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A VIEW FROM HERE
by deb weiss
Radical Chic Redux
March 20, 2000
Last Thursday in Fulton County, Georgia, a man named Jamil Abdullah Al-Amin allegedly shot two sheriff's deputies, Ricky Kinchen and Aldranon English, as they attempted to serve him with an arrest warrant.
Though Deputies Kinchen and English didn't know it at the time, they weren't dealing with just any old bad guy.
Al-Amin -- once known as H. Rap Brown -- rose to prominence in the turbulent 1960s, first as a leader of the hard-left Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committe, then as a Black Panther 'justice minister.'
Back then, he was something of a folk hero to the wine-and-cheese left. Not as absolutely inspiring, perhaps, as Ho Chi Minh or Ernesto "Che" Guevara: still, he -- along with fellow-revolutionaries like Stokely Carmichael and Huey Newton -- was definitely in the running.
Students of the era might want to dust off their copies of Tom Wolfe's 1970 masterpiece, "Radical Chic and Mau-Mauing the Flak-Catchers," which includes a wildly, horrifyingly funny account of Leonard Bernstein's Manhattan fundraiser for some imprisoned Black Panthers (Bernstein demonstrated his racial sensitivity by, among other things, hiring only white waiters for the occasion).
As for the New Left -- those children of unimaginable privilege who shut down America's elite campuses in the 1960s (and who now largely run them) -- they celebrated H. Rap Brown's thuggery with the sheer blind arrogance that has since become so drearily familiar.
H. Rap had a way with words, in those heady days, producing such gems as "violence is as American as cherry pie," and "black folks built America, and if America don't come around, we're going to burn America down."
For the latter comment, delivered before an angry mob in Cambridge, Maryland in 1967, he would subsequently be charged with having incited a riot that left two city blocks in ashes.
After a failed robbery attempt that ended in a shootout with police, he spent five years in prison. It was there that he converted to Islam, changing his name (though not, evidently, his fundamentals).
Since 1976, he has lived in Atlanta, celebrated as a "spiritual leader." One neighbor, shrugging off news of the shootings, described Al-Amin as "the epitome of the peace of Islam."
If that's true, the peace of Islam is in serious trouble. As recently as 1995, Al-Amin was charged with aggravated assault (his accuser later withdrew the charge). At the time, Al-Amin was carrying an unlicensed weapon, a violation of federal law which could have put him behind bars for up to 10 years. However, the authorities declined to prosecute, leaving Al-Amin free to pursue his spiritual endeavors.
Despite his 30-year history of violence and radicalism, the entry under "H. Rap Brown" in Compton's Encyclopedia Online describes him simply as a "social activist."
The Dallas Morning News, on a page of recommended classroom topics for Black History Month, trumps this amazing euphemism by including him in a list of "freedom fighters" and "great civil rights leaders." (The late Stokely Carmichael -- who once said, famously, that "when you talk of black power, you talk of building a movement that will smash everything Western civilization has created" -- is there, too.)
Last Thursday's encounter with the great man should have been purely routine. He'd failed to keep a January court appearance to answer charges of receiving stolen property and impersonating an officer, and the court had issued a warrant for his arrest. Deputies Kinchen and English were just doing their job when they went to Al-Amin's Atlanta grocery store to serve the warrant.
As the deputies neared the store, they saw a man sitting in a parked car. According to press reports, they approached him and asked him to show his hands.
"Okay," the man is reported to have said, "here they are." He then fired on the two deputies.
Deputy English is hospitalized in stable condition, with wounds to his chest, arms and legs.
Deputy Kinchen, who suffered gunshot wounds to the abdomen, wasn't quite so lucky. He died on Friday. He was 35 years old.
As for Jamil Abdullah Al-Amin, he's still at large. Authorities suspect friends are hiding him. The community is rallying to his defense, many expressing outrage that the social activist could even be suspected of such a crime.
"He wouldn't do anything like that," said one neighbor: "that's preposterous."
For eight feverish days, the national press has savaged NRA spokesman Wayne La Pierre for shooting his mouth off about gun control and the Clinton administration, in an interview on ABC's This Week.
But the shooting death of a young deputy in Fulton County -- by a hero of the kulturkampf, no less -- has passed by virtually unperceived.
So has the fact that the killing might never have happened, if federal gun laws had been enforced.
It's almost as if the press was willing to accept a certain level of killing in order to achieve its political agenda.
------------------
Slowpoke Rodrigo...he pack a gon...
