OF MARCHES AND MEN
Column Written 9/7/2000
by Mumia Abu-Jamal, M.A. All Rights Reserved
If there is no struggle, there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom, and yet deprecate agitation, are men who want crops without plowing up the ground. They want rain without thunder and lightning... Power concedes nothing without demand. --Frederick Douglass
Like nature's gifts of spring or summer, around has come march season-the time of year when Washington virtually requires the presence of thousands who march in the capital of the Empire. One of the latest was promoted by the Rev. Al Sharpton and Martin Luther King III, dubbed "Redeem the Dream" an allusion to the famous March on Washington of 1963 called by Martin Luther King, Jr., and other civil rights and labor leaders. They were there to demonstrate that the elder's "dream" was still not realized in America almost 40 years later, and that racial profiling and police brutality remained an intractable problem. I was invited to share some words there, which I will share with you, the reader (in part):
..When you examine the life of Black America today, what do you see? A dream or a nightmare? ...If you really and truly want to "Redeem the Dream," then-follow [Martin Luther King's] example "Ask questions about the whole society."
Why are there billions of dollars to build prisons, and not a nickel to build a school? Why does the government pay a prison guard more than a college professor? Why do parents need to work 2 jobs to feed and house their families? Why do you support politicians who support repression against you and your people? Why do we call cops, who beat, maim and kill us, public servants? Whom do they serve? Why vote for conservatives, even if they wear the label of "Democrat?" When will Blacks demand respect from a party that treats them like stepchildren? When will African-Americans learn that the two major parties are both supporters of white supremacy, and corporate control... Here's another-How can you truly consider yourself free, when you can't walk down a city street, hail a taxi, or drive anywhere in America, without the threat of a humiliating search, or as Amadou Diallo demonstrated, an execution while standing in one's own doorway? How can you be free while judges in black robes rival Klansmen in white robes in their contempt for Black life and liberty?...
When you're being pulled out of your car, for the unwritten offense of DWB (Driving While Black), why not flash your voter's registration card to the cops?...Does your political party affiliation protect your property, your liberty, your life?... A vote is just a means to an end; what end? Power. The power to protect and enhance one's life, liberty, and property; the power to protect one's person from official oppression, the power to be let alone. What politician is speaking about this power-and why not?
The legendary Revolutionary Teacher, John Africa, said, "It is insane not to resist something that gives nothin' but sickness to you, your mothers, your fathers, your babies, your family..." Are you getting power from this political system, or sickness?
For the most part, all this writer did was ask questions, especially about the political system, the system behind the duopoly of political parties. Marches will come, and marches will go. Let us remember the lessons of the ancestors, like Frederick Douglass: "Power concedes nothing without demand." At least demand.
March on.
İMAJ 2000
