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Dissecting Fact from Fiction as It Relates to the Chattel Slave Trade

1/20/2020

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If you are not African (Black) and/or you don’t participate in and pay close attention to issues within the African liberation movement, you probably won’t have much framework for what I’m talking about here. Within African community dialogues within the U.S. there is a contentious discussion about the true origins and connections of Africans within the U.S. today with the transatlantic slave trade. These discussions are raging everywhere from African churches to petti-bourgeoisie opportunism electoral politics, to revolutionary nationalist organizing spaces. The central debate centers around how we came to the Western Hemisphere. Did the majority of us come here through the transatlantic slave trade, kidnapped from Africa? Or, did we come thousands of years before that on our own? Or, were we always here and therefore have no actual connection to Africa?

I think primarily because I have spent an inordinate amount of time studying the transatlantic slave trade, I have learned – not from the bourgeoise educational institutions in this country – but from my independent Pan-African education learned within the work study process of the All African People’s Revolutionary Party, that our people from Somalia to Bokango to the middle passage to the Western Hemisphere have always fought courageously against colonial oppression. Since I know this beyond a shadow of a doubt, I have absolutely no shame at all at knowing that for a brief period of our African lives, we were enslaved by European colonialism. There’s no disgrace in that for me no more than there would be if I was attacked on the street by 10 people and captured despite the fact I fought valiantly against them. The odds were against me and they took me hostage as a result. I see our history in the transatlantic slave trade that same way.

If someone doesn’t know our valiant history of resistance, then I understand why that person would have no desire to identify with that slave history. The only other alternative is to see us willing participants in our oppression. The happy house slave narrative of someone who happily accepted being disrespected and dehumanized. If people believe those lies about us, than its even easier to see why that person would see the need to create a more “honorable” version of our history. And, for the most part, with the Africa deniers and to a slightly lesser extent, the “we came on our own” crowd, I’m afraid some of this shame is driving much of their narrative.

Certainly, for the we were never in Africa people, this position is 100% driven by ignorance and shame about history these people clearly haven’t lifted one finger to digest and understand. I haven’t met or seen a single one of them who has read a single book about transatlantic slavery. Certainly, nothing about Africa. Instead, they rely almost (and incredibly) entirely on conspiracy theories about the lack of fully intact slave ships today as proof that there was no transatlantic slave trade. For these poor souls there is not only a lack of understanding of our history of resistance, but a very sad and disgusting oblivion of understanding of anything about Africa. In fact, you can test it. Ask these people to tell you absolutely anything about an ethnic history, practices, customs, biological, etc., connections between African people in the West today and Africa and you will receive nothing in return except a litany of rhetoric with no substance. This problem is the direct result of colonial anti-Africa miss-education.

The people who believe we were always here present a little more complexity, but not much. Their argument, which they rely on credible scholars like Ivan Van Sertima and Cheikh Anti Diop to substantiate, expresses that Africans left Africa in large numbers long before colonialism and ventured to this Western world and settled here. There is no question that Africans did travel here before colonialism. They developed relationships based on mutual trade, assistance, and understanding with the Indigenous people of the Western Hemisphere. Actually, there is evidence that people traveled all over the place before colonialism without engaging in antagonistic and dominating behavior towards the people they encountered. So, that portion of this analysis has legitimacy. The point of contention is the percentage of African people in the West who fall within this number. According to these people, a significant amount of our people here represent this reality. In order for us to take this suggestion seriously, we need these people to present much, much evidence. In other words, the people advancing this notion cannot provide you any scientific evidence to justify their claim. They will argue that an African with roots in Louisiana with a French surname (like my family) could have that as a result of slavery, but could also have it because of historical patterns (they claim) of Africans losing their family knowledge and people settling everywhere, even in slave states. Although it could be possible that some people fell within this realm, its highly unlikely that large percentages of Africans living in slave states fall under this definition and these people produce nothing to suggest any differently besides their desire to believe this.

