“To Protect and Serve Whom?

”
EXPANDED VERSION, JUNE 2020
by Mumia Abu-Jamal

From the collection titled

HAVE BLACK LIVES EVER MATTERED?

Originally published by City Lights/Open Media in 2017

Expanded version © 2020 by Mumia Abu-Jamal
 TO PROTECT AND SERVE WHOM?
Published as pamphlet in September 2015, updated February 2017

What makes a movement, a Movement?

What social forces come together to make it cohere,
to build it into something that can stand in the world, like a
new-born thing, able to drop, rise on unsteady legs, breathe
deeply, and then run its course?
Consider this: There has never been a time since the
“founding” of the U.S. government that there has not been
a movement of some sort, but, like any other thing in life,
such movements have been weak or strong, in ebb or flow,
depending on the social conditions from which they emerge.
We live in an era where the very notion of a movement
seems strange, or out-of-time.
That may be because over the last half century, the state
has worked hard to counter the influence and memory of
movements as soon as possible.
The state projects itself through the institutions of me-
dia, the academy, and public schools so as to present a false,
misleading historical narrative that confuses people. As a
result, it becomes difficult to see a social movement grow,
interact, swell, and finally, present its positions in the public
square so that they cannot be easily refuted.
Thanks to movement scholars, we know of the deep ha-
tred and venomous methods deployed against the late Rev.

179
180 | have black lives ever mattered?

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., a man whom the U.S. govern-
ment nefariously pressured to kill himself.
The Reverend’s greatest enemy was his own govern-
ment, a force crystallized in the person of the director of the
FBI: J. Edgar Hoover.
Hoover, an unabashed racist, used his powers to try to
destroy any movement that questioned the status quo. But
Hoover seemed to reserve his deadliest assaults for members
of Black freedom movements.
This may be perhaps best seen in the program code-
named COINTELPRO, code-speak for the Counterintel-
ligence Program operated for decades by the FBI against
U.S. citizens, particularly Black movement leaders from Dr.
King to Dr. Huey P. Newton of the Black Panthers. All were
treated, in the words of William Sullivan, Assistant Direc-
tor of the FBI, while speaking to staffers of the U.S. Senate
committee investigating COINTELPRO, as enemies of the
State:

This is a common practice, rough, tough, dirty

business. . . . To repeat, it is a rough, tough, dirty
business, and dangerous. . . . [N]o holds were
barred. We have used that technique against
foreign espionage agents, and they have used it
against us.
Questioner: The same methods were brought
home?
Answer: Yes; brought home against any orga-
nization against which we were targeting. We did
not differentiate. This is a rough, tough business.35
 To Protect and Serve Whom? | 181

Nor should we forget how the FBI viewed Dr. King.

Again, Assistant Director Sullivan’s words: “We regard Mar-
tin Luther King as the most dangerous . . . Negro leader in
the country.36
Why is this important to us, now, in the womb of an-
other emerging national movement? It is vital, for it teaches
young activists and revolutionaries in the making, that this
is the real, essential nature of the state: militant opposition
to any social force that seeks to make it more open, demo-
cratic, and accountable, and that threatens to increase public
control over public resources, institutions, and affairs. If you
begin a social movement and fail to understand this histori-
cal reality, you will march into a buzz saw that will leave you
in pieces.

The Reason Movements Emerge

When a society reaches a dead end, when it can no longer
persist in its old ways, social movements arise to push it to its
next stage of development. If that social movement is able to
project its ideas, and spread them widely enough, and these
ideas find room in the hearts and minds of the People, such
movements may make that next step, and define the era’s
zeitgeist and what is and is not the common good.
History shows us that social movements can transform
society, but they do not go uncontested, for the status quo
of the state abhors change. The state always sees change as
a challenge, and it utilizes its vast power to counteract any
such change.
Note well that we have been using the well-known
and well-documented example of the U.S. Civil Rights
182 | have black lives ever mattered?

Movement to proffer these ideas. On its face, such a national

movement seems benign today, for in some ways, it has suc-
ceeded in integrating its narrative and perspective into the
nation’s narrative and perspective, and into the hearts and
minds of people around the globe. Rev. Dr. Martin Luther
King Jr. is a national hero who is honored with a nation-
al holiday and a towering granite statue of his likeness on
the Mall of the nation’s capital. Moreover, his visage stares
out from the semi-grottoed wall of the Church of England,
where he is recognized as a saint.
If the state could do what it did against a mild-man-
nered minister such as Martin Luther King, what can it do
to you?
Answer: Whatever it wants to.
Activism is neither easy nor necessarily safe, and that
is especially so in this age where the people are exposed
to an Orwellian level of internal surveillance, police mili-
tarization, and criminalization of dissent unprecedented in
U.S. history. Being active in the movement to hold police
accountable for their crimes against people and their com-
munities seems only to increase exposure to such forces of
intolerance.

