If this boy had been more prudently 
dropped into life on, say, a street 
with trees that throw out their annual yellow 
to make a welcome parade for the sun; 
had as childhood neighbours a Circuit Court Judge 
whose front door had no letter box, 
a Garda Chief Inspector with an opinionated 
and over-confident dog; 
kicked a ball up and down summer evenings, 
dead apart from the occasional well behaved bee, 
with the boy next door (but one) who blossomed 
into a political correspondent 
and now gets to make up truth, 
another way would’ve been found.
But for coming at Gardaí 
with a chemical imbalance, 
what some people are calling 
a machete 
and a totally inappropriate 
post code, 
the only sentence 
was that ethically administered, 
democratically accountable, 
bolt action firing squad.
The eminent and learned 
bottoms we employ to sit 
on the inquiry into this 
need not fret the task ahead of them. 
For their report is already written.
&nbsp;
<pre>Photo Credit: <a class="owner-name truncate" style="color: #808080;" title="Go to Paolo Trabattoni's photostream" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/mctraba/" data-track="attributionNameClick">Paolo Trabattoni </a>/ Flickr</pre>

Garda Police

Poem: The Case of George Nkencho

Martin Luther King Jr is the embodiment of patriotism and a symbol of what it means to stand up for what you believe in even when the odds are against you. In today’s media, patriotism is often equated with blind fealty to the nation. However, King was an example of what this author believes is true patriotism, having the strength to hold your country accountable and demand it to be better and be true to its ideals. As we remember his life and legacy on the 50th anniversary of his assassination it is important to remember this: King was a man who stood for justice and demanded that the United States live up to its ideals. The whitewashing of King’s legacy has made him seem tame to contemporary observers who would rather look to people such as Kwame Ture (Stokely Carmichael), Malcolm X or the Black Panthers. However, King’s actual influence and radicalism cannot be denied if we just look at historical events. The message of Martin Luther King Jr and the importance of his message is exemplified by his speeches to the students of Howard University in Washington, D.C. The impact of his message is evident in student actions that were inspired by his words. Just as King’s words should not be taken out of context from the content of the actual speeches he gave, they should be considered together with such actions.
Martin Luther King Jr visited the campus of Howard University several times. Each time he encouraged the students to fight for their rights while adhering to the message of non-violence. In 1964, King gave the annual Gandhi Memorial Lecture. The event featured King and several other luminaries including noted writer <a href="http://www.the-platform.org.uk/2017/06/25/lessons-james-baldwin-taught-me-2">James Baldwin</a>. It was Baldwin who set the tone for the event asking three pointed questions for discussion. He stated, “How much provocation can a non-violent fighter take before he breaks into violence? Or if he can hold himself in check during the campaign is he more prone to become violent afterwards… how long can we not fight back?”
King’s speech was a response to this query. He said, “Non-violence is the most potent weapon available to the Negro in his struggle for freedom and justice.” He encouraged the young people to rise above the hatred of white supremacists who sought to deny them equal citizenship. “One must rise to the heights of being able to accept blows without retaliating.” He went on to explain what this means, not as a passive acceptance, but as a mode of survival without internalising toxic emotions such as hatred: “Hate is dangerous. It is as injurious to the hater as it is to the hated… Non-violence means that you refuse to engage in external physical violence, and… in internal violence of (the) spirit.”
Protecting one’s spirit meant practicing love. “There are three kinds of love. The love I speak of… is a love of understanding, creative, redemptive goodwill for all men.” This was the message from King to the young people of Howard University. It was speeches like this and the call of non-violence that inspired the afore-mentioned Stokely Carmichael nee Kwame Ture to coin the term “Black Power” while a student at Howard. Carmichael, who graduated from Howard in 1964, would go on to join and become a leader in the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee.
The breadth of King’s message was on full display when he spoke again at the University’s Charter Day Celebration on 2nd March 1965. In his speech he called on the students to rise up and fight to make a better world. He called on them to end “the world’s three towering evils – racial injustice, poverty and war.” He called on the students to not give up even when all seemed lost. He said, “we must keep moving”. That is what we should remember about King and his message. It was not a narrow message focused completely on making the better simply for African Americans. He wanted to make a better world for everyone. That was the essence of his lauded “I Have a Dream” speech. It was also the message he carried to every protest and battle of the <a href="http://www.the-platform.org.uk/tag/civil-rights/">civil rights movement</a>.
The universality of his message spoke to young people, and inspired them to be active and stand up to injustice. King was not simply a man fighting for the civil rights of his people – he fought to make the world better for everyone. This led him to join efforts to end the Vietnam War. His Poor People’s Campaign linked the struggle of African Americans to the struggle of poor whites and to others battling to survive under the crushing weight of poverty. This message of the universal struggle and an effort to bring various groups together made King an enemy in the eyes of the J. Edgar Hoover and the FBI. However, to millions around the country, this message was an inspiration indicating that change could come.
This was no more clear than on the campus of Howard University. Inspired by King and others, the students held numerous protests across the campus. Students protested the Vietnam War and America’s involvement. To get their message across they interrupted Charter Day exercises and burned two figures in effigy outside of Douglas Hall – the programme’s speaker, General Lewis Blaine Hershey, who was the director of the Selective Service System, and James Nabrit, then the Howard President. They even took over the University’s Administration or “A” Building to demand change at the university in March of 1967.
King’s legendary oratory inspired thousands. It is why Joann Gibson Robinson and the Women of the Montgomery Improvement Association called him to Montgomery, Alabama, during the Montgomery Bus Boycott to be the face of their movement. It is also why he received international praise including the Nobel Peace Prize. A symbol of King’s international recognition remains on the campus of Howard University. A bust of Mahatma Gandhi presented to King by the Indian Embassy sits on display in the Historic Founders Library. This bust, along with a bust of King himself, stands as a reminder to students of the power of non-violent, peaceful protest. It is a message that remains relevant today as young people march for change after recent US school shootings and as Black Lives Matter (BLM) brings attention to the killing of unarmed black men.
It is interesting to see the parallels between BLM and the earlier movement led by King, both of which have had non-violence as a tenant. Like King’s movement, BLM is vilified in the press and by conservatives as the cause of the violence against them. According to those in power, the civil rights movement was built by outside agitators, and similarly, according to officials in Ferguson, BLM protests were cause by outside agitators. Paradoxically, they were each also told that silence will make their problems go away – that if they stop agitating then justice will eventually come. This preposterous notion haunted the civil rights movement and continues to dog the BLM movement today.
On the 50th anniversary of his assassination, we must remember King for his universal message of peace and non-violence. We must remember that this message was not “tame” but radical. It was radical in that it called people to fight for change but also maintain their morality. This was a tough battle in the face of vehement hatred and the frequent indignities faced by African Americans and other minorities. As King stated, “Hate is dangerous. It is as injurious to the hater as it is to the hated.”
&nbsp;
<pre>Photo Credit: Courtesy of the Howard University Archives</pre>

king giving Ghandi Lecture 1964 2 (1)

Dr King linked universal social struggles and inspired a generation of students

“We Must Keep Moving”: Martin Luther King Jr and Student Activism at Howard University