I’m forever open minded and ready to learn. The minute these people offer something beyond their hopes and dreams, I mean scientific evidence, I’m going to go all into studying it. In the meantime, I reject their position in the basis that its extremely disrespectful to our ancestors who fought to keep us alive in this hellish experience. I refuse to diminish the courage and dedication of our ancestors. I acknowledge their suffering and for me, that means recognizing those slave shackles and our constant demand to break them. There’s no shame in this whatsoever. Its actually one of the proudest legacies out here because we come from a people who fought to be free. Maybe I see it this way because I've roamed the somber chambers of slave dungeons in Ghana and Senegal. I say this because no one who denies our legacy of slavery that I've talked to or studied has endured those horrific memories. If they had, it would be akin to a Jewish person denying the Holocaust. This spirit explains the constant spirit of resistance, creativity, and defiance that so many non-Africans spend 24/7 trying to emulate. I guess in the final analysis, this is what it comes down to for me. We are a people fighting for our freedom and liberation today. That fight is fueled overwhelmingly by our spirit of resistance. In that frame of reference, our struggle against servitude is a very proud and necessary aspect of what makes us up as a people today. I don’t know what it is that makes these people wish to deny that, but I wear it proudly. Its that spirit that refuses to let me give in to oppression today. Its that spirit that drives me to challenge injustice everywhere all the time, despite the consequences. And, probably, its their fairytale version of history that explains why they exist with a fairytale analysis for how we will move forward as a people.

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The Radical and Unknown Side of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

1/16/2020

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The radical Dr. King is unknown to most because much of what we understand about Dr. King’s legacy was created for us by the very same people and interests that wanted to see Dr. King destroyed when he was alive. Today, and every year around the time of the commemoration for Dr. King’s birthday (which is actually January 15th), we are overwhelmed with a constant barrage of repeated snippets of Dr. King’s 1963 “I Have a Dream” speech where he talks about “little black girls and little white girls…”
The corporate image making mechanisms that craft everything you believe from what mustard to like to what you know and think about Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., are forever hard at work crafting your vision of Dr. King as that of a religious pacifist who just wanted to be loved by racist white America. And, their suggestion about Dr. King is that he would sacrifice anything for that love, even his life. This is nothing except a shameless effort by the capitalist system to redefine Dr. King’s image to keep you from recognizing and understanding the significance of Dr. King’s courageous and uncompromising moral imperative against this wicked power structure.

For example, Dr. King’s uncompromising position against the immoral war in Vietnam. His position, of which he admittedly was pushed to take by the militant influences of the youthful Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee working around him, was not just some soft position of being un-dialectically against war. His position developed from his increased understanding that the war was being fueled by the capitalist system’s desire to eradicate any threat (socialist development) to its political and economic hegemony over the world’s people and resources. Dr. King stated as such in his iconic “Why I Oppose the War against Vietnam” speech given one year to the date of his assassination on April 4, 1967. In that speech, Dr. King probably sealed his death warrant with terrorists who carry out intelligence work for this country when he explained, correctly, that a few people were using the war to consolidate their control of resources and the targeted bombing against the Vietnamese people was simply a manifestation of the rich trying to ensure the poor stayed that way. Dr. King called for a “redistribution of wealth.” And, by this he didn’t mean anyone giving anyone anything. He meant pursuing justice for centuries of the economically developed capitalist countries stealing from the majority colonized people on earth.

Another example is Dr. King’s position on non-violence. The capitalist power structure, by continuing to repeat the one speech snippet over and over, is attempting to deceive you into ignoring Dr. King’s total approach to fighting for justice for all of humanity. Without question, Dr. King believed completely in non-violence as a principle, meaning to him, there was really no other approach that could win us our liberation. Still, Dr. King was a pragmatic person who recognized that the masses of African people, tired of racist exploitation, were never going to sit still and let our enemies brutalize us without fighting back. Or, in other words, Dr. King knew, as most of you who rely on our enemies for your education about our movement don’t, that our people always fought back. Not sometimes. Not a few times. We always fought back. He knew that if the enemy shot at us, we would shoot back. So, although Dr. King certainly had his individual convictions, he was practical enough to respect that the masses of our people would never accept non-violence as a principle, only as a tactic, as was evidenced by civil rights projects like the Loundes County Freedom Organization – the original Black Panther Party, in Alabama, in 1965. No evidence exists to suggest that Dr. King didn’t exist, cooperate, and support the movement’s collective decision to engage in self defense against racist white terrorism, despite his personal position which everyone knew. That means Dr. King was often in houses where he knew the occupants had guns. He was in cars where people were armed. He even accepted without resistance (and even relief) armed guards from the Deacons for Defense.

