Charleston!
By Ted Glick
I’m
not a pacifist. I believe that people have a right to self-defense. But
I do believe that, in the United States, nonviolent tactics are the
tactics we should use. Beyond that, I believe that those who want a
world of justice, peace and higher love must be about transforming
ourselves into people who are not-violent, physically, emotionally,
spiritually. We must be like this in all ways as much as possible, as
far as our interactions with one another and with all life on the
planet. We will not transform this fundamentally unjust, oppressive and
violent world if we, as change agents, are not fundamentally transformed
and transforming as human beings.
Is
this a contradiction with my chanting, “Death to the Klan,“ as I did
two days ago as part of a demonstration in downtown Newark, NJ? The
demonstration was called by the Peoples Organization for Progress in
response to the murders on June 17th of nine African American people taking part in Bible study in an AME church in downtown Charleston, South Carolina.
When I got the call late Thursday night about the demonstration the next afternoon, I was glad to get it and decided right then that I would go.
The
event began with close to 100 of us, primarily African American but
with maybe a dozen white people, forming a semi-circle as POP Chair
Larry Hamm got the program going. First to speak after Larry were a
Christian minister, a Muslim imam and a Jewish woman, an impromptu
interfaith service to ground us in a larger view of what happened in
Charleston as we all struggled to come to grips with the immense crime
we were there to protest.
Speakers
connected this horrible racist crime to the police murders of black
people over the past year and over many, many years, to the
institutionalized racism and skin color-based inequality that continue,
no matter the skin color of the current resident of the White House.
As
people spoke, I kept thinking: “This terrible crime happened because of
a deep-seated culture of white supremacy and white racism in the USA,
with racist organizations pushing their sick ideology and sickening the
hearts and minds of too many white people. We must be about building a
very different culture that affirms the humanity of all people, opposes
racism, injustice and all forms of inequality, and takes visible action
in support of these values.” I felt the embodiment of that culture, that
loving and activist culture, as the event’s program unfolded.
At
a certain point, Larry Hamm organized us into a march through the heart
of downtown Newark and back to the point where we had first rallied, in
front of a statue of Abraham Lincoln. As that march arrived back at
that point, Larry led us in a chant I’ve never heard before at a POP
march: “Death to the Klan.” Before this we had been chanting, “Stop
racist violence, now!”, “No justice, no peace,” and similar chants.
I
joined in the “Death to the Klan” chant. My immediate thought as I did
so was to the effect that the chant was calling for an end to the KKK as
an organization, and that was something I supported 100%. Though I’m
all for free speech, I don’t support organized efforts to propagate acts
of hate, violence or oppressive discrimination against people on the
basis of skin color, religion, nationality, gender, sexual orientation
or any other God-given characteristic.
Beyond
that, all of us, whatever our ethnic background, should openly support
efforts to affirmatively address institutionalized racism and move our
society toward genuine equality.
How
sad that in the year 2015, 47 years after Martin Luther King, Jr. was
killed in Memphis, such a vicious and terrible act could take place in
this country. In response, white people, white people in particular,
must reflect seriously on our responsibility to speak out against racism
in all its forms, wherever we encounter it, as we interact with other
white people. We can do nothing less.
Ted Glick has been a progressive activist since 1968. Past writings and other information can be found at http://tedglick.com, and he can be followed on Twitter at http://twitter/com/jtglick.
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