438 – 455 Prisons to the end (old book 284-294)
Vincents text
Norsk Ny dansk bog
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My journey through this social jungle had automatically led me into
the ultimate closed system, the prison, in which I ran into three underclass
robbers who’d attacked me on my arrival in America five years earlier. While
society had closed slowly around me, like a vise, these people had opened up
to me and had, through my own ghettoization, become a part of myself. I now
understood that they’d had no real choice: their freedom was one-dimensional.
Their choice then, of whether or not to victimize me, is indicative of the
white choice: Should we stop oppressing an unredeemed people in order not to
risk ending up in a kind of prison ourselves? Or, locked into a system where
“life’s design is already made,” have we lost the freedom to choose? Such a helping hand from above unintentionally functions just as the
American penal system does. Here, 95% of the money is used to dispose of the
unwanted and brutalize them, while only 5% is spent on paternalistic
“rehabilitation” of the waste product (which took years to produce). Most
inmates are so wrecked by the prison system they never adjust to life on the
outside and wind up back in prison. Millions of people who need psychiatric
treatment as a result of the ghetto’s institutionalized, chronic, and
self-perpetuating pathology are instead locked up. Some 25% of prison inmates
are mentally retarded because of their impoverished backgrounds and lead
poisoning. Almost half of the inmates are black although they make up only
13% of the country. When, in addition, blacks on average receive sentences
twice as long as whites for the same offense (as reported by the New York
Times), you begin to understand why many blacks see themselves as political
prisoners. It may seem that I present blacks as helpless victims, but how else
will we see the executioner in ourselves? While reading this book, your
unconscious racism has tried to deny responsibility by insisting that the
problem, after all, is probably due to the innate inferiority of blacks. But
recall that black West Indian immigrants, who weren’t forced to internalize
our racism, are doing just as well as whites in America. So when native
blacks, deeply shaped by our racism, have only half the income of whites and
make up more than half of all prison inmates, then yes, many of them are
helpless victims of our racism. The images of broken and apathetic people in
this book are not the images that our oppressed, struggling to maintain a
little dignity, like to see of themselves. But oppression always produce more broken humans than pattern
breakers, and if we don’t understand those who are too weak to resist, how
will we ever realize how destructive our racism is? These prisoners did resist. What made them choose our ultimate
punishment wasn’t actual need or hunger but uncontrollable anger—a vicious
cocktail of hatred and self-hatred that made them despise everything. They’re
merely the visible symptoms of our oppression; their anger is shared by all
black Americans. Their anger constantly defeats them, makes them stumble
where others easily succeed. Instead of examining the cause of their rage, we
blame them for not succeeding. We don’t understand the ghetto monster we’ve
created. Instead, we turn our backs to it, “mass incarcerate” it—one day,
perhaps, it will be “concentration camps”—and destroy our own society in the
process. Yet no matter how formidable the oppression seems, there’s always been
an active movement to oppose it, from Nat Turner to Black Lives Matter. I
couldn’t passively watch all this destruction, so I joined the movement of my
generation, the Black Panthers. They’d already used the power of political
theater at some courageous events, exercising their Second Amendment rights
to carry arms while protesting the endless police killings of blacks. Whites
were so scared by blacks with guns that Governor Reagan, with the support of
the NRA (believe it or not), tightened gun laws in California. And even
though the Panthers were otherwise nonviolent, the FBI started a secret
COINTELPRO operation to smash the group, assassinating countless Panthers,
some in their sleep like Fred Hampton. I was especially impressed by the Free
Breakfast for Children program they set up in many ghettos, and I hitchhiked
around to support them. In Baltimore I usually stayed with my Panther friends
Henry and Ilane (seen here with their baby under the poster of Huey Newton).