This Movement for Justice Against Police Violence

It is no coincidence that the words “police” and “politician”
are so similar, for they both derive from the same Greek
term for city-state: polis. Police are the employed servants
of the state, and as such the instruments of state policy. And
what is the state? Marx and Engels said: “The executive
of the modern state is but a committee for managing the
 To Protect and Serve Whom? | 183

common affairs of the whole bourgeoisie.”37 Thus, police

serve the ownership and wealth classes of their societies, not
the middling or impoverished people. For the latter, it is
quite the reverse.
That’s why we see the police utilized to surveil those
who organize labor, the oppressed, social movements, and
networks of resistance, and why they beat down those who
dare to speak out and protest.
In Brazil, state authorities casually slay street children,
for they are seen by shop owners and elites as a kind of pub-
lic pestilence. In Iguala, Mexico, officials team up with nar-
co-traffickers and disappear dozens of students. In China,
police beat down students who demand real representation
in state power. In New York, and across the country, cops
coordinated surveillance and mass arrests in an attempt to
criminalize the Occupy movement, and forced its support-
ers and their message, not just from the street, but from
public view.
Police, therefore, don’t only perform a public an-
ti-crime policy; in order to serve their financial and political
masters, they must also commit crimes themselves, crimes
that involve violence, abuse, and thwarting basic constitu-
tional freedoms and human rights.
When you look at a police car and see the motto “To
Protect & Serve,” don’t be fooled. If you are a person of
color, an immigrant, a person of conscience ethically com-
pelled to protest, the armed authorities may not protect and
serve you. And that is especially so if you live in a low-in-
come community, a barrio, or in the darker-skinned part
of town. If you are wealthy—what the Occupy Movement
184 | have black lives ever mattered?

made infamous by calling it “the 1%”—then, yes, they pro-

tect and serve you.
What happens every day in economically disadvan-
taged neighborhoods of color would shock whites who live
in better-secured middle-class neighborhoods. For the fact
is, police relate to each community in a completely differ-
ent posture.
Changing an institution requires knowing its origins.
Therefore, activists committed to holding police account-
able for chronic violence in our communities must know
who the police really are, historically, and what social func-
tion they have performed; if activists are under-educated in
this regard, or misinformed, they will not be able to see how
best to approach and change the police as an institution.
Understanding history keeps activists from accepting cheap
reforms that act as institutional covers for the growing re-
pressive powers of the police in an era of mass surveillance
and open authoritarianism.
Taking the time to study and understand America’s
deep history is essential in order to see, anticipate, and plan
for what is before us.

In the Beginning . . .
The vivid, energized eruptions of protest across some 200
U.S. cities in the wake of the monstrous grand jury deci-
sions not to pursue criminal charges against the police who
killed Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, or Eric Gar-
ner in Staten Island, New York, were not the beginnings of
the movement; if anything, they were just the most visible
response of something that had been boiling and bubbling
 To Protect and Serve Whom? | 185

in the Black American psyche for generations. Similarly, the

chronic injustice itself—illicit police violence and impuni-
ty—has rankled Black life in America for an equally long
period of time.
If we read any traditional history of American policing,
we will likely encounter tales that the American system was
derived from the British effort to establish the London Met-
ropolitan Police of 1829. This assertion is in error.
Two centuries before the institution of Scotland Yard
got into the game, armed, violent police forces were operat-
ing in the United States with a specific role: to keep enslaved
Blacks in bondage, to punish those who attempt to escape
to freedom, and to deter Blacks from revolting against the
system that enslaves, commodifies, and terrorizes them.
Originally known as “slave patrols,” thousands of
armed British soldiers were dispatched to Barbados to form
the core of forces used to keep Africans in complete subju-
gation to their white oppressors. Indeed, this was their only
job. Their import from the British West Indies to the British
colonies in North America, circa 1696–1702, marked the in-
troduction of what were then termed “militia tenants.”
Their job, researcher Kristian Williams explains in En-
emies in Blue, was to stop, interrogate, and punish any “stray”
Africans, that is, any Black person who was not on a planta-
tion and directly under white control. It was this racialized
system that was imported from the British West Indies to
their North American colonial outposts.
When the British enslavers spread from Barbados to
what is today South Carolina, they brought with them more
than the people they damned to a life of forced labor. They
186 | have black lives ever mattered?

