“A
system cannot fail those it was never meant to protect”
- W.E.B
Dubois
“Porque cuando la tiranía es ley, la revolución
es orden [because when tyranny is law, revolution is order]”
- Calle
13 (Residente)
On
November 24th, 2014 a St. Louis grand jury did not indict officer
Darin Wilson for the murder of Black youth Michael Brown. Responses on social
media ranged from salutes of victory to disappointment and ultimately, rage.
Oftentimes, this response was colored by race between Black communities and
other people of Color, and then Whites. However, before the assorted reactions
on social media, there loomed the threat from Ferguson activists that if the
Grand Jury would not indict, that there would be hell to pay. Ferguson
activists kept their word. Violence, protesting, looting, state terror and
militarized police all culminated into events that have been described as a
“war zone” by mainstream media and personal accounts, and while deficit
conversations develop about rioting and violence as committed by Ferguson activists,
we should realize that these particular consequences serve a purpose in their
intricate nature and are done not without reason.
I
write this with the hope of providing context behind the violence and to unveil
a multilayered process that can be fully appreciated as we decolonize and
challenge OUR approach to Ferguson. Firstly, we should not assume that Ferguson
activists and locals are involved in looting as part of rioting. To assume such
a portrayal is irresponsible of mainstream media forums and highly deficit of
the complexity that’s occurring in Ferguson. Second, while I avoid an
essentialized frame of resistance in Ferguson, violence and looting are part of
the reality of what’s occurring. That needs be admitted and understood, but must
be done so in the context of what has happened, the emotional trauma of locals,
their response, and even their resistance. The states reaction to Ferguson also
reveals power dynamics and how far activists must go to truly be recognized and
valued, because “a riot is the language of the unheard” (Dr. Martin Luther
King, 1963) and one can only remain unheard for so long. Lastly, we must
decolonize our lens as we see Ferguson unfold because resistance is complicated
and cannot be forced into a discourse of what is progressive or regressive. Neither
the liberal, nor the Eurocentric deserve a say in what is occurring and how. In
the end, what arises from Ferguson is an inconclusive framework developed out
of resistance and revolution, but very much valuable to the entire discussion
particularly speaking as a person of Color myself.
Looting
and violence is happening in Ferugson as a response to no indictment of the
murder of Michael Brown. That is one reality, but it is the one that mainstream
media will tell you and many participants on social media will distribute.
Other realities have difficulty coming to the surface. For example, the fact
that Ferguson activists have mobilized groups to protect local businesses from
looting and robbery is one that has just recently arisen. Another is that
peaceful demonstrations and civil disobedience continue as part of the
reactionary process to no indictment. Just as much as violence has been a
response, so has peaceful protest. So not everyone is involved in the violence
and looting as mass media suggests.
Che
Guevara, the Argentine revolutionary, wrote in a piece titled Guerilla Warfare:
A Method, the following: “Violence is not the monopoly of the exploiters and as
such the exploited can use it too and, moreover, ought to use it when the
moment arrives.” Violence against oppressed communities ought to be dealt back with violence. Too often we excuse violence as a cheap form of resistance that is not deserved by either party. But why is it okay for the police to arrive as a militarized
force, ready and capable with equipment utilized from wars in Afghanistan and
Iraq, to counter protests in Ferguson, but it’s not okay for the Ferguson
activists to resist with their own violent strategies? Already there is a power
dynamic set. The oppressor may counter insurgency with militarized weapons but
the oppressed cannot. Mainstream media has promoted this deficit tone, that
Ferguson activists have rallied to a violent cause, one with no purpose,
without context, and destructive to their respective community; but this isn’t
new. Rebellion and violence as an act by oppressed communities has always been misunderstood, undervalued, and silenced.
President
Obama and other civic members claim countless times that violent reactions to
the no-indictment verdict does not move the conversation or the cause in the right
direction. Many social media supporters of Michael Brown say the same. However,
what is occurring instead is a mitigated advocacy of a divisive issue that is
more or less political neutrality, this is talking versus walking; this is
providing lip service versus actual engagement. Counter to their arguments that
violence has not done anything to change society or move it in a just and
equitable position, are countless acts and events that have shown the contrary.
