OUTRAGE AND THE FIGHT FOR
JUSTICE
URL of this article:
September 22, 2011
Warning: the films on this page are extremely graphic.
After Georgia was forced by the United States
Supreme Court to abandon its scheme to deny Black people the right to an
undiluted vote and representation, Leroy Johnson became the first Black person
elected to the Georgia State Senate since Reconstruction.
The year was 1962. During his tenure,
Johnson used his considerable influence inside the body to become the Senate's
Chair of the Judiciary Committee. From this position, he was able to bottle-up
legislation that was bad for the State of Georgia, especially its Black
residents. Outside and inside the State Senate, Leroy Johnson practiced the art
of leadership and engaged in the fight for justice. He produced solid results
for a people who were hungry for justice.
Who among our elected officials today
exercises the art of leadership in an engaged struggle for justice? Sadly, the
numbers are way too small. It is more expedient to exchange silence for merely
"being there," in the end exercising no leadership at all and
becoming a spectator to power in abandonment of those who need the effective
use of power the most.
The art of the struggle has veritably
been abandoned for merely occupying a seat at the table when the purpose of the
struggle for the seat at the table was to empower the struggle for justice. The
only reason we send people to occupy that seat is to leverage the power of the
community where power is exercised, on behalf of those who need it the most.
As I was commiserating over the Troy
Davis situation with a former member of the Georgia Legislature who rose to the
highest possible position within that body for his party, he lamented that for
all of his years in the Legislature, he had not introduced a single death
penalty bill.
I quickly interjected that he was so busy putting out other fires
and sticking his fingers in all the holes of the leaky dikes and schooling his
colleagues on the effective use of the power of their elected positions that he
couldn't do everything. It will be interesting to see what legislative actions
his former colleagues will initiate in the face of this clear act of barbarism
by my state.
Occupying these "seats at the
table" is important. Engaging in the struggle for justice is important.
And contrary to what many would have us believe, leadership is important.
That's why so much effort is spent on co-opting or marginalizing the leaders of
conscience that we do have and preventing authentic representatives of our
values to occupy those seats at the table.
Therefore, more is required of us. We
must hone the skill of discernment. We must not give our vote to just anybody
to occupy these positions of power. We must not allow "posers" to
represent us. Posers are those who wear the jackets of authority, who are put
in positions of power by us, but who do not engage in the artful use of that
power on our behalf.
Discerning who is friend and who is
poser has been difficult. But, it is being made more possible by the arrogance
now of those who do not have the interests of the people at heart. They seem
not to care that their "Neanderthal" is showing. But we can look at
them and clearly see that they ain't us. Their actions are a clue that they do
not share our values.
Unfortunately, posers exist all
around us: and in the media, too. The job now of people of conscience is to
make sure that we don't enable these posers by our own supportive behavior.
My friend reminded me that Leroy
Johnson, alone in the Georgia State Senate, was more powerful in the 1960s than
are the 55 Black members of the Georgia Legislature now. We need to stop and
think about that.
More is less? What role have we all
had to play in such a circumstance? Is our leadership more of a reflection of
who we are than we have acknowledged? What can we do differently in order to
get a better result?
Abu Ghraib has its antecedents right
here in the United States.
The violence sponsored by the United
States abroad has its origins inside the United States.
As the United States and NATO drop
bombs on unsubmitting African people in Libya, the United States kills an
innocent Black man in Georgia.
There is more to come unless we
affirmatively take steps to stop it.
Republican voters cheered at the
prospects of more executions at a recent Presidential debate.
In a recent article, Africom
brags on its lessons learned from Libya:
"The command had to define what
effects it needed, and what specific targets would contribute to achieving
those effects ~ a precise endeavor, Ham said. If attacking a communications
node, planners must ask themselves what does that particular node do? How does
it connect to other nodes? What’s the right munition to use? What’s the
likelihood of collateral damage? What’s the right time of day to hit it? What’s
the right delivery platform? And finally, how to synchronize attacks."
“That level of detail and precision
... was not something the command had practiced to the degree that we were
required to do in Odyssey Dawn,” Ham said. . . . If we were to launch a
humanitarian operation, how do we do so effectively with air traffic control,
airfield management, those kind of activities?”
he said.
The United States has to craft those
practices with African partners, he added.
U.S. allies in Libya are as barbaric
as their sponsors. Despite youtube's efforts to dissuade it from being seen,
please watch this video sent to me from France:
As committed Libyans valiantly resist
the entire NATO arsenal of modern and old-fashioned killfare, a new kind of
perverse global plantation is being created.
There is a clear and present danger
that Africa and Asia will become U.S. killing fields for the next decade or
more while the United States, itself, becomes a police state ~ unless we stop
this poser leadership that really stopped representing us a long time ago.
If we fail to stop them, watch that
video again ~ and welcome to the new America, hauntingly familiar to a place we
never left.
WARNING: Barbarism is not pretty. In fact, it can churn your stomach. Do not watch these videos with children about. Extremely graphic. This is the liberation given to the black people of Libya by the rebels. THIS IS WHAT AMERICA, FRANCE, GREAT BRITAIN, AND THE REST OF NATO CONDONE.
The victim is alive in the third, allowed to live possibly because his life would be worse hell than if he was slaughtered. Bombs are evil but the thought that what was done to this man was done to him personally, one bit at a time, brings home just how truly lost these demons of hell are.
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