Ahjamu Umi's: "The Truth Challenge"
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Why People Support the Likes of Umar Johnson and Julius Malema

9/22/2018

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I'll be as clear as my limited command of this colonial language English permits me to be.  So-called Black Nationalist, so-called Pan-Africanist, so-called "leaders" of African people Umar Johnson in the U.S. and Julius Malema in Azania (South Africa), are nothing except opportunists who use our people's suffering to advance their individual interests.  Of course, and unfortunately, we could add countless other names to that list, but we choose to focus on these two for this piece because they exist in Africa and North America which demonstrates that con-men are easily able to confuse and fool our people everywhere we exist on Earth.  Secondly, and amazingly, each of these men have been able to develop and cultivate a large number of African supporters and admirers.

Johnson has built up himself on Youtube with a series of videos filled with semi-truths and distortions.  He has mastered the skill of the colonialists by appealing to our fears and ignorance to convince many of us that our LBGTQ family members are the true threats to our people's forward progress, not capitalism and imperialism.  In fact, you will never hear Johnson utter a single word about capitalism, imperialism, or any exploitative system against African people because his system relies on utilizing the deceptive "advertising" approaches of these backward systems so that he has been able to create a mini-empire of products to sell and capitalize off our people on.  Books, DVDs, etc, that are all going to tell our people what we need to know to free ourselves.  Novices to our struggle can be easily deceived by the illusion that this African is genuinely interested in our people's liberation through this approach, but Mr. Johnson has no organization people.  So, to think that he genuinely wants to stop our oppression when he has demonstrated no interest in building a vehicle to achieve that objective is akin to believing that someone telling you they will take you somewhere when they have no access to any transportation options is going to get you where you need to go.  The concept sounds great and the vision is fantastic, but at the end of the day, you will still be sitting exactly where you started.  Left with nothing except a book and a DVD which is precisely what Mr. Johnson intends.  All of this is ill-refutable and that is without even getting into his massive and shameful scam of convincing so many of our people to believe in his "promise" to build a school for African boys.  Hundreds of thousands of dollars were collected by Johnson a couple of years ago with no practical school plans ever being presented, not to mention no physical location, etc., produced.  For many of his unfortunate supporters, this clear deception apparently did nothing to dim their enchantment with this Black power pimp.  And, to add insult to injury, the critics who did respond with questions were met with defensiveness by Johnson where he claimed that people just didn't understand all of the challenges involved in building a school.  And, despite the overwhelming evidence that Johnson paid for the professional services of women, most of his supporters still haven't questioned whether any of their money went towards his physical pleasures instead of building that school.  Since much of his appeal is in his emotional appeal to our long neglected and disrespected African women, despite his clearly patriarchal and anti-woman foundation in his philosophies, he has been able to retain a considerable measure of support from African women despite the obvious question in the air about his consistent attacks against interracial relationships.  What I'm saying is if a man is going to hire women for physical pleasure you are not going to convince me that he's going to do it in a "principled way" where he doesn't spend a cent of any money at his disposal.  And you certainly aren't going to tell me that he will only practice his sexual conquests with a Black Nationalist posture, refusing to "interact" with women who are not African.  Finally, there are productive and inspirational independent African schools that emerge everywhere without anything close to the massive budget Johnson has collected.  I know this because I've seen many of them and co-founded one myself.  The clear manipulation and opportunism from Johnson has to be more deeply talked about in African communities in the U.S. and around the world.  

Julius Malema was a youth leader within the African National Congress (ANC) in Azania.  He was unceremoniously kicked out of the ANC some time ago because of serious allegations of misappropriating ANC funds and other allegations of abuse against members, including one of using ANC resources to sell narcotics on a wide spread basis.  Of course, Malema disputes all of these allegations, but he has been unable to explain how he accumulated the massive wealth at his disposal from the ANC salary he pulled in.  After being expelled from the ANC, Malema started an organization called the Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF).  The stated objective of his organization is to combat white supremacy in Azania.  So far, this has been mostly Malema making similar types of bombastic pronouncements against the European population, much in the same way Johnson does in the U.S., without any clear programmatic thrust behind it to empower African people.  Sure, calling all Europeans to leave Azania immediately appeals directly to the emotions of Africans who are sick and tired of being oppressed within their own land, but making the call and having the plan to empower us are two entirely different things.  And, this is especially contradictory because its not as if Malema's sudden Black Nationalism was something consistent in his political evolution.  He was a member of the ANC which means he was always a supporter of the ANC's Freedom Charter which states that Azania belongs to everyone regardless of national origin.  There is no evidence of Malema taking any position against the Freedom Charter at any time.  Now we are supposed to believe that he has magically transformed himself into the political tradition of Steve Biko, Mangaliso Sobukwe, and Elizabeth and David Sibeko, when he was always a son of Nelson Mandela until it no longer benefited him?  That plus the reality that the corruption allegations that dogged him while he was in the ANC still persist.  Evoking the logic of that great philosopher Katt Williams when speaking about Whitney Houston and her long rumored addiction to drugs, "no rumor lasts for years against you unless there's some truth to it!"  Truthfully, there's significant evidence of Malema's personal corruption, but just like Johnson, none of that evidence has done anything to shake his support base.

The next question is why and how are these men, and those like them, able to win over the hearts and minds of so many African people?  The answers are complex.  Our people everywhere we exist on Earth are viciously disrespected and oppressed by capitalism, imperialism, white supremacy, patriarchy, homophobia, and all forms of exploitation and anti-humanity.  This existence has historically made us extremely vulnerable to any message that has even a sprinkling of hope within it.  This is the formula the multitudes of Pastor Chicken wings and Iman hamhocks have used for centuries for stringing our people along towards the day when our suffering will end, whether on this Earth or in some other place.  And, because of this vulnerable state, its really not difficult for really anyone to craft a message that appeals to our emotional cries for dignity.  In these instances, the quest for validation of our humanity is achieved just in hearing someone speak with authority about the things close to our hearts.  Most of us won't push any farther than that because in achieving that validation we receive the medicine we needed to make it through the day.  If you understand the conditions of our oppression, this phenomenon is quite understandable, but this should not be confused with a genuine struggle for liberation.  That struggle requires much more than emotional appeals.  It requires the masses of our people organized to confront the enemies causing our oppression.  It requires a resolute war to the fullest where power is seized by one side or the other.  Although both of these men posture on the premise of "leading" us into this war, we can assure you that neither one of them has absolutely any intention of going there. If you want to know the difference between someone who intends on going there and someone who is playing Black power pimp politics like these two, look at what they are doing and compare it to people like Amilcar Cabral, Kwame Nkrumah, Sekou Ture, Carmen Peirera, etc.  Those freedom fighters spent their entire lives creating the capacity to fight for African dignity, freedom, and self-determination.  We know this validation thing when we see it because truthfully family, its no different than the same type of validation we are seeing with the supporters of Donald Trump in the U.S.  Those people don't care what he does provided he continues to provide them the emotional soothing they need to calm the fear and insecurity he has helped ratchet up within them.  And, if you are wondering if I'm comparing Trump to Johnson and Malema, from a class standpoint, I absolutely am comparing them.  None of them want to do anything to eliminate the existing exploitative capitalist system.  They all, on different levels, want to salvage it, increase its vitality, and carve a space within it for them to continue to prosper within it.  None of which have anything to do with our people's liberation.

And last, but not least, we as African people objectively have to take some blame for the continued acceleration of these Black power pimps.  The standard is so low among our people that anyone with a rap that sounds good can win traction among our people anywhere.  This is only possible because we are intellectually lazy.  Someone like Johnson and Malema can call themselves Pan-Africanists and most of us don't have the ability to even analyze whether what they are doing qualifies as genuine Pan-African work.  We don't even know exactly what Pan-Africanism is.  How can you support someone and you haven't even read a single book about the concept they claim they represent?  At this point, you have to bear some of the responsibility for them taking advantage of you.  

The remedy for this is we cannot expect someone to "lead" us to liberation. We have to take an active role in our own liberation.  That means participating in studying what the conditions of our struggle look like.  We have to own that piece and that means being accountable to it.  That means being in organizations to permit us to have regular structures to facilitate our work and our developing political education.  There is absolutely no way around this people.  If you are not willing to do these things and you think all it takes is sending cash to someone through Cash App then you are doing nothing to advance the struggle of our people.  All you are doing is deepening the pockets for the latest chapter in a long glossary of people willing and able to prey off the gullibility of the struggling African masses.

One last note is some of you who support these men are undoubtedly going to be asking why write something like this?  Are we jealous of the "stature" these men have apparently achieved?  My response to anyone who thinks that is to suggest you study revolutionary movements.  Revolutionaries never seek personal fame or prestige.  Our interests are only in the masses of people achieving power.  You cannot find one piece of work I've ever been involved in that was centered around advancing me.  I write this piece because the deception of our people by these men and others creates obstacles in the work of true revolutionaries.  An example is one of Johnson's videos has him shamefully and ignorantly explaining the "difference" between the Pan-Africanism of that great son of Africa Kwame Ture (Stokely Carmichael) and Johnson.  In that piece, Johnson attacks Kwame Ture and our organization's emphasis on scientific socialism in our quest for one unified socialist Africa.  To Johnson this objective is false because "socialism is a white man's ideology."  There is so much written here and elsewhere refuting this ignorance its not worth discussing here, but this confusion makes it necessary for us to spend time correcting the error.  This is also true of Malema's mis-representation of Pan-Africanism in Azania.  Neither Johnson or Malema are fit enough combined to wash Kwame Ture's shoes.  Plus, some of us have spent years being attacked and we are tired of being silent in the context of not wanting to promote disunity.  Some of this nonsense needs to be confronted head on with aggressive and uncompromising resistance to these vultures who pick and prey off the vulnerability of our people.  So to all you marauders and snake oil sales people, when you come for our people we are coming for you.




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Africa 2018: The Contrast of Poverty and a Vision of Great Progress

9/19/2018

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Everywhere I've ever spent time in Africa, including multiple trips here to Ghana and Senegal, Gambia, Nigeria, Tanzania, etc., there are many similarities, but I am haunted by one that is consistent wherever I've gone.  You can stand on any street corner and see newly constructed (and extremely expensive) high rise buildings while directly in front of you are people selling inexpensive wares on the street for pesos (pennies).  

