Response on racist police violence in Baltimore: Nonviolence as Compliance

Ta-Nehisi Coates Apr 27, 2015
About the Author

Ta-Nehisi Coates is a national correspondent at The Atlantic, where he writes about culture, politics, and social issues. He is the author of the memoir The Beautiful Struggle. @tanehisicoates

Officials calling for calm can offer no rational justification for Gray's death, and so they appeal for order.

Rioting broke out on Monday in Baltimore—an angry response to the death of Freddie Gray, a death my native city seems powerless to explain. Gray did not die mysteriously in some back alley but in the custody of the city's publicly appointed guardians of order. And yet the mayor of that city and the commissioner of that city's police still have no idea what happened. I suspect this is not because the mayor and police commissioner are bad people, but because the state of Maryland prioritizes the protection of police officers charged with abuse over the citizens who fall under its purview.
The citizens who live in West Baltimore, where the rioting began, intuitively understand this. I grew up across the street from Mondawmin Mall, where today's riots began. My mother was raised in the same housing project, Gilmor Homes, where Freddie Gray was killed. Everyone I knew who lived in that world regarded the police not with admiration and respect but with fear and caution. People write these feelings off as wholly irrational at their own peril, or their own leisure. The case against the Baltimore police, and the society that superintends them, is easily made:

Over the past four years, more than 100 people have won court judgments or settlements related to allegations of brutality and civil rights violations. Victims include a 15-year-old boy riding a dirt bike, a 26-year-old pregnant accountant who had witnessed a beating, a 50-year-old woman selling church raffle tickets, a 65-year-old church deacon rolling a cigarette and an 87-year-old grandmother aiding her wounded grandson ....
And in almost every case, prosecutors or judges dismissed the charges against the victims—if charges were filed at all. In an incident that drew headlines recently, charges against a South Baltimore man were dropped after a video showed an officer repeatedly punching him—a beating that led the police commissioner to say he was “shocked.”

The money paid out by the city to cover for the brutal acts of its police department would be enough to build "a state-of-the-art rec center or renovations at more than 30 playgrounds." Instead, the money was used to cover for the brutal acts of the city's police department and ensure they remained well beyond any semblance of justice.

Now, tonight, I turn on the news and I see politicians calling for young people in Baltimore to remain peaceful and "nonviolent." These well-intended pleas strike me as the right answer to the wrong question. To understand the question, it's worth remembering what, specifically, happened to Freddie Gray. An officer made eye contact with Gray. Gray, for unknown reasons, ran. The officer and his colleagues then detained Gray. They found him in possession of a switchblade. They arrested him while he yelled in pain. And then, within an hour, his spine was mostly severed. A week later, he was dead. What specifically was the crime here? What particular threat did Freddie Gray pose? Why is mere eye contact and then running worthy of detention at the hands of the state? Why is Freddie Gray dead?

When nonviolence begins halfway through the war with the aggressor calling time out, it exposes itself as a ruse.

The people now calling for nonviolence are not prepared to answer these questions. Many of them are charged with enforcing the very policies that led to Gray's death, and yet they can offer no rational justification for Gray's death and so they appeal for calm. But there was no official appeal for calm when Gray was being arrested. There was no appeal for calm when Jerriel Lyles was assaulted. (“The blow was so heavy. My eyes swelled up. Blood was dripping down my nose and out my eye.”) There was no claim for nonviolence on behalf of Venus Green. (“Bitch, you ain’t no better than any of the other old black bitches I have locked up.”) There was no plea for peace on behalf of Starr Brown. (“They slammed me down on my face,” Brown added, her voice cracking. “The skin was gone on my face.")
When nonviolence is preached as an attempt to evade the repercussions of political brutality, it betrays itself. When nonviolence begins halfway through the war with the aggressor calling time out, it exposes itself as a ruse. When nonviolence is preached by the representatives of the state, while the state doles out heaps of violence to its citizens, it reveals itself to be a con. And none of this can mean that rioting or violence is "correct" or "wise," any more than a forest fire can be "correct" or "wise." Wisdom isn't the point tonight. Disrespect is. In this case, disrespect for the hollow law and failed order that so regularly disrespects the community.