I helped them feed the local children and saw these kids, dressed in rags,
walk long distances in the morning to get a meal. I felt this was more
meaningful than joining the cult around the mercurial leader Huey Newton (top
left), whom I’d often met in Oakland, along with other leaders, such as
Elaine Brown, who sings “There is a Man” at the end of my show. But when
David Dubois became chief editor of the Panther paper, he convinced me that
my real role was as a photographer for the paper. I was incredibly proud of
working for the son of the great W. E. B. Du Bois,
seen here in the BPP headquarters in Oakland along with famous cartoonist
Emory Douglass. And so the photos in this book were first published in The
Black Panther. There’s a sad afterword to this story: When I had to review the movie
The Butler on Danish TV in 2013, I broke down in tears during the part in
which, for the first time, the Black Panthers were portrayed positively—as a
natural stage in the black resistance. I realized how I myself had suppressed
my Panther involvement, which was part of my original Danish book. When I was
starting up my show in Reagan’s America in 1984, I erased all traces of it,
afraid I’d be accused of being a terrorist. America and I had changed since I
met Reagan in 1972, when I’d brazenly accused him of oppressing blacks. I was
right. He was the first candidate using “coded” racism and dog whistling
(“jungle”=ghetto, “monkies”=Africans) to win the
presidency since the Civil Rights Movement. But let’s not forget that those who can adjust to this gulag system
can experience our society, with its barred windows and deserted fear-ridden
streets, as the freest in the world. A book like this will be greeted with
open arms because the system is so massive in its oppression that all
criticism is lost upon it, and it becomes entertainment or religious escape. Only when the system meets organized resistance does it come down on
you hard, as I saw with my best friend in California, Popeye Jackson. By the time I met Popeye, I’d reached the end of my journey. As a
vagabond I loved the freedom to lose myself in the individual person and
naively believed I could keep myself free of racism. But now I began to feel
that my vagabonding had been a privileged white flight—like so many others.
The conceptual framework I’m using here had become a necessary hope as well
as a means of survival in a world of oppression, but I now realized that
there were other truths and more spiritual ways of perceiving human life. I
felt that I was exploiting the suffering with my camera, and, sensing my own
growing racism, it was beginning to make me sick. It’s not pleasant to
discover you’ve become what you’re struggling against, but racism isn’t a
voluntary matter in a racist society, and I knew I was more than just a
racist. So rather than feeling ashamed, my racism made me feel part of
America, and I had to take responsibility for it by becoming an active
antiracist and helping to change the country I’d come to love. The more I
loved America, the harder it was just to silently observe its
self-destruction. While I’d taken photos, dozens of my friends had gone off to
prison—friends who’d protested the system, many without thinking about
it—while I’d been thinking and snapping away with my camera without acting. So I put my camera away and began to work with Popeye. He proved to me
that the victim, far from being helpless, is capable of resisting. He was
proud of his lower ghetto background and always dressed like a hustler. He
was the personification of the underclass, with all its openness, violence,
sexism, beautiful culture, generosity—all the things we in Europe consider
stereotypically American. Popeye had himself been on a long journey. He was
only 10 years old when he first went to jail and spent a total of 19 years in
prison. During his long confinement, his political consciousness matured, and
he felt that through Marxism he could free himself of the intensified
self-hatred imprisonment usually induces. He didn’t want Marxism to be just
an individual psychological escape or a purely analytical system, as it is
for so many European students, so he began organizing the other inmates into
the United Prisoners Union (UPU), later becoming its president. He felt it
was possible to escape the ghetto only by collectively changing the entire
system. He quickly became a well-known figure and was, for instance, chosen
as a mediator between the Hearst family and the Symbionese Liberation Army,
the terrorist group who kidnapped Patricia Hearst. Popeye’s influence on prison inmates increased, and I was told the
police had tried to get him back in prison by planting dope in his car (on
occasion they’d also threatened him with death). Working together in the UPU,
we became more and more closely bound to each other. Noticing the big holes
in my shoes, he gave me a pair of boots without a word. Though I’d stopped
taking photos, he persuaded me to take these pictures for the prison
newspaper. I promised never to tell how I smuggled the camera in, but since
Sheriff Hongisto, a closet gay, is now dead, I feel free to reveal it was
Hongisto who “jailed” me out of appreciation for my work in the gay movement. Popeye constantly tried to organize the inmates under inhuman
conditions that stifled all private life in a place where the system used
almost any means to break people down. Precisely because I myself was totally
paralyzed in these surroundings, seeing how Popeye got the other inmates to
read political literature, even though it was impossible to imagine how
anyone could read amid the ominous noise and ever-present fear, made an
indelible impression on me. Many inmates told me that Popeye had had a
similar effect on them—he wasn’t a “fake intellectual revolutionary”; he was
one of their own. Although an extremely promising organizer, Popeye was naturally not
without severe human failings that disturbed many of the volunteers in our group,
particularly the women. They’d learned a lesson from the naive Left of the
’60’s, which had romantically embraced a number of rapists as the
“avant-garde of the revolution.” Some of them left our group because of
Popeye’s sexism. I clashed intensely with them because I felt their views
were just another form of racism—an up-to-date radical way of saying: I don’t
like the underclass. “If you think a man can come out of 300 years of slavery and 19 years
of prison as an angel, you are fools. Even Martin Luther King was sexist,”
Coretta King says today.” Back then, I said, “If you think a man should be
denied a powerful leadership role until he lives up to white liberal norms in
every respect, then you’re as dangerous an enemy of affirmative action as the
worst Southern racist. If you turn your backs on Popeye now, then it’s not
their racism forcing him back into a ghetto, but yours.” Having myself ended
up in the sexist trap (page 274), I was a great defender of Popeye. But I was
also betraying him at the same time: Just as whites don’t put enough pressure
on each other’s racism, I and the other men in the group didn’t try to change
Popeye’s sexism, if only to allow him to be a more successful organizer.
