SIRATYST (Stuff I Read and Thought You Should Too) --
“To ravage, to slaughter, to usurp under false titles, they call empire; and where they make a desert, they call it peace.”
(Calgacus, as quoted by Tacitus, Agricola 30-31)"
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Erica Garner (Instagram)
When I met Erica Garner in 2016 at the Drug Policy Alliance Conference in New York City, it was not a meeting of activist and journalist; it was a chance meeting between two women who were desperately missing their fathers and determined that they would never be forgotten, that their legacies would endure.
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Her eyes were tired and filled with that consuming grief that never goes away. The kind of grief that shocks the nervous system and sinks deep into your bone marrow until it becomes a part of you. Still, she smiled. She put one foot in front of the other and she chose life; she chose to live for her father and not die with him. She chose her daughter, Alyssa.
Erica chose us. Time and time again, she chose us.
I envision her now, voice hoarse and cracking, fist in the air, not giving a fuck about who didn’t like what she had to say or how she chose to say it.
I see her lying down in the same spot, on the same Staten Island N.Y. street corner, where NYPD officer Daniel Pantaleo choked her father to death in broad daylight simply because he could. She was joined by other protesters in a “die-in” as many people walked by as if she didn’t exist.
I see her calling out ABC for their farce of a townhall on race after the network walked back a promise that she would be allowed to ask President Barack Obama a question.
I see her refusing to be a tokenized voice of a “resistance” constricted and diluted for white liberals’ comfort. During the 2016 presidential election cycle, Erica stood, unshakable, as an emerging, powerful voice of the radical black left. When the majority of black women voters supported Hillary Clinton—many of them calling anyone not doing the same either politically unsophisticated, dangerous, or “privileged” enough to make decisions rooted in morality—Erica was clear that her decision not to support Clinton was rooted in the survival of her family, her community, and justice for her father.
She was the embodiment of unbought and unbossed.
I see her calling out NYC Mayor Bill de Blasio for refusing to support the release of Pantaleo’s disciplinary record. This killer cop not only remains on the city’s payroll, he has received multiple pay raises. Bill de Blasio, however, would rather share his superficial condolences on social media in the wake of Erica’s death, instead of pursuing the justice that would have made her life easier.
Erica was a revolutionary. She knew the magnitude of what she was taking on and she jumped into the movement—feet planted, back straight, head high, warrior heart beating. She didn’t shy away from calling out the Democratic Party for being complicit architects of mass incarceration, nor was she silent about the community occupations that led to her father’s state-sanctioned killing.
Erica Garner was about her father’s business.
To hear her speak about respectability politics, broken-windows policing and the war on drugs, was to see a young black woman fully aware that her father had a target on his back before he ever stepped foot on that corner and dared to navigate the world as a free black man.
She did not seek the spotlight for herself; she snatched the glaring flashlights of the police state, those lights trained on black, brown, and indigenous communities, those lights that relentlessly targeted her father, and she turned them right back on their cowardly faces.
I do not know if she was unafraid, but she was brave.
Three weeks ago, in an interview with Benjamin Dixon, Erica talked about Venida Browder, Kalief Browder’s mother, who died last year after suffering a heart attack. She also shared that the white supremacist system that she was going up against was trying to kill her, too.
“[Venida Browder] died of a broken heart. She had heart problems because she kept on fighting for her son. Like, I’m struggling right now, with the stress and everything, ‘cause this thing, it beats you down. The system beats you down until you can’t win...I felt the same pain that my father felt on that day when he was screaming, ‘I can’t breathe.’ When he was saying that he was tired of being harassed, tired of being arrested and his money stolen.” — Erica Garner
That’s what this white supremacist, heteropatriarchal, capitalist, imperialist, genocidal system does. It tries to break you into tiny pieces until you don’t recognize yourself anymore. It steals fathers away from daughters and mothers away from their children. It etches trauma into the walls of your chest cavity until your heart just can’t take it anymore.
Erica gave birth to her second child in August—her son Eric III, named in honor of his grandfather. It was then that doctors discovered that she had an enlarged heart, but she refused to stop fighting for justice. Despite how dangerous pregnancy and the postpartum period is for black women, how potentially fatal, she kept going.
“I warned her everyday, you have to slow down, you have to relax and slow down,” her mother Esaw Garner-Snipes said.