brought with them an armed system of enslavement and

perpetual surveillance, a feature of all Southern slavery, but
one particularly intense there so as to protect the minori-
ty whites from the massive enslaved Black population that
outnumbered them from the earliest years. By 1860, the
eve of the U.S. Civil War, South Carolina’s population was
704,000 persons. Of that number, the Black population was
412,320, approximately 60 percent of the state total.
This massive number of brutally oppressed people re-
quired the minority of whites to bolster the role of the City
Guard, South Carolina’s early name for the slave patrol, and
it demonstrated why the entire white male population was
compelled to support institutional white supremacy over
Blacks, and faced enlistment under pain of a substantial fine
(some 40 shillings), for adult males.
“South Carolina passed laws restricting the slaves’ abil-
ity to travel and trade, and created the Charlestown Town
Watch,” writes Kristian Williams.38 “Beginning in 1671, this
watch consisted of the regular constables and a rotation of
six citizens. It looked for any sign of trouble—fire, Indian at-
tacks, or slave gatherings. The laws also established a militia
system, with every man between sixteen and sixty required
to serve.”39
Slave patrols were designed not just to deter Black
revolt, but to suppress Black solidarity through music and
culture. For example, Williams writes, among the duties of
this early-created armed body were to “prevent all caballing
amongst negroes, by dispersing of them when drumming
or playing, and to search all negro houses for arms or other
offensive weapons.”40
 To Protect and Serve Whom? | 187

Armed white supremacists, not Scotland Yard’s Sher-

lock Holmes types, were the true Founding Fathers of
America’s police system; and fear of Blacks and Native
Americans drove whites to add the Second Amendment to
the U.S. Constitution.
Police, like slave owners, were given legal and custom-
ary immunity from anything done to Africans, whether en-
slaved or free.
That, too, is a fact; one we must come to terms with.
To be sure, every state wasn’t South Carolina, nor was
South Carolina every state. But it should be noted that this
was an important feature of Southern society, one that cen-
tered on institutional white supremacy and enslavement of
Blacks to generate enormous amounts of white wealth. And
given the particularly American lust for wealth, we cannot
ignore that the North, not to mention the so-called bor-
der states, also had a hand in the flesh markets of slavery.
In 1790, New York led all Atlantic states in the number of
enslaved people held, with some 21,000 people there forced
to live in bondage. That same year, Pennsylvania had about
a fifth of that number, but by 1820, Pennsylvania’s enslaved
population had mushroomed to 30,000. This, however, was
roughly a fifth of the number for the average border state,
such as Maryland and Kentucky.
That said, New York, the bustling economic whirlwind
of the colonies and post-Revolution states, had its own his-
tory, in ways quite diverse from its sister states in the South.
New York, during the 19th century, was home to mil-
lions of European emigrants, many of whom were fight-
ing anti-immigrant antipathy. The anti-Irish feeling of the
188 | have black lives ever mattered?

British elites carried well into the Atlantic states, and Irish
folks were subjected to brutal and unrelenting prejudice in
Philadelphia and New York. On the bottom economic and
social rung of American society, they were not seriously re-
garded as white.
In Noel Ignatiev’s groundbreaking 1995 work How the
Irish Became White, he recounts the peculiar origins of the
Philadelphia Police Department. There, Irish were involved
in running battles with nativists who, deeply imbued with
anti-foreigner, anti-immigrant, and anti-Catholic fervor,
staged violent attacks on Irish people, and even attempted
to burn down their churches. Irish folk In Pennsylvania and
New York responded to such provocations as people in cities
have done since Rome: they banded together, established
gangs, and used their numbers, their grit, and their smarts
to defend their communities. They also engaged in illegal
activities to hustle money and boost local influence.
In mid-19th-century Philadelphia, one of the more
notorious gangs, the Killers, used the local Moyamensing
Hose fire department as a gang hangout. Its leader, a crafty
Mexico War veteran named William McMullen, wanted to
take the gang into politics.
This era featured the rise of the so-called Know Noth-
ings, an anti-immigrant, nativist faction that commanded
considerable national influence in politics during the 1850s.
By 1856, however, McMullen’s organizing ability, skill
at stuffing ballot boxes, and intimidation of political op-
ponents resulted in his fellow gangsters opening up the
mayorship to a Democrat, Richard Vaux, who returned
the favor.
 To Protect and Serve Whom? | 189

