The Trayvon Martin Case – A
Call to Action!


A seventeen year old youth has been gunned down.  It’s a tragedy that’s all  too familiar to African people around the world.  Whether it’s in Sierra Leone, Somalia,  Haiti, or Sanford, Florida, African life has no value, regardless of who’s
pulling the trigger. This is the  reason you won’t see me engaging in an emotional download from Trayvon’s
murder.  I’m way past that type of  reaction.  You see, it was way back  in the 70s that I first had my taste of the Trayvon treatment.   I was an eleven year old youth on a city bus in San Francisco.  The bus came to a stop and four young
Black men got on with face masks and guns and robbed everyone on the bus.  I knew immediately who the four men
were because they were well known in the inner city community I grew up in.  Their vicious criminal activities were
also very well known.  So much so that I knew taking any step to interfere with their activities could easily mean death for me and my family.  So, I took the blow to the jaw from one of their shotgun butts and sat  there while they brutally robbed all of the business oriented White people on that bus.  When they concluded  their crime spree, one of them looked at me as they exited the bus and said “don’t say s - - t!”  Since I hadn’t done anything wrong, I sat there on that bus and waited for the police,
believing myself to be as traumatized as anyone else on that bus.   Sure I had no material possessions for them to take, but I had my fragile  emotional security.  Unfortunately,   it wasn’t the neighborhood bus jackers that shattered that security.  There was a part of my young spirit  that truly felt the police would arrive to bring justice that day so I remember  a part of me being glad to see them when they arrived.  My naïve sense of security was quickly destroyed when the White bus victims immediately started telling the police I was a part of the group who had robbed the bus. Despite my pleas of innocence, the police threw me down on that bus, handcuffed me, and took me downtown for processing until my parents came down and raised holy hell and
demanded my release. No apology, no acknowledgment of my pain, just carry on.  In spite of that experience, I still remained loyal to the system, viewing that incident as just that, an aberration of justice.  Holding no grudges I moved forward, believing that my life had as much value as anyone else’s.  Then an incident took place when I was 14 that shook me to my very
foundation.  I was bussed to an all-White school in the then all-White Sunset district in San Francisco.  After leaving a store to catch the bus home after a baseball team practice, my 125 lb. self was jumped and beaten unconscious by three White men in their 30s who simply didn’t want anyone Black in their neighborhood.  The beating hospitalized me for days, but there are two aspects of that experience that stand out for me, even to this day.  First, that I was called the n word so many times while they beat me, and with so viciousness, that it is impossible for me to see the word as any type of term of endearment as many confused people would argue today.  In fact, I’m convinced that those three guys set some sort of Guinness Book of records with the number of times they yelled the word in the short period in which the beating took place.  Second, since the beating took place directly in front of the street car tracks, and it was around the 5pm rush hour, there were literally thousands of
White people waiting.  Men, women, and children, and not one person lifted a finger to help me.  Someone did call the police and the ambulance, but I remember being on the gurney and having the police ask me if I had a record as they wheeled me
into the ambulance.  So what’s the relevance of my personal stories to the case of young Trayvon?  Well, if you missed it, my point is what happened to Trayvon isn’t just one unfortunate incident.  It isn’t just a sad and misguided occurrence in Florida.  It isn’t just a case of a racist interaction in the South.  Trayvon’s murder is an example of the systematic devaluing of African
life that is a part of the institutional racist status quo that has been in place for 500+ years.  My occurrences are not just similar to Travyon’s case.  They are part and parcel of how this system works.  In fact, there are very few Black and Brown males who haven’t had experiences similar to Trayvon’s case.  The question is simply whether they were fortunate enough to survive