Vote for the Neal Knox 13
A VIEW FROM HERE
by deb weiss
Radical Chic Redux
March 20, 2000
Last Thursday in Fulton County, Georgia, a man named Jamil Abdullah Al-Amin allegedly shot two sheriff's deputies, Ricky Kinchen and Aldranon English, as they attempted to serve him with an arrest warrant.
Though Deputies Kinchen and English didn't know it at the time, they weren't dealing with just any old bad guy.
Al-Amin -- once known as H. Rap Brown -- rose to prominence in the turbulent 1960s, first as a leader of the hard-left Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committe, then as a Black Panther 'justice minister.'
Back then, he was something of a folk hero to the wine-and-cheese left. Not as absolutely inspiring, perhaps, as Ho Chi Minh or Ernesto "Che" Guevara: still, he -- along with fellow-revolutionaries like Stokely Carmichael and Huey Newton -- was definitely in the running.
Students of the era might want to dust off their copies of Tom Wolfe's 1970 masterpiece, "Radical Chic and Mau-Mauing the Flak-Catchers," which includes a wildly, horrifyingly funny account of Leonard Bernstein's Manhattan fundraiser for some imprisoned Black Panthers (Bernstein demonstrated his racial sensitivity by, among other things, hiring only white waiters for the occasion).
As for the New Left -- those children of unimaginable privilege who shut down America's elite campuses in the 1960s (and who now largely run them) -- they celebrated H. Rap Brown's thuggery with the sheer blind arrogance that has since become so drearily familiar.
H. Rap had a way with words, in those heady days, producing such gems as "violence is as American as cherry pie," and "black folks built America, and if America don't come around, we're going to burn America down."
For the latter comment, delivered before an angry mob in Cambridge, Maryland in 1967, he would subsequently be charged with having incited a riot that left two city blocks in ashes.
After a failed robbery attempt that ended in a shootout with police, he spent five years in prison. It was there that he converted to Islam, changing his name (though not, evidently, his fundamentals).
Since 1976, he has lived in Atlanta, celebrated as a "spiritual leader." One neighbor, shrugging off news of the shootings, described Al-Amin as "the epitome of the peace of Islam."
If that's true, the peace of Islam is in serious trouble. As recently as 1995, Al-Amin was charged with aggravated assault (his accuser later withdrew the charge). At the time, Al-Amin was carrying an unlicensed weapon, a violation of federal law which could have put him behind bars for up to 10 years. However, the authorities declined to prosecute, leaving Al-Amin free to pursue his spiritual endeavors.
Despite his 30-year history of violence and radicalism, the entry under "H. Rap Brown" in Compton's Encyclopedia Online describes him simply as a "social activist."
The Dallas Morning News, on a page of recommended classroom topics for Black History Month, trumps this amazing euphemism by including him in a list of "freedom fighters" and "great civil rights leaders." (The late Stokely Carmichael -- who once said, famously, that "when you talk of black power, you talk of building a movement that will smash everything Western civilization has created" -- is there, too.)
Last Thursday's encounter with the great man should have been purely routine. He'd failed to keep a January court appearance to answer charges of receiving stolen property and impersonating an officer, and the court had issued a warrant for his arrest. Deputies Kinchen and English were just doing their job when they went to Al-Amin's Atlanta grocery store to serve the warrant.
As the deputies neared the store, they saw a man sitting in a parked car. According to press reports, they approached him and asked him to show his hands.
"Okay," the man is reported to have said, "here they are." He then fired on the two deputies.
Deputy English is hospitalized in stable condition, with wounds to his chest, arms and legs.
Deputy Kinchen, who suffered gunshot wounds to the abdomen, wasn't quite so lucky. He died on Friday. He was 35 years old.
As for Jamil Abdullah Al-Amin, he's still at large. Authorities suspect friends are hiding him. The community is rallying to his defense, many expressing outrage that the social activist could even be suspected of such a crime.
"He wouldn't do anything like that," said one neighbor: "that's preposterous."
For eight feverish days, the national press has savaged NRA spokesman Wayne La Pierre for shooting his mouth off about gun control and the Clinton administration, in an interview on ABC's This Week.
But the shooting death of a young deputy in Fulton County -- by a hero of the kulturkampf, no less -- has passed by virtually unperceived.
So has the fact that the killing might never have happened, if federal gun laws had been enforced.
It's almost as if the press was willing to accept a certain level of killing in order to achieve its political agenda.
------------------
Slowpoke Rodrigo...he pack a gon...
Vote for the Neal Knox 13