The Near-Death of Bubacarr Jallow
By: Don Sawyer
Tags: Africa, Racism, Vietnam War, George Floyd, Mwc Death

From 1995 until 2005, I had the great privilege and pleasure of cooperating with West African colleagues to develop some of the most innovative and effective training materials for grassroots community development workers available in Africa. Besides the professional challenge and satisfaction, the most enjoyable element of that experience were the close, fierce friendships I developed there.

One of those was with a young man I met on my first trip. I visited him at his home in rural Gambia and was hosted by his family and community. The generosity and kindness they showed me moves me to this day.

His family was desperately poor, and with no prospects in The Gambia, Bubacarr managed to find a torturous and dangerous route to Europe. There he worked underground for several years. And then in Germany, he was attacked. This is what he wrote me shortly after being released from hospital:

I was hospitalized because of racist people. Three men attacked me in darkness at the end of October 2002 in Dusseldorf. One stabbed me with a knife in the side of my stomach. I fell down and they ran away and left me on the ground unconscious. When I came to I was in hospital.

They had already operated me an after the doctor signed the emergency operation documents for me. Two months in hospital there and one and half more under doctor’s supervision, seriously, because they said I was almost dead when I arrived at the hospital. I almost died but luckily someone called an ambulance and the police and they came quickly. Trust me — this was my worst nightmare and the worst experience in my life. So much to say, but let’s fight RACISM and injustice in our communities. I stand against RACISM SINCE I CAME TO GERMANY. SHARE MY SUPPORT AGAINST RACISM.

The expression of fury at the recent killing of George Floyd has unleashed a tidal wave of anger. But the strength and global reach of the demonstrations shows that this about both the recent murders of black men and women and the centuries-long reign of terror they have endured as well as a larger system that has functioned to establish and maintain savage economic and social inequality, no matter what the cost in human suffering. Both Floyd and Bubacarr were victims of an economic and political structure that demonizes the “other” in order to divide, suppress and exploit. It serves the interests of a global ruling class that benefit from a fractured opposition and cultivated fear and distrust of those not of our immediate tribe.

So what do we do about it? I am in no way — no way — conflating my situation with that of aboriginal and black folks and so many others subjected to oppression. That particular pain and socio/cultural devastation is not mine. But in 1968 I and some 10,000 other people, mostly white, from all over America and Canada went to Chicago to protest the mass killing of some two million Vietnamese men, women and children by American forces, many of them victims of oppression themselves.

I was in Grant Park when 300 gas-masked police fired tear gas canisters into a group of a thousand peaceful protesters and then charged into the panicked crowd with batons flailing. I was arrested on a trumped up felony charge, had a gun pointed at my head by the arresting cop, beaten up by the police once they got me back to the station, and thrown into the Cook County Jail. There I met dozens of aboriginal and Black men whose main crime was being born into poverty and being the wrong colour in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Yes, my white privilege got me out on bail (thank you, Paul Newman) and enabled me to eventually beat the charges against me, but I was also privileged to see firsthand what systemic racism and the lie of social justice looks like. But I took away one more thing: collective action can make a difference. Our protests in Chicago against a force of 23,000 militarized police — along with the actions of millions of others across the globe — helped bring the terrible human tragedy of the Vietnam War to a close. And remember, while a pacifist, MLK understood the need for militant action. “Riots,” he said, “are the language of the unheard.”

In Africa as well as North America, I along with thousands of other white folks have worked with colleagues from many different ethnic, religious and national backgrounds, dedicating our lives to building a more just and equitable world. That world will only be possible when we recognize our global humanity and stand together against the forces of greed and oppression and those eager to sacrifice decency, tolerance and a sustainable future for short-term profit and power. Sadly, these destroyers exist in all groups. This is our time, for us — all of us — to fight for the future of our children and grandchildren, shoulder to shoulder, finding and valuing what we share rather than what separates us. That unity has always terrified the ruling oligarchs for one reason: they know nothing can stand against it.