TEN YEARS

Last April Dick Barrett of the Nationalist Movement was killed in his Pearl, Mississippi home, allegedly by a black man he made sexual advances to. If there was ever a better period that you can put on the past decade for myself and those of us that have made One People’s Project what it has become, it has not been found. That to me was the best way to sum up all the writing, all the excursions, rallies and street battles, all the mayhem that OPP has seen in the ten years we have been around.

July 4, 2000 is what we note as the day we were founded, but one can say we started that day in April 2000 when we received that first email indicating Barrett’s group was going to hold a rally in Morristown, NJ. It was a rather curious year by this point. We had a Klan rally in New York City the past October, only the second one in that city’s entire history. The Council of Conservative Citizens after years of getting a pass for their white supremacist activism was finally getting called out, and with that the politicians who worked with and were members of the organization. Black men getting killed by police was at a fevered pitch with the deaths of Amadou Diallo, Patrick Dorismond, Stanton Crew and Earl Faison, all hot issues at the time, not to mention the NJ Turnpike State Police shooting that put racial profiling on the front burner. Support for the then-Superintendent of the New Jersey State Police Carl Williams, who was bounced out of office after he made remarks that seemed to defend the practice, is what brought Barrett to New Jersey in the first place. It was also in the midst of a time when political demos were becoming more volatile. The rallies at Seattle’s World Trade Organization and Washington, DC’s MF/World Bank conferences just happened, so activists were pretty amped by the time this announcement came. They were especially so because just like the Klan rally in NYC, this was a rarity: a white supremacist rally in the area – and we were only four months since the last one.

We organized by meeting, hooking up with other groups, going out into the communities, talking with Morristown city council members, and via a new medium to us, a website to help coordinate all the things we were doing in regards to the upcoming July 4th rally, and we called our counterdemo the “One People’s Rally”. We called it that because we didn’t want our efforts to be simply about Barrett and his nonsense. We wanted it to be a celebration of us being united as one people. We were going to make it a festive atmosphere with music, performances and a general appreciation of us. Much of that eventually was chipped away when the reality of the situation was realized, which was a good thing because on July 4th, things exploded. Protesters were arrested for showing their displeasure at Barrett’s rally in a number of ways. A six-year-old was pepper sprayed by police. We still had our sound system though – which by the way was powered by a generator, not by the cord going to the town Visitor Center as Barrett’s sound system was – and we used it to drown him out by playing reggae, hip hop, ska and punk.

These were things that were pretty much expected at rallies such as these, but all of us knew that there was more that we needed to do in order to get hold of what kind of crap was going on. In an article that I wrote that appeared in the Bridgewater (NJ) Courier-News, a newspaper I once worked as a columnist for, I made it clear where we were going with this.

“Yesterday was one of many shots you are going to hear from this coalition from now on. Notice I did not say “might”. We are maintaining this group of anti-fascists and will meet again real soon to take this further.

Article published in the Courier-News on July 5, 2000, the day after Dick Barrett’s Morristown rally (click on image to enlarge)

Let that be a warning, by the way, to those who are the silent supporters of white supremacy. Those who endorse the politics of hate are not going to hide under cute terms as “neo-conservative” or declarations of “I am not a racist” while promoting racist ideals. If you are truly not a racist, then you should be able to explain yourself to those of us who deserve that explanation. However if you support the politics of hate, you will be called out. If you are an elected official, you won’t be for long. If you own a business, we will find better places to spend our money. If you are a church that is involved in political campaigns and lobbying, your tax-exempt status is history.

This may sound harsh, but conservatives over the past few years have force our hand. They have decided for themselves that people of color are their sworn enemy and somehow not deserving of the rights afforded us in the constitution. We have put our time in here in New Jersey. We are working for what we want, and we will fight to keep what we have. We do not need someone stirring up divisions among us, pushing themselves ahead at our expense. They will not either. Let (NJ Assemblyperson) Michael Carroll, Hal Turner, New Jersey Right to Life, Richard Barrett and his ilk know. They will lose this one.”

So here we are, ten years later. That list of names I mentioned in the last line is pretty much irrelevant now. Dick Barrett is dead. Hal Turner is busy trying to keep himself our of jail. New Jersey Right to Life, which at the time was where one could find some seriously dubious characters, has scaled down their activities significantly. Michael Patrick Carroll is still an Assemblyperson, but he’s pretty much harmless in today’s climate. And what of us? We just moved on rather quickly to other, bigger concerns and issues – not to mention targets. We have done pretty well in that regard. We have seen and in many cases assisted in the fall of a number of major hate organizations. We have become a go to source for those trying to find out who is who in hate politics, especially those who think they can pretend they are not. And in the past six months we have scored some rather high profile hits, Those hits have allowed us to travel the country to introduce ourselves to anti-fascist activists whom we have learne
d more or less grew up with One People’s Project and wanted to further the work we have been doing.

It wasn’t – and it still isn’t – my intention to be first and foremost an activist. I make my ideals. My ideals don’t make me. Frankly, I am a writer, artist and musician first and foremost, and I still want to open up that club I have been mulling over for years! Still, I am proud of what we have done over the past decade. I don’t think the future is going to be too shabby either. As we go forward however, I am always being reminded – if you can’t tell from my reference to the club – that it’s meaningless to fight without appreciating the things we fight for. For me, that is no effort. There is something in all of us that drives us to do the things we do. I make a point to look for that thing in every person I encounter in life, even among those who I am fighting. That most basic cornerstone is a reminder that we are all human beings with real loves and good qualities, and even if they are buried in the darkest of hearts and minds, for the benefit of us all that should never be ignored or discounted. That is what makes the “One People” in our name so important. We are indeed one people, and have always been so. Whatever culture and heritage that you are a part of is a contribution to all of us as a people. To keep it to yourself or to use it to place yourself above others is an abomination of it. It is not acceptable.

I am sure that it is more than apparent by now that it is not an option for me and those like me to brook that flawed, selfish element in society that says we are not to see ourselves as one people, that we are not to care of those around us, that we are an island unto ourselves. If someone has chosen to destroy themselves in such a fashion, we won’t allow them to take us with them. Our mission has been to marginalize those characters, and diminish their ability to function in a society that sees itself a little broader than they would wish. Those we have done that to know they are wrong. That is why in discussions and debates they can’t tell you outright what they are about if they wish to have some sort of standing among us. We get code words and new terms for what they are truly about. They cry about people of other cultures being able to be what they want to be while they can’t, not realizing that those they complain about are actually being just as marginalized as they are (don’t bother trying to convince them of that; they have their story and they are sticking to it!) This however shows us just how strong we are. This is not their society. It is ours. They are merely parasites, and they are the kind of parasites that if not dealt with properly can indeed infect and kill this society. In many respects we deal with them properly. Other times we slip up. Arizona’s SB1070 law speaks to one of those times, but depending on how we deal with that it could also show our ability to preserve our unified culture and heritage.

I think I have said all that I want to say for now. I know this is not all I want to say, but I’m the kind of person that likes to show people what’s up more than just talk about it anyway. I want to thank all of those who have been with us during this past decade. None of what we do has ever been about One People’s Project. It’s been about all of us. Ultimately, I suppose I am thanking all of us for being the people we are proud to fight for in the first place!

Sincerely,

Daryle Lamont Jenkins,
One People’s Project