those incidents as I was, or whether they ended up like Trayvon, Sean Bell, Amado Diallo, Oscar Grant, James Byrd, or the large number of Black men killed in inner city violence, which is unquestionably a part of the same life devaluation process.  So, since I understand that, I’m way past an emotional response, although to be honest, a part of me does wonder where Black people find the patience to wait for a so-called system of justice that has never come through for us.  Why doesn’t someone just drive by Zimmerman’s house and take care of him the way he took care of little Trayvon?  Although part of me wonders that, I know that alone won’t solve the problem.  The issue is systematic and therefore only a systematic solution can address the issue.  We have to get organized.  As the late Kwame Ture (Stokely Carmichael) said at his famous Black Power speech at the Jackson, Mississippi state capitol in 1966 at the conclusion of the march against fear; “we have to build a power base that is so strong – it will bring them to their knees every time they mess with us!”  When he made that speech he didn’t know it, but two short years later, when he moved to Guinea and became the student of Kwame Nkrumah, Kwame Ture himself would learn what that power base is.  I realize this type of conversation about African self-determination is in many ways totally outside of the parameters for most people of all races in Portland where there is little context for the African liberation movement.  Still, if you are serious about this problem than it’s time to broaden your perspective and hear African voices and what we believe to be the best solution for us.  One of those solutions, and the one I wholeheartedly endorse, is Pan-Africanism.  As wide of a stretch as this is for you if you see America as the center of the world, and/or if you have little understanding of African history or politics, the core issue involving racism is the continued exploitation of the African continent.  Racism didn’t start in the U.S. and it doesn’t just exist in the U.S.  That’s why the problem can’t be solved just within the U.S.  Kwame Nkrumah, the first president of Ghana, and the founder of the All African People’s Revolutionary Party, was correct when he stated that “No Black
person anywhere on the planet will be free until Africa is free.  The total liberation of Africa under one scientific socialist government must be the primary objective of all Black revolutionaries wherever they are on the planet!”  My experiences from
the ghettos of this country to the bush in Africa have led me to this conclusion.  Racism is about power and the lack of it for African people and other people of color.  The key to empowerment for African people isn’t the U.S. electoral process and it isn’t in relying on the White working class in the U.S.  either.  It’s in establishing African self-determination and that’s in creating a free, united, and socialist Africa.  This was the call of Nkrumah, Sekou Ture, Patrice Lumumba, Marcus Garvey, Amy Garvey, Malcolm X, Shirley Graham and W.E.B. Dubois, Amilcar Cabral, Walter Rodney, Muammar Gaddafi, and many others.  It’s in
creating an All African Committee for Political Coordination in Africa and throughout the African world.  It’s  in understanding and respecting that just as the “Communist Manifesto” is the core values document for Marxist/Leninists, the “Handbook of Revolutinoary Warfare” by Nkrumah is the core values document for revolutionary Pan-Africanists. If you aren’t familiar with those values or those people, don’t dismiss Pan-Africanism simply as a“back to Africa” movement.  Pan-Africanism is about African people returning politically and spiritually to Africa, wherever they live on the planet.  It’s about strengthening Africa and creating a power base for African people utilizing Africa’s vast resources to empower African people for self-determination.  It’s about raising the stock of African people and shattering this racist system that makes African people reliant on European systems of power, thus perpetuating the concept that African people are less, which creates an environment where
African life is less.  It’s time to start talking in Oregon about a program that is advocated and endorsed by African people all over the world.  Consider how you can help Portland become a part of this critical worldwide movement.   Please  contact me at the email below or go directly to www.aaprp-intl.org/Cached - Similar  if you want to find out more about Pan-Africanism and the current work of the A-APRP to address this problem on a worldwide basis.  
rayvon is dead because his real mother, Africa, is unable to protect
him.  For those who are serious
about eliminating racism, we owe that much to Trayvon, and to the future victims
of this vicious system. 
umifam@gmail.com

