A Love Letter to the People

The people of Copenhagen turned out to support Black Lives Matter movement and demand for total stop on war against Black People with powerful speech and songs from the African Diaspora in Copenhagen. See the turn out at the protest from 18:07 to 18:20

Last Thursday on July 14th, 2016 I was invited to speak at the Black Lives Matter protest demonstration here in Copenhagen. The event was arranged quickly and quite efficiently by Mary Consulate Namagambe  and Sade Johnson.  I know both women through the activism and events which they are both very active in either arranging and/or supporting for people of African descent here in Denmark. There was about 500 people who showed up to this beautiful demonstration. There were people who I knew from way back like photographer David Morrow (who also hails from the States), former colleagues and students. There were new friends, 

like Aka Mørch Pedersen- a young lady from Greenland with whom I have been having fascinating conversations with regarding her Inuit culture and her own writing and art.  There was Nazila Kivi - a literary critic at one of the largest papers in  Denmark and also an editor at Friktion magazine for 

gender, body and culture. Kivi, whose background is in Iran - writes from spaces other than the mainstream. Eritrean artist Miriam Firesewra Berhane Haile was also there among countless others who all came out to show their support for the BLM protest demonstration. 

Unfortunately, although I spent a lot of time preparing my speech - I inadvertently had left it at home! Here is the speech that I was meant to read:

Thank you Sade and Mary and others who have taken the time to organize this event and for those of you who have contributed time and money.  Organizing events is no easy task and I am moved by the speed and enthusiasm in which this initiative has been met with and for the great solidarity expressed with BLM. 

If you want to know the health of the human race, look at how people of African descent are treated. 

A year & one day ago, Sandra Bland was found dead in her cell.  She was pulled over for a minor traffic violation. 

Let me just start with the recognition that certainly things are not as bad here as they are in the U.S. But there’s a road that has been paved for these occurrences to happen there – and if we are not too careful, we can go down this road too.  Militarization of the police & violations of our personal freedoms are something that is already part of the post-9/11 narrative. Part of this road means not reckoning with history.  One of the tenents of the BLM movement is to critique the system. 

My name is Lesley-Ann Brown and I am originally from Brooklyn, New York. Some of you may know me as a teacher – whether I have taught you or your children.  Others may know me from my blog, or my poetry.  I’ve studied a lot of history and work as an educator and write sometimes. I studied writing and literature at the New School for Social Research, with a focus on Race & Representation. I have been blessed to work with many children who although they were born here have yet to be accepted. They come from all over the world. I say these words for them. 

I have now lived in Denmark for the past 17 years and for those who know me,  know the time and space I have had to put in to issues of race and the role it plays not just in the U.S. but here in Europe and more precisely here in Denmark.  I say ‘had to’ because for me, due to the color of my skin it has never been a choice. I have never had the luxury of not having to think about race.  Many of you out there have never had that luxury either. 

Throughout the years of living here in Denmark I have experienced a very interesting phenomena – and that has been of Danes, coming up to me, mostly in quiet and asking me, “What is going on in America?” They would then go into a story that happened to them in the States which revealed to them how deep racism actually is.  These stories have come from Danes from all walks of life and show that for some – the racism in America cannot be hidden.  However there is usually some disconnect here in Denmark between what is perceived as the experiences of Blacks in the States and Blacks here, for example. Many criticize that our gathering here, is just for show, or we are copying the goings-on in the United States. To these people I can only answer, you haven’t been listening to people of African descent here. 

I wanted to address the critique that many seem to be having about people of African descent here in Denmark wanting to demonstrate about occurrences in the States, the critique being that it has nothing to do with Denmark. I would like to correct that false view  by stating unequivocally that whatever happens to people of African descent in one place, is of importance to all of us.  There is a communication going on, a drum beat, if you will, and in this communication we have deciphered, as we have always done, that we are in trouble. No matter where we may find ourselves. 

Let me give you a bit of my background so that you understand the context of the who, what, where and when.  I am the daughter of immigrants from Trinidad and Tobago. I lived in the U.S. til about when Reagan was president and returned during the first Bush administration.  I saw and experienced first hand the realities of race in the United States – whether it was having a police officer hold me at gun point or having to visit a loved one in jail. In case you need reminding, which I am sure many of you don’t – the U.S. currently has 2.9 million people incarcerated. Many in for-profit institutions. If you have been paying attention and doing the work, you will recognize that what we see today is but an extension of the conditions in which many of us were brought here in the first place, whether it was to the United States, the Caribbean, South America, Europe even.  Our movements have always been policed. Our very presence continues to be questioned and criminalized. At the end of the day, many of us, no matter what social strata we may occupy, have to reckon with racism, sometimes losing our very lives in the process.  This pattern can be deciphered here in Europe as well.  A simple google search will reveal the fallen in Sweden, Norway, England, France, the Netherlands – I could go on, but we know. 

Furthermore I have travelled extensively, and it hasn’t escaped my attention that no matter where I go people of African descent and indigenous people are not faring very well.  To just make a point here –BLM is about using our voices to illustrate that there is a link between the silences of the suffering of the people from Greenland here in Denmark and our cries that Black Lives Matter.  We also stand with our Muslim brothers and sisters who have been subjected to the same attack we have been under for years. We also stand with our disabled brothers and sisters. 

This is how it works: A slander of character. A slander of spirit.  With the cooperation of the education system, the media and some politicians.  When you choose to teach a selective history, you are choosing violence. It is violence when you reprint dehumanizing words for our children to see. It is violence when you, as a political body, use such language to further dehumanize us. It is violence when an amusement park uses caricatures to describe us – especially when there is a gaping void in presenting us in a balanced light.  

