Are We Paying Attention Yet? The Response Of Black Rage To Oppression Is Not Going Away

“The longer we allow city officials and corporate oppressors to operate with impunity, the more we will see our communities devolve into chaos.”

By Jamala Rogers
Progressive America Rising via Black Commentator

Another U.S. city goes up in smoke. The rage and despair to conditions in black Bantustans has now bubbled over into the streets of Baltimore.

The city had been center stage after the horrific death of Freddy Gray at the hands of Baltimore police. After allegedly “making eye contact” with police, 25 year old Gray ended up in police custody with a severe spinal cord injury that later led to his death.

Gray’s death is part of a relentless and seemingly never ending string of police assaults on black citizens across the country. Almost daily, we are besieged with graphic videos of black people’s encounters with police. At one point, I advised my Facebook community not to repost these images as our people struggle with both the historical and contemporary symptoms of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD).  My suggestion was to post visuals of the perpetrators or of people organizing against state violence as the more healthy or inspiring alternatives.

Here in Ferguson, we have been in a joint healing and organizing mode since the murder of Mike Brown. I wish I could say that there have been no acts of police violence since the tragic August 9 shooting of the black teen. Sadly, that has not been the case. This means that in between organizing to address the systemic violence of police to black bodies, progressives and justice-seeking citizens have been organizing to address solutions to racist policing. We have also stepped up our efforts to get relief for the conditions in disenfranchised and marginalized communities where distrust and rage are brewing.

The injustices highlighted in the scathing report on the Ferguson Police Department by the Department of Justice can be ascribed to most cities. The longer we allow city officials and corporate oppressors to operate with impunity, the more we will see our communities devolve into chaos. It is a choice Dr. Martin Luther King posed to the nation in 1967 and it looks like we keeping choosing chaos.

As I did with the Ferguson uprising, I encourage people not to run to Baltimore now but to organize where you live. If you’re in an urban setting, your city has the same incendiary issues that we face in Ferguson and that the African American community is facing in Baltimore – failing schools, unemployment, police terrorism, etc. When organizers in Baltimore need our presence in their city, they will let us know.

Meanwhile, our communities are begging to be organized into a fighting machine that demands – and gets – its dignity and human rights. The energy of young people needs to be channeled into a self-determining movement that uplifts their aspirations and helps them to conquer their hopelessness and fears to create a future where they have an assigned place. The narrative is not about who’s burning down some buildings but who’s looting the nation of its human resources and material wealth.

Spoiler alert: it’s not the angry, black youth in saggin’ pants.

Black Commentator.com Editorial Board member and Columnist, Jamala Rogers, founder and Chair Emeritus of the Organization for Black Struggle in St. Louis. She is an organizer, trainer and speaker. She is the author of The Best of the Way I See It – A Chronicle of Struggle. Other writings by Ms. Rogers can be found on her blog jamalarogers.com.  Contact Ms. Rogers and BC.