Scene: A Bar with $40 drink minimum at the Ronald Reagan Airport
Status: “Subject exhibits a fast mind that used to be called
brilliant…
Quo: “It still could be called that…
Status: “But that’s no longer a compliment. It’s as
worthless now as the kind of work ethic that earns an honest buck…
Quo: Well, we can’t tell him we think that way…
Status: We can’t tell him we know it’s true, much less that we make it true….
Quo: Ha ha! Yes, leave him back in his illusions of his
earnest mission, his self-betterment through the liberal arts!
Status: What we used to call arts and letters, and sometimes
put on the news…
Quo: You mean like when our green grandfathers let Malcolm X
on TV to rave and lambast the white devil we called the voice of common sense….
Status: But it backfired…he came off way too rational….
Quo: And even
entertaining…
Status: He had our guys cowering…
Quo: So we had to make sure no one that articulate (by our
own standards) for that cause would ever be allowed to speak again….
Status: We still haven’t totally pulled that off…
Quo: But we’re getting closer. We gotta take a bow here. We
did a pretty good job of ensuring that what they felt was their calling, their
essence, their vocation or career even would be seen as a mere orgy of thoughts
dancing in an inconsequential echo chamber…..Ah, yes. All his carefully revised
sticthing and unstitching, his seductive raps or resume would now be merely a
sinful orgy that knows know just moderation…
Status: Yes, we did a good job of feeding them McDonald’s so
of course he’d grow up to spend more time in our hospitals that advertise
THRIVE!
Quo: McDonald’s, or a PhD or a 5 star review in Pitchfork…it’s all the same “happy meal….”
Status: And now that they’re so thoroughly defeated, we can
retrain them, reprogram them….
Quo: why even bother? They’re damaged goods. We can wait a
few more years when their kids (from ages 3 to 18) will only have our voices to
listen to!
Status: Yes, to get them in the ward where we’re the doctors
Voice From Speaker
System
You think this is the
future, but it’s already happened
Quo: What did he say?
Voice From Speaker…
Flight 1984, now
arriving at Gate 4 with a stopover in St. Louis
Status: I think they’re calling my plane
Quo: Where are you going?
Status: To crush those protestors in Ferguson. Did you hear
how those white guys named Anonymous recently exposed the KKK, as if they’re
trying to recreate the Deacons for Self Defense or something?
Quo: Yes, but it’s not like I was banking on the KKK to
carry us across. They were only plan C….
Status: Plan F actually….
Quo: We’re working on many fronts….
Status: Indeed, by any
means necessary….
Quo: Ha ha, that’s
good one. I love the way you take that phrase they wear on t-shirts and use it
against them
Status: Only we can back it up….
Quo: You’re going to Saint Louis?
Status: It’s just a stop over. I won’t leave the airport,
just transfer en route to HQ in LA. I don’t have to be on the ground. Hell, I
don’t even have to be in LA, except I got kids there. I can work from the plane
just as easily. I can even moonlight and help the Israelis take over the Gaza
Strip and gentrify Jerusalem while I’m at it….and help that new mayor of
Oakland with her push for the kind of “affordable” housing that can price out
the undesirables….and scatter the blacks from the potentially threatening (to
us) compact inner city neighborhoods just like we drove the citizens of St.
Louis way out of town into Ferguson….but even that wasn’t enough to separate
and dispirit them……yet!
Quo: Affordable!! Yes, you’re a brilliant user of language!
Status: I learned that at the K-Street Think Tank, straight
from the Center for Consumer Freedom!
Quo: You’ve always loved the frictionless flow of capital….
Status: Globalization, baby!
Quo: The new diaspora…
Status: I hear some are on to it; they call it the new Jim
Crow….
Quo: One guy even called it the new Dr. James Crowe, Data
Analyst….but they’re still scratching the surface……really, it’s the new Mercy
Status: Yes, The new Slave Ship called Mercy, like the one that rescued Phillis Wheatly from her pagan
land….and brought her to our secular land with "In God We Trust” plastered all
over the devalued currency we let the peasants use once we “freed” them….
Quo: Okay, see you later, bye…
Status: I don’t buy. I sell. Let them buy, and think they
make!
