On Nov. 25, protesters rallying against the Ferguson grand jury’s decision gathered outside of John Marshall courthouse in downtown Richmond. Signs in their hands and chants on their lips, the crowd buzzed with somber energy, but quieted just enough to allow the organizers and speakers to be heard. As speakers addressed the crowd, the overarching themes of the uphill struggle for racial justice were highlighted — sometimes accidentally, but accurately nonetheless. The crowd encompassed every age group, but college students from Virginia Commonwealth University and Virginia Union University, among others, were the biggest demographic. Jackie Robinson, a social work major from VCU, took to the mic and started with a shout-out to her college…

On Nov. 25, protesters rallying against the Ferguson grand jury’s decision gathered outside of John Marshall courthouse in downtown Richmond. Signs in their hands and chants on their lips, the crowd buzzed with somber energy, but quieted just enough to allow the organizers and speakers to be heard. As speakers addressed the crowd, the overarching themes of the uphill struggle for racial justice were highlighted — sometimes accidentally, but accurately nonetheless.

The crowd encompassed every age group, but college students from Virginia Commonwealth University and Virginia Union University, among others, were the biggest demographic. Jackie Robinson, a social work major from VCU, took to the mic and started with a shout-out to her college peers. “You know, our generation, they think that we’re the lazy generation,” she said. “That we’re sitting behind computers and we talk about the issues, but we’re not really out here to fight. And this shows that no, we’re about the movement… Mike Brown, he got killed in August, and we haven’t forgotten.”

As the ensuing applause proved, Robinson’s message hit home for the students in the crowd. Faced with adulthood in an America that demands more of us than we are equipped to provide, millennials have been the object of criticism from our older counterparts from the beginning. A quick Google search on the term “millennials” reveals that lazy, narcissistic, and spoiled are some of the more popular descriptors that have been attached to us. However, even with the constant smartphone stimulation, the internet addiction, and the desire for instant gratification — or perhaps because of these factors — the current generation is an angry one. With all the information in the world at our fingertips and the power to organize with the creation of Facebook events, the millennial reaction to injustice is instant.

Just the night before the rally at John Marshall courthouse, VCU students gathered on campus to protest the freshly-issued Grand Jury decision to not indict Darren Wilson. Maheen Shahid, president of the university’s Feminist Student Organization, had been with a group of like-minded friends when the decision was announced. In an act of defiance against the injustice, Shahid and her friends immediately went to the library to “recruit troops”. A few recruitment trips and some social networking later, a student demonstration was in full swing in Monroe Park.

Still, there is always the question of sincerity in this new generation of activists. Shahid summed it up well, saying, “This isn’t just a hashtag, or something that you wear. You don’t do it so you can say, ‘cool, I went to three rallies, can I get my Bell Hooks water bottle now?'”

Internet activism has a variety of unique strengths: it is quick, it is accessible, and it is easy. Anyone can organize for a cause, and anyone can have a platform to disseminate information and their own personal beliefs. Even those who are too busy with work or school, have disabilities hindering their mobility, do not have transportation to events, or otherwise can not engage in “real life” activism gets a chance to be heard through the internet.

The problem is when activism becomes a sort of badge, worn as a fashion statement and then discarded when it is no longer a trending tag on Twitter. It makes one wonder how many people are really trying to support the Ferguson protesters, compared to how many are only showing up for rallies so that they have something to add to their Snapchat stories. Furthermore, there are plenty of demonstrators who are a bit too eager to add other issues to the Ferguson discussion. Though all people of color experience racism, that is not an excuse to co-opt discourse on police brutality and anti-black racism for the purpose of furthering other goals, no matter how legitimate.