I've spent the last several days trying to make sure I drink as much water as possible.  I've never drank soft drinks much and I don't consume alcoholic beverages so as liquid drinks go its pretty much water and ice tea for me.  Consequently, I get sick of water often so its a chore for me to force myself to drink it while here.  One of the cheapest, most available, and safe ways to drink water in Ghana is by drinking the little plastic satchels of water that can be bought in packages or as individual packets by the aforementioned sales people on the streets.  I've already drank more of these little satchels than I can count.  So, since I'm drinking so many of them I decided to pay attention to where they come from.  A company called Voltic produces all of the satchels I've seen and drank.  After some quick research on them I've discovered they are a subsidiary of Cola Cola, Africa division.  They have been so since 2016 when international Coke swooped up the company.  Now, this company does about seven million USD in revenues in Ghana this year.  And, they are aggressively expanding their dominance in water distribution outside of Accra into the more rural areas of the country.  

There are a number of corporate stories like Voltic operating throughout Africa.  There's Vodafone who along with a couple of other carriers serve as the Verizon of Africa.  They reported several million customers throughout Africa in January of 2018 because they provide service in almost 150 countries worldwide, including everywhere I've been in Africa.  Vodafone might seem connected to Africa, but they are a British company based in London, England.  Then of course, there is the much talked about coltan industry.  If you haven't heard yet, coltan is that mineral ore that must be dug out by hand.  Once grounded into a powder, it can hold an electrical charge which makes it ideal to facilitate the transfer of digital technology.  What you probably don't know is 80% of the available coltan reserves, meaning available mines to dig it out of, exist in the Congo, Central Africa today.  Huge multi-national corporations like L.T.D. Limited in Britain, Cabot Corporation in the U.S., and Eagle Wings International in the U.S. oversee the extraction of this precious mineral from the Earth.  I say precious because once these multi-nationals extract - or I should say plummet and steal - this resource from the Congo they process it for production to the familiar names you know and love like Samsung, Apple, Microsoft, Motorola, IBM, etc., so they can produce their cell phones, flat screen televisions, lap top computers, etc., that you are so excited to buy from them.  Think about that for a moment.  If they steal the resource from the Congo, exploiting the land and the mining workers, and then an African in Africa, Europe, the U.S. or Jamaica, or Canada, etc., buys an overpriced cell phone, isn't that double jeopardy exploitation?  And, we won't even delve into how those corporate interests instigate and directly encourage all these little wars in the Congo you read about to protect their coltan production.  You see, wars tend to keep prices down because people tend not to want to compete when they are in danger of getting their privates shot off.  So their production costs remain low, but you still pay bloated retail for the stupid phone anyway, but none of that seems to discourage us from spending much of our awake life staring at it.  

Meanwhile, getting back to that sales person on the street.  You can drive down any street in the urban areas of Accra, Dakar, Banjul, Dar Es Saalam, Conakry, Bissau, Nairobi, etc., in Africa and you will see scores of people, primarily women, standing in between lanes in the street, literally risking their lives every second of every day, selling Voltic water, towels, cashews, candy bars, soap, dried plantains, eggs, anything they can develop to make enough to feed their families.  These women will stand out there in the blazing hot sun with hundreds of flavored eggs on their heads.  They will charge you the equivalent of about 30 cents per egg.  Since rent in even the most basic living condition in an African city like Accra will require at least 300 CDs per month or about $75.00, which doesn't include utilities, food, transportation, diapers, etc..  That's a hell of a lot of eggs.  Just writing that makes me mad as hell because no one will ever be able to convince me why its ok for Voltic, Vodafone, and all those coltan pirate companies to rob Africa of billions of dollars annually while our people who come from the land where that water, electrical waves, and coltan comes from get nothing except sore feet, tired knees, arthritis, and not even one step closer to making enough to rest for a day.

If that last paragraph makes any sense to you at all (if you are someone confused enough into believing in capitalism it won't make sense to you because you would look at these companies as opportunistic and creative which is either extremely ignorant, soulless, or both) then you already know why I'm here in Africa right now.  You already know why I'm always talking about Africa.  You already know why we're always talking about Africa.   So, you better know why we are doing a lot more than just talking about Africa.  We are organizing around how to completely take back everything from those pirates.  Yes, this revolution will be bloody.  Very bloody, but just stand on any street corner and watch our struggling, suffering people.  Its already bloody.  Why not organize and solve the problem once and for all?  And for you folks who think those women are in the situation they are in because they haven't figured out how to be the next Vodafone which is what you are trying to do?  This revolution I'm talking about is coming for you first.  When that happens don't try and say you didn't know.  There are warnings all around you, including right here, two or three times per week.  You won't listen.  You are going to join those sore losers from Cuba in Miami, or the ones from Vietnam in California, those driven out of Azania, South Africa, Zimbabwe, etc., who are crying about how the revolutions and/or struggles for justice pushed their families out of those countries.  Notice how they seldom tell you what their families were doing in those countries?  I would bet that 9 out of 10 times, their families should have been driven out, just like you will be driven out.  Africa will belong to its people so those companies should foment chaos, charge high prices, make your heartless profits while you can because your day is coming and since your day is coming, that means our day is also coming.  Hold on sistas.  Your days of standing in those lanes are numbered.
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Lost Children in Diaspora and the Importance of Coming to Africa

9/17/2018

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Although I’ve been outside of the U.S. many times in my life, it never ceases to amaze me how different the U.S. looks from the outside as opposed to being inside of it.  Capitalism – and its appendage white supremacy – work 24/7 to convince Africans everywhere on Earth that there is absolutely no alternative, no other course, no possible scenario of life that doesn’t revolve around the system currently in power.  That process has pushed many of us who live in poverty in Africa, the Caribbean, etc., or in the belly of the centers of imperialism e.g. the U.S., Britain, France, Belgium, etc., that the best we can ever hope for is to figure out how to co-exist with our enemies in power (capitalism).  Some of us go as far as swallowing the koolaid without even tasting it.  We say we are fortunate to have been “brought” to the imperialist centers instead of having to live in poverty in Africa.  Can you imagine a lion in captivity saying they are blessed to be in a zoo instead of running in the wild?  If you heard a lion say that you would think they were insane.  Or at least lacking some of the attributes that makes them a lion.  We are lacking some of the attributes that make us human – and African.  We have been reduced to colonial subjects who know nothing besides what our masters have provided to us.  What we know about the world, science, religion, art, language, everything – is what has been spoon fed to us by the people who hold us, or at least benefit, from us remaining in psychological captivity.  And to demonstrate this point, we get extremely angry at those of us who lovingly point this out to us while continuing to honor the system that created the dysfunction.
 
There is a cure for this sickness.  Its called coming home to Africa.  And, just coming here on some bourgeois tour isn’t going to give you what you need.  You have to come home as a part of a process designed to liberate our people from the bondage that keeps us confused.  As I sit here preparing to begin the 50th Year Commemoration Conference for the creation of the All African People’s Revolutionary Party (A-APRP) here in Accra, Ghana, West Africa, I’m pondering all of this.  I’ve been a member of the A-APRP for 34 of those 50 years.  The intense political education process I’ve participated in during that time e.g. our work study process, has prepared me to understand my place as an African in the world today.  It has helped me understand that African isn’t just an identity based on biology.  It’s a political identity based on my relationship to Africa.  Its an understanding that as a people, we can never reach our potential, we can never be truly free, until Africa is free, united, and socialist!   So, as I sit here, I take in the environment.  My political education has prepared me to properly interpret the conditions Africa faces today.  I know that Africans have no control of the systems we live under anywhere we exist on Earth. I know that our work is designed primarily to change that.  To build capacity for us to seize that power.  And, once we get it, for us not to use it to plunder resources and control populations as the imperialists do, but to use Africa’s vast resources to solve Africa’s problems, the problems of African people everywhere, and to contribute towards advancing the entire world’s populations.  Because I understand that, I am able to read between the lines and recognize my place here.
 
Its understanding my place that creates space for peace in the midst of all the hard work we must do.  You see, while Africans are disrespected every second of our existence in the imperialist U.S., here in Africa, I feel at home.  I am welcomed by our people here because they know that unlike most of the people who come to Africa today, even Africans born outside of Africa, I'm not here to expand the U.S. military.  I'm not here to spread an imperialist inspired religious message.  I'm not here to serve as paternalistic charity.  I'm here as a long lost and humble family member to make my small contribution towards Africa's forward march.  The love I receive when here is overwhelming.  This is in contrast to the constant attacks and disrespect that defines the African existence within the U.S. and other imperialist countries.  And, I should note that seeing those attacks from Africa brings to the forefront an entirely different perspective.  Whereas we are made to feel in the U.S. that we have no choice except to endure that inhumanity, here in Africa its quite obvious how pitiful and desperate racism actually is within the U.S.  The entire thing only exists to prevent us from connecting with our true power - Africa.  When I'm here, that is as obvious as the sun in the sky so no amount of primitive behavior within the U.S. can make a dent in that armor.

None of this is to say that every African outside of Africa must come here and move here immediately.  Some of us are so infected by imperialist thinking and values that my personal preference is that you stay right there under the watchful eye of your master until you decide its time to break free.  And to be clear, deciding you hate Europeans isn't breaking free.  The capitalist system couldn't care less if you dislike Europeans because that does absolutely nothing to weaken the capitalist system.  Breaking free can only mean making the conscious decision to side with the masses of our people against the evil empire of capitalism and imperialism, led by the united snakes of amerikkka.  What this is saying is a major part of that freedom process is recognizing that if all you know is what you have learned in the U.S., there is an overwhelming level of experiences you need to have because you are missing out on so so much knowledge.  Particularly about who we are as a people.  Even if you try and read "alternative" theories within the U.S., but you are basically stationed and stuck there, even if you have traveled under the auspices of the imperialist military of the U.S., even if you have traveled to the Caribbean or Africa with your personal family or on some tour, you still are basically functioning within the parameters they provide for you.  And, despite whatever ways you invoke to try and argue that, you won't fully understand it until you take that journey to free your mind from the shackles of capitalism and imperialism.  That's going to take some concerted effort and study, but if I can do it, you certainly can do it.  In fact, you can surpass me, easily.  Then, maybe we can sit here together someday and continue to contribute towards our forward progress.  When you are here with me, able to do that you will marvel, as I do, on how little the U.S. seems to actually be from this vantage point.

