by Emancipate NC Organizer Dedan Waciuri
Introduction: A Local Assault with Global Meaning
In Greenville, North Carolina, Anthony Drayton was brutally assaulted by Greenville Police inside a local McDonald’s. To the casual observer, this may appear as just another case of “police misconduct.” But to view it this way strips the event of its true meaning. Drayton’s assault was not an isolated outburst of violence; it was the enforcement of a centuries-old system of spatial control — the state’s attempt to regulate where Black people can exist, how they can move, and what kind of life they are allowed to live.
Spatial control is not simply about land. It is about power over movement — deciding who is free to move and who must remain contained. Drayton’s beating inside McDonald’s exposes the reality that for Black people in America, space is never neutral. Every public square, every street, every business is a potential checkpoint where police, the armed wing of the state, can violently regulate Black existence.
Movement as a Revolutionary Question
Our perspective at EmancipateNC is that movement itself is political. The ruling class organizes society by regulating movement: workers to the factory, commodities to the market, armies to the battlefield. For oppressed people, movement has always been bound up with survival and liberation.
● Enslaved Africans were forbidden to leave plantations without written passes. Freedom of movement meant rebellion.
● The Great Migration of six million Black people fleeing Southern terror reshaped America’s political geography, terrifying elites who understood that Black relocation destabilized racial order.
● Civil Rights marches and sit-ins were acts of radical disruption — not simply because of slogans, but because they placed Black bodies in forbidden spaces, refusing to obey segregation’s geography.
The state knows that when Black people move — across counties, across neighborhoods, across the lines they draw — we unsettle the whole system.
Spatial Control: From Plantations to Policing
Spatial control is the hidden architecture of American white supremacy. It is not new; it has simply changed form:
● Slave patrols were the first police, dedicated to tracking and capturing Black bodies in motion.
● Jim Crow laws carved entire geographies of exclusion. White-only restaurants, buses, schools, and neighborhoods were violently enforced.
● Redlining and zoning kept Black families boxed into neighborhoods while suburban highways carried white workers to jobs and safety.
● Urban renewal bulldozed thriving Black communities, displacing movement into cramped, surveilled ghettos.
Today, Greenville police play the same role. They are the modern overseers of geography, making sure Black people stay “in their place.” The assault on Drayton inside McDonald’s was spatial discipline — a reminder that Black presence, even in spaces marketed as open to all, is conditional.
Policing as Spatial Enforcement
Police are often described as fighting “crime,” but their deeper role is to enforce the racial geography of capitalism. They determine who belongs where:
● Traffic stops serve as roaming checkpoints, disciplining Black drivers for crossing boundaries.
● Stop-and-frisk policies criminalize simply existing in public spaces.
● “Loitering” laws criminalize stillness — standing, waiting, or gathering without buying.
● Protest policing frames movement as disruption, labeling marches as traffic blockages or “riots.”
In Greenville, the same logic applies. Anthony Drayton’s body became a target because his presence disrupted the order that the police are tasked with defending. Inside McDonald’s, the police were not just assaulting him — they were reasserting who has the right to occupy space, and under what conditions.
Black Movement as a Threat to Empire
Why does the state fear Black movement? Because it knows history.
● The Freedom Riders rode buses across the segregated South, destabilizing Jim Crow at its core.
● The Pan-African Congresses connected Black struggles across continents, linking Harlem to Accra to Havana.
● Today, movements from Ferguson to North Carolina show how state power relies on confining, blocking, and militarizing space.
Anthony Drayton’s assault is connected to these struggles. Whether in the streets of Ferguson, the townships of South Africa, or the occupied territories of Palestine, the logic is the same: containment, control, and punishment of the oppressed when they move too freely.
Greenville as a Microcosm
Greenville, NC is not unique. Its policing reflects national patterns: bloated police budgets, underfunded communities, and a political order that prioritizes containment over liberation. But Greenville is also a frontline. When Drayton was assaulted, it revealed how even small Southern cities are laboratories for spatial repression. Substations, patrol patterns, and policing of Black gathering spaces are all part of an intentional design to maintain control.
The fight for justice in Greenville is therefore not just local — it’s global. It’s tied to broader struggles against militarized borders, colonial checkpoints, and surveillance states.
Conclusion: Reclaiming Our Right to Move
The assault on Anthony Drayton at McDonald’s is a window into the machinery of spatial control. It shows how the police function not merely as enforcers of “law,” but as regulators of geography, deciding who belongs where, and punishing those who cross invisible lines.
But history teaches us something else: Black movement has always been the foundation of liberation. From the escape routes of the Underground Railroad to the marches of Selma to the streets of Ferguson, movement is how we break the lines they draw.
To honor Drayton is to fight for freedom of movement: the right to walk, to gather, to drive, to protest, to live without fear of violent containment. The ruling class knows that when Black people move — together, strategically, across boundaries — we shake the foundations of empire.