“Militarized Police” by Shotboxer Portland is licensed under CC BY 2.0
The world is shocked by the image of an 11-story residential building in Gaza collapsing because of a bomb dropped by the Israeli Defense Force, one of the most advanced armies in the world thanks to U.S. support. But in the United States, Andrew Yang, former presidential candidate and now candidate for mayor of New York City, proudly proclaims he stands with the “heroic people of Israel” who are under attack from the vicious, occupied Palestinians, who have no army, no rights and no state.
But as politically and morally contradictory as Yang’s sentiments might appear for many, the alternative world of Western liberalism has a different standard. In that world, liberals claim that all are equal with inalienable rights. But in practice, some lives are more equal and more valuable than others.
In the liberal world, Trump is condemned for attempting to reject the results of the election and indicating he might not leave office at the end of his term. But as soon as Biden occupied the White House, one of his first foreign policy decisions was to give the U.S.-imposed Haitian president, Jovenel Moïse, a green light to ignore the demands of the Haitian people and the end of his term in February. He remains in office.
In the liberal world, the United States that has backed every vicious right-wing dictator in the world since the Second World War, orchestrates coups, murders foreign leaders, attacks nations fighting for independence in places like Vietnam, trains torturers, brandishes nuclear bombs, has the longest-held political prisoners on the planet, is number one in global arms sales, imprisons more people than any other nation in the world, has supported apartheid South Africa and is supporting apartheid Israel—while championing human rights!
In the liberal world, the United States can openly train, fund, and back opposition parties and even determine who the leader of a nation should be, but react with moral outrage when supposedly Russian-connected entities buy $100,000 worth of Facebook ads commenting on “internal” political subjects related to the 2016 election.
In the liberal world, Democrats build on racist anti-China sentiments and the identification of China as a national threat, and then pretend they had nothing to do with the wave of anti-Asian racism and violence.
In the liberal world, liberals are morally superior and defend Black life as long as those lives are not in Haiti, Libya, Colombia, Venezuela, Brazil, all of Africa, and in the jails and prisons of the United States.
In the liberal world, you can—with a straight face—condemn the retaliatory rockets from Gaza, the burning of a police station in Minneapolis, attacks on property owned by corporations in oppressed and exploited communities, attacks on school children fighting back against police in Baltimore, and attacks on North Koreans arming themselves against a crazed, violent state that has already demonstrated—as it did with Libya—what it would do to a state that disarmed in the face of U.S. and European aggression.
And in the liberal world, Netanyahu is a democrat, the Palestinians are aggressors and Black workers did not die unnecessarily because the United States dismantled its already underdeveloped public health system.
What all of this is teaching the colonized world, together with the death and violence in Colombia, Haiti, Palestine and the rest of the colonized world, is that even though we know the Pan-European project is moribund, the colonial-capitalist West is prepared to sacrifice everything and everyone in order to maintain its global dominance, even if it means destroying the planet and everyone on it.
That is why Biden labels himself an “Atlanticist”—shorthand for a white supremacist. His task is to convince the European allies it is far better to work together than to allow themselves to be divided against the “barbarians” inside and at the doors of Europe and the United States.
The managers of the colonial-capitalist world understand the terms of struggle, and so should we. It must be clear to us that for the survival of collective humanity and the planet, we cannot allow uncontested power to remain in the hands of the global 1 percent. The painful truth for some is if global humanity is to live, the Pan-European white supremacist colonial-capitalist project must die.
This article was originally published in Black Agenda Report.
Ajamu Baraka is the national organizer of the Black Alliance for Peace and was the 2016 candidate for vice president on the Green Party ticket. Baraka serves on the Executive Committee of the U.S. Peace Council and leadership body of the United National Antiwar Coalition (UNAC). He is an editor and contributing columnist for the Black Agenda Report and contributing columnist for Counterpunch. He was awarded the U.S. Peace Memorial 2019 Peace Prize and the Serena Shirm award for uncompromised integrity in journalism.
Israeli military personnel push a Jewish activist from the United States amid a Palestinian-led protest on June 10 against the seizure of the Masafer Yatta region in the West Bank / credit: Emily Glick
MASAFER YATTA, OCCUPIED WEST BANK—On Tuesday, the Israeli military started training in Masafer Yatta, a rural, arid enclave south of the occupied West Bank city of Hebron. This comes after more than two decades of Palestinians using legal avenues to try to stop the seizure of their land.
