Courage is the price which life exacts for granting peace.
The soul that knows it not, knows no release.
From little things:

Knows not the livid loneliness of fear
Nor mountain heights, where bitter joy can hear
The sound of wings.

How can life grant us boon of living, compensate
For dull gray ugliness and pregnant hate
Unless we dare

The soul’s dominion? Each time we make a choice we pay
With courage to behold resistless day
And count it fair.

– Amelia Earhart

Excerpt from Kevin Powell’s piece, That Sickening Feeling Again, at the Root

Plain and simple, racism creates abusive relationships. It does not matter if the perpetrator is a white sister or brother, or a person of color, because the most vulnerable in our society feel the heat of it. Real talk: this tragedy would have never gone down on the Upper East Side of Manhattan or in Brooklyn Heights. I am not just speaking about the judge’s decision, but the police officer’s actions. Those shots would have never been fired at unarmed white people sitting in a car. Until we understand that racism is not just about who pulled the trigger in a police misconduct case, but is also about the geography of racism, and the psychology of racism, we are forever stuck having the same endless dialogue with no solution in sight.

And until America recognizes the civil and human rights of all its citizens, systemic racism and police misconduct, joined at the hip, will never end. That is, until white sisters and brothers realize they, too, are Sean Bell, this will never end. Save for a few committed souls, most white folks sit on the sidelines (as many did when we marched down Fifth Avenue in protest of Sean Bell’s murder in December 2006), feel empathy, but fail to grasp that our struggle for justice is their struggle for justice. They, alas, are Sean Bell, and Amadou Diallo, and all those anonymous black and brown heads and bodies who’ve been victimized, whether they want to accept that reality or not. And the reality is that until police officers are forced to live in the communities they police, forced to learn the language, the culture, the mores of the communities they police, forced to change how they handle undercover assignments, this systemic racism, this police misconduct, will never end.

And until black and Latino people, the two communities most likely to suffer at the hands of police brutality and misconduct, refuse to accept the half-baked leadership we’ve been given for nearly forty years now, and start to question what is really going on behind the scenes with the handshakes, the eyewinks, the head nods, and the backroom deals at the expense of our lives, this systemic racism, this police misconduct, these kinds of miscarriages of justice, will never end.

Our current leadership needs us to believe all we can ever be are victims, doomed to one recurring tragedy or another. It keeps these leaders gainfully employed, and it keeps us feeling completely helpless and powerless. Well, I am neither helpless nor powerless, and neither are you. To prevent Sean Bell’s memory from fading like dust into the air, the question is put to you, now: What are you going to do to change this picture once and for all? Mayor Bloomberg said this in a statement:

“There are no winners in a trial like this. An innocent man lost his life, a bride lost her groom, two daughters lost their father, and a mother and a father lost their son. No verdict could ever end the grief that those who knew and loved Sean Bell suffer.”

No, the grief will never end, not for Sean Bell’s parents and family, for his fianceé and children. But Mayor Bloomberg, you, me, we the people, can step up our games, make a commitment to real social justice in our city, in our nation, and, for once, penalize people, including police officers, who just randomly blow away lives. Sean Bell is never coming back, but we are here, and the biggest tragedy will be if we keep going about our lives, as if this never happened in the first place.

And a long as we have leadership, white leadership and black leadership, mainstream leadership and grassroots leadership, that can do nothing more than exacerbate folks’ very natural emotions in a tragedy like this, we will never progress as a human race. Instead a true leader needs to harness those emotions and turn them into action, as Dr. King did, as Gandhi did. In the absence of such action, so many of us, especially us black and Latino males, will continue to have a very nervous relationship with the police, even the police of color, for fear that any of one of us could be the next Sean Bell.

It is my distinct pleasure to introduce you to Omar Freilla and the Green Worker’s Cooperative.

Reposted from black and green

In case anyone has been under a rock, the three police officers who murdered Sean Bell in a storm of 50 bullets were acquitted of all charges - all of them.

When I heard the news, about 85% of me shrugged it off as I said to myself “I’m not surprised”. I’ve grown up in the shadow of police brutality. I’ve seen it and felt it at random moments on the street and at protest marches. Every so often a friend (always a shade of brown) will tell me about being stopped and frisked by the police. I’ve been stopped and frisked myself. I’ve followed the names of the young men and women killed by the NYPD ever since I was 14. And like lots of folks I’ve been in the countless marches and vigils that honor their memory. I didn’t think more bullets than the 41 used to kill Amadou Diallo near my home could be fired at a person. This time it was 50. That unsurprised 85% of me has gotten used to the “not guilty” verdicts that always follow. The cops always walk. Sometimes they even get an award or a promotion. Unlike that part of me that expected the worst, about 15% of me expected things to be different this time. Fifty shots was irrational, crazed, sadistic. Detective Michael Oliver, the one who fired 31 of the 50 shots, had just returned from serving in Iraq. Surely the judge would see that Oliver had gone ballistic and thought he was back in Iraq, that Bell was human. This time, they ought to be convicted of something, anything. This time it would be different.

I expect the abuse. I despise it, but I expect it. And then I keep hoping that things will be different. And when they’re not I still don’t call it quits.

I wonder if this is what a battered wife feels like.

