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Moving Jackson Forward: Opposing Visions of a People’s Assembly by Kayode Crown
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the meeting, which Minka shared with the Jackson Free Press. “Ordinary people recognize that the original pretense to a movement for popular assemblies never taught commoners how to be independent from city government and to take action to govern themselves. Now the process of popular government as selfdirected liberating activity is underway,” the RPA document said. The basic concept of both people’s assemblies is a focus on gathering together to express ideas on the direction the city of Jackson should go. Both define their end-goal as some form of direct democracy, though they differ in the definition of what the term means. For RPA, direct democracy means the people determining what will happen and taking the initiative themselves to make it so. For JPA, the goal is to become a legal government entity through future legislation, achieving the rule of the people and changing government from within. RPA, in contrast, believes that the government cannot reform itself and that the people must replace it by direct rule. Illustrating the difference, Mayor Lumumba and his wife, Ebony, were part of the July 11 JPA meeting, attended by more than 80 people virtually. City and administration officials spoke at the Lumumba assembly, as they often do at length at the traditional people’s assemblies. RPA, on the other hand, is committed to excluding the mayor and his administration’s officials. The leaders are openly critical of the mayor, with Minka often critiquing Lumumba’s decisions, particularly on police violence and allowing the Jackson Police Department to work with the federal government on Project Eject. The organizers also do not believe it is possible for the government, or those close to it, to organize a real people’s assembly. “Unlike a city council or PTA meeting, the RPA was not reported to by elite administrators or politicians, leaving a few minutes for ordinary people to express themselves and be ignored,” the RPA resolution document stated. “The meeting established an overwhelming consensus that the RPA is not a place where professional politicians, police or surveillance operatives in uniform or plain clothes, are welcome.” Conversely, JPA co-chair Rukia LuKayode Crown
August 5 - 18, 2020 • jfp.ms
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reg Griffin, a 42-year-old fi- One Day, Two Assemblies nance worker based in Jackson, Rukia Lumumba, the mayor’s sister, was happy to participate in the who directed his election campaign, is the Real People’s Assembly’s effort to co-chair of Jackson People’s Assembly. She bring respite to Jesse and Sarah Pittman. told the Jackson Free Press that JPA opted They are an elderly couple living on for a Zoom meeting in July on policing beSage Street who were dealing with raw sew- cause of the pandemic. age leaking beside their house and making “Before COVID-19, we (had) issuethe heat of summer less bearable than usual. based assemblies last year and the year beThe RPA, as organizers call it, pressured the fore. (We) met in person and (had) a mass city government to bring a sewage truck to community gathering to discuss a pertinent the street and start resolving the problem af- issue,” Rukia Lumumba said. ter a Jackson Free Press article about the problem and lack of response from the City of Jackson. “This is a direct result of the work session that we did in the Real People’s Assembly,” Griffin told the Jackson Free Press, which had exclusively reported the couple’s sewage situation. RPA initiated a donation drive through GoFundMe and used the proceeds to host the elderly couple at the Westin Hotel in downtown Jackson from June 17 to June 22. It was five days for the Pittmans to sleep better at night, away from the smell of raw sewage that invades the house when the window-unit air conditioner is on. Griffin said he and Jacksonbased lawyer Adofo Minka, who writes columns for this newspaper, formed a coalition on June 30. Rukia Lumumba is the co-chair of the Jackson People’s Assembly, set up as an avenue for the “Out of that coalition, we formed people to interact with government officials. the group that is called the Real People’s Assembly,” Griffin said. “We wanted to raise funds to provide The meeting in February was not some temporary relief from the situation, issue-based, but was more light-hearted, (putting the Pittmans) into temporary she said. The assembly had met 10 times lodging, even if it was for a few days, to between 2018 and 2019, and before that, say, ‘hey, you have somewhere to go where the meetings were less frequent and focused you don’t have to deal with the unhealthy, on what she called “larger Issues.” unsafe and unsanitary condition.’ That was “The initial assembly model when my one thing that we started.” The GoFundMe father was city councilperson of Ward 2— campaign raised $1,200. they held assemblies monthly,” she said. The new Real People’s Assembly is not Their most recent people’s assembly to be confused with the Jackson People’s had a direct competitor—the RPA. The Assembly, long a form of shared gover- upstart assembly’s first meeting was held at nance for the family of Mayor Chokwe A. 1 p.m. on July 11, with people gathering at Lumumba. 135 Bounds St. and also virtually. Happen In fact, the RPA was established as an ing at the exact time was the second meetalternative to those better-known people’s ing of the year for the traditional assembly assemblies in Jackson. on Zoom. Both groups, in fact, held assemblies Minka made it clear that the RPA is to discuss solutions to over-policing and designed as an alternative to the Lumumviolence prevention recently on the same ba’s approach, explicitly saying so in a docuday: Saturday, July 11. ment containing its resolution at the end of
mumba said in a phone interview that the basis of the assembly is actually as a link between the government and the people. That is, what the newer RPA prohibits is embedded in the traditional JPA model. ‘Fake People’s Assembly’ The RPA document contains 11 negative mentions of Mayor Chokwe A. Lumumba. The group, which said it emerges from a group called Coalition Against Police State Violence, true to its origin has an ax to grind with Lumumba’s mayoral administration in its handling of police brutality incidents in the city. “The city government of Mayor Lumumba, who gratuitously claimed to be ‘radical’ and leading some kind of revolution, is responsible for the Black-led police state murder of eight Black people,” the group stated. RPA added: “The fake people’s assembly, after eight black people have been killed by the Black led police state, thinks Mayor Lumumba’s administration is basically good.” Minka listed the incidents to include an unidentified man on Oct. 27, 2017; Nathaniel Fleming on Nov. 15, 2017; Crystalline Barnes on Jan. 27, 2018; Lee Edward Bonner on Feb. 21, 2018; Elliot Reed on May 9, 2018; George Robinson on Jan. 17, 2019; Mario Clark on Feb. 14, 2019; and an unidentified man on April 13, 2020. About a year and a half into his term, Mayor Lumumba decided to release the names of officers involved in shooting to death citizens after reporting from this newspaper led to almost a year of meetings of a task force to discuss whether and how to release officers’ names. That task force included police officers. The issue of police brutality, nonetheless, occupied the center stage at the July 11 Jackson People’s Assembly, organized by Rukia Lumumba and others. A member of the task force against police brutality presented Lumumba’s recent executive order prohibiting chokeholds and other measures to rein in police excesses in the city at the meeting where participants were polled on their perspective on it. RPA founders aren’t buying it, though. “All of these things are just pacifiers,” Minka said. “(Lumumba) passed those reforms after people had protested in front of the Governor’s Mansion, and people started to mention the death of Mario Clark at the Black Lives Matter protest they had at the beginning of June. That was when he
