February 10, 2022

50 Years After Recording “No Knock,” Gil Scott-Heron’s Protest Song Contains a Prescription

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No-knock raids are in the news again after last week’s police killing of Amir Locke, but the tactic and its impact have never left the minds of artists and activists calling for its end. As you follow along with our colleague Eamon Whalen’s reporting on the Locke case, take a listen to Gil Scott-Heron’s “No Knock,” recorded 50 years ago.

“The Revolution Will Not Be Televised” gets more plays and shares, but “No Knock,” from 1972, is more freshly resonant. Scott-Heron’s poem is rapped over a pulsing beat. It’s concise, with tight lines. It’s spare, with minimal instrumentation. And it’s specific: It names names, closing in on “one of our unfavorite people,” John Mitchell.

Mitchell was the attorney general who called for no-knocks, and he became Nixon’s presidential reelection campaign chair. Mitchell approved wiretapping without court authorization, tried to spike the Pentagon Papers’ publication, advocated the prosecution of antiwar demonstrators, and was convicted of perjury, conspiracy, and obstruction in the Watergate cover-up. A statesman.

Mitchell isn’t the only bad actor in Scott-Heron’s sights. “No Knock” has a long reach. It presses for a multigenerational movement against the tactic that not only disparately kills civilians but results in the preventable deaths of the very police using the tactic. The poem is as much a pushing back as a lament. And it taps into Scott-Heron’s twin talents: resistance and results. If “No Knock” expresses fury, it lands on another beat: a policy proposal to end it.

Let us know at recharge@motherjones.com if you see good news in national or local no-knock coverage.

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WHO DOESN’T LOVE A POSITIVE STORY—OR TWO?

“Great journalism really does make a difference in this world: it can even save kids.”

That’s what a civil rights lawyer wrote to Julia Lurie, the day after her major investigation into a psychiatric hospital chain that uses foster children as “cash cows” published, letting her know he was using her findings that same day in a hearing to keep a child out of one of the facilities we investigated.

That’s awesome. As is the fact that Julia, who spent a full year reporting this challenging story, promptly heard from a Senate committee that will use her work in their own investigation of Universal Health Services. There’s no doubt her revelations will continue to have a big impact in the months and years to come.

Like another story about Mother Jones’ real-world impact.

This one, a multiyear investigation, published in 2021, exposed conditions in sugar work camps in the Dominican Republic owned by Central Romana—the conglomerate behind brands like C&H and Domino, whose product ends up in our Hershey bars and other sweets. A year ago, the Biden administration banned sugar imports from Central Romana. And just recently, we learned of a previously undisclosed investigation from the Department of Homeland Security, looking into working conditions at Central Romana. How big of a deal is this?

“This could be the first time a corporation would be held criminally liable for forced labor in their own supply chains,” according to a retired special agent we talked to.

Wow.

And it is only because Mother Jones is funded primarily by donations from readers that we can mount ambitious, yearlong—or more—investigations like these two stories that are making waves.

About that: It’s unfathomably hard in the news business right now, and we came up about $28,000 short during our recent fall fundraising campaign. We simply have to make that up soon to avoid falling further behind than can be made up for, or needing to somehow trim $1 million from our budget, like happened last year.

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