Philly Leader: 'Luxury Of Ignoring Protests Is Not Peaceful; This Is Not Business As Usual'
By Dom Giordano
PHILADELPHIA (CBS) -- Deandra Jefferson, Leader of Philadelphia Coalition for Racial, Economic, and Legal Justice told Talk Radio 1210 WPHT midday host Dom Giordano that "Philadelphia needs to care about what's going on in Baltimore" because she feels that the same things are happening in Philadelphia and all over the country.
"Finally people are recognizing that black lives do not matter to this country and it's a problem."
As a leader of a Philadelphia protest on the matter, she would not share details of what her groups plans were in protesting, but she did take exception to the belief that blocking traffic while protesting in the streets is not actually "peaceful."
"I don't consider it peaceful when you have the luxury to ignore the fact that people are dying and if that takes blocking traffic in order to get you to realize that this is not business as usual and we can't keep going on with as usual, then that's what it takes to be honest...You have the right to travel freely, but why would want to travel freely when there is this violence committed against people?"
Jefferson feels that if protests are not in the streets than people can easily ignore them.
"There's protests on sidewalks. There's protests in parks and America can conveniently forget about those. They can conveniently pass those by. You are not going to be able to conveniently pass by us at this point because we have gotten to a point in this country where conveniently passing things by is getting more and more people killed, because nobody wants to pay attention. So you will pay attention at this point. We have to make you pay attention."
According to Jefferson, just because most of the powerful positions in Philadelphia (Mayor, Police Chief, Superintendent of Public Schools, etc.) are held African-Americans, that does not mean that they are not experiencing "internalized racism."
"After living for so long in a country that is taken over by white supremacy, you are not necessarily as a black person always going to be on the side of your people and it's simply because of the brainwashing of the American public."
She feels that because of the fact that they live in different areas, that they "have a different understanding of our blackness" and the value that it brings with it.
"A lot of times when you have people who live in a society and are unchecked in going about their days in white privilege they do take on these self policing tactics. Some of these self policing tactics do have to do with respectability politics and things like that...It's not devaluing their blackness, but it is saying that they have an altered view of their blackness because of the country in which we live in."