Related Story

A State of Emergency in Baltimore

Days of Rage in Baltimore and Mexico

Greg Grandin on April 28, 2015 in The Nation

Protesters mark the seven-month anniversary of the Ayotzinapa students' disappearance in Chilpancingo, Mexico. (Reuters/Emiliano Torres) 

Yesterday, as Baltimore restaged the intifada, protesters in Mexico, in Chilpancingo, the capital of the state of Guerrero, rammed a flaming truck into the glass-fronted congressional building, and set fire to at least six other vehicles. They had taken to the streets to mark the seven-month anniversary of the disappearances of the 43 students, who have come to represent the hundreds of thousands of dead as a result of US-Mexico’s drug, immigration, and trade policies (a number of the relatives of the disappeared are currently in New York, where they are appealing to the United Nations to end Washington’s so-called Merida Initiative, or Plan Mexico, which sends billions of dollars to Mexico to supposedly fight drugs but which the relatives of the 43 say goes to “suppress dissent”).
Elsewhere this week, in Oaxaca, protesters did damage to the building of the governing Partido Revolucionario Institucional. Videos of the Chilpancingo protest are here, here, here. In Mexico City, demonstrators erected an “anti-monument,” a large red 43 in the middle of the business center.
Obviously, the right way to think about the murder of Freddie Gray and the protests that followed is to think deeply about slavery and post-Abolition racism in the United States. Immediately after the trouble began yesterday, historians and critics on social media were broadcasting information about Baltimore’s history as a slave port, its long history of police brutality, its equally long history of resisting race terror. Apparently, Spiro Agnew’s law-and-order response to a protest that turned violent in 1968 bought him his spot on Nixon’s ticket.
One can also, without diluting the power of that deep history, think about the repression and reaction laterally, as an effect of the same transnational policing and trade policies responsible for the disappearance of the 43 student-activists in Mexico. Since the August murder of Michael Brown and the September abduction of the 43 Mexican students, #BlackLivesMatter and #TodosSomosAyotzinapa are just two of the hashtags that have captured distinct heterodox protest movements that are converging.
I was at an event the other night at CUNY, a “Citizen’s Tribunal,” part of a “caravan” that is bringing the parents and advocates of the 43 disappeared to over 40 US cities (Roberto Lovato writes about it here in The Nation). At the CUNY event, a lawyer for the parents said that the two principal obstacles to “neoliberalism”—and hence the two principal targets of neoliberalism’s enforcers—were the ejidos, that is, peasant communities who still hold and work their land in common, and the rural teacher-training institutes (like the one where the 43 were enrolled), which for decades has taken the lead in protesting the dispossession generated by “free trade.” In the wake of Baltimore, that observation put me to think that Mexican peasant communities and African-American urban communities are broadly structurally analogous in their relation to “free trade” capitalism.
On both sides of the border, the absence of any sane, humane, industrial or rural policy has created concentrations of dispensable peoples. On both sides of the border, children of these dispensable people are most vulnerable. “In 2007, Baltimore City African American infants were almost nine times more likely to die before age 1 than White infants residing in Baltimore City.” In Mexico, the southern agrarian states, including Guerrero, that have suffered under NAFTA have similarly stunningly high rates of infant mortality. On both sides of the border, these people, the victims of failed government policy, are then blamed for the failure of government policy, their culture, their attitude, their “values,” and their music (rap, hip-hop, and the narcocorrido). On both sides of the border, rolling protests, days of rage and frustration like those seen in Baltimore and Chilpancingo have difficulty coalescing into a national movement, building a coalition with elites or national-level political parties due to the fragmentation of politics, itself an effect of government economic policy.

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On both sides of the border, US federal money funds the overpolicing of the crisis. “The weapons that are given to Mexico [by Washington] are used to kill us, not help us,” said Blanca Luz Nava Velez, whose 19-year-old son, Jorge, is among the missing. And on both side of the border, the crisis is generated by federal policies (enacted by both Washington and Mexico City) that are designed to keep pay low and jobs precarious: What demands can a segregated labor force divided by a garrisoned border make on capital that can go anywhere it wants, anytime it wants?
Advocates of the North American Free Trade Agreement did say that economic liberalization would bring about a convergence. They were right. Just wait to see what the TPP brings.