Quo: Yes, let them buy even if they have to die to do so….
Status: We can make another killing! (the two clink glasses)
Quo: Who do you work
for anyway?
Status: For the news media and the developers…but I’ll work
for the government too, and the bankers and HMOS…or even the Government in its
quest to divest itself for our benefit… They are trying to learn from us, and
be more like us…..and they’ve come a long way….
Quo: You’ve always loved that revolving door!
+++
SCENE: LA, Studio of UCN (United Cable News)
SR (speaking into cell phone): Did
you find some fearful white folks there? Or do we have to stage a scene? (phone voice on other end). Good to hear.
I knew there would be some to go around! Let’s go with the one about the
insurance man who bought a gun….just in case….He’s got a great quote about why
those who aren’t afraid are stupid!. (phone
voice on other end)…..and make sure not to interview any of the
demonstrators, especially that Ashley Yates
(phone voice)….Yes, I know that Bassem Massri guy will try to shout over
the woman we hired to play the role of a reporter….but don’t worry we’ll just
edit it out on our end
Nah, you don’t have to interview
the KKK. Let the Coyote network do that, and you don’t have to make up this New
Black Panther Party thing. We must appear more level headed. Yes, the ex-mayor
and his “I Love Ferguson” campaign…that’s a good one. He’s folksy, and seems
sympathetic…..some of his best friends are black….wait, let me put you on
speaker phone….
PV: .but the protestors are onto
the fact that he just wants to increase property value…
SR: But the rest of the country
doesn’t have to…don’t worry, we won’t give this nearly as much air time as the
story about Bill Cosby, or other black men, living or dead, on trial for sexual
abuse….but don’t worry even if we don’t run with your stories, you’ll still get
a handsome Kill Fee as if we did….
PV: I’m working on an exclusive
with Darren Wilson’s new wife!
SR: You know he’s now a
millionaire after the non-indictment.
PV: I bet she’s gonna buy some
cool stuff….
SR: Great! Great!___
Location, guy’s locker room, Downtown Oakland YMCA
Willie (a retired 70-something black Vietnam vet)
Ron (a 60 something black man who teaches ESL part time to the children
of Asian Immigrants and Refugees)
Lou (a 40 something white college teacher)
Bart (a 40 something white Bus driver)
W: The media coverage of Ferguson
shows that the power structure has a stake in keeping people confused and
divided, to prevent any ground swell of organizing unity…
R: How?
W: For instance, they make it seem
like the protestors burnt the church where Michael Brown’s family went; they
make them seem like looters, and make the looters seem like protestors…
R: They do kind of overlap
W: But they’re different….many of
the looters are anarchists
L:
…and white anarchists at that
W: They’re not really down with
the struggle
B: But some think they are…
W: breaking into a paint store so
they can spray-paint “Fuck The Police” on the walls of a black owned coffee
shop whose windows they smashed?
B:
Not all of them do stuff like that
L: But I know quite a few who do:
“Fuck the police. Burn down indiscriminately. Destroy!”
W: They have no plan, no strategy.
And choose the wrong targets…
R: I went to some of their
protests for Oscar Grant or during Occupy. They really didn’t want an older man
around…
W: Especially an older black man
L: My students told me they feel
as threatened by these white anarchists as they do by the cops…
R: They’re just as bad as the
cops. In some ways, worse
W: I wouldn’t be surprised if they
work for the same people….there’s a long history of coming at us from two
seemingly opposite sides
B: Do you have any proof they’re
doing that now?
R: It doesn’t really make a
difference, whether I do or not….
B:
Yes, it does. It would make your point more convincing to the skeptic….
R: Not really, because the result
is the same. Blame the angry black men and women, blame the victim….
W: There’s got to be something we
can do with all this anger and
despair
R: We’re working on it. Even now,
by talking about it…
W: But first you gotta accept that
the white folks looting are much more destructive…
L: When it comes to burning and
looting, there’s a double standard. Hell, a baseball team wins the world
series, and that can get white people burning and lootin….
