BRIEF HISTORIES: THE WATTS RIOTS

(Image source: ClickAmericana.com)

"We rioted because the white man was doin the Negros-- they was taking what the Negros had-- all they had just about-- and I had enough of it."

On a hot Wednesday night August 11, 1965 a 21 year-old Black man named Marquette Frye along with his brother Ronald Frye were pulled over at a routine traffic stop by a white police officer. The stop was reportedly for drunk driving.

"It is very hard to try to explain to someone what it feels like to be Black in a white world. The things that happen to you daily and that affect you and that are so much apart of you are very hard sometimes to even remember because they have become so routine."

California Highway Patrol Officer Lee Minikus made Frye walk the line. The officer berated him with questions. Frye was then forcibly arrested on the scene. His mother's 1955 Buick was going to be impounded. Frye's brother Ronald ran to get their mother, who was only two blocks away. By now, a small group of onlookers gathered around the scene.

"There is really nothing that I can tell you here that would fully-- really let you know what it is like because it is too horrible and too deep to communicate to anyone."

When Rena Frye arrived and saw what was unfolding she wasted no time at all. She pushed through the officers to scold her son for drunk driving. Two more officers had arrived on the scene. One of them pulled his mother away from Frye. Another one struck Frye on the side of the head with a baton. Frye's mother jumped on the officer and tore his shirt. Another officer pulled out a shotgun and shoved Frye against the car yelling: "you get your black ass up against the car! If you get off that car I will blow your ass off!"

"I don't like to use the word riot. I say it was a revolt, or a overthrow. It wasn't a riot. That's a bunch of crazy folk going crazy without reason. There was a reason. And I have always wanted to see some changes around here"

A police officer handcuffed Rena Frye. By now the group of onlookers swelled substantially and reached a fever-pitch. The crowd grew openly hostile towards the police officers. Rocks and bottles were hurled at officers and the police car. Marquette, his brother, and Rena Frye were all arrested and thrown into the police car. "The crowd was pissed when the cops picked on my mama. I got angry. I took a swing at one. They handcuffed my hands and legs, threw me in the car and kicked me. Ronnie was thrown over the top of the car." The police car drove off. In less than an hour the crowd had transformed into a mob. Enraged by the police brutality and the rumors spreading that Frye's pregnant girlfriend was also brutalized by police, the people rose to their feet. The crowd flooded the streets, pulled white drivers out of their cars and beat them. Stones shattered store windows and people scrambled to take whatever they could get their hands on. Firebombs were thrown into buildings and cop cars were flipped over. The streets of Watts ripped open flesh wounds.

"I threw the firebomb right into the front window; right in the front window. A friend of mine went in the store towards the back and threw a firebomb in the back and the place went up in flames. But it was pretty well uh-- emptied by the looters and so forth."

"Then we would decide to burn and the cry in the streets was 'burn baby, burn!' "

"Our YOUR FRIEND CHARLIE pawnshop
was a glorious blaze
I heard the flames lick
then eat the trays
of zircons
mounted in red gold alloys"

"We decided to burn this store because we felt like this man hadn't been doing nothing but gaining on us anyway."

"We scream but we can't be heard. We talk but we can't be heard. It just seem like people don't understand."

It was one of the biggest racial uprisings in United States history. Police came to break up the crowd several times through out the course of the night but were repelled by stones and gun fire. Firemen attempting to put out the fires were shot at and driven out. The rioting continued and intensified into the next night and into the next night and into the next. By the fourth day a curfew had been set and the California Governor had called The National Guard.

By the following Tuesday the rebellion had ended. The uprising lasted for six days and resulted in the deaths of at least 34 people. There were reportedly over 1000 injuries and at least 4,000 arrests. Property damage totaled over $40 million dollars. At least 30,000 people took part in the revolt.

"I didn’t know there was a riot. When I got out of jail and turned on the radio, I heard Wolfman Jack play 'Burn, Baby Burn,' and then I heard my name, my brothers name and my mother's, and I heard about the people killed so far. I just cried."