We walk in the shoes of Shirley Graham DuBois, W.E.B. DuBois, Amy Jacque Garvey, Amy Ashwood Garvey, Kwame Nkrumah, Sekou Ture, Madame Ture, Amilcar Cabral, Carmen Peierea, Imbalia Camara, Patrice Lumumba, Muammar Qaddafi, Malcolm X, and so many others who rose far above the petty existence of the imperialist U.S.  When you live your life based on those principles, it influences how you move.  How you treat people.  And, that is how people can easily determine what type of person you are and why you are here.  So, I am without question home.  I experience a peace I only dream about when in the U.S.  No need to look over my shoulder here. I can relax.  I can sleep.  I can laugh. I can live.  I can contribute towards our complete and total liberation and I can envision our future generations living with something much, much better than the latest cell phone, knowledge of the latest reactionary song lyrics, and a total lack of dignity.
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Africa, U.S. Politics, Capitalism, & Class Struggle Around All of This

9/9/2018

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A Congolese coltan miner works on average 12 hours a day, seven days per week, earning about $50.00 USD each week. Their life expectancy is 40 years old. All of this to fuel the cell phone, lap top, flat screen, etc., industries. And Africans in the U.S., the Africans who benefit the most from this than any other Africans on Earth, walk around as if this exploitation has no connection to U.S. capitalism and our relationship to this country.
Today I sit here living in Sacramento, California, U.S.  Just yesterday, I attended and spoke on a panel for a local African (Black) community event focused on defining and implementing "Black power."  On Wednesday, I and others here in the U.S. leave for our conference on Pan-Africanism that is taking place in Accra, Ghana, West Africa.  For anyone with a basic understanding of the worldwide struggle for African self-determination, those activities probably don't suggest any significant contradictions, but in fact there are actually serious conflicts that exist within this struggle around what constitutes a legitimate path towards power for people of African descent.

Examples of these contradictions can be found everywhere.  Here in Sacramento, the city itself has always been politically influenced by the dominance of state government politics along with the two military bases that contributed, along with employment with the state, to bringing much of the early African population to this city.  The politics promoted from these entities have always been dominantly "conservative", or what we would actually call reactionary, meaning always accommodating to the capitalist white power structure.  Evidence of this was displayed at the event yesterday where speaker after speaker spoke to the necessity of African people getting out to vote in November, 2018.  Of us doing everything we can to attempt to stop the Trump administration. And, as always, these electoral politics are couched within a U.S. framework as if the African community in the U.S. operates in a way that has no impact, responsibilities, or consequences for African people outside of the U.S.

Both of these political tendencies - a 100% focus on electoral politics, and an absence of any analysis that includes Africa - are reflections of class struggle within the African community and it is this class struggle where the contradictions between African politics within the U.S. and the broader Pan-African and African liberation struggle take place.  At yesterday's event, it wasn't until the last panel of the day, the one I participated in, that anyone even articulated a perspective that wasn't advocating electoral politics and until my turn, absolutely no one spoke of Africa in any concrete way.  And, of course, as soon as I presented and dared suggest that we take even five seconds to consider a revolutionary Pan-African reality that exists outside the confines of the U.S. electoral process, several people spoke up to reaffirm that if we talk about revolution, we still need to vote and endorse U.S. electoral politics as our primary strategy.  As our "practical" struggle.  The reason this is always the approach is because of those class contradictions.  Capitalism trains everyone, particularly African people in the U.S., that we have absolutely no options, no possible way to exist, no chance in hell, to exist on any level unless we figure out how to do so within the confines of U.S. capitalism.  In other words, any suggestion that we even spend five minutes talking about anything that includes something outside of the capitalist system and/or the U.S. is without question insane.  What this approach automatically does is validate only petti bourgeois thought and action as viable and legitimate while criminalizing revolutionary struggle.  By petti bourgeois we mean adopting a position where people see their role as protecting and advancing the values and institutions of U.S. capitalism.  By doing so, we become the middle managers of capitalism, ensuring its interests are protected.  Serving as the on the ground managers for the ruling class elites.  That's where the class struggle comes in.  By accepting these positions we inadvertently turn ourselves against the interests of African people everywhere, including working class Africans within the U.S., but particularly our people outside of the U.S.  This is true because the U.S. capitalist economy was built and is sustained on exploiting African human and material resources on a daily basis.  Every chocolate bar we eat is being consumed based on the exploitation of our people in Africa.  Every time we look at our cell phones we are able to do so based on the exploitation of our people.  When we browse the internet, we are doing so because the device we are using is available to us based on the exploitation of our people.  Even, when we want to escape all of that and just unwind with a Netflix movie, the flat screen we are watching the movie on is there because of the savage way in which our people are being brutalized.  So, any efforts any of us make to uphold the U.S. political system - which upholds the capitalist system - serves towards the exploitation of our people.  Even reform efforts our people make with their electoral work in the U.S. cannot stop our suffering.  For example, there are efforts underway to reform bail systems in the U.S.  There are efforts to challenge oppression against house-less people - more and more who are African people.  There are efforts to challenge how educational systems are run in this country.  The problem is the issue isn't just bail, its the entire so-called criminal justice system.  From the police on the streets to the prisons that entire system has been built on oppressing Africans and other marginalized people so that entire system must be destroyed.  The same is true for the educational system in this country and certainly, homelessness is one of the main indicators that capitalism must be destroyed because that problem exposes the conflict that the richest country in human history also has the most house-less people in human history.

The other issue is although many of the people who support this petti bourgeois approach, they do so out of a lack of understanding.  Those people sincerely believe these efforts are the absolute best ways to solve the problems we face.  To understand that, look at the situation like this.  If you only existed within one room your entire life, you would not have the information and/or perspective to know what exists outside that room.  In fact, you would believe that everything you ever needed was in that room because you would not know of anything outside of that context.  Just based on survival, you would have to convince yourself that your only options were in that room.  This is the reality a large percentage of our people face in the U.S.  This capitalist system within the U.S. is presented to us as the only available option so we try to do the best we can working with that, but at the end of the day, we are only working to uphold the very system that oppresses us.

Then there are those who intentionally work to uphold U.S. capitalism because they function and operate with resources within this system.  Maybe they occupy positions within the educational or (so-called) criminal justice systems which make the continued operation and existence of those systems vital to their personal stability and advancement.  Understanding the difference between these two types of advocates for this system is important.  Sekou Ture in his classic work on "The History of Class Struggle" argues that we must know the difference between reactionaries - people who uphold capitalism based on the single room concept - and counter-revolutionaries, people who actively and intentionally fight for capitalism because they know it protects their class interests, despite the fact they sabotage the interests of the African masses by doing so.  

What ends up happening within cultures like that described at the event yesterday is petti bourgeois values become normalized.  There were a significant number of young people present at the event yesterday and for the most part, those youth were shamed into voting and seeing that as their sole obligation to our people.  The often stated lie that our people died for the right to vote was repeated when there is no question that our people died for freedom, while understanding that the vote was simply a tactic to achieve freedom, is always completely ignored by these people.  Besides the obvious disrespect these tactics to advance petti bourgeois politics present to those courageous Africans who sacrificed for the vote, the argument about dying for the vote is just dishonest.  Even a cursory history of the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), the three main groups on the ground getting their heads bashed in for voting rights, reveals that these organizers were not confused about their purpose for fighting for the vote.  Most of the leadership for SNCC e.g. Kwame Ture (Stokely Carmichael), Ruby Doris Robinson, Jamal Abdullah Al-Amin (H. Rap Brown), Mukassa Dada (Willie Ricks), etc. have been very public and vocal about the vote.  And, these are people who were locked up, beaten up, and lots worse, in this fight.  They made it clear that they viewed the vote as a vehicle for our freedom, not the sole purpose of our existence.  For these people today to suggest that voting, and only voting, is the only way we can contribute to our people's forward progress completely discounts the outstanding contributions organizations like the Universal Negro Improvement Association, Black Panther, Party, Revolutionary Action Movement, Nation of Islam, etc., have made to our communities.  None of those organizations did their work from electoral politics platforms, at least not the work they are known for.  Regarding Africa, the intentional dismissal of Africa from our political discourse within the U.S. would be comical if it wasn't so tragic.  Everywhere we turn, Africa is in our faces whether we intend for it to be or not.  Most of our people would have no problem understanding that Africa should play a significant role in our future if there wasn't such a concerted effort to prevent them from even hearing that perspective.

What's important for those of us interested in honest and principled struggle for justice for Africans and others within the U.S. and around the world, first, we have to recognize this class struggle taking place.  We have to move beyond the basic uncritical assessment that any group of African descent people getting together under a political agenda is enough and so we should avoid controversy (which is code for avoid class struggle). Revolutionary class consciousness requires a clear understanding that the people advancing petti bourgeois class values and actions are doing so for a reason, even if some of them are not conscious of those reasons.  More of us need to call out this contradiction.  We need to talk much, much, more about the unmistakable and undeniable reality that the U.S. capitalist economy sits directly on top of the masses of African people around the world.  We have to talk about how this continued exploitation of Africa demands that our people within the U.S. make a choice - U.S. capitalism or the masses of African people (and the rest of humanity).  We have to start framing these discussions within that specific context.  We have to fight to make that the dominant discussion in our communities.  Institutionalizing that struggle will do a lot to win over many of those people who are stuck within that one room concept.  We have to start challenging this backward concept that we have to place every egg we ever had and will ever have within the basket of U.S. capitalism and its voting system.  We have to challenge the often repeated refrain that those that didn't vote (for example) are the cause the U.S. Supreme Court is stacked in a way that overturned the Abood decision which drastically impacted public sector Unions.  That threatens women's right to choose, etc.  Yes, on the surface, not voting in democrats places those with even more backward credentials on bodies like the Supreme Court, but really what we should be talking about is how we can move past a system that forces us to entertain those backward politics in the first place?  In yesterday's event, a discussion evolved around us making it a priority to prevent Trump from engaging in the constitutional process to permit him to become president for life.  The position articulated within the room yesterday was that this to happen would spell the end for African people within the U.S.  Here's why that type of perspective doesn't even line up with the history for African people within the U.S.  Everything we have achieved in this country, from our right to vote, to where we can live, to where we can work, to how we worship, has been won through a fight by us for our human rights.  We are a people within this country who could not even shop at a despicable department store because of our race.   The fact we have even those most basic abilities today results only from our mass struggle for justice and dignity.  And let it be shouted from the roof tops that this system battled and fought our ability to have those rights every step of the way and this system continues to fight to take whatever gains we have away from us.  So, there is nothing about our history in this country that suggests we would be finished if Trump, or anyone else against us, became president for life.  What we would certainly do is what we have always done, lead the fight here against that injustice.  And, ironically, that fight wouldn't be waged primarily in the electoral ballot box.  It would be waged in the streets as our struggles have always been waged.  That's why its so disrespectful and dishonest for these people to pretend that voting is our only weapon when even that vote came from us being in the streets.  Its also dishonest the way they suggest in subtle ways that there is absolutely no difference between revolution and spontaneous urban rebellion (or coups or fractional wars based on fighting for neo-colonial shares of resources in Africa).  This confusion serves to frighten people away from wanting to know anything about revolution.  We have to push to be able to present and explain what revolution looks like and how it will benefit the people.  We have to be willing and able to wage that fight despite the fact they will pull out all stops to continue to try and make us look unbalanced and insane for suggesting that any life outside of the slave plantation is ever possible.