McMullen immediately offered six members of

Moyamensing Hose (and also the Killers) jobs as cops. They
were later known as “Dick Vaux’s police,” and became in-
famous for their epic brutality, especially against Black
Philadelphians.
Through their public offices, they rolled back the na-
tivists and formed a barrier against Black advancement in
the City of Brotherly Love.
In many ways, today’s institution of policing extends
from a historical continuum that began with white suprem-
acist slave patrols and, in cities like Philadelphia, organized
gangsterism. And in those origins lie many of the defects of
the present system. They remain racist; they remain conser-
vative; and like the gangs that their grandfathers belonged
to, they remain cliquish, clannish, and aggressive toward
outsiders.
In 1850s-era Philadelphia, they didn’t preserve the
peace, or strive for justice. They started riots. Race riots.

Cops Riot Against the People

In early Philadelphia, both politicians and police saw race ri-
ots as important tools to establish dominance and “place”—
as in keeping Blacks in theirs. This was especially so during
mayoral election periods, when power was faced with chal-
lenges. Ignatiev writes:

Election day saw continuous fighting between Ne-

groes and whites, often initiated by Democratic
police who feared for their jobs. Hundreds were
injured, and three Negroes were killed; among
190 | have black lives ever mattered?

them was Octavius Catto, a prominent figure in

the Afro-American community and leader of the
campaign to desegregate the streetcars, shot in the
back by a white man who was then ushered from
the scene and out of the city by a policeman.41

Philadelphia was an urban hell for Blacks in Philadel-

phia for much of the 19th century. As in many other cities,
Blacks suffered from the impact of a heavy, threatening, and
repressive police presence in their everyday lives. And this
wasn’t only a 19th-century matter, for it continued through-
out the 20th as well. Philadelphia, moreover, has been no
different from the many American cities that became flash-
points for social conflict and racialized violence.
All over the country, low-income Black neighborhoods
went up in anguished flames, and guess what the trigger was
in virtually every case?

Summers of Fire
In 1965 and again in 1967, cities across America burned,
set ablaze by Blacks who felt that the system was hopeless.
Watts. Detroit. Harlem. Newark. Plainfield, New Jersey.
And beyond.
In 1968, the Kerner Commission Report was published,
and at its core sat the answer to this long train of angry, in-
cendiary responses to chronic social discontent: joblessness,
poor housing, disrespect from politicians, and the like. But
one thing centered the report: “Almost invariably the inci-
dent that ignites disorder arises from police action. Harlem,
 To Protect and Serve Whom? | 191

Watts, Newark, and Detroit—all the major outbursts of re-

cent years—were precipitated by routine arrests of Negroes
for minor offenses by white officers.”42
The Kerner Report, published nearly 50 years ago,
could have been published almost anytime since, as seen in
the dark parade of events from coast to coast, from Rod-
ney King in L.A. and Oscar Grant in Oakland, to Michael
Brown in Ferguson and Eric Garner in New York City. Be-
ing able to witness police beat, abuse, and use lethal force
against unarmed Brown and Black Americans on TV, com-
puters, and mobile devices is the only new piece in the pic-
ture, for police terrorism of Black populations dates back to
their genesis in slave patrols.
The recent cases of Michael Brown end Eric Garner
have relit the fuse of civil activity and widespread social in-
dignation. People nationwide are now deeply questioning
the structures of policing that were previously less visible,
beyond reproach, and unquestioned.
Why do police act as they do, especially with regard to
Black Americans in the urban cores of cities?
Why do they continue to do so, when it clearly incurs
such profound social costs?
Kristian Williams gives us some idea, writing of two
specific, police operations against the African American
communities in Chapel Hill and Los Angeles. Williams
writes of “Operation Ready-Rock,” in which, in November
1990, some 45 state police, canine units, and a militarized
Special Response Team hit the 100 block of Graham Street
in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, as if it were D-Day.
192 | have black lives ever mattered?