Solidarity between people of color is a warm, hope-affirming concept, but the illusion of fully-realized solidarity cannot be allowed to distract any kind of social justice movement from the realities of oppression. Anti-black racism runs rampant in all ethnic and racial communities, whether we want to admit it or not. Even with white and brown people uniting to take a stand against police brutality and the desolate state of race relations in the United States, one has to wonder why black voices continue to be drowned out by the rest; how many people are just looking for a pat on the back when they acknowledge the oppression of black Americans?

The rally on Nov. 25 highlighted this issue in a bizarre, dramatic episode. In the line of demonstrators waiting to speak their minds on the microphone was an impassioned young white woman who took the opportunity to break down in front of the crowd, announcing the guilt she felt for being born white. After causing great discomfort among the entire audience by repeating several variations of “I have more privilege than you,” she was asked to step down.

The woman, whose name remains unknown to me (probably for the better), responded by screaming: “It’s called solidarity, you b—!”

The organizers of the rally subsequently decided to end this spoken portion of the rally and begin the march, even though there were several people of color waiting in line to speak. Watching this unfold in front of me was almost surreal; it struck me that with one outburst of white guilt, emotions in the crowd had run so high that the entire discussion had to be shut down. The black people present at the rally had literally been silenced because a white ally had not gotten a metaphorical gold star for doing the bare minimum in acknowledging her privilege.

Despite how inappropriate and disrespectful the outburst had been, it was still enlightening as a real-life perpetuation of a problem that is so present within solidarity movements — that problem being the people in power hijacking the struggle of the oppressed for their own gratification. Though usually an issue attributed to white allies, non-black people of color must also keep in mind that the struggles of the black community are not ours to co-opt for social justice brownie points.

There is hope for the current generation of activists, but we must watch out. We are angry, energized, and eager for change, but if we allow ourselves to be deluded by romanticized illusions of togetherness and a lack of seriousness in our intentions, then we will not get much done.

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Richmond to Ferguson: A Meditation on Solidarity and Being an Ally

An episode of The PJs (1999-2001) is on my list of must-see Christmas specials. Eddie Murphy was a creator of this cartoon which is easily one of his most underappreciated works. The special is a hood version of The Grinch Who Stole Christmas and, like the other episodes in the series, is a hilarious take on life in a high-rise housing project during the 1980s/1990s era. For those of us who lived that life, the show is able to generate laughter and positive memories of community to coincide with depictions of the difficult circumstances that experts came to label as “failed housing policy”. For …

An episode of The PJs (1999-2001) is on my list of must-see Christmas specials. Eddie Murphy was a creator of this cartoon which is easily one of his most underappreciated works. The special is a hood version of The Grinch Who Stole Christmas and, like the other episodes in the series, is a hilarious take on life in a high-rise housing project during the 1980s/1990s era.

For those of us who lived that life, the show is able to generate laughter and positive memories of community to coincide with depictions of the difficult circumstances that experts came to label as “failed housing policy”. For me, and no doubt others, living in The PJs was my earliest lesson in how little black lives can matter in communities across America.

My family lived in San Francisco’s Geneva Towers, a high-rise low-income building similar to those in other cities including the infamous Pruitt-Igoe in St. Louis and Cabrini-Green and Robert Taylor Homes in Chicago. These complexes shared similar challenges rooted in failures to properly fund maintenance and upkeep–irregular access to basics like power and water, filthy common areas, frequently broken elevators with several flights of stairs to climb, diminished safety measures linked to elevated crime, and the isolation that comes from living in a part of town that most members of the larger community are too fearful to visit.

I, and possibly many of the other black children in urban high-rise projects, was left to make sense of the world and to ask the question of “why do I deserve to live this way?” My guess is that most didn’t have a nuanced answer to that question, just hurt. Scars were created that run deep and that may never fully heal.

But the nation eventually made a course correction. HUD took action–for example it foreclosed on the private owners who were receiving government subsidies to run Geneva Towers. And, in 1989, Congress created the National Commission on Severely Distressed Public Housing which led to important reforms. The federal Hope VI program helped tear down dilapidated housing with the goal of deconcentrating poverty and creating mixed-income properties. The good models that were created moved the dial in a positive direction. Bad public housing still exists in some communities but the housing world is drastically different than it was in the 1980s.

