Look at this. Please click to enlarge and just take a few moments to take it in. I’ll wait.
Ieshia Evans being arrested at Baton Rouge. Pic by Jonathan Bachman/Reuters. Please click to enlarge.
The BBC reports people’s comments about photographer Jonathan Bachman’s powerful, gripping soon-to-be-legendary photograph and he was interviewed on Radio New Zealand’s nine-to-noon show this morning. He sounded like a good man. Saying demonstrators have been trying to tell us what’s been going on for years, but now with cellphones … Listen to the interview yourself at Radio NZ. (Archived as MP3 at The Paepae here.)
Like many others, I saw it first on social media – Twitter in my case – and was stopped by it. Her posture, their protective armour compared to her summer dress. It screams.
What a moment. What an iconic image.
Now read this: Fighting the Future: White Supremacy vs Demography by Eoin Higgins and tell me if you think he’s wrong in any way. Because I can’t find an argument against what he is saying.
It’s July of 2016, and black men are being killed because they threaten the fundamental bedrock of the modern authoritarian racial hegemony in the US: Only whites may be armed, only whites may have authority in society.
Any threat to that shaky premise must be swiftly dealt with. Early on the morning of July 4, an off-duty NYPD officer killed a black man in his car with his family after a road rage incident. Delrawn Small struck the off duty officer during the conflict and the policeman retaliated by shooting him to death. Even off-duty, the policeman refused to accept a threat to white police authority and responded with murder. …
Read on. Warning: it gets worse. So important. (Archived as PDF here.)
-P
Update: some confusion but it seems her name is Ieshia Evans, not Leshia Evans.
Worth reading in the Washington Post:
‘Graceful in the lion’s den’: Photo of young woman’s arrest in Baton Rouge becomes powerful symbol
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/jul/22/i-wasnt-afraid-i-took-a-stand-in-baton-rouge-because-enough-is-enough
Thanks for sharing that link. Wow, good on her.
It must be hard to express or rationalise the disappointment many Black Americans feel about how the Obama administration has worked out.
Not just the ‘political realities’ of the composition of the Republican domination of the House & Senate, the Tea Party obstructionism, but also Obama’s own cerebral, thoughtful nature and his (my hallucination:) severe commitment to NEVER giving the appearance of an “angry black man” — these factors, among others, have constrained him.
Iesha Evans and her ilk are disappointed. Obama “chose politics over his people” she says. Wow. That’s tough.
OK. I still think the world breathed easier because of his election.