New documentary film following the lives of two of Mark Duggan’s best friends provides raw insight into life before and after he was shot dead by police 
&nbsp; 
When director George Amponsah recently started screening his film The Hard Stop, he could not have anticipated how timely it would be. The <a href="http://www.vox.com/2016/7/6/12105380/alton-sterling-police-shooting-baton-rouge-louisiana">stark video of Alton Sterling</a> being pinned to the floor and shot dead by cops in Louisiana, and the very next day that of <a href="http://fusion.net/story/322473/who-is-philando-castile/">Philandro Castile</a> dying in his car seat after suffering a similar fate, reignited <a href="http://www.the-platform.org.uk/2014/12/06/black-youth-as-a-lethal-weapon-the-incoherence-of-the-american-justice-system/">#BlackLivesMatter</a> protests across the United States and the world. Two days after Castile’s shooting, as #BlackLivesMatter protesters were bringing <a href="http://www.timeout.com/london/blog/in-pictures-the-blacklivesmatter-protests-in-london-this-weekend-071116">London’s Oxford Street</a> to a halt, I was at the <a href="http://www.frontlineclub.com/screening-the-hard-stop-qa/">Frontline Club</a> to watch this raw documentary about the killing of Mark Duggan, shot dead by police here in the UK in 2011. 
The Hard Stop is named after the controversial tactic used by British police, where armed officers deliberately intercept a vehicle to confront a suspect. It was the tactic used when police officers shot dead <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2015/jul/03/police-marksman-anthony-long-cleared-azelle-rodney-murder">Azelle Rodney</a> in 2005. At the time, the Independent Police Complaints Commission recommended the Metropolitan Police review the use of this “high risk option”. By 2013, the police officer who shot Rodney was found to have had “no lawful justification” for the killing, but the Met had yet to review the hard stop tactic. There had been no review by the 4th August 2011 either, the day the hard stop was used on Mark Duggan. 
This candid observational documentary follows two of Duggan’s childhood friends, Marcus Knox-Hooke and Kurtis Henville, in the aftermath of their “brother’s” death. We join them as Marcus is facing prison for, essentially, starting the riots that came in the wake of the killing. He is accused of instigating the first act of <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-14434318">violence in Tottenham</a>, the epicentre of civil unrest that soon engulfed the entire country. Footage of Tottenham ablaze, and of widespread looting, is criticised by Marcus in a rare glimpse of politics in the documentary: “We are supposed to be standing united against the government, against all the oppression they are putting us through, not destroying our local area.” 
Later, as Kurtis and his girlfriend listen to the radio in their kitchen, there is another nod to politics as the news reports on how austerity is hitting the poorest hardest. Kurtis is unemployed and we follow his struggle to find work. It is his sincere attitude and cheeky sense of humour that break down barriers in this film. These universally relatable glimmers of humanity draw you in, and you might even notice how different life is for the Kurtis’ of this world, as he looks for work online by parking next to a Carphone Warehouse to use their Wi-Fi using an unidentifiable and very old mobile handset. 
Moments of insight are scattered along the journey. Prominent race rights advocate Stafford Scott appears briefly. Scott was the co-founder of the <a href="http://tottenhamrights.org.uk/?p=90">Broadwater Farm</a> Defence Campaign set up in the wake of the 1985 riots on the estate. Back then, it was Cynthia Jarrett who died after a police search of her home and PC Keith Blakelock who was shot dead in the subsequent unrest. Grainy footage shown from the 1985 riots looks otherwise identical to the scenes of 2011 and leaves you wondering how far things have really come. Scott gives his opinion that the following generations, like Mark, Kurtis and Marcus, need little reminder of the history they were born into, as negative experiences cement what they already know about the police and life on the Broadwater Farm Estate. 
For many in this country, places like the Broadwater Farm are the ones you avoid, the places that even police fear to go. But for those who live there, it is not just somewhere to tolerate, or survive. “This is my home,” Marcus says as he shows us the corridors where he learnt to ride his bike, “whenever I need to be safe I come here.” These moments of humanity are the most powerful in the film, like seeing Mark’s girlfriend Simone at home with the kids laughing about when they first started dating, or telling us that some days their oldest son Kimali does nothing but silently listen to Mark’s music all day – or later, hearing Mark’s young daughter crying to her mum: “I’m tired, I want to go and sleep with my daddy in heaven.” 
For much of the film though, while the dark footage, harsh words and raging music reinforce the stark realities and the raw anger of day-to-day life for the two main characters, I can’t help but wonder if they potentially reinforce negative stereotypes, too. It’s hard to know whether director George Amonpash has peeled away enough of the misconceptions and misunderstandings to be able to change any minds with his work. 
I ask Amonpash about this, and he admits that he is not sure. But he explains his experience of screening the film around the country, and of one particular occasion where a young white boy brought his father to the cinema to watch it. All “dad” had to say in the end was, “Wow – I had absolutely no idea.” As I am leaving the screening, a young international student who has just watched the film approaches me and says, “Can I ask you something? One thing I don’t get is, if they didn’t want all of this to happen to them, why did they do all the things they did in their lives?” Perhaps the documentary should have dug deeper to answer this. Or perhaps, the point of it is that you walk away asking this very question, because, ultimately, we must all take responsibility for both the question and the answer. 
This film opens with the words of Martin Luther King that “a riot is the language of the unheard.” The Hard Stop ends by not only giving a voice to the unheard, but capturing it in its rawest form. The importance of watching this film will only grow as we realise how much the reality it documents still has to change. 
The Hard Stop is in UK cinemas from today, Friday 15th July 2016. 
<pre>Image from: https://www.intofilm.org/resources/1035 </pre>
&nbsp;