Finally, much has been written about Dr. King’s position on the evolving Black power movement which had its most recent mass expression during the march against fear in June of 1966 in Mississippi, United States. What has been written is that Dr. King vehemently opposed the concept of Black power. This perspective has been advanced by biographers, documentary and film makers, etc. of Dr. King who wish to promote the belief that Black power was anti-white so by positioning Dr. King to be completely opposed to the movement, these people hope to discredit it. Dr. King certainly expressed reservations about the movement, but even while doing that in public, he worked behind the scenes to ensure he maintained nothing except the most principled and respectful relationships with the younger proponents of Black power like Kwame Ture (Stokely Carmichael). In fact, Kwame Ture indicated that King often warned him that he was going to make certain statements about Black power, but that it meant nothing as it related to King’s support of our desires to be free. In other words, Kings approach was a strategic one designed to throw the power structure off base while our people continued to build our capacity.

This weekend, as always, will be filled with a strong whipped cream version of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Just remember that all of that is designed to keep you from seeing King as he was. A person who was willing to sacrifice his life for justice. And for him, that justice increasingly meant challenging the capitalist system on every level using every tactic and resource necessary to change this backward system. Although many of us refuse to see it, this power structure assassinated Dr. King because they clearly saw this happening. If we now can begin to accept this, in order to truly commemorate Dr. King’s contributions, we recommend you take two actions. One, read his April 4th, 1967 speech against the Vietnam war. The second thing is organize groups to read that speech as a part of an organizational effort to educate and organize around the true movements for justice in this world as they are. Not the annual sanitized versions released to us by the very people who actively sought to destroy Dr. King.

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The World Warns Africans in the U.S. "Don't Forget Who You Are!"

1/9/2020

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Former U.S. National Basketball Association (NBA) player Mahmoud Abdul Rauf, bravely refusing to acknowledge the imperialist and racist U.S. national anthem before a game in the 1990s