The military training has involved the army sticking shooting targets onto tractors, windows and barrels of hay.
My voice shakes in this video. Tons of Israeli soldiers just started "training" in Masafer Yatta. They're driving war tanks near a school, as children watch, terrified, they're placing targets on cars and windows, they're doing this to evict us in the most brutal way possible. pic.twitter.com/kWV7JWEraB
Expected to last a whole month, this is the first such military training exercise in the Palestinian community in 20 years, and comes as Masafer Yatta is experiencing the largest mass expulsion of Palestinians since 1967.
Today the military launched its training in Masafer Yatta, which is planned to last a whole month, by positioning targets, pictured here, on the vehicles and property of Palestinians from the community of al-Majaz.
Demonstrations—regularly met with violence from soldiers and Israeli settlers—have occurred almost weekly since Israel’s Supreme Court rejected a petition in May against the expulsion of more than 1,000 Palestinians.
For example, on June 10, the Israeli army attacked a Palestinian-led protest. Soldiers beat protesters, fired tear gas that burned demonstrators, threw stun grenades and detained Israeli solidarity activists. More than 200 Palestinians, Israelis, and Jews from both the United States and the United Kingdom protested as part of the “Save Masafer Yatta” campaign.
“Our protests show the racism in how the Israeli army treats us,” said Basil Adra, an activist from the village of Tuwani in Masafer Yatta. “Soldiers who claim that they are not allowed to stop settlers from committing violence against us are then very aggressive towards protesters.”
Israeli military personnel push Palestinians and solidarity activists protesting on June 10 the seizure of the rural West Bank enclave of Masafer Yatta / credit: Emily Glick
The Culmination of a Decades-Long Legal Battle
In the 1980s, the Israeli army declared all 19 villages in Masafer Yatta as “Firing Zone 918,” a closed military training site. By 1999, the Israeli military rounded up more than 700 residents into trucks and expelled them off land they had cultivated for generations.
In response to the forcible transfer, the Association for Civil Rights in Israel (ACRI) in the year 2000 filed petitions with the Israeli Supreme Court on behalf of residents. The court then granted an interim injunction, permitting residents to temporarily return to their homes.
A 2012 state attorney decision allowed four villages—Tuba, Sirat ‘Awad Ibrahim, Sarura and Mufaqara—to remain based upon the Israeli Defense Ministry’s position that the land wasn’t needed for military training. Despite the decision, settler violence and land theft have plagued these villages.
From there, the high court continued hearings on various petitions for years. But last month, the court dismissed residents’ petitions. In its ruling, the court determined the Palestinian inhabitants—who live nomadically and depend on shepherding for their livelihoods—were not permanent residents when the military declared the area a firing zone.
The recent court opinion has given the army the green light to demolish eight villages and displace the Masafer Yatta residents once again.
The residents, along with ACRI, petitioned the Supreme Court on Sunday for an additional hearing and interim order to stop military training in Masafer Yatta.
“It is to be hoped that the high court will accept the request for additional hearing and reverse the ruling that war crimes can be committed under the court’s purview,” ACRI attorneys Dan Yakir and Roni Pelli said.
Israeli military personnel push solidarity activists on June 10 amid the Palestinian-led protest in the West Bank enclave of Masafer Yatta / credit: Emily Glick
From Quiet Grazing Lands to an ‘Army Base’
Since the court ruling, residents say Masafer Yatta feels like it has transformed into the equivalent of a military base. Temporary army checkpoints have been established at entrances of the area’s eight villages deemed the firing zone. Soldiers with assault rifles strapped to their chests patrol the area daily—delivering demolition orders, as well as carrying out arrests and nightly raids. Military jeeps packed with soldiers roam the rocky terrain.
The Israeli military has already started carrying out demolitions since the court ruling.
BREAKING Imminent threat to the entire community of Khalet a-Thab’a in Masafer Yatta. From Sunday June 19, all but three of the village’s structures are at risk of being destroyed.
In May, 19 structures such as houses, tents, animal pens and water tanks were demolished. That left 45 people homeless in the villages of Al-Fakheit and Al-Mirkez. This month, the army bulldozed tents belonging to 21 residents of these villages, which they had set up after their homes were destroyed. On Thursday, all but three buildings in the village of Khalet a-Thab’a received demolition orders that can be enacted beginning Sunday.
