It’s time The Boss rocks Ferguson and Cleveland
... 41 shots, and we’ll take that ride cross the bloody river to the other side 41 shots, cut through the night you’re kneeling over his body in the vestibule praying for his life ...
No secret my friend you can get killed just for living in your American skin
41 shots, Lena gets her son ready for school she says, "On these streets, Charles you’ve got to understand the rules if an officer stops you, promise me you’ll always be polite and that you’ll never ever run away..."
You get consumed with pain, shame, disgust and rage when the song in gravelly baritone recalls the brutal shooting of 23-year-old unarmed Amadou Diallo by four cops in Bronx, New York City, on February 5, 1999. The West African immigrant was shot 41 times by Kenneth Boss, Sean Carroll, Edward McMellon and Richard Murphy and collapsed with 19 bullets hitting him in the volley of fire from four 9mm pistols that had probably 16 rounds each. The police officers, who were acquitted by an Albany jury despite facing second-degree murder charges, thought that Diallo — who had no criminal record — was about to take out a "gun" while he was reaching out for his wallet. The killings of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, and Tamir Rice in Cleveland, Ohio, by cops this year echoes the horrific Bronx incident. Iconic American singer-songwriter Bruce Springsteen, aka The Boss, who has often championed the cause of the working class (The Ghost of Tom Joad and We Are Alive), slammed several governments for quagmires like Vietnam (Born in the USA), Iraq and Afghanistan, explicitly portrayed the anger at the presidency of George W Bush (Long Walk Home), criticised the “marauders” and “robber barons” for the 2008 economic tsunami (Death To My Hometown) and described the chaos after Hurricane Katrina (How Can A Poor Man Stand Such Times and Live), took to the stage in Atlanta on June 4, 2000, exposing the ingrained hatred towards African-Americans in the heart-wrenching American Skin (41 Shots).
The song, penned by The Boss himself, includes lyrics like, Is it a gun, is it a knife is it a wallet, this is your life … It ain’t no secret. No secret my friend, you can get killed just for living in your American skin that drip with the trust deficit and rancour that the Whites have towards African-Americans — in this case, the four cops who killed Diallo.
The recount of the grisly shooting by The Boss rankled the then-NYPD chief Howard Safir and Mayor Rudolph Giuliani, who pounced upon the singer for his audacious attempt to expose the racial divide. According to reports, Bob Lucente, the then head of New York’s state fraternal order of police, called Springsteen a “dirt bag” and a “floating fag”. Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association president Patrick Lynch wrote to members, “I consider it an outrage that [Springsteen] would be trying to fatten his wallet by reopening the wounds of this tragic case at a time when police officers and community members are in a healing period.” At a joint press conference with Safir in June the same year, Giuliani said, “Despite the fact that they were acquitted ... there’s still people trying to create the impression that the police officers are guilty.”
It’s difficult to halt a juggernaut like Springsteen. Around 13 years later, The Boss was again at it: while performing in Thomand Park, Limerick, Ireland, he dedicated American Skin (41 Shots) to 17-year-old African-American Trayvon Martin, who was killed by neighbourhood watcher George Zimmerman in Sanford, Florida, on February 26, 2012. Springsteen told the audience, “I want to send this one out as a letter? for back home. For justice for Trayvon Martin.” Zimmerman, who thought that the unarmed Martin was suspicious and shot him in the chest, was acquitted by the jury of charges of second-degree murder and manslaughter in July 2013.
After the Atlanta performance, while Giuliani and the NYPD scorned Springsteen, Diallo’s parents praised the singer telling the New York Post, “It keeps [Amadou’s] memory alive.” They told the singer that they appreciated the song.
If Springsteen pens another song for Brown and Rice and takes to the stage, it will surely provide some respite to the shattered families, revive the memories of the Diallo incident and remind the Obama administration that justice still eludes the African-American community. The Boss had campaigned for Barack Obama in 2008 hoping for a wave of change. However, in a rally in Parma, Ohio, in 2012, Springsteen said, “I’m here today because I’ve lived long enough to know that despite those galvanising moments [Obama’s election] in history, the future is rarely a tide that rushing in.” In the same year, Springsteen expressed his disappointment at Obama. During a press conference in Paris, he said, “I still support the President, but there are plenty of things that I thought took a long time and would have been closed by now.
On his campaigning for Obama in 2008 and John Kerry in 2004, he said, “I got into that sort of by accident. The Bush years were so horrific that you couldn’t just sit around. I never campaigned for politicians previous to John Kerry and at that moment it was such a blatant disaster occurring at the top of government, you felt that if you had any cachet whatsoever, you had to cash it in because you couldn’t sit around and watch it.”
The Boss must be more disappointed now. Americans, especially the oppressed, need another soul-searching number from him.