The cops declared de facto martial law, closing down

the streets, bringing out their dogs, and raiding the neigh-
borhood pool hall.
Residents were not allowed to leave, as cops were legal-
ly armed with a “blanket” warrant for the persons, homes,
and vehicles of everybody on the block. Everybody.
But when the actual raids went down, the warrant didn’t
really “blanket” everyone, for only Blacks were targeted and
searched, often at gunpoint; white people in the area were
allowed to go their merry way.
The raid resulted in 100 detainees, 13 arrests, and
zero convictions. Despite the victims’ successful class-
action suit, the local police continued to defend “Operation
Ready-Rock.”
Just a few years before the assault in Chapel Hill, cops
in L.A., perhaps thinking of their Hollywood environs, went
bigger, bringing in hundreds of cops, arresting some 1,500
people, taking 500 cars, all under the cool eye of LAPD
Chief Daryl Gates, who launched the raid, “Operation
Hammer,” on South Central.
In this operation there were 1,500 arrests, resulting in
32 felony charges. After the big show, charges against 90
percent of the people were dropped.
Sociologist Randall Sheldon examined the raid and
concluded: “The overall purpose was merely social control
(of African-American youth) rather than a serious attempt at
reducing crime.”44
With themes similar to those of vintage Arnold
Schwarzenegger flicks, it is hard to resist the impression that
 To Protect and Serve Whom? | 193

the state wasn’t waging a form of low-intensity warfare, in-

cluding psychological operations, against Black folks.
Williams tells us: “Though individually they receive
just a meager portion of capitalism’s benefits, the police rep-
resent both the interests and the power of the ruling class.
Like managers, police control those who do the work and
they actively maintain the conditions that allow for profit-
able exploitation.”45

An Inside Look
Retired police chief Norm Stamper spent his entire adult
life employed as a cop. He joined the police department as a
young man, rose up through the ranks, and ended up head-
ing the police departments in two major U.S. cities: San Di-
ego and Seattle. In his 2005 book Breaking Rank, Stamper
discusses the chronic racism he witnessed during his years
of experience in cop culture:

Simply put, white cops are afraid of black men. We

don’t talk about it, we pretend it doesn’t exist, we
claim “color blindness,” we say white officers treat
black men the same way they treat white men. But
that’s a lie. In fact, the bigger, the darker the black
man the greater the fear. The African-American
community knows this. Hell, most whites know it.
Yet, even though it’s a central, if not the defining
ingredient in the makeup of police racism, white
cops won’t admit it to themselves, or to others.46
194 | have black lives ever mattered?

In his book, Chief Stamper shares a personal story

about how, shortly after he left the police academy, his gruff
sergeant told him to march into the neighborhood Black
tavern, walk up to the biggest, meanest-looking Black man
in the joint, and treat him in an insulting fashion.
Stamper, scared as hell, but not wanting to disappoint
the old cop, mustered up his courage, and marched into the
“Bucket of Blood.” Before he could reach the biggest, mean-
est-looking Black dude in the joint, his superior rushed in,
and called him off.
It was a test, he explained.
On a more serious note, Stamper recalled his academy
training when another wizened geezer went “off book” to
teach the young recruits an important lesson that was de-
signed to save their lives. The trainer explained to them
about the existence of the Nation of Islam, described as a
“Black Muslim cult” that had pathological hatred of white
people. The elder instructor warned them to be especial-
ly wary of Nation of Islam members, for they believed that
white cops were “devils,” and it was their duty to send them
to the next world.
Stamper said that hearing such things scared him
shitless.
Of course, this doesn’t explain every interaction be-
tween Blacks—especially Black men—and police, but it does
provide some precious insight. For when men fear, they are
halfway to hate; for we hate that which evokes fear in us.
And as Stamper suggests, we are loath to admit our fears. It
makes us angry, for it seems unmanly. A sexist view, perhaps,
but there it is.
 To Protect and Serve Whom? | 195

How Black Politicians Have Failed (And How White

Politicians Have Acquiesced)
As these words are written, marches and demonstrations con-
tinue to erupt all across the country. These demonstrations
have caught the national Black political machinery off guard.
For many of these figures have run for, and risen to,
political office, but their ties to the grassroots Black commu-
nity—their voter base—are tenuous, at best. As these Black
office holders most often come from the professional class,
they rarely have strong backgrounds in activism.
When these Blacks enter office, they usually are most
concerned with their personal, professional, and political
concerns, not the suffering and injustice endured by people
in impoverished communities.
This is so primarily because the media act as discipli-
narians against Black politicians, who are punished if they
dare challenge the status quo by speaking on behalf of the
most marginalized populations in the country: the Black
working class and voiceless impoverished class.
When these sectors of the country are mobilized, they
can impact political races, media, and policy. However, more
often than not, they are mobilized on behalf of politicians
who, once installed, couldn’t care less about the real life-
and-death vulnerabilities of their constituencies.
Why is this so? Because, in the absence of a powerful
movement, in the absence of pressure from people in the
streets, members of the political class serve those with more
wealth and power as a way to increase their own. Instead of
serving the public interest, office holders flow toward a ran-
cid pool of financial self-interest and self-aggrandizement.
196 | have black lives ever mattered?