Based on the grade school level arguments I'm often presented with here from my writings, and the childish videos dominating youtube these days, there are unfortunately more than enough of us (Africans) who are still very much confused about who we are as a people. Rampant liberalism is the benchmark of a society that thrives on untruths and misrepresentations. Consequently, efforts by many of our confused elements to disparage Mother Africa by claiming no connection to her are able to exist temporarily in this reality where truth, justice, and reality, are completely disconnected, but the rest of the world is not playing along with this utter confusion. And, there is ample evidence that Africans within the U.S. would do well to wake up and stop pretending that you are this country, and more importantly, that this country is you.
A few days ago, U.S. Army Specialist Henry Mayfield Jr., an African from the Chicago area of Illinois (U.S.), was killed along with two U.S. private contractors, in Manda Bay, Kenya. This was a coordinated attack that was carried out by as many as four or five members of the group al-Shabad. This killing comes on the heels of the attack two years ago where four U.S. Green Berets were killed in Niger. The lone African among them, LaDavid Johnson, was separated from the three European soldiers and dismembered.
These deaths by Africans who were unfortunately adorning U.S. military uniforms when killed (and therefore representing U.S. imperialism) have important precedent. Back in the 1980s, the anti-apartheid movement was in full swing. People all over the world were protesting the illegal racist settler regime in Azania (named South Africa by Europeans). At that time, the African National Congress (ANC), Pan-Africanist Congress of Azania (PAC), Azanian People’s Organization (AZAPO), etc., were engaged in armed excursions against the racist regime. Cuba also contributed hundreds of thousands of Cuban troops to battle back the racist and often European mercenary forces that were not only attempting to save apartheid, but expand it. Sensing impending defeat, the U.S. began to seriously weigh the options of sending in U.S. troops to support the racist apartheid regime which up to its final moment was a staunch ally of the U.S. The PAC and AZAPO, being Pan-Africanist formations that recognized that African people everywhere on earth are a part of the African nation, shrewdly counted on their relationships with African organizations with ties within the U.S. to deliver a clear propaganda message; “if you Africans in the U.S. decide to come here representing U.S. imperialism against your own people, be advised that we will not be taking any African prisoners from the U.S. You will find your immediate grave upon your return home to Africa!”
The point being made here is that the grievances many colonized people around the world have against the U.S., the world’s chief imperialist power for the last 80 years, has nothing to do with African people in the U.S. Although most of us here are completely ignorant and unaware of political developments anywhere, the people around the world who are claiming their dignity understand clearly that we are not the people making decisions that are adversely impacting their lives. Still, as citizens of the planet, they are demanding of us that we stand with them and not on the side of our oppressors. And, make no mistake about it, when you put on a U.S. military uniform and travel to other countries, particularly Africa, in the eyes of the world, you are standing with our oppressors.
Understanding this, you can see clearly why the reception Pan-Africanists like us receive in Africa is universally different than that received by Africans representing the U.S. military. And, that reception isn’t just limited to countries in Africa. Iraq, Iran, North Korea, Cuba, as well as groups like the so-called Islamic State (of which al-Shabad is affiliated), Boko Haram, al-Queada, Hezbollah, and others have all made statements and/or taken actions that illustrate their message to us to not stand on the side of the oppressors against the majority of humanity.
This is not to say that all of those entities are our allies. Certainly, some of them are i.e. Cuba are, but what Africans in the U.S. need to be thinking about is how we can not alienate ourselves from the rest of the world. Especially when the world is morally correct about the evil of the U.S. empire. These absurd distractions taking place in our community here such as the so-called American Descendants of Slaves (ADOs), Foundational Black Americans (FBA), Africans claiming no history and allegiance to Africa, etc., are setting forth a confusion that is placing Africans from here at odds with truth and justice. The people promoting this nonsense have dollar signs in their vision. They are xenophobic so they don’t travel anywhere (only about 10% of Africans in the U.S. even have passports), but those of you in the U.S. military do travel. You are letting these people fill your head with confusion that will get you killed.
And, when that happens as it did in Kenya, Niger, and probably (unfortunately) more places to come, we don’t wish to say we told you so, but we have been telling you for decades. No African has any business in the U.S. military. The only military we should belong to is the All African People’s Revolutionary Army and the only U.S.A. we should be representing is the United States of Africa i.e. Pan-Africanism or one unified socialist Africa. The wife of Johnson who was killed in Niger is still searching for answers two years later and the same will be true for Mayfield’s family and any others. The U.S. military has proven when it comes to troops they only care about being able to ensure they are available to fight for imperialism. Beyond that, this is a government that drops chemical weapons on its troops, provides them limited to no resources to cope with the traumas of war. Then, abandons them to live and die in complete agony. We must start having serious discussions within the U.S. about whether paid college tuition and a mortgage loan is worth that level of sacrifice. Or maybe you should just ask that question to the families of Mayfield and Johnson.
We have historically embraced economic challenge to promote the cause of justice. This question is absolutely no different. We realize Africans join the military for economic opportunities, but the questions of this day prompt us to question that. The question of justice demands us to do that. What we decide today on this question will influence what happens with our people for generations to come.

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The Barbaric & Criminal Recent History of U.S. Relations with Iran

1/6/2020

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The typical imperialist rhetoric that spews from the U.S. towards anyone they don’t agree with, whether you are talking about Cuba, Venezuela, the previous Libyan Jamahiriya, Bolivia, North Korea, Iran, etc., is always that the country target of the week is evil and dangerous to the “security” of the U.S. By security, what they want everyone to believe is that all these countries are working night and day to develop and/or implement the capacity to kill people within the U.S. Despite the fact the U.S. has existed as a so-called “independent” country for 244 years – and besides Pearl Harbor 79 years ago (which we would argue the U.S. permitted to happen for a collection of political reasons), not one entity has physically invaded the U.S. Regardless, this criminal regime works tirelessly to convince people here that their lives are in danger, not from U.S. imperialism, but countries fighting simply to survive and develop on their own. Today, the evil bear is the sovereign country of Iran.

