By Bob Parsons, De
When I read Carl Dix’s thoughts on being in court with his reflections on the Jim Crow oppression of Black people in the 1950s/60s – how the Stop “Stop and Frisk” campaign stands on the shoulders of the legacy of the 1960s Freedom Fighters, how the prosecutors are the modern day version of those who put 1960s freedom fighters in jail and worse – it made me recall my own personal history. I did not experience Jim Crow as Carl had – I had been totally ignorant of it.
I grew up in a white segregated area of the country. I had the occasion at 12 years old in 1958 to travel through the Deep South with my father and 11-year-old brother. We stopped at a gas station in Mississippi or Alabama. My brother and I went to the side of the building to use the rest room. We saw two – one labeled “white” and one “colored.” We had never seen this and were totally confused. We asked my father what it meant. He said only, “Use the ‘white’ one, boys.” We used the rest room and then being curious, opened the door to the “colored” one. The entire rest room – every square inch of surface, floor, walls and ceiling – was smeared with feces. We ran away, more terrified than after viewing any horror movie. And, more horrified because we had no idea what it meant, why anyone would do that. And, after the way our father had answered us, we were scared to ask him.
Fast forward to 1968, and a 21 year old who was being slowly awakened by the war in Vietnam and the beginning of the civil rights movement, though not aware of much of it and having never known a Black person. When Martin Luther King was assassinated, I watched TV news that showed scenes of Black people rebelling and 100 cities burning. I thought to myself, “Black people are very intensely, deeply angry about something…. and I don’t know what it is. I think I’d better find out.”
A 45-year quest ensued, begun because the oppressed rose up and slapped me awake. I learned there were white people who took up the battle to end Jim Crow segregation and even gave their lives. Now we have the new Jim Crow, mass incarceration of 2.4 million people, a huge percent Black and Latino, with the NYPD’s “Stop and Frisk” policy a pipeline to that mass incarceration. As Carl Dix has said, this amounts to a slow genocide that can turn into a fast genocide. Too many people, especially white people, are not aware of either aspect of this. Carl Dix and Cornell West initiated the Stop Mass Incarceration Network and then the Stop “Stop and Frisk” campaign as a way to raise that consciousness and act to stop them.
When Carl, Jamel and others went to Zucotti Park last October to tell people of the first action planned for a Harlem precinct station, a large percentage of the young white people who were rebelling as part of Occupy Wall Street had never heard of “Stop and Frisk” and were unaware of 2.4 million in prison and how that impacted the lives of millions of other Black and Latino people. When it was explained to them, many were shocked and some took it up enthusiastically, including a number who were arrested in Harlem, Brooklyn and the Queens action for which we are on trial.
Every time I heard the prosecutor say this trial is not about Stop and Frisk but about the defendants having “broken the law, “ I kept thinking how so many, especially white people, were ignorant of how “the laws” supported the entire Jim Crow segregation, how EVERY ASPECT OF THAT SEGREGATION WAS LEGAL. They simply wrote laws and if you fought Jim Crow, you were the one “breaking the law.” I also thought of another historical example. Every aspect of the holocaust was legal, including the “final solution.” The Nazis simply passed laws to make it so. And too damned many Germans went along with it.
This new generation of Freedom Fighters is determined to build a mass movement that will wake up millions of all nationalities to fight these intensely egregious expressions of the oppression of Black and Latino people, to STOP Mass Incarceration and STOP “Stop and Frisk.“
Act to support the STOP “Stop and Frisk” Freedom Fighters on trial and declare to the world, “I’m a Freedom Fighter too!”
When I read Carl Dix’s thoughts on being in court with his reflections on the Jim Crow oppression of Black people in the 1950s/60s – how the Stop “Stop and Frisk” campaign stands on the shoulders of the legacy of the 1960s Freedom Fighters, how the prosecutors are the modern day version of those who put 1960s freedom fighters in jail and worse – it made me recall my own personal history. I did not experience Jim Crow as Carl had – I had been totally ignorant of it.
I grew up in a white segregated area of the country. I had the occasion at 12 years old in 1958 to travel through the Deep South with my father and 11-year-old brother. We stopped at a gas station in Mississippi or Alabama. My brother and I went to the side of the building to use the rest room. We saw two – one labeled “white” and one “colored.” We had never seen this and were totally confused. We asked my father what it meant. He said only, “Use the ‘white’ one, boys.” We used the rest room and then being curious, opened the door to the “colored” one. The entire rest room – every square inch of surface, floor, walls and ceiling – was smeared with feces. We ran away, more terrified than after viewing any horror movie. And, more horrified because we had no idea what it meant, why anyone would do that. And, after the way our father had answered us, we were scared to ask him.
Fast forward to 1968, and a 21 year old who was being slowly awakened by the war in Vietnam and the beginning of the civil rights movement, though not aware of much of it and having never known a Black person. When Martin Luther King was assassinated, I watched TV news that showed scenes of Black people rebelling and 100 cities burning. I thought to myself, “Black people are very intensely, deeply angry about something…. and I don’t know what it is. I think I’d better find out.”
A 45-year quest ensued, begun because the oppressed rose up and slapped me awake. I learned there were white people who took up the battle to end Jim Crow segregation and even gave their lives. Now we have the new Jim Crow, mass incarceration of 2.4 million people, a huge percent Black and Latino, with the NYPD’s “Stop and Frisk” policy a pipeline to that mass incarceration. As Carl Dix has said, this amounts to a slow genocide that can turn into a fast genocide. Too many people, especially white people, are not aware of either aspect of this. Carl Dix and Cornell West initiated the Stop Mass Incarceration Network and then the Stop “Stop and Frisk” campaign as a way to raise that consciousness and act to stop them.
When Carl, Jamel and others went to Zucotti Park last October to tell people of the first action planned for a Harlem precinct station, a large percentage of the young white people who were rebelling as part of Occupy Wall Street had never heard of “Stop and Frisk” and were unaware of 2.4 million in prison and how that impacted the lives of millions of other Black and Latino people. When it was explained to them, many were shocked and some took it up enthusiastically, including a number who were arrested in Harlem, Brooklyn and the Queens action for which we are on trial.
Every time I heard the prosecutor say this trial is not about Stop and Frisk but about the defendants having “broken the law, “ I kept thinking how so many, especially white people, were ignorant of how “the laws” supported the entire Jim Crow segregation, how EVERY ASPECT OF THAT SEGREGATION WAS LEGAL. They simply wrote laws and if you fought Jim Crow, you were the one “breaking the law.” I also thought of another historical example. Every aspect of the holocaust was legal, including the “final solution.” The Nazis simply passed laws to make it so. And too damned many Germans went along with it.
This new generation of Freedom Fighters is determined to build a mass movement that will wake up millions of all nationalities to fight these intensely egregious expressions of the oppression of Black and Latino people, to STOP Mass Incarceration and STOP “Stop and Frisk.“
Act to support the STOP “Stop and Frisk” Freedom Fighters on trial and declare to the world, “I’m a Freedom Fighter too!”
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