Stop Legitimating Injustice and Legitimate Justice for Refugees 2015

Refugee's manifestation in Lutherstadt Wittenberg on 16.04.2015: With Refugees as Guest Speakers from Schwäebish Gmünd Video: Schwäebish Gmünd Refugee Activists Tour and Discussions on Civil Disobedience against Imprisonment and Movement Restriction (RESIDENZPFLICHT)
Press Conference: 14:00 Hour Date: 16.04.2015
Time: 14:00 Uhr
Venue: Lutherstadt Wittenberg (Marktplatz)
Lutherstadt Wittenberg, April 08, 2015
Refugee self-organizations and initiatives are holding a manifestation to denounce an illicit practice of depriving registered refugees in their legal existence and to demand legalization of “Tolerated Refugees (Duldung)” that have been residing in Germany for so many years without compromise.
The demand addresses to BAMF and its 530 foreigners offices in Germany. The foreign office of Lutherstadt Wittenberge implements inhuman measure that destroys our lives and perspectives and its implementations are not compatible to the Administrative Laws, Asylum Law and the German Foreigners law.
The Foreign Office's inhuman measures contribute to destroy refugees perspective for so many years.1 They interdicted refugees not to work, not to make driving license, not to have bank account, not to have health insurance card, their movements are restricted, subjected to repression and oppression, exposed refugees lives to danger, with deportation treats, deprived refugees their legal existence and right, used as an object of securing their own existence and work, isolated and humiliated and those politically active are criminalized and persecuted.
They used “Cooperation” as a pretext.2
These implementations and aggressive measures applied to refugees in this 21 century contributes in destroying refugees lives and perspectives, deteriorate refugees' health conditions etc, and contradicts the world's inter-dependency and globalization process that the Federal Republic of Germany profits.
Therefore, we demand the legalization of all refugees that have been residing in Germany for so many years without compromise. They should be compensated for their lives and perspective being destroyed.
Stop destroying their lives and perspectives. Stop Legitimating Injustice and Legitimate Justice for Refugees 2015
Flüchtlingsbewegung Sachsen-Anhalt, The Caravan for the Right of Refugees and Migrant and The Voice Refugee Forum
Contact Information
Wittenberg, 017699321843, Vockerode 015225951740, Bitterfeld 015206302191
For more information
http://thecaravan.org/node/4289, http://www.thevoiceforum.org/node/3894 http://refugeeinitiativewittenberg.blogspot.de/2015/03/refugees-protest-manifestation-in.html
1 Up to 10 to 17 years and even more
2 Refugees have presented their official document but still they insisted that he or she does not cooperate

Lampedusa in Hamburg presents: A 3 days manifestation for the continuity of our political fight

Join us as we intensify the struggle for our demands and the right to stay for all.19th-21th March, 16-19Uhr @ our Lampedusa infostand, Steindamm II. you are all invited!!

Ivana Hoffmann will always live in our hearts

Ivana, a 19 year old woman from Germany with combat name Avaşin Tekoşin Güneş died on 7th of March 2015 defending the assyrian village Til Hemis against attacka by the Islamic State.

Refugee Activists on Civil Disobedience against imprisonment

“Residenzpflicht still means Apartheid”
“Lager still means elimination”