Outside the prison an effective campaign was started to get Popeye
released, and at long last he was freed. We threw a big “back in the world”
party for him. Popeye had often warned me about FBI infiltrators posing as
members of the UPU. Having always trusted everybody I met in my vagabonding,
I took his warnings as normal ghetto paranoia. I had difficulty imagining
anybody I knew being secret police, so I was knocked completely out when I
experienced the terror the system used against Popeye’s union: One of my
friends—indeed, the one in whom I had the most faith—was an FBI informant. Her name was Sara Jane Moore. She was a bit older than the others, and
we thought she was a nice, sympathetic, though slightly confused, housewife
from the suburbs. It shocked us when she confessed to the newspapers that she
was a spy for the FBI but now had pangs of conscience—during our work she’d
been converted to Popeye’s views. Two months later she almost changed world history when she attempted
to shoot President Ford in Union Square. She experienced such terrible
torment over what she’d brought about with her FBI work that she wanted to
take revenge on the FBI by assassinating the head of the system, as she said. Billy, a neighbor in the building where I lived with transvestites,
knocked the gun out of Sara Jane’s hand and saved the president’s life. This
got him invited to the White House. But Billy was dating the leader of the
gay movement, Harvey Milk’s lover, Joe, and the White House rescinded the
invitation when Milk made him openly confess he was gay. (After 32 years in
prison, Sara Jane was released in 2007, and I was contacted by film and TV
companies that wanted to use my pictures of her). What had happened between these two episodes that could throw her so
off balance? Saturday night, a couple of days after our party, Popeye was
supposed to come over to select the prison pictures for our paper. He called
up, however, and said he didn’t have time; he had a meeting to go to. I said
I’d come to the meeting later and drive home with him. Only two hours before
I was set to leave, I got a phone call from Annie, crying in fear and begging
me not to go home with Popeye. If I hadn’t received that call, I wouldn’t
have been watching the news the next evening: “This is the Sunday edition of the eleven o’clock Eyewitness News. The
San Francisco Police continue their investigation into the execution-style
slaying of prison reformer Popeye Jackson, who was head of the United
Prisoners Union. Jackson was sitting in a car with Sally Voye,
a school teacher from Vallejo, when the shooting took place at 2:45 Sunday
morning. Police say they died immediately. - Now, like many of you, I love dogs. I am concerned about them.
That’s why I feed my dogs Alpo. Because meat is a dog’s natural food. That’s
what they love most. And Alpo’s meat dinner has beef products that are really
good for them. Not a speck of cereal. Not a better dog food in the world. (Police): Reports indicate that the killer first fired a shot that
smashed a window of the car. The first bullet hit Miss Voye
and then Jackson. The gunman was not there to rob the people. Wallets were
intact. This sounds like an execution-style slaying … - You could call it that. We’re working on that as a possible theory.
