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A Simple Vision for Understanding Bank Failures

3/19/2023

According to a February 2023 Federal Deposit and Insurance Corporation (FDIC) audit, 563 U.S. banks have failed and/or come under regulatory authority since 2021. Here in California, U.S., the latest casualty has been the Silicon Valley Bank (SVB). This latest rash of bank failures, especially within the software start up SVB, have alarmed apologists for capitalism all over the world. With this piece, we are hopeful we can bring some fundamental understanding of what’s happening for everyday working people.

First, it should be explained that the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) is an institution of the U.S. federal government. Its reason for existing is to provide some level of guarantees against bank failure. They do this by regulating banks, auditing them, and insuring bank deposits for up to $250,000 USD (aggregate deposits per institution). What this means – for example is if you have $275,000.00 in liquid asset deposits in any U.S. bank, if that bank fails and/or comes under FDIC jurisdiction, your deposits for up to $250,000.00 are insured by the federal government, meaning the government should issue you a check for that amount. The remaining $25.000.00 in deposits that you had in the failed bank makes you now a creditor for that bank, meaning they owe you that money just as you owe your credit card companies, car finance institutions, etc.

Of course, like any creditor/borrower relationship, your ability to get repayment has no guarantee. The bank can come under bankruptcy protection, etc., which means you would lose all or most of that $25,000.00 using that hypothetical example, but that is a fundamental definition of the role of the FDIC. Its worth noting that credit unions are governed by the National Credit Union Administration (NCUA), which serves the same general purpose for credit unions that the FDIC serves for banks, including insuring deposits for up to an aggregate $250.000.00 per customer/member per institution.

Its important to also note that the FDIC was formed in 1933 as a result of the Banking Act legislation. This happened four years after the great stock market crash of 1929 which means the FDIC was created as a vehicle to encourage renewed trust in the U.S. banking system. Its that question of trust that provides the basis for creating a simple way of analyzing and understanding what is happening with banks within the capitalist system and how to interpret these bank failures.

When we look at the operational functionality of the banking system, we have to start with its origins. Contrary to popular opinion, the international banking system, and the concept of capital as the foundation of that system, did not start from the creative and intellectual genius of the fathers of the capitalist system. Instead, the start up capital for the international banking system came directly from proceeds produced from the enslavement of kidnapped Africans. The labor of their work was converted to revenues that were invested to initiate the banking system and the capital it would rely on to facilitate its existence. Every large international bank today from Chase to Barclays owes its origins to this nefarious beginning. If we understand and accept this ill-refutable history, it should be easy to understand that the capitalist banking system, from its beginning, has been about exploitation and its that reality that paves the way for greater understanding of what’s happening today.

Banks operate by taking your deposits, no matter how large or small, and investing those deposits to generate capital. The more money you have to deposit, the greater incentives the banks provide you for doing so i.e. no fees, more services, slightly higher dividends (returns on your deposits), etc. Regardless, whether you have $250,000.00 deposited in a bank, or $25.00, the process works the same. Your money is used by the bank to invest in any number of financial projects designed to provide a positive return for the bank on your deposit. For the overwhelming majority of us, this is done with little to no return for you. In other words, if you have a job where your paycheck is direct deposited into your bank account every two weeks – say $2500.00 twice per month. And, from each check you have $300.00 automatically transferred into your savings account, that means you are saving $600.00 USD per month. You will receive next to nothing for that money sitting and growing in that bank, but the bank will use your deposits and invest them in any number of profit generating projects – primarily exploitative projects around the world because those types of investments are the best suited to produce the highest return on the dollar. Think exploitative companies that steal resources from Africa for example. Companies like Dutch Royal Shell, or Shell Oil, rob Nigeria’s Niger Delta blind drilling for oil. There is no over-sight and the workers are paid peanuts. As a result, Shell’s profits continue to break records. Well, a bank will invest in Shell’s stocks and profit from Shell’s theft of resources from Nigeria. So, as Shell’s profits grow, the bank’s profits grow. And, by profits we mean capital i.e. money the bank earns that serves the sole and specific purpose of being reinvested for additional profits.

That’s why when the capitalist commentators talk about most U.S. banks being “well capitalized” they are primarily telling the truth. These banks have millions of dollars – dollars they made investing your deposits – sitting around ready for them to invest to make even greater profits. Meanwhile, you get slim to nothing from them using your money and you will even be penalized if you come upon rough times and cannot maintain the minimum requirements they demand to keep your account(s) going. They have to make those demands of you because if your money isn’t available to them, they have nothing to invest and profit off of it. If you think about it, the banking model is basically the same as someone coming to you, taking your paycheck when you cash it, using your money to make additional money from it, and just returning to you what they took from you in the first place. And, if they are unable to get a return on your paycheck, they are usually supported by the government in their financial challenges while you are left to figure out how to proceed on your own with no help or support.