Even areas of Masafer Yatta not part of the firing zone are at risk of being razed. The Israeli Civil Administration, which governs activities in the West Bank, issued on Thursday a demolition order for Palestinian activist group Youth of Sumud’s guest house and community center.
Just now the Israeli civil administration accompanied with army raided Tuwani village delivered a final demolition order for Youth Of sumud center in the village in Masafer Yatta /South Hebron Hills . #SaveMasaferYattapic.twitter.com/cJsLEsr0YZ
“This center, which we worked for years to complete, is a big step for the people of Masafer Yatta to organize and protect our lands. We use this place to host internationals, hold meetings and organize community gatherings,” Sami Huraini of Youth of Sumud told Toward Freedom. “This demolition order isn’t just about the Youth of Sumud—it is about crushing organizing efforts in solidarity with the vulnerable communities in the 918 firing zone.”
The center is located in Tuwani—the only village in Masafer Yatta with a zoning plan—meaning the law protects it from demolition. Sameeha Huraini, Sami’s sister who also is involved with Youth of Sumud, explained the Civil Administration gave the demolition order on the grounds the center is located outside of the zoning plan and on an archeological site—both claims are false, she said. The Israeli military and Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories, which oversees the Civil Administration, did not respond to requests for comment by the time of publication.
A stun grenade burned the pants and leg of an activist during a June 10 Palestinian-led protest against the seizure of the rural enclave of Masafer Yatta in the West Bank / credit: Emily Glick
‘Our Rights Have Become Dreams’
Army-enforced eviction isn’t Masafer Yatta’s only struggle. Several illegal, Jewish-only settlements encircle the region.
“Israeli illegal outposts inside Masafer Yatta are connected to resources and are not under imminent eviction,” said Ali Awad, a Palestinian activist from the village of Tuba. “Settlers in these outposts commit violence against neighboring Palestinians and work in tandem with the Israeli military to steal our resources and expel us from our homes.”
While the Palestinian villages are not connected to the electrical grid and water system, the illegal settlements are. Without these hookups, Palestinians are forced to survive on NGO-donated solar panels and expensive water tanks, which settlers often destroy and soldiers confiscate.
Israeli military personnel mingle on June 10 with settlers from the colony of Mitzpeh Yair / credit: Emily Glick
Awdah Hathaleen, a Palestinian activist from the village of Umm al-Khair in Masafer Yatta, lamented what will happen to his community if the army is successful in dismantling the eight villages.
“After that, what will be [the army’s] next mission? The other villages [in Masafer Yatta], and, unfortunately, my village will be one of them. Because if they succeed in this, they will just keep going,” Hathaleen told Toward Freedom. “We are humans. Humans who deserve basic rights. But our rights have become dreams. And now we have to work to make those dreams become reality.”
Jessica Buxbaum is a Jerusalem-based freelance journalist reporting on Palestine and the Israeli occupation. You can follow her on Twitter at @jess_buxbaum.
Frantz Fanon’s 60th death anniversary is an occasion to explore the impact of the Martiniquais writer and psychiatrist, who has influenced many a revolutionary with his study of the psychology of the oppressed.
Editor’s Note: The following is the writer’s analysis.
“The master’s room was wide open. The master’s room was brilliantly lit, and the master was there, very calm… and our people stopped dead… it was the master… I went in. “It’s you,” he said, very calm. It was I, even I, and I told him so, the good slave, the faithful slave, the slave of slaves, and suddenly his eyes were like two cockroaches, frightened in the rainy season… I struck, and the blood spurted; that is the only baptism that I remember today.” —Aimé Césaire
Today marks the 60th anniversary of the passing of one of the greatest thinkers to have emerged from the ranks of the oppressed, Frantz Fanon (1925-1961).
Fanon’s contributions are timeless. As long as white supremacy and neocolonialism remain in the driver’s seat of human relations, Fanon’s thought will continue to arm the colonized in the Battle of Ideas.
The Radicalization of Fanon
Born and raised in what is still France’s Caribbean island colony of Martinique, Fanon was exposed to and shaped by the everyday class and race relations that characterized the island in the early 20th century. Forced to join a segregated column of Black troops, he fought in World War II. Upon continuing his studies in post-war France, he came face to face with the racism that dominates the European world. In his first book, Black Skin, White Masks (1952), Fanon reflects on coming of age in a world, where, “For the black man there is only one destiny. And it is white.” At the time of publication, Fanon had just turned 27.