We have to rule out robbery. - Police say a number of people went to their windows when they heard
the shots. Police will begin questioning them tomorrow to find the killer. - Here’s how it starts. You see someone take that first mouth-watering
bite and you’ve just got to get a taste for yourself. In this world there’s
only one fried chicken that always tastes so finger lickin’
good, and you’ve got to say “HEY! It’s a Kentucky Fried Chicken day!” 450 Although it was my best friend I saw lying in a pool of blood on TV
only a few hours after I myself had planned to drive home with him on that
disastrous night, I was unable to cry the first four days—it all seemed so
unreal to me, presented, as it was, in this strange American mix of dogfood
and fried-chicken commercials. The system, with the media at its disposal,
can get away with just about anything since it’s capable of making us forget
in the next instant what we saw in the previous one. What had happened didn’t dawn on me until the funeral, and I broke
down totally in tears. I’d also come to realize that Sally, who’d worked with
prisoners and ghetto kids though she lived in the safety of a suburb, who’d
even tried to work on Popeye’s sexism, and whom I’d liked, this fantastic
woman had also been murdered—simply because she would’ve been a witness to the
assassination. My destiny would’ve been no different had I been with them
that night. Here’s Sally with Popeye a few days before their murder. The assassin
has never been established. But since Sara Jane Moore, sentenced to life in
prison, gave Playboy a harrowing account of her undercover work for the FBI,
including how the FBI threatened her life when they realized she was being
won over by Popeye’s ideas, few of us have any doubts. Popeye had often
warned me of ex-convicts who might’ve struck early-release deals with the
police. He himself was never afraid of dying in spite of the fact that, as
the San Francisco Chronicle later revealed, police had threatened to kill
him. In his last article, which he wrote while I was with him in prison, he
said: “We ought not to fear death. We are the convicted class and only
through revolution can we win our freedom and the freedom of all oppressed
people in the world.” At the funeral, where I was the only photographer invited by his
family, many of his union workers and prison friends—Indians, blacks,
Chicanos and whites—kissed him farewell. Many others wouldn’t be able to get
“back in the world” and see his tomb until a generation later. His mother,
who’d brought him cake in prison every single week for 19 years, suffered a
total breakdown in front of the coffin. There is a man who stands in all our way. And his greedy hands reach out across the world. But if we slay this man we will have peace in this land and this glorious struggle will be done. And what we want is just to have what we need and to live in peace with dignity. But these few old men, no they won’t break or bend so it’s only through their death that we’ll be free. And if we dare to fight for what, for what we want sparing none who are standing in our way: The fight is hard and long but we can’t, we can’t go wrong, for our liberation will be won. And we can meet again if we do not die for that is the price that might be paid, But if we pass this way we shall meet some day, we shall meet again if we do not die... But how long ... how long ...?
The human warmth I’d everywhere encountered—the same warmth with which
other immigrants had been welcomed with open arms—was a fresh breeze in my
life after the detachment and reticence I’d known in Europe. But the warmth
and openness of Americans stood in glaring contrast to the cruel and inhuman
ghetto system that had grown out of their own intense pain. I’d been on the
highest peaks, and I’d been in the deepest shadowy depths with one foot in
the grave of America. And the violence against oppressed peoples everywhere goes on. Between
our ghettoization of the world’s poorest, most exposed people and our climate
racism—coupled with unfair trade policies—we kill more human beings each year
than did World War II and will drive millions to our shores as refugees. Are
we ready to cover up yet another body? And just how many are we prepared to
dispose of because we fear a deeper personal change that would benefit the
world as a whole? The scene is changing. The colonized peoples, their backs to the wall,
now must serve as colonizers and oppressors. They’re sent out over the ocean
their ancestors traversed to come here. Our inhumanity has come full circle.
We’ve finally managed to create them in our civilization’s own bloody image.
Yet another child has been killed in ghetto violence (five years old). The
ring is closing. Once again a black mother must throw her child in the ocean,
as she did from one of the slave ships of 400 years ago ... the lifetime of
our system ... The ocean shall lead her back to the
shores her ancestors came from when we needed them. How much more suffering
are we going to witness—or cause? We don’t know. We throw our uncertainty in
the ocean with the ashes of our victims … |
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438
Disse fanger gjorde
modstand? Det, der fik dem til at vælge vores ultimative
straf, var ikke egentlig
nød eller sult, men ukontrollabel vrede - en ondartet cocktail af had og
selvhad, der fik dem til at foragte alt.
