A "Stop the Violence" community meeting was held in New Haven City Hall last night. As you climb the stairs in City Hall, you are confronted, surrounded, eyed and watched by the portraits of New Haven's Mayors. I am always struck by the more recent ones. Dick Lee, and his attempt to control black community insurrection with foundation and federal money. Bart Guida and his attempt to control by illegal government surveillance and community infiltration.The Daniels advent of community policing to offset the legalized violence of the at that time police department gestapo tactics. (The Beat Down Squads)
Destefano's scaling back of community policing and the building of schools.
This particular meeting harkened back it seemed to echoes of the magnificent seven aldermanic slate demanding representative democracy 40 years ago. I heard the voices of Freddie Harris and the angry young men and actually saw a now old but still young at heart George Edwards, the young men in the Hill planting the seeds of the Hill Parents Association. I heard Hank Parker's remarks after the first defeat for mayor and two other unsuccessful runs for Mayor resonating throughout the meeting.
Speaker after speaker expressed the same question, "What is the meaning of Black Power." They asked ,even if they have never heard the song,"Where have all the Flower's Gone?"
Why have model city events turned and spun and twisted and circumnavigated around corners and alleys? Why have countless community conversations and peace commissions and tree plantings, and town meetings wound up in littered vacant lots, in new schools, in vacant buildings once thriving dream factories now abandoned awaiting the arrival of livable cities,redevelopment agencies, visions for New Haven, an empowered New Haven,all american cities, fighting back and ceta.
The speakers intoned ( not specifically ) but spoke nonetheless about the countless dreams embodied as I write this commentary by those sleeping and being sequestered this very moment, in the city lock up or at the Whalley Ave jail.
Somehow we want to believe that the production of the guns that won the west is far removed from the bullets that are flying this very moment as you read this on Dixwell Avenue or in Afghanistan.Somehow we want to believe that civil disobedience and criminality can be separated. The placeholder language for institutionalized violence is often called civil control and the unvarnished rage of errant individuals sometimes successfully masquerades as senior executives at Enron or JP Morgan, or Watergate, or AIG or Blackwater.
We want to believe that bailing out the fiscal criminals was the right thing to do, because they were we are told " they were too big to fail" Can you imagine the proverbial school bully saying give me your money for I am too big to fail?
We are told that Tiger does not have to speak to the police because he is sleeping. ( Tell that to Skip Gates)
We are told that the parents are at fault, or society is at fault or the system is at fault.
There is no answer to questions that have no answers. The phrasing of a question is sometimes tantamount to asking the river to stop flowing, asking the sun to stop rising each day. Questions are not to be posed just for the fun of reality show enactments and for pontification opportunities.
Let's consider the daily and moment to moment roles we all reconstruct, rehearse and perform whenever the opportunity arises.
If you define a problem too narrowly your solution might be too narrow. If you define a problem too broadly then your solution might be too broad. Tthe micro problems escaping detection live another day to reinfect the body politic. If you want to stop the violence - lock everyone up. If you believe that the majority or super majority of one pigmentation segment of the population are more criminally inclined then create and maintain a system that captures and confines black and brown human elements with an occasional white cell (mate thrown in the mix). If peace on earth good will towards men means inflicting and enforcing economic quarantine on the urban body politic then so be it. Clearly the introduction of small pox and other diseases was enough.
Violent deaths, deaths by smoking, deaths by driving, deaths by drinking, deaths by flying tell us that societal self destruction is often times only tempered by good cops and bad cops. Who is the new sheriff in town, Bush one day, Obama the next, who will it be tomorrow?
During colonial times, no not during the American Revolutionary period, but during the global colonial conguest and sun never sitting on the British Empire days, violent terrorist plotted and killed for their homeland to be free. Criminals such as Mandela and criminals such an Anwar Sadat sought to make their country free. Criminals such as Nat Turner , John Brown and Denmark Vessey sought to set the captives free.
As the meeting was held in City Hall in the land of the Quinnipiac people I can hear those people, your people, our people saying "Stop The Violence."
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=166834&id=585698688&l=51bab4aa0e
article in New Haven Independent: http://www.newhavenindependent.org/archives/2009/12/about_150_commu.php
http://nhregister.com/articles/2009/12/17/news/new_haven/a3-neforum1216.txt
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