As these events unfolded, I pursued secondary and higher education and eventually became an advocate for the poor. At which point, I was bearing witness to an important new chapter in the urban housing story–black families with children being seven times more likely to live in homeless shelters than their white counterparts.

It was evident that the reforms designed to address the problems impacting my childhood had, by the 2000s, contributed to at least one new and significant challenge–increased family homelessness. The nation did not replace all the public housing units it tore down. The National Low-Income Housing Coalition has estimated that Hope VI resulted in a loss of more than 100,000 housing units.

Other factors have compounded this problem, including skyrocketing housing prices over the last couple decades. Increasing numbers of people were in need of affordable housing as the number of available units was on the decline. As a result, in 2012 there was a shortage of 7.1 million affordable rental units for extremely low-income households. The nation’s public schools enrolled 1.3 million identified homeless children and youth during the 2012-2013 school year.

Homelessness is the “new PJs” for this generation, or the new type of housing situation that is unacceptable for children. Young people live in homeless shelters, motels, or with an ever rotating list of family and friends. They are more likely to miss school, experience food insecurity, and have health problems. Frequently on the move, they worry about where they’re going to sleep tomorrow or the next day which leads to toxic stress and negative impacts on mental health and physical development.

My guess is that these children also wonder, “What did I do to deserve to live this way?” In short, homelessness is creating scars that run deep and that may never fully heal.

Creating housing policy that doesn’t traumatize small children should be a low bar to meet, but somehow it has been a struggle. Recent Obama Administration action will finally fund the National Housing Trust Fund (after six years of effort) via contributions from the reconstituted Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. This is an extremely important step. But vigilance over its implementation, and other means of expanding the availability of affordable housing, must remain a priority if America truly believes that all its children matter.

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Upgrading Black Children From the Projects to Homelessness?

On May 2, 1967, Bobby Seale, co-founder of the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense stood in front of the California state capitol and read Executive Mandate #1. Seale and others were protesting the state legislatures’ decision to pass a bill to disarm the Panthers. However, Seale did not view the treatment of the Black Panther Party as a singular issue. In fact, it was quite the opposite. In Executive Mandate #1 Seale was clear that what was happening to African Americans was connected to colonialism, the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and the war in Vietnam. Seale argued that collectively, these actions showed that the “racist power structure of America has but one policy: repression, genocide, terror, and the big stick…

On May 2, 1967, Bobby Seale, co-founder of the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense stood in front of the California state capitol and read Executive Mandate #1. Seale and others were protesting the state legislatures’ decision to pass a bill to disarm the Panthers. However, Seale did not view the treatment of the Black Panther Party as a singular issue. In fact, it was quite the opposite. In Executive Mandate #1 Seale was clear that what was happening to African Americans was connected to colonialism, the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and the war in Vietnam. Seale argued that collectively, these actions showed that the “racist power structure of America has but one policy: repression, genocide, terror, and the big stick.” The black community had “begged, prayed, petitioned, and demonstrated to get America to right the wrongs which had been perpetrated against black people.” But all of these efforts had been answered by “more repression, deceit, and hypocrisy,” Seale declared.

Bobby Seale consistently argued that these issues were inextricably linked. He knew racism played a role in the atomic bombings, war in Vietnam, and of course the treatment of African Americans at home. Now almost fifty years later, all of these issues are again at the forefront. With the grand jury decisions in the Michael Brown and Eric Garner cases, the country has exploded in protests and acts of civil disobedience. At the same time, the world found out just how bad the U.S. tortured people during the Bush years and remains at war. And as these events unfolded, over 800 delegates from approximately 160 nations gathered in Vienna for the third Conference on the Humanitarian Impact of Nuclear Weapons with strong support from Africa and Latin America. Of course the common denominator in the use of nuclear weapons, torture, and police brutality is the victims were nonwhite.