De er blot de synlige symptomer på vores undertrykkelse, for deres vrede
deles af alle sorte amerikanere. Deres vrede besejrer dem konstant, får dem til at snuble, hvor andre
nemt klarer sig – og i stedet for at se på årsagen til
deres vrede, skyder vi skylden for deres manglende succes på dem selv. Vi forstår ikke det ghettomonster, vi har skabt. I stedet vender vi
ryggen til det,
"masseindespærrer" det - en dag måske i
"koncentrationslejre" - og ødelægger vores eget samfund i
processen. Der er et sørgeligt efterord til dette: Da
jeg skulle anmelde filmen The Butler på dansk tv i 2013, brød jeg sammen i
tårer under den del, hvor de sorte pantere for første gang blev portrætteret
positivt - som et naturligt stadie i de sortes modstandskamp. Da gik det op
for mig, hvordan jeg selv havde fortrængt mit panter-engagement, som var med
i min oprindelige danske bog. Men da jeg startede mit show op i Reagans
Amerika i 1984, slettede jeg alle spor af det, af angst for at blive beskyldt
for at være “terrorist”. Amerika og jeg havde ændret os siden jeg mødte
Reagan i 1972, hvor jeg skamløst havde beskyldt ham for at undertrykke de
sorte. Jeg fik ret, for han var den første kandidat, der brugte “kodet”
racisme (“jungle” = ghetto, “monkies” = afrikanere)
til at vinde præsidentposten siden borgerrettighedsbevægelsen. Jeg
deltog i talrige sorte demonstrationer, lige fra de Sorte Panteres op til
nutidens Black Lives Matter-protester. Men aldrig så jeg så mange aktive
sorte som under kampen mod Reagans tveæggede racisme: For han brugte både den
farvekodede sydstatsstrategi mod sit hjemlands sorte og støttede det
Sydafrikas apartheidregime. Selv kvinder undertrykte han, da han opfordrede
diktatoren Zia til at indføre sharia-lov i Pakistan. Det gik op for mig, at
sorte altid havde forsøgt at appellere til deres undertrykkeres samvittighed,
men i Reagan-årene følte jeg, at vi undertrykkere var én stor forenet
sammensværgelse af hvide, jøder, muslimer og indvandrere (selv sorte
indvandrere, i det mindste på universiteterne) mod vores fælles korsfæstede
ofre. Derfor delte jeg den sorte frustration over at demonstrere mod folk,
der ligesom Reagan grundlæggende var gode i hjertet (som hans gravskrift siger).
446
Men lad os ikke glemme, at
for dem, som kan tilpasse sig dette gulag-system,
kan vort samfund set inde fra vore tilgitrede, angstfyldte og øde gader
opleves som det frieste i verden. En bog som denne vil blive hilst med åbne
arme, fordi systemet er så stærkt og massivt i sin undertrykkelse, at al
kritik preller af og bliver til underholdning eller religiøs flugt. Først når
systemet møder organiseret modstand, slår det ned med hård hånd, som jeg oplevede
det med min bedste ven i Californien, Popeye Jackson. Popeye forsøgte konstant at organisere de
indsatte under umenneskelige forhold, der kvæler alt privatliv på et sted,
hvor systemet brugte næsten alle midler til at knække folk. Netop fordi jeg selv var totalt lammet i disse
omgivelser, gjorde det et uudsletteligt indtryk på mig at se, hvordan Popeye
fik de andre indsatte til at læse politisk
litteratur, selv om det var umuligt at forestille sig, hvordan nogen kunne
læse midt i den ildevarslende støj og den evige frygt. Mange
indsatte fortalte mig, at Popeye havde haft en lignende effekt på dem - han
var ikke en "falsk intellektuel revolutionær"; han var en af deres
egne.
To måneder senere ændrede hun næsten
verdenshistorien, da hun forsøgte at skyde præsident Ford. Hun havde fået så stærke sjælekvaler over det, hun havde forårsaget med sit
FBI-arbejde, at hun ønskede at hævne sig på FBI ved at myrde systemets leder,
som hun sagde. Billy, en nabo i den bygning, hvor jeg
boede med transvestitter, slog pistolen ud af Sara Janes hånd og reddede
præsidentens liv. Det fik ham inviteret ind i Det Hvide Hus. Men Billy var
kæreste med lederen af bøssebevægelsen, Harvey Milks elsker, Joe, og Det
Hvide Hus tilbagekaldte invitationen, da Milk fik ham til åbent at tilstå, at
han var bøsse. (Efter 32 år i fængsel blev Sara Jane løsladt i 2007, og jeg
blev kontaktet af film- og tv-selskaber, der ønskede at bruge mine billeder
af hende). Reklame: -Ligesom mange af jer, elsker
jeg hunde. Jeg føler meget stærkt for dem. Derfor giver jeg mine hunde ”Alpo.” For kød er en hunds naturlige mad. Det er det, de
elsker mest. Alpos kødmiddag indeholder
oksekødsprodukter, som virkelig er gode for dem. Der er ikke et gram mel i.
Hvis De giver Deres hund ”Alpo,” behøver De ikke at
give den noget som helst andet. Der findes ikke bedre hundemad i verden! Politichef: – Det ser ud, som om
drabsmanden først skød vinduet ud af bilen og derpå skød på nært hold. Første
kugle ramte Sally Voye og den næste Popeye Jackson.