Finally, we have to make it plain that there is no future for us without Africa, period.  How can we expect to be a freedom thinking people when we disrespect our mother - Africa?  If we see her as a loser, how can we see ourselves as winners?  There is no example of any people winning while being cut off completely from their homeland.  The Palestinian people?  The basis of their struggle is their land - Palestine.  The Irish people?  The Filipinos?  The Indigenous peoples of the Western Hemisphere?  Don't you understand that the struggle over Standing Rock was all about land.  During that struggle in 2016, a European reporter asked a young Indigenous man what the land meant to him and his answer was "the land means everything!"  Meanwhile, we Africans in the U.S. are trying to say we are waging a struggle for our freedom without any contact, program, consciousness, and discussion about where our land is and what having it will do to enhance our struggle.  Many of us are acting like we can have a successful struggle fighting with only the tools provided to us by our enemies.  We ignore the obvious principle that no people are awarded the tools for freedom by the people oppressing them.  No people in history.  We don't challenge the obvious contradiction that there are 50 million Africans within the U.S. yet no one in the U.S., including the Africans here born and raised in Africa, know much of anything about Africa.  We walk around like this is some sort of inconsequential accident or coincidence.  Clearly, this is a coordinated effort by our enemies, who control this dysfunctional educational system, and the capitalist media that promotes this coordinated separation of the children of Africa from our mother.  One participant yesterday who had great intentions, wanted to know more about Africa.  This person admitted that their only knowledge of Africa was what they saw on the CNN show "Parts Unknown" or whatever the title of that show is/was (I just don't watch television shows for the most part, sorry).  Not to throw shade at this person because none of this is their fault, but could you imagine any European saying the only knowledge about Europe they possess is what they saw on BET?  That's the social equivalent of where our people are every single day.  We have to change this by speaking out about the relationship of Africa to U.S. capitalism.  How Africa provided the capital to fuel capitalism through the transatlantic slave trade.  How the systems of colonialism that were set up from that period institutionalized the system that ensures the cocoa (chocolate), coltan, diamond, gold, uranium, bauxite, etc., industries were and are controlled by our enemies.  We have to start talking about why Africa is the richest continent on Earth, yet houses the poorest people on Earth?  Why is it that African people are at the bottom of the societies we live in everywhere on Earth?  Why?  Why?  Why?  We have to start raising these questions because when we do, it will become much clearer that the key to maintaining capitalism is keeping Africa disconnected from the African masses.  Keeping us believing that our only salvation is going to be U.S. British, French, etc., capitalism.  We have to start challenging all of that.  Its shouldn't be such a powerful statement in 2018 to say to a group of Africans that no African will be free until Africa is free.  That statement always generates a vivid reaction from Africans which tells us we are not making that statement enough.  

I've said repeatedly what we need to be doing, but I understand there cannot be a revolution without revolutionaries so our work continues to be raising the consciousness of our people so we can have the shock troops to wage this struggle with our people.  The fact so many of our organizing spaces within the U.S. are dominated today by these backward petti bourgeois ideas is a reflection of how weak our revolutionary Pan-African, and other revolutionary forces, are.  That should signal us that instead of attacking each other, when we are all very weak, we should encourage the induction of all of our ideas into the discourse of our people because whatever any of us have to say is a step forward.  And, our people are intelligent enough so that they can figure out in time what path is best for them.  So, we should do all these things within the context of our missions for justice and liberation.  Our people will decide how they wish to proceed and we will be creating the conditions to greatly weaken the dominance of these petti bourgeois ideas in our communities.  I wonder how many of us are truly interested in engaging these questions this way?

Africa and U.S. capitalism are indeed a paradox.  Both exist, and capitalism only exists because of Africa's exploitation, yet the dominant perspective is that one has very little to do with the other.  And, we walk around here everyday ignoring the obvious realities.  This is the objective of our class enemies and its time for those of us to disagree to stop playing along.  We have to develop strategies to get our youth so we can provide them with access to revolutionary consciousness before the petti bourgeois ideas are accepted without question.  Class is a bad word in the African community.  Its far past time to change that.

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The Real Reasons Nike Signed a Deal with Colin Kaepernick

9/5/2018

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"The masses of people living in capitalist societies don't know how to think.  Instead, they only know how to react to stimuli.  When they react this way, they actually think they are thinking, but they are just reacting to what has been programmed into them."  Those words by Kwame Ture may be considered harsh and unkind by some people, but how else do you explain the ridiculous reactions of many people towards anti-police terrorism protests by professional football players, led by former San Francisco quarterback Colin Kaepernick?  Millions of people, primarily European (white), but certainly there are plenty of other peoples who agree with them, consider these protest actions worthy of criminal punishment.  Most of these deranged people would not object if Kaepernick and the rest of us were forcibly moved out of the country.  These strange people obviously have very strong opinions about the subject despite the fact I would bet big that less than a quarter percent of them have ever read one volume book (cover to cover) on any of the following topics; institutional racism, the history of police, police terrorism, and protest movements.  Even less of these people (if that's even possible) have participated in any protest movements, yet all of them hypocritically benefit every day from protests carried out by workers, the civil rights movement and its gains for people of color and white women, etc.

The reasons the emotional reactions strongly overpower the intellectual understandings is because of the statement used to start this article.  People are programmed in this society to react, not think.  So, those people burning their Nike products because of Nike's announced endorsement deal with protest icon Colin Kaepernick are convinced they know what they are doing when people around the world are looking at them and scratching their heads.  Their logic that the protests are disrespectful against the U.S. and its institutions like the military are completely ill-relevant, but for the sake of argument, let's say Kaepernick and the others are protecting specifically against the U.S. flag, and military, etc.  Even if they are (and I believe regardless of the liberalism involved that in truth, they are), judging by history, they have every right to do so.  The insane logic that African people have an obligation to respect a country that shows us absolutely no respect is not even worth acknowledging, but for the sake of argument again, these people I'm talking about are so finely programmed that they do not even possess the capacity to explain in clear language how an African in the U.S. owes any type of debt towards the U.S. military for fighting wars overseas?  How have these wars done anything to "protect our freedoms"  Remind me one more time because I know the oppression African people face in this country had absolutely nothing to do with Iraq, Afghanistan, Vietnam, etc.  None of those countries prohibited my parents from going to quality schools.  Living where they wanted.  Shopping where they wanted.  Eating where they wanted.  Going to whatever part of town they wanted.  None of those countries created and/or enforced racist Jim Crow segregation laws in this country which repressed and oppressed my parents and millions of other Africans up through the late 1960s.  This is all so insane that none of those people can explain to me why my father was wrong to tell me that I should never once consider joining the military because he was forced to fight in the U.S. Army during the Vietnam war despite the fact he had none of the rights mentioned above in his native Louisiana at the time he was enlisted.  A high school student could conclude that our fight has always been and continues to be against the U.S. government and its institutions of oppression e.g. police departments.  This is what the players are protesting for and that context is important because confusion around anything dealing with racism in this capitalist society is as common as alcohol at the corporate office party.  

So in the backdrop described above where African players protest and a large swath of white people in this country call for their castration, including the so-called president of the U.S., Nike, one of the world's largest corporate producers of athletic themed equipment and clothing has come out in the middle of all of this and signed Kaepernick to an endorsement deal?  Those angry face popping Europeans are calling for everything Nike to be burned to the ground.  And supporters of the protests are calling for everyone to go out today and spend any money you have and don't have on whatever it is Nike that you can get your hands on.  The typical capitalist business model is to always take the safe route.  Never be controversial, and to avoid conflict or political opinions at all costs.  As a result, many people are naively using that logic to conclude that Nike deserves props for their decision.  They did something similar with a disgraced Tiger Woods several years ago and many people are pointing to their ads appealing to Serena William's inner city upbringing in contrast to her outstanding success on the tennis court as virtues.  But, what is Nike doing here with Kaepernick?  Really?

First, let's look at who Nike really is.  They are a company that helped us understand the viciousness of the garment producing industry.  Their dependence on exploitative sweatshop labor in Southeast Asia is well known and its not like the company has ever done anything to provide justice to those it profited from and exploited.  Plus, having lived and organized in Oregon, U.S., the state where Nike is based in the U.S., I observed first hand the efforts by  Phil Knight, the driving force behind Nike, to destroy Oregon's public university system to ensure that he could have unlimited control over the direction of the University of Oregon, the state's most prestigious university.  In working to ensure the U of O was an athletic powerhouse and a marketing and recruiting ground for future talent for his company Nike, Knight waged a vicious campaign that significantly weakened Oregon's four smaller and much less prosperous universities located in the rural areas of the state.  All of these practices, including pushing for sweetheart subsidy deals to operate in the state, make it painfully obvious that Nike cannot ever be confused with a justice loving entity that makes stands based on principle.  

