McPherson: Anger Rising

The former national chairman of the New Black Panthers Party has called on that organization and other black militant groups to defend minority neighborhoods in the wake of numerous controversial police killings. Malik Zulu Shabazz spoke on a radio program last week called “Black Power Radio” about the need for unity among blacks and said “it is time for black groups like The Nation of Islam, the Huey P. Newton Gun Club and the New Black Panthers to organize, arm themselves and patrol to defend black communities against police brutality,” Brietbart reports.

“We will defend ourselves as Malcolm [X] said, ‘by any means necessary,’ and that the only option can not be non-violence,” Shabazz told his listeners. “We have the right to defend ourselves with deadly force.”

“There must be a group of brothers and sisters,” he said. “There must be a unit. There must be an army that will defend us with the force of arms. We should strive to build a united front and start patrolling these streets.”

On the issue of several recent assassinations of police officers, Shabazz was unequivocal. “Police brutality is going to come to an end one way or another, or it’s just going to be a lot of dead bodies in the streets.”

Mr. Shabazz is certainly expressing a concern shared by Americans living in poor and minority neighborhoods. Police in the United States have come to be revered as almost saint-like by many, but their brutal, and often vicious and deadly tactics are raising the ire of others.

With a helping hand from Uncle Sam, police departments even in low-crime states and cities have become heavily militarized, and combined with no shortage of laws to enforce – and wide latitude granted for their enforcement – cops can and do ride regular roughshod over those they are supposed to serve and protect. It’s not just blacks and other minorities who are sick of it, but being politically weak and generally “out of sight, out of mind” means that the worst offenses are most certainly being inflicted on those least able to achieve political reform.

We’ve seen where this leads. In the late 1960s, for example, Northern Ireland’s highly-segregated and repressive society inspired a non-violent civil rights movement. But nature abhors a vacuum, and when the police and government did little or nothing to protect the Catholic minority – when both were persistent partners in Catholics’ continued misery and oppression – the IRA swept in to act first as a defensive organization...and then an offensive one. The province erupted into a bitter internecine conflict that lasted for three decades, while English cities became the scenes of unforgivable bombings perpetrated against innocent civilians in the hope that politicians might start paying attention to the problem.

The message going out loud and clear from people like Shabazz is that if change doesn’t start soon, there will be “a lot of dead bodies in the streets.” Ronald Reagan promised “morning in America,” yet it is the threat of civil war that ought to be everyone’s wake up call. If the police wish to act like an occupying army, sooner or later they will be treated like one. At that point the “law and order” crowd will start talking about putting an actual army on the streets. Then things quickly spiral out of control.