In Sanford and talking with the people
by Alice Woodward
We’ve arrived in Sanford, Florida where it truly feels like ground zero. I did not have to look, it did not take investigation or research or really any effort at all to connect with and learn about the very raw very traumatic reality of what it means to be Black in the deep south in the United States in 2012. On the porch in a Black community on a stifling hot Florida afternoon the very first person I talked to opened up about growing up in Sanford, going to an all Black high school in the Jim Crow South, about the white only and Black only bathrooms, about a movie theater where Black people had to go downstairs to a separate theater. Then they talked about more recent history, how the Black kids get chased out of the parking lots when they gather and socialize at night like at a fast food place, while the white kids do the same all the time. One time a group of white and Black people went into a store together and they came out and the white kids had stolen all this stuff and didn’t get caught. When the Black youth asked the white kids how they could do this, the answer was, “it’s easy when you’re around because they always go after you all.” A young woman maybe 12 years old explained how in school the dress code doesn’t get enforced for the white kids, but for Black students if you’re shorts are too high or your shirt is too short, you’ll get an in-school suspension because its much more strictly enforced.
Clyde Young hears from people in an Atlanta neighborhood about how they are brutalized by this system. The audio starts with a BAsics Bus Tour volunteer, and then Clyde and Sunsara Taylor talk with people about Bob Avakian, how we are building a movement for revolution, and how they can be part of it now. The sound isn’t great, but this is moving and real… so turn it up.
Source: SoundCloud / BAEverywhere