Nike's decision to sign Kaepernick has absolutely nothing to do with principles and everything to do with bottom line profits.  I realize many of you who do not understand how to develop and maintain a vision for the future will have a difficult time grasping this.  In your view, how can they be making any type of prudent business decision when they are embracing the embodiment of evil in Kaepernick in the minds of their primarily white and older demographic customers who account for a significant portion of their retail revenues?  The difference is a corporation like Nike, unlike most of you, isn't just thinking about today or tonight.  They are thinking about 10, 15, 50 years from now and how they can ensure their brand is on top then, as well as now.  In other words, you can bet that Nike has done a very complete and detailed financial projection and analysis around this question before they reached out to Kaepernick.  I can ascertain that what they concluded is that human consciousness doesn't stand still.  It continues to move.  Even if so many white people cannot see past tomorrow, and are so infected with racism that they cannot even stand themselves, Nike understands that Kaepernick's stand is the correct and principled stand to take.  They realize that because of that ill refutable reality, its highly unlikely that 25 years from now, people, even more than enough white people, will see Kaepernick as they see him today.  And, they have plenty of research to back up that contention.  Although capitalism teaches history as if how they teach it is accurate and has always been the case, we know that everything capitalism says about history is a lie.  Consequently, we know that despite their efforts to whitewash the 1960s for example, during that time Martin Luther King was a hated man.  Muhammad Ali was a hated man for taking his stand against the Vietnam war.  King and Ali fielded a hatred that Kaepernick hasn't even come close to receiving.  He certainly lost his football career, but only after he had already become a millionaire, something Ali wasn't permitted to do.  And, of course, King lost his life.  Nike understands all of this and since their mission isn't to be on top today, or just next year, they are making a calculated move to ensure that they are still on top long after the idiots burning their shoes today are long dead, buried, and completely forgotten.  Judging by how people view Muhammad Ali and Dr. King today, its quite possible that Nike's decision will be a correct and profitable one for them.

What should be the takeaway for us regarding this entire situation is that we have to start to learn how to see the world through our own analysis.  An analysis that is fueled by our culture and our history.  We have to see the importance of learning and adhering to our own cultural ideology.  If we had the ability to do that as a mass of people today, we couldn't be taken in so easily by the outward appearance of respect for our struggle that the untrained eye will afford to Nike today.  With our own ideology we would understand clearly that the rubber for the sneakers comes from rubber plantations exploited in Liberia, West Africa, and that our people are remanded to poverty for the exploitation of that rubber that benefits Nike, while we get nothing except continued servitude.  With our own ideology we wouldn't and couldn't be satisfied just to pay our enemies to wear the shoes.  We would instead desire to own and control the production of the shoes in a way that creates opportunities and resources for the masses of our people.  No, I haven't criticized Kaepernick for accepting the deal with Nike.  Based on how that African has selflessly shared his resources to advance our struggle, I have no reason to believe he won't use whatever resources come his way through this deal to continue to do so.  He clearly has developed some vision in everything he is doing.  He knew his football career would suffer for taking a stance.  That means he took time to study his history. He knew about Ali, Mahmoud Abdul Rauf, and others who set the stage for him.  He has vision.  Its time for the rest of us to join him.  Try to focus on not reacting to things like this when they happen.  Instead, think about what this means and seek out resources coming from our own African cultural perspective to understand why things happen the way they do.  Practice doing that.  It will make the work of people like me much more easier because we won't have to spend as much time deconstructing the confusion every single time something happens.  We can spend more time helping us point in the direction we need to go.  What Kaepernick has done has given us a light.  The power is indeed ours.  If you don't believe that, read comments on any article about Kaepernick and you will see the absolute fear strangling these poor and ridiculous people.  That should tell you that all we have to do now is assume and play our proper role.
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A Personal Reflection of My Gentrification (Land Grab) Trauma

9/2/2018

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A 2012 picture of yours truly talking to bourgeois reporters in front of the house we liberated and returned to the African woman in Portland, Oregon, U.S. Her house was illegally "foreclosed upon" e.g. stolen, by capitalist banks. Land grab, or gentrification, is happening in Portland, Sacramento, the Bay, L.A., New York, Africa, everywhere African people reside.
Last night I had the privilege of attending an outstanding old skool soul concert here in Sacramento, California.  One of the great performers was Evelyn "Champagne" King.  She came out singing "I'm in Love," her 1981 hit which is my favorite by her.  As I danced and watched her perform it, I recalled that it was that very song that was playing on the radio as I drove into Sacramento in August of 1981, my first time ever coming here.  After being a student activist Pan-Africanist here for three years, I joined the All African People's Revolutionary Party (A-APRP) in May of 1984 at the party's first African Liberation Day (ALD) commemoration at James  McClatchy Park in the Oak Park neighborhood of Sacramento. By the time ALD came around in 1985, I was already a central organizer in planning the program.  In those days that meant posting up between 30,000 to 50,000 ALD posters around town and passing out equally as many ALD brochures as we called them.  The Oak Park neighborhood in those days was predominantly African and Indigenous with a healthy sprinkling of poor Europeans.  The park, which the local folks called "the Big Park" was overrun by gang fighting, drug sales, and other nefarious activities.  I remember that when we went down to the city to apply for the permit to use the park, they didn't even have a concern about our radical revolutionary politics.  They really wanted to know how and why we wanted to use that park for our activity.  "The Big Park" - as beautiful as it appeared, was considered one of the most dangerous places in Sacramento.  McGeorge Law School, located just across the street from the park, according to a European woman law student attending there at the time, constantly warned its students to avoid the park at all costs.  

All of this mystique about the park made it all the more attractive to us.  The day before ALD in 1985, and each of the years to come, we boldly marched into that park with numbers.  We engaged the multitude of people assembled in the park.  We talked to those gang members, drug dealers, etc., about Pan-Africanism and revolution.  We worked very hard to build relationships with as many of those people as we could and that process evolved over those first years into some of the local Oak Park Bloods set agreeing to help us secure ALD.  To them that meant keeping Crips out of the park, but we knew being able to have dialogue with them was the first step to working to dismantle these tribalistic attitudes that plagued our communities.  Those first few years were grinding.  And part of the reason was many people absolutely refused to enter that park, but over time that all began to break down.  By 1990, the A-APRP's presence in Sacramento and ALD had grown to the point where thousands of people were attending ALD in that park each year.  In 1990, the day before ALD when we set up the stage, there were about 50 Africans surrounding us while we worked.  They asked us countless questions.  Some of them even helped us.  Then, when the police came into the park to challenge our right to set up early, the people respected the bold way in which we stood up defiantly to the police.  We continued our work.  In 1991, Tupac Shakur performed at ALD in that park in front of at least 5000 people.  We continued to organize ALD in that park, doing intensive organizing work in the surrounding Oak Park community up through 2007 which is the year I moved to Oregon.

Fast forward to 2018.  The A-APRP is still doing ALD in California, just not at McClatchy Park or Sacramento.  Now, we are doing it in Oakland, California for our Western regional ALD commemoration.  Since returning to Sacramento a year and a half ago, I have come through Oak Park several times.  I hardly recognize the neighborhood now.  The local tire shops and small businesses have been replaced by yuppie bars and brew draft houses.  The Nation of Islam Mosque on Broadway is still there where I had lunch with Geronimo Ji Jaga (Pratt) in 1997 shortly after he was finally released from prison, but across the street from the Mosque is a huge new Christian Church.  There are high rise apartment buildings everywhere, including on the corner of Broadway and MLK where my favorite taco place used to be.  And the "Big Park?"  Today when I drove by it I saw young European women walking their dogs there.  Two European men where playing frisbee golf or whatever the hell that game is.  There are still some Africans in the park, but you know how that gentrification thing goes.  You can look at those Africans and tell that they know their time in that park, in that neighborhood...Well, those days are numbered.  I parked and walked through the park.  I walked in front of the stage that was built in 1993.  We cleaned up that park and then the city decided the park was worth investing in to have big city events in so the place where we camped overnight to protect our little stage now has a huge stage that we used many years ourselves up through 2007.  Today, a European woman sat under the canopy of the stage sunbathing in a bikini.  As I stood there watching these people I received the usual "you don't belong here looks.  All while standing in the place where I spent decades organizing.  McGeorge Law School has expanded to controlling most of the area around the park now.  And the always lit federal housing unit across the street from the park, where I once helped rescue a European law student from being stomped when he foolishly tried to break up an impromptu block party held by the Oak Park Bloods (OPB) is now quiet and gated up.  

As I stood in that park today I thought of how the sunbathing bikini person, the frisbee golf people, and the dog walkers most likely have absolutely no idea what used to take place in that park.  Or, maybe they do?  But, even if they do, they certainly have no idea that a small Pan-African party did most of the initial work to make the park inhabitable and we did it with the full cooperation and support of the community.  Since I was so intimately involved in that work, I couldn't help today, but to wonder what happened to all those folks who used to attend those block parties on the corner?  All those people who used to gang bang and sell drugs in the park?  Most importantly, all those community people who used to want and wish for a better community who used to come to ALD and other events we did in the neighborhood to express their hopes and desires.  Every once in a while, when I step out over there, I see one of them here and there.  Some even remember me.  One African recently stopped riding his bike as I walked towards the coffee shop to tell me that he credited me with helping him get off crack and support his family.  That African had a half gallon of milk in his hand and he proudly told me that it was my work on the microphone m/cing ALD, which I did most years in that park, that motivated him.  He said the milk was for his grandchildren.  He and I embraced.  He cried.  I cried.  I cried today because the progress of a community can only be judged by the progress of the most downtrodden of that community.  I asked rhetorically where all those people are, but I already know.  Many of them are incarcerated, including many I knew. Many more dead, several who I know suffered this fate.  More drugged out.  More just scattered and displaced.  Whatever it takes to make room for more frisbee golf and brew houses.  The Oak Park community, the place where I lived and organized for many years in Sacramento.  Where my daughter grew up and went to school is a shell of its former existence today.  In one way, its frustrating as hell, but in another more expanded way its further motivation for me to keep working on our behalf.  This is happening to us everywhere because we lack power as a people.  The sooner we empower ourselves, the sooner we can stop being political footballs for someone else's economic agenda.  
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2nd Amendment & Gun Rights.  As Racist as Everything Else U.S.

