We Shall Never Forget…

If you ever lost focus on what is real­ly hap­pen­ing in America with race, or if you were nev­er edu­cat­ed on it, this is where you need to begin open­ing your eyes to the ghast­ly vio­lence that was unleashed on black peo­ple, not just by white cit­i­zens, but by the state & Federal Governments.
Today, as peo­ple march for jus­tice in the name of the mul­ti­ple black men, women & chil­dren who have been mur­dered by both police and vig­i­lantes, it is impor­tant to under­stand the gen­e­sis of this hatred.
The last thing we black peo­ple need is to have white peo­ple tell us what we need to do, what we want from white peo­ple is for them to lis­ten to what we are say­ing and for them to ask us to help them to under­stand what we are feeling.

If we under­stand that this [hatred] is (endem­ic to white Anglo Saxons) then we begin the process of under­stand­ing that wait­ing and march­ing will not change hearts and minds of a peo­ple who are by def­i­n­i­tion the per­son­i­fi­ca­tion of hatred.
It did not change hearts and minds 57 years ago before they assas­si­nat­ed Dr. King, it will not do so now.
It is for those rea­sons that Dr. King was against it and Malcolm X demand­ed change by what­ev­er means necessary.

Fifty-sev­en (57) years ago Dr. Martin Luther King warned African-Americans about accept­ing grad­u­al­ism, in his August 1963 speech he spoke of what he char­ac­ter­ized as [the fierce urgency of now].
“We have also come to this hal­lowed spot to remind America of the fierce urgency of now. This is no time to engage in the lux­u­ry of cool­ing off or to take the tran­quil­iz­ing drug of grad­u­al­ism. Now is the time to make real the promis­es of democ­ra­cy.” – Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., I have a dream speech, August 28,1963.

Someone said if white police were kneel­ing on the necks of dogs or shoot­ing them as they are doing to black peo­ple every sin­gle police depart­ment would have been dis­band­ed.
If they val­ue the lives of dogs (no offense to my dog Bud), more than they do the lives of black human beings, what makes you think that any­thing you do oth­er than force them to respect you will impact their hearts.

In the first place, I am offend­ed sole­ly on the basis of any con­cept by which my exis­tence should be based on any­one else’s sense of com­fort­a­bil­i­ty or acqui­es­cence.
So the very premise of grad­u­al­ism as a con­cept ought to be tossed out the win­dow. If you are not com­fort­able with me in the space that I occu­py you are free to find some­where that you are more com­fort­able. What is not going to hap­pen is that I am not going to adjust my life just so that you can be com­fort­able liv­ing your life the way that you want to live it.

If the police which is sup­posed to keep com­mu­ni­ties safe, has got­ten to the point that those com­mu­ni­ties are worse off because of them , then it is time to get rid of the police.
Sure we need crimes inves­ti­gat­ed and we have some won­der­ful & proffes­sion­al offi­cers who do that every day. The prob­lem is not with those unbi­ased pro­fes­sion­als who go and do their jobs as pros.
The prob­lem comes from the poor­ly-edu­cat­ed, poor­ly-trained racial­ists that are sent out into the com­mu­ni­ties to gen­er­ate income for the states and munic­i­pal­i­ties.
They are lit­tle more than tax-col­lec­tors with a racial agen­da. That is where the prob­lem lies.

(1)So we are call­ing for qual­i­fied immu­ni­ty.
(2) Stop send­ing police to the Apartheid state of Israel to train to kill black peo­ple.
(3) Make police get mal­prac­tice insur­ance.
(4) Stop police unions from stand­ing in the way of police account­abil­i­ty.
(5) Stop hid­ing police offi­cers’ per­son­nel records from the pub­lic when police com­mit crimes against the com­mu­ni­ty.
(6) Once an offi­cer is fired from a police depart­ment for mis­con­duct he/​she should not be able to work in law enforce­ment again.
(7) End the prac­tice of keep­ing police in their depart­ments, even after mul­ti­ple mis­con­duct alle­ga­tions of use of force excess­es.
(8) Remove the police from schools.
(9) Begin dis­man­tling the indis­crim­i­nate stop­ping of motorists for minor traf­fic infrac­tions.
(10) Begin dis­man­tling laws like the stop and frisk laws in New York, and the mar­i­jua­na laws that police have used to abuse peo­ple of col­or.
We can begin with these changes with­out abol­ish­ing the police altogether. 

Mike Beckles is a for­mer Jamaican police Detective cor­po­ral, busi­ness­man, researcher, and blog­ger. 
He is a black achiev­er hon­oree, and pub­lish­er of the blog chatt​-​a​-box​.com. 
He’s also a con­trib­u­tor to sev­er­al web­sites.
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