That’ still not even the full story. Besides the example of investing in the exploitative practices of Shell and other criminal multi-national exploitative capitalist corporations, the banks invest heavily into shady and high risk ventures like securities from the secondary market. These type of investments are often bundled high risk mortgage loans – meaning loans provided to buyers who’s repayment potential is questionable, but who agreed to repayment terms at much higher, and profitable, interest rates. These types of unscrupulous business practices by banks have resulted in devastating consequences such as the 2008 mortgage crash in the U.S. where everyday consumers were left houseless while the banks were bailed out by the 2009 multi-billion dollar gangster deal – compliments of the Obama Administration – the most lucrative welfare scheme in human history.

As it relates to banks like the Silicon Valley Bank in Santa Clara, California, U.S., the same principles apply. This bank was the home for software start up companies who invested incredible sums of money in highly questionable ventures for most its 40 year existence. As has been alluded to, this has always been the program of capitalist banks, but in recent years we are seeing the limitations of this strategy much easier because the decline of capitalism i.e. its inability to meet production demands and produce on a consistent basis (due to contradictions with labor, resistance to this exploitation, global insecurity, higher costs of production, etc.) has created conditions where the once assumed stability of capitalist banks is now more and more in question. This is a reality that will continue to create hardship for millions of people, worldwide, but in the long run, this also has the potential to represent a new day for the masses of humanity where capital no longer controls the narrative everywhere on earth. There are a lot of variables to unpack in order to create that reality, but for now, the best thing all of us can do is engage every effort that we can to educate our communities about the role of banking institutions to profit from our continued exploitation and how the system is set up to support their existence, and failures, while making us the main source of accountability for ourselves and their greedy exploitative practices. This problem, like every other problem we face, cannot be resolved through any level of individual initiative. It cannot be resolved by any other approach to stabilizing the capitalist system. This problem is a reflection of the exploitative basis from which capitalism developed hundreds of years ago and its simply a manifestation that this profit over people model of operation is existing in its final days. This may be a scary thought to many, but at the end of the day, Kwame Ture was 100% correct when he said that “if we don’t struggle for revolution, we suffer so why don’t we organize and take the suffering as a pathway to our liberation and forward progress instead of just continuing to suffer with no end in sight?” Capitalist banks are viewed as vehicles to provide us with houses, cars, loans, etc. What they are in reality is a criminal operation that is 100% supported by the U.S. government which is nothing more than a mouthpiece for international capitalism. The sooner we can do the necessary work to create broader consciousness around this, the sooner we can reclaim the resources that rightfully belong, not to a small and criminal elite, but to the masses of people on earth.

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"Say It Loud" - A Sad Attempt to Dishonestly Discredit Kwame Ture

2/12/2023

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It was November 2022 when I first saw notification that Mark Whitaker’s “Say It Loud – When Black Power Challenged the Civil Rights Movement” book was going to drop in February, 2023. I typically prefer books written by journalists with activist backgrounds as opposed to strictly news media histories, so I had concerns about Whitaker, who’s experience contains U.S. magazine editing and related fields. Still, I’m without question a student of our movement history and whenever anything is written that provides a perspective on revolutionaries who contribute to our movement for justice, especially African revolutionaries, I make it my business to study that material.

Whitaker’s book, focusing on the events that exploded out of the June 1966 Mississippi march where the Black power chant started a new phase of the civil rights movement, had a specific focus on Kwame Ture, formally Stokely Carmichael. After his work in the U.S. movement, Ture played a significant role in laying the foundation for the work of the All African People’s Revolutionary Party (A-APRP), the party I have spent my entire adult life contributing to, so I knew I had to study this book. Doing so is a priority because there has been a concerted effort, unnoticed by the untrained eye, directed at discrediting the work of uncompromising radicals like Kwame Ture. Former U.S. empire president Bill Clinton, speaking at former civil rights activist and U.S. congressman John Lewis’s funeral in 2020, provided an example of this trend when he took a swipe at Kwame’s legacy within the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC).