Bobby Seale understood how these issues were connected. Of course he was not alone. Since 1945, many inside the black community have consistently argued that the black freedom movement, peace, and nuclear weapons were part of the same fight. Sadly, one cannot possibly be shocked that the police, who are agents of the state, would shoot unarmed black men and then describe them as “it” and “demons” when one reads the grotesque ways in which the U.S. tortured nonwhite people abroad, and have repeatedly threatened to use nuclear weapons on nonwhite people around the world.

What recent events show is that now, just like in the 1960s, activists need to fight on multiple fronts. While President Obama banned torture his second day in office, activists need to make sure in his last two years Obama eliminates nuclear weapons, ends military engagements in the Middle East, and creates a division in the Justice Department to investigate police shootings and misconduct.

Like many, I am not sure how these things will play out. I don’t know if these protests will evolve into a new movement or when these wars will end. However, what I am sure of, and what has become increasingly clear over the last few months is that Malcolm X was right: “it’s not an issue of civil rights, but human rights.” And however activists proceed in 2015, Malcolm’s words should be the guiding principle for all actions to come.

Vincent Intondi is an Associate Professor of History at Montgomery College and Director of Research for American University’s Nuclear Studies Institute. His forthcoming book, African Americans Against the Bomb examines the role of black antinuclear activists.

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On the Connections Between Police Brutality, Torture, and Nuclear Weapons

In a recent New York Times article, Taiye Selasi offers this resonant insight on nationality and identity in relation to the recent Michael Brown case: “that we don’t hear of American-on-American violence as we hear of black-on-black crime suggests that the identity ‘American’ does not, as advertised, imply a single community.” The phrase “American-on-American violence” describes aptly the deaths of Michael Brown, Eric Garner, and the too many unarmed black victims — men and women — of police violence since 1999. This hyper-racial (as opposed to post-racial) moment, overflowing with examples of lethal police brutality, harkens back — as Alice Walker meditates …

In a recent New York Times article, Taiye Selasi offers this resonant insight on nationality and identity in relation to the recent Michael Brown case: “that we don’t hear of American-on-American violence as we hear of black-on-black crime suggests that the identity ‘American’ does not, as advertised, imply a single community.” The phrase “American-on-American violence” describes aptly the deaths of Michael Brown, Eric Garner, and the too many unarmed black victims — men and women — of police violence since 1999.

This hyper-racial (as opposed to post-racial) moment, overflowing with examples of lethal police brutality, harkens back — as Alice Walker meditates on in her recent poem, “Gather” — to those horrific practices of American-on-American violence historically known as lynching. Lynching involved citizen-led, ritualistic acts of public violence sometimes witnessed by large throngs of people, including children. An estimated 3,445 blacks died at the hands of lynch mobs between 1882 and 1968. Lynched bodies, the “Strange Fruit” Billie Holiday memorializes in her haunting and iconic recording, swinging from tree limbs or otherwise grotesquely displayed in full view, spoke the terror — the racial terrorism — that would come to others if they, too, stepped “out of line.”

In Without Sanctuary, collector James Allen catalogs photographs and postcards taken as souvenirs at lynchings throughout the United States. The images collected in Without Sanctuary reflect what the historical record indicates: that the majority of victims of lynching were African American men, though it is also important to note that African American women and women and men of other ethnicities (for instance, Irish and Italian immigrants) were also lynched. Lynching, then, was a set of violent rituals used to police and punish the “Other,” and to set clear boundaries between “whites” and “non-whites.”

One postcard in Without Sanctuary is inscribed with this note: “This is the Barbecue we had last night my picture is to the left with a cross over it your son Joe.” Repeated references to “barbecues” and “main fare,” Allen notes in Without Sanctuary, are found often in lynching-related correspondence. This particular postcard also features an advertising stamp, “katy electric studios temple texas. h. lippe prop,” revealing that, at times, these events were planned ahead, and professional photographers were hired to photograph them. Photographers would then produce and sell prints (in the hundreds and occasionally the thousands) as souvenirs.