Besides the fact about 95% of people in the U.S. couldn’t tell you what language people speak in Iran, what popular foods or music is there, etc., this power structure bangs the drums of war by appealing to the fears of the populace here because the ruling classes know people here have developed slim to no capacity to critically assess their criminal efforts to exploit humanity. So, Iran is the latest chapter of this primitive and brutal approach to interacting with the rest of the world. The sad thing is if people in the U.S. knew even the most basic information about Iran, they would know that Iranian people have spent the last 40 years being sabotaged by the U.S. military, U.S. intelligence (the Central Intelligence Agency – CIA), and U.S. policy making through economic sanctions, embargos, etc. The absolute last thing those people want is conflict with the U.S. or anyone else. So, I’m telling you here that the Iranian people are absolutely 100% no threat to anyone within the U.S., period, outside of defending themselves. In order to understand the truth in this statement, you would have to know something about the history, at least the most recent history.

In 1953, the U.S. helped Mohammad Reza Pahlavi – the Shah of Iran – come into power. As is the case with every neo-colonial regime, the main purpose for Pahlavi was to brutally oppress the Iranian people while making sure Iran’s mineral wealth, specifically oil rights, were available for exploitation by the large oil manufacturers at reasonable prices to refine, etc. And, Pahlavi did that for 26 years until 1979 when the Ayatollah Khomeini, backed mostly by youth, staged the “Iranian revolution.” The U.S. Embassy was held by these rebels for 444 days. One note: The new people making decisions in Iran immediately released all the African and women employees in the Embassy (except those they suspected of being CIA employees) because they said those segments of people were “oppressed in the U.S.” and not responsible for the oppression the Iranian people had suffered due to Pahlavi’s policies, supported wholeheartedly in concrete material ways by the U.S.

Now, it should be noted that the new regime under Khomeini, despite their effort with the African and women hostages in the embassy, should never be confused with a progressive government. Dedicated to their vision of Islamic fundamentalism, Khomeini’s regime drastically limited women’s rights and imposed other oppressive practices designed to eliminate and intimidate anyone who was not on board with their vision of the world. The succession of leadership in Iran that has come forward since Khomeini’s death in 1989 has not proven to be any more progressive. Still, the latest violence inflicted by the U.S. against Iran e.g. the assassination of Iranian military commander Soleimani, occurred strictly because of U.S. imperialist interests in the region. This rotation of U.S. enemies in the Middle East is always nothing except the effort by the U.S. to destabilize countries that it perceives to be any potential threat to its political interests and the interests of the multi-national (oil) companies that mostly dictate U.S. policies in that region of the world. Iran is now in the U.S.’s crosshairs. This all belies a history since Pahlavi’s government of insane criminality, brutality, and immorality by the U.S. as it relates to Iran.

In the early 80s, the U.S. found itself having to figure out a way to finance a surrogate army the CIA was creating in Central America to illegally overthrow the democratically elected government of the Sandinistas in Nicaragua. In office only one year, the government regime of Ronald Reagan found that even the bourgeoisie members of U.S. Congress were so outraged by the illegal practices of U.S. intelligence and military operatives in El Salvador, Nicaragua, etc., that Congress created the Boland Agreement in 1982, designed to eliminate the ability of the U.S. government to fund any military operations in Nicaragua. The Reagan regime desperately wanted to overthrow the Sandinistas because of their fear that growing socialist revolutions, following Cuba’s example, would rise up throughout the Western Hemisphere. With the Boland deal in place, the Reagan administration had to resort to secret and illegal means to raise money for the contras. That’s when the Reagan regime proliferated selling weapons to Iran. These arms transactions came to be known as “Iran/Contra” or “Iran-contraegate” once the practice of U.S. arms sells to Iran became public. These transactions were controversial because an arms embargo had been implemented against Iran by the U.S. in 1979 after the Iranians seized the U.S. Embassy in Tehran, Iran.