It is without question, our responsibility as African revolutionaries to protect the legacy of our soldiers so that our people can know that its perfectly okay for us to decide to chart a of action that isn’t in any way defined by capitalist norms and values. Consequently, I immediately pre-ordered Whitaker’s book in November of 2022, and the book arrived on February 7, 2023. A 307 page book, I completed it by Saturday, February 10, 2023. And, I don’t say that to brag, but to illustrate how frustrating the contents of the book were and how determined I was to get through it so I could use our platforms to let people know. As is the case within the capitalist paradigm of history, Whitaker’s book made every effort to discredit Kwame Ture as is their practice with anyone who exhibits genuine African militancy that doesn’t cow tow to worldwide imperialism.

We will say first that you are strongly encouraged here to read the book. We will always encourage people to read everything, regardless of how bad, because we believe one of the primary reasons poor works like Whitaker’s book are able to continue to pass as major literature on our movement is because the overwhelming majority of us have made little to no effort to take it upon ourselves to seriously study and articulate our history for ourselves. And by ourselves, I don’t mean anyone with “Black” skin. We recognize the necessity at all times for a nation, class, gender analysis in anything we study and use so we are talking about a revolutionary Pan-Africanist perspective, not the race of the author.

“Saying It Loud” fell short by using tired old tropes about the civil rights movement being the highest expression of African existence while the Black Power era of that movement is depicted as poisoning the sanctity and pureness of the anti-segregation phase of the movement. And, as can be expected, Kwame Ture’s rise to chair of SNCC was consistently portrayed in the book as the demise of the organization while John Lewis’s tenure was discussed, as is usually the case in reformist literature, as pristine and without major contradiction.

The above would actually be okay, because there are always going to be serious ideological differences between the revolutionary and reformist perspectives of history. This is to be expected, but what’s offensive about Whitaker’s book is its efforts to minimize the intellectual capacity and seriousness Kwame Ture had for our struggle. The author constantly paints a picture of Ture as never truly being serious about the struggle as if Kwame’s style and practice during the most dangerous periods of the movement provide some sort of evidence about his lack of seriousness and even worse, his lack of mental stability. For example, Whitaker saw Kwame’s use of humor while being incarcerated at the notorious Parchmen Prison in Mississippi, for his civil rights work as proof of his lack of seriousness. Whitaker insinuates the same regarding Kwame’s reaction to a number of terrorist events that Kwame was directly involved in. Anyone who knows anything about the torture and degradation Kwame and others experienced routinely, knows that any method the organizers could use to get through, and help others get through, the experience, should be praised, whether you understand those tactics or not. This is true because regardless of how people processed that trauma, they were there because of their courage and commitment to our struggle for justice. Kwame’s willingness to consistently risk his life had no personal upside. He never cashed in on those experiences such as could be argued about a number of his political contemporaries. This fact can never be questioned, especially by someone in the media who never risked a toenail for anything beyond themselves.

Unfortunately, Whitaker continues with this logic throughout the book, criticizing everything Kwame does without even the slightest analysis applied in the process. For instance, he focuses a lot on Kwame’s individual speaking engagements as if to imply that Kwame was only interested in the spotlight that the SNCC chair position afforded him and not movement building. This point is further brought out in the book by Whitaker’s insistence that Kwame’s speeches were “incendiary” and that he never explained what was meant by Black Power. To Whitaker, incendiary apparently means anything that doesn’t fit neatly within the capitalist paradigm. For instance, Kwame’s insistence that African people should use whatever means are available to them to secure their human rights is incendiary to Whitaker because we are never supposed to have agency and humanity. We are always only supposed to accept what the capitalist system is willing to provide to us. In this colonialist/slave master framework, any suggestion that we should take our freedom from an empire that has everything it has solely because of what it steals from us, is always considered ill responsible. As to Whitaker’s criticism about Kwame’s refusal to define Black Power for the U.S. capitalist media, its incredible that he cannot understand that a major underpinning of Black Power is the concept that we will determine our own destiny. A major element of that self determination is recognizing that we no longer need to base our movement on what is understood by the people holding up the system that is oppressing us. If you want to understand Black Power or Pan-Africanism, etc., do your own emotional labor and study to understand it. It is not the responsibility of the oppressed segment to define their vision in a way that makes sense to you and its unfathomable that this still needs to be explained to people in 2023. And, to add insult to injury, Whitaker suggests that Kwame’s reaction to the military draft board and some of his responses to the frantic pressure within SNCC, suggest mental instability on his part. This worthless analysis isn’t even worth the time it would take to respond to it.

