Well, the truth is that it had to happen. We all knew it. One can't predict exactly how or when or where, but nobody can be surprised no matter how surprised we may pretend to be. Somebody was going to respond to the free-for-all murder of all of these black young men by the police. This time it turns out to be Micah Xavier Johnson who answered the call.
It has happened previously. Throughout the history of this country, 'law enforcement' has violently kept the black man in 'his place', whether that was as a slave or on the lowest rung on the social ladder. All along the system has supported the brutal methods employed by the police without a hint of remorse. Just keep' em in their place. And, in response, there have been (what's the word here) rebellions, uprisings, protests, marches... retaliatory shootings. This can be seen from many different perspectives. The victims were military veterans, husbands, fathers and brothers who served the city of Dallas – and died protecting the rights of fellow Americans to criticize their brethren in blue. Or, they were the brutal enemy, killed before they themselves could victimize some helpless black man. It all goes beyond the particular people involved in this tragedy. These people all have names and will be condemned or commemorated but are nothing more than pawns in a huge process that probably none of them understood. Certainly Mr. Johnson did not understand. According to reports, he targeted white people as well as the police demonstrating his scattered focus. This is not an issue that can be broken into white people and black people... or any other division of people. It is easy to recognize the enemy when the enemy wears a uniform, so targeting police can be understood. But, even though the society at large, obviously directed by white people, has not caused the needed changes, white people themselves are not the problem. The generic police officer simply has a job with which they feed their family. They do not make the many connections that would allow them to understand the overall function performed in their line of work. This is common among those in similar positions through history... concentration camp guards, for example didn't directly administer the gas, administrators in the bureau of Indian affairs didn't directly annihilate Native Americans. It is only a selected few 'bad cops' that really do the damage. Every city and every police department has them. And, within the system of 'law enforcement' these 'bad cops' are known. We know who they are. The real problem is that these 'bad cops' are protected. The system goes to great lengths to justify that which cannot in good conscious be justified simply to 'protect ones own'... and damn the evidence. Where is the 'good cop' who would stand against the 'bad cop'? And, knowing full well who this person is, the 'bad cop' is put back out into society to do it again. It is clearly with a purpose that we don't keep adequate statistics on the subject of police murders and police beatings. It is only when we developed the personal phone with a camera that the subject was acknowledged and then, even with video proof, the 'bad cop' still has been allowed to escape justice. There are no consequences for that 'bad cop' who goes out and kills himself a nigger. And now, we have a chance to do something about it because Mr. Johnson gave his life to try to make a difference. It catches on, others notice, the injustice builds and the pressure explodes... police officers were also shot Friday in Georgia, Tennessee and Missouri... likely not the end of the process. It is not over. It will not be over until we have systematic changes in this country. The various hatreds must be understood for what they are and the haters must be called out for what they are. Otherwise, the hatred festers, grows worse over time and forces unwanted reactions. As a nation, we need to be aware that, even with all of our overseas aggressions, our own 'men in blue' kill more Americans than enemy soldiers kill in overseas battles. Something is wrong with us. The question is, will we use this tragedy as an opportunity to work toward healing ourselves from this affliction that has been with us since our inception as a nation, or will we repress the truth, attempt to maintain the status quo and wait for the next occurrence? Based upon our national history, one cannot expect much in the way of sincere improvement, therefore, get ready for more of the same... and that's the truth !!!
Can we be surprised then, that there has been a military-style response in one of those cities? That is not to justify this bloody act in Dallas; just to explain its inevitability.The perpetrator in this instance, not someone, apparently, with a record of mental illness, before being killed by police using a bomb-carrying robot, told negotiators he was killing white police because of the two recent police killings of two young black men: Alton Sterling in Baton Rouge and Philando Castille in St. Paul.
