Radio Oscar Grant Raheem

From Gaza to Fruitvale, Oakland, 2009 is off to a social breaking start. Cultural annihilation is taking place in Gaza that is somewhat similar and also doesn't even compare to whats going down in America. If you haven't heard about the BART Shooting yet, then this blog is not for you. A BART Officer (BART is bay area's mass transit system) handcuffs and tases Oscar Grant in the Fruitvale Bart station on New Years Day and shoots him in the back while he was subdued on the floor. Not only that but there are 4 different videos mostly from Camera phones, from different angles to put you there at that moment. Technology comes thru again! But yet the officer hasn't been arrested? Which is why this past Wednesday night, protests turn violent in Oakland. People are smashing windows, burning cars, and trying to turn over police cars. A song that plays all too often in our communities.

I like when he says "...protesters, who have been determined to cause trouble" DAMN RIGHT!

This story is all too reminiscent of the ending of "Do the Right thing", in fact, its uncannily the same story. Cops subdue a minority into submission then kills them, cold bloodily. It also reminds me of the quote at the end of Do the Right thing from Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcom X.

"Violence as a way of achieving racial justice is both impractical and immoral. It is impractical because it is a descending spiral ending in destruction for all. The old law of an eye for an eye leaves everybody blind. It is immoral because it seeks to humiliate the opponent rather than win his understanding; it seeks to annihilate rather than to convert. Violence is immoral because it thrives on hatred rather than love. It destroys a community and makes brotherhood impossible. It leaves society in monologue rather than dialogue. Violence ends by defeating itself. It creates bitterness in the survivors and brutality in the destroyers".
- Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

"I think there are plenty of good people in America, but there are also plenty of bad people in America and the bad ones are the ones who seem to have all the power and be in these positions to block things that you and I need. Because this is the situation, you and I have to preserve the right to do what is necessary to bring an end to that situation, and it doesn't mean that I advocate violence, but at the same time I am not against using violence in self-defense. I don't even call it violence when it's self-defense, I call it intelligence".
- Malcolm X

So there are these two parallels that we seem to operate between. I like to call it the Malcom King Parallel. Making the conversion of our oppressors our self defense. Conversion tactics being our weapons. Does this work?

A police brutality strikes again, and a rally/march ain't gonna do shit. Sorry, we gotta start admitting this to ourselves. We have been saturating the Civil Rights market with protests so much that nobody even pays attention anymore. This has been going on for way too long. If they are not gonna listen to our protests, then something else must be done. And I am not saying that I may have a solutions to that, but I do want us to come together and admit to ourselves that this tactic is not working, because they are not listening, and they don't care. They are still killing us. They are shooting us while come home from a long day of work and mistaking wallets for guns. They are shooting us on the eve of our wedding days. They are shooting us in the back while we lay on the floor handcuffed.




Over the years the situation seem to get worst and worst, and I'm talking bout all the way from Rodney King. Yes 1991. People, 18 years. The LA "Riots" of 91 came out of the Rodney King Case, but lets really look at what transpired there. The media and government officials are the ones who labeled it as "Riots" the same way they labeled black people taking food and supplies from flooded markets during Katrina as "Looters". They weren't riots, that was a Revolution. Is it time for another one?

"They outsourced racism...to us."

There's a real dope documentary that I urge you to check out if you haven't. It's called "Bastards of the Party" and it addresses alot of whats wrong with our communities today. It traces back the orgins of gangs and the breakdown in family structure from the 1970's. Its also talks about how programs and tactics were used to break us apart and get us fighting each other, to kill ourselves off. They outsourced racism....to us.

"The Crips and Bloods are the bastard offspring of the political parties of the 60's, Black panther party, US organization...."

I'm bringing this up because I want us to try to understand what was lost and how we get back that fight we had, that communal fight that the black panthers so aggressively and so beautifully integrated into our lives. They realized back then that marches and rallies were futile without real community empowerment. That's us really feeling that we can affect change, because we did change something.

The police have been killing us for years. HOW DO WE CHANGE THIS? They are shooting us in the back. They are dropping bombs on us. I feel so helpless in this Gaza Situation when we can't even fight for our rights to live in our own communities in America. Where are our relief efforts?