current social and political impasse. Ultimately, Sean Bell is one more (tragic) seed to the upheaval that must come.


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