But how could she?
It would have been a revolutionary act for Erica to focus on her health in a world that demands that black women bear the burdens until we’re buried in the ground. “It’s a marathon, not a sprint,” that’s what movement elders tell us. But, sometimes, the systems of oppression, neglect, violence, and exploitation break us down until we feel we don’t have a choice. We find ourselves carrying so much pain, suffering so much loss, and holding so much rage, that practicing self-care feels impossible without justice. Sometimes, there can be no peace within without it.
That’s how white supremacy kills—slowly and quickly.
The police state that killed Eric Garner; the killer who choked the breath from the body of Erica’s “Superman;” the mayor who protected that killer—and the police department that keeps him gainfully employed to kill again—not only denied Erica justice, they actively caused her harm. Just as the NYPD lynched her father, she struggled against the noose of white supremacy tightening around her throat and the boots of the state on her back.
She lived with the eyes of the NYPD following her every move. She fought without ceasing for her father, for her children, for her people, for a world in which the humanity of her people was unassailable.
She cried freedom every day of her life and she did not deserve this. Her children don’t deserve this. No family should experience this much soul-scarring pain and loss. It ain’t fair that, at 27-years old, she will be called a martyr when what she lived to be called was mama. State violence intruded into her life, into her family’s life, in such a vicious, brutal way that the horror is almost unspeakable.
She couldn’t breathe.
“I’m not giving up and this is the fight. I’m in this fight forever,” Erica told Dixon. “No matter how long it takes, we deserve justice and I want justice for other people. And I want other families to know, it’s hard, but you gotta keep going. You gotta keep the name out there. People will forget.”
Erica Garner lying down in the same spot on the same Staten Island, N.Y. corner where NYPD officer Daniel Pantaleo killed her father Eric Garner. (Getty Images)
Know this, Erica Garner—mother, sister, aunt, friend, daughter, comrade, truth-teller, light-bringer, freedom-fighter: You shook the world and we will always say your father’s name.
Eric. Garner.
Thank you for being radical, revolutionary, black love in action. Thank you for being brave. Thank you for being loud and unapologetic and unwavering. Thank you for imagining another way of being in the world, for capturing an elusive vision of black freedom and never letting it go. Thank you for teaching us and demanding more from us.
Thank you for sharing that quiet moment with me—both daughters, both mothers, connecting over struggling to find joy in a cruel world without our fathers.
We love you. We continue this fight for you. We will always say your name.
We can still hope for a medical miracle, but ... Erica is a fighter, a tireless struggler for justice for her Dad and all ordinary people. Fight on, Erica!
The gates outside the LNG work site were blocked from 6 am until about 9 am, when the workers were told to leave the site for the day. One day lost and hopefully many more to keep this monstrous project from endangering Tacoma and the globe.
Cynthia Linet, free after Not Guilty verdict at her trial for locking down at the LNG site!*
You gotta remember, establishment, it’s just a name for evil. The monster doesn’t care whether it kills all the students or whether there’s a revolution. It’s not thinking logically, it’s out of control.
—John Lennon (1969)
Militant nonviolent resistance works.
Peaceful, prolonged protests work.
Mass movements with huge numbers of participants work.
Yes, America, it is possible to use occupations and civil disobedience to oppose government policies, counter injustice and bring about change outside the confines of the ballot box.
It has been done before. It can be done again.
For example, in May of 1932, more than 43,000 people, dubbed the Bonus Army—World War I veterans and their families—marched on Washington. Out of work, destitute and with families to feed, more than 10,000 veterans set up tent cities in the nation’s capital and refused to leave until the government agreed to pay the bonuses they had been promised as a reward for their services.
The Senate voted against paying them immediately, but the protesters didn’t budge. Congress adjourned for the summer, and still the protesters remained encamped. Finally, on July 28, under orders from President Herbert Hoover, the military descended with tanks and cavalry and drove the protesters out, setting their makeshift camps on fire. Still, the protesters returned the following year, and eventually their efforts not only succeeded in securing payment of the bonuses but contributed to the passage of the G.I. Bill of Rights.
Similarly, the Civil Rights Movement mobilized hundreds of thousands of people to strike at the core of an unjust and discriminatory society. Likewise, while the 1960s anti-war movement began with a few thousand perceived radicals, it ended with hundreds of thousands of protesters, spanning all walks of life, demanding the end of American military aggression abroad.