R: But a cop shoots a black man
and the media starts talking about how whites are afraid of looting before it
ever happens……
W: And remember when the news
showed that picture of the white couple waste deep up in water during Katrina
with a bag of groceries they ”found” to survive before they’re rescued or the
water subsides…..but they can show basically the same picture…with a black
man….and they call it “looting.”
L: this is systematic…this is what
I try to teach my students, or air out and legitimize their anger about it if
they already think it’s true. I try to get them to express this anger in ways
that might be able to persuade whites….
W: And white folks might listen to
you more than they’re ever listen to me…
L:
I don’t know….I don’t think I can convince some of the white anarchists
they’re not helping….I’m so frustrated and pissed off about them
B: They really think that they’re
rebelling, and burning in solidarity…
L: Like those Oaksterdam stoners
with the Bob Marley t-shirts doing their bruning man ecstatic dances to
“Burning and Looting….”
B: Or that old Clash song. “White
riot, I wanna riot! White riot, want a riot of my own….”
L: Oh god, I used to think that
song was so deep… “Black man’s got a lot of problems, but they don’t mind
throwin a brick/ white people go to school, where they teach you all to be
sick, and everybody’s doing, just what they’re told to….and no one wants to go
to jail…. “ As if throwing a brick or going to badge of some kind of honor….
R: Or they just want some free
Thanksgiving turkey….
B: I know a few of them who teach
Psychology at UC Berkeley, and put out a call for academic papers about why
Riot is better, and more pure, than Rebellion…and they don’t get fired for
their support of incendiary anti-establishment actions….
L: I know some of these people.
They think they got freedom of speech. But they’re only allowed to say this
because they have the same enemy as the power structure does….
W: Just like in the 60s when white
kids protested the draft….
R: and some even spit on black
soldiers….
W: All they did was help privatize
the government…to make our vote more useless…..just like the right wing had
been trying to do…
L: Yeah, these anarchists may
think they’re so radical, more radical than the protestors, because they’re
against negotiation….
B:
You’re just talking about the ones who think about it….others just wanna
throw a brick….
R: But the property owners don’t
really mind—like that landlord who got caught burning his own property down….
L: It was a good way to get the
people to leave the rent controlled building he couldn’t evict them from…so he
could build a new building with government subsidies and bring in others who
could pay more rent…
W: It’s ethnic cleansing. They’re
trying to drive us out of compact neighborhoods close to the centers of
commerce in the big cities….They have felt threatened by it, by us, for
years…but now they’re stepping up actually doing something about it…
R: It was a long term plan…
W: And that’s what they’re trying
to do in Ferguson too…Many people who live there were already pushed out of
Saint Louis proper….who needs tanks or an army if you can just price people out
with rents?
R: Just like San Francisco and
Oakland. Ferguson is just like Richmond….the Richmond of St. Louis…
W: And Richmond is trying to
organize against Chevron, which in its own way is as much of a killer as the
police…
R: And Richmond and Ferguson are still too threatening to people like Chevron.
They must scatter us even more….
L: That’s why they gerrymander the
districts
W: I vote, but it don’t mean shit.
Gentrification is the deeper than gerrymandering….
R: They’re taking what property
we’ve fought for…this dispersion, or new phase of the Diaspora, is exactly what
you’re seeing in Ferguson….Here in the bay area, it’s not as violent, blatant
martial law as it’s been in Ferguson since August 9th….that’s really
the only difference…but that’s only coz we haven’t stood up
W: It’s just as violent here, and
some invisible wounds prove as fatal and crippling as 12 gunshots from a cop.
It’s just harder to get on camera….”
R: But the bigger point is that
it’s not just the corrupt cops. It’s the corrupt District Attorney, who was
clearly biased in favor of the cop he was supposed to be prosecuting……the whole
damn kangaroo court system…the governor, the attorney general….all the way up…
L: And the news media who clearly
sides with the cops and puts forth an image of the Poor White Victim, and the
Black Bogeyman, in the kangaroo court of public opinion…
R: That’s why they brought Bill
Cosby up when all this was going down…
W: Even my wife agrees with me
about that one. Even if Cosby did rape these women, why paint a target on him
much bigger than the target you paint on whites accused of the same crimes…
R: Like Woody Allen….