The immoral process of getting these weapons to Iran consisted of the U.S. funneling the weapons through the illegal Zionist state of Israel. Once Israel, also a public enemy of Iran, secured payment for the arms, they in turn supplied the monies to the U.S. to serve as funding for the contras in Nicaragua. Of course, another illegal activity utilized by the U.S. to finance the contras was the facilitation of the sales of crack cocaine throughout African communities in the U.S. This method served multiple objectives. Raise money from crack sales to finance the contras while ensuring crack served to devastate and frustrate the capacity of the African liberation movement throughout the U.S. (one of the most common refrains heard throughout the inner-cities in the 90s and 2000s, etc., was that during the 80s and 90s, the people mostly out at night “in the ghetto” were crack dealers and their customers, whereas during the 60s and 70s, the streets were packed with Black Panthers selling papers, protecting people, organizing, along with the Nation of Islam doing the same along with other groups).
Once word of these arms sells to Iran were leaked to the public in 1985, the Reagan regime used the justification that the arms transactions were necessary to coax the Iranian government to help the U.S. negotiate the release of seven U.S. “citizens” who were reportedly being held captive by Hezbollah which is the political/military group based primarily in Lebanon that has a strong relationship with the Iranian government.

An investigation into Iran/Contra was launched based on pressure from the public and Reagan’s regime appointed a three-person committee to facilitate the investigation against itself. What the team produced, in conjunction with the U.S. congress, were indictments against 11 lower level persons within the Reagan government. The George Bush Senior presidency pardoned all 11 once it was elected in 1988. An unintended result of this investigation was that it inadvertently revealed to the public that the arms sells actually started in 81, thus invalidating the Reagan regime’s lie about the hostages being the reason for selling weapons to Iran because the kidnappings had not even happened until after 1981. So much for caring for U.S. hostages.

The importance of this history is that as a result of these arms transactions, weapons manufactured by the U.S. account are the majority of weapons owned by the Iranian government today. In other words, whatever weapons the U.S. now claims threaten people in the U.S. are most likely weapons the U.S. supplied to Iran.

As usual, more tricks and deception from U.S. imperialism and as usual, millions of people in this country, lacking critical thinking skills to even properly understand the workings of the National Football League or the National Basketball Association they always argue about, will unwittingly go right along with the lies and criminal endeavors of an illegal empire. Even the most dedicated court jester would have to recognize that this strategy and approach is never sustainable for long.

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"People Vs Huey Newton" A Book Designed to Destroy Our Legacy

1/3/2020

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Black Panther Party co-founder Huey P. Newton (center) with attorneys Charles Garry (left) and Fay Stender (right) in a press conference after Newton was released from prison on August 5, 1970.

This book; "American Justice on Trial - People V. Newton - America 1968/2016 by Lise Pearlman is labeled repeatedly throughout the web as the "definitive book" on the historic murder trail of Black Panther Party co-founder Huey P. Newton. Newton was on trial in 1968 for the death of Oakland, California, U.S., police officer Jim Frey. Another police officer named Heanes was injured in the shoutout and Newton himself sustained a gunshot wound to his midsection.

Pearlman, who published this book in 2016, was a retired judge and for some reason, this European woman is pegged as "a leading expert in this country on the Newton trial." She is also connected to at least two documentaries on the Black Panther Party and the Newton trial. The thesis Pearlman's book posits to tell about this trial is whether an African revolutionary - Newton - could receive a fail trial within the U.S. so-called justice system. What was clear from the very beginning of this book is that Pearlman is anything except the objective analyst on this case that her accolades grant her to be.

The contradictions within this book, and there are many, gives further life to the often repeated refrain in this blog that critical and analytical study is essential for anyone serious about understanding the contradictions within this society in deeper ways than the surface sound bite analysis that poses as critical information in this country. If you don't do the critical study, you will never develop the skills to see through the subtle tricks books like this one consistently pull designed to portray these works as objective presentations on the subject at hand.