When I heard the news that the cops had been acquitted, my mind also heard another story, it said “you don’t matter”. It was like Kanye West’s “George Bush doesn’t care about Black people” comment in the aftermath of the devastation of Hurricane Katrina. But this time the story I was hearing wasn’t coming from George Bush. It was an entire court system saying to me “you don’t matter”. It’s a story I’ve heard repeated over and over. I remember hearing it when I was ten years old, living next to the Cross Bronx Expressway and looking up at the abandoned buildings with painted scenes on the boarded-up windows (drapes, potted plants, and silhouettes painted to trick passing commuters into thinking the buildings were occupied). I thought to myself “why don’t they spend money to fix them instead?”, what I heard back was “you don’t matter”. I remember visiting Baton Rouge, LA twelve years ago and seeing how close poor Black families lived to oil refineries that dominated everything in site and at night looked like their own New York City skyline - families whose members were dying left and right from cancer. The sound I heard from the refineries was “you don’t matter”. When a state environmental regulator considering her support for a permit for a 5,200 ton-per-day waste facility in the South Bronx said “the City is like a body, and every body needs a colon”, I heard a very loud and clear “you don’t matter”.

On a certain level, all of us who hear “you don’t matter” when we listen to the news or go about our daily routine, live with trauma. The fact that some of us actually take steps to change the world around us is a testament to the fact that away from courts; schools; work; welfare offices; other government agencies; and the media, there is another story being told, one that says “you matter”. I hear it in old Civil Rights songs. I hear it today among the Zapatistas of Chiapas, Mexico. I hear it from the members of the ReBuilders Source Cooperative in the South Bronx. I hear it from people chanting “Green Jobs, Not Jails” across the country. I hear it from the grassroots community-based groups everywhere that call for environmental justice.

I often imagine that if “you matter” had always been the dominant story, global warming wouldn’t be an issue. After all, where is all that pollution coming from other than in places where “you don’t matter” is the ever-running story on the news.

I’m tired of hearing that I don’t matter. I’m tired of being abused and accepting it.

There is another story that needs telling. And we who are making another world possible are going to tell it.

My dear friend Adrienne Maree Brown, Executive Director of the Ruckus Society is contributing over at a great new blog black and green.

Here’s a repost of her Earth Day tidings…

Environmental Justice swallows Environmental Movement

I remember when Earth Day used to seem like a celebration only relevant to people from another planet. I remember when I would see people dressed as turtles, or with signs in the shape of the planet, and think they were a little nutty. I was a kid. Those were the average citizen canaries in the little coal mine of my childlike dreams for myself.

I remember then when I began to develop a distinct need for justice - in every interaction, from those with authority in the militarized environment of my youth, in my family which had two distinct stories of injustice, from the nation I was expected to represent no matter how far I left it behind me physically, philosophically. Justice, when I was coming out of college into a world ripe with injustice, seemed to have nothing to do with those sign carrying turtle/polar bear/spotted owl loving white people.

I remember when I was taken to a wild place, and was shocked to find buried in my own memories the wooded places of my youth. I remember the first time I really sat and comprehended the thousands of years of life in an ancient tree. I remember the juxtaposition for some time between the natural world I was falling in love with, and the beautiful urban wilderness of my home, Brooklyn. I remember the growing incongruence between my adoration of massive spaces - plains, oceans, mountainscapes…and the equal but different adoration of all that was capable in the palm of my hand with new technology that could hold every song I’d ever loved and reach every person I currently love. Could I have both?

This Earth Day I am committed to striking the balance. I don’t think our right move at this point is back to the land, or back to the ways of our ancestors. I think it is forward to the land, forward with work for every single person that has space for vision, dignity and actually contributes towards a healthy planet, forward with the ways of our near and ancient ancestors locked into our genetic code and helping us consider the fusion of technology and nature. It’s forward to a space where all that we create serves what we did not create and cannot replace.

I am still not dressed like a turtle, and cringe a bit when I see little signs shaped like planets. But I love the people in those suits and holding those signs, and see them as part of the same movement I am now in. I tend to lean towards the folks within that movement who have a particular undeniable need for justice in their future planet.

And I admit, I want some new high tech picket line sign that will scroll the faces of people impacted by ill-formed and selfish decisions on the personal, communal and federal level. But until such time, I post my sign right here - Justice for the planet will come through justice for the people.

I have picked up the Starfish and the Spider, The Unstoppable Power of Leaderless Organizations.

I am reading the corporate focused book through the lens of… what is relevant to the way we form our social movements and organizations?

The Premise:
The Starfish and the Spider argues that organizations fall into two categories: traditional “spiders,” which have a rigid hierarchy and top-down leadership, and revolutionary “starfish,” which rely on the power of peer relationships.

Principles of Decentralization:
- when attacked a decentralized organization tends to become even more open and decentralized
- it’ easy to mistake starfish for spiders
- an open system doesn’t have central intelligence; the intelligence is spread throughout the system
- open systems can easily mutate
- the decentralized organization sneaks up on you
- as industries become decentralized, overall profits decrease

Asking the right questions is key to identifying if an organization is a starfish or a spider.

The Right Questions:
- Is there a person in charge?
- Are there headquarters?
- If you thump it on the head, will it die?
- Is there a clear division of roles?
- If you take out a unit, is the organization harmed?
- Are knowledge and power concentrated or distributed?
- Is the organization flexible or rigid?
- Can you count the employees or participants?
- Are working groups funded by the organization or are they self-funding?

More soon…

hat tip to Chris Rabb at the afro-netizen.