Action in the Streets and in the Suites by Nicole C. Lee

Dec. 8, 2014

Action in the Streets and in the Suites
By Nicole C. Lee

nicoleclee
Nicole C. Lee

(TriceEdneyWire.com) - Last year at this time on a very cold night I walked into the Ambassador’s Residence of South Africa to begin a task I had been preparing for months.  Although anticipated and planned for, preparing the US National Memorial to celebrate the life of Nelson Mandela was an auspicious and sorrowful task.  As the president of TransAfrica, the organization that convened the Free South Africa Movement in the United States, I was steeped in the history of the antiapartheid movement. On the day of the memorial, each speaker issued a challenge that we live the life, legacy and values of Mandela into the next generation.

“WWMD: What Would Madiba Do?” was a question that was asked that day and for months after his death as pundits and commentators analyzed world events from the proverbial shoes of Mandela.

Mandela was a more complicated person than history wishes to remember. People love the grandfatherly figure but want to forget the warrior. He was a freedom fighter, considered a terrorist by some (including the US government).    We remember Mandela as the grandfather who reconciles and forgives but it was also Mandela who dug in until demands were met and apartheid was all but defeated.  Indeed, the movement to which Mandela belonged was a multicultural racial justice movement comprised of young people without title who merely wanted freedom.  The organic, authentic nature of core made it both intractable and attractive at the same time.  This quality eventually won hearts all over the world as people allied themselves with the people of South Africa to demand world leaders turn their back on the evil system.

It seems that past has proven to be prologue. For over 120 days, mostly without fanfare and cameras, the people of St. Louis County have staged daily demonstrations to protest a system that led to Mike Brown’s death at the hands of police. While Mike Brown was both a friend to many and the movement’s rallying cry, it just begins there.  They believe justice demands systemic change. Their life experience tells them they have access to 2nd class citizenship.  

The state has responded with repression.  On the night that DA McCulloch announced there would be no indictment in the death of Mike Brown, I watched from inside the bubble as police shot tear gas into crowds of demonstrators at Ferguson PD. With nowhere to “disperse to”, demonstrators huddle together against buildings to protect themselves from tear gas and rubber bullets.  As network news reported the Missouri government’s line that tear gas was not being used, social media proved otherwise as pictures flooded twitter depicting the truly despotic scene.  It seemed that while fires raged two miles away, the Unified Command had chosen to take its state sponsored anger out on people armed with only water bottles.  Like Soweto, 37 years before, here was a population crying out for justice seemingly being crushed by a government force that had no interest in their wellbeing only in silencing them.

Apartheid is an Afrikaans word that means “separateness”. The system of apartheid in South Africa has an American cousin, Jim Crow.  And while so many demonstrated and marched for freedom from this countries racist past, it is the racism in our present that so very concerning.  As there were two South Africas during apartheid, one prosperous and free and one oppressed, this country has two realities as well.  As Ta-Nehisi Coates stated in a recent interview, “There is one social contract for one group of people and another for the rest.”  Some have remarked in light of the decisions of grand juries not to indict in the Mike Brown or Eric Garner case that the system is not broken but it is working as intended.

For the majority of African-Americans dealing with racism is a daily task. From humiliating micro aggressions that bore away at one’s psyche to the loss of life that can only be describe as extrajudicial executions, African Americans are experiencing the effects of an American apartheid---a system the world has long since repudiated.

Like the generation of antiapartheid activists in South Africa, we have a generation of young people energized by both the deaths of Black men and inspired by the activism of the people of Ferguson.  And while the network news focused on the violence of a few rather than the nonviolent protest of so many more, the world focused on the people.  Recognizing what was real, people in over 100 cities joined the demonstrators of Ferguson.  With the gut wrenching news of no indictment of officer who killed Eric Garner, people all over this  country and the world are rising up to demand the U.S. live up to its creed for all its citizens.

If Mandela were here, I fear he would weep.  So many sacrificed to see apartheid abolished from the Earth and yet it remains.  However I suspect, I hope he would also see that the youth of this country standing up.  Both the aggrieved and their allies have gotten their sea legs and are ready to take action in the streets and the suites.