The first very subtle attack is the suggestion, contained in the title and the body of the book, that the scales are balanced by Pearlman (and everyone else) in evaluating the Black Panther Party (BPP) and Newton, on one hand, and the state/capitalist system on the other hand. To the trained eye, there is nothing objective about this book in this regard. Like most literature in this society, the unspoken approach is that police are as much a part of the fabric of this society as oxygen. Never is it considered even for five seconds that maybe the police themselves are the problem. Instead, any question of police abuse, and there certainly were credible indications that Officer Frey was racist and abusive in his enforcement of "laws" in African areas of Oakland, are treated as individual distortions by the author. Meanwhile, the BPP itself is treated as an extreme and unstable entity. This characterization is accomplished by repeatedly labeling the Panther's slogans such as "off the pig" as violent which suggests automatically that the Panthers are the aggressors. This happens without the author having to call the Panthers aggressive. Its the implication. Never, is it explained that a person who survives rape is perfectly within their right to call for the castration and/or destruction of the rapist. No where should their response to their oppression be considered violence as if to suggest they are the instigators. This is exactly what this book does in a way that ensures that despite the fact the author says the burden of proof is on the state against Newton, what she's actually set up is a scenario where its actually Newton who must prove to the readers that he wasn't a bloodthirsty anti-white "Black militant". This is the premise in all literature produced in the capitalist world along with the unbalanced rule that when one police officer is abusive its just that one individual we are talking about, not the institution, but when one Panther is foul, its the entire Black Panther Party which is unreliable.

The book continues on this slanted route by slyly mentioning the racist allegations against Frey and the system, but never institutionalizing them like Pearlman does against the Panther Party. When she describes jury foreman David Harper refusing to enter the court building through public entrances because he "refused to be intimidated" the inference is that it was the BPP that would be doing the intimidating. She then provides examples to ensure this is the message. She talks about Harper being in elevators with "belligerent Panther leaders" like Bobby Seale and Stokely Carmichael (Kwame Ture) without even bothering to discuss what made these leaders belligerent. Such a serious accusations should be required to come with examples of belligerence such as instances where Seale, Ture, etc., cussed people out, abused people, etc. Nothing is offered. Just like nothing is offered to confirm Pearlman's baseless accusations that the Panthers wanted and encouraged urban rebellions. Her evidence of this were the bombastic assertions of former BPP Minister of Information Eldridge Cleaver. She elevated the comments of someone as erratic and ill responsible as Cleaver while completely ignoring the fact Oakland was one of the few cities with large African populations that didn't have an urban rebellion outburst. Anyone familiar with the on the ground reality in Oakland knows the BPP played a major role in cooling out tensions after Martin Luther King's assassination, etc., Yet, this European woman would have you believe the Panthers wanted nothing more than open and unorganized bloodshed in the streets of Oakland. Several times throughout the book she accuses Kwame Ture of this bloodlusting, constantly bringing up the long ago dis-proven allegation that Kwame "was against" white people and was only interested in "Black Nationalist politics." When you have actually shared work with Brother Ture, its still often difficult to believe anyone could be so far off base in their assessment of this work, yet Pearlman accomplishes this time and time again. Also, she consistently equates urban rebellions with revolution as if these two distinctly different phenomenons are one and the same. No wonder so many people continue to be confused about the difference today.

Finally, Pearlman relies heavily on the bad behaviors and actions of Huey P. Newton himself to justify discrediting the entire African liberation movement. There are so many articles I've written here and posted about the contradictions of Newton, that I'm not even going to waste time getting into them again. No one has been more balanced in their criticism of Newton's erratic behavior than this blog, but we also have a responsibility to point out when subtle defenders and apologists for white supremacy/capitalism are using Newton's personal failures to attempt to discredit an entire organization and movement. And please don't give the weak response that Newton was a major leader in the BPP (therefore justifying the correlation). The very same people who tirelessly make that racist argument are the same people who call violent enslaved African owning, patriarchal barbarians like George Washington and Thomas Jefferson "forefathers."

