Emmett Till versus Oscar Grant

At the recent SF Freedom School session, we had a very involved and interesting discussion that revolved around comparing the events and organizing surrounding the murder of Emmett Till (1955 in MS) and Oscar Grant (2009 in Oakland). As with most discussions of events that are very emotional and complex, we were only beginning to scratch the surface when we had to stop.

I am hoping we can use the blog to keep the conversation going.... Face to face is superior to blogs, but blogs have their place too.

Here are the notes from the  easel pad....where do we go from here?

news media focus:

• ET = national/intl news on miscarriage of justice; local MS papers criticizing outside attention;
• OG = media focused on "violence" of protests

Picture is work a thousand words:

• ET = Jet Magazine (galvanizes black national community)
  
• OG = cell phone videos (undermines white denial of cops' culpability)
  

jury deliberation:

• ET = 67 minutes;
• OG = 9 hours

defense argument:

• ET = body was not Till's;
• OG = Did Mehserle intend to kill Grant?

role of federal govt:

• ET = refused to intervene;
• OG = plans to file civil suit after criminal verdict

goal of organizing around murder:

• ET = Bryant and Milam convicted of murder and kidnapping;
• OG = disband/disarm BART police, civilian oversight of police; jail all cops involved, media stop demonizing Grant, jobs and education for minority youth, free all political prisoners, drop charges against SF 8, end gang injunctions, revise police bill of rights, end 3 strikes, review hiring and training practices of police, money to oscar grant's family, drop charges against those arrested in protest, federal government intervene to protect the civil rights of Grant family and Oakland community

immediate result of trail:

• ET = Bryant and Milam acquitted, get paid to tell their story to LIFE magazine;
• O.G. = Mehserle convicted of manslaughter.

other effects or lack thereof:

• ET = In Friendship formed in response to Till's murder to raise money for civil rights activities, positioned to be able to support Montgomery Bus Boycott 100 days after murder; contributions to existing civil rights organizations (NAACP, FOR, CORE and local independents) rise dramatically; American Jewish Committee begins lobbying Congress to bolster existing Civil Rights legislation; black MS sharecroppers boycott Bryant's store and put him out of business; a generation of activists (e.g., John Lewis) are shaken out of their paralysis by the Till case to look for ways to make change, when they get to college, they discover workshops on nonviolent direct action being taught by employees of SCLC and FOR.
• O.G. = Pirone and Doemenici are fired; BART police lose Tasers until they are retrained; legislation is pending in CA House for civilian oversight of Oakland cops; nonprofits work with city officials to find ways for youth to vent their feelings in a nonviolent way; anarchists continue to exploit peaceful protests to provoke police violence; initial groups creating coalitions like CAPE unable to sustain their activity beyond a few months; direct action not coordinated and sustained over time; not part of a national movement against institutional racism (such as police brutality).

Lessons???? drawn re: organizing from comparing two events in their contexts?

• Make sure you share what's happened
• work is never over (e.g., protests forced arrest of Mehserle and firing of Pirone and Doemenici, but after verdict, more organizing to ensure that civilian oversight happens and it has teeth, actually effects police training and behavior)
  
• empowerment comes from being part of a group (need to get over our fears of speaking up today)
• don't count on the media to support your cause
• racism is institutional
• One cannot look to the legal system for "justice" (decisions can be used to organize for institutional and paradigm changes)
• To what degree are social justice organizations today working together?
• What role did JET magazine play in successfully getting the word out about what actually happened to Emmett Till? What are the counterparts to JET today, are they as successful in gaining support for organizing against police executions today as JET was as successful in helping people organize against institutional lynching and terrorism in 1955?

Sing don't Chant

Saturday morning I participated in a picket and distributed leaflets against NCLB in front of the Moscone Center. Phil Brown from Eliminate NCLB, Phil Kovacs from Educator Roundtable,
Joe Lucido from Fresno and Craig Gordon from OEA came with others from their organizations and joined SF's Teachers 4 Social Justice Saturday morning, April 14th to picket and hand out literature to those attending the National School Board Association's annual meeting. (Thanks to Karen and Dawn for taking the lead in organizing the SF folks -- and kudos to Eric and Mark for coming out and joining us.)
The groups from Fresno and King's County/Tulare had gotten up at some god awful time in the morning (5 AM?) to get on buses and arrive at 7:30 AM. Phil Brown guessed that they handed out 7500 flyers. Dawn and I arrived at 10 AM and handed out our flyers. We were shooed away from the doors of the Center and put on a traffic island where we joined those walking in a oval who were chanting. I immediately thought of one of Bruce Hartford's "seven key concepts of nonviolent direct action"-- chanting is to singing as a mouse is to an elephant. I told Marsha Feinland of the Peace and Freedom Party that we had to sing and not chant. (Singing can be heard farther away, the words carry farther; you can sing a lot longer than you can chant; singing invites people in while chanting pushes people away; lyrics of songs tend to be much more informative than chants, etc.). So on the spot, Marsha and I tried to come up with a song. We took the tune of "Row, Row, Row your Boat" and sang,

Test, test, test the kids
send them down the stream
N--, C---, L---, B---
makes you want to scream

Not the greatest attempt, but we tried. The problem is picking a tune that everyone knows and likes but is not complicated, lends itself to lyrics where a few new lyrics can easily be plugged in. This was my small attempt to take the lessons learned in the SF Freedom School and apply them today.

later that day I thought of another verse to Row, Row, Row you Boat:

test, test, test some more
until they bubble in
N--, C---, L---, B---
Don't believe the spin

Then to the tune of When the Saints Come Marching In:

Oh when the schools
stop giving tests
Oh when the schools stop giving tests,
I want to be in that classroom,
when the schools stop giving tests

Oh when the schools
get fully funded (get needed funds?)
oh when the schools get fully funded
I want to be in that classroom
when the schools get fully funded