Elaine Brown speaks at VCU... my take

This past Firday I had the honor of attending a lecture at Virginia Commnwealth University with Elaine Brown. Although the information (for the most part) was not new to me, I was very much impressed with the speaker. I dont know what it was, but I believe it was her sincerity, genuiness, passion, and candidness. Maybe its just hero-worship. Whatever it was she definitely made a fan out of me.

I got there a bit late, but when I arrived she was talking about criminalization and the creation of a Black criminal class. Specifically she was making reference to a "scientific" study that had been conducted, through the human genome project, to test the hypothesis that there was a gene responsible for criminal behavior.

She would go on to cite the US invasion of Panama, where over 5,000 people were killed, to arrest General Manuel Noreaga to give an example of their type of criminal actions. These actions however, uniformally go unpunished. In this particular instance, Colin Powell was exonerated of any culpability. When asked if he thought it was worth 5,000 deaths to capture one person he stated that 'he wasn't interested in numbers, only results'.

She would go on to make mention to a speech that Bill Clinton gave were he declared Thomas Jefferson as his hero and would ask the listeners (particularly black people) if MLK was alive what would he say? He would say "I died for your freedom and look what you've done with it". Billy would then go on to enact the 3 strikes law in order to help us live out King's legacy. In fact, during his administration, America would go on to achieve the dubious distinction of having jailed more of its citizens than any other nation, past or present.

Speaking of Thomas Jeffereson, since he is Bill's hero and all, she went into a short history on him as well. She brought to our attention one writing in particular, his 'notes on the state of Virginia', where he proposed that Blacks were so inferior to whites that they could only be considered normal if they were cross-bred until they were 1/32 black blood.

1/2 black blood = mulatto, 1/4 = quadroon, 1/8 = octaroon, 1/16 = quintoon, and finally 1/32 = normal

Some of you may believe that Lincoln freed the slaves in 1863 with the issuance of the Emancipationb Proclamation right?....Wrong! For severeal reasons. First of all, this attempt was a strategic manuever to undermine the economy of the South, it was a military action, not a moral decision. Secondly, he didn't have the authority. the Southern states had seceded from the Union and formed the confederacy, at the time their president was Jefferson Davis.

However, as the Civil War the slaves were eventually given their "freedom" and this is the point where, according to Ms Brown the former slave class become a new criminal class through the institution of the Black Codes. The Black Codes were laws to keep the newly freed slaves in check --- criminalizing them. One of the most enforced laws were the laws against vagrancy. In actuality it made it technically illegal to be unemployed.

In 1896, there was the case of Plessy v. Ferguson where this Black guy sued because the train he was forced to ride on didn't offer all of the same amenities as the White train. This would lead to the condition we know of as 'Seperate but Equal' which pretty much amounted to apartheid.
Fast forward to 1965, and we (negros) were able to attain the Civil Rights act and the Voting rights act. 1865 to 1965 and those were our "accomplishments".

She would go on to talk about the Prison Industrial Complex (did you know that that term was coined on Wall Street), MLK and his assassination. His asssassination would come soon after he began to speak out against the war and came to grips with armed resistance as necessary and inevitable. He had also began to speak of a need for 'redistribution of wealth' in this country.
She spoke of the need for Black folks to realize that theyare oppressed and that we need to adopt the principle of "I am We" instead of the self-centered outlook that many of us have.

To hear the audio that inspired this post go to: http://dc.indymedia.org/media/all/display/32709