Remember not to holler over Ferguson like our parental president says. . . 'don't shout' [View all]

[bigtree]

Last edited Tue Aug 19, 2014, 12:27 PM - Edit history (4)

___________________________________________________

Don't holler, don't shout. Not UNLESS you actually want to be HEARD, because the president obviously doesn't understand ANYTHING about what folks out here are angry about.

Unless you're a youth in trouble or looking for leadership, it's unlikely that you're going to be satisfied with his first and foremost admonition in his talking down to Americans today that we look to his very worthy effort with 'My Brother’s Keeper' to cause the police forces in MO., or elsewhere in the country, to bring themselves to respect the rights of black youth and others in the African American community.

As if it was somehow a matter of assuaging our own anger out here in the nation at police forces which regularly and deliberately treat our black youth like thugs and criminals, President Obama wants us to change their "perception and reality" of our children and family members by trying to "understand" and to "listen" to more of their deprecating and duplicitous bullshit, and incredibly, "unite" with them.

President Obama today:

"I’ve said this before," President Obama lectured. "In too many communities around the country, a gulf of mistrust exists between local residents and law enforcement. In too many communities, too many young men of color are left behind and seen only as objects of fear. And through initiatives like My Brother’s Keeper, I’m personally committed to changing both perception and reality. And already, we’re making some significant progress, as people of good will of all races are ready to chip in. But that requires that we build, and not tear down. And that requires we listen, and not just shout. That’s how we’re going to move forward together -- by trying to unite each other and understand each other, and not simply divide ourselves from one another. We’re going to have to hold tight to those values in the days ahead. And that’s how we bring about justice, and that’s how we bring about peace."

The President has been part of that group who lord down their nonsense on us for so long that seems to have forgotten that WE ultimately decide who serves in those positions of authority. He's apparently lost sight of the reality that WE are to have the ultimate voice in how these public officials regard and deal with our communities. The glare and din of his office has apparently rendered him deaf and blind to the fact that many of these police forces aren't, themselves, "listening" to our appeals and demands.

He's out of touch with the reality that it is these very police officials in Ferguson and elsewhere who have "divided" themselves from the people they are supposed to serve and are doing little more than defending their own positions of authority over us; and abusing that power we've invested in them with our votes and with our hard-earned contributions to our democratic system of governance.

It's not the demonstrators of Ferguson who've neglected to "hold tight to those values." It's these abusive and self-protective officials and officers who have let go of any modicum of respect for these communities under siege and under fire from canisters of smoke and tear gas hurled from a distance behind the protection of their taxpayer-sponsored armaments.

We are going to need to keep raising our voices above their sonic cannons and their lecturing from the elevation of the offices we've gifted them with; HOLLER if we must, until our voices are plainly heard and our demands addressed. THAT'S how "we bring about justice," and THAT'S how we "bring about peace;" by not allowing ourselves to be cowed into believing that these same indifferent officials and officers can be made to listen and bridge that "gulf" they've deliberately created to neuter our voices and place themselves outside of the reach of their own responsibility and accountability to us by muting or repressing the VOLUME of our own protests.

Pretending that our concerns about the militarism of these local police forces are just about these officials and officers' ability to communicate with each other and protect themselves with radios and hazmat suits shows that those "lines" the president says he wants to preserve are already "blurred" and distorted in his defensive view. No one looking at the virtual army that has been arrayed and has already attacked protestors and demonstrators in Ferguson in the past week can ignore or dismiss the fact that these police forces erected to protect and serve are already armed and armored for repression and positioned to completely suppress the very voices President Obama is lecturing us to keep quiet.

What we expect from our President and other leaders is to amplify our voices DEMANDING justice in Ferguson - not co-opting officials and officers in that town in their attempts to choke them out with barrages of gas and smoke; materially or rhetorically.

The president promised today to "watch" Jay Nixon as he deploys the National Guard in Ferguson, to "make sure it's used in a limited and appropriate way." It's as if the president hasn't really been watching that town at all in the past week. That expectation of his is as fleeting as his brief words today about the crisis of oppression in that town against what is essentially the same community of individuals as the youth from the Brown family who was gunned down and his life extinguished for what was, essentially jaywalking.

Essentially, their community of individuals have been under direct attack since the first bullets left Officer Darren Wilson's publicly-provided service revolver.

As apt as it was in a popular science fiction series; and applied to the surreality of the military siege of Ferguson; Commander William Adama, portrayed by Edward James Olmos, an eloquent point is made on the merging of military with police:

"There's a reason you separate military and the police," he says. "One fights the enemies of the state, the other serves and protects the people." When the military becomes both, then the enemies of the state tend to become the people.

This Democratic president has become so accustomed - so comfortable with wielding the force of our military abroad for 'humanitarian' missions, that he's lost sight of the fact that Americans can no more be cowed away from HOLLERING for justice and peace than any other community's targeted population will allow themselves to voluntarily recoil at the point of our government's weapons.

At Edwardsville, Illinois, on September 11, 1858, Abraham Lincoln remarked:

"What constitutes the bulwark of our own liberty and independence is not our frowning battlements, our bristling seacoast, the guns of our war steamers, or the strength of our gallant and disciplined army. These are not the reliance against the resumption of tyranny in our fair land. All of them may be turned against our liberties without making us stronger or weaker for the struggle."

"Our reliance is in the love of liberty, which God has planted in our bosoms. Our defense is the preservation of the spirit, which prizes liberty as the heritage of all men, in all lands everywhere." Destroy this spirit and you have planted the seeds of despotism at your down doors."

"Familiarize yourselves with the chains of bondage," Lincoln warned, "and you prepare your own limbs to wear them. Accustomed to trample on the rights of others, you have lost the genius of your own independence and become the fit subjects of the first cunning tyrant who rises among you."

This local MO. government and this administration have become too accustomed to trampling, and bondage. And we have allowed them to skirt accountability for their sly justifications for their attacks on our civil liberties; demagogic appeals to 'unite" with them in their delay and denial of justice; the deliberate inflaming, and careful stoking of the sparks of fear that flash from their tear gas launchers; their smoke grenades; and from the service revolver which struck Micheal Brown down in the prime of his life.

We can hardly afford to quiet down now.