Tuesday, April 24, 2007

Stop snitching? Stop smoking crack first



To snitch or not to snitch, that is the question. Actually, it’s not. It’s a reduction of a complex set of societal challenges into a slogan that can be put on a t-shirt. Keeping the complexity alive allows for the question: Given the legacy of police brutality does it make sense for those who engage in the guerilla economy of drug dealing to police themselves of their communities? And if so, do those self appointed individuals properly maintain an order that allows civilians, i.e. those not involved in the drug game, to live their lives in a fashion that regular policing would not support? Not so easy to put on a white T.
I was raised not to speak to police. I mean literally. They didn’t have any business with me so I should have any business with them. Even before I started doing the minor dirt that I did, however, I was stopped by police, had dogs sicced on me, had an N.Y.P.D’s knee in my neck for running for a bus, you know all the standard shit a young black man in the U.S has to deal with. But as for this bullshit question of if there was a murderer in my building would I call the police, my answer is and probably always will be “Hell yeah!”

What kind of moron do you have to be to allow yourself and possibly your family to let someone with a casual disregard for human life chill anywhere near you? As for this code business, does the “code” have a way of protecting me and mine from this murderer’s aggression? Because if not, I would firmly suggest the “code” check out my new website, www. movethefuckon.com and kill that noise. I do agree that there should be a way for communities to police themselves, but when has that not turned into some mafia related type shit? I pay taxes, I ain’t paying the “code watchers” or whatever they’d call themselves. In some ways this seems like some childish antics; “What the police don’t want to protect our communities the way that they should? Well screw them then, we’ll just police ourselves.” Which would be fine, if the main proponents of the idea weren’t individuals tweaking off ever increasingly powerful drugs.
See this code shit seems like a conflation between some seventies post black panther politics and a marketing campaign done by some pretty smart drug dealers. And yes, there are smart drug dealers out there. Take the cat below for instance. Now he may sound like mumbles the unintelligible, but this negro has turned his main nemesis, snitches, into his bread and butter via a series of dvds called “Stop snitching”. Of course, he’s arrested now, but given the options he’d set up for himself by being in the game, namely, jails, institutions, or the grave, I’d say he made a pretty smart move for himself.


What does this have to do with afrogeeks? Well when your neighborhood drug dealer starts selling dvds called “stop snitching” with his crack, maybe he’s not just a drug dealer. Maybe he’s an Afrogeek as well.