The green monster filled with Black people behind Delaney Hall
Here are some inconvenient truths of an inconvenient protest. Some of you folks still insist on forgetting how we got here—people locked up in a concentration camp in Newark.
Newark Mayor Ras Baraka supported Harris for president. Larry Hamm of the People’s Organization for Progress supported Harris for president. And both are to her ideological left, so why?
A “safe state” is a misnomer, as we’ve since learned. No one is safe when the federal government completely abandons its duties.
So they understood what was at stake, as did I.
Who controls immigration? The feds.
Who controls funding for disabled people? The feds.
Who controls funding for scientific research, the parks, and the arts? Ding, ding, ding, the EFFING feds!!
Because of how the country works via the Constitution, you do not hand your country to a psychopath over a single issue, not even three or four issues or a dozen!!
You think I appreciated Biden and his War on Drugs? You think I forgot about all the Black people who went to jail thanks to him? I did not. But I also knew that the alternative wouldn’t even leave me room to fight back.
People whose families span ten generations or more (I’m a 14th-generation American) know the damage a sadistic federal government can do.
My family—like the families of Ras and Larry—has survived not just chattel slavery, but Reconstruction and its aftermath, the re-enslavement, the Nadir. Do you know that during the Nadir, my Great-great aunt was set on fire because she allowed Black people to live in her boarding house, so they wouldn’t get put on the chain gang. They threatened her, set her house on fire, and she was burned alive as they wouldn’t allow her to leave. My father moved to LA after his brother was dragged from his house, stripped, had his ba/lls cut off, and hung up in a tree as a 15-year-old for the suggestion that he was trying to pass, one drop could get you kill/ed.
We told you what was going to happen. And this is not a childish, “I told you so” taunt. I am saying to please listen, because not understanding how this works will harm all of us.
You are out gun/ned. And there are things worse than dying, but also, there are some really fascinating ways that you can die in the United States, see the paragraphs above.
Nonviolent demonstrations should be taking place at Delaney Hall, as they have been for a year. The conditions are horrendous. This can’t be normalized like how the Green Monster, the County Jail filled with Black people, is normalized, directly across the parking lot—-with ZERO irony from recent protesters who want to know how the parking is down there.
The facility should expect and accommodate regular visits by politicians and local and state officials. The McIver NO Delay Act, co-sponsored by Menendez and Watson, should be supported. NJ, the county, and the city of Newark should actively use health codes, environmental and land-use law, and safety regulations to disrupt operations. The state, county, and local government should support nonviolent protests around the perimeter of the facility.
Why do I say perimeter? Because going ON to the property triggers the FEDS.
Do you know who runs the Feds now? Oh yes, FASC/ISTS, they don’t give a f&&& about your First Amendment, but you already know that.
Is that inconvenient for you?! You don’t give an eff about the fas/cists in the White House, because YOU HAVE rights. Sometimes it is not just about you, sometimes you’re going to be inconvenienced during a protest and do things you don’t want to do , think about the long game, you’re not in Minnesota, there is no solidarity here, there is just each group doing what they want.
Some of you lack discipline.
If your objective is freeing detainees, we need the House. We need media that supports that objective. What we do not need is a New Jersey where Chris Christie's crew gets back into office, that is definitely on the table. In this state, we are coming dangerously close to an SPD-CPD Weimar situation. Sherrill won, can you folks let it the EFF GO? You have too much faith in people who still cling to their segregated school districts and segregated pools, who sit down to Thanksgiving dinner with open racists and chat with them on FB, because the Democrat that I hate, if you hate them too, well, who cares if you’re an open racist, sexist, and homophobic, I hate Heather, and he does too. Some of the loyal opposition is teaming up with independently minded Republicans with the idea that they aren’t going to turn fascist as soon as they get some leverage.
Mikie Sherrill won with support from people who could still vote. But with all that the feds are doing, large chunks of white New Jersey will still vote for a Republican, and I might not be able to vote; hell, white women might not be able to vote.
Side note, do you know that white women could vote when NJ was founded, and then it got stripped away? Did you know that?!
I am getting sick and tired of people who actively did not vote for sanity. Those who said the 50501 campaign strategy wasn’t adventurous enough are now self-righteous about Delaney—online. No one has even taken off a substantial amount of time off work.
Congressman McIver is facing a felony. Ras went to jail. And the same self-righteous people who said fascism wasn’t on the table—this is just like it was before—now say Ras is just being performative, and so is Andy Kim, and so is McIver, we’re all performing for the amusement of you—a revolutionary that won’t take off work and worked through COVID because you don’t believe in vaccines.
You folks are not ready. You’re not taking off from work. You’re not shutting Newark down, because you don’t live there and you’re scared of the people who live there, oh, I know now you, not you with the Black chick fetish—— but everyone else, you’re afraid to take the bus to Newark, but you got all these ideas. You view that place as a different country, its people as a different species. That is how you can protest down there with zero irony about the jail across the parking lot—filled with Black people. Oh, but those people did things wrong. Yeah. They were born Black in New Jersey. That’s their crime. You can go to county jail here for not paying parking tickets—if you’re Black. They send more Black boys to jail here than they do in Mississippi.
You are not Minnesota. You are delusional. You have no solidarity. You don’t give a damn about the detainees.
Most of you typing don’t even know anyone who is not of the same ethnicity as you, not in a way that would make you miss work. You don’t give a damn about Newark. You don't give a damn about immigrants. You don't give a damn about people detained unjustly at Delaney AND at the Green Monster. Because if you did, you wouldn’t have selfishly depressed the vote nationally, because of your being in the New York metro area, because of your “it’s all the same” rhetoric that echoes nationally.
I keep my eye on the ball. I have been watching Delaney for over a year. I watched how it grew out of spite, not care. I watched how you folks actively mocked other protests as “not real.” And now that disaster patriarchy has come to your door, you lack the discipline to stop adventurism tactics. We know how the police act, because ACAB. So, if one wants to keep focused on the detainees rather than the protesters, how do we move forward? Not like you’re moving right now.
How does ICE get shut down? A revolution, but you can’t take off work for that. So what are your options? The midterms. Your options are to put all these petty differences aside and focus on the midterms. Focus on the right to protest. Listen to the people who live in Newark. I get it—you don’t give a damn about Black people. But that right there is why Delaney exists. Why Flock exists. It is why a militarized police force exists. It is why Trump is in the WH. It all exists because you don’t give a damn if Black people live or die. And what you’re doing right now—disrespecting the mostly Black section of Newark, and what they are asking—is being a boot. You’re just another boot. Instrumentalizing a community. Instrumentalizing detainees for your own selfish, adventuresome ends.
So I say again, as you go to work this morning —because you don’t have time for the revolution—make a plan.
Get along with your family, your neighborhoods, and people who pretty much mirror you politically except for a few differences. So we can take over Congress. And if we don’t, so we can actually work together to survive this.
This disrespect, this admiration of adventurism, this objectifying of people’s pain for cash and prizes—it is not helpful.
Being dead right is actually easier. Being pragmatic so you can fight another day? It’s less sexy. But we need that.
Protests should be inconvenient, for everyone.