Here's my latest, crossposted from Kasama.
A 21st-century slave patrol murdered Sandra Bland
#SayHerName #SandraBland
Let the truth be known: Sandra Bland, an activist in the #BlackLivesMatter movement, was kidnapped and murdered by modern day slave catchers.
Her “crime” was daring to act like a human being in the face of the
arbitrary and brutal violence of white supremacy and male authority.
Watch the videos of her outrageous kidnapping and
weep for what you know is coming. Watch the video of a brave and
self-assured woman menaced, brutalized, and thrown to the ground, and
rage against the horror documented on 21st-century technology. Look for
the crude attempts by the authorities and their captive media to edit,
to mislead, to lie, to distort, to deflect, to assassinate Sandra
Bland’s character. But don’t be fooled. Sandra Bland did not kill
herself.
For moving her car out of the way of an approaching
Texas pig patrol car, Sandra Bland was assaulted, dragged off to jail
for three days, and murdered in her cell. For insisting on her right to
be upset with being treated like shit in the midst of a random encounter
she was tarred as “uppity” and marked for death. Her voice is clear in
the videos of her kidnapping—both the edited one released by the pigs
and the bystander video showing her flat on the ground—and in the
message she left from prison on a friend’s phone: she was disgusted with
what was happening to her but frustrated at being powerless to stop it.
In her autobiography,
liberated Black freedom fighter Assata Shakur presciently warns us
about how white supremacy will seek to absolve itself of responsibility
for the deaths of its captives: “In prisons it is not at all uncommon
to find a prisoner hanged or burned to death in his cell. No matter how
suspicious the circumstances, these deaths are always ruled ‘suicides.’
The are usually Black inmates, considered to be a ‘threat to the
orderly running of the prison.’ They are usually among the most
politically aware and socially conscious inmates in the prison.”
Graphic from Sandra Bland’s Facebook page showing Dylann Roof at left.
We may never learn how the pigs killed Sandra Bland,
but even if the dubious and suspicious official narrative about suicide
by garbage bag turns out to be other than the time-worn lie it appears
to be, the pigs at the Waller County Jail are still her murderers: Sandra Bland did not do this to herself.
We don’t know that the authorities knew who Sandra
Bland was before they kidnapped her, but her presence in social media
was out front and they certainly figured it out once they had her behind
bars. Her Facebook page bore the slogan “Now legalize being Black in America” with a banner illustration contrasting how racist terrorist Dylann Roof
was treated after being arrested (with a cheeseburger) to how a Black
man is treated (bloodied and beaten). In a series of videos, Bland was
outspoken against Police violence, white privilege and racial injustice,
and spoke movingly about a cause she felt strongly about:
“I was asked, was I trying to racially unite or racially incite. Well, honestly I feel that my goal is to racially unite. Now, in the process of doing that some people will be incited, i.e., upset, because based on the history of America it is not good when it comes to Black and white people. But I want us to try and get past that and that is ultimately impossible until certain people realize that they were born into a certain kind of privilege.… Black people are gonna be mad when we see our people gunned down and murdered.”
It’s a familiar pattern, well known to the
communities preyed upon by the death squads in blue, but now plain for
anyone with eyes to see: A Black person encounters so-called law
enforcement, and winds up dead.
Sandra Bland. Kindra Chapman. Sam DuBose. Tamir Rice. Freddie Grey. Walter Scott. Eric Garner. Michael Brown. Akai Gurley. Charly Keunang. Shantel Davis. Kimani Gray. Ramarley Graham. Kyam Livingston.
#SayTheirNames and grit your teeth, for these names are only a few of
untold hundreds of innocent Black people murdered by the modern slave
catchers year after year, most with complete legal impunity.
“Show me in American history where ‘all’ lives have mattered. Show me where there have been liberty and justice for all, like that fucking pledge of allegiance we love to say….if ‘all’ lives mattered would there need to be a hashtag for #BlackLivesMatter?” —Sandra Bland in #SandySpeaks
Let us be clear, again. So-called law enforcement is
not some tree bearing good and rotten apples: it is a noxious, poisonous
growth that must be uprooted and destroyed. The police are not acting
in an aberrant fashion: they are doing what they were designed to do,
enforcing the structures of white supremacy that maintain the capitalist
order. The rampant lethal violence of these modern day slave patrols
against communities of color is fully sanctioned by the state despite
being documented not only by brave citizen copwatchers but on the
state’s own bodycams and dashcams. The police reform schemes of liberal
politicians like New York City’s mayor DeBlasio and President Obama are
revealed to be nothing other than feel-good window dressing for the same
old repressive business as usual.
Graphic from Sandra Bland’s Facebook page.
We are heartened by the growth of the
#BlackLivesMatter movement now confronting racist terror across the
country. It is exciting to see activists from communities of color,
notably led by women like the martyred Sandra Bland, take the lead in
combatting this country’s structural white supremacy, confronting
politicians, ripping down confederate flags, defacing racist monuments,
building networks of support and discussing the implications of the deep
intertwining of racism and capitalism. More than one activist in this
movement has pointed out that the first flag of slavery in this country
was not the confederate stars and bars, but the stars and stripes
itself, and we hope these are steps in a path that brings this movement
to an understanding of the need for revolution, the abolition of white
supremacist institutions and structures, and the destruction of
capitalism itself. This movement will not soon be silent.
In the words of Sandra Bland’s mother, “Once I put this baby in the ground, I’m ready…This means war.”
#SayHerName #AvengeSandraBland #SmashSlavePatrols
