White Supremacy Attempts to Take Over Black August
By Jasmine Williams, Staff Writer
Folks, it’s time to press pause. It’s time to pause and let our hot heads and heavy hearts simmer — the overtly racist acts by individuals and government entities that has been occurring in the home of “liberty and justice for all” this past month.
Did anyone have the time to actually digest, that in 2017, “Post-racist” America, white nazis and KKK, emboldened by the current president— were not only allowed, but protected by sworn officers—to gather in order to spew and represent hate towards the majority of people in this country in Charlottesville?
Did we? Or did the weekly Sunday episodes of “Power” clog up our minds and make us briefly forget about the real abuse of power that goes on in this country day in and out?
Let’s also acknowledge that institutional racism— as it stands today and has stood for many years— is a system. What we witnessed this past month in Charlottesville, San Fransisco and Berkeley was but a byproduct of that system.
The events that took place in Charlottesville, Virginia are not isolated. It burns no more or less than when Trayvon Martin was shot and killed or when Philando Castile’s murderer got off with no real justice. The current administration since then has not only minimized the hateful nature of the “gathering”, but has only continued to target already marginalized communities.
Just in this past month the Trump Administration has lifted the ban off the 1033 Program, which permits local police agencies access to surplus military equipment such as grenade launchers, bayonets, large-caliber weapons, and tanks. WE know what communities will be affected by more surveillance and more police. WE know that once local police departments get their hands on military equipment it won’t be long after that local SCHOOL police departments will be itchin’ to get their hands on the same equipment. What do local police departments need with tanks and Ak47s? Who exactly is this country at war with?
Just a couple of days ago the Trump Administration ended the federal program known as DACA (Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals).
“DACA is a holdover from the Obama era. When Congress failed to get itself together enough to pass immigration reform, 44 took matters into his own hands, and his administration crafted a program that would insure that people who were brought to the U.S. as children — people who know no other country, and in some cases, speak only English — would not be forcibly deported to their ancestral homelands.” BLAVITY
The ending of this program is an intentional attack on over 800,000 children that work , own homes, and attend school in this country, according to the New York Times.
Since its inception the United States has enslaved, harassed, incarcerated , and killed Black people and any other group that stands in the way of a capitalistic, paternal, Eurocentric society. It has used its laws and inequity of power to create social norms that idolize whiteness above all and uses violence and other forms of psychological terrorism to dismantle our communities. This is not new, but it’s getting old.
So let’s simmer. Let’s recognize what is and what has been going on in OUR country for centuries. Let’s pause, let’s talk, let’s organize, let’s build community and reclaim our streets.
In the words of Freedom Fighter Angela Davis:
“ In a racist society it is not enough to be non-racist. We must be anti-racist. ”