“Baltimore City Officials Denounce Outside Agitators,” by Shakaboona.
Today, we can accurately state that, regardless of place or time, the oppressor will always be the oppressor and will always stay true to form. The oppressor will follow the same patterns and employ the same tactics in keeping their foot on the necks of the masses of people. Whether it’s 1775, 1965, or 2015, their patterns and tactics remain the same.
Take the 1960s Civil Rights Movement era, for example. Many movement people, like the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., James Forman, Ella Baker, Stokely Carmichael, and the women of SNCC, traveled throughout the South to help the racially and economically oppressed Black people to organize local civil rights movements where they live, as part of a national Civil Rights Movement to end American apartheid. Additionally, African and Caucasian people from the northern cities of America, especially college students, traveled to Southern cities in North Carolina, Alabama, and Mississippi to join local civil rights movements, protests and rallies and marches.
In every city that dealt with the pressures of Civil Rights protests, the local politicians, police, and even some scared-to-death Black folks were very angry and frightened about the Northern protesters joining the Southern protesters in struggle. They vocally denounced the Northern protesters, derogatorily calling them “outside agitators,” a term the government initially used to slander communists during the Red Scare. In fact, the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was considered by the government the number one outside agitator in the country, and a communist to boot.
Now, fast forward to the present, to the human rights protests in the cities of Ferguson and Baltimore, where local politicians, police, and Uncle Tom Black folks cried foul over the outside agitators that arrived from all parts of the United States to participate in the Black Lives Matter protests. In Baltimore City, while the local government oppressors were vehemently denouncing the presence of outside agitators coming from Philly, New Jersey, Delaware, New York, and North Carolina to aid their brothers and sisters in solidarity of struggle, the local government had no qualms about calling on outside oppressors of federal agents of every stripe; state police troopers, and State National Guard troops, to be transported into Baltimore City to aid them in repressing Baltimore’s protesters. Baltimore City officials even had 5,000 police officers transported in from Pennsylvania and New Jersey to help crush the Baltimore rebellion.
Denouncing outside agitators is the same lame government con game that calls for locally oppressed Black people to reject its human forces arriving from around the country to aid them in their time of need, while marshaling its police military forces to assist them in crushing all political dissent and mass movements of the people wherever it arises. This tactic didn’t work against the Civil Rights protesters of the past, and is surely not going to work against the human rights protesters today. Bring on the outside agitators, and let the oppressors be damned. I am Kerry “Shakaboona” Marshall, co-founder and editor of the Movement magazine, Prison Radio correspondent. Thank you for listening.
These commentaries are recorded by Noel Hanrahan of Prison Radio.