9/2/2018

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Unlike most everything written and discussed about the Second Amendment of the U.S. constitution these days, this piece is not going to be a debate designed to attempt to interpret the thinking of those African slave owning racists who wrote the constitution.  Since they were all filthy from the top of their heads to the bottom of their feet, we are concerned about what they thought just as much as they were concerned about how we felt when they were owning us.  If you are reading this and you see these thugs as your "founding fathers" that's your sick dysfunction.  The objective here, as always, is to present ill-refutable truths about the history of the so-called second amendment of the U.S. constitution.  We say so-called because we know that as it relates to our rights as human beings on this planet Earth, that U.S. constitution has about as much value to us as soiled toilet paper.  We can go down the line of each article and amendment to those articles and illustrate in plain and ill-refutable language how each and every directive within there has been violated as it relates to the rights of African people, all oppressed communities, women, non-men, etc.  Without question, that document wasn't written for us.  It had nothing to do with us in the 1700s, and it has nothing to do with us today.  Any attempt to say otherwise is just another lame effort to whitewash U.S. history as a part of capitalism's strategy to confuse us into believing whatever this country does, it does with us in mind.  They must convince the African masses to believe this nonsense because they are deathly afraid that we will one day wake up (which one day we will) and realize our interests have never been, and will never be, the same of those of the U.S.  When that day arrives, this country in its present form is finished and everyone reading this knows that.

So, we continue to do our work of encouraging, inspiring, and agitating the African masses and all peace and justice loving humanity.  In this case, the Second Amendment of the U.S. constitution is our focus.  That amendment, written as an add to the so-called bill of rights on December 15, 1791, was the result of a struggle between the ruling class European men to ensure that European men had the right to form and maintain "state militias" as an alleged safe guard against the supposed "tyranny" of the federal U.S. government. 

Now, it should be about as obvious as the sun rising each morning for anyone with even a cursory understanding of U.S. history to read between the lines and properly interpret the real objective of this amendment, but the problem here is the phase "cursory understanding."  I participated in a discussion with some people yesterday where we assessed and commented on a picture going around of a woman breastfeeding her baby in public.  The caption to the picture read "this is disgusting!  It should never be permitted in public!"  Since the woman had her flip flop shoes resting on the table, the picture and caption was intended as some sort of silly joke to imply the caption was really about the flip flops and not the breastfeeding.  Most of the people commenting were overjoyed to point to anyone attempting to defend the women's right to breastfeed in public that those defenders were quick to judge, missing the point about the flip flops on the table.  As I indicated to this group, the joke could never be funny because the only reason the joke could even be attempted as a joke in the first place is because of the commodification of non-men's bodies and the related reality that women are harassed everyday for feeding their children in public.  The fact this obvious fact was missed by all those who wanted to focus on the stupid flip flops is a clear example of the effectiveness of dumb down techniques in this society today.  Consequently, although the real objective of the so-called second amendment should be clear to all, there is no question that a large percentage of people actually believe that the language in that amendment was specific to people - meaning European people - having the right to bear arms and nothing else.  To the masses of uncritical thinkers in this country, that is really all there is to that question.

To hard cold truth of course is that the actual debate behind the amendment was behind the question of the consequences of slavery being ended in 1863-65.  When this happened, the masses of Africans, anxious as hell to escape the trauma of slave plantations in the Southern U.S., fled the Southern U.S. in the millions after the civil war ended.  There are so many myths around this period designed to uphold the fictional "greatness" around the U.S.  First, the civil war itself was not fought to end slavery so the Northern soldiers who fought in the civil war, contrary to what so-called European historians want you to believe, did not fight to end slavery.  They didn't fight for that just cause in that war anymore than any U.S. troops have ever fought for any just cause then and leading up to today.  As as always been the case, troops in the U.S. armed forces are fighting to develop and maintain the capitalist empire.  Those troops who fought in that civil war were fighting to help the North win to protect the rights of large and developing capitalist business interests to expand their industry into the Southern U.S.  By protecting the slave institution, the Southern plantation industry was slowing down the industrialization process e.g. the mechanization of the production of products.  The Northern Industrialists knew that industrialization was the key to their ability to dominate economically so their support for the North to win the war was simply a business decision. It had absolutely nothing to do with our fate one way or another and Lincoln's own words about our freedom confirm that.  The second piece of misinformation goes back to the mythical belief, held up high by European people today, that the so-called second amendment was there to protect White people from the U.S. federal government.  Those plantation industry owners?  They were bleeding money prolifically after slavery.  Although they institutionalized every illegal and immoral effort imaginable to intimidate our people into staying on as plantation sharecroppers, they were not successful in extorting enough of us to do that so these plantation people used the U.S. legislative process to protect their rights (as they always do).  They starting employing roving bands of armed thugs, called posses, to travel the countryside and terrorize Africans into turning around and heading back to work as sharecroppers on the Southern plantations.  The so-called second amendment was simply the lobbying effort on behalf of these criminals to push to ensure that these bands of terrorists had the legal protection to carry out their barbaric acts against our people.  There is no other way you can effectively explain why the first version of the so-called second amendment was drafted with the word "nation" included by James Madison, only to be debated and changed to "state" to ensure these roving bands of degenerates could operate with immunity in their repression of our people.  This is ill-refutable despite whatever constant efforts the apologists for white supremacy make to try and cleanse their racist and terrorist history.  And, then, to add insult to injury, those same primitive elements pushed to employ those same posses as developing police departments in the Southern U.S.  By 1800, the men who had terrorized our people on the wagon trails were now licensed police in cities throughout the U.S.  Thus, effectively demolishing the myth that police were ever here to "protect and serve" African people.  When they shoot us down today they are simply fulfilling their historic mission, carrying out the objectives their forefathers intended them to perform.

With this proper interpretation of history, it becomes much easier to understand why any effort African people make to bear arms in this country, from the African Blood Brotherhood in the 1920s, to the Deacons for Defense in 1964, to the Black Panther Party in 1965 in Alabama, and then 1966 in Oakland, California, etc., are consistently met with opposition from everyone, including those hypocrites who claim to want gun rights for all "law abiding" people.  The U.S. will never be comfortable with Africans owning firearms because as that drunk European college student told me back in 1980 "we are afraid that once you all get the chance, you will do to us what we have always done to you."

Europeans shouldn't worry about us that way.  We have never been, nor will we ever be, a bloodthirsty people.  If we were, we would have certainly risen up and started slitting their throats years ago.  History will definitely judge that had we done so, we would have easily been within our rights, but that's not who we are.  We are a humanistic people.  Humanism is an essential element of African culture.  Walk down the street in any African city in Africa and observe someone commit a crime like snatching someone's purse.  Multiple people will take off after that person, catch them, and return the stolen item to its owner.  This pales in comparison to the consistent history of Europeans brutally killing, raping, doing whatever they want to us, anywhere in the world, and other Europeans standing around and enjoying the barbaric scene.  There is no equivalence anywhere for African people.  We don't want revenge.  We do want justice.  That justice looks like us organizing against this backward system, including us learning how to own and properly manage firearms, despite what their constitution says and what their organizations do. 
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Are Anti-White Feelings Rooted in Deep Anti-African Programming?

8/30/2018

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Please refrain from responding to the title here by reciting all of the trauma and terror that Europe and her children have deposited on the planet for the last 500+ years.  If you are paying attention, you should know this is one of the last places where that response is necessary.  The question here is based in analyzing the colonized mindset and conditions of African people.  That 500 year reign of terror has institutionalized within the African masses that we are inferior.  It has delivered the same message about us to all non-African peoples.  We are resilient people so our struggling masses are never going to lie down and accept being oppressed.  One of the many ways we unconsciously fight back against the inhumane treatment we receive from our oppressors is to challenge the legitimacy of those oppressors.  No one in the last 100 years was more articulate at voicing that challenge than El Hajj Malik El Shabazz (Malcolm X).  When Malcolm was a member of the Nation of Islam and giving those extended street corner rally speeches in Harlem, New York in the late 50s and early 60s, he became an expert at deconstructing the immortality of European people.  Malcolm would talk about how Europeans had noses like "dogs" and how they smelled "like canine creatures."  He would disparage the pale skin of European women.  He even crafted an analysis that Europeans, being less than human, do not possess the capacity to laugh like the rest of God's children.  

This language certainly served to dehumanize Europeans, but that has to be placed within its proper context.  In the 1950s, there had been no mass African independence movement.  No civil rights movement in the U.S. and Caribbean.  And certainly, no Black power and Pan-African institutionalization.  In those days, the narrative and image of Tarzan represented the dominant image of Africa, even to many people living inside the continent.  Of course, all of those issues are still very much alive today, but due to the relentless struggle our people are waging, there are also many healthy counter narratives at play today on all levels of our existence.  In the 1950s, this was much less so.  By doing what he did, Malcolm, and others, helped plant the seeds of deconstructing that colonial mindset by knocking the Europeans down several notches so that we could see them as they really are, fallible, highly confused human beings like the rest of us. 

Malcolm's methodology also had a purpose. He was working to recruit our people into a movement that was based on expressing the virtues of being African people.  Within this analysis, the work of Malcolm and others makes sense from an anti-colonial standpoint, but what we are seeing today is an aberration of what Malcolm was working to accomplish.  Today, Africans, particularly within the Western Hemisphere, have adopted some of the most strange and far out conspiracy concepts and theories.  We were never from Africa.  We have been in the Western Hemisphere for thousands of years.  We are not even biologically and/or culturally connected in any way to Africa.  These are some of the ideas that are floating around out here today.  At the base of much of this thinking is the unstated assumption that by creating this fictitious history for our people, we can create some new context for who we are that somehow rises us up to the level that we secretly see Europeans occupying.  Much of this philosophy is rooted in a core belief that Europeans are the basis from which human progress must be judged.  This is true of even the most "Black" and/or even African philosophies operating out here today.

These conclusions can be reached because these philosophies almost always come with some disclaimer against European culture and ways of life.  As if these pseudo cooked up philosophies offer us a pride that we need because we don't have it anywhere else.  And, the reason we can easily conclude that these beliefs are rooted in anti-African thinking is because none of these people, and I mean not one of them, possess even the slightest understanding of African history, tribal histories, cultural perspectives, and certainly not political developments and class struggles.  Nothing.  That's why their beliefs don't even match up with material reality.  For instance, if it was true that most or all of us were always in the Western Hemisphere, where are these people who can prove that their families have roots going back thousands of years here?  What were their names and what culture did they have?  I don't know about you, but I've never met a single person who can meet any of that criteria.  Ninety-five percent of everyone has a European name and some physical family history in states, regions, countries, in the Western Hemisphere that clearly practiced chattal slavery. 