Mark Duggan and the Fatal Hard Stop

The release of Beyoncé’s new song has led to heated debate about whether the world’s greatest pop star is a role model for the black community or just another artist capitalising on black culture 
&nbsp; 
Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you probably have heard about Beyoncé’s new song ‘Formation’ which was released in early February. The song and video are both filled with allusions to “unapologetically black” Southern American culture, and are some of the most publicly pro-black statements that Beyoncé has made. The release of the song and video were followed up with a performance at the Superbowl, where Beyoncé performed the song flanked by dancers dressed as members of the Black Panther Party. Reactions range from unadulterated support and jubilation, to criticism about the <a href="http://www.blackgirldangerous.org/2016/02/dear-beyonce-katrina-is-not-your-story/">appropriation of Katrina</a> and the Black Panthers, the <a href="http://radfag.com/2016/02/10/my-apparently-obligatory-response-to-formation-in-list-form/">erasure of transwomen</a>, and the lyrics which reference the <a href="http://thyblackman.com/2016/02/09/beyonce-on-jackson-five-nostrils-creole-vs-negro-and-beefing-over-beyonces-formation/">history of colourism</a>. 
The question remains, however, whether ‘Formation’ was meant to be a political anthem for the times, or whether it was just a gimmick intended to sell concert tickets. This question was pushed further into the spotlight when comparing <a href="http://www.the-platform.org.uk/2015/12/16/2015s-lyrical-ironies-and-most-inventive-albums/">Kendrick Lamar&#8217;s</a> Grammy performance to Beyoncé’s Superbowl extravaganza. 
While Beyoncé’s politics were being scrutinised after the release of ‘Formation’, Kendrick complicated the debate with his medley of hits, including ‘Alright’, the unofficial <a href="http://www.the-platform.org.uk/2014/12/06/black-youth-as-a-lethal-weapon-the-incoherence-of-the-american-justice-system/">Black Lives Matter</a> anthem. The Grammy performance featured <a href="http://www.the-platform.org.uk/2014/12/06/black-youth-as-a-lethal-weapon-the-incoherence-of-the-american-justice-system/">Kendrick dressed as a prisoner</a> and was a critique of the prison industrial complex, as well as serving to connect current African American struggles back to those of their ancestors on the African continent. Kendrick&#8217;s performance was widely praised, raising the argument by <a href="http://www.the-platform.org.uk/2015/08/24/policing-black-women-capitalisms-violent-assault-on-hip-hop-and-civil-society/">black feminists</a> that it was sexist to praise Kendrick while criticising Beyoncé. 
Critique in regards to Beyoncé’s hair, body and clothes are undeniably sexist, but questioning her politics should not be blankly viewed the same way. Beyoncé is considered to be the biggest pop star on the planet appealing to mainstream audiences – and she has done so by toning down her blackness. Kendrick’s performance, on the other hand, is unsurprising as he markets himself as a man of the streets, who speaks about what&#8217;s happening in the hood. Beyoncé was always going to get more attention for her newly reclaimed blackness, and by extension, a backlash from some quarters. She was also going to be questioned about her sincerity, because this is not how we are used to perceiving her. 
To understand the controversy around ‘Formation’, the lyrics must be analysed. Beyoncé goes to lengths to remind everyone that she is, and has always been, a “Texas Bama”. The references to hot sauce, liking her baby with an afro and taking her man to Red Lobster after having great sex, are all references to a certain type of black culture that we rarely see celebrated by a mainstream artist. It is also Beyoncé’s way of saying that she hasn&#8217;t forgotten where she has come from. But the song also goes at length to promote the material wealth that she has amassed and will continue to gain. 
The song has come at a critical time in America and has started a renewed debate about the Black Panthers. The Black Panther legacy in America has been stained by a string of police killings, many of which led to the <a href="http://www.aljazeera.com/news/2016/02/black-panther-freed-43-years-prison-160220032055810.html">false imprisonment</a> of party members who are still being exonerated to this day. Little reference, however, is made to the organisation&#8217;s Breakfast Club Program, which has been adopted by every state in the union, nor to the influence of the Black Panthers on the Black Lives Matter movement. 
But Beyoncé is no Nina Simone. The fact that the song is being touted as such speaks to the lack of protest songs in mainstream pop cultures during this newly political era. With this in mind, it is important to note that many are favouring nostalgic discussions about the Black Panthers and black radical militant movements of the past, rather than engaging with present-day activists and struggles including the <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/feb/09/flint-michigan-water-crisis-investigation-criminal-charges-rick-snyder">Flint water crisis</a>. 
What is fascinating is the reaction of many black women who are self-proclaimed anti-capitalists. Quite a few excuse the apparent appropriation of Katrina, the Black Panthers and the black struggle, as they feel that she is using her star power to start a conversation. Digging deeper, it is apparent that the unadulterated support Beyoncé receives is influenced by the need of black women to support one another, as we all try to navigate the daily micro-aggressions we receive just by being women of colour in a largely western society. While I find this admirable, I&#8217;m not convinced sisterhood is at the top of Beyoncé’s agenda, considering she makes empathic statements about money and material wealth being of utmost significance to her. The fact that Beyoncé announced her world tour very soon after releasing ‘Formation’ can be viewed as shrewd marketing. Conversely, some proceeds from her tour will go to a <a href="http://www.fuse.tv/2016/02/beyonce-formation-tour-flint-water-crisis%5d">Flint Water Fund</a>, so perhaps this is her way of using her work to help various causes affecting black Americans. 
Equally important, nonetheless, is the fear that if we do not support Beyoncé, then what role models are we left with in mainstream pop culture? There is dearth of women of colour in mainstream society, and it’s refreshing to see a woman who appears to be in control and who, at this moment in time, is loudly proclaiming her blackness. It is difficult to not be enticed when black women are usually invisible from most of society, or worse, when our physical features, hair, style, slang and dance are appropriated by white women and are then deemed acceptable. Perhaps we are just filling the void left by living in a society where we are made to feel invisible and worthless – and that is a political act in itself. That is reason enough to consider ‘Formation’ to be a new civil rights anthem. As Audre Lorde once said, “black women caring about themselves is not self-indulgence, it is self-preservation, and that is an act of political warfare.”
<pre>Image from: http://goo.gl/5qWzqz</pre>
&nbsp;

Is ‘Formation’ the New Civil Rights Anthem?