 Refugees from Schwäbisch Gmünd on civil disobedience against imprisonment, Restriction of Movement and refugee persecution in Germany
Leke Aremu, Farook Khan, Raphael Paul, Frankline Ndam
We fled from persecution from our various home countries but still the same persecution continues in Germany. We refugees arriving in Germany are already criminalized at the borders by forceful finger printing before our names are even known.
Our political protest started in February 2014 when we discovered the violation of our privacy by being exposed to CCTV camera observation (Close Circuit Tele Vision) that had been installed at the entrance of the isolated refugee Lager in Schwäbisch Gmünd without prior notification. We sent an inmate delegate to the responsible authorities to let them know how we feel about the CCTV camera positioned opposite the entrance of the lager. We stated that it gives us the precarious impression to be held under surveillance control which makes us feel to be prisoners in fear and insecurity to scare us from Self-Organization in the isolated refugee Lager. But the district officials of Schwäbisch Gmünd refused to accept our demand for the removal of the CCTV camera.
Due to this reason, we decided to hold a one month strike from the 3rd of March to 11th of April 2014 with rallies and peaceful demonstrations against the CCTV Camera in the refugee lager, in the city center and at the district administrative office of Ostalbkreis in Aalen for public interest until our demand is met. Instead of negotiating the matter they involved the police to back up their refusal of mediation. We were brutalized by the city police who never was able to comprehend our own side of the story. During the demonstration on the 11th of April 2014 at 14:13 hour the police forces arrived and later attacked refugee demonstrators inside the Lager. Two of the refugees were bitten and injured by the police dogs and four of the refugees got arrested. They only were released after two hours due to the protest of the other refugees in front of the police station. At the same time the CCTV camera silently disappeared.
Our struggle continued by exposing all the different forms of persecution of refugees. That’s why we were humiliated and labeled as so called “trouble makers” by the administrative officials as to justify our criminalization and to target us as enemies of public order and security. Even our photos were published in the local newspapers. Since then we have been receiving many letters of accusations with the aim to stop our protest which led to further exclusion through a three month “stay away order” which banned us from entrance to the social administrative office in the refugee Lager. They set up false accusations of “duress/assault” (Nötigung) as to defame against our freedom to protest as well as to justify police brutality and the ignorance of fficials of the lager against the demonstrators. One of our activists was itten by a police dog released to attack without accountable reason is now till under charges to have prevented police officers from executing their duty although he was just defending himself from further injury. He received penalty order to pay 750 Euro. After he appealed against it, the local court (Amtsgericht) of Schwäbisch Gmünd reduced the fine to 300 Euro. Now the case is pending at the regional court (Landgericht) for retrial. The intention is to find out whether the superior court will still defend the harmful, irresponsible and unlawful action of the police officers against the refugee protest in the Lager in order to uphold the scandalous criminalization of the victims. This lesson we had to learn already from numerous murder cases of refugees like Oury Jalloh and others, who have been killed through the hands of German police officers.
After a Racial Profiling police control on the way to a political and media workshop on self-organized refugee resistance and anti-deportation struggles in Jena, 10 of us have been fined with 130 Euro and 50cent each for breaking the isolation of the notorious lager by intentionally violating the “German Residenzpflicht” – Apartheid Law that restricts refugees to administrative regions of residence denying their freedom to move freely in Germany.
In continuity of our political struggle we have been continuously maltreated and isolated by this apartheid law of so called “Residenzpflicht”. We were racially controlled by the police in the train and consecutively charged to pay fines and charges to the very system of our arbitrary repression. We refuse to pay this “penalty” because we see the “Residenzpflicht” law as an abuse of our basic human right to freedom of movement and from racist discrimination.
Since then, we have been receiving threatening letters of escalating scale as far as coercive detention with the last letter requesting to report ourselves to Ellwangen prison for three day confinement for a matter that we understand to be our basic right in Germany.
As refugee activists we translate this abuse of administrative and legal powers as deterrent expression of injustice, repression and mental torture affixed with the German asylum system.
These conditions make us remember the very dark times and continuities of German nationalist history back through fascist and colonial terror and genocides. We will not stop to stand and fight against the German mentality of supremacy by means of lager isolation, police brutality and abusive perversion of human rights against refugees. We did not flee from life threatening situations to be held again as hostages of exclusion and arbitrariness in the German apartheid and lager system.
We refuse to pay fines for our rights
We refuse to accept any imprisonment “in Silence”
We refuse to accept any state persecution of refugees in Schwäbisch Gmünd and Germany
“Residenzpflicht”-persecution is still going on – the so called “Abolition” is a devious lie
We demand for life decided by our own in freedom and human dignity
We call on everyone for solidarity
Express your views and feelings in public actions
Send in your protest notes to the authorities

