"Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable."
The recent police shootings of Alton Sterling in Baton Rouge, LA and Philando Castile in Minneapolis, MN followed by the killing of five and wounding of six other police officers in Dallas are the latest instances of the crises of confidence between the police and African-American communities nationwide.
That the majority of the police in Dallas, for example, appeared to have a mutually respectful relationship with peaceful protesters there does not minimize the depth and magnitude of simmering anger within many Black communities toward the way they are generally treated by white police officers.
Such anger can be best graphically described as being like hot molten lava beneath the surface of the earth in many of our cities just waiting to erupt.
On Feb. 29, 1968, President Lyndon B. Johnson's National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders (also known as the Kerner Commission) warned that racism was causing America to move "toward two societies, one black, one white -- separate and unequal."
The Commission was formed in July 1967 to examine the causes of urban riots that had occurred in cities such as Chicago, Newark, Los Angeles and Detroit since 1965. President Johnson asked the commission, "What happened? Why did it happen? What can be done to prevent it from happening again?"
With respect to the police and African-American communities, the report concluded:
The police are not merely a 'spark' factor. To some Negroes police have come to symbolize white power, white racism and white repression. And the fact is that many police do reflect and express these white attitudes. The atmosphere of hostility and cynicism is reinforced by a widespread belief among Negroes in the existence of police brutality and in a "double standard" of justice and protection -- one for Negroes and one for whites.
The frustrations of powerlessness have led some Negroes to the conviction that there is no effective alternative to violence as a means of achieving redress of grievances, and of 'moving the system.' These frustrations are reflected in alienation and hostility toward the institutions of law and government and the white society which controls them...
Today, we don't need another "Presidential Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders."
Too many unarmed black men have been killed in police shootings since Michael Brown's death, on August 9th, 2014 in Ferguson, MO.
In Chicago, cops shoot about 50 suspects dead each year-more than 75 percent of them black.
Regrettably and sadly, as a consequence of the proliferation of guns and their use in resolving disputes, 93 percent of all African-American murders nationwide continue to be committed by other African-Americans.
"No man is an island, entire of itself... any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind; and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee."
John Donne's 17th Century observation is relevant today. There is an historically unique and propitious time and opportunity needed for a qualitatively new kind of civic and national government leadership to respond to the crises of confidence between police nationwide and African-American Communities.
No more "Commissions," "Studies" or "Conferences" to consider and "discuss" the problem.
President Obama should immediately convene at The White House The NAACP, National Urban League, Black Lives Matter and National Action Network, LGBTG organizations, for example to immediately meet with Police Chiefs and Police Benevolent Associations, etc.
The purpose of such a meeting should not be to "study" the problem, but to offer practical solutions to reduce the use lethal force as the FIRST option by police in seeking to arrest a Black person, and to commence a frank dialogue between these organizations and the Police under the guidance of Presidential leadership.
Although, the undertow of political expediency related to the scheduled National Party Conventions of the Republican and Democratic parties is likely to be deemed a more immediate and urgent preference than the Conference we propose, failure to PROMPTLY and RESOLUTELY respond to the existential national crisis of confidence within African-American communities and the police will allow another Dallas police shooting "earthquake" to erupt.
If this cannot or will not be done, then African-Americans and others persons of good will committed to fairness and non-racial application of police powers in our country, should immediately seek to non-violently shut the country down until life becomes so inconvenient for the non-caring persons among us, that they will come to their senses and support the ending of police shooting of Black men at will in the United States of America in 2016.
Existing and being " Black" should not continue as a 24/7 condition of clear and present danger to living in our nation today.