"After the revolt, they fed us pacification programs. They put their little police department here for control. They were going to make damn sure this never happened again"

The economic deprivation of Watts, the wide-spread employment discrimination, the anti-black racism and heavy policing all contributed to the powder keg. Residence were sick of poverty and joblessness. They were sick of decrepit living conditions. The State's denial of the rights outlined in Civil Rights Act left many residence indignant. The insurrection threw Watts into the national spotlight. America asked the stupid question "what does the Negro want?" Reporters pored into the area after the riots to investigate the reasons for why the rebellion occurred, interviewing many of the residence who were apart of the riot. It was then that America suddenly "discovered" the economic conditions that pushed so many people to the breaking point.

"You are gonna make a black monster down here and this monster is gonna get larger and larger and pretty soon its going to eat all of us up."

Then all the cameras left. And most of the buildings destroyed by the riots have never been repaired. Watts has generally been kept in the condition it was in over fifty years ago.

"There was a Japanese restaurant over there, a corner barber and a liquor store. They all burned up. The trees along the streets were bigger. Police cut them back so we couldn't climb up and throw bottles from there. That green complex across the street is where all the people from the hood came out to watch me do my dance for the officers. The trash, well, that's still here from '65 probably."

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Brief Histories

THE DECOLONIZER
February 2016

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CATCHING UP WITH YOUNG PEOPLE: NEOLIBERALISM, RESISTANCE, AND MLK

From the Annual MLK Community Luncheon Address at Beverly J. Martin Elementary School January 18, 2016.

By Russell Rickford

"Fight for 15" (Image Source: nationofchange.org)

"Neoliberalism” is a funny word. It doesn’t mean “liberal” according to today’s definition of that term—someone who thinks the government should be actively involved in reforming society.

No. The “liberal” in neoliberalism comes from the 19th century meaning; that is, complete freedom from government interference. So “NEO” liberalism, in part, means a return to an era in which there was next to no economic regulation or taxation.

But neoliberalism is much more than that. Neoliberalism is an especially aggressive, especially brutal form of capitalism. It has ruled our lives, and the lives of most people on the planet, since the late 20th century.

What else does neoliberalism mean? Neoliberalism means growing insecurity, unemployment or underemployment for most of the people in the Global North (the rich countries), and economic devastation for most of the people in the Global South (the poor countries).

Neoliberalism means austerity (except for the bankers). It means the crushing of labor unions, the decline of wages, the shredding of the safety net. It means sending jobs overseas. It means the billionaire class sucks up 95% of the economic gains since the Great Recession of ‘08-09.

Neoliberalism means desperation and downward mobility. It means your life is increasingly precarious. You’re swimming in debt. You think you’re running in place, but you’re actually falling behind.

Neoliberalism means even white, middle-class people are dying sooner. (As it turns out, your whiteness won’t protect you.)

Neoliberalism means obscene inequality. It means the redistribution of the world’s wealth to the top 1%. EIGHTY people now hold the same amount of wealth as the world’s 3.6 billion poorest people. In the U.S., 400 individuals have more wealth than 150 million citizens. The Walton family, owners of WALMART, have more wealth than 42% of American families combined.

Neoliberalism means privately run prisons and privately run healthcare. It means billionaires privatizing our public schools and annexing our great cities. Neoliberalism means decay.

It means climate change, the destruction of our planet, the neglect and deterioration of our infrastructure and our public institutions. It means that children in Flint, Michigan are dying of lead poisoning as a result of that city’s foul, orange-hued tap water. Flint is largely black and largely poor. They’re drinking toxic waste. If you think it can’t happen to you, you haven’t been paying attention.

Neoliberalism means widespread ignorance and spiritual starvation. In its lust for profit and world domination, neoliberalism unleashes the most reactionary and vulgar elements of society. The fascists. The bigots. The warmongers.

This is not civilization. It’s barbarism. This is not what King had in mind when he said we would reach the Promised Land.

Who can live elegantly under the neoliberal regime? How can we teach our children decency in such indecent times? The only way to salvage our humanity, to leave our children something besides war and debt and misery, is to fight!

So as I close, I urge you to join the General Strike that is unfolding in many pockets of the world, from South Africa to Saudi Arabia. From Ferguson to Baltimore. From Yale to Mizzou to Ithaca College.

Today, many of our young people recognize the imperative to resist. They recognize the truth of what the democratic freedom fighter Ella Baker said back in 1964: “We who believe in freedom cannot rest.”

