By, Robert Vinson Brannum
13 April 2011
My Dear Fellow Citizens of the District of Columbia,
please forgive this interruption in your listserv readings.
I am #24 of the
"41 for 51" arrested for protesting the injustice in the federal budget agreement between the Congress and President Obama. This letter does not come from the harshness of the Birmingham City Jail or an uncomfortable processing center with the United States Capitol Police; but rather from the peaceful contentment of home.
There have seen several news reports and questions calling protest actions by
Mayor Vincent C. Gray, Council Chairman Kwame Brown, Councilmembers Michael Brown, Muriel Bowser, Tommy Wells, Sekou Biddle, and Yvette Alexander at the Senate Hart Office Building a political stunt. While reporters and columnists may feel it fair game to be critical of publicly elected officials, they are off the mark in questioning the calls to act by 39 other District residents arrested with them.
Getting arrested by a federal law enforcement agency to protest injustice is no more a political stunt exercised by elected officials and citizens than it is for a journalist to go to jail to protect a news source. The media's focus on the motives of
Mayor Gray, Chairman Brown, Councilmembers Brown, Bowser, Wells, Biddle, and Alexander highlights its subterranean purpose to undermine and devalue the people's fight for District self-determination.
Lost in the media's translation of the protest is the story of the people arrested with the mayor and members of the council. Who are they and what moved them to come to the protest and to make an instant personal decision to be arrested along with their locally elected officials?
They are young and old; parents and grandparents; African-American and white; gay and straight; male and female; college students and working professionals; retired and unemployed. Two were arrested with canes. They are community leaders and private citizens of the District who illustrate Mayor Gray's theme of "One City."
Recently, when people gathered in other countries and mobilized in the streets to protest injustice; the media called them heroes and fighters for democracy. However, in this people's protest, when local residents united with their locally elected officials to challenge the legislative acts of its national leaders, the media questions motives seemingly to invalidate the will of the people. Not only does the District of Columbia political leadership not have the respect of the Congress and the President; the people of the District of Columbia cannot stand with their own local leaders in peaceful civil disobedience and be respected members of Congress, the President, or the media.
In his 16 April 1963 "Letter From Birmingham Jail", Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King wrote, "We know through painful experience that freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed. Frankly, I have yet to engage in a direct-action campaign that was "well timed" in the view of those who have not suffered unduly from the disease of segregation. For years now I have heard the word "Wait!" It rings in the ear of every Negro with piercing familiarity. This "Wait" has almost always meant "Never." We must come to see, with one of our distinguished jurists, that "justice too long delayed is justice denied."
Contrary to news reports and their cynical questions, the "41 for 51" District residents arrested did not act in a collaborative political stunt. Even if it is true and it is not; everyone did agree in advance to get arrested - so what? It does not diminish the fact the people came united for a purpose.
The "41 for 51" were motivated by principle and acted on conscience to Free DC.
Respectfully in the struggle for justice in the District of Columbia,
Robert Vinson Brannum
#24 of the "41 for 51"
President
DC Federation of Civic Associations, Inc.
JDR
Sent on the Sprint® Now Network from my BlackBerry®
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