Tilsyneladende forsøgte morderen ikke at stjæle fra dem. Vi fandt pengesedler
og mønter i de afdødes lommer. (TV-mand) : – Det kunne se ud til at være en
henrettelse? – Ja, det er en meget god teori. – Er det
den teori, I arbejder efter? - Vi arbejder med det som en mulig teori. Vi må
se bort fra almindeligt røveri. – Politiet siger, at folk i gaden løb til
vinduerne, da de hørte skuddene. I morgen vil politiet udspørge dem for at
finde drabsmanden. – Her er, hvordan det hele starter. Her
ser De Mr. Jones, som tager den første mundvandsdryppende bid af en ”Kentucky
Stegt Kylling,” og den uimodståelige aroma får også Dem til at tage en bid. I
hele verden er der kun een stegt kylling, som
smager så fingerslikkende godt, at De må sige Whauw!
Det er Kentuckystegt Kyllingedag i dag.” Skønt det var min bedste ven, jeg så ligge i en blodpøl på Tv-skærmen
kun få timer efter, at jeg selv skulle have kørt med ham hjem denne
skæbnesvangre nat, var jeg ude af stand til at græde de første fire dage – så
uvirkeligt forekom det hele mig i denne underlige amerikanske blanding af hundefoder
og reklamefilm for stegte kyllinger.
Systemet kan med medierne til sin rådighed slippe af sted med næsten alt, da
det er i stand til at få os til at glemme det næste øjeblik, hvad vi netop har set.
There is a man who stands in all our way. And his greedy hands reach out across the world. But if we slay this man we will have peace in this land and this glorious struggle will be done. And what we want is just to have what we need and to live in peace with dignity. But these few old men, no they won’t break or bend so it’s only through their death that we’ll be free. And if we dare to fight for what, for what we want sparing none who are standing in our way: The fight is hard and long but we can’t, we can’t go wrong, for our liberation will be won. And we can meet again if we do not die for that is the price that might be paid, But if we pass this way we shall meet some day, we shall meet again if we do not die... Popeye var den sidste ven,
jeg ønskede at sige farvel til på denne måde. Efter mordene på Popeye og
Sally kunne jeg ikke holde det ud længere og flygtede ud af landet. Alle mine
følelser og sanser var dræbt. Jeg havde mistet 12 af mine bedste venner og bekendte
til denne meningsløse amerikanske vold, og talrige andre var forsvundet i
fængsler for livstid. Den menneskelige varme, jeg
havde mødt overalt - den samme varme, som andre indvandrere var blevet
modtaget af med åbne arme - var et frisk pust i mit liv efter den
tilbageholdenhed og tillukkethed, jeg havde kendt i Europa. Men amerikanernes
varme og åbenhed stod i så skærende kontrast til det grusomme og
umenneskeliggørende ghettosystem, der var vokset ud af deres egen dybe
smerte. Jeg havde været på de
højeste tinder i Amerika, og jeg havde været i de dybeste skyggefulde dale
nær gravens rand. Men volden fortsætter –
volden mod alle undertrykte folk. Mellem vores ghettoisering af verdens
fattigste og mest udsatte mennesker og vores klimaracisme - kombineret med
uretfærdig handelspolitik - dræber vi hvert år flere mennesker end under
Anden Verdenskrig og vil drive millioner af mennesker til vores kyster som
flygtninge. Er vi klar til at dække over endnu et lig? Og hvor mange er vi
parate til at smide væk, fordi vi frygter en dybere forandring af os selv,
som ville gavne verden som helhed? Billedet er ved at vende
sig. De koloniserede folk, der står med ryggen mod muren, må nu tjene som
deres egne udbyttere og undertrykkere. De sendes ud over det hav, som deres
forfædre krydsede for at komme hertil. Vores umenneskelighed har nået den
fulde cirkel. Vi har endelig formået at skabe dem i vores civilisations eget
blodige billede. Endnu et barn er blevet dræbt i ghettovolden – 5 år gammelt.
Ringen er ved at lukke sig. Endnu en gang må en sort mor kaste sit barn i
havet, som hun gjorde fra slaveskibene for 400 år siden ... vores systems
levetid ... Havet skal føre hende
tilbage til de kyster, som hendes forfædre kom fra, da vi havde brug for dem.
Hvor megen lidelse skal vi endnu være vidner til – eller årsag til. Vi ved
det ikke. Vi kaster uvisheden i havet med asken af vort offer….. Ship Ahoy! Ship Ahoy! Ship Ahoy! As far as your eye can see, men, women and baby slaves, coming to the land of Liberty, where life’s design is already made – So young and so strong they’re just waiting to be saved... |