‘Model Block’ or Cell Block?
By Muhammad AbdullaH Muhammad
While the city is in an uproar regarding the savagery of Amadou Diallo’s
shooting, quietly in Washington Heights, an apparent plan is being
implemented to put the population of color back into slavery.
Awilda is a young Dominican student who lives at West 161st St., one of
the "model blocks" closed by military check point at the 33rd Precinct’s
Washington Heights area. Recently, she was stopped by the police as she
was about to enter her apartment building where she has lived for the last
12 years. She was asked to produce an ID showing the address of the
building. otherwise she would be turned hack. The young lady’s ID
displayed an Illinois address where she was studying at that time. So, in
order to be allowed to enter the building she had to ring up her apartment
and have someone verify that she lived at that location.
On the same block, within a few days of it being barricaded, several
children were playing football. The football accidentally fell close to
the police officer on duty twice, which annoyed the officer to the point
of calling for back-up help. One of the young boys was so severely beaten
that his hair was ripped out of his scalp. His pregnant sister who came to
inquire about her brother, was assaulted viciously.
These occurrences didn’t happen in Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy or
Duvalier’s Haiti: they happened in the United States of America where the
Fifth Amendment of the Constitution states: "Nor shall any person
be...deprived of life, liberty, or property without due process of law."
They happened in the Washington Heights area of Manhattan where Blacks and
Latinos are under military siege with aerial cover by helicopter
surveillance and heavily armed street infantry.
The closing of blocks is the solution presented by the police department
in the 33rd Precinct against the so-called war on drugs. They have named
this initiative: "The Model Blocks." According to Webster, model: "refers
to a representation made to be copied or, more generally, to any person or
thing to be followed or imitated."
The police pretends to thwart the civil liberties of the citizens of
Washington Heights under the pretext of war on drugs. They did not start
this plan in Bedford-Stuy or Harlem. They started this "model blocks" in
Washington Heights, where the Dominican population is newly arrived and
are still inexperienced in the civil and human rights struggle in this
country. It is the area of least resistance, where the cord can break the
easiest. Then, as this plan gets firmly established in Washington Heights,
they plan to spread it to other areas of this city and country and
ultimately export it to other countries. In fact, the "model block"
concept has already been implemented in the Dominican Republic.
If the U.S. government can trace Bin Laden’s whereabouts and were able to
assist in the killing of Escobar the Colombian drug lord, by identifying
his voice on his cellular, they have the technology to stop drugs and guns
before they reach our communities (we refer to the film "Enemy of the
State."
African Americans and Dominicans do not import drugs into the country.
However, under the guise of combatting crime in Washington Heights, the
N.Y. police department is seizing militarily the territory and space (city
blocks) that belong to its citizens. The usurping of citizens’ right to
freedom of movement in their own communities is in fact the re-institution
of the slave plantation or "model" community prison system.
In order to fully understand the depth of wickedness of tints "model
block" concept, one has to understand the psychological effect that space
(confinement) has upon human beings and animals.
"The important point about a fixed-feature space is that it is the mold
into which a great deal of behavior is cast," said Edward T. Hall in his
book about man’s use of space "The Hidden Dimension." The psychological
and physical boundaries that a militarily controlled barricade imposes on
human beings casts a behavior of fear and the passive acceptance of
imprisonment.
Is Washington Heights the "mold" or "model" that is being cast in a
plan
to put us back in slavery? While many politicians, celebrities and
community activists are being jailed before the cameras on the Diallo
case, hardly anyone is paying attention to this direct military action
which imprisons a whole community.
Black and Latino community leaders and the community at large must be
warned that, should we allow the 33rd precinct to close up our blocks, the
NYPD will duplicate and triplicate this concept in other communities—and
we’ll end up back in slavery unperceptively and subliminally.
The sad thing is that the Washington Heights population has not had any
one to defend them from this sinister plot.
Black and Latino elected officials have backed this initiative which is
akin to covering up a cancerous sore with a bandage. They blindly—without
the benefit of independent iinvestigation—have accepted the status quo and
seem to have failed to recognize the fatal and insidious poison that lurks
inside the remedy—which will eventually kill the communities they have
failed to represent.
A good politician should be an avid student of history. Didn’t the British
introduce opium into China in the 19th century to destabilize and weaken
their society in order to infiltrate and take over China’s commerce. That
was indeed the cause of the Opium Wars.
For our survival into the next millennium, our communities need a new
breed of politicians who will do their homework and who will be "wise as a
serpent and humble as a dove," to quote Jesus.
In response to this sinister move, African Americans and Latinos of the
Washington Heights area have organized "Community Forces United," a
coalition committed to assisting in the education, organization,
preservation and defense of our communities. For more
information please
call (917) 504-3598.
Muhammad Abdullah Muhammad is the National Latino Representative of the
Nation of Islam and the Honorable Louis Farrakhan.
The Black List - http://www.themarcusgarveybbs.com
From The Daily Challenge
NYC's only Black owned Daily
http://www.challengegroup.com
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