After Dallas massacre, African Americans look to next steps

After Dallas massacre, African Americans look to next steps

DALLAS - With the spirit of Thursday's protest march shattered by a deadly sniper attack, members of Dallas's black community have begun the work of regrouping and taking charge of their future.

Parishioners of Frienship-West Baptist Church in Dallas, Texas, pray together on July 10, 2016

About a thousand people gathered late Sunday at the Friendship-West Baptist Church, called together by the Next Generation Action Network, which had helped organize the march.

The protest ended in bloodshed, with five police officers killed, nine wounded and two civilians also hurt after a lone gunman ambushed police.

African American activists, entrepreneurs and elected officials at the townhall meeting weighed potential next steps and how to build a movement. But the evening was also dominated by ordinary people who had come to express their exasperation.

They spoke about police brutality and Eric Casebolt, a white policeman who, in June 2015, violently slammed a 15-year-old black girl to the ground at a party deemed too noisy and drew a gun on two of her friends.

None of them was armed.

A grand jury decided last month not to indict the officer from the Dallas suburb of McKinney, TX, touching off a wave of indignation.

Others acknowledged that the problem had less to do with the Dallas Police Department, which has made significant reforms in recent years, than with law enforcement in surrounding towns.

Dallas Police Chief David Brown, who has received plaudits, still came in for his fair share of criticism.

Early on as the situation developed, his department tweeted out a photograph of a man later identified as Mark Hughes, who had been carrying an assault-type rifle at the protest, as a suspect before reversing themselves. His image was beamed around the world.

"Everybody is singing Kumbaya for the chief of police," said Mark's brother Cory Hughes, one of the organizers of Thursday's march.

Brown "put my brother out there and he has yet to pick up the phone and call us, to send an email, to send out a tweet, and we can't even go home!" Hughes said, noting the family has received numerous death threats.

- A plan of action -

Other participants in the meeting said the problems go beyond law enforcement.

In some suburbs of Dallas, blacks and Hispanics are not welcome, according to activist Carlos Quintanilla, president of Accion America.

He pointed to Garland and Arlington, while others mentioned Duncanville.

And in neighborhoods heavily populated by blacks, rats run rampant in school cafeterias, while mold spreads in classrooms.

Participants pointed to South Oak Cliff High School, which Brown himself attended several decades, as one such school.

Dominique Alexander, the charismatic founder of the Next Generation Action Network, spoke of a "school-to-jail pipeline" in majority black, poor neighborhoods.

Wearing a T-shirt emblazoned with the name of late boxer and civil rights activist Muhammad Ali, senior pastor Frederick Douglass Haynes III called for far-reaching answers.

"There are wounds to our souls," said Haynes, who paid tribute to the slain officers.

"We can't settle for another Kumbaya moment that is superficial," he said. "We need a plan of action."

Civil society representatives urged people to vote, contact their elected leaders, to be present when movements get started and make donations.

"I get a hundred likes when I post a picture" on Facebook, said a young woman with long braids. "I get four when I say come to this townhall meeting."

The gathering set a date for the next city council meeting on August 3 and called for another townhall on Thursday in the hopes of setting something in motion.

After Thursday's killings, "Dallas is ground zero for change," said Royce West, a Democrat in the Texas Senate.

"We don't have a choice," he told AFP.

"The loss of lives of officers and citizens, it creates the perfect storm for change."

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