{"id":1607,"date":"2015-04-29T15:28:08","date_gmt":"2015-04-29T22:28:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/uniondelbarrio.org\/main\/?p=1607"},"modified":"2020-05-29T07:51:57","modified_gmt":"2020-05-29T14:51:57","slug":"baltimore-2015-we-see-black-rage-but-we-need-black-power","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/uniondelbarrio.org\/main\/baltimore-2015-we-see-black-rage-but-we-need-black-power\/","title":{"rendered":"Baltimore 2015: We See Black Rage But We Need Black Power"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Do we support protests against police terror? Absolutely.\u00a0Will we denounce people for raising hell? Absolutely not. Meanwhile, opportunistic media commentators, dishonest\u00a0politicians from both parties, and liberal representatives from dozens of social service agencies are now rushing to Baltimore to denounce the \u201crioting.\u201d<\/p>\n

What is different about Baltimore is that the standard \u201cpeaceful\u201d protests, candlelight vigils, #hashtags, and passionate speeches were not enough to contain justified\u00a0public anger and frustration. We know that the rage spilling out onto the streets of this city is rooted in the historical repression of the Black community and was sparked by the recent wave of police killings of Black men. Yet it is what comes after the anger and frustration subside that is most important for Black communities across the US, and important for us as \u201cgente solidaria\u201d who face the same kind of state violence, whether it comes from the police or migra.<\/p>\n

Therefore, we will not denounce what is happening in Baltimore. Instead, our intention is to bring some political clarity to how we see circumstances unfolding. To start, we have to understand that there is a fundamental difference between hell raising and organizing. The first, which is what is happening in Baltimore, is based on justifiable rage. The second is much less common, and is based on tactical\/strategic planning. Protesting, whether it be \u201cpeaceful\u201d or otherwise, is always important but it does not automatically translate into independent political power. Raging against oppression is not the same as seizing power from the oppressor.<\/p>\n

Police and migra violence must be understood as a form of political power imposed on our communities through violence \u2013 otherwise known as state sponsored terrorism. Police killings are rarely analyzed as a function of political power – this is the line that is not usually crossed, even among many progressive-minded people. It\u00a0is an historical fact that state sponsored terrorism is used by the powerful to defend their privileges and to repress and contain the powerless. Killer cops and killer migras will never be held accountable precisely because they serve state sponsored terror. Killing people in our communities is part of the job of policing. This is why cops come into our communities with guns and spend hundreds of hours training to shoot guns. The poorer and darker skinned a community, the more police and more guns are deployed. If a community resists the police, they come in with even more police and even bigger guns. This is a pattern that is as simple as it is historically consistent.<\/p>\n

If we don\u2019t call it for what it is, then we limit ourselves to parroting sterile debates as framed by\u00a0media personalities, democrats\/republicans, and representatives of social service agencies. Consequently, we also limit ourselves to demanding the same short-term reforms, inevitably condemning ourselves to more state terror a few weeks or months down the road from now, when the pattern is then repeated.\u00a0Inevitably, another innocent member of the Black community is murdered by the police. As before, we will endure\u00a0weeks of so-called \u201canalysis\u201d and \u201cdebate\u201d within the media, so that we can \u201cbegin the healing process.\u201d Loyal critics of the US political system then demand resignations, reforms in\u00a0policing, greater diversity among police, and funding for a few social programs.<\/p>\n

In the end, these reforms will not change a damn thing, because this is about more than diversity and sensitivity training. Just this week,\u00a0Loretta Lynch, the first Black female Attorney General replaced Eric Holder, the first Black Attorney General. They both served under the first Black president, Barack Obama. Baltimore currently has a Black mayor and a Black police commissioner. Clearly, this kind of diversity did not stop the police from killing Freddie Gray, nor did it change the balance of power in Baltimore. Indeed, political and economic power differentials in South Carolina, Ferguson, NYC, Cleveland, Pasco, Los Angeles, San Diego, Oxnard, San Quint\u00edn, and Ayotzinapa also remain identical to how they operated before the protests. This represents a consistent pattern of political violence that must be disrupted.<\/p>\n

We know that during the short time the Black Panther Party (BPP) was fully operational, they successfully disrupted this pattern of police violence. Originally named the \u201cBlack Panther Party for Self Defense,\u201d the Panthers were founded in Oakland in order to build organized self-defense to police violence in the Black community. The Panthers not only changed the course of Black political culture, but they represented liberation struggle as something we all could understand. The work of the BPP had a tremendous influence on the Chicana\/o Movement, AIM, and other movements around the world. Uni\u00f3n del Barrio was founded on many of the same principles of the BPP.<\/p>\n

We must not limit ourselves to more of the same ineffective\u00a0solutions offered by liberal politicians or media commentators. The only way\u00a0to challenge police\/migra violence (and attend\u00a0to the dozens of other urgent needs of our communities) is to build dual and contending power that demands collective organization.<\/p>\n

The recent wave of police killings of Black men has sparked the Black rage we see in Baltimore, but what Baltimore and all of us really need is to see some Black Power in action. We stand with the Black community of Baltimore in demanding justice for Freddie Gray. We uphold our decades-long fraternal relationship with the Uhuru Movement<\/a> as a path to Black Power. We agree with the Uhuru Movement that the only way to stop police from murdering Black men is to impose \u201cBlack community control of the police.\u201d We know that if we truly want to bring about substantive political change to our peoples, we are going to have to be AT LEAST as organized as those institutions that are used to repress our communities.<\/p>\n

DON\u2019T JUST CLICK \u201cLIKE\u201d & MOVE ON\u2026 THE TIME TO JOIN THE STRUGGLE AND BUILD A LIBERATION MOVEMENT IS NOW!<\/strong><\/p>\n

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