Extemporaneous musings, occasionally poetic, about life in its richly varied dimensions, especially as relates to history, theology, law, literature, science, by one who is an attorney, ordained minister, historian, writer, and African American.
Wednesday, May 6, 2015
"ALL'S WELL THAT ENDS WELL" IN STATEN ISLAND
Breathing is basic to life. All human life. So too is money. None here in America can survive without both. Arguably, having money is breathing.
Strangulation is the forceful cutting off of one's physical breath. Economic strangulation is the forceful cutting off of one's economic breath.
Death ensues from strangulations of all kinds, individual, national or racial.
The "I can't breathe!" protest slogan is especially apt to black people generally. Popularized in the wake of the unpunished, videotaped, murder of a Eric Garner in Staten Island, New York, this slogan summarizes the tacit economic terrorism against black people, generally, as it did to Garner.
Body-slammed to the ground by five police officers, Garner was then garroted by one of them, Daniel Pantaleo, by means of arm-bar strangulation. Garner's crime was economic. He had been indiscreetly selling "loosies" --untaxed individual cigarettes.
Although petty monetarily, a much greater principle was at stake: the prerogative and power of the state, through its police power and men, to regulate individual economic activity and to render it beholden to taxation.
Garner's death typifies the dire legal and economic status of vast swaths of the black American population. Many of their economic opportunities have been so constrained by law, public policy, regulations, racism, and custom, insidiously, since near the end of Reconstruction, in the 1870s, (reinforced after 1968's King riots) that some are confined to sidelines, like selling 'loosies' to support their impoverished families as was Garner.
The death of Eric Garner grew out of his attempt to breathe: economically, at first, and, physically, in the end. The police who pounced on this man to preclude his effort to breathe on his own, 'were just doing their job,' pursuant to the powers-that-be, who hired them; who pay them to do as they did to Garner and those like him!
The prosecutor 'submitted' this case to a Staten Island grand jury which did not indict any of Garner's killers! The judge, William Garnett, refused to release the grand jury transcripts or evidence therefrom, citing New York law, shielding such from scrutiny!
That action has now been appealed to New York's highest court.http://www.dnainfo.com/…/new-yorks-highest-court-asked-rele…
Meanwhile the erstwhile Eric Garner prosecutor, former District Attorney, Daniel Donovan, was elected to Congress in special election held on May 6, 2015.
http://www.foxnews.com/…/staten-island-prosecutor-in-eric-…/
"All is well that ends well!" To quote William Shakespeare's tragi-comedy, at least in Staten Island, New York!