[col. writ. 8/19/14] © ’14 Mumia Abu-Jamal
As the days and nights of angry resistance rage on in Ferguson, Missouri, the corporate media embarks on its newest campaign: the proposed banning of “outside agitators”.
It is ironic in the extreme to hear black reporters and black cops – and, indeed, black activists – launch verbal attacks against “outside agitators”, when, were it not for such protestors during the hottest days and nights of the civil rights movement – they would not exist!
For the phrase “outside agitators” was born in the minds and mouths of white southern segregationists, who decried the arrival of white and black students from the north, who worked to register voters, founded freedom schools, and joined the Freedom Riders on buses, to break state segregation laws.
Remember the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC)? That’s Martin L. King’s organization. When SCLC stages marches in Alabama, that state’s governor, George Wallace, called SCLC “professional agitators with pro-Communist affiliations.
Sound familiar? How close to “outside agitators!” The phrase begs the question: outside of what? The state? America?
This country is called the United States of America, founded upon a Constitution. Do all people have the right to protest, or just some residents?
Is what happened to Mike Brown a local matter, or is this really a national issue?
It’s not the job of media to police protests – pitting ‘good’ demonstrators against ‘bad’ ones. Their job is to report what is happening – period.
Were it not for these protests – let us be frank – the media would’ve ignored this story.
If the media was doing its job, reporting on the vicious violence launched against young Blacks the nation over; perhaps Mike Brown would be alive today.
Let us look at the cops, almost 98% of whom are outsiders to Ferguson. They work there; they kill there; but they don’t live there.
They dwell in neighboring, whiter counties and towns.
WHO ARE THE REAL ‘OUTSIDE AGITATORS’?
–©’14maj