There will no doubt be calls, particularly this having happened in Texas, for an even more militaristic crackdown by police on minority neighborhoods. But that would be a terrible mistake. What is needed is an amping down of the violence on both sides -- the communities and the police. And also an amping down of the rhetoric, particularly by political leaders. American society needs to start living up to its demonstrably false claim to be a just society of equality under the law. This is a good place to note that while this deadly assault on police in Dallas represents the worst attack on law enforcement personnel in memory, it is not the first planned coordinated sniper attack in Texas or the US. The last one, which was reportedly planned but never activated, was to have taken place in neighboring Houston, in November 2011. It was not, however, intended to target police officers. Rather, it was intended to assassinate the leaders of the Houston Occupy movement, which was just getting going in that city that fall. A heavily redacted memorandum (provided to ThisCantBeHappening! by the Partnership for Civil Justice and obtained by that public interest lawfirm in a pile of documents it received in response to a Freedom of Information request), sent from the Houston FBI office to the Bureau's national headquarters in Washington, DC explains: "An identified [DELETED] as of October planned to engage in sniper attacks against protesters in Houston, Texas, if deemed necessary. An identified [DELETED] had received intelligence that indicated the protesters in New York and Seattle planned similar protests in Houston, Dallas, San Antonio, and Austin, Texas. [DELETED] planned to gather intelligence against the leaders of the protest groups and obtain photographs, then formulate a plan to kill the leadership via suppressed sniper rifles. (Note: protests continued throughout the weekend with approximately 6000 persons in NYC. 'Occupy Wall Street' protests have spread to about half of all states in the US, over a dozen European and Asian cities, including protests in Cleveland 10//8/11 at Willard Park which was initially attended by hundreds of protesters." A second document, a memo from the Jacksonville, Florida FBI office sent out to a number of regional FBI offices and to Bureau headquarters in D.C., indicated that the plan, while not activated in Houston, may have been put on hold indefinitely: "On 13 October 20111, writer sent via email an excerpt from the daily [DELETED] regarding FBI Houston's [DELETED] to all IAs, SSRAs and SSA [DELETED] This [DELETED] identified the exploitation of the Occupy Movement by [LENGTHY DELETION] interested in developing a long-term plan to kill local Occupy leaders via sniper fire." The really disturbing aspect of all this is that when ThisCantBeHappening! contacted the FBI in Washington to find out what the Bureau had done about this deadly plot, which, as described, sounds like it may have involved some law enforcement or perhaps private security organization in Houston, we were basically blown off, and advised to contact the Houston FBI office or the Houston Police. The former would not return calls, and the latter claimed not to have even heard of the plot. There were never any arrests of the Houston sniper plotters, though the FBI normally makes a big public announcement whenever it busts up some real or manufactured terrorism plot, suggesting that the Bureau was not at all concerned about this known plan to murder leaders of a lawful protest movement against corporate power. Again, none of this justifies the murder of police officers, but it is important to note the grotesque double standard of justice that exists, not just in Texas, but in the nation as a whole. Organizing to defend a community from abusive police, back in the late 1960s, prompted the US government to organize a massive coordinated campaign of ruthless repression against the perpetrators -- the Black Panther Party. But organizing a plot to murder the leaders of a peaceful demonstration against corporate power in the capital of the US oil industry apparently led to no action at all by the nation's top law enforcement agency. (Nor did anyone in Congress see fit to call a hearing to investigation this plot of the resulting FBI inaction.) The same double standard applies to the problem of police brutality and murder of blacks and other people of color. If a cop is killed -- especially by a person of color -- the full weight of the law enforcement and legal establishment is brought down on the alleged perpetrator. A good example of this is the case of Mumia Abu-Jamal, the Philadelphia journalist who was convicted in an abomination of a trial in 1982 for the 1981 killing of a white Philadelphia police officer. Sentenced to death initially, Abu-Jamal spent over two decades on Pennsylvania's death row before ultimately having that sentence overturned by a federal court, leaving him facing life without possibility of parole. But at every turn, from being left to bleed to death in a police van from a police bullet before finally being brought to a hospital to having his legal appeals rejected by higher courts that had granted relief to other prisoners on the same grounds, down to the present time where the state's Dept. of Corrections is leaving him untreated for a severe diagnosed case of easily curable active Hepatitis C, Abu Jamal has been abused by police and by the legal system. Yet as we have seen over and over, especially in the past few years thanks to the proliferation of documentation via cellphones, when police murder an unarmed black or brown suspect (and often a white one too), they escape prosecution, or if prosecuted, skate free on a technicality. A common refrain at #blacklivesmatter protests is the phrase "No justice, no peace!" The intent of that phrase is that as long as there is no justice there will be protests. The reality, though, in a nation that so readily turns to guns to solve its grievances, is that there will also be events like what just happened in Dallas. It's time to turn things around, not by just ramping up the police repression, but by making justice a reality for all, and not just the privileged class. DAVE LINDORFF is a member of ThisCantBeHappening!, the uncompromised, collectively run, five-time Project Censored Award-winning online alternative news site. His work, and that of colleagues JOHN GRANT, JESS GUH, GARY LINDORFF, ALFREDO LOPEZ, LINN WASHINGTON, JR. and the late CHARLES M. YOUNG, can be found at www.thiscantbehappening.net (Article changed on July 8, 2016 at 11:10) (Article changed on July 8, 2016 at 15:48) Dave Lindorff is a founding member of the collectively-owned, journalist-run online newspaper www.thiscantbehappening.net. He is a columnist for Counterpunch, is author of several recent books ("This Can't Be Happening! Resisting the Disintegration of American Democracy" and "Killing Time: An Investigation into the Death Penalty Case of Mumia Abu-Jamal"). His latest book, coauthored with Barbara Olshanshky, is "The Case for Impeachment: The Legal Argument for Removing President George W. Bush from Office (St. Martin's Press, May 2006). |
Saturday, July 9, 2016
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