Fighting Police Racial Profiling: James Williams and Grassroots Organizing : NOLA Indymedia

In the shadow of the Mississippi Bridge, the neighborhood of Algiers lies across the river from the French Quarter and the rest of New Orleans. Directly to the west of Algiers Point, where the ferry from the French Quarter unloads, is a largely Black neighborhood of single-story double shotgun houses. James Williams parks the car, picks up flyers from the back seat and emerges from the sedan for a day of talking to regular people about police harassment. James is a dedicated community organizer, but on this Sunday afternoon in November, he is in Algiers because of his own unlawful arrest by a white police officer in a New Orleans suburb seven months ago. In previous weeks he has stood outside malls and large apartment complexes in Kenner and Harahan, where the arrest occurred.
James and I climb up the stairs onto a worn yellow porch. He holds a clipboard under his right arm and lifts his left hand, forming it into a fist. Knock-na-na-knock sings the wooden door. At six-foot-four, James fills the door frame. Short dreadlocks lay above his strong face. The focus in his eyes conveys an earnestness despite his relaxed and friendly nature.
We stand there silently, waiting for a hint that someone is shuffling to the door. When doors we knocked on were hollow, James would roll up his fact sheet and place it between the handle and the door frame for people when they return home.
The door cracks open and an older woman peeks her head out, unaccustomed to unannounced strangers.
“Hello, I’m working with friends to find ways to reduce about police harassment and misconduct. Can I share some information with you?,” James begins, handing her the flyer. “Do you have a few moments to talk?”
He relays the story of an incident in Harahan during which he was arrested and put in jail overnight.
“I was riding in the passenger seat of the car. A white lady—a professor who came down to help after Katrina—was driving,” James says, referring to Pam Nath who is canvassing across the street. “My daughter was in the backseat, we were going to her mother’s house. You know, I don’t go out to Harahan much. We’re lost a little bit, going slow. A police car stops us, he comes up to the driver’s side and asks the white lady if she’s lost. She says, yes we’re trying to get to this address. He tells her how to get to the street, then asks is that an apartment complex? She doesn’t know, she hasn’t been there before. So I say, ‘yes.’ Upon seeing a black man in the car, the cop’s whole attitude changes. He’s askin’ her ‘how do you know this guy? Is he your nephew? Is he your cousin?’ Crazy stuff. She says something about us working together, but she’s flustered, ya know, ‘cause she doesn’t usually deal with cops acting like this.”
The old lady listens intently. Her glistening gray hair is pulled back and she has a slight hunch. One hand holds the flyer and the other rests on the handle of the screen door.
“He asks for my license. So I give it to him. As I’m giving him my license, I say: ‘Here is my license, though I don’t understand why you need it, since I’m not the one driving.’” As he says this last line, James’ face contorts in on itself in tense disbelief. The brow wrinkles, cheeks raise, mouth tightens. “So the cop orders me out of the car, pushes me around to the back of the car,” James continues, “calling me an asshole and all this stuff. Next, the cop pushes me up against the car, twists my arm behind my back for several seconds, then searches me and finds nothing. He goes back to look in the car. Nothing. Because he was acting so crazy, I stopped answering his questions at that point.”
“After backup comes, he handcuffs me, puts me in the backseat. He asks me what I’ve been arrested for in the past. I tell him, I have nothing more to say to him. He asks me again. I tell him ‘I’m pleadin’ the fifth’. He replies, ‘You want to be smart huh? Well then I’m going to plead the fifth about what I’m arresting you for. I’m just gonna start writing stuff down.’”
At the Gretna jail, James found out he was being charged with resisting arrest and battery of a police officer. Both charges have a maximum sentence of six months, and the battery charge cannot be expunged from a person’s record.
At every door, every reincarnation of the incident, James’ voice remains even and deep, rolling along, noting the moments that hit home with people. Everyone allows James his voice, often nodding and concentrating their eyes on his face, as if reliving a familiar scene in their past.
“What happened to me was wrong. And I know there are many others who have gotten a lot worse,” acknowledges James. Growing up, he later told me, James routinely dealt with police harassment and has witnessed multiple occasions of police beating up his peers. Since he began handing out his flyer and knocking on doors, he’s heard many more stories. From Harahan and Kenner, New Orleans suburbs, to Algiers and the French Quarter, there are no sanctuaries.
“I’m out here because the police need to be held accountable. I believe that if people come together, we can reduce police misconduct. This is not the way things are supposed to be,” he says.
At this juncture, we talk about the petition James created, which includes three demands: drop all the charges against him, investigate the police officer and a mandate to end police abuse everywhere that it exists.
Half of the people with whom we talk sign the petition willingly. Some ask him if he has filed a formal complaint with the Harahan Police Department. A few people even offer lawyers’ names--representatives of friends and relatives who were taken to court or took the police to court for harassment. The other half hesitate to sign out of fear that their names and addresses on a public document might induce the police to seek retribution. This fear persists even though police in Harahan and Algiers have different jurisdictions. In such moments, James demurs, thanks them, and asks them to call him if they can help him in any way or, likewise, if he can help them. We walk to the next door of a single story house and begin again. This is the work, the grind of awareness, for justice.
As James stands and I sit on the curb aimlessly at the end of the day in Algiers, all our flyers distributed, James poignantly asks me something I hope never to forget: “Do you think this is really how social change happens?”
In the near silence, as a dog barks a few blocks away, the question hangs. I look searchingly across the street at a cemetery. I don’t know for sure. Without money and power, or connections to either, how does one bring injustice to the public’s attention? And how then is the attention and awareness of injustice transformed into tangible solutions? Though we talked to less than thirty people and left flyers for no more than that, I believe the act of canvassing, talking directly to people in the community, has incredible potential. And in my own way this is how I responded to James’ question. “This is a part of the process, a necessary part of making regular people aware and potentially involved.” What I was getting to and am often transfixed by is figuring out the question: how do folks become involved in organizing, in activism? What are the myriad ways people enter into this lifestyle? Self-interest, conscience, born into the movement, friendships, education, intrigue, romanticism, mentors, guilt, oppression, privilege, politics, atrocities, exposure?
Walking back to the car, then driving back across the river, we knew struggling for justice would be a life-long process that requires the daily grind and sacrifice. Petitions engage people. And canvassing brings people into the conversation who may not have time to be involved in “the movement.” But beyond effectiveness, James’ question seemed to imply how much must we sacrifice to get there, and doing it this way, will these methods get to liberation in our lifetimes.

The trial of James Williams has been continued to April 8, 2009 in Metairie. He faces two charges: resisting arrest and battery of a police officer. A conviction of “battery of a police officer” cannot be expunged from a person’s criminal record and would have a detrimental effect on Williams’ future educational and employment opportunities.
You can sign Williams’ petition online at:
http://www.thepetitionsite.com/2/justiceforjames