beware: history lesson and small rant

Tonight I went to a presentation by the Brattleboro Community Justice Center (because this little town of 12,000 people has a community justice center, because a) there are issues in our, and every, community demanding attention and justice, and b) this town is awesome) of the documentary "Greensboro: Closer to the Truth" and a talk afterward by one of the survivors of the Greensboro Massacre.

"What is the Greensboro Massacre?" you say? I didn't really know either. I looked it up when I saw the flier for this event, in fact. And I found out about something horrifying and not surprising and, at the same time, very surprising in our nation's history. Here's a summary of what I learned tonight, because I think it's really important that you hear about it:

In 1979 (November 3, to be exact), a group of labor organizers and activists centered around the Communist Workers Party movement in Greensboro, NC held a rally at a local community center. Members of the Ku Klux Klan and local Nazi party caravaned by, and the two sides quickly became violent toward each other. Then the Klansmen and Nazis pulled out guns and started shooting and killed five people. The Greensboro police, who had known about the Klan and Nazi plans to disrupt the rally with violence, not only did nothing to prevent these events but also did nothing to stop it. In fact, they weren't nearby (despite having intense and antagonistic police presence at just about every other CWP events). In two separate trials, the killers were tried and acquitted. This despite the fact that the events were actually caught on tape.

(I'll say that again: there is a clear video record of people committing murder, and the murderers were acquitted of the crime. Twice.)

On Nov. 4, one day after the massacre, Islamic students stormed the U.S. embassy in Tehran and began the Iran hostage crisis, and not very many people remembered to care about five unarmed activists had been killed by racist groups operating with police support.

But then a couple years ago the survivors decided to pursue the creation of a Truth and Reconciliation Commission, modeled on that of South Africa after apartheid. And it worked, and a lot of information came to light. The City of Greensboro didn't just decide to ignore the commission, it actually voted (along clear racial lines) to reject its existence. And maybe some things changed, and certainly a lot of things didn't. One positive change is that many cities in the U.S. have now begun to discuss the creation of their own Truth Commissions modeled on Greensboro's (the first in the United States), including post-Katrina New Orleans. Another is that during the period in which the commission was active, the police chief of Greensboro was forced to resign because of the exposure of his methodical racial profiling of city residents and police officers, which apparently many people think wouldn't have happened without the commission's message of community justice.

And Marty Nathan, whose husband was killed that day, and who now lives near here in Northampton, MA and practices medicine in a community clinic, said some pretty amazing things. One is that she quit medicine and went into labor organizing in the North Carolina textile mills because after practicing rural medicine for a short time she'd become convinced (and remains so to this day) that most of the illnesses she was seeing were ultimately caused by poverty, and that there wasn't much she could do about that as a doctor. She also said that while truth came to light, there wasn't reconciliation. In other words, there is truth now, but no justice. And without justice, nothing changes.

I'm not sure how you find reconciliation in such situations - doesn't reconciliation imply that at some time there was harmony to begin with? But that's obviously never been the case in Greensboro or most places in this world where those with money and the right skin color/gender/religion/tribe/etc. retain far, far more than their fair share of power and resources. So justice means some radical change in lifestyle and philosophy for all of us. It means all of us having to want to find peace, not just in name but in equal access to clean water, food, shelter, fair pay, healthcare, etc. For ALL of us. And, more importantly, all of "Them" too.

Are you ready to make those changes? I'm not sure I am, but I'd like to be, and I will try. Tonight was yet another reminder that there are people who have long been trying to show us the way.