We believe what's actually happening here is our people continue to harbor significant shame in being African.  We shouldn't blame our people for that.  We have been systemically told that Africa is a place where those who are losing the challenge of life live.  Its a place where all the disease and poverty exists.  This is dominant thinking in the world today and not only are our people not immune to it, we are the most susceptible to it.  Marcus Garvey told us that its impossible to hate the roots and love the tree so with such a lack of understanding about Africa, what our people do instead is make up a false identity to compensate for our feelings of alienation and desperation. And, since we correctly interpret that much of our suffering, at least to the level of being active accomplices in it, results from European people on all levels, we continue to harbor great anger towards Europeans for permitting and often contributing to our trauma.  As a result, we find it necessary to include within our fantasy identities a special rebuke for those White people who created the conditions that require us to live this false life in the first place.

I was arguing with someone once who was trying to tell me that my Pan-African organization, because we did not have an anti-European position and because we supported the Irish Republican Socialist movement, was actually not a pro-African organization.  Their position was that our positions compromised our commitment to our people.  Of course, this person belonged to no organization.  Also true, they had no passport and had never traveled anywhere outside of a few colonial states within the U.S.  I asked them why they hadn't saw the need to secure a passport and travel to Africa?  My point, which I'm quite certain they never understood, was if they were so anti-White, it would seem to me that their first priority would be going to a place where no Europeans existed.  I told them I was in the Gambia once and didn't see a European for weeks.  I had similar experiences in other countries so I would think they would be at the front of the line to get there, yet I couldn't even get this person to follow through on filling out paperwork to get a passport.  Even after I volunteered to pay for it for them.  After extensive back and forth struggle, I have to give this person credit for finally admitting that their apprehension was based on fear.  Beyond the one book I sat and read with them in which they struggled greatly to get through, I knew they had extremely limited understanding about anything about Africa so where was this fear coming from?  That 500+ years of conditioning is where it came from and its manifested through oral misinformation passed down, the backward information we "learned" in school, and through every institution in this society.  Even many of our family members born and raised in Africa, dedicated to using every ounce of their existence to get to Western capitalism, play a significant role in perpetuating confusion about Africa once they get here.

This system makes us hate ourselves and to compensate for that, we make up things because we lack knowledge of our true history.  Then, in addition to that dysfunction, we act out our anger towards Europeans by building superiority over Europeans into our new world views.  Although completely understandable, all of this is counter productive.  There is no need for us to create a false history.  We are without question African people.  The moment we embrace that and stop trying to be anything except that is the moment we can truly grasp who we are in this world so that we can begin to seriously do something about it.  We grasp the truth by challenging the backward narratives that have been forced upon us.  And to do that, its going to require us making a commitment to engage in serious study of our history.  There are no shortcuts.  Reading unsubstantiated debris on the internet cannot substitute for comprehensive study.  We have far too many giants of Pan-African literature for anyone to attempt to use ignorance as an excuse for argumentation.  Start with Marcus and Amy Garvey.  Walter Rodney, Franz Fanon, Kwame Nkrumah, Sekou Ture, Amilcar Cabral, Steve Biko, Mangaliso Sobukwe, Angela Davis, Assata Shakur, Malcolm X, W.E.B. DuBois, etc., etc., etc.  Scholars like Rodney and DuBois provided us with all the historical evidence needed to build up our respect for Africa, but if we don't read it, we will never know it.  Once we have that solid foundation where we understand Africa's enviable and proud history of humanism, collectivism, and egalitarian societies...Once we know of the courage, resilience, and civilization of our people, we will learn to stand on our own real life merits.  We will no longer compare ourselves with Europe and her children, whether done consciously or not.  We will scoff at anyone who makes an attempt to separate us from our Mother - Africa.  And most importantly, we will start to see the necessity to defend our mother as we will understand that our mother has the key to our future development in ways that dwarf any concept of these fake identities being able to compete with.  Plus, a Pan-African reality provides us the muscle to ensure our dignity is respected and protected.  With that in place, we will no longer have the need to be angry at Europeans because they will then be required to respect us in ways we have never imagined.  And, we will respect ourselves in ways we have never imagined.  Instead of believing in anti-human fantasies, its time for us to work to make our reality what its intended to be.


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Did Malcolm X Really Want back in the Nation of Islam?  Or...

8/28/2018

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Plenty of people know the basic story of El Hajj Malik El Shabazz's (Malcolm X) life.  He went to prison in 1946.  He became a believer in the teachings of Elijah Muhammad while in prison and once he got out in the mid 1950s, he became a tireless soldier in building Muhammad's Nation of Islam throughout the U.S.  People know this general framework not because there has been mass serious study of Malcolm's life.  The information out there is there because of the capitalist system's understanding of Malcolm's inspiration to the masses of African people.  The system saw the impact Malcolm had on the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) in mid 1960s before and after Malcolm was assassinated.  Malcolm's ideas challenged SNCC, an organization built in the image and philosophy of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr, to radically transform itself into the face of the Black Power movement.  The capitalist system, always thinking of ways to stay ahead of the masses, decided that if you can't beat em, join em.  Or, at least shape em.  In the 1970s, 80s, and 90s, Malcolm was a regular fixture as a character in mainstream motion pictures like the 1977 "King" where Malcolm was portrayed as a violent sociopath.  The masses of African people, forever distrustful of capitalism's efforts to program them about Malcolm, responded by making Malcolm the image of African resistance and rebelliousness in the late 1980s and early 90s.  Malcolm's voice became a permanent feature on rap records during this period.  Unfortunately, Spike Lee's sorry depiction of Malcolm in his Denzel Washington starring movie "Malcolm X" (1992) did a significant amount of damage in tarnishing the fiery light Malcolm has ignited in the hearts and minds of our people, but since people's progress always continues to move, the verdict was far from over.

Today, Malcolm still serves strongly as an inspiration of liberation and uncompromising pride and determination within African people and all of humanity.  As a result, lots of attention is paid to Malcolm's personal development.  Since not even a full year elapsed between Malcolm's official break with the Nation of Islam (NOI) in March of 1964 and his assassination in February 1965, questions still resonate around Malcolm's actual direction.  Was he a revolutionary Pan-Africanist when he was killed?  Was a militant Black Nationalist?  DId he actually just secretly wish he could return to "the good old days" within the NOI?  Much has been written and said about this over the last 53 years.  And the most high profile literature e.g. Manning Marable's tragic volume book on Malcolm in 2014 and some of the other garbage produced by people like Bruce Perry, etc., have said a lot about Malcolm's intentions while not supplying enough evidence to win over Judge Judy's Court room.  Today, the questions about which direction Malcolm was headed in still loom large.  

One of the most common theories, promoted understandably and most consistently by members of NOI, is that Malcolm really wanted back in the Nation.  To support this claim, these folks point to the calls and at least one letter Malcolm wrote to Elijah Muhammad since his break asking for a conversation with "the Messenger."  The logic used here is that Malcolm wanted nothing more than an audience to beg forgiveness for forsaking the Nation and had Muhammad given him that audience, Malcolm could today still be alive and still in the Nation.  Although this argument has an emotional appeal for those who promote it, there isn't much concrete evidence to support this position.  There is clear documentation that Malcolm did write that letter to Muhammad.  And, he probably did make some calls, but none of this proves anything really.  Placing the situation in 1963/64 in context, Malcolm was under an overwhelming amount of pressure.  He was fighting with the Nation for the very house he and his family depended upon for shelter.  He was experiencing confirmed death threats and actual attempts against his life on a regular basis.  There was open hostility against him by followers of Muhammad who viewed his defection as treason.  And most of all of that was secretly being facilitated and manipulated by the U.S. government. Under these adverse circumstances, Malcolm had no protection.  Its seems reasonable that a logical thinker like Malcolm would surmise that a detente with the Nation would be the way to stave off this pressure.  So, like the person in any relationship who knows that relationship isn't healthy, but decides to continue to exist within that environment, something that happens all the time, Malcolm could have reached out in a desperate effort to generate some peace.  This certainly wouldn't mean that he was 100% ideologically in line with returning to the NOI.  And, nothing about everything Malcolm was doing suggests that.

Questions that have never really been seriously explored, especially by the slate of worthless literature produced by people like Marable, is what exactly was the foundation of Malcolm's work those last eleven months?  What we know is Malcolm traveled to several countries in Africa and the Middle East.  One trip in 1964 he was gone for five months total.  Malcolm had no job and no source of income.  Who was paying for his travels?  And why?  Certainly not the NOI?  What we know for sure is Malcolm certainly completed his religious journey during the Hajj he took to the Middle East.  It seems reasonable that Muslim leaders in those countries, anxious to have a high level Islamic voice in the U.S., would underwrite Malcolm's travels for this purpose. It doesn't add up that those same sources would underwrite Malcolm's extensive travels throughout Africa.  Particularly to countries like Ghana, Tanzania, and even Guinea - which although dominantly Islamic was as much Pan-Africanist and politicized in its representation to the world as anything else.  We know that Malcolm had multiple meetings with Kwame Nkrumah, the then president of Ghana.  Why has the content of those meetings never been seriously discussed?  Lee's movie didn't even bother to address those meetings.  Since his movie was based on Malcolm's autobiography this seems strange since Malcolm asserts in that book that his meetings with Nkrumah were the "highest honor of his life."  That's a significant statement from someone who became literate by reading the entire dictionary.  A strong compliment from someone who helped create the largest independent African organization in the U.S. at that time and since that time to the present.  A solid assessment from someone who was a center piece of starting the Nation's first newspaper.  From someone who debated racism at Oxford, on television, and in every corner of the world.  Although I wasn't in those meetings between Malcolm and Nkrumah, a close look at Malcolm during those last few months shed light on exactly how he was moving.  