This kind of “power to the people” activism—grassroots, populist and potent—is exactly the brand of civic engagement John Lennon advocated throughout his career as a musician and anti-war activist.
It’s been 37 years since Lennon was gunned down by an assassin’s bullet on December 8, 1980, but his legacy and the lessons he imparted in his music and his activism have not diminished over the years.
All of the many complaints we have about government today—surveillance, corruption, harassment, political persecution, spying, overcriminalization, etc.—were used against Lennon. But that didn’t deter him. In fact, it formed the basis of his call for social justice, peace and a populist revolution.
Little wonder, then, that the U.S. government saw him as enemy number one.
Because he never refrained from speaking truth to power, Lennon became a prime example of the lengths to which the U.S. government will go to persecute those who dare to challenge its authority.
Lennon was the subject of a four-year campaign of surveillance and harassment by the U.S. government (spearheaded by FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover), in an attempt by President Richard Nixon to have him “neutralized” and deported. As Adam Cohen of the New York Times points out, “The F.B.I.’s surveillance of Lennon is a reminder of how easily domestic spying can become unmoored from any legitimate law enforcement purpose. What is more surprising, and ultimately more unsettling, is the degree to which the surveillance turns out to have been intertwined with electoral politics.”
Years after Lennon’s assassination, it would be revealed that the FBI had collected 281 pages of surveillance files on him. As the New York Timesnotes, “Critics of today’s domestic surveillance object largely on privacy grounds. They have focused far less on how easily government surveillance can become an instrument for the people in power to try to hold on to power. ‘The U.S. vs. John Lennon’ … is the story not only of one man being harassed, but of a democracy being undermined.”
Such government-directed harassment was nothing new.
The FBI has had a long history of persecuting, prosecuting and generally harassing activists, politicians, and cultural figures, most notably among the latter such celebrated names as folk singer Pete Seeger, painter Pablo Picasso, comic actor and filmmaker Charlie Chaplin, comedian Lenny Bruce and poet Allen Ginsberg. Among those most closely watched by the FBI was Martin Luther King Jr., a man labeled by the FBI as “the most dangerous and effective Negro leader in the country.”
In Lennon’s case, the ex-Beatle had learned early on that rock music could serve a political end by proclaiming a radical message. More importantly, Lennon saw that his music could mobilize the public and help to bring about change.
For instance, in 1971 at a concert in Ann Arbor, Mich., Lennon took to the stage and in his usual confrontational style belted out “John Sinclair,” a song he had written about a man sentenced to 10 years in prison for possessing two marijuana cigarettes. Within days of Lennon’s call for action, the Michigan Supreme Court ordered Sinclair released.
While Lennon believed in the power of the people, he also understood the danger of a power-hungry government. “The trouble with government as it is, is that it doesn’t represent the people,” observed Lennon. “It controls them.”
By March 1971, when his “Power to the People” single was released, it was clear where Lennon stood. Having moved to New York City that same year, Lennon was ready to participate in political activism against the U. S. government, the “monster” that was financing the war in Vietnam.
The release of Lennon’s Sometime in New York City album, which contained a radical anti-government message in virtually every song and depicted President Richard Nixon and Chinese Chairman Mao Tse-tung dancing together nude on the cover, only fanned the flames of the government agents who had already targeted Lennon.
However, the official U.S. war against Lennon began in earnest in 1972 after rumors surfaced that Lennon planned to embark on a U.S. concert tour that would combine rock music with antiwar organizing and voter registration. Nixon, fearing Lennon’s influence on about 11 million new voters (1972 was the first year that 18-year-olds could vote), had the ex-Beatle served with deportation orders “in an effort to silence him as a voice of the peace movement.”
As Lennon’s FBI file shows, memos and reports about the FBI’s surveillance of the anti-war activist had been flying back and forth between Hoover, the Nixon White House, various senators, the FBI and the U.S. Immigration Office.
Nixon’s pursuit of Lennon was relentless and misplaced.
Despite the fact that Lennon was not plotting to bring down the Nixon Administration, as the government feared, the government persisted in its efforts to have him deported. Equally determined to resist, Lennon dug in and fought back. Every time he was ordered out of the country, his lawyers delayed the process by filing an appeal.