In 1953, the Martiniquais psychiatrist was assigned to Algeria, where he treated patients who were severely traumatized by the violence French colonialism had spun into motion. He met Dr. Pierre Chaulet, a French doctor who secretly treated members of the guerrilla resistance, Front de Libération Nationale (FLN), who had survived torture and captivity. “Viscerally close to his patients whom he regarded as primarily victims of the system he was fighting,” Fanon immediately became a cadre of the Algerian Revolution.1
By 1956, Fanon’s consciousness no longer allowed him to oversee operations at Blida Hospital in Algeria. In an influential resignation letter that moved many on the left, he wrote:
“There comes a time when silence becomes dishonesty. The ruling intentions of personal existence are not in accord with the permanent assaults on the most commonplace values. For many months my conscience has been the seat of unpardonable debates. And the conclusion is the determination not to despair of man, in other words, of myself. The decision I have reached is that I cannot continue to bear a responsibility at no matter what cost, on the false pretext that there is nothing else to be done.”
The Wretched of the Earth
Fanon produced a prodigious amount of intellectual work. Toward the African Revolution is a compilation of his writings on forging African and Third World unity with the Algerian Revolution at the vanguard of this process.2A Dying Colonialism explores how the Algerian people threw off their internalized inferiority complex by turning away from the colonizer’s cultural practices and embracing their own traditions.3
He dedicated his last days to dictating the final ideas of his most moving work to his wife, Josie. Six decades after it first hit the streets of Paris, The Wretched of the Earth: The Handbook for the Black Revolution That Is Changing the Shape of the World is as accurate and explosive as ever. The title comes from the line “Arise, ye wretched of the earth” from “The Internationale,” the Second Communist International’s official anthem, and from Haitian communist intellectual Jacques Romain’s poem, “Sales négres:”
too late it will be too late
on the cotton plantations of Louisiana
in the sugar cane fields of the Antilles
to halt the harvest of vengeance
of the negroes
the niggers
the filthy negroes
it will be too late I tell you
for even the tom-toms will have learned the language
of the Internationale
for we will have chosen our day
day of the filthy negroes
filthy Indians
filthy Hindus
filthy Indo-Chinese
filthy Arabs
filthy Malays
filthy Jews
filthy proletarians.
And here we are arisen
All the wretched of the earth
all the upholders of justice
marching to attack your barracks
your banks
like a forest of funeral torches
to be done
once
and
for
all
with this world
of negroes
niggers
filthy negroes.4
How many revolutionaries the world over became enraptured in his eloquent portrayal of the “Manichaean” differences between the neighborhoods of the rich white colonizer in Algiers and the casbah (ghettoes) of the colonized?
Here within this classic, that all revolutionaries have a duty to study, reside some of the most poignant prose on how the oppressed internalize violence and project it onto themselves:
“Where individuals are concerned, a positive negation of common sense is evident. While the settler or the policeman has the right the livelong day to strike the native, to insult him and to make him crawl to them, you will see the native reaching for his knife at the slightest hostile or aggressive glance cast on him by another native, for the last resort of the native is to defend his personality vis-a-vis his brother.”
Based on his treatment of patients in the Blida Hospital, which today bears his name, Fanon’s final chapter, “Colonial War and Mental Disorders,” examines the “ineffaceable wounds that the colonialist onslaught has inflicted on our people.”5
The fundamental pillar of the book, however, was Fanon’s conviction that the colonized could only shed their fear and shame through a baptism of revolutionary violence. Fanon’s former high school teacher and mentor, Aimé Césaire, had a profound influence on him. Césaire’s words cited at the beginning of this article from his epic poem on slave liberation, “And the Dogs were Silent,” set the tone for the Fanonian worldview. Despite a chorus of liberal complaints from the West that Fanon was “too violent,” Fanon concluded:
“As you and your fellow men are cut down like dogs, there is no other solution but to use every means available to reestablish your weight as a human being.”
‘You Can Kill a Revolutionary, But You Can Never Kill the Revolution’
Though Fanon died of leukemia when he was only 36, revolutionaries the world over have picked up his fallen weapons, his ideas, and applied them to their own particular national liberation struggles. Fanon’s observations and thesis continue to mold the thinking of awakening generations in life-and-death struggles from Johannesburg to Gaza to Harlem.