Our fight, our struggle for liberation has very much to do with land – our possession of it or dispossession, and who is in control of it.  Where on the planet can a person of African decent go and be free from the legacy of empire, of colonization?  Often you can predict the trajectory of a country’s political narrative from watching the trends in others. Would you not say that there has been a steady militarization of the police here? Sure, it’s not as obvious as in the States- but think about how your freedom, and it doesn’t matter who you are, has been restricted by the narrative of freedom. 

The European Union has said that there is no such thing as ‘race’ – just the human race.  While the statement seems noble, at best, it can however, to those of us who have studied history, sound sinister.  No, there is no such thing as ‘race’ for those who have only read about it in textbooks and who have never had to deal with real people of African descent.  But the spell has already been cast – 400 years ago. Europe went out and divided the human race. Created hierarchies and brutalized the global majority. We cannot talk about Black liberation without confronting this context. We did not happen in a vacuum. 

For if you are of African descent and happen to live anywhere on the globe where European colonialism has played itself out, you know the role that race plays. Intimately. You know the role it plays in quality of education, job choice, and access to descent housing. You know that race plays a role in whether you are stopped by the police or a John- asking you, even if you are dressed in your Sunday best, whether you are a prostitute or not.  You know that race plays a role when your child comes home from school to report that the teacher called him or her ‘neger’ and you know it plays a role when the media participates in the ceremony of slander every 6 months or so, when they decide that it’s fun to look at the word ‘neger’ or ‘negro’ and discuss, very often without us, on the use of the word.  We know that this is violence. 

If you are of African descent – whether it is in Sweden, Norway, Denmark, UK, France, the Netherlands, the Caribbean, Russia  you know that other’s humanity was built on our being deemed ‘not human’.  In other words, if you are of African descent, you are probably living in a system  that has thrived on our erasure, suffering, silencing and exploitation without any real effort to listen to us.  This is not just in the U.S. but Western Europe as well. 

If you look into the past 400 years or so – although there are people who will discourage this practice, especially those who have benefited from this system- you will see, or notice, experience even, that progress for us – I mean real progress where we don’t have to fear racist doctors who do not listen to us, yet hold our very lives in their hands, where we do not have to fear being stopped, searched, questioned, where our presence usually translates to discomfort for others, where we have access to decent education (education must instill a sense of personal and cultural pride, if it does not do this it is not functioning), well, this progress where we do not have to fear for our lives or of those we love has not yet happened. 

If you are of African descent, no matter where you are in the world, you are most likely, at some point in your life, to have seen the gross mechanisms on which this world is built.  You have seen the belly of the beast. Not only that – you will not be able to speak of this space, a space that has been rendered invisible, silent and sometimes even illegal. 

I am here today to say what I have always been saying since my arrival here 17 years ago.  And I am not the only person to say it. It is just now, people are listening. There is a war going on. It has always been going on. Sometimes this war is a real war, with guns and battle, sometimes however, this war is happening against our consciousness- luckily the one thing in the end, that we can control. The tools are many and seductive. Images are deployed. Videos fill our feeds. Words are carefully chosen to spin the webs of confusion. People will slander your character. 

But don’t be confused.  The speed in which some want to deem BLM as culpable in violence should be an indicator of what is truly feared. And that is for people of African descent the world over to wake up and organize.  And we don’t need to organize on Facebook, social media or even on the streets.  Harriet Tubman could not have shepherded hundreds of slaves into freedom if she posted her ideas on social media. This war of images, ideas and dehumanization began the moment this world entered our shores – and has left us generations after, devastated, scattered, and disempowered. 

Please remember that nothing is on the news by accident. Do not be reactionary. This is not new. It is only now being recorded and traveling at the speed of light. What we must do is focus on how we can create real change, not just in rhetoric but in ways that will benefit you, your family and your community.  Close ranks. Spend your money on each other. Share empathetic doctors, schools. Organize so that if something happens to your child in school, you are not alone in standing up.  We have no political power here in Denmark. But through focus and organization we can create a community that cannot be bullied.  We must use the resources that we have.  It is the only way. 

As a woman, I want to emphasize the role that Patriarchy plays in white supremacy.  Jessie Williams gave us a shout out in his by now historic speech.  But let’s take a moment to be real. BLM was founded by 3 queer women.  Patriarchy and racism thrive through bullying. Silencing. Ridiculing. Ostracizing. Slander.  Especially within our own communities. Let’s take a moment to acknowledge how women, particularly women of African descent continue to be victimized both within and without the community, through these very tools.  It gets even more layered when this person of African descent doesn’t fit into the binary of gender here in the West.  
Very often, Black women find themselves exploited, ridiculed, kicked down by the very people who are expected to protect them: organizations that purport to be champions of Blackness and women, but whose men unfortunately have very narrow views on what "Blackness" and "womanhood" ought to be.  People who call you "sister" in one minute and who spread slander behind your back. It has been my experience - that there is a violence that occurs too often among us - where the behavior truly mirrors that of White supremacy and sexism.  We are a battered people - but we need not batter one another. Beware of dashiki wearing "liberation" leaders.  Of the misogynist Black nationalist. You know who are your friends and colleagues are by how they treat you when you are at your lowest. 

Please take a moment to think about women.  About the women who have names. About the women whose names we do not know.  For is there, I ask you, any lower place on the "hierarchy of modernity" than that of the Black woman, the Native American woman, the indigenous woman? In the end to be Black is to be indigenous. And we need to recognize this. To be of African descent is to be indigenous. This is about land. This is about power. It always has been. 

Rest In Power Sandra Bland. 

P.S. Last week I had an unfortunate incident with someone who claims to be a friend of Black people but because she disagreed with how I framed an article - proceeded to defame me and attack me on Facebook.  The best judge for all of us about who we can and cannot work with is how people, especially people who claim to be "leaders" treat other human beings.