Rather than represent the social justice needs of their

communities, Black office holders seem to imitate their
white colleagues who serve financial power and use the priv-
ilege of their office to build up their own bank accounts, one
thousand dollars at a time.
It should also be noted that many of these Black politi-
cians hail from low-income and working-class families, and
have less resources compared to their white colleagues. This
means that they may be more easily lured to take extra cam-
paign funds and become beholden to private interests rather
than to the social needs of their public communities. Doing
so creates a classic conflict-of-interest scenario that prevents
such office holders from taking stands that might displease
their big financial donors. This renders them unable to truly
serve the public interest and put in some work to improve
the miserable realities of Black people: chronic impoverish-
ment, neglected schools, neglected housing, police violence,
mass incarceration, prison violence, and financial predation
of low-income people and communities of color. They are
thus politically compromised and ideologically isolated, for,
in a state that places white wealth and security above those
of other Americans, to really serve communities of color
constitutes a betrayal of the status quo.
Only a social movement can build the political force
required to get some traction with this ilk of Black leaders.
And if that don’t work—and, let’s face it, it may not—then
old leaders gotta be rejected, and movement-supporting and
movement-conscious leaders must take the helm of power.
This is especially so when it comes to Blacks in blue,
who are under intense pressure to serve the white privilege
 To Protect and Serve Whom? | 197

structure and worldview that continues to institutionally

dominate most law enforcement and judicial systems na-
tionwide. For Black cops, like Black politicians, function in
predominantly white environments, where their opinions
and objections hold less sway.
Kristian Williams, in a footnote, cites an Atlanta police
chief who describes his department’s bargaining unit (the
so-called “union”) as “not a union at all, but in fact a thinly
veiled cover for [Ku Klux] Klan membership.”47

Reforms? Or Revolutionary Changes?

In the wake of the horrendous instances of police violence
against unarmed Black men and boys that ignited mass
marches across the country, what is the way forward? What
are leading political and civil rights voices saying in response
to these chronic, and increasingly publicized violations of
human rights?
The responses, to be sure, seem markedly anemic and
pathetic, considering the gravity of the grievances raised
by the people. In a nutshell, the proposed solutions offered
by local and national (primarily Black) leaders includes the
following:

• body cameras for cops,

• civilian review boards of police violence,
• opening of grand jury records.

This is, to say the least, a sad and depressing set of pro-
posals that can barely be called reforms. They are sops to the
masses, stale crumbs for pigeons.
198 | have black lives ever mattered?

They solve nothing, for they change nothing.

Nor are they seriously expected to, for politicians, in
their thirst to be seen as doing something, grab at sound
bites being offered, but change nothing, for, as the videos of
police beating Rodney King show us, cameras can show a lot
but still not result in anything except acquittals.
What people are demanding is a real solution, not
nonsense about “body cams.” Such discussions are frankly
meaningless.
Decades ago, at the tail end of the fiery 1960s and chill-
ing 1970s, Dr. Huey P. Newton, Minister of Defense of the
Black Panther Party, wrote several articles proposing how
we might totally transform American policing.
His articles followed years of on-the-ground organiz-
ing, demanding not “community policing,” but “community
control of police.” The core of this concept is for police to
live in the community that they are employed to police, and
subject to the will of the people that they allegedly “serve.”
Dr. Newton gave that idea much thought, and in a se-
ries of articles published in The Black Panther during Feb-
ruary and March of 1980, he presents an alternative view
of how police should be structured. We here summarize his
ideas:

• Existing police departments would be abolished;

• A Citizen’s Peace Force (CPF) would be established
to serve local community needs;
• The persons serving on the Citizen’s Peace Force
would be selected per council districts, starting (part-
time) at age 15, for two-year terms;
 To Protect and Serve Whom? | 199

• Those chosen would be trained, but also educated in

areas of urban problem solving.

