This year, we want to remember Martin Luther King Jr., the man who inspires Civil Rights activists to this day. Almost 60 years ago he delivered his “I Have a Dream” speech in our nation’s capital. He preached a message of unity amidst racial violence, and love, even in the presence of hatred. His dream remains unrealized.
“We must learn to live together as brothers or perish together as fools”
-Martin Luther King Jr.
On Jan. 6th, thousands of insurrectionists stormed our capitol. Half a century later, we are still fighting racial injustice. America prides itself on “E Pluribus Unum”, but our nation has never felt so divided. Click each profile to read our thoughts on capitol insurrection, presented by the members of Abantu Audio.
Andres R Gomez
If Martin Luther King Jr. were alive today, he’d be younger than the Queen of England. The 10th President of the United States, John Tyler, has a grandson who is alive today. That was six presidents before Abraham Lincoln. When Thomas Jefferson died, Harriet Tubman was just a child, and when Harriet Tubman died, Ronald Reagan had already been born.
The United States is a young country. If you are 25 years old, you have lived through 10% of American history. ¼ of American Presidents were slave-owners. This country was built on white supremacy. So, when someone breaks in and waves a Confederate Flag in the Capitol Building, is it really a surprise?
It’s crazy to think it took an attempted coup for GOP “leadership” to finally denounce Trump.
“There comes a time when silence is betrayal”
Since 2015, people warned of fascist and dictatorial personalities. To the people who think something like the Third Reich could never happen in America, need I remind you Hitler was elected democratically, and Nazi Death Camps were directly inspired by American Eugenics. White supremacy is America’s default mode of existence.
Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated. As was Fred Hampton, Huey Newton, and Malcolm X. Any black leader who starts to gain “too much” influence or “too much” power is routinely met with execution. That’s white supremacy. In all those cases, the interest behind the hit is rooted in U.S. local, state, federal governments and/or federal agencies. A 1967 poll revealed Martin Luther King Jr. was one of the most hated men in America.
Racism is so deeply rooted in this country, George Carlin put it best when he said America was founded by slave owners who wanted to be free. They called for liberty, independence, and equality, yet since 1776, America has been unable to see past a social construct – race.
Slave owners were so twisted they actually believed they had the right to own people. Black people were dehumanized and labeled property, today they are labeled criminal. George Floyd lost his life for no reason other than the color of his skin, but more accurately, the projection of race coming from the officer who did not see a human, only “criminal”. When people protested this public execution, they were met with flashbangs, rubber bullets, and teargas.
When hundreds of thousands storm the capitol waving Trump flags because they are so deluded into thinking the election was stolen and our democracy is broken, that is sedition. How did law enforcement act toward this mob? They waved them in, opened up the gates, took selfies with them. The fact that they even made it inside the Capitol Building, where one man proudly waved his Confederate Flag, that is white supremacy.
Martin Luther King Jr. pleaded all of us to look past the color of a person’s skin, and instead judge them by their character. Identity politics has divided us, people are divided by their beliefs, divided from an agreement on fact, and most importantly divided from the truth. We are all one. Race separates us only in perception.
America prides itself in its values. Freedom. Democracy. Equality. But any person of color knows that reality is different from Enlightenment ideals. If you thought America stood for freedom, centuries of slavery prove otherwise. If you thought America stood for democracy, imperialist coups over democratically-elected leaders prove otherwise. (Evo Morales in Bolivia when the U.S. State Department wrongly accused election fraud) If you thought America stood for equality, militarized repression at Black Lives Matter protests contrasted with welcoming arms from Capitol police and negligible use of force on Jan. 6th, proves otherwise.
“Hatred, which could destroy so much, never failed to destroy the man who hated”
-James Baldwin
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Travis Hatcher
Frustration, confusion, disbelief – those are my feelings as I listen to the news taking place. As I watch and read about these events, an overabundance of questions flood my mind. While some of these questions are left answered, many remain unanswered. Questions like, who are the good cops? We know who they were because they got beat up, chased and terrorized, and most importantly, held back the angry mob.
