We Will Stand Our Ground

Well I’m not gonna take the time when you come down there in Pine Bluff and tell me that (what are you doing here) But you can be assured I’ll have my dog on gun there, and I’ll feel threatened and I wonder whether I will be justified with a “stand your ground” defense! – Sen. Flowers

BLAFROKAN – In a country built on racism (white terrorism and domination), violence and lethal force has long been a tactic of intimidation, oppression and subjugation for Africans in America. Racial violence is as American as is capitalism. From the inception of the United States, it’s government sanctioned it under the guise of preserving “law and order.” Blackness has been criminalized, an European projection of itself, in a deliberate effort to thwart any upward mobility towards true liberation for African Americans in this country.

In the home of the “brave” and land of the “free” enslavers, plantation overseers, slave catchers, bounty hunters, lynch mobs, police, and now deputized white civilian class citizens can act as operative agents of white “supremacy” securing “law and order” against unarmed Black children like Trayvon Martin, slain by suspected white supremacist George Zimmerman. His defense “stand your ground” under Florida state law would legally vindicate a guilty man of murder in the second degree, a charge which should have been first degree to begin with.

Is your community so bad…or are you planning on coming down to Jefferson county with this crap? And if you do, we’re gonna have a response and we’re gonna evoke this stand your ground defense if this thing passes. – Sen. Flowers

Another victim of “stand your ground,” was Markeis McGlockton of Clearwater, Florida. McGlockton is shown on camera defending his family after walking out of a convenient store. He was immediately shot dead after shoving a suspected white supremacist Michael Drejka, 48, to ground who was seen harassing his girlfriend and child in the car over a parking space.

Stand your ground laws are in at least 25 states, which removes the clause requiring civilians “duty to retreat” as a measure of self defense and deescalation of violence. A stand your ground bill proposed in Arkansas, strong criticized by Democratic State Senator Stephanie Flowers, a Black woman and mother, who minced no words when it came to vociferously contextualizing and weighing in on these implications for her Black constituents. She exuded the kind of courage, boldness and passion needed when committee members tried to shorten the debate and silence her convictions on this racist bill.

The bill fell one vote short of passing.

Today before another hearing on the bill, Flowers told the committee, “I don’t apologize for my expression and my passion and my emotion.” Instead she asked the committee “try to understand where my passion comes from.”

I think we all know its been a quite amazing and unusual weekend, at least for me … and social media has, in other words, blown up, and I think that’s a good thing. – Sen. Flowers

Thank you Senator Stephanie Flowers for standing your ground. Bold. Brilliant. Beautiful. Boundless. BFK4.