Dr. Huey P. Newton’s service-oriented perspective de-

parts markedly from the increasing militaristic and authori-
tarian project that now animates much of police theory and
law enforcement practice.
Dr. Newton also writes about the spectrum of personali-
ty profiles considered best suited for serving the community.
The personality profile of a “conscientious objector” to
the military draft, for instance, would be a potentially excel-
lent fit for service on a Citizen’s Peace Force. Motivation, in
general, would be screened with an emphasis on selecting
service-oriented, rather than control-oriented, personality
types.48
The central objectives of his proposal are encapsulat-
ed in three key concepts: conscription, community criteria,
and civilian control. At base, he argues, the Citizen’s Peace
Force would also act as a militia, but one profoundly differ-
ent from the police forces that exist in some 18,000 towns
and communities of present-day America.
Today’s Movement must be more than a Moment. It
must grapple with the question of whether it is reform that
is needed (body cams, etc.), or deep structural changes that
speak to the present crisis facing communities across the
country.
The People can—and must—build solutions to this cri-
sis, if they but dare.
200 | have black lives ever mattered?

What Next?
Movements are driven by commitment, ethics, intelligence,
solidarity, and passions; for without passion, the embers may
dim and die.
For example, what sparked the Civil Rights Movement
and kicked it into high gear?
It wasn’t just Martin’s magnificent oratory, as much as
we lovers of words wish it were so. It wasn’t just Rosa Parks
defying law and custom by refusing to rise from her seat at
the front of a segregated bus.
This is not to denigrate their robust and noble con-
tributions to the Movement, but to give us insight into a
larger, more salient point.
Two events gave certainty and determination to the
Civil Rights and Black Liberation Movements, enshrining
them into the undying hearts of millions.
They were: the terrorist murder of a 14-year-old Black
boy, Emmett Till, on August 28, 1955, for whistling at a
white woman in Money, Mississippi; and the September 15,
1963 terrorist bombing of 16th St. Baptist Church in Bir-
mingham, Alabama, where four little Black girls were mur-
dered by white supremacists.
The atrocities committed in these attacks were horrific,
but they were common at the time, particularly in the South.
In her autobiography, for example, Angela Y. Davis recounts
that white terrorist attacks were so frequent where she was
growing up that her neighborhood assumed the nickname
“Dynamite Hill.” “Many people assume that the bombing
of the 16th Street Baptist Church was a singular event,” says
Davis, “but actually there were bombings and burnings all
 To Protect and Serve Whom? | 201

the time. When I was 11 and [my sister] Fania was 7, the
church we attended, the First Congregational Church, was
burned. I was a member of an interracial discussion group
there, and the church was burned as a result of that group.”49
The white terrorist attacks against Black Emmett Till and
the Black 16th St. Baptist Church were not unusual; what
was unusual was the degree of attention they received, atten-
tion that caught the conscience of the nation.
Such violent events, and the tragic sacrifices to the de-
mons of racism and hatred, gave martyred life to the cause,
and touched those who could no longer resist the moral
gravity of the Movement.
Similarly, while the Brown and Garner cases seem to
have attracted the most press, the case of 12-year-old Tamir
Rice, killed by a cop, has struck deep and powerful chords
among people in this country and beyond.
In the middle of the last century, children fell at the
hands of white supremacist and racist terrorist organizations
such as the Ku Klux Klan.
Today, such children fall at the hands of cops—more
often than not, the hands of white cops.
Any system that permits its children to be killed with
impunity would seem to be a system in dire crisis. Some-
thing at the very core of our system—and society—is irre-
vocably broken and must be fixed.
Cops, armed with the awesome powers of the state, are
now doing what Klansmen did several generations ago—and
a new/ancient movement stirs from generations of chronic
injustice, passionate indignation, and knowledge of success-
ful insurrectional histories.
202 | have black lives ever mattered?

When the state permits its servants to take the life of

living, breathing, growing, wondrous children, it ceases to
have a reason to exist in the world. It has failed utterly.
Perhaps that is the force that fuels today’s youth to fear-
lessly stand up against automatic weapons, armed Humvees,
and sniper rifles, as have the youth of Ferguson. They are
fueled by deep and moving forces that compel them to con-
front the state terror unleashed against them.
They yell, at the top of their lungs: “We Can’t Breathe!”
We Can’t Breathe!
“Your system is choking us!”
¡Ya Basta! Enough is enough! We won’t take this anymore!
When people reach this point, when they no lon-
ger fear power, they are on the road to social change and
transformation.
This is their time, their hour; their Selma, their Civil
Rights Movement.
In many ways, the elders have failed them.
It’s time for Youth to rush the microphone—and take
the stage!