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On Saturday, February 18th, I participated in a book reading event.  It was a very broad discussion about my book and using creative skills to advance the struggle for liberation and justice.  I talked extensively about the subtle methods in which racism functions within this society and how my book tackles racism and sexism in that unconscious fashion.  The point is that good literature finds a way to tackle those subjects and educate the reader on how those things function within this society and what our interaction is with those issues.  For example, I've had several women who have read the book talk about how in reading about Ashley they have been forced to see the similiarities and realize the dysfunction in their own lives.  They have also expressed how they also experience an understnding about how they fit within this racist/sexist society.  To me, this is the absolute power of the written word and the ability to tell a story.  It is also the power of fiction as opposed to non-fiction.  I have written countless articles about racism and sexism and the same people read it and then it dies.  WIth fiction, I'm reaching an audience far wider than my non-fiction activist audience.  I'm telling the story of racism and sexism through the eyes of a young White woman and people are reading it who never read anything about racism and sexism.  That's our moment to reach those people and raise their consciousness.  I plan on making my voice heard for years to come and broadening my audience.  Tht pen is my sword (at least one of them)!

I don't know the person who doesn't like to see the new year as an opportunity to move their life in a much more abundant direction.  People use many different tactics to symbolize a new direction, new energy, and a positive course of action.  For me, I always start out each new year by thinking of three critical historical events that took place in January that have had a profound impact on my life, and the lives of millions of people.  The first of those events is the Cuban Revolution which celebrated it's 52 anniversary on January 1st.  Regardless of what you know or don't know about Cuba, the undeniable facts are if you compare the lives of the people there to the lives of the people in neighboring Haiti, Jamaica, or Puerto Rico, there is no comparison that the people in Cuba enjoy a much higher quality of life under their socialist system.  People often use issues such as racism, homophobia, and sexism to discredit the Cuban Revolution, forgetting that those were problems there long before the revolution and that there is an overwhelming strong argument that the revolution has improved the attitude and practics around those issues in an accelerated fashion.  Cuba serves as an example of moving humanity forward to me, in spite of their shortcomings and they give me inspiration to continue to fighting for a better world...A socialist world.  The second and third events occurred on the same day.  January 17th is the infamous day in which both Patrice Lumumba of the Congo, Central Africa, and Alprentice "Bunchy" Carter and John Huggins of the L.A. Black Panther Party chapter, were murdered at Campbell hall in UCLA.  Lumumba represented the excitement and potential of the Congo and all of Africa when he was elected as the Congo's new Prime Minister in 1960.  The desire of his Congolese National Movement was to take the massive mineral wealth of the Congo, the diamonds, uranium, gold, etc., and use that to empower the Congolese people in particular and Africa in general.  The Central Intelligence Agency, in conjunction with Union Mineral in Belgium, and other European companies, assassinated Lumumba on January 17, 1961 and this event tossed the Congo into a tailspin of chaos and instability that continues today.  In fact, after the 1960 election, the Congo didn't have their next election until 2007.  The situation in the Congo is an example as to why all of Africa is in the situation it's in today.  Regarding Bunchy and John in L.A., that tragic incident speaks to the efforts of the federal government, the FBI, to sabotage the Panthers by turning the U.S. Organization against them.  The shootout on January 17, 1969, was the end result of the FBI'S illegal efforts and it caused the Panthers to lose two of their most dynamic leaders.  Bunchy Carter was a local gang leader turned political revolutionary.  Something that is the worst fear of this power structure.  So, I use the Cuban people, Lumumba, Bunchy, and John to start off each year.  If I can just work to approach the principled struggle of those people, I can make quite the contribution to moving society forward.  It's my intention to live up their shining examples!

I don't have any strong political messages to spread today.  Only a simple message.  Many people will tell you to follow your dreams, but you'll find most people don't really believe in you while they are telling you this.  Understand that you have to believe in yourself and that your belief will be tested to the core, especially by those you may consider to be close to you.  It's funny how that works.  Still, that's what happens more often than not.  So, you have to decide what you want to do, develop a plan on how you will do it, and forge ahead.  Understand up front that any support you get, even from your loved ones, is a bonus and isn't anything you can count on.  Even if you don't get support, as long as you know your plan is stable, stick with it and carve out time each day to dedicate to it, no matter what.  Make it a priority.  Understand that the reward won't be instant.  It will take tons and tons of hard work.  I speak from experience.  I wrote my book.  Now I am finishing up the sequel.  The sequel if almost 500 pages.  Presently, I'm reading each page out loud to try and catch as many errors as I can before I have this sequel professionally edited.  It's painstaking, tedious, and soooo long, but it is my plan.  My dream, and I'm going to make it happen.  I plan to transform this sequel, entitled "Beautiful Flower, Deadly Thorns" into a screen play.  I'm already inquiring with film companies about it.  Its going down.  And, when it does, all the people who have kicked my dream, I will smile at them and wish them well.

As the debate rages around the so-called Military Detention Act where the U.S. legislature is attempting to make it policy to lock up citizens simply for their political beliefs, its appropriate that we remember Fred Hampton.  The 21 year old Chicago man was the Chairperson for the Ill Black Panther Party.  He was a fearless and tireless leader who worked successfully to broker peace agreements with the the then named Blackstone Rangers and Vice Lords.  Chairmen Fred's attempt was to politicize those street organizations and get them to understand their enemy wasn't eachother, but the oppressive capitalist system.  The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), under its infamous counterintelligence program, or COINTELPRO, targeted the Black Panther Party for destruction.  Freedom of Information Act documents confirm that between 1967 and 1971, the Panther Party accounted for 233 of the 278 COINTELPRO activities.  The government targeted specific individuals like Chairman Fred to disrupt his very successful political activities.  Their initial attempt was to frame Fred on a trumped up charge of stealing $71 from an ice cream truck.  When that ridiculous trick didn't work, they tried, through provocatuers, to set Fred up for murder.  When that wasn't successful, they turned to William O'Neal, an FBI informant who was offered the choice of working for the FBI against the Panthers, or going to jail on criminal charges.  O'Neal infiltrated the Panther chapter and tried a number of techniques to implicate Fred in violent and illegal activities.  Being unable to lure the dedicated Hampton into any wrong doing, O'Neal followed the direction of Roy Mitchell, the Chicago FBI field office director, under the direction of Richard Held and Cartha DeLoach in the FBI national office, to provide the FBI with a diagram of Fred Hampton's bedroom.  The details of what happened are widely available today, but the quick version is on December 4, 1969, at 4am, nine Chicago police raided Fred's Chicago apartment and fired 99 shots into the small apartment, woundiing several unarmed occupants and killing Mark Clark, and Fred Hampton.  The Cook County Coroner's office confirmed that Hampton was actually killed by two close range execution shots which confirms the account given by the other occupants of the apartment who heard gunshots in Hampton's bedroom and officer's saying "he's good and dead now."  In spite of the FBI's criminal and gangster activity to silence the voices for justice and their continued attempt to intimidate and harass those who dare speak out, we honor Chairman Fred in December by recalling the words of Black Panther Party Co-Founder Huey P. Newton at the moment of

