No Safe Age

[nattyreb]

NO SAFE AGE
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[Col. Writ. 12/3/06] Copyright 2006 Mumia Abu-Jamal


It's boy's night out, and a group of brothers are having a bachelor's
party at a neighborhood club. One of them is particularly thrilled,
because his marriage to the woman he loves is just hours away.

But he will never marry, because a pack of wild, undercover cops will
execute him, and unleash a deadly rain of 50 bullets on he and his friends.

The crime? Cruising While Black ... Sean Bell, unarmed, was 23.

And the corporate media merely explains it may've been a case of
"contagious" shooting -- one cop fires, two cops fire, three cops ...
get the picture?

It's a kind of social illness, like alcoholism.

But neither Sean Bell, Trent Benefield, nor Joseph Guzman were armed.
According to some reports, one of them *said* he was armed.

Like the madmen who launched a preemptive war on the unsubstantiated
suspicion of weapons of mass destruction, undercover cops launched an
urban preemptive war on unarmed young Black men, reportedly based on
unsubstantiated suspicions. *50 shots*. Death, and serious injury.

No cellphones; no wallets; no threatening candy bars -- for such
trifles are no longer deemed necessary.

In America, blackness is sufficient.

Even maleness isn't required, as shown by the recent shooting of an
elderly woman who allegedly allowed a drug dealer to use her home.
Katherine Johnston, having lived almost 9 decades, was shot to death
while trying to defend her Atlanta home after it was attacked by
undercover cops.

According to a neighborhood snitch, he never claimed her house was a
drug site, despite police pressure to do so.

No significant quantities of drugs were found at the home.

What was *her* crime? Trying-to-survive-to-90-while-Black?

What's more dangerous -- drugs, or armed undercover cops kicking in
doors allegedly on drug raids?

Police suspicion, it seems, is a weapon of urban war. Several years
ago, writer Kristian Williams noted a case where a whole community was
held under siege, because of police suspicion. In his remarkable 2003
book, *Enemies in Blue: Police and Power in America* (Brooklyn, NY: Soft
Skull Press), Williams recounted an amazing story:

"The racial politics of police suspicion are well illustrated by the
North Carolina State Bureau of Investigation's 'Operation Ready-Rock.'
In November 1990, forty-five state cops, including canine units and the
paramilitary Special Response Team, lay siege to the 100 block of Graham
Street, in a black neighborhood of Chapel Hill. Searching for crack
cocaine, the cops sealed off the streets, patrolled with dogs, and
ransacked a neighborhood pool hall. In terms of crime control, the
mission was a flop. Although nearly 100 people were detained and
searched, only 13 were arrested, and one of them convicted.
Nevertheless, and despite a successful class action lawsuit, the cops
defended their performance and no officers were disciplined.

"When applying for a warrant to search every person and vehicle on the
block, the police had assured the judge, 'there are no 'innocent' people
at this place ... Only drug sellers and drug buyers are on the described
premises.' But once the clamp-down was underway, they became more
discriminating: Blacks were detained and searched, sometimes at
gunpoint, while whites were permitted to leave the cordoned area." [p. 121]

How many of the armed maniacs who shot Johnston, Bell, Guzman or
Benefield will ever see the inside of a cell? How many will reach the
confines of Death Row?

We *know* the answer -- because we've seen this movie before ... Paid
leave (which amounts to paid vacations), a whitewash of an
investigation, and a 'they-were-doing-their-jobs' is all that ever happens.

It's a damned shame.


Copyright 2006 Mumia Abu-Jamal

[Mr. Jamal's recent book features a chapter on the
remarkable women who helped build and defend
the Black Panther Party: *WE WANT FREEDOM:
A Life in the Black Panther Party*, from South
End Press (http://www.southendpress.org); Ph.
#1-800-533-8478.]
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And I have never seen so many corpses walking around talking about
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Submitted by: Sis. Marpessa