Today’s Notting Hill Carnival rests upon the legacy of a remarkable persevering campaigning journalist 
&nbsp; 
From Trinidad and Tobago, to the United States, to Britain, Claudia Jones stood firmly at the centre of every struggling society she entered, transforming even dark detention centres into active political arenas and causing colonial establishments to dread her influence. While Claudia’s name now surfaces in discussions about the founders of the Notting Hill Carnival, few have understood her legacy, and access to her speeches and television interviews remains limited. 
A dedicated grassroots community leader active on both sides of the Atlantic, and a black woman no less, Claudia Jones captivated an audience of 14,000 in New York’s Madison Square Garden in the mid-1940s, an era which preceded the modern civil rights movement and followed women’s suffrage. In Britain, she set up one of the earliest black newspapers, the West Indian Gazette, and among her many campaigns, she organised the week-long hunger strike tent for the Free Mandela movement at St Martin in the Fields in the early 1960s. 
What Claudia witnessed clearly paved her path. Her family emigrated from the then British colony of Trinidad following economic unrest and mass upsurges in the city of Port of Spain where unemployed workers’ councils were growing. There was a mounting consciousness particularly amid the Trinidadians through the Garvey Movement which, rightfully, was a cause of concern for European and American colonial powers. A few years after their arrival in Harlem, New York City, when Claudia was just 12 years old, her mother collapsed over a sewing machine in a factory, dying out of sheer exhaustion. As a teenager, she had to abandon further education and contracted tuberculosis due to poor living and working conditions, and this plagued her with ill health for the rest of her life. At the same time, she began to observe the systematic discrimination taking place around her, and was especially affected by the Scottsboro Boys trial of Alabama between 1931 and 1937 in which nine African-Americans were falsely accused of raping two white women. She also closely followed Italy’s invasion of Abyssinia (now Ethiopia and Eritrea) and its closer alignment with Nazi Germany. 
Claudia sought a radical political force to combat the social issues being faced by black communities during the Depression: the least paid, least educated, highest mortality and most imprisoned. She found this in the Communist Party. During this period, the Communist Party in Harlem was carrying out strong work in the social sphere, stepping in to stop evictions by white landlords and leading high profile legal-political cases in relation to the incrimination of black men in the south. As such, Claudia Jones joined the youth league swiftly rising to become the “negro affairs” editor for the Daily Worker newspaper and a regular speaker addressing the issues of <a href="http://www.the-platform.org.uk/2015/08/24/policing-black-women-capitalisms-violent-assault-on-hip-hop-and-civil-society/">working-class women</a>. Poet and activist Elean Thomas comments in a 1989 edition of <a href="http://www.bl.uk/press-releases/2015/may/spare-rib-magazine-goes-online-for-the-first-time">Spare Rib magazine</a>: “She did not seek to compartmentalise human beings or see social activities as merely another method of politicity – but as a natural human interest.” 
The FBI spent more than ten years spying on Claudia Jones. She was arrested on a deportation warrant in 1948, and again, under the McCarran Act in 1950, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_r234kDAJTI">charged with being a communist</a> “alien” (non-US citizen). In a letter she addressed to her friend John, she describes activism within the confines of Ellis Island with a vivacious pride: “There are trade unionists and maritime industries, who smile their firm greetings of approval when, from shops and locals, wires or letters come, telling of actions taken on behalf of American liberty.” Moreover, she petitioned the United Nations with fellow detainees, asserting, “Our freedom of conscience [has been] violated and our right to think outlawed.” 
This Orwellian feeling is reiterated in an extraordinary court speech in 1953 when she is accused, this time under the Smith Act, with the ludicrous charge of advocating the overthrow of the US government. She appeals to judge and jury: 
“The thinking process, as your honour well knows, is a process that defies jailing. When it is all boiled down what shows is not the strength of the policies and practices of our prosecutors – which are akin to <a href="http://www.the-platform.org.uk/2014/08/21/police-brutality-must-be-defended/">police state practices</a> – but their desperate fear of the people. Nothing shows this more, your honour, than our exposure of the biased jury drawn from a system which virtually excludes Negro, Puerto Rican and manual workers. This virtual exclusion exists not because of a lack of qualifications or even financial hardship, but because of deliberate discrimination based on consciously cultivated white supremacist ruling class prejudice which sullies our boasted western culture.” 
Eventually, in 1955, the courts ruled that Claudia needed to be deported under the McCarran Law. Her country of origin would not take her, petrified of the power she would have on the small island. So Britain had no choice but to accept her as a colonial subject. After 33 years in America, ejected by a superpower frightened by this one woman’s courage, she left for Britain penniless and alone. 
&nbsp; 
The West Indian Gazette and the Notting Hill Carnival 
Impoverished as she was, Claudia Jones forged networks from the moment she stepped into Britain. She surrounded herself with creative practitioners and humanitarians, including Paul Robeson, Trevor Carter and Pearl Prescod. She immediately recognised that the community needed organising and a voice of its own. 
The <a href="http://www.irr.org.uk/news/claudia-jones-and-the-west-indian-gazette/">West Indian Gazette</a> and Afro-Asian Caribbean News – its full name – was launched in 1958 in the aftermath of the Notting Hill race riots in which Kelso Cochrane was killed. As well as the newspaper, Claudia set up a committee with Amy Ashwood Garvey (the ex-wife of Marcus Garvey) to defend black victims. 
The black press in Britain had a strong history in campaign journalism, published as letters in the 18th-century and gaining momentum as journals in the 19th-century. The mob violence of 1919 perpetrated against returning black servicemen of the first world war who were denied settlement – as well as Arab, Portuguese, Chinese and other minority groups – was the <a href="http://www.open.ac.uk/researchprojects/makingbritain/content/1919-race-riots">worst race riot in British history</a> and gave the government licence to strengthen its immigration laws. Some black communities escaped targeted areas like Cardiff and Liverpool, while others stayed to launch papers and fight back. 
Rooted in local and international campaign work, the West Indian Gazette lobbied the government on anti-racial legislation, featuring news stories on culture, immigration and responses to the media’s racialised language. Its publication period coincided with the <a href="http://www.the-platform.org.uk/2015/02/12/a-brutal-legacy-of-human-rights-and-human-wrongs/">pan-African movement</a> and the liberation of many African countries, and its message very much echoed the sentiments of the <a href="http://autograph-abp.co.uk/exhibitions/fifth-pan-african-congress">1945 Pan-African Congress</a> in the UK, namely, the eradication of the colour bar and unity against British imperialism. In a December 1959 edition of the paper she writes, “We can only stop the prejudice in people’s minds by education, by persuasion, but we can stop the actions of incitement and discrimination by outlawing them.” 
Claudia Jones went beyond the newspaper – and the <a href="https://dianelangford.wordpress.com/2015/03/05/claudia-jones-letter-to-daily-worker-1963/">unreceptive British Communist</a> Party – to bring the local community together. She set up the <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/london/7577113.stm">first roofed festival</a> in St. Pancras in the winter of 1959, televised by the BBC, in the belief that “unity can defeat rising racial tensions”. With carnival’s strong emancipative traditions, particularly in Trinidad where creative organic celebrations once provided the opportunity for people to dress-up and mock colonial powers, this was an ideal medium. Today, discussions on London’s Notting Hill carnival revolve around its commercial structure and its originality, and <a href="http://noisey.vice.com/en_uk/blog/the-historical-fight-for-notting-hill-carnival-15">for decades it has been under threat</a> from authorities and police clampdowns, and now, gentrification of Westminster, Kensington and Chelsea. Its communal energy, however, continues to reverberate upon Claudia’s previous festival work and <a href="http://www.colvillecom.com/page/talbot-road">anti-racism marches</a> in London. 
The vast impact of Claudia’s work is still being unearthed. Earlier this year, the National Archives of Ghana released a “thank you” letter dated 27th October 1942 which she was sent by Kwame Nkrumah of the <a href="http://wasuproject.org.uk/history-of-wasu/">West African Students’ Union (WASU)</a>, a man who went on to become independent Ghana’s first prime minister and president. 
Claudia Jones passed away in her sleep on Christmas Eve in 1964, not living long enough to see the UK’s first legislation addressing racial discrimination come about – the Race Relations Act of 1965. Claudia helped lay the foundations for the progress to come, as well as the values we must savour and revisit as we face <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/commentisfree/2015/aug/03/cameron-swarm-plague-god-migrants-calais">refugee crises and the prejudiced discourse</a> that has ensued. 
Last week on a hot and sunny Saturday afternoon, <a href="https://www.google.co.uk/url?sa=t&amp;rct=j&amp;q=&amp;esrc=s&amp;source=web&amp;cd=1&amp;cad=rja&amp;uact=8&amp;ved=0CB4QFjAAahUKEwjcu--ew87HAhXQCtsKHTU6BV0&amp;url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ft.com%2Fcms%2Fs%2F0%2Fd09ab086-e375-11e4-9a82-00144feab7de.html&amp;ei=tsThVdyIJ9CV7Aa19JToBQ&amp;usg=AFQjCNFEInsS3xaGlK_F2tt3CSpax1q79g">British Jamaican author Donald Hinds</a> sat in front of an audience at the Brixton Cultural Archives, humbly smiling, and spoke of her legacy. Having worked with her at the West Indian Gazette of 250 Brixton Road, Donald described Claudia as a woman with a big heart who laughed a lot and worked beyond her physical capacity. His wife now tells him he has inherited Claudia’s messy desk policy. In a calm but poignant recital, he read the words of George Lamming at her funeral in Highgate where she now lies buried to the left of Karl Marx. 
“I shall think of her as a person, as a superior person – superior to the quality of our response to living&#8230; Here was a great source of our strength… If we mourn her, it is only to celebrate her example.” 
<a href="http://www.the-platform.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/Claudia-Malcolm.jpg"><img loading="lazy" class="aligncenter wp-image-11695" src="http://www.the-platform.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/Claudia-Malcolm.jpg" alt="Claudia - Malcolm" width="450" height="203" /></a>
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Featured image from: http://daily.redbullmusicacademy.com/2013/04/warrior-charge-the-birth-of-uk-soundsystem-culture-feature</pre>

