Jamal Joseph Interviewed by Michael Slate

October 28, 2015 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

 

At the Saturday, October 24 Rise Up October rally and march, and at the Thursday, October 22 Say Their Names public reading and remembrance in Times Square, Michael Slate was able to catch up with a number of people to get their reasons for coming out, and their views on the epidemic of police terror and murder. Following is the transcript of the interview with Jamal Joseph:

 

MS: Once again, identify yourself.

Jamal Joseph, professor of film at Columbia University, artist, activist, and former Panther.

MS: As I was saying, when I look back at this, I look at these signs and posters up here of people there, and you look at them, and there’s a tendency if you just look at it in the newspaper and you read a name, and you read an incident, you get outraged. But this brings it home so much harder when you see these faces that sometimes you even stand there and you stare and you realize all the families, all of the life that was behind there and how it’s been just stolen and robbed and multiplied out thousands of times. Now, you were in here and you gave a very powerful reading, you’ve been part of introducing other people, you’ve been a major part of this whole campaign and this whole program of Rise Up October. What compelled you to be part of this?

Jamal Joseph: I live in Harlem and I’m a father who... each time my sons who are now grown, each time they go out the door I wonder if they’ll come back safe. I’m not so worried about the other kids in the neighborhood or the gangs in the neighborhood, but the police in the neighborhood. My sons are now both college educated but they’ve been stopped several times. We know kids who’ve been shot, who’ve been arrested. And from the time that I was 15 years old and joined the Black Panther Party—and of course one of the main things that the Panthers talked about was police brutality and police terror—things have gotten worse, not better. And it corresponds to the number of Black and Brown men who are incarcerated. We’ve gone from half a million to 2½ million, 2.2 million. There are more Black men in prison today, October 22, 2015, than there were in chains at the height of slavery. So there is a growing attitude of man’s inhumanity to man in America, of people before profits, and of Black and Brown lives not mattering. And the police are in the community behaving like an occupying army, not as an organization there to protect. We have to memorialize acts of terror.

Every September 11th the names of the victims at the World Trade Center are read and tears are shed and we’re reminded that we should not forget. We should not forget, and so we’re doing the same thing today. We’re saying here is a continuous act of terror that has been happening in this country that continues to get worse, and we want to kind of put the face to the names and let those names be remembered in our hearts because these are children, babies, grandparents, homeless folks, working folks, immigrant folks, students—there is no one kind of person that gets targeted out. There’s a group of folks that are poor, usually Black and Brown, and anyone can be subject. I have a friend who’s a doctor who got beat up by the cops a few doors away from his house. He’s got a piece of a Nobel Prize because he was part of Doctors Without Borders. I told the story of a grandfather who lives in my building in Harlem who just last week got maced and handcuffed because of a ticket, an altercation with someone with a traffic ticket. And this man is a former Marine and a retired cop who has this attitude as someone who worked with the city, who worked with the government that cops just come in, white cops especially, and just treat people in Harlem any way they want to treat them. So unless you’re going to walk around flashing your ID card or with a tattoo on your chest that “I’m a student,” that “I’m a doctor,” that “I’m a mother,” that “I’m a grandmother,” you’re subject to be beaten, arrested, if not killed. And even if you have those tattoos and those banners that still might happen because we’re not seen as human.

MS: Why do you think this happens? Where do you think it comes from? Why do you think it happens?

Jamal Joseph: It’s connected to what the police force is here to do. They’re to protect the interests of the ruling class. They’re in the community to protect property, not people.  And this is why a grandmother in the projects can call 911 and say “someone is climbing through my window” and the cops might arrive a half-hour later if at all. And a store keeper could say “someone is across the street looking like they’re thinking about doing something in my store” and the cops will be there before they can hang up the phone. So there’s this mentality that folks in poor communities must be contained and controlled, not protected. And that’s part of the ideology and philosophy of the system that puts profits before people.

MS: Now, when you look at this, one of the things that’s really disturbing about this... and we were talking about this just as I started to interview you... was the whole point about the numbers, the actual numbers, and the numbers that we know and the numbers that we know are out there but we don’t know the names yet. You think about this... especially in connection with Rise Up October… there’s been a lot of people talking about how this is actually indicative of a slow genocide right now. What do you think about that and what do you think are the dangers of this becoming?

Jamal Joseph: I think it’s true and it’s connected with state power, the idea of expanding that and using this mentality that we’re in constant danger from terrorists to militarize the police. Now, when you buy weapons from the military for your local police departments, the high-powered assault rifles and the tanks and the body armor—who comes to train you? The military. And what is the military training you to do? Kill the enemy. And so we have that idea. Now, again, as state capital consolidates power and as they understand that people are not needed to work the factories, people are not needed to work the fields in the same way, it is a slow genocide. It is genocide by neglect, it is genocide by poor systems that throw people in prison more and more for longer and longer. And it is genocide that tells these people who have been trained that the people in the community are the enemy that if you shoot to kill—don’t worry about it. You’ll be on desk duty and charges will be dropped by the district attorney or the grand jury won’t indict and you’ll be back on the job with full pay in a matter of weeks or months.

MS: How do you see stopping this?

Jamal Joseph: It is the power of the people that has changed things throughout history. It is as Frederick Douglass says: “agitate, agitate, agitate.” It is what we’re doing today in making these numbers swell to the thousands and the tens of thousands so that whenever a cop stops someone, they look into the eyes not just of that isolated Black kid or Latino girl or senior citizen, they’re looking into the eyes of all of us. And they know that besides civil justice, there’s people’s justice.

MS: Alright, Jamal Joseph, thank you very much for joining me.

Jamal Joseph: Thank you, brother. Rise up!

 

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