When Malcolm returned to the U.S. from visiting Nkrumah, Sekou Ture, and other Pan-Africanists in Africa, the first thing he did was announce the formation of the Organization of Afro-American Unity (OAAU).  This was done exactly one year after Nkrumah helped found the Organization of African Unity (OAU).  At that time, Nkrumah believed the OAU was going to be the vehicle that facilitated Pan-Africanism and all evidence indicates Malcolm believed the OAAU would be the U.S. branch of that OAU.  Unfortunately, imperialism had different plans.  Today, the OAU, which is now called the African Union, is identified as a clear structure serving neo-colonialism, capitalism, and imperialism.  Nkrumah was beginning to recognize that in 1964 as his landmark book "Neo-Colonialism" illustrated that year, but like Malcolm, he was short on time.  Practically one year to the day after Malcolm was assassinated, Nkrumah's government in Ghana was overthrown in a wicked imperialist planned and supported coup.  

Still, the questions remain.  What did Malcolm and Nkrumah discuss?  Malcolm's daughter published his diary in 2016 and in there he discussed how Nkrumah warned him that Ghanaian intelligence forces had detected that the U.S. government would attempt to kill Malcolm.  Malcolm admitted in his diary and Nkrumah addresses in the book of his letters ("The Conakry Years"), that Nkrumah did warn Malcolm.  And, that Malcolm was invited to stay on in Ghana.  What was Malcolm being invited to stay on in Ghana and do?  History gives us a glimpse.  Three years after Malcolm's assassination another young African revolutionary in the U.S. met with Nkrumah, who after the coup in Ghana, was then living in Guinea-Conakry under the protection of the Democratic Party of Guinea and Sekou Ture.  That second African revolutionary from the U.S. was Kwame Ture (then Stokely Carmichael).  We know for sure that Nkrumah asked Carmichael to stay on in Guinea and help build the All African People's Revolutionary Party which was Nkrumah's response to neo-colonialsim and imperialism in Africa.  

We believe Nkrumah wanted Malcolm to stay in Ghana - at that time - and do the work that Kwame Ture ended up doing.  The conditions Malcolm faced in 1064 were drastically different than those facing Kwame Ture in 1969, but Malcolm clearly left Africa committed philosophically to the vision Nkrumah articulated.  The book "The Final Speeches of Malcolm X" (not to be confused with "The Last Speeches of Malcolm X") contains the last eleven speeches Malcolm gave in chronological order.  Each and every one of these speeches has a clear Pan-Africanist focus and this wasn't something that Malcolm was just focused on in those last eleven months of his life.  His response to the reporter about Kennedy's assassination in December 1963 - his famous "chickens coming home to roost" statement was as strong a Pan-Africanist statement as has ever been made and Malcolm made that statement while still on active duty in the NOI.  Meanwhile, the Nation was issuing a statement of condolences for "the loss of our president."  Its not a knock against the Nation.  Its just truth that there's no way Malcolm was philosophically aligned with this organization at that point in his life.  In fact, you can see this trend in Malcolm's words as early as 1960.  I would explain this as human progress doesn't stand still.  Although I understand the continued claim by NOI people that Muhammad produced Malcolm, that also isn't a very concrete argument.  We are all produced by someone. It could be said that Marcus Garvey produced Elijah Muhammad and that Booker T. Washington produced Marcus Garvey, etc.  Clearly, its not nearly as important where we came from as it is where we are going.  There is little doubt in my mind that Malcolm was headed towards a solid understanding of Nkrumah's prophetic statement that no African anywhere on Earth will ever be free until Africa is free.  Malcolm took this position with vigor and used his uncanny wit to make this message palatable to the masses e.g. "We are still Africans.  If a cat has kittens in the oven you don't call them biscuits!"  We don't believe Malcolm became even more outspoken on Pan-Africanism simply because he was more than likely receiving financial backing by Nkrumah, Ture, and others.  Actually, they supported him because he was a genuine Pan-Africanist who was doing concrete work to advance the cause internationally.  There is much to support this thinking and very little to refute it.  Had Malcolm had more time, there's little question that all real and imagined doubt would have been completely erased.
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People's Violence Versus State Sponsored/Supported Violence

8/24/2018

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Lil Bobby Hutton and Bobby Seale leading a group of 29 Black Panther Party members and supporters into the California State Capitol on May 2, , 1967, to protest the racist Mulford bill designed to prohibit Panthers from carrying guns in public. Had the Panthers organized and used those guns against the state, it would have been ill advised and premature, but it wouldn't be African people being violent because their decision to do so was prompted by 500 years of terrorist state supported and sponsored violence against us.
Yesterday, I had an intense conversation with a European man who approached my table to challenge me on the definition of socialism.  I'm going to reference that conversation to establish the framework for this article.  Some people will read that and say its not fair for me to have a conversation with someone and then write about that conversation to people who were not a part of the conversation.  To that I say many people know I write prolifically on this blog.  And, if you don't know that, you should know it before you pick a fight with me because if you are arrogant enough to approach me with a nonsense argument, then I'm going to be committed enough to expose your racism to the world.  As is usually the case, my conversation with this individual broached many different subjects, but I'm going to reference him asking me what I would do if a klansman showed up where he and I were talking.  I told him if the klansman approached me, I would end his misery.  From that, this individual attempted to go on a tirade accusing me of "being violent" because I didn't know the klansman and therefore, I had no understanding of his motives and consequently, I would be wrong to do anything to prevent him from "expressing his views."  This individual became mortally offended when I told him he didn't know anything about what he was talking about and he sounded as ignorant as "a barnyard animal."  Eventually, this person acknowledged, at least on a minimal level, the moral and historical correctness of my position, but that's not the point.  I didn't want or need his validation.

The point is it has become normalized in current times for far too many people to accept the individualistic and immaterial vision of history that each situation has its own truth.  As a result of this bourgeois logic, a klansman now has individual agency and his decision to represent an organization that has spent the last 150 years brutalizing, terrorizing, and murdering my people, suddenly has no basis of legitimacy in how we decide we must respond to this person to protect ourselves.

You see this distorted logic everywhere.  The land reform programs that were initiated in Zimbabwe in 1990 and Azania, South Africa, this year, are being characterized as an unfair and violent theft from the colonizers whose ancestors violently and illegally stole the land in the first place.  If those colonizers were so concerned about justice, why didn't they make effort some time ago to provide reparations for the injustices that placed them in the position of privilege at the expense of our people?  Apparently, justice is only a word they know when they perceive themselves as being deprived of it.  I'm clear across the world and I know the history of how they illegally got the land so I know they must know it.  Yet, our people correcting a 500+ year injustice is being discussed as if these latest reform acts (long overdue and tame compared to what we should be doing to get our lands back) are just as unjust as the violent colonial domination that institutionalized inequality in the first place.

So there's little question that the dominant narrative on violence is that when the state executes and supports it, that's ok, but when the people exercise it, then its criminal.  And, we are not saying that working class Europeans created this mindset.  They didn't.  We simply blame them for doing what they consistently continue to do, accept backward mindsets like that without even questioning or challenging it.  In fact, most of them overwhelmingly endorse it.  And, in doing so, they adopt this caviar attitude against our suffering, minimizing it, and acting as if their white vision is the only vision that has validity.  I even saw pictures floating around the internet of white people making jokes about the silly outfits white supremacists were wearing to rallies around the country in recent weeks.  I realize that if I was white, and therefore removed from the historical and systemic elements of white supremacist violence, I would probably think a good way to release my stress about the situation would be to dehumanize the imagery of these racists, but for us, our history of suffering from these people is far too great for us to dismiss any of them, regardless of how silly other white people think they look.  Many white people look silly to us in any number of situations and scenarios, but we still can never drop our guard and dismiss them as harmless because history easily tells us otherwise.  A klan robe all by itself looks silly, but compared to the horrifying stories I've heard my entire life from my Southern born and bred relatives along with the vast history I've studied, if the klan looked like donkeys I'd still need to take that as seriously as is humanly possible.

What all this tells us is we can never accept European definitions for our struggle on any level.  We cannot even give them the time to express their views.  In fact, there is nothing they need do around us except provide material support for our liberation work.  If that support must come with European analysis, keep your support.  We don't want or need it.  Clearly, with far too many Europeans carrying this continued dysfunctional love affair with capitalism, we just need to accept that they will never see any effort we make to assert our dignity as justified because in their worldview, our opposition against capitalism is an opposition against them.

​As for people's violence versus that supported and/or carried out by the state, we have to continue to boldly assert that are oppressed victims of the state, and those the state supports who would brutalize us e.g. vigilantes, white supremacist groups, etc., we have the right and responsibility to organize for the capacity to carry out revolutionary violence to overrun the forces of oppression.  And, to be clear, when we say revolutionary violence, we are talking about the ability to organize to engage in planned violence to overthrow the state.  We are not ducking behind the "safety" of claiming self defense.  We are claiming our right to protect our current and future generations, other oppressed peoples, and the planet by stopping the ability of those causing harm to all those entities to do so.  In other words, for those who are a little slower, if I stop someone from committing a rape, I'm not guilty of committing an act of violence.  If those who show up to stop racists from normalizing racism, which means normalizing racist violence since that is the legacy of such people, then even if the people showing up to stop racism do so by physically stopping the racists from being physically present, those people doing the stopping are not committing acts of violence.  And, to say so is being dishonest and inhumane.

Our issue is never with those who show up to stop racists from showing up.  Our issue is that most of those people who do that stop there.  They do not proceed to engage in the most important element of that work e.g. organizing European people so that they never join racist groups in the first place.  And, if when showing up to stop those racists, the anti-racists do so using any means necessary, they are right to do so.  If African people use whatever methods possible to stop ourselves from being brutalized by state terrorists and their surrogates, we are within our rights as human beings to do so.  We shouldn't spend five seconds debating, arguing, convincing, about the morality of our position on this question.  Anyone who doesn't get it at this point isn't interested in getting it.  Any Europeans who continue to center themselves when we are the ones being systemically brutalized are only concerned about validating themselves.  All we have to do is continue to engage in the work of organizing our people for revolutionary victory.  If we do that, the rest will take care of itself.

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    I don't see disagreement as a negative because I understand that Frederick Douglass was correct when he said "there is no progress without struggle."  Our brains are muscles.  Just like any other muscle in our body if we don't stress it and push it, the brain will not improve.  Or, as a bumper sticker I saw once put it, "If you can't change your mind, how do you know it's there?"

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