ALJAZEERA
journalist Ned Resnikoff writes that at times “the crisis caused by riots and property
destruction has had a significant role in forcing authorities to respond to
demands for political change.” Specific events such as the Watts Riot,
Stonewall Inn, Selma, Haymarket, and Blair Mountain are events where violence
was met with social acknowledgment and political consequences. Each pushed an
issue to the forefront by the sheer violence of what happened. Sometimes
something loud has to happen, really LOUD in order to be heard and recognized.
This is a tragic truth; sometimes violence is required.
Violence
as resistance, among other misunderstood methods, has its place from what we
expect of communities and what sometimes communities hope to achieve on their
own. Who are we to foreordain how a community harnesses its resistive energy
and unleashes it? Eve Tuck is a youth resistance scholar who suggests that
there are contradictions within the framework of schooling that are intended on
progressing students towards completion, but are actually foundational to
students being held back or marginalized. This results with identities that are
often described by Tuck as Dangerous Dignities which comprehends resistance as
a multi-faceted process, riddled with complicating discourses and something
that goes beyond the whole reproductive and resistance argument; as a dangerous
dignity sometimes we expect youth to resist in certain ways to transform
oppressive structures, but frankly, the resistant outcomes are unpredictable
and sometimes not transformative according to our lens.
Tuck’s
research findings tend to “complicate, extend, and sometimes explode current
conceptualizations of youth resistance.” What needs to happen is an approach to
Ferguson with a serious critique of resistance through the relationship of
Humiliating Ironies and Dangerous Dignities, and of liberal and Eurocentric
notions of progress. Why can’t progress be an entire community rising up? According
to Tuck, resistance can play out in the following:
“Does resistance do what we think it does?
No, almost never. And it doesn’t go in the directions that we anticipate it
will go…We also learn that the material realities of resistance can be
dramatically different; the consequences may be muffled or delayed in some
scenarios, while the consequences may be simultaneous/immediate in others. But
resistance does do something, it does
produce, or prompt, or prevent something.”
Resistance
does something, regardless of the shape or form it takes. It produces knowledge,
even if it is violent!
A
recent article by Cheryl Corley at NPR suggests that Ferguson has become the
Arab Spring to a whole new generation of activists local to their struggle.
Robynn Haas from the Catholic Voice further demonstrates this with a profound
account of Ferguson youth activists taking the stage at a mass meeting in
October with national civic, community and faith leaders and critiquing their
engagement while motivating the crowd. Haas reports the following commentary by
Ashley Yates at the meeting:
“‘Ashley Yates, a young activist and a leader of the movement in
Ferguson, also took the podium. "People take our anger and they try to
make it violent, when the real violence is the AK-47s and the M16s that are
pointed at us," Yates lamented to the audience. Violence is "when you
see a sniper pop out of the top of a tank with a smile on his face, when all
you have is your hands and your words and your anger," she said. "I
am OK with being angry," she continued. "If you can see a dead black
body lying in the street for four and a half hours and that doesn't make you
angry, then you lack humanity…’”
The
resistance occurring in Ferguson is peaceful; it is civil disobedience; it is
marching; it is talking; but it is also violent. And in its violence it is
being recognized; at the same time, tragically it is being misinterpreted by so
many leaders and media organizations, by so many of us. Nevertheless, we must
admire Ferguson activists for putting a face to the issue and reacting in ways
that could not be ignored by the country, by us. We had to come face to face
with it. Where that takes us? I don’t know. But at least it exists in our minds
now, and with it, an obligation to not paint the violence and resistance of
Ferguson as backward or regressive, but as something much more profound in the
making.
#BlackLivesMatter
“Critique
is resistance; Resistance is Revolution”
- L'lerrét Jazelle
Ailith (Black TransGender Activist)