Finally, the book relies on more tired and played out tactics of disrespect such as refusing to acknowledge that Stokely Carmichael becomes Kwame Ture in 1977. Although Whitaker articulates the name change, he continues to refer to Kwame as Stokely Carmichael, a fundamental and basic form of disrespect not just for Kwame, but for our efforts to de-colonize ourselves as a people. Also, this book falls into the exact same bourgeoisie trap that Peniel Joseph’s work on Kwame’s life and so many other depictions of Kwame’s life after he leaves the U.S. for good in 1969. Since these people wholeheartedly accept the bourgeoisie and racist conception that everything is always centered around the U.S., anyone like Kwame Ture who decides otherwise must be insane and this is the basis from Whitaker and so many others reference to Kwame’s decision to move to Africa. Relying on the same discredited allegations against Sekou Ture and the Democratic Party of Guinea, Whitaker uses Kwame Ture’s move to Guinea-Conakry to again question his intellectual stability while relegating any further analysis of Kwame’s work to his annual appearances in the U.S. (since for these people that’s the definition of anything and everything).
This sad analysis of Kwame’s life completely ignores his work from 1969 to 1998 to become a Central Committee member for the Democratic Party of Guinea and the A-APRP while using his contacts and influence to expand the A-APRP throughout Africa as called for in Kwame Nkrumah’s “Handbook of Revolutionary Warfare”, the strategy to achieve Pan-Africanism. After just returning from Guinea-Bissau a few short weeks ago, I was able to again see the results of Kwame Ture’s initial work in Africa in building the A-APRP and Pan-Africanism as I’ve seen in previous trips to Ghana, Tanzania, Gambia, Senegal, etc. Even a cursory observation of this massive body of work reveals that Kwame Ture retained consistency in elevating his relation to Black Power to a broader and more comprehensive understanding of Pan-Africanism, the highest expression of Black Power the world knows. This elevation was progress from Kwame Ture, not evidence of an eroding mental state. Its hard to imagine a more racist and reactionary framework as that suggested in Whitaker’s book around this question, no matter who or where it originates from.

So, again, we encourage you to read Whitaker’s book if you desire to do so. We also encourage you to study up on the work of the A-APRP, particularly Kwame Ture’s life after he moved to Africa. We encourage this because its ill refutable that the more we practice this type of study, the easier it becomes for us to interpret these things through the critical vision necessary to have the healthiest perspective humanly possible. Things like acknowledging that this period Whitaker covers in his book represents a period when Kwame Ture was a mere 25 years old facing opposition from every corner of the capitalist power structure. Imagine a 25 year old speaking to the contradiction of a powerless and oppressed people coming to see their agency as being their responsibility and truly justice minded people rising to support that concept instead of acting as if such a perspective could only exist among people who have some other ulterior motive and/or or are just not truly serious about their messaging. Pay attention to how if Whitaker provided a fraction of critique towards notoriously corrupt and racist individuals like Ronald Reagan and Federal Bureau of Investigation terrorists Cartha Deloach and William Sullivan (he barely mentions them) that he did Kwame Ture he would have had a 1000 page book.

We realize that imperialism’s role is always going to be to discredit any efforts by anyone to challenge its hegemony. We will never be taken aback by that. What we are concerned about is just how easy it continues to be for so many of us to be led astray by their continued dirty tricks.

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Will We Ever Accept that Police Are Never Our Friends?

1/27/2023

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The most recent and tragic story of police violence against a defenseless African in Memphis, Tennessee, U.S. is yet another triggering event for the African masses everywhere on earth. Its especially triggering to this author for multiple reasons. First, my daughter and only child currently resides as a graduate student in Memphis and the ancestors know that I count the days when she can finish her studies and be closer to us. My other reasons for being triggered may also be emotionally based, but there is significant objective analysis to justify those concerns.

The first of these concerns is the constantly superficial and dishonest method in which these incidents are dominantly portrayed within the capitalist media. Its always the same nonsense regurgitated over and over again. African people who either work as police, are related to police, or know police, come out from under every rock to say over and over again that “not all police are bad!” Or, as I heard one African woman who’s husband was a police captain somewhere put it, “my husband is Black, not blue.” The other headache producing phenomenon which surfaces after each shooting or beating is the tired refrain that comes from so-called African community leaders, the police leadership themselves, and even the families of the shooting victims. They are shocked and as the mother of the African killed in Memphis said over and over in her statemen’; “where was the humanity in those officers?”

Then, there is the consistently injected weak analysis that seeks to somehow justify police terrorism against us when the perpetuating police are African, as is the case in this Memphis incident. People point to this as if they are doing anything besides giving our revolutionary analysis of police a boost.

