‘Shining a light at injustices of the system’

In 2012, I was in Mississippi, visiting the graves of Michael Sherwner, Andrew Goodman and James Chaney killed by racists and victim of a police cover up in Mississippi, America 1964 and popularised by the film Mississippi Burning. I was also in Birmingham, Alabama researching the Children’s Crusade and the 16th Street Church of the 4 Little Girls blown to smithereens by dynamite and marching in Selma, Alabama. The graves and monuments I visited were of students, black and white, Jewish and gentil,e and children. Freedom workers and Freedom Riders. That was in the context of the struggles of the 1960s popularised by Dr Martin Luther King and in his own way Malcolm X. 

I have viewed this America under its first symbolic black President. Sadly I have another bloody chapter to fill from Philando Castle in Minnesota and Alton Sterling in Baton Rouge and of course the families of the Dallas Police men and we continue to work and support the Black Police Association in their work to pull Avon & Somerset Police into the 21st century.  

The black and white images then of nightsticks, horses, water cannons, lynch, racist abuse and beatings were of a different age but sadly now reminiscent.  The images now also remind me of a different time. When healthy Black men went into British police cells in the 1970s and 1980s and left carried out DEAD on ambulance stretchers their death clouded in ‘mysterious circumstances’. 

However, now we are in 2016 a digital age. Where no one seemingly can escape the eye of justice and yet still I see the long arm of the law killing my brothers like Walter Scott in Charleston where I visited just last year cut down like a wild fleeing animal which in many ways to the policeman he was.

Of course all lives matter but what the Black Lives Matter movement speaks to is shining a light at the injustice of the system. Highlighting deaths in custody, wrongful arrest, disproportionate sentencing, mass incarceration, higher unemployment rates and a range of social and economic depressing factors. These all show America…and Britain that whilst all lives matter some lives are treated and appear valued more than others.

It’s a peace vigil so I’m going to quote from Dr King himself inspired by Mahatma Ghandi: “I’m tired of violence. I’ve seen too much of it. I’ve seen such hate of too many sheriffs in the South. And I’m not going to let my oppressor dictate to me what method I must use. Our oppressors have used violence. Our oppressors have used hatred. Our oppressors have used rifles and guns I’m not going to stoop down to their level I want to rise to a higher level. We have a power that can’t be found in Molotov cocktails.”

We at Ujima celebrating our eighth birthday offer a prayer to those grieving or a hug of comfort to those in need.  Tomorrow alongside BCFM Radio we will continue to do what we have done since Day One. Champion the voice of the voiceless Representing young and old, religious and non-believers, LGBT and straight, male and female and disabled and able-bodied as well as white, Asian and black. 

We urge you all in the your daily lives and work to do the same not just today, not just tomorrow or when the next shooting occurs. But every day until injustice is at end and equality, diversity and inclusion become ways of life and business. Then and only then can we can truly believe you when you tell us that All Lives Matter. 

This is an edited version of the speech that Roger Griffith gave at the Black Lives Matter rally on College Green this week. Roger is the author of My American Odyssey: From the Windrush to the White House, and the chair of Ujima Radio. He will be giving a free talk as part of the Bristol Americana Weekend at St George’s Hall, Bristol at 2.30pm on Sunday, July 12.

Watch a video from Bristol’s Black Lives Matter march