Finally, in 1976, Lennon won the battle to stay in the country and by 1980, he had re-emerged with a new album and plans to become politically active again. The old radical was back and ready to cause trouble.
Unfortunately, Lennon’s time as a troublemaker was short-lived.
Mark David Chapman was waiting in the shadows on Dec. 8, 1980, just as Lennon was returning to his New York apartment building. Ironically, Lennon had signed an autograph for Chapman earlier that evening outside his apartment building.
As Lennon stepped outside the car to greet the fans congregating outside, Chapman, in an eerie echo of the FBI’s moniker for Lennon, called out, “Mr. Lennon!”
Lennon turned and was met with a barrage of gunfire as Chapman—dropping into a two-handed combat stance—emptied his .38-caliber pistol and pumped four hollow-point bullets into his back and left arm. Lennon stumbled, staggered forward and, with blood pouring from his mouth and chest, collapsed to the ground.
John Lennon was pronounced dead on arrival at the hospital.
Much like Martin Luther King Jr., John F. Kennedy, Malcolm X, Robert Kennedy and others who have died attempting to challenge the powers-that-be, Lennon had finally been “neutralized.”
Still, you can’t murder a movement with a bullet and a madman: Lennon’s legacy lives on in his words, his music and his efforts to speak truth to power.
As Yoko Ono shared in a 2014 letter to the parole board tasked with determining whether Chapman should be released: “A man of humble origin, [John Lennon] brought light and hope to the whole world with his words and music. He tried to be a good power for the world, and he was. He gave encouragement, inspiration and dreams to people regardless of their race, creed and gender.”
Lennon’s work to change the world for the better is far from done.
Peace remains out of reach. Activists and whistleblowers continue to be prosecuted for challenging the government’s authority. Militarism is on the rise, all the while the governmental war machine continues to wreak havoc on innocent lives.
For those of us who joined with John Lennon to imagine a world of peace, it’s getting harder to reconcile that dream with the reality of the American police state. And as I point out in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People, those who do dare to speak up are labeled dissidents, troublemakers, terrorists, lunatics, or mentally ill and tagged for surveillance, censorship or, worse, involuntary detention. And it only seems to be getting worse.
As Lennon shared in a 1968 interview:
I think all our society is run by insane people for insane objectives… I think we’re being run by maniacs for maniacal means. If anybody can put on paper what our government and the American government and the Russian… Chinese… what they are actually trying to do, and what they think they’re doing, I’d be very pleased to know what they think they’re doing. I think they’re all insane. But I’m liable to be put away as insane for expressing that. That’s what’s insane about it.”
So what’s the answer?
Lennon had a multitude of suggestions.
“If everyone demanded peace instead of another television set, then there’d be peace.”
“Produce your own dream. If you want to save Peru, go save Peru. It’s quite possible to do anything, but not to put it on the leaders….You have to do it yourself.”
“Peace is not something you wish for; It’s something you make, Something you do, Something you are, And something you give away.”
“Say you want a revolution / We better get on right away / Well you get on your feet / And out on the street / Singing power to the people.”
“If you want peace, you won’t get it with violence.”
Indeed, a revolution of any substance will not come about by way of violence. Government forces are armed to the hilt and waiting for that eventuality.
Fighting the evil of the American police state can only come about by way of conscious thoughts that are put into action. As Lennon sings in “Happy Xmas,” “War is over, if you want it.”
Do you want an end to war? Then stop supporting the government’s military campaigns. Do you want government violence against the citizenry to end? Then demand that your local police de-militarize. Do you want a restoration of your freedoms? You’ll have to get the government to recognize that “we the people” are the masters in this relationship and government employees are our public servants.
The choice is ours.
The power (if we want it), as Lennon recognized, is in our hands.
“The people have the power, all we have to do is awaken that power in the people,” concluded Lennon. “The people are unaware. They’re not educated to realize that they have power. The system is so geared that everyone believes the government will fix everything. We are the government.”
For the moment, the choice is still ours: slavery or freedom, war or peace, death or life.
The point at which we have no choice is the point at which the monsters—the maniacs, the powers-that-be, the Deep State—win.
As Lennon warned, “You either get tired fighting for peace, or you die.”
