From the notebook: Truth-convention tidbits
I was asked last night: Aren't most of the groups represented at the ongoing convention of truth groups in Greensboro dealing with long-term problems rather than the kind of single incident that Greensboro experienced on Nov. 3, 1979?
The short answer is yes, most of them are, but there are exceptions.
The representatives of the Moore's Ford Memorial Committee focus on the unsolved July 25, 1946, killings of four young African Americans by a group of 12 to 15 unmasked white men. The victims, one of whom had returned just months before from military service in the Pacific, were shot hundreds of times. The 1898 Wilmington Race Riot also was a one-time event that took place within a fairly compressed time frame. And one could argue that the events surrounding Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans were one-time, rather than systemic, abuses.
But to make that argument is to presume that these events took place in a vacuum. They did not -- not even the Greensboro shootings, as the Greensboro Truth and Reconciliation Commission's report makes clear.
Each event took place within a system of antidemocratic repression. Now, the drivers of that repression vary from one instance to the next in terms of their relative levels of influence, but the repression is a constant. By definition, then, class issues are also a constant -- one is either a repressor or a repressee, and money tends to be the demarcator. And in the U.S., class issues and racial issues, particularly in the South, often have been very difficult to tease apart, a fact that has contributed in many instances to the longevity of the repression by dividing the opposition to the oppressors.
(UPDATE: By chance I just stumbled across this book, which, though I have not read it, appears as though it may examine the motives and mechanisms of societal repression. Perhaps you will find it useful in thinking about this issue.)
Doria Johnson of the Anthony P. Crawford Remembered Memorial Committee, which honors an ancestor of hers who was lynched after organizing a school for African American children in Abbeville, S.C., labeled the common thread of repression "colonialism" during Thursday's Q&A session with news media, and literally or metaphorically, there's some truth to that claim. But what is unequivocal is the common thread of violence as a tool of repression: "The culture of violence is systemic," participant Kathy Sanchez observed.
At least one other thread unites the many sad stories that have brought these people to Greensboro this week: In almost every case, "official" leadership has been very late to the table, lagging behind the oppressed themselves, or their survivors, who in most cases have been the drivers behind the various truth efforts represented here. "The evidence of grassroots effort is where we find the real leadership," said Gail Glapion of the African American Leadership Project in New Orleans, a strategic-planning network for that city whose work since Hurricane Katrina in 2005 has refocused on organizing an effective response to the crises left by the storm.
Organizers said 35 delegates took part in Thursday's discussions, with some unable to attend because storms across the eastern U.S. disrupted their travel plans. An additional five participants were expected to take part today. News conferences are scheduled for 12:30 and 4 p.m.