We Need to Talk About Claudia Jones

The media focus on the bodies of black women diverts attention away from the very real problem of racist social and economic policies in the US 
  
From mad love to bad blood? Taylor Swift’s white saviour complex gets her into trouble with Nikki Minaj, but this ‘feud’ goes beyond just a <a href="http://www.billboard.com/articles/columns/pop-shop/6641794/taylor-swift-nicki-minaj-twitter-argument-timeline">Twitter argument</a>. The co-option of rap and hip-hop by the imperialist culture industry has overshadowed its radical origins and potential, contributing to the media’s constant obsession in hyper-contextualising black women in the entertainment industry. 
The recent grievances made by Nikki about Taylor and the music industry is just one example of this. It is quite easy to parrot the tens of thousands of tweets by both Nikki’s fans and activists that have rightly concluded that there is and always has been racism in the music industry. If Nikki Minaj was not black, she would not be under as much scrutiny nor forced by the media to be an emblem for black hyper-sexuality – as, indeed, her counterparts Miley Cirus and Katy Perry are not. The sexual exploitation of black female subjects like Nikki has also created the means to police them. The political expression that forms the essence of hip-hop has been ignored by mainstream media and shaped by disparaging gendered images of black men as hyper-violent and self-destructive, which, in turn, has reduced the agency of black women to their sexual appeal. 
It is also true that Taylor Swift and her <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QcIy9NiNbmo">luxury brand of faux-feminism</a> hold more weight in exposing the systemic white supremacy of institutions that continuously silence black women and women of colour, rather than elevating women into equality. It is also very easy to make accusations of respectability-politics onto powerful figures such as Beyoncé and her supposed ‘feminist anthem’ in the form of her fourth and fifth studio albums 4 and most recently Beyoncé. However, in a world run by capitalist ideals, this often entails re-articulating these values in the form of visual cues for the purpose of selling music. You could argue that Nikki Minaj has also implicated herself in the consumer identity that profits off her body and has enabled the ‘jezebel’ stereotype to be reinforced in mainstream hip-hop. 
But let’s go back to the beginning. The messages in <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zc32ZXnHxus">hip-hop started to change</a> as corporations started eating at independent record labels. With the passing of the Telecommunications Act in 1996, large media corporations engineered the phasing out of black-owned radio and television stations. Today, only 3.4 per cent of all radio stations and 0.6 per cent of all TV stations are black-owned. Media corporations have therefore played a detrimental role in reshaping hip-hop, with white corporations policing black artists through green-lighting misogynistic, sexist, racist and hyper-violent imagery that has now become the signifier of what hip-hop means today. 
The fact remains that there is a perpetual need to commodify black women’s sexuality and the most accessible images of this lie in the entertainment industry. However, hinging the discourse on black entertainers like Nikki Minaj and Beyoncé becomes a distraction from the wider state of black women. The rapidly changing structure of hip-hop has forced an antagonism towards the ethics of black revolutionaries such as the Black Panthers, who have succumbed to capitalism as a result of the imprisonment, exile and murder of their own, leading to most resistance being neutralised. This really is where capitalism, racism and gender intersect. The racially motivated shooting of Michael Brown that sparked the Ferguson protests resulted in nationwide dissent against the police brutality of African Americans. This exposed the capitalist legislation on private property found in laws such as <a href="http://thinkprogress.org/justice/2014/02/26/3332391/trayvon-martin-years/">‘Stand Your Ground’</a> that sheds light on the institutional racism justifying the violence on black bodies. This has perpetuated the marginalisation, oppression and ultimate dehumanisation of black women, as well as the silencing of their collective agency. The double consciousness of black women is met with an epistemic violence from both dominant and alternative systems of representation. The government polices black women by devaluing their reproduction with racist social and economic policies. 
The brutal murder of 28-year-old activist Sandra Bland by a <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/11568699/Police-brutality-and-racial-tensions-in-the-US-in-90-seconds.html">racist militarised police state</a> led to global petitions and protests for investigations into her death, which was ruled by police as a suicide by hanging in her jail cell. The violence Sandra Bland endured reflects the long history of the US in using the profit system of capitalism – her arrest followed a minor traffic violation – to racially target and exploit black subjects, putting black women in further jeopardy. By watching Bland’s 15-second videos entitled <a href="https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCwlldaZuDFGeZ5QweLtn3jQ/videos">‘Sandy Speaks’</a>, one can tell she was an outspoken advocate for the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement in which she vented her frustrations with the racist structures of the state. Yet, her own story remains erased and she becomes a victim deprived of the spirit and agency she expressed in life. 
The cultural integrity of hip-hop has been compromised and the racialised misogyny of the entertainment industry and media means that black female artists are scrutinised on deeper epistemic levels. Editorial agendas have informed journalism through the fetishisation of black womanhood. In the African-American context in particular, the public and socio-political voices of African-American female discontentment are often overlooked in popular black music and culture. Black women in the entertainment industry are forced to re-inscribe stereotypical performative identities to make sense of their gendered identity and doing this within a racial context proves to be the most challenging. 
Singer, songwriter and notable civil rights activist Harry Belafonte is outspoken in his anti-capitalist sentiment, and in providing the financial aid needed to bail out many jailed civil rights activists (which included Martin Luther King Jr.), he describes “unbridled capitalism” as the ultimate enemy, and has <a href="http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/harry-belafonte-locarno-mitt-romney-359192">publicly criticised high profile celebrities</a> like Jay Z and Beyoncé for turning their backs on social responsibility. The responsibility, argues Belafonte, lies with black celebrities to participate in popular struggle. Janelle Monae and Jidenna recently did just that in Philadelphia by <a href="http://pitchfork.com/news/60782-janelle-monae-and-jidenna-lead-philadelphia-march-against-police-brutality/">leading a rally against police brutality</a>. In public interviews, Monae has in fact expressed her passion for instrumentalising change in communities. Many high profile black celebrities in the entertainment industry, or otherwise, participate in similar ways, such as young actress Amandla Stenberg and her recent evaluations of the appropriation of black culture in her viral educational video, <a href="http://amandla.tumblr.com/post/107484511963/dont-cash-crop-my-cornrows-a-crash-discourse-on">“Don’t Cash Crop My Cornrows”</a>. Even so, as Belafonte explains there is a clear disconnect with current black celebrities, such as Jay Z and Beyoncé, in being vigilant towards the ills of capitalism and the violence it enacts on working class black people, particularly when they are the beneficiaries of capitalism themselves. It is easy to identify with the plight of black bodies, all the while ignoring the roles celebrities play in profiting from the capitalist structure that simultaneously marginalises them for their race. Therefore, in order to advocate for black women, one must vehemently stand against capitalism, state violence, police brutality and the racism that has ultimately poisoned our societies and dehumanised the bodies of black subjects. 
Now is the time to create a true camaraderie between black celebrities and progressive activists in critically assessing and being watchful of both the imperialist, capitalist culture industry they are part of and the communities from which they hail.
<pre>Image from: http://www.billboard.com/articles/news/465045/amas-2011-taylor-swift-nicki-minaj-win-big-on-ladies-night</pre>