I’m still puzzled about the bad cops, were the bad cops the ones that let members of the angry mob pass without any challenge? Or were they the off-duty officers from other jurisdictions that took place in the event. It’s unsettling to think that a good amount of those who swore to serve and protect could either let this take place, or actively join in. It’s more apparent than ever that we need police reform. It takes me back to May 2020 when I joined the protest in LA for George Floyd. I’ve never seen a police force so quick to shoot peaceful protesters with rubber bullets for being out past the curfew that they gave nearly no notice for. Also, around the same time there were protests at the Capitol for BLM. The Capitol police had officers lined up on the capitol steps in full flak jackets and Kevlar helmets. Same equipment I wore when I was a Corpsman with the Marine Corps. All this for what? Bias?
Law enforcement and government agencies label and treat peaceful protesters as terrorists, while actual terrorists (that’s what they were, not rioters) are treated as peaceful protesters. This has been going on in America for decades and I’m frustrated that it happened in front of the world’s eyes, and we still have people who deny it. I’m confused about what the government actually considers a threat. The fact that all this just played out on display for the world to see makes me delusional.
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Luckens Cadet
On Jan 6th a group of right wing terrorists (yes, that’s what they are) attacked the Capitol Building in what many consider an attempted coup. As we received more information on the plan, it slowly became even more sinister. A possible inside job? With the chaos that transpired, it is difficult not to contrast the preparation, or lack of preparation, for this event in comparison to the Black Lives Matter protests (you know, where people were actually protesting police brutality; not attempting to overthrow the government). This comparison can be seen and made throughout U.S. history. It’s always been pretty black and white.
This month, we celebrate Martin Luther King Jr. When Dr. King was alive, the FBI conducted cointelpro actions towards him and the civil rights movement. They spied on him, infiltrated civil rights marches via informants and ultimately assassinated Dr. King (as the strong Mrs. Coretta Scott King would prove in a 1999 court decision which stated the U.S. Government and federal agencies were responsible). Fast forward and today Dr. King is seen as a hero in the American conscience and those that Dr. King would consider a part of the problem constantly use his speeches to quell any protests from a frustrated Black community that continues to be targeted and murdered by an atrocious, seemingly state-sponsored green light on the life of Black people. They run to Dr. King’s quotes to speak peace and non-violence, uttering words like “Martin Luther King would be disappointed”. What a hypocritical contrast, because when Dr. King was alive, these same people would have never approved of Dr. King’s stance against the status quo. This same hypocrisy can be seen today. The people leveraging Dr. King’s quotes to call upon peaceful protests are some of the same people who supported and/or were active participants of this Jan 6th insurrection. Dr. King indeed preached peace during his earlier years, like when he spoke of his dream at the capital where millions showed up, too bad the insurrectionists didn’t take a page out of King’s talk on peace while they violently broke into the capitol.
These hypocrisies can be seen throughout history in the movements of the oppressed against the status quo. In 2016, hundreds, if not thousands of Native American people took a stand against the continuous steal of Native land and infringement of ancestral sacred land. The response to Natives wanting to stop an oil pipeline from going through their land and polluting their fresh water (Google BP Oil Spill or just Oil Spill), was a harsh display of force and brutality by the local and state government of Dakota. Native people wanted the U.S. to remember their treaties and you know, simply not destroy the environment. Nope, ‘Merica has to do all it can to quell the protests.
Contrast this response to the lack of response when terrorists threatened the lives of U.S. Senators and House Representatives. Where were the tanks? I guess they were out of order. All in all, what we learned simply is what Black, Brown and Native communities knew all along – the U.S. is a hypocritical country that doesn’t take White Supremacy as a serious threat to the country’s instability. Instead, it sees communities of color as a greater threat and justifies these radical ideologies.
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Alejandro Gonzales
Pandemonium of the Perverse
Seeing those thugs and white supremacists terrorize the capitol, like others, enraged me to the point of hopelessness. Not hopelessness in the sense that I felt powerless, but in the vision I have of this country and what it supposedly stands for. The capitol to me holds no special meaning or purpose, for it was built on slavery, the torture and murder of Black lives, the theft and genocide of Indigenous peoples, the incarceration of Black and Brown lives, the imprisonment of children at our borders. This is the country we are supposed to stand behind when they say “fight for freedom”, “land of the brave”, “home of the free”, the same old cliches. America, sadly, will never give up these false premises. I hope to see those things come to be, we all do, but after seeing what I saw on January 6th, I don’t believe I will see that day in my lifetime.