As political prisoner Mumia Abu-Jamal writes, the Black Panthers were Fanonists. His audio essay and tribute to Fanon discuss what the psychiatrist’s anti-colonial perspicacity meant to a 15-year-old Mumia, who has spent 40 years in prison. In Seize the Time, Bobby Seale talks about the influence of Fanon on the young Panthers and how Huey P. Newton read the book seven times.6
Malcolm X, Ernesto “Che” Guevara and Nelson Mandela all traveled to independent Algeria, which emerged as an epicenter of Pan-Africanism and internationalism. Paulo Freire stated that he had to rewrite Pedagogy of the Oppressed after reading The Wretched of the Earth. Hamza Hamouchene, president of the London-based Algerian Solidarity Campaign, discusses in CounterPunch what he deems Fanon’s unique contributions to understanding nationalism, the national bourgeoisie, political education and universalism, among other themes.
It is important to highlight that Fanon was more than just a doctor and writer.
At his graveside, Vice-president of the Provisional Government of the Algerian Republic (GPRA) Krim Belkacem emphasized Fanon’s diverse roles in the FLN’s total war. Beginning in 1954, Fanon worked as a writer, editor and propagandist for FLN periodicals Résistance algérienne and El Moudjahid. He also was a researcher; lecturer; a FLN representative in Ghana, Ethiopia, Mali, Guinea and Congo; as well as a clandestine militant.
Looking at the work of Karl Marx, Steve Biko, Cedric Robinson, Sylvia Wynter and other examples of revolutionaries/intellectuals, the Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research wrote a tribute to Fanon because of how he embodied the praxis of a radical or organic intellectual: “The world will only be shaped by the most valuable insights of philosophical striving when philosophy itself becomes worldly via participation in struggle.”
Fanon survived an assassination attempt, exile in Tunis and was staring down a crippling disease that he refused to talk about but that ultimately claimed his life. Aware he was dying, he pledged, “I will not cease my activities while Algeria still continues the struggle and I will go on with my task until my dying day.”7
Today, it is more necessary than ever to study Fanon to understand the psychological, emotional and spiritual damage wrought by neo-colonialism on the peoples of Africa, the Americas, Asia and what the Black Panthers referred to as the United States’ internal colonies. Fanon’s conclusion in The Wretched of the Earth on African and human liberation begs the same questions six decades later:
“Let us waste no time in sterile litanies and nauseating mimicry. Leave this Europe [U.S.A.] where they are never done talking of Man, yet murder men everywhere they find them, at the corner of everyone of their own streets, in all the corners of the globe.”
Danny Shaw is a professor of Caribbean and Latin American Studies at the City University of New York. He frequently travels within the Americas region. A Senior Research Fellow at the Center on Hemispheric Affairs, Danny is fluent in Haitian Kreyol, Spanish, Portuguese and Cape Verdean Kriolu.
Notes 1 Fanon, Frantz. Toward the African Revolution. New York: Grove Press. 1964. 2 Fanon, Frantz. Toward the African Revolution. New York: Grove Press. 1964. 3 Fanon, Frantz. A Dying Colonialism. New York: Grove Press. 1965. 4 Macey, David. Frantz Fanon: A Biography. London and New York: Verso. 2012. 5 Macey, David. Frantz Fanon: A Biography. London and New York: Verso. 2012. 6 Seale, Bobby. Seize the Time: The Story of The Black Panther Party and Huey P. Newton. Random House: 1970. 7 Macey, David. Frantz Fanon: A Biography. London and New York: Verso. 2012.
The documentary, “Ferguson Rises,” produced by Mobolaji Olambiwonnu and Films With A Purpose studios, is an important examination of how a global movement, Black Lives Matter, was sparked.
The opening scenes of happy, playing, gleeful children, mommies and daddies, and families doing what families do… abruptly cuts to a black screen and the sound of the shots that ended Michael Brown, Jr.’s life on August 9, 2014, in Ferguson, Missouri. From there, the documentary goes on to provide important details about the growing unrest in the small, predominantly Black community that led to the Black Lives Matter movement.
Poster of film, “Ferguson Rises (2021)
The film examines how Ferguson police called for backup from 15 police departments in the Saint Louis area to deal with a crowd that had formed after police had left Brown’s body uncovered and decomposing in the sweltering heat for more than four hours. They did that faster than how long they took to call a coroner to cover the 18-year-old’s body.
