An American Way of Death: Ferguson Freedom Fighter Darren Seals Assassinated

7, September 2016 -- The tragic death last night of Ferguson, Mo., resident and activist Darren Seals closely mirrors the death of another young black Ferguson resident two years ago: DeAndre Joshua, Like DeAndre, Seals was found with a gunshot wound to the head inside of a burning car. This is the same Darren Seals who was on the frontline of the protests borne after the shooting death of Mike Brown at the hands of Officer Darren Wilson there in 2014. In the years since the Ferguson riots the justice department has made a series of recommendations for police reform in that city. Seals’ activism played no small part in getting that far. He also participated and food and clothing drives around his community, and agitated the democratic party to respect the black vote. At 29 years old he is taken from that community – taken from us; and I realize that the crime of terror this nation projects while fabricating bogeymen around  the world, will never stop being inflicted upon we persons of color until we are again legal slaves, property of the one percent. Or we ourselves force a change. 

In North Dakota, Native Americans from myriad tribes are protesting and fighting to protect their land, water and sacred ground from the Dakota Access pipeline construction project that will send an oil conduit right through their sovereign nation. Last Saturday during the Labor Day weekend mercenaries armed with attack-dogs and weapons descended upon and attacked the entire peaceful protest. It was Bloody Sunday all over again.  Video and photos are already flooding the internet with images from the merciless attack, blacked –out by the corporate news networks in a way the Bundy takeover of the Oregon wildlife sanctuary never was. Only the fastidiousness of the progressive press has assured this story has received any national attention at all. 

In these two events – the gangland style murder of Darren Seals and the corporate-sponsored mercenary assault on peaceful Native protesters – we are again witnessing a level of state violence one only inflicts on another when they are at war. And despite having never declared one, persons of color and their real allies are literally under the guns of what is functionally a Nazi coup that has taken over police departments and their fraternal orders. How painful and paradoxical it must be for Seals’ loved ones to have to rely on St. Louis County sheriffs and police to lead this investigation, when they should be number one atop anyone’s list of suspects. How comforting it must be for the St. Louis law enforcement to be able to bury a vocal, black thorn in their side, and to have the final say on his death. Just wait for the obligatory reports of drug history, complete with a mugshot any second now. 

People of color live under the hammer of state terror here all the time. We never had a nostalgic age of life’s simpler times. America, by it’s bloodstained and avaricious quest to join Europe in empire, has made reality here for people of color hell, as it has around the world.   

It is reality. 

It is a condition the mythically ”exceptional” majority would not savor if the roles were reversed. I doubt many whites would stop fighting for their freedom if we abused them and used code words like “commie” and “terrorist” to mis-characterize their struggles. No law or court can ever make the system of white power respect the rights of persons of color.   

This is a kind of terrorism that is not easy for blacks and Latinos and Native Americans to prove in US courts, for the courts give the system cover. Our color makes us guilty until proven innocent. I knew this before I watched a policeman perjure himself with the straightest of faces in my own misdemeanor case nearly two years ago because I was biking without a light at night. I have since been unable to get a limited teaching license in a state I had over 10 years of professional experience. 

The very fact that we must petition those same police departments’ internal affairs, or other agencies (city, county, and state civil rights commissions for example) connected to police and sheriff’s departments through every state of criminal justice shows an absurd existence for POC. The fact that we even have to petition the same US Justice Department that helped establish COINTELPRO, and was proven complicit in the death of MLK by a Memphis jury in 1999, shows you how absurd existence for people of color is in these times.   America is infested with a hate, a terror bug that has festered and grown here since this nations’ inception: Raping this land from Native Americans, enslaving millions of African to build it. The systems of disparity across every social, health and economic indicator broadcasts to the world that this is far from the land of the free.  

Thank you Mr. Seals for your strength and leadership in this struggle for peace and equality, may you rest in power.

