Damo, we still speak your name…

The news came on Friday. I wasn’t able to hear it as it broke. Later when I checked email, I read the excited comments. The United Nations Committee Against Torture (UNCAT) had released its concluding remarks. Among many references to the brutality and impunity of U.S. policing, they wrote:

“The Committee is concerned about numerous, consistent reports that police have used electrical discharge weapons against unarmed individuals who resist arrest or fail to comply immediately with commands, suspects fleeing minor crime scenes or even minors. Moreover, the Committee is appalled at the number of reported deaths after the use of electrical discharge weapons, including the recent cases of Israel “Reefa” Hernández Llach in Miami Beach, Florida, and Dominique Franklin Jr. in Sauk Village, Illinois. While taking note of the information provided by the State party on the relevant guidelines and available training for law-enforcement officers, the Committee observes the need to introduce more stringent regulations governing their use (arts. 11, 12, 13, 14 and 16).”

I took a deep breath as the words blurred. So much of what we do in the name of the dead is really for us the living. It’s so we can try to make sense of the senseless. It’s so we can carry on and move through our grief. It’s so we don’t follow the dead into their graves. In May, when I wrote about your killing by the CPD, I didn’t know how your friends (how our community) would come together to ensure that your death wouldn’t be another unremarked upon, unnoticed but to a few, routine occurrence.

We Charge Genocide (WCG) was born from the tragedy of your killing. However, through WCG, many of us have re-membered to hope. WCG member Sarah Macaraeg beautifully captured the essence of the UN delegation’s trip earlier this month:

“By the time the delegates left, they had staged both a walk out and a silent protest inside the United Nations when “US representatives responded to…questions regarding police use of tasers by claiming police are properly trained to use them and that they aren’t lethal,” according to a group statement.

In two days, they changed history. The story of Dominique Franklin Jr. has now been covered around the world, affirming the belief that his life mattered, as all young Black lives matter. Questions of police impunity, militarization, excessive force, and patterns of discrimination are now among the forefront of those posed by U.N. members to the U.S.” –

Your friends made sure your name was entered into the record when they charged genocide for your killing and those of other black people in Chicago. They stood fists raised, then tired arms raised, some holding your picture for 30 minutes. They didn’t need words to convey their solidarity and love. Their protest embodied both.

We Charge Genocide at UNCAT

On Friday the UN guaranteed that your death, your tragically unnecessary death, will serve as a platform for future organizing and change. All of us who have been involved in this effort are committed to continue the work of creating a more just world in your name and those of the others lost to us through state violence.

Your friend Malcolm, who was/is gutted by your killing, was among the delegation that traveled to the UN in Geneva. He and the other delegates carried your story and those of many others with them. They took the task incredibly seriously. You would be proud.

We struggle out of profound love. It’s a love that sustains and strengthens us. It’s a love that convinces us that we will eventually win. I close with Malcolm’s words about you, Damo, because they are so eloquent. Malcolm urges that “no matter what life you lived, you deserved to live it!” This is the epitome of unconditional love that refuses any justifications for your killing. We should all strive to meet this test. I have no more words. All I will say is that you are written; we’ve spelled your name into eternity. We carry on. Rest in power, young man, rest in peace.

• 

  By Gail Smith, December 2, 2014 @ 9:16 pm

  Thank you for this moving, elegiac and prophetic (in the social justice sense) essay, Mariame. The youth of We Charge Genocide are cause for great hope. And your work, as ever, amazes me.

Other Links to this Post