W: …and notice how they often get
black women to be the ones reporting it in the news…
R: Why? I bet the fact that he
tried to buy NBC a few years back has something to do with it….
L: Yeah, just like the second
James Brown started buying radio stations, the power structure stepped up their
plan to destroy him….
R: that’s part of it. Cosby, and
Brown—and any strong black man with money—becomes a threat to the
establishment.
W: Ironically, he’s more of a
threat for the same reason we used to criticize him a s a sell out, or even a
Tom, as if he wasn’t “black enough” on The Cosby Show…
R: He did help humanize the black
family man to the sick Racist mind of white America….he was helping a healing
process….
W: Not as much as Malcom X, or
Chuck D. or Shock E…”
R: I’m not defending Cos….Whatever
you think of him, or the black and brown folks in that catcall video that white
guy named Bliss made which edited out the white sexual harassers…..
W: The main point is that all this
stuff was really useful in helping them change the national discussion about
Ferguson into blaming the victim for not being purely spotless, inhuman and flawless….precisely because it seemed to have nothing
to do with the killing of Michael Brown, and the violent crackdown on
protestors….
L: it’s played into White Fear
which could flip the script so Darren Wilson, the cop on trial, would become
the victim….It’s all so interconnected.
W: They want us out of
here….though we may be allowed back in the city after a 50 mile commute if we
work as janitors for them….They wanna scatter, and divide us….Even when they
divided our families up back in plantation days, we were still too close to
each other in Hush Harbors to organize….
R: They have more power over us in
Prisons than they did in plantations. It’s much harder to organize…..
W: Every time we come closer to
having some say about the land we live on, they found some way to take it away.
Wars were always fought about that; their search for a warm water port….They
brought our grandparents to Oakland to work here, and then realized even in the
ghettos, we were able to claim too much. Then they realized they made a mistake
and wanted them back. They didn’t need us to work anymore….they got Chinese
slave labor for that.
B: They’re shooting themselves in
the foot and don’t even know it. Maybe the protestors in Ferguson are helping
them know it. Their message is clear.
L: But the media is covering it with static, white noise. Like the cops, the media has been licking its lips,
patting themselves on the backside, when some looting broke out. It’s what they
wanted. It makes “better news.”…more ratings. More dollars….Mumia calls it Fear
TV
R: You give the media too much
credit. They’d get more advertising dollars even if they didn’t get ratings.
Ratings don’t matter as much as you think….
B: Just like the Dow Jones average
going up doesn’t help the economy…..
L: If anything it makes it
worse….: The only true demands the media serves are the advertisers….Looting
only makes better TV because Hollywood made people think violence is more
exciting than negotiation…
B: I still think looting has a
place. We can’t demonize the looters. We’re not necessarily smarter than any of
them…
W: But you do need to get your
definitions straight….How do you define outside agitator?
L: Nyles Fort, by my definition is
not an outside agitator, but some of the looters are.
R: The media purposely blurs that
line…and so many of these white self-proclaimed radicals….
B: or the anarchists….
R: just can’t conceive, much less
understand what black folk are fighting for. In many ways, they’re like those
SDSers that Gil Scott Heron criticized in Comment
#1
W: What Martin Luther King said
about the “White moderate” he saw in the clergy 50 years ago, and those Smiling
Facers in those early 70s soul songs, is at least as true of the “White
Anarchist” today…..and that really pisses me off…
L: SO any update or rewrite of Letter From Birmingham Jail would have
to mention the shallow understanding of the white RADICAL, along with the
moderate MLK criticizes
R: …or the KPFA [Pacifica] liberals…beneath much of their high talk
is the simple fact that they can’t let themselves be part of a movement that is
primarily lead by blacks…!”
L: Exactly, whether they know it
or not, they’re being used to help break up the movement before it has a chance
to grow…
B: But aren’t you forgetting that
this is first and foremost about Michael Brown?
R: No… But we need to find new
ways to fight the media, to get the truth on the media…
W: Oh, damn, there’s more
helicopters…
R: The white anarchists in Oakland
are at it again…
W: I better get home before they
block off the freeway…
R: Maybe they’ll go after a real
target today….and help make the message clearer….