Pearlman spends a significant portion of the book detailing the work of Newton (and George Jackson) attorney Fay Stender. A white Jewish woman, Stender was invaluable in her contributions to the Newton defense team. Pearlman's major jab at Newton regarding Stender was the attorney's alleged attraction to Newton and her eventual reported oral sex encounters with Newton while he was incarcerated which led to them coming together on a sexual basis upon Newton's release from prison. When Newton moved on from Stender, Pearlman portrays that as such a violation based on Stender's extensive work on Newton's defense. For any of us not born yesterday, we should be sophisticated enough to recognize that Newton probably was insensitive and sexually manipulative as many, many men often are, but everything else from these encounters displays two consenting adults who handled a sexual relationship in a messy way. Certainly not the wholesale theft of white woman resources by conniving "Black militants" that Pearlman goes out of her way to infer.

Stender was eventually victimized by a physical attack in her home by an alleged Black Guerrilla Family (BGF) member. The complexities of the relationship between the BGF and the BPP have surrounded me since I was growing up as a youth in San Francisco in the 70s. The back and forth is so convoluted the story will change depending upon who you talk to. What we do know is the federal government had massive intelligence and counter insurgency measures directed at the BPP and the 1970 Marin County Courthouse incident where George Jackson's younger brother Johnathan attempted to take over the court proceeding for the trial of James Mcclain who was being charged with stabbing a prison guard was a clear example of this. The word on the street has been the Panthers planned to help Johnathan Jackson bust Mcclain, William Christmas, Ruchell Magee, and others out that day in August, 1970, but that Newton, from jail, correctly suspected cointelpro interference and called off any Panther involvement. Jackson carried out the action anyway and he, along with Christmas, Mcclain, the judge, and others were killed and jurors and other court officers were injured. Magee still remains in prison today 50 years later, and of course, Angela Davis was then sought after, arrested, and charged with supplying the guns Jackson used that day (the guns were apparently registered to Davis). The point to all of this is the word on the street is many within the BGF blamed Newton for the failure of that day as well as the death of their founder George Jackson who was also a BPP Field Marshall. The BGF also allegedly blamed Stender for her work on George Jackson's defense to which Jackson allegedly fired Stender before he was himself murdered in prison. Stender suffered injuries from the attack that she never recovered from and in 1980, Stender committed suicide, allegedly citing depression and deep regret for being "used" by the African liberation movement. Pearlman spends quite a bit of time making this point. We have no doubt that Ms. Stender was genuine in her commitment to bringing justice to these imprisoned Africans, but the first rule of revolutionary organizing is for you to understand that your work will be as thankless as thankless can get. People in capitalist societies like this one have very little respect and appreciation for revolutionary work which is characterized by the capitalist system as work carried out by insane people. So, if you are doing this work expecting anything more, it probably isn't going to happen and each one of us can give extensive examples of being disrespected, abused, and traumatized for trying to do what's right. What happened to Ms. Stender is extremely unfortunate and should not have happened to anyone, but to use her suffering to suggest that the African liberation movement is only about gangsterism and not revolutionary change, as Pearlman attempts to do, is just as criminal to me as what happened to Ms. Stender. The BGF and the BPP do not solely represent revolutionary African politics and our movement. They are manifestations of it. The only motivation for making such an argument is to uphold the belief that anything outside of capitalism as an approach to addressing oppression is wrong.

In conclusion, when all those reviewers and analysts credited Pearlman with being the expert on the Newton trial I'm left to think what they really meant is what she provided in terms of the courtroom drama and occurrences from a historical standpoint. For that, she can take that title, but since 60% of the book was dedicated to evaluating the African liberation movement in general, and the BPP and Newton in particular, for that she gets an F grade. Whatever Huey P. Newton and the BPP did well or terribly to the African liberation movement reflects on their accomplishments and/or shortcomings as human beings and makes absolutely no measurable statement about the credibility of independent African liberation efforts as Pearlman tries hard to suggest. To suggest otherwise, as Pearlman clearly attempts to do is nothing more than the same racist dehumanizing of our human struggle covered in liberal sheepskins.

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