These young people are calling for a new social contract. Some of them, particularly those organized under the banner of “Black Lives Matter” and “Fight for 15,” are calling for the reconstruction of democracy. They’re calling for living wages, dignified jobs, a worker’s bill of rights, and the protection and rebuilding of unions. They’re demanding fully funded healthcare, social services, and public schools. They’re seeking universal childcare, full access to reproductive health, an end to racist mass imprisonment, police terror, and the colonial occupation of the Palestinian people.

Some of our young people are now in open rebellion against neoliberalism and its accomplice: global white supremacy. They’re determined to create a massive crisis for the system—a crisis of dissent. They have begun to engage in civil disobedience. Boycotts. Work stoppages. Marches. Rallies. Creative disruption. I think Martin would have been pleased.

As our brother Cornell West has said: “The litmus test for realizing King’s dream was neither a Black face in the White House nor a Black presence on Wall Street. Rather, the fulfillment of his dream was for all poor and working people to live lives of decency and dignity.”

So let’s be like King. Let’s catch up with our young people. Let’s demand a humane economy and an end to war. Let’s become nuisances.

King was a deeply flawed man. As flawed, perhaps, as you and me. If he was great, he was great because some small but determined segment of the people rose up and said “enough.” They launched a general strike. They didn’t hold no picnic. They didn’t have no love-fest. They analyzed their objective conditions. And they went to battle.

So I leave you with the words of the beautiful Fred Hampton, chairman of the Chicago Black Panthers, one of the spiritual descendants of King, and Malcolm, and Ella, who was murdered in his sleep by the mad-dog cops and federal agents in 1969. Comrade Fred said: “People say you fight fire best with fire, but we say you put fire out best with water. We say you don’t fight racism with racism. We’re gonna fight racism with solidarity. We say you don’t fight capitalism with no black capitalism; you fight capitalism with socialism.”

Thank You. Venceremos! Free Palestine!

Russell Rickford is an Assistant Professor of History at Cornell University.

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Russell Rickford

THE DECOLONIZER
February 2016

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OBAMA'S LEGACY

President Barack Obama. The first Black president. Leader of the so-called free world. You could still see him triumphantly approaching the podium in Washington that day in 2008 before a sea of arms and waving flags. As he now leaves office the country has fallen into endless lamentation.


The Decolonizer says: stop D*** riding Obama.


We had ourselves a Black president. And it was great, unprecedented, a moment in United States history. It was a blue and red 2008 election button with the word "change” in bold white letters.

The conservatives cringed. The liberals clamored, their hearts raised joyfully to the new sovereign as if to say: "Obama is in office for our sins.” Couldn’t wait to tell the good news to their Black friends: "racism is a thing of the past, we have a Black president!” They could barely keep themselves from salivating.

Meanwhile, a black woman digs in between the sofa cushions of a run-down home in Chicago trying to come up with the money to bury her son. Said she was looking for change.

The Obama years saw the extra judicial killings of so many Black people that the #BlackLivesMatter movement was created in response. The largest Black outcry in recent memory was made a national movement because a Black president sat in the White House unable to challenging anti-Black state violence.

Who could forget that fateful night in November when Officer Darren Wilson was not indicted for murdering Mike Brown? When the riots begin Obama’s face appears on a TV screen. Live on public television he says: "no one needs to be policed more than poor communities with high crime rates.”

During the Baltimore riots, Obama proceeded to wag his finger at angry protesters saying "there is no excuse for violence in Baltimore.” Never once has he taken administrative action to bring extra judicial killings to justice. He has said “Trayvon Martin could have been me” but never once has he openly acknowledged India Clarke, Sandra Bland, Rekia Boyd or any of the Black cis and trans women who have been killed by state violence.

Then there is Obama’s immigration policy. He is responsible for the aggressive forced removal of thousands undocumented immigrants. Through the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) raids he is responsible for the state terror and virtual assault on migrant families. The Obama administration escalated the ICE raids at the beginning of this year, targeting Central American immigrants mostly from Honduras, Guatemala, and El Salvador.

The United States is willing to exploit these countries for produce, labor, drug trafficking, and is willing to install puppet governments, but is unwilling to accept migrants who cross its boarders to escape the conditions the United States has helped to create. Lives are placed in jeopardy when immigrants are sent back to these countries because of the ongoing violence that occurs there.