The above was a popular saying by the late Kwame Ture, formally Stokely Carmichael to us party organizers when discussing the disgusting behavior some human beings demonstrate when dealing with the rest of humanity.  Just a few short weeks ago, this blog was besieged by rightwing pen hoes who are paid to write empty headed comments attacking truth seeking commentary such as that displayed here.  These sorry excuses for human beings expressed support for sorry individuals like Herman Cain and called me names for daring to call Cain the sellout uncle tom that he is.  Now, the entire world knows what I said already.  Cain's nothing, but a sexual predating, selfish, self indulging, bottom of the shoe piece of crap.  The latest accuser says she has phone records.  Pretty hard to talk your way out of that one.  I guess that's why I haven't heard from the pen hoes lately.  Or, maybe it's that the pimps that pay them to write have stopped the checks?  Who knows what the deal is with those idiots.  The point is that truth crushed to Earth will always rise again.  That's what we do do here.  Tell the truth.  Not based on personal interest or emotion, but based on historical analysis and data.  We encourage everyone to get involved and take responsibility to make this world the place we want and need it to be. 

We have to give them credit.  They have mastered the art of illusion.  They have convinced literary billions of people worldwide to accept their sick, twisted, and untrue version of history.  They do this so that they can justify and generate support for their murderous assault on humanity.  When I say they I'm talking about the multi-national capitalist corporations whose interests are represented through their organizations of influence:  The Council of Foreign Relations, Tri-lateral Commission, Democratic Party, Republican Party, Ford, Chevron Foundations, Ad Council, and the many university administrations, library committees, media companies, and the many other organizations they use to advance their agenda.  They use holidays like "Thanksgiving" or what we call Thankstaking, to annually confuse everyone into subtely accepting their murderous assault against the Native peoples under the guise that all you are doing is getting together with family and friends.  While you are eating and watching football, they don't want you to even consider the truth that the "Thanksgiving" holiday grows specifically out of the 1637 violent assault against the Pequot Tribe in the area known today as Virginia by English and Dutch terrorists.  There was no feast of Indians and White people.  This was a myth created by the framers of history mentioned above to take a murderous home invasion robbery and turn it into a holiday that has been celebrated annually for hundreds of years.  It would be no different than having a national holiday to celebrate people who stormtrooper busted into your house, raped your family, stole your house and everything you own, and then celebrated their barbarism by having a feast in your house.  But, don't worry, it's just a dinner with family and friends right?  It's just college and NFL football right?  You aren't doing anything to contribute to that horrific story from 400 years ago.  You're just enjoying a much deserved day off right?  All of that is more than likely true, but pay attention to your youth on Thursday.  When they are playing while the adults socialize, watch when one of them finds a quarter or dime on your floor.  What will that child's reaction be?  Will it be "here's a quarter of yours I found!" or will it be "I just found a quarter!"  More than likely it will be the latter and although you may grin at this scene, don't miss the fact that you are observing the results of 400 years conditioning that has trained us that whatever you can take, whatever you can get, you can make it yours.  Its the American way and these holidays serve one purpose and one purpose only....To make you believe it.

This is a weak kneed advisory......The following message is unhealthy for all those apologists for the gestapo police state agents and their supporters!!    Are police a part of the 99%?  This has become an almost common theme coming from the primarily White middle class oriented participants in the Occupy movement.  I certainly don't criticize them for being White or middle class, but it is what it is.  As an African man who emerged from the terrors of the innercity that all you fake macho pro-police/military cowards would quake in your boots if you had to venture in there without all your hardware (and I'm sure even with your hardware).....I can tell you honestly that from the perspective of the African working class (and I'm sure every other working class community as well), calling police our allies is like telling a family whose relatives were killed by Mafioso hitmen that the hitmen are their allies.....It's only the Dons and godftathers who gave the order that are the enemy.  As long as they protect the interests of the ruling class before they decide to defy that stupidity and act like working class people......Police are unfortunately not allies to working class people.  And believe me, as a person working to help secure participants in the Occupy movement, I can tell you there are many people who share our point of view.  And everyday, with each peaceful demonstrator police viciously beat, they are doing more than we could ever do to bring more and more people over to our way of thinking.