Policing Black Women: Capitalism’s Violent Assault on Hip-Hop and Civil Society

The ‘Human Rights, Human Wrongs’ gallery interrogates the processes of cultural production and consumption displaying a vast selection from the Black Star Photo Agency archives 
  
Everyone has the right to representation as a person before the law. Article 6. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights. This article hovers over the ‘Human Rights, Human Wrongs’ gallery in gold shiny letters against a regal purple backdrop in merciless, authoritative glory. 
The selection of over 300 photos curated by Mark Sealy explores the Black Star Photo Agency archives beginning from 1945 up until the early 1990s. It takes viewers through a period of graphic brutality and change in which the old world order was being dismantled and old colonial powers were losing sight of their possessions. Although universal declarations were being introduced, the incompatibility of sovereign domination and human rights was becoming glaringly evident. 
Amid these pivotal changes emerged the iconic photos of the 20th century – but certainly not by accident. The lighting, angles and sharpness of the photos are thoroughly calculated and would have appeared in Life Magazine and other publications under the instruction of an editor, hand-picked to suit the required narrative. You’d be hard-pressed to separate the majority of these from stills of a West End stage due to their theatrical studio-like quality. 
Very much a Eurocentric conversation during this time, the rhetoric of esteemed and valuable photography did not transcend a great deal beyond France, Germany, Britain and the United States. As such, images from agency leaders in corporate assignment photography would have been a one-sided discussion carrying huge political bearing, reflecting the narrow dialogue of power dynamics that was happening globally. Stemming from this background, the gallery invites the viewer to question the historical accounts in the stock photographs produced for mass western consumption during key historical shifts. Mark Sealy explains that he is less concerned with the photographers, as much as the ideas or forces in which they operated. 
“Any enquiry into photojournalistic practice and its impact on humanitarian objectives, has to necessarily interrogate not only the kind of images we are presented with, but where, when and how they are distributed.” 
State violence is a powerful reoccurring theme of the exhibition, underpinned by racial segregation in the case of the USA, with photos of protests, hunger strikes and riots. This includes a photo from 1968 of the sanitation worker’s strike in Memphis, Tennessee, by Cleatis Ray Keisling, which shows a row of policemen crouching with their guns pointed towards a row of visibly unarmed black men, who, in stark contrast, stand tall holding placards which read “I Am A Man”. The words are echoed aptly (and sadly) in the message “Black Lives Matter” which emerged internationally in the past few months as a response to <a href="http://www.the-platform.org.uk/2014/12/06/black-youth-as-a-lethal-weapon-the-incoherence-of-the-american-justice-system/">police aggressions</a> and acquittals in the USA, placing the images firmly in living memory and at the forefront of current struggles. 
Several sequences of Dr Martin Luther King Jr’s life and activism are highlighted in the collection, including a succession of frames by Charles Moore, depicting Dr King’s arrest in Montgomery, Alabama in 1958. There’s also a photo of the Selma to Montgomery rally in 1965 and the first public use of the “black power” fist by students at the Mississippi Meredith March evening rally in 1966. 
The pictures are embedded within the wider context of Pan-African unity taking hold of the African continent, with 17 countries being liberated in 1960 alone, including the Republic of Congo, Somalia and Kenya. However, these huge changes and celebrations are simplified to an “infinite, reproducible” handful of stock images, often depicting the African with hands out, begging, at the European camera – or otherwise, weak, broken and incompetent. This is loudly exemplified in photos by Carlo Bavagnoli and Ray Bellisario, one of which shows an overcrowded row of unclothed, seemingly malnourished, mourning mothers breastfeeding their babies in the Republic of Biafra (now the Federal Republic of Nigeria) in 1967. That being said, in one rare and amusing series by Robert Lebeck, a young man is shown tactfully stealing the sword of the Belgian King Baudouin I during a procession which took place the day before the liberation of the Republic of Congo highlighting colonial transition most vividly. 
Moments of strife in Morocco and of the joy of independence in Tunisia are also on display in this gallery, as well as the fight for justice in Santiago, Chile, 1983, with women demanding to know where their loved ones have been taken (director Patricio Guzmán shows how this search is still ongoing in his extraordinary 2010 documentary film, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ok7f4MLL-Hk">Nostalgia for the Light</a>). The political and military role of women is further explored in photos from Somalia to Vietnam. 
Yet, with all the momentous milestones in this latter 20th century story, come images of the slow, long wait, the observers who stand in the background of pictures witnessing the violence, accustomed and silent. The barren warzones and burnt forests are inhabited by soldiers watching time go by. This seeming irrelevance of war is accentuated by the facade of peace with winners and rejectors of the Nobel Peace Prize overlooking different sections of the gallery. Journalistic stamps and notes at the back of photos of the most heinous crimes are put together in a collage to visually demonstrate the thought processes that led the images into glossy markets. 
As the 50th anniversary of the assassination of <a href="http://www.the-platform.org.uk/2012/02/21/malcolm-x-before-the-symbol-is-whitewashed-from-history/">Malcolm X</a> fast approaches, the gallery also points to the cost of acting for peace. Several leaders of the period covered in this gallery paid the ultimate price in challenging the status quo: X was eliminated at the point in which he campaigned to change the discourse from ‘civil’ to ‘human’ rights; Dr King was murdered when he began to address <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m3H978KlR20">social and economic equality</a>; and beyond the USA, Thomas Sankara was killed mere months after <a href="http://dogwoof.com/films/concerning-violence">he appealed to the west</a> to stop sending aid and to allow Burkina Faso to flourish on its own merit. 
While in some ways our cultural focus has turned to Hollywood and YouTube, cultural production and consumption remains caught up in global power dynamics. The ‘Human Rights, Human Wrongs’ gallery prompts us to examine the given narrative, and understand the interconnectivity of events and the legacies we have inherited. It also forces us to question, over and over, how we have wronged each other in our confined interpretation of human rights. 
The ‘Human Rights, Human Wrongs’ gallery runs until 6 April 2015 at <a href="http://thephotographersgallery.org.uk/human-rights-human-wrongs-2">The Photographers&#8217; Gallery</a>. Entry is free. Please see website for further details.
<pre>Photo Credits: Charles Moore / Birmingham, Alabama, United States of America, May 3 1963 / The Black Star Collection, Ryerson Image Centre.</pre>
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A Brutal Legacy of Human Rights and Human Wrongs