Addendum
February 1, 2017
When the words of “To Protect & Serve Whom?” were writ-
ten, Barack Obama had less than two years left to serve in
the White House. Who knew what tomorrow would bring?
Few dared guess that the presidency of Donald J. Trump
was actually on the cusp of becoming a reality. Yet this tran-
sition doesn’t diminish any of the arguments in “To Pro-
tect & Serve Whom?,” or any other works presented in
 To Protect and Serve Whom? | 203

this volume. Instead, such arguments are deepened, made

more tragic, for the 45th U.S. president is mentioned here
(see “The Other Central Park Rapes”), in an unflattering
light, to say the least. It’s safe to assume that he will spark
far more antagonism than his predecessor, Obama, who, lest
we forget, chided Black Lives Matter activists for their “loud
shouting” and tried to shuffle them into voting booths to
support one of the co-architects of the biggest mass incar-
ceration boom in U.S. history: Hillary Clinton. Suffice it to
say, he was less than successful.
Indeed, while as president Obama may have commuted
thousands of sentences, his changes were episodic, not sys-
tematic. Thus, the day he left office, he also left the horrors
of mass incarceration fundamentally unchanged, and in the
hands of an ultra-right-wing populist endorsed by a known
domestic terrorist group, the Ku Klux Klan. Barack Obama
left behind a vast machinery of repression, added to the most
intrusive surveillance program on earth.
As far as the Black Lives Matter Movement is con-
cerned, by raising their voices while under the Obama pe-
riod, they established their sound integrity—and perhaps it
may be seen that it’s possible that they should have yelled
louder. For Black Lives Do Matter. Now, more than ever.
 THE FIRE THIS TIME
June 2020

News of the police asphyxiation of 46-year-old George Perry

Floyd, a Black man, on a Minneapolis street on May 25, 2020,
has torn through the hearts of millions. Hundreds of cities
around the world have ignited in mass protest and resistance,
and many have burned.
The reason? The same reason that stirred riots in America
for the better part of a century: the acts of state officials—
police—who sparked these events with their violence and their
immense negrophobia, the hatred and fear of Black folks.
In many ways, this violence has its roots in state militias
during colonial and slavery days, when the central concern of
white political elites was to control the movements and affilia-
tions of captive Black people.
Floyd, a security guard, was arrested on suspicion of pass-
ing a counterfeit $20 bill in a store. When he was arrested by
four cops, he was handcuffed behind his back and forced to
lie down on his stomach in the street. Officer Derek Chauvin,
a white cop, knelt down beside him with his knee planted in
the side of Floyd’s neck, keeping him in that prone position for
nearly nine minutes, several minutes after he lost conscious-
ness, then breathed his last.
Before he passed, he could be heard fighting for breath,
offering a raspy “I can’t breathe!” several times, before calling
for his recently deceased Mama to save him.
 This heartrending occurrence, captured on a bystander’s
camera phone, went viral and ignited a national reaction of sol-
idarity and protest. It continues as of this writing.
The nation hasn’t seen this level of mass protest since the
1960s. Diverse Black Lives Matter gatherings, including many
young white, Latinx, Asian, and Indigenous protesters—have
seized the moment. Indeed, cops have publicly—à la Colin
Kaepernick—“taken a knee,” and some have deigned to march
alongside the people, so as to distance themselves from the cold,
calculated killing of Floyd by Minneapolis cops.
Yet such acts do not disguise the social role and official func-
tion of cops: to protect the reigning status quo. And that status
quo exists to protect capital, property, and wealth, as well as the
systems in place that support such relationships. Thus it is built on
impunity, today no less than in the colonial days of British Amer-
ica, when neither the Crown, nor its agents, could do wrong.
For capitalism is a law unto itself.
Activists must continue to “seize the time” by being criti-
cal, analytical, and historical in crafting strategies to build a fu-
ture free of the unjust, imperial sting of police-state impunity.
For from oppression and repression come solidarity, resistance,
rebellion, and change.
It has taken over fifty years to reach what may be a turning
point in a new American history.
The future will be decided by those who truly desire to
fight for it.

Copyright © 2020 Mumia Abu-Jamal

Special thanks to Johanna Fernández | @JFernandez693 | www.wbai.org/
program.php?program=355