The filmmaker also casts a lens on Ferguson’s smallness. The city has just 20,000 residents and is almost 70 percent Black. It is so small that Michael Brown, Sr., knew some of the police officers on the scene and went to high school with them. Yet, they ignored him when he asked if the person lying dead in the street was his son. Michael Brown, Jr.’s mother, Lezly McSpadden, not only was ignored when she arrived on the scene—she was callously disrespected.
Whether Brown stole cigars in a convenience store as well as whether he had his hands up when police officer Darren Wilson encountered him are accurately contextualized in the documentary. The film sheds light on the then-police chief, Tom Jackson, repeatedly stating to the media Wilson was not aware of Brown’s possible involvement in the incident at the convenience store. This, of course, would call into question what reason Wilson had to stop Brown. Jackson went on to change his story.
Still from film, “Ferguson Rises” (2021) / credit: fergusonrises.com
The irresponsibility, sensationalism and outright dishonesty of the media is on full display in the documentary. In one clip from CBS This Morning, the lower-third graphic on the screen read, “Missouri Riots,” but the footage showed Brown’s mother and neighbors crying and emotional at the scene of his shooting. No footage of actual riots.
In chronicling the growth of the Black Lives Matter movement, the documentary provides key moments in that timeline that were known only to the residents of Ferguson. They begin with an elder U.S. Army veteran walking the streets of Ferguson the day after the shooting, waving a U.S. flag, reciting with emotion the words to the spiritual song, “Oh Freedom.”
Extensive coverage of eight hours of protests shown in the documentary were uneventful. That is, until Ferguson police brought in riot gear and military equipment to assault residents because, as one man in the film commented, police wanted to stop them from marching to the police station. Yet, CNN and other media outlets throughout the country falsely conveyed the first night of protests was violent because of residents’ actions.
Still from film, “Ferguson Rises” (2021) / credit: fergusonrises.com
The reality of two Fergusons—one Black and one white—is well conveyed in the documentary. Several white residents appeared to dismiss the anger of Black residents, with one white man reducing the protests to “tantrums.” Their cluelessness continued with comments about how the “community has been portrayed to the outside world” and how “the phrase ‘Black lives matter’ doesn’t sit well with a lot of white people” because “all lives matter.” The willful obtuseness is enraging, but this is the reality of how our struggle is viewed.
Yet, a few white residents recognized the centuries-long rift in Missouri that led to that horrible day in Ferguson. The white pastor of the African Methodist Episcopal church sees the protests as a spiritual battle between heaven and hell, good and evil. A former Ferguson police detective recognizes the racism in the police force, even though he excuses cops using tear gas on protesters. Then we hear from a white resident who was going to move out of town until he drove by the scene of Brown’s murder and realized just how horrible the murder of the young man was and how traumatizing it must have been for the embattled community to have to see Brown’s body decomposing in the street.
Still from film, “Ferguson Rises” (2021) / credit: fergusonrises.com
The documentary focuses on Michael Brown, Sr., and the trauma men endure when their children are killed. It also takes a look at residents’ clarity on the systemic nature of what they’re fighting against. They understand it is not about individual police officers or a few bad apples.
The end scenes, however, are a study in contradictions, with Cori Bush going from being a Black grassroots activist in Ferguson to an elected representative in the U.S. Congress. Meanwhile, a Black man named Wesley Bell was sworn in as Saint Louis prosecutor, but did not prosecute Wilson. Ferguson elected its first Black mayor six years after Brown’s murder, but the Time magazine cover featuring Alicia Garza, Opal Tometi and Patrisse Cullours as the faces of Black Lives Matter did not age well considering the enormous financial scandal that fractured the movement. Clips show Los Angeles and New York police departments announcing budget cuts. Yet, those cuts were miniscule compared to the total budgets of those police forces. Plus, claims of rising crime have fueled the rallying cry to “refund the police,” even though they were never “defunded.” Meanwhile, positive clips of Georgia politician Stacey Abrams and U.S. Vice President Kamala “The Cop” Harris, seem out of place for a documentary that for the most part condemns the system.
“Ferguson Rises” is a very good documentary. But the triumphant and hopeful end scenes are a sobering reminder that mere representation without radical or justice-focused politics often replicates the system.
Jacqueline Luqman is a radical activist based in Washington, D.C.; as well as co-founder ofLuqman Nation, an independent Black media outlet that can be found on YouTube (here andhere) and onFacebook; and co-host of Radio Sputnik’s“By Any Means Necessary.”