It’s strange to me that a person can take this one thing, the color of your skin, and transform it into “White Power”, this thing, this anomaly somehow gives “me” power over others, it somehow prevents me from being punished under the same system that’s brutalized, murdered and incarcerated more human beings than all other countries on Earth. We’ve all read the statistics, we are 5% of the world’s population, yet the US has 20% of the world’s incarcerated people, and over 50,000 juveniles under the age of 20 are in juvenile detention centers, and 5,000 more 17 and under are in the US prison systems. How can a country who calls itself free and fair have children under 17 in the US prison system? How can this self righteous system incarcerate 70,000 migrant children, separating them from their families, fleeing violence in countries the US decided to overthrow and install mercenary soldiers in, to exploit and control its natural resources. It’s infuriating talking to a person who’s enjoyed their privileges without so much as acknowledging these facts, these videos showing children screaming for their mothers and fathers, videos of Black people being shot in the back, Indigenous peoples being sprayed with mace and water cannons in subzero temperatures simply for protecting their land and water and basic human rights.
This country is a sham, a mockery of what it means to be decent. How can you call yourselves the fighters for freedom when you poison the water of innocent people living in Flint, and then decide that the GM plant deserves clean water because their motors rusted? I say and lay all of this bare because this system that has treated the poor and people of color as worthless has allowed Nazi, KKK, White Supremacists to overthrow the capitol. They allowed these terrorists to go in with weapons, body armour, guns, zip ties, and mace to threaten the lives of people who actually give a damn about making this country better. The Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Rashida Tlaib, Ayanna Pressley and Ilhan Omars of the world, the Senator Patrick Leahy and Bernies who speak out against fascism. Those who care that children are being put in cages and people are left homeless from the pandemic, that over 400,000 people have died from COVID-19 in the US alone, that’s 20% of the world’s total deaths from covid. Let that sink in, 20% of the world’s prison population and 20% of the world’s deaths from covid. For all our strength and monetary worth we cage people like animals and kill them when they can’t afford health insurance or a vaccine.
Meanwhile, duck dynasty, racoon wearing morons with bats, shields and guns beating a police officer to death with a fire extinguisher, terrorizing people working the front lines of the capitol, Black men and women who are charged with protecting a building that’s refused to protect them. Police officers opening gates, taking selfies and standing aside for these terrorists, looters and idiotic human beings to overthrow the capitol. Thinking back to the Black Lives Matter marches in DC and other states where people were fighting for basic human rights were met with batons, clubs, guns, rubber bullets, and tear gas simply for marching OUTSIDE the capitol, not in, not climbing walls, swinging bats, breaking windows or throwing tear gas, simply marching and chanting for our basic human rights and dignity. Statue of Bigotry, Land of Hypocrisy, two different America’s simply for the color of our skin and for the morals we stand for. To those who pretend that racism does not exist in this country, that cops do no brutalize and murder Black and Brown people, that this government hasn’t setup CIA regimes in South America, Mexico, Haiti, Africa, to those who turn a blind eye to what is self evident, you are not just blind to the injustices of your fellow humans, your fellow countrymen and women, but what is worse, you are blind to yourself.
I hope to see us heal, and be able to meet and discuss these issues and problems that face us all, they are not minuscule when they have repeated themselves every twenty years, when the world is literally burning. Where protected lands are being sold off to henchmen for exploitation and more burning of fossil fuels, melting of glaciers, deforestation, extinction of the natural world, and of course, the racial and class divide. These are not problems that only exist outwardly in our society, but more importantly, we must face the fact that they exist within each and every one of us. I’m in no way a perfect human, nor are any of us, but we must ask ourselves almost daily what it is we’re doing for humanity, how we are making the lives of those around us better, for our families and for the common good of all people and the natural world as well, for animals are our family too – the Earth our mother, the sky and water bring and sustain all life.
“I am a citizen of the United States and an enrolled member of the Oglala Sioux Tribe, meaning I am a citizen of the Oglala Lakota Nation — and in this dual citizenship, I must work, I must eat, I must art, I must mother, I must friend, I must listen, I must observe, constantly I must live.”
– Layli Long Soldier
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