Posted on 09/05/2014 4:46:43 AM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
In wake of Ferguson shooting, leaders of black student organizations hope to raise awareness on unwarranted gun use, police brutality.
Racial tensions reached a boiling point last month when police officer Darren Wilson shot and killed unarmed black teenager Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri.
Among the protests, rallies, police activity and arrests, students at this university — more than 800 miles from Ferguson — have been touched by the issue and are heading to the nation’s capital to work toward change.
The Black Alliance Network, a group of presidents and vice presidents from every black student organization on the campus, will hold a peaceful march in Washington on Saturday to help raise awareness for legislation against unwarranted gun use, police brutality and officer misconduct. Participants will gather at the back side of the White House at 2 p.m., and student organizers are encouraging people to bring signs, energy and chants.
“It’s really just for people who are demanding a change, whether you be black, Latino, white, Asian — it’s for change, it’s not about race,” said Samira Jackson, the vice president of public relations for the Black Student Union.
The senior communication major said when BSU members heard about the events in Ferguson, the news only solidified their plans to march. A few weeks before Michael Brown’s death, police killed Eric Garner, an unarmed 43-year-old black Staten Island, New York, native, sparking the group’s interest in raising awareness.
“That’s when a lot of our group members really started to get involved and passionate,” Jackson said. “What hit home the most was the fact that [Brown] was just 18 years old and his life ended. … lives are being taken for unnecessary reasons.”
Kumea Shorter-Gooden, this university’s chief diversity officer, said these incidents indicate that today’s American society criminalizes black people, and noted that Michael Brown committed no crimes while walking down the street that day.
“How a police officer could escalate that and then take this young man’s life is just astounding,” she said. “And yet I think it’s really kind of a wake-up call to us about the persistence of racism in America. … We are not post-racial.”
Shorter-Gooden said the police’s handling of the protesters, including controversies around militarization, excessive force and denying people their rights, exacerbates this message. But on this campus, however, Shorter-Gooden identified the biggest issue regarding race as micro-aggressions.
“I hear students of color talk about daily, almost normative slights and invalidating comments that they experience from peers or faculty or staff. Comments like ‘Oh, wow, how did you get in here?’ or ‘Yeah, I guess you must’ve come in under affirmative action,’” she said. “It’s an array of relatively small but problematic things that when accumulated can have an impact on someone’s sense of self or whether they feel like they belong here or want to be here.”
Senior government and politics major Jasmine Jones said she was “deeply saddened” by the situation in Missouri, but does not think it is a reflection of today’s society as a whole.
“It’s a reminder of what has been happening in society since the existence of African Americans,” the president of the Black Political Student Association said. “Our society, or America in general, kind of just glosses over race and they think that it’s a thing of the past. … things like the Trayvon Martin incident and the Ferguson incident is just a reminder that we still have dirty laundry that we’re just covering up.”
Jones said she has seen students on this campus react to the incident in a variety of ways, and plans to discuss the incident and how students can respond at BPSA’s monthly “poli-talk” discussions.
“I think for a lot of people, it’s just so overwhelming and so stressful that people are just like ‘I give up.’ … The other sense is people are just so enraged that they want to change things radically,” Jones said.
When senior government and politics major Moriah Ray heard about Brown’s death, she said she immediately started thinking of ways she could help spread awareness. Ray, the vice president of this university’s chapter of the NAACP, said the NAACP contacted each local unit to discuss everyone’s reactions and where to go from there.
It emphasized encouraging people to register to vote in the midterm elections, which tend to lack minority representation, and using social media, including the hashtag #BlackLivesMatter, to spread the message. Ray said police brutality is not something that should be dismissed, especially today, and she plans to bring her organization to the march Saturday.
“It’s really important if you have a voice. … If you’re lucky enough to learn about social issues, you have more obligation to do something about it,” Ray said.
The student networks organizing the march thought it would be beneficial to bring a large number of people together. Members have been reaching out to friends in the area who attend other schools such as George Washington University, Howard University and Towson University, “to take a stand and demand change in our world,” Jackson said.
“Our generation, we’re young adults now and we’re going to decide the future — if we make a change now, it will impact years to come,” she said.
One of the greatest collective failures in history is the collective failure of America’s “black leadership” to lead their people into freedom and prosperity. Instead they have led them into generations of institutional victimhood and permanent low-productivity as a culture. Not as a race, but as a culture. Plenty have abandoned the culture and gone on to personal success. But most cling to the culture and the permanent syndrome of poverty, protest and victimhood.
I suppose the “black leaders” like it that way.
Ten people will show up, outnumbered by the hustlers and press sycophants, then demand more free stuff and even greater black privilege.
The media will turn it into another Selma, even though you could fit all the “protestors” into one VW microbus.
And it will accomplish exactly nothing.
I saw nothing about protesting black-on-black shootings
Excellent. We haven’t had a single protest in Washington since January 20, 2009.
Maryland “Freak State” PING!
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