ICE raids have been conducted inhumanely, often in the early hours of the morning, where people are taken into custody and thrown into the deplorable immigration detention centers.


How many people of color has Obama killed?


Then there is Obama’s foreign policy. The Obama years saw the rise of drone warfare; the buzzing death machines that hover over arbitrary "hot spots” in Pakistan, Afghanistan, Waziristan, Libya, Syria, Somalia, and Yemen, killing supposed terrorist leaders on Washington’s secret "kill list.” The Obama Administration was directly responsible for the tenfold increase in drone activity during Obama’s presidency. Obama himself was directly responsible for overseeing the drone program.

According to the Bureau of Investigative Journalism over 400 reported drone strikes have occurred as of 2014. It is estimated that U.S drones have killed at least two thousand people; most of them were people of color. Most of them were innocent civilians. In 2013, Obama defended the program by saying that strikes were as a last resort and as "precise” as possible. Leaked documents on the program proved that this was a lie. 90% of the people killed by drone strikes are innocent civilians. Apparently the lives of brown people are extinguishable.

The Obama administration constantly preferred extermination over capture during covert counter-terrorist operations. Obama has developed "kill teams,” special military units formed for the purpose of assassinating CIA terrorist targets. Obama has taken liberties to target and execute anyone who poses a national security threat in the Middle East. The most famous kill team mission of course was the assassination of Osama bin Laden, who Obama never fails to gloat shamelessly about during public discussions of his foreign policy.


Obama: keeping the world safe for United States colonial domination.


This past January Obama made his final State of the Union Address.

It was an address oozing with United States exceptionalism. It played up bipartisan conflict instead speaking frankly about the racial situation. Obama affirmed U.S leadership of the world aggressively and with the up most barbarism. It was an address that utterly ignored the horrors of his administration, all the bloody mangled bodies floating in the background of his presidency.


F*** Obama!


They say that he was a litmus test. That he was the president that America had been waiting for. He was the symbol that people of color had made it to the mountain top. Conditions for people of color in America have scarcely improved since Obama took office. The expression "I have a Black president" has lost its meaning.

Obama's change could not save us. It could not save Sandra Bland or Michael Brown. It could not save the families from the added grief of knowing that no justice will be served.

Obama teaches us that, so long as the United States is an illegitimate country founded on the genocide of Indigenous people, the forced slave labor of Africans, the cheap labor of migrant workers, the domestic labor of women, the exploitation of the poor, the neo-colonial imperialism in Africa, Asia, and Latin America, it's leader is by default an accessory of global white supremacy, capitalism, settler colonialism, and white supremacist patriarchy. The operation of this country requires the global destruction of people of color. It does not matter what complexion you are or how far left on the liberal spectrum you fall. If you are president you will carry out this requirement.

This is Obama's Legacy.

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THE DECOLONIZER
February 2016

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DR. MARTIN LUTHER KING JR. HATES YOU

Now is the time of year when we remember Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Liberal white supremacists come out of the woodwork to perpetuate colorblind racism. Uncle Toms gather around to talk about how far we have come. Middle class people of color tell youth to pull their pants up.

MLK celebrations happen all across the country. Everywhere people are holding hands and sing "this little light of mine." Program agendas ask "what would Dr.Martin Luther King Jr. say if he could see us today?"

It has become a day to celebrate progress. Yet you couldn't hear freedom ring if it came out the barrel of a gun shot in your head handcuffed execution style.

From Birmingham to Selma we remember Dr. Martin Luther King's adventures. Place him next to Gandhi and Jesus. Burn candles and sing for King's second coming. Oprah Winfrey dips into a bowl of croutons and laughs. Al Sharpton holds his hand to his heart and sobs.

There is talk of Obama and marches on Washington, and freedom coming down like a mighty stream. The Black elite blow their noses and pay homage to the Dream. Stepping on the necks of poor Black people "If it wasn't for Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. I wouldn't be where I am at today."

White supremacist want to be judged by the content of their domination. They regurgitate MLK quotes to keep people of color in place. "Now remember, boy, Dr. Martin Luther King said, 'hate cannot drive out hate.' Now wait a minute there, boy, Martin Luther King said, 'an eye for an eye will leave everyone blind.'"

