
HARLEM, New York (BNN) – Jubilation spread through most of the Western world Sunday, when
the news that Capt. Richard Phillips had been freed from captivity on the
Maersk Alabama. The captain of the hijacked ship had been held hostage in a lifeboat since Wednesday, when four Somali individuals boarded U.S. Cargo ship in the wee hours of the morning. The standoff came to an end around 7:19 P.M. local time, when U.S. Forces killed his captors after claiming to have seen the Captain in "imminent danger."
While a majority of the nation seemed to be celebrating the news, at one Harlem lawyer's desk, things weren't so simple.
"While no one wants to see an individual deprived of liberty, " remarked New York lawyer Lester Coleman, "the question here is whether the extreme and unusual use of force in this matter was warranted."
"There's two sides to every story - the White media tends to use terms like '
pirates' in order to contextualize the situation into a frame of perception that best aligns itself with their needs. But regardless of nomenclature, it seems that once again, we're in another situation where White Officials have legally taken the lives of young Black men."
Mr. Coleman's organization,
Citizens Against Negro Turpitude or
CANT, has been the entity responsible for recent protests such as the actions against the
NYPost's Obama "Monkey" Cartoon, as well as Saturday's march against the controversially-named Brooklyn establishment, "
Obama Fried Chicken.""We're frankly shocked to see that more of the world media isn't delivering a balanced viewpoint on this issue," continued Mr. Coleman, "because the question of crime does not exist in a vacuum. Yes, Somali individuals stormed a cargo boat, killed several of its crew, and held a hostage for three days; no one is disputing that. What we
would like to shed some light on however, are the conditions that caused this situation. What actions has the United States historically taken to contribute to the extreme levels of poverty that would cause so-called "Pirates" to take such desperate measures.
"People have a tendency to ignore the
causality behind the
functionality - and then quite literally start cheering when the white man's band-aid solution is to storm the ship and just blow these victims of globalization away. And again, it
is surprising that we're not seeing more of an outcry regarding this particular situation - normally, we're able to count on the support of progressive institutions, such as the Palestinians and the French."