Rashard Zanders is a pioneer in slash careers, and at any given time could be found teaching, writing, agitating, jamming, learning, busking, creating, caffeinating, de-caffeinating, hiking, biking, loving, and daydreaming. He enjoys studying Pan African Philosophy and its potential to affect positive change, He is the proud parent of Thrilla the Cat and can be reached via email at rashard.zanders@gmail.com   

1805 Treaty: Twin Cities still Dakota Land

Courtesy Chris Spotted Eagle, host of the excellent Indian Uprising show on KFAI community radio here in the Twin Cities:

KFAI’s Indian Uprising for May 4, 2008 from 7:00 - 8:00 p.m. CDT #264

Statehood - now reaching one hundred and fifty years. "On May 11, 2008, Minnesota will reach its 150th anniversary as the 32nd state in the United States of America. Beginning in January 2008, the Sesquicentennial will be a year long, statewide commemoration and a catalyst, to learn from our past and connect all of us as Minnesotans in creating a thriving, innovative future." - 2007 Minnesota Sesquicentennial Commission.

The public's knowledge about the Indigenous people of their homeland, Mini Sota Makoce (land where the waters reflect the skies), and their true history before and after Minnesota statehood proclamation and how it came to be, is abysmal.

• What about the gallows where the 38 Dakota men were hung in Mankato, Minnesota, on December 26, 1862, for defending their homeland? It was the largest mass hanging in the U.S.

• What about the Treaty of 1805? Most of St. Paul and Minneapolis are on this land. The land is Dakota land and was not compensated for.

• What about the 1,700 Dakota people, primarily women, children, and elders who were force-marched 150 miles from southwestern Minnesota to the concentration camp at Ft. Snelling in 1862-1863? Many were killed during the march and others died at the camps.

"My grandmother was bayoneted in the stomach by a soldier on horseback. Then, hundreds more were killed in concentration camps during the cold Minnesota winter of 1862-63." - Chris Mato Nunpa (Dakota)

"My grandfather spent his third birthday at the concentration camp at Fort Snelling, which ironically was only a few miles from his birthplace on Nicollet Island in the Mississippi River. My great grandfather, Mazaadidi, was one of the warriors condemned to hang at Mankato but was instead sent to prison." - Reuben Wambdi Kitto, Jr. (Dakota)

Letter to the Editor excerpt, Mpls Star Tribune: "The decision of the Legislature whether to fund a project concerning Fort Snelling is a golden opportunity for Minnesota to take a leadership role in the nation in dealing with the legacy of the genocide of indigenous peoples in the Americas. We can renovate the fort or we can imagine something better. I propose that the state appropriate funds for the removal and reconstruction of Fort Snelling on more neutral ground and to turn the reconstructed site into the Minnesota Museum of Genocide. The original site would be turned into a state park in which the DNR and the Dakota communities of Minnesota, both federally recognized and non-federally recognized, would come to an agreement on the design and management." - Jeffrey Kolnick, Associate Professor of History, Southwest Minnesota State University and Augsburg College. See complete letter: http://www.startribune.com/opinion/commentary/15679667.html

Guests are:

Chris Mato Nunpa (Dakota), Ph.D., Associate Professor, Indigenous Nations & Dakota Studies (INDS), Southwest Minnesota State University

James Anderson (Dakota), Cultural Liaison, Mdewakantunwan Dakota Community Center, Minnesota

Waziyatawin Angela Wilson (Dakota), Ph.D., AAUW American Postdoctoral Fellow, former Associate Professor of Indigenous History, Department of History, Arizona State University; Editor, In the Footsteps of Our Ancestors: The Dakota Commemorative Marches of the 21st Century, Living Justice Press

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Indian Uprising a one-hour radio Public & Cultural Affairs program relevant to Native Indigenous people, broadcast each Sunday at 7:00 p.m. CDT over KFAI 90.3 FM Minneapolis and 106.7 FM St. Paul. Producer and host is volunteer Chris Spotted Eagle. To receive or stop getting announcements, message Chris to radio@spottedeagle.org

For internet listening, visit www.kfai.org, click Play under ON AIR NOW or for listening later via their archives, click PROGRAMS & SCHEDULE > Indian Uprising > STREAM. Programs are archived only for two weeks.