Refugees from Schwäbisch Gmünd on civil disobedience

Schwäbisch Gmünd – Political Fight is Our Right
Civil and Legal Disobedience
Time line: Videos and Facebook Documentation
Liberation Bus Tour 30.04.2013 Schwäbisch Gmünd
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wUvJEfELPtM
(Call: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=glo4NpUB4DU)
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Refugee Initiative Schwäbisch Gmünd
Protest against Lager Repression in Schwäbisch Gmünd – written Chronical
and Foto-Documentation
https://de-de.facebook.com/refugeesinitiative/photos/a.370255696420901.1...
(10.04.2014)
Refugees Protest continues (11.04.2014):
https://de-de.facebook.com/refugeesinitiative/posts/553560818090387
Police Brutality with dogs and Pepper spray as Refugee protest continues
against CCTV (11.04.2014)
https://de-de.facebook.com/refugeesinitiative/posts/553776501402152
Call after Police Brutality Escalation on 13.04.2014:
https://de-de.facebook.com/refugeesinitiative/posts/554951781284624
Report on Police Dogs biting Refugees in Schwäbisch Gmünd
(Beobachternews 15.04.2014)
https://de-de.facebook.com/refugeesinitiative/posts/555731694539966
SOLIDARITY STATEMENT FOR THE REFUGEES in Schwabisch Gmünd by
International Migrants Alliance -European Section (19.04.2014)
https://www.facebook.com/refugeesinitiative/photos/a.370255696420901.107...
Protest-Demo in Jena 20.04.2014 Police Station after Racial Profiling
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-bt8LLtRvfo
Statement: http://thevoiceforum.org/node/3571
Fight Lager Repression – Lagerverfolgung bekämpfen! 03.05.2014
https://de-de.facebook.com/refugeesinitiative/posts/566804406766028
Info Tent against Police Brutality and administrative Repression in
Schwäbisch Gmünd 16.-18.05.2014
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bi5legTkI0k
Facebook comments:
https://www.facebook.com/refugeesinitiative/posts/578918395554629
https://www.facebook.com/refugeesinitiative/posts/576452549134547
Protest and meeting with the Ministry of Integration at Stuttgart
Landtag 05.06.2014
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZBGJ3DJkmLM
Facebook comments:
https://de-de.facebook.com/refugeesinitiative/posts/588666127913189
https://www.facebook.com/refugeesinitiative/posts/592502494196219
Residenzpflicht Protest Schwäbisch Gmünd 21.-23.08.2014
https://de-de.facebook.com/refugeesinitiative/posts/633210956792039
Residenzpflicht! Keine Haft für Bewegungsfreiheit! – Action Days
Stuttgart 23.-24.09.2014
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9yIXKJ5P4WM
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Associated engagements of Refugees Initiative Schwäbisch Gmünd:
http://thevoiceforum.org/search/node/schw%C3%A4bisch%20gm%C3%BCnd
Refugee Activist stormed Deportation Hearing on Munich Airport (10.04.2014)
https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.553323328114136.1073741828.307...
Preparation Meeting 20 Years of The VOICE Refugee Forum – Democratic
Insecurity! (06.-07.09.2014) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yILtzQ_WBTk
Break the Culture of Deportation, Isolation and Elimination
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zrjWJ8K48vo
Abolition of the ‘Residenzpflicht’ law?
The most important changes:
For refugees with ‘Aufenthaltsgestattung’ the geographical restriction (restriction of movement) “expires” after three months of stay.
After that they are allowed to move freely within the German territory without a permit.
The obligation to reside in a particular place remains.
Unfortunately, there are many exceptions:
1. A final conviction because of a criminal offense (no minimum penalty or limitation), if it is not because of a violation of immigration laws.
2. Violation of the ”Betäubungsmittelgesetz” (= drug possession), even if there was no conviction by a court.
3. If “concrete measures to terminate residence” are imminent. But this should never(!) be the case with persons with ‘Aufenthaltsgestattung’.
Refugees who fall within these exceptions are, as usual, at the mercy of the foreigners authorities.
For refugees with ‘Duldung’, the geographical restriction (restriction of movement) “expires” after three months of stay as well.
At least in theory: Lawyers fear that the claim of foreigners authorities that “concrete measures to terminate residence” are imminent will enable the authorities to “tie” refugees arbitrarily to certain districts at any time – as before.
These things will stay as they were:
• For asylum seekers in reception centers the stay will remain restricted to the district of the foreigners authority. In Brandenburg this is the Municipality of Eisenhüttenstadt.
• The absurd and unique rule within the German legal system thatviolations of the geographical restriction are first considered an administrative offense and, in the event they are repeated, wilful offense.
More information:
http://oplatz.net/2015/01/13/the-fight-against-residenzpflicht-has-to-go...
http://women-in-exile.net/2015/01/02/changes-of-the-residenzpflicht-law/

10th anniversary of Oury Jallohs murder in cell no 5 in Dessau Police station

1.000 people joined the march in the Eastern German city Dessau heading to the police station on 7th of January 2015, where exactly 10 Years ago, the Sierra Leonean Refugee Oury Jalloh was burned to death in cell No. 5.
http://thecaravan.org/node/4241