None of us are safe
5th December 2016 · 0 Comments
By Edmund W. Lewis
Editor
I was struck last week by the words of Pastor Tom Watson of Watson Teaching Ministries who told WWL News in a story about the Nov. 27 Bourbon Street shooting that claimed the life of 25-year-old Demontris Tolliver that “the whole city is unsafe.”
More true words have never been spoken.
While the reasons the whole city is unsafe are many and complicated, it goes without saying that a large part of the reason the city is unsafe is because of New Orleans’ legacy of unjust practices and policies that favor the ruling class of wealthy and powerful business titans at the expense of everyone else.
Such a stranglehold on the city’s resources and the many challenges and woes such an unjust government-business alliance create are manifested in many of the societal ills we see every day in the City That Care Forgot like chronic poverty, unemployment, low educational achievement, substance abuse, crime and violence.
It is impossible and would be foolhardy to even attempt to address the rising tide of violent crime that threatens to overtake the Crescent City without first acknowledging and addressing the many antiquated polices and practices that have held the masses back in New Orleans since the city was founded in 1718.
Simply put, the problems plaguing the city today are as old as names like Bienville, Orleans, Bourbon and Claiborne. These problems have not gone away because the ruling minority has seen no reason to change the way things have always been done in New Orleans.
For the record, while the two suspects in the Bourbon Street shooting are not believed to be from New Orleans, it does not matter. They are products of a violent nation and a violent town where many of the same polices and practices that block people of color in New Orleans from reaching their full potential are also embraced.
New Orleans just does it better.
Again, what the City of New Orleans and its “uptown rulers” do here in Antebellum Disney is not dissimilar to what other factions do in other U.S. cities and parts of the world, but nobody does it better or are more committed to seizing and maintaining power and privilege than the ruling minority is here.
The local one percent, beneficiaries of very old money that dates back to the kidnapping, sale and purchase of human beings, take very strategic steps to ensure that justice, democracy, economic fairness and equal opportunity for a quality public education never take root here.
They accomplish this by pumping cash into the campaign war chests of elected officials and public administrators, leaving absolutely nothing to chance.
When the late Malcolm X said that when you see somebody always winning, they are dealing from the bottom of the deck, he was talking about the ruling class in New Orleans and around the world where the wealthiest Americans maintain control and power of people and resources by any means necessary.
There is no room for compassion, guilt or morality when the goal is total domination.
All of this “invisible violence” trickles down to the masses, who are taught by the circumstances they find themselves in and their oppressors to hate themselves and to place very little value on life.
Segregation served as an effective buffer to shield people of African decent from many of the draconian and Machiavellian practices that are commonplace today, but since Brown v. The Board of Education many Black families have become more susceptible to white supremacist practices and tactics that destabilize and disintegrate families and leave them less able to fend off those who would replace legalized slavery with other forms of oppression.
Violence is the language of the oppressed and a number of psychologists have said that self-hatred, rage, despair and a sense of helplessness all play a major role in the scourge of crime and violence that plague many U.S. cities.
One of the simplest and most effective things Black people can do to offset white supremacy and get a handle on violence is to learn to love themselves and others who look like them. Is it any wonder that a number of conscious Black thinkers, among them the late great Dr. Frances Cress Welsing, have said that loving ourselves is one of the most revolutionary things Black people can do.
As I have said before in this column, our Americaness is killing us. We need to get back to knowing, valuing, respecting, believing in and loving ourselves and those who find themselves in the same boat.
We can no longer allow outside forces to choose our leaders or determine what our agenda should be.
None of us are safe from crime, violence, unconstitutional policing, unequal protection under the law, prosecutorial misconduct, mass incarceration, predatory lending, environmental racism, economic injustice, public corruption, white privilege or taxation without representation until all of us are safe.
In the spirit of the Beloved Ancestors, it’s time for us to come together and get back to the African way, which assures us that “I am because we are.”
I am hoping that the Injustice Boycott that kicks off this week in three U.S. cities will empower and enable us to take a giant step in that direction.
Anybody ready for a little revolutionary love?
This article originally published in the December 5, 2016 print edition of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper.
