Most Mondays I plan to share music from black artists. But I recently learned the history behind this song and felt like it was really relevant.
In 1999, a 23 year old Guinean man named Amadou Diallo was shot multiple times and killed by 4 plain-clothes New York police officers. Amadou was unarmed. The officers claimed they thought he was a suspect in a rape case, although this has never been confirmed. While the officers where charged with murder, they were ultimately acquitted. As you can imagine this brought up a lot of the anger and frustration that we're seeing over 20 years later, after George Floyd's murder (and of course dozens of others black lives lost to police violence since then.)
In 2000, Bruce Springsteen wrote a song inspired by what happened called American Skin(41 shots.) After the song debuted, the largest police union in NYC called for a 'boycott' of Bruce Springsteen and refused to work security for his upcoming show in Madison Square Garden. John Gallagher summarizes the contents of the song, and the police union's response to it, very well in this twitter thread:
Listening to the song now, it’s hard to imagine what made them so mad. It isn’t angry or accusatory, just sorrowful. It offers up the simple, powerful refrain... “You can get killed just for living in your American skin.” The fact that it made the NYPD so mad tells us a lot about why they are doing what they are doing right now. The party line has always been the same... Question our authority and become our enemy. It doesn’t matter if you’re a famous rockstar or a citizenry demanding reform.
This week, the same union, the Sergeant's Benevolent Association, seems to be up to the same behavior. They've published the name, arrest record and private information of the New York mayor's daughter in retaliation for her participation in protests for the #blacklivesmatter movement. This is known as doxxing and can be very dangerous for the individual whose information is compromised.
This spring the Sergeant's Benevolent Association's leader, a man name George Mullins, has also tweeted a video calling black people 'monsters' and public housing 'war zones.' He also declared a war on Mayor de Blasio and this week told Fox News he plans to 'win the war on New York City.'
Here's one more quote from John Gallagher's Twitter to wrap things up:
To recap, the president of the second largest police union in New York City publicly declared war on both its mayor and its citizens in the last four months. It’s not making many headlines right now but it seems like a red flag and a pretty big deal to me!
Agreed. There's something very, very wrong about the use of force against peaceful protesters and the increasing use of funds to support police departments while defunding schools, health systems and other vital institutions in black communities.
I'm still reading, listening, learning and absorbing a lot. There's so much to unlearn, and even more to re-learn. Here are a few podcasts and pieces I've read on systemic racism that you might find enlightening. Educating ourselves is a small but crucial step towards understanding how deep these problems are rooted in American culture and society and what we can do about them.
The Seeing White special from Scene on Radio goes into the history behind how the social construct of race came to be used to divide the poor, protect slaveowner interests and exert power over society's most vulnerable citizens.
Watch 13th, LA 92, or When They See us on Netflix, Selma or Just Mercy on Amazon Prime, or Student Athlete on HBO.
Domestic Violence and the police. ("[In 2019,] an independent panel found that the typical penalty for New York City police officers found guilty of domestic violence—some had punched, kicked, choked, or threatened their victims with guns—was thirty lost vacation days.")
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