The U.S. justice system displays its inherent racism and disregard for victims of domestic violence in the case of Marissa Alexander 
&nbsp; 
On January 27th, Marissa Alexander is expected to finally leave jail after what <a href="http://justiceformarissa.blogspot.com/">many</a> have <a href="http://www.freemarissanow.org/about-marissa-alexander.html">decried as a wrongful conviction</a> and commitment. On August 1st of 2010, Alexander fired what she has called a warning shot, to protect herself against her abusive husband, nine days after she had given birth to a premature daughter. Two of his children were in the house at the time. Supporters say <a href="http://www.msnbc.com/msnbc/marissa-alexander-will-get-new-trial">this shot saved her life</a> after a violent struggle escalated to verbal threats that he was going to kill her, and she could not get out of the locked garage. Alexander drew a gun out of her car that she was licensed to carry and use. 
Domestic violence and gun laws have been trending topics on social media in the U.S. over the course of the past year, particularly with regard to questions of victim-blaming, as in the case of <a href="http://thinkprogress.org/health/2014/09/09/3564896/janay-rice-cycle-abuse/">Janay Palmer and Ray Rice</a>, and with regard to Florida’s controversial <a href="http://www.msnbc.com/msnbc/marissa-alexander-accepts-plea-deal">Stand Your Ground</a> law, which has been linked to the violent shooting deaths of Trayvon Martin in 2012, and Jordan Davis in 2013. Stand Your Ground is meant to provide immunity to those who resort to deadly force in self-defence. Historically, this had to do with protecting oneself and one’s home and property from intruders, deriving from something called <a href="http://www.ncsl.org/research/civil-and-criminal-justice/self-defense-and-stand-your-ground.aspx">the castle doctrine</a>. Stand Your Ground has been expanded in certain states to include self-defence when one feels one’s life is threatened, and was thus cited in the non-indictment of George Zimmerman in the violent shooting death of Trayvon Martin. Florida woman Marissa Alexander’s protracted legal struggle – which combines both of these controversial topics – reveals an unfortunate perpetuation of victim-blaming and bias against women and people of colour in the U.S. justice system, effectively silencing and invisibilising victims of domestic violence; all the more readily if she is a black woman. 
<a href="http://www.freemarissanow.org/timeline.html">First convicted in 2011</a>, Alexander has now spent nearly three years behind bars. Initially sentenced to 20 years, she was <a href="http://www.dailykos.com/story/2014/03/02/1281483/-DA-Angela-Corey-Now-Seeks-60-Years-Against-Marissa-Alexander-In-2nd-Trail">told to expect 60 years</a> if found guilty again at a retrial scheduled for December 1st at the hands of notoriously harsh State Prosecutor Angela Corey. The conditions of Alexander’s pending release constitute quite the pyrrhic victory in a black woman’s battle for life and legitimacy: she is now an averred criminal, having accepted a plea bargain on November 24th, pleading guilty to three charges of aggravated assault. By the time of her release, Alexander will have completed the plea deal’s concomitant three-year prison sentence, and will be required to spend two more years <a href="http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2015/01/house-arrest-surveillance-state-prisons">under house arrest</a>. These are the facts of the outcome from the case of a woman who fired a warning shot because she felt that her life was in danger, in a state where <a href="http://thinkprogress.org/justice/2014/02/26/3332391/trayvon-martin-years/">others have found protection</a> under Stand Your Ground law for killing innocent youth because they felt that their life was in danger. Alexander was compelled to accept criminal charges in order to once again save her life – this time, from being spent in prison. Her status as a credible and legitimate citizen-subject, already systematically psychologically undermined in the context of an abusive intimate relationship, has met with further, civic degradation at the hands of the justice system. One cannot help but wonder here whether this is a case of Alexander’s ventriloquising for the justice system what she has always been in its eyes, as a black woman: <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/05/09/marissa-alexander-prosecutor_n_1504428.html">unruly, criminal, not to be trusted</a>? 
In <a href="http://vimeo.com/113119921">a talk last month</a>, Professor Angela Davis addressed the importance of “attending to the circuits that lead from the intimate to the institutional, from the public to the private, and from the personal to the political.” The travesty of justice in Marissa Alexander’s case – a victim of domestic violence who has been apprehended and incarcerated for defending herself – points to a not-so-subtle collusion between intimate and state violence. These are, if you will, different levels of “the domestic” – an imagined space of protection and nurturing of citizen-life for the continued growth of the family and, by extension, the nation. In resonance with the logic of awareness-raising efforts of <a href="http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/01/12/whats-wrong-with-all-lives-matter/">#blacklivesmatter campaigns</a>, Alexander’s case makes evident that not all lives are in fact counted as equal, credible or legitimate. It is also, sadly, <a href="http://www.thenation.com/article/193809/its-time-bring-domestic-violence-survivors-barbara-sheehan-home-prison">not at all new</a>. 
Alexander was initially refused immunity under Stand Your Ground. Last year, the law underwent an amendment <a href="http://abcnews.go.com/US/florida-extends-stand-ground-include-warning-shots/story?id=24244906">said to be inspired by her case</a>, and yet she was again denied immunity. The controversial amendment to include warning shots, mediated by smug and patronising older white men in power, publicly pitted the mothers of Trayvon Martin and Jordan Davis <a href="http://www.cbsnews.com/news/mothers-of-trayvon-martin-and-jordan-davis-team-up-to-stand-up-to-stand-your-ground-law/">against Marissa Alexander</a>. Riding off of false sympathy for Alexander, this turn of events only served to publicly fraction members of a community who might otherwise be a source of solidarity and support for one another. The degradation of the collective support systems of citizens by agents of the state mirrors a methodical isolation of the victimised counterpart in intimate partner violence, and indicates a palpable continuity between private and public violence, as suggested by Professor Davis. 
Rhetoric of violence and invalidation: abuse, dismissal 
The ways in which Alexander’s domestic violence case has been spoken and written about enacts a routine – and commonplace – dismissal and diminishment of the deeply harmful and dangerous nature of domestic violence: “domestic dispute” is often used by the media as a phrase to describe the events of the day that she fired the shot in self-defence. The euphemistic use of “dispute” is wholly inappropriate and inaccurate in any discussion of domestic violence, and its codified use only serves to further exculpate a guilty system from complicity in ignoring and passing over such deeply damaging and fatal cycles of violence. Additionally, a critical piece in the judge’s conviction of Alexander was a claim that she was acting out of “anger” rather than “fear.” Just as with the Janay Palmer and Ray Rice incident, the media and public has been eager to blame the victim, citing both women as “violent”, calling the couple – in both instances – a “violent couple,” and invalidating Alexander and Palmer’s victimhood by pointing out aggressive acts that the women committed in self-defence. 
At the end of the day, in taking her life into her own hands, out of those of her abusive ex-husband, Marissa Alexander has given over more than five years of her life to state power. This begs the following question: where does a battered woman’s agency lie, when she has stood up against her abuser? We are immediately prompted to consider what threat, exactly, the black woman fighting for her life and dignity may signify? Or, more specifically, as Professor Davis put it at the end of her talk, “what is so threatening about a black woman in the southern United States who attempts to defend herself from what is called domestic violence?”
<pre>Image from: http://www.bet.com/news/national/2014/06/10/marissa-alexander-back-in-court-new-trial-postponed-to-december.html</pre>

Domestic Injustice: What Marissa Alexander’s Case Means for Survivors of Violence