Attendees and participants in lynchings would often mail these photographs and postcards through the United States Postal Service to friends and family in the same spirit as one might post photographs on Facebook today: as a general update or as a way to share the experience with those who could not attend. On one postcard, for instance, the sender wrote, “All ok and would like to get a post from you. Bill, This was some Raw Bunch.” The postcard’s front border reads, in handwritten script, “LYNCHING SCENE, DALLAS, MARCH 3, 1910.” One of the most complex postcards includes a portrait of the victim, Will James, surrounded by four images showing the stages of his lynching and the burial of his ashes.

On occasion, such images were sent to other possible victims as warnings. Mailing these images meant that the results of lynchings were witnessed not only within the communities in which they occurred, but also were replicated, transmitted, and amplified for viewers sorting, transporting, and receiving these pieces of mail, effectively broadening the reach of these events. By 1908, the practice of mailing postcards or other visible forms of lynching images was so popular that the Postmaster General of the United States, through an addition to the Cromstock Laws, banned the mailing of the written messages that often inscribed these images.

There are certainly important differences between the ritualistic acts of violence called lynchings and the most recent yet systemic violence at the hands of police against black people. In terms of image transmission in particular, rather than sent through the United States mail, personally recorded video of police brutality and its aftermath is now recorded by smartphone and transmitted to millions through social media outlets — evidence of the disease of American racism gone viral. The intent of sharing these images, of course, is starkly different from the intent of those who sent lynching images through the mail. People sharing, for instance, the Eric Garner video, seek justice for the victim, a purpose resonant with Mamie Till’s decision to allow her son’s mutilated, lynched body to be viewed at his funeral, and photographs to be reprinted in national newspapers and magazines. Today, videos, memes, hashtags, recordings of a victim’s final pleas, post-Grand Jury explanations, protesting and all the forms protesting takes — all of it is part of the spectacle and sonics of 21st century lynching, the spectacle and sonics of a New Jim Crow.

Yet there are parallels between the violence of the past and the perpetual violence we are witnessing in the present. While the intent might not be such, while these killings may not be illegal, the message repeatedly in these instances of violence and death is that black lives don’t matter. When we watch an officer aggressively hold a man in a chokehold until he can no longer breathe, and that same officer on a second video moments later nonchalantly peering into the camera, it looks like black lives don’t matter. Or when a black teenager’s body is left out in the open for public view for at least four hours in the high heat of August, it looks like black lives don’t matter. Or when our judicial system doesn’t seem to know how to adequately speak to these instances of American-on-American violence, we can’t help but think that while the intent may not be such, the message communicated is that black lives don’t matter in the larger fabric of our society. As difficult as it is to contend with, the history of lynching and our contemporary moment of violence against black people reminds us that the devaluation of black life in America is as old as this nation. And it still exists, daily resuscitating the need for us to utter in chorus the otherwise muted truth that should be self-evident: Black lives do and have always mattered.

As we wrestle with two Grand Jury decisions not to indict police officers for murder and United Nations concerns regarding a “pattern of impunity” concerning victims of color in the American judicial system, as demonstrators of all hues flood the streets here and abroad in protest, I am reminded of anti-lynching advocate Ida B. Wells. Wells, an African American journalist who often sent detectives to investigate individual lynchings and published their reports, explained that she published these findings “to give the public the facts, in the belief that there is still a sense of justice in the American people, and that it will yet assert itself in condemnation of outlawry and in defense of oppressed and persecuted humanity.” It is this sense of justice that now must compel this nation and its law enforcement agencies towards acting justly. Or are we living in a moment without sanctuary?

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Without Sanctuary?: On Lynching in the 21st Century