White liberals in Martin Luther King tee shirts sing "we shall overcome" loud enough to drown out the cries of black people dying in the streets.

This January 18th, The Decolonizer says: Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. hates you.

The Decolonizer knows there will be a rush to social media to post your favorite MLK quotes, wait at your computer for likes, and feel good about your complacency in white supremacist settler colonial domination. Here is an alternative list of #QuotesbyMLK:

"The activity of Negro forces, while heroic in some instances, and impressive in other sporadic situations, lacked consistency and militancy to fill the void left by government defaults."

"The principle of self-defense, even involving weapons and bloodshed, has never been condemned."

"When the Negro uses force in self-defense he does not forfeit support- he may even win it, by the courage and self-respect it reflects."

"It is unfortunately true that however the Negro acts, his struggle will not be free of violence initiated by his enemies, and he will need ample courage and willingness to sacrifice to defeat this manifestation of violence."

"Over the last few years many Negros have felt that their most troublesome adversary was not the obvious bigot of the Ku Klux Klan or the John Birch Society, but the white liberal who is more devoted to 'order' than to justice, who prefers tranquility to equality."

"The amazing thing about the ghetto is that so few Negros have rioted."

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THE DECOLONIZER
January 2016

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ON THE FRONT LINES: #RISEUPOCTOBER #WHATSIDEAREYOUON

by Dubian Ade

As I enter the confines of Washington Square Park I am met with busy people hunched over, chalk drawing liberation into the concrete floor. The massive stone arch towers over them, adjourn with colonial European faces that seem to shrink at the sight of the people gathering increasingly at its base. At any second it seemed the masses would rise up in fury to topple the stone landmark. A woman stationed at the edge hands me a copy of The Revolution newspaper.

Another black woman yells "Get your buttons! Black Lives Matter, get your buttons." Another black woman follows alongside her selling black liberation flags. The sound of drums waters the space in rhythms synced with the beautiful chaos of the people organizing at every direction. Filled with sounds, conversation, movement, smells, tastes swirl behind a backdrop of words ferociously spoken from a microphone.

They are the families. Sandra Bland, Micheal Brown, Eric Gardner, Tamir Rice, the kind of testimonies that tear at the insides like swallowed rust nails. "Until you experience this you will never know my pain!" she rages as a loved one concerned, hurt written on his face reaches from behind the stage for her "No, no until they been through what I have experience you will never know!"

The microphone drops. It is a thud felt in the pit of a collective stomach.

BLACK LIVES MATTER, BERNIE SANDERS, AND RACIAL BARRIERS IN LANGUAGE

By Bud Gankhuyag

The highly publicized disruption of a Bernie Sanders speech on August 8th in Seattle, Washington, caused by Black Lives Matter (BLM) activists Marissa Johnson and Mara Willaford, has sparked widespread condemnation and even outright dismissal of the entire movement for black lives. Many are unable to make sense of why these activists interjected a speech of an outspoken socially progressive candidate; others have reasoned that this act was indeed senseless. By taking such a reactionary and antagonistic stance, however, critics are bypassing any consideration of the perspectives of the activists and importantly the very reasons behind their choices. Instead, what has taken the place of critical understanding is an ignorant ascription of lack of intelligence and political acumen, accusations that are racial and gendered. Demonizing BLM and movements for racial justice only serve to bolster the relative privilege and myopia of white progressivism.

Elaine Thompson / AP

As activists Marissa Johnson and Mara Willaford firmly stood on stage, juxtaposed to a silent, deferred Sanders. They welcomed the Senator to the city that has spent $200 million to imprison black children and houses a police force riddled by use of force, racial profiling,and scandals throughout the year. They left the stage after five minutes, but not before commemorating the one-year anniversary of Michael Brown's death and declaring to Sanders that the BLM movement will persist regardless of who is elected president. The crowd of mostly white Sanders supporters quickly expressed their outrage; when Johnson pressed to the crowd that "it is time that we honor [the life of Michael Brown] here and now," one heckler claimed "we've already done it!" On public facebook comments responding to videos of the incident, angered Sanders supporters called the two women "uneducated on politics" and "Idiots... This is why you do your research, so you don't make yourself, cause and people look like idiots. What a shame."