I have nothing original to add to the discussion of the police murder of Sean Bell and the judge's decision to let the guilty cops go free. Maybe because I'm too pissed off, or nauseated, or both by the loss of life, the criminal murder of an innocent man, the inherent racism of the police state, the loss to the man's wife and young daughter and the rest of his family - I could go on. But others are writing more eloquently than I can muster today, so I link with approval to them.

Holly writes at Feministe that the police murder of black men is a feminist issue. She makes a strong, eloquent case.

The problem is that this disproportionately affects communities of color. The black men who are most often slaughtered by such violence, and all the women and children in their lives too, their loved ones, friends and relatives. A system that is all too eager to exonerate “the thin blue line” and continue business as usual. All of these are feminist issues. Racism must be a feminist issue, for any kind of feminism that counts. Police brutality must be; the biases of the criminal justice system must be.

The SuperSpade is rightly flabbergasted and bitter:

I know there will be rallies held in New York to protest this miscarriage of justice and if you are in the area, you should go. After the marches though, Bell’s story like Amadou Diallo and others will be filed in the Black consciousness as the continuing saga of injustice that has plagued Black folk since we were kidnapped from Africa. Surely this is worth Black folk being bitter right?

Mikhael B. Reid expresses her outrage and posts links to cartoons she has done on this case and on police brutality.

I'll post more when I find it.

Oh, And: Barack Obama registered the predictable "we are a nation of laws so don't go crazy in the streets" admonishment. Not that I expected him (or think he should) advocate rioting, but it would be refreshing to hear a prominent politician say something like, "We are a nation of laws, sure, but I don't see how the police can be allowed to gun down a person in cold blood and get away with it. Something is wrong with our justice system. Cases like this make the law seem like a sham to protect the power of the state against the rights - the very lives - of the people."

NOTE: I'll be posting updates as I find them at the entry on my WordPress blog.

If you had read Robin Morgan's Goodbye to All That (#2) and felt both alienated and emotionally blackmailed, Kimberle Crenshaw and Eve Ensler write an excellent response to the kind of "either/or" feminism Morgan's essay typifies:

Because we believe that feminism can be expressed by a broader range of choices than this "either/or" proposition entails, we again find ourselves compelled to say "no"--this time to a brand of feminism that betrays its inclusive and global commitments. We believe we stand in unity with many feminists who will say, "Not in Our Name" will this feminism be deployed.

Young feminists have been vocal and strong in critiquing the claim that a vote for Obama represents some form of youthful naiveté, a desire to win the approval of men, or a belief that sexism no longer factors into their lives. While paying respect to those women who carried the banner for so many years, these young women have reminded us that feminism is not static but evolutionary, changing in content, scope and tenor as new generations elevate their concerns and aspirations. And while we agree that this "either/or" brand of feminism fails to capture the imagination and hopes of countless numbers of women who refuse to entrust this capital into the hands of a candidate just because she is a woman, we think it important to add that this is not simply an intergenerational difference at work here. At issue is a profound difference in seeing feminism as intersectional and global rather than essentialist and insular. Women have grappled with these questions in every feminist wave, struggling to see feminism as something other than a "me too" bid for power whether it be in the family, the party, the race or the state.

For many of us, feminism is not separate from the struggle against violence, war, racism and economic injustice. Gender hierarchy and race hierarchy are not separate and parallel dynamics. The empowerment of women is contingent upon all these things. Despite the fact that we know that identity does not equal politics--especially an antiwar, social equity and global justice politics--we are led to believe that having a woman in power is the penultimate accomplishment. And even when the "either/or" feminists back off this claim in general, we are told, it is true in the case of the particular, Hillary Clinton. Experience and judgment go hand in hand, we are told, but one has to wonder how is it that so many ordinary citizens who were outside the beltway instinctively sensed what would come with the war, but the female candidate running for President did not?