The incoherence that pervades the American justice system repeatedly sanctions losses of black lives, activating indignation and pain with a long history 
&nbsp; 
Black Youth as a Weapon 
It breaks my heart to have to write this follow-up piece in light of the circumstances of the recent grand jury decision not to indict Darren Wilson in the August 9th murder of Michael Brown. It appears that the dictum “Police Brutality Must be Defended”, the title of <a href="http://www.the-platform.org.uk/2014/08/21/police-brutality-must-be-defended/">my August piece</a>, holds true. This title refers to Michel Foucault’s ironically titled 1975 lecture series “Society Must be Defended,” and here, it is police brutality that comes to stand for “society” – as respectability and culture – which must, apparently, at all costs be defended. At least, this is what “justice” as it is presently being served in the US would have us know. The clichéd performance of a refusal to hold police accountable for the <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/11/26/police-brutality-victims_n_6225776.html">killings of black youth</a> in particular, reiterates a monstrous and seemingly implausible knowledge of the phrase “police brutality must be defended”. The announcement earlier this week of no indictment by a Staten Island grand jury in the <a href="http://nypost.com/2014/12/03/cop-cleared-in-eric-garner-chokehold-death/">chokehold-death of Eric Garner</a> is yet another case in point. 
Following this “no justice” type of knowing, police are not held accountable for these murders according to at least two narratives: First, police officers are scared for their lives in the face of black bodies, perceived as lethal weapons in and of themselves, whether the individuals are armed or unarmed; therefore, their killing of black people is justified by their fear. This fear is a racist distortion and, as others have noted, is ultimately a <a href="http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/10/12/in-ferguson-and-beyond-punishing-humanity/">white supremacist perception</a> of a threatened order and power structure. An alternative narrative exculpating police of the loss of black lives is that the killing was unintended – an accident, and therefore not punishable as murder. An accident of what, exactly? Of fatally pulling a trigger upon perceiving danger where there was merely a <a href="http://www.dailykos.com/story/2014/12/02/1348833/-Tamir-Rice-The-story-behind-the-execution-character-assassination-coverup-of-a-senseless-murder">12-year-old playing</a> with a BB-gun? Or where a <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/10/06/joseph-weekley-manslaughter-charge-dismissed_n_5940534.html">seven-year-old lay</a> sleeping? Or where a <a href="http://reason.com/blog/2008/08/05/lima-ohio-swat-officer-acquitt">young mother and child</a> were present inside their home? 
Matter and the “Evidence” of Historical Affect 
Listening to the press conference given by Prosecutor Bob McCulloch, after the decision by the grand jury not to indict Darren Wilson for the murder of Michael Brown was released on Monday night, I was struck by McCulloch’s insistence on the justice system’s reliance on concrete evidence. In his preamble, McCulloch referred repeatedly to an alleged mutability of witness statements – where certain facts were inconsistently reported, or changed from story to story. This, he implied, effectively invalidated the prosecutor’s case. Yet, such mutability could be drawn out in any number of questioning techniques in secret proceedings. Also, if indeed the witness accounts were mutable, one might consider that the air in this country is so thick with current and past stories of racist murders that it is haunted, especially in the south – it is thus entirely possible that these stories are clamouring for attention in the collective consciousness and certain facts can become fungible under pressure. In reading subsequent analyses of Wilson’s defence, I was surprised to understand that <a href="http://www.newyorker.com/news/amy-davidson/demon-ferguson-darren-wilson-fear-black-man">his defence rested on fear</a>. A feeling. Now is this concrete evidence, or is it a hard fact? A racist feeling with deep historical roots is a hard fact. It is a harder fact when it results in murder. A racist feeling is an especially hard fact when it results in murder that goes unnamed and unpunished. 
In the face of this grand jury decision, “#blacklivesmatter” has become a ubiquitous meme and chant in protest gatherings and marches. This enunciation is both affirming and painful – spoken over and over because the system says otherwise. “Black lives matter” is a speech act that is expressed by the amassment of bodies in the streets in protest, mattering forth this concrete fact of embodied life as evidence. A more sinister side of concrete matter and incontrovertible evidence of black lives mattering has been the <a href="http://fox8.com/2014/11/28/ferguson-protesters-stage-mass-die-in-force-st-louis-galleria-mall-to-close/">staged die-ins</a>. 
Love and the Language of Fighting Back 
“If I love you, I have to make you conscious of the things you do not see.” This James Baldwin quote is highlighted on a protest sign photographed in Washington DC last Tuesday, with “love” underlined three times in red. 
<a href="http://www.the-platform.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/baldwinsign.jpg"><img loading="lazy" class="aligncenter wp-image-11154" src="http://www.the-platform.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/baldwinsign.jpg" alt="baldwinsign" width="380" height="343" /></a> 
Since last Monday, a resurgence of protests and marches have been held across the country and around the world in solidarity with the community in Ferguson, and also to target the larger problem of racist police brutality and killings in the U.S., with protested fatalities quoted to be occurring at a rate of every 28 hours. Other signs, carried by young children and adults alike, read “It is Right to Rebel,” “Darren Wilson Murdered Mike Brown,” “No Justice No Peace,” and “Black Power.” Some quote Martin Luther King Jr.’s statement that “A Riot is the Language of the Unheard.” Much has been made, again (as in August), of so-called looting and rioting in the community. These actions of protest are born of a desire for self-validation and the overhaul of a structurally racist justice system, and it behoves us to examine the racist slur and write-off that the words “looting” and “rioting” carry with them. 
“It’s a kind of incoherency that you are constantly negotiating,” says Claudia Rankine, author of Citizen: An American Lyric, regarding the everyday racial aggression that the book documents. Rankine’s book of poetry, published on October 6th, has received <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/29/books/claudia-rankine-on-citizen-and-racial-politics.html">praise and attention</a> in its timely emergence, cataloguing and analysing daily moments of racism in its leading sections, and memorialising victims of racist violence in its final section, including one, “In Memory of Trayvon Martin&#8221;, which begins: 
My brothers are notorious. They have not been to prison. They have been imprisoned. The prison is not a place you enter. It is no place. My brothers are notorious. They do regular things, like wait. On my birthday they say my name. They will never forget that we are named. What is that memory? 
The days of our childhood together were steep steps into a collapsing mind. It looked like we rescued ourselves, were rescued. Then there are these days, each day of our adult lives. They will never forget our way through, these brothers, each brother, my brother, dear brother, my dearest brothers, dear heart&#8212; 
Your hearts are broken. This is not a secret though there are secrets. And as yet I do not understand how my own sorrow has turned into my brothers’ hearts. The hearts of my brothers are broken. If I knew another way to be, I would call up a brother, I would hear myself saying, my brother, dear brother, my dearest brothers, dear heart&#8212; 
On the tip of a tongue one note following another is another path, another dawn where the pink sky is the bloodshot of struck, of sleepless, of sorry, of senseless, shush. […] 
The power of the broken heart lives in the space of the break that is dense with energy, of a desire to heal the irreconcilable parts. The knowledge of this pain is the beginning of the difference between “no justice” and “know justice”. Protest and social action happening around the country and the world right now come from this energy, <a href="http://thenormalschool.com/index.php/between-452-by-ashon-crawley/">venturing into the break</a> and coming together as its expression. It is this love that may sometimes erupt in violent expression. 
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<pre>Related Images: http://www.theatlantic.com/infocus/2014/11/violent-protests-in-ferguson-missouri/100860/
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