At some point in history, when we do not know because we cannot predict the future, but whenever it happens, whether this year or 50 years from now, it will not be soon enough, we as a people will have to take accountability for some of this suffering we experience. What is meant by this statement is that there have been plenty of us on the radical left within the African community who have been talking about police terrorism for decades, centuries even. We have talked and written extensively about police as an institution emerging from the chattel slavery system. We have expounded repeatedly about the terror directed against us being a result of the systemic requirement of the capitalist system to ensure the African masses stay repressed (and how police exist specifically to maintain that repression). And, we have explained in great detail, over and over again, that the nationality of the police officer is 100% ill-relevant because we are talking about that systemic institution of repression against our people.

And you cannot argue that this work has not penetrated deep among our people because the seeds of this consciousness has emerged even within popular capitalist culture on a consistent basis. The number of motion pictures that demonstrate police corruption are too many to name and movies like “Boyz in the Hood”, a 30+ year old movie, clearly articulated the uselessness of African police officers in creating safety for the African masses. Yet, despite all of this, there are still so many of us who absolutely refuse to accept reality. In fact, we can say with relative confidence that unless most of us personally experience police terrorism against us or our families, we refuse to accept that this is a problem we have any responsibility to do anything about. Far to many of us in 2023 still believe that the road to progress is lined with us integrating into police departments when incidents like Memphis clearly show us that this strategy is not working.

We could talk in detail about so many things about this latest incident and any other incident, but the bottom line is our people have to at some point take responsibility for recognizing who we are in this system. We have to take responsibility for waking up from this fantasy that we wish to believe that we have the “rights” that everyone else has. That we are free in these societies.

From the perspective of this author, its far past time for us to take the kid gloves off with our people. As someone how has offered free self defense training and political education about who we are in this society for years, only to have most people ignore those efforts, its becoming more and more difficult to not shake my head when these attacks continue to happen against us. For those of us who preach organization until our throats are sore just to have most people dismiss us in their pursuit for capitalist integration, its time for you to be accountable to yourselves and our communities.

Don’t misconstrue what is being said here. Our job is to wake up our people and regardless of how many of us remain asleep, we will continue to do our work, but its time for that work to take on more militancy. This liberal “I can be on the side of African people and still support police” insanity needs to be called out at every turn. The right wing and its racist analysis talking points i.e. we are only concerned about police shootings against us and not violence in African communities needs to be shut down among our people. And, we need to start calling out this malaise that dominates our existence until something happens to you and your family. Because at some point, if you continue to ignore reality, you have to take some responsibility for what happens. So, let’s reiterate some key points again. The police are never our friends. Those institutions were never created to serve us anywhere on earth. They exist to serve the interests of international capital. And, any African, other people of color or working people period, who join those institutions are doing nothing besides allying themselves to those anti-people institutions. In other words, where is the massive outcry from African police about the corruptness of policing institutions? We are not talking about quiet off the record confirmations of things we already know. We are talking about active resistance to the repression their jobs perpetuate against us. That resistance doesn’t exist so stop talking about African police because they are worthless to us.

Start paying attention to sincere effort to provide our people with the tools to organize ourselves to protect us because those efforts are truly all we have and its really all that we need. The only thing lacking with those efforts is that most our people don’t support them. Its time to change that once and for all. There are any number of independent organizations who have programs that speak directly to how we organize against police terrorism. The All African People’s Revolutionary Party, Malcolm X Grassroots Movement, Nation of Islam, Black Alliance for Peace, etc., etc., etc. Join those organizations and/or start one of your own that has a political education program that educates about the role of police in protecting the capitalist system and how we organize against them.

If our people continue to ignore these resolutions while operating as if calling 911 is your primary protection plan for your loved ones, then you are the one who becomes responsible when those terrorists that you called, come and create even greater trauma for you and your family. We can do so much better. The only thing stopping us is us.

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The Undeniable Similarities Between Trump & Obama Supporters

6/5/2022

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Since the emergence of Donald Trump as a dominant political figure in U.S. capitalist politics, the narrative coming out of the liberal bourgeoisie has been to criticize the lack of analytical capabilities coming from Trump supporters. For several years now, there has been a consistent focus around the lack of intellectual foundation contained within the thinking of anyone who supports Trump’s thoughts and actions. And, without question, there is overwhelming evidence to support this critique. Even surface level students of history can see clearly the lack of truth coming from Trump and his supporters with their superficial and uninformed analysis of white supremacy, patriarchy, and the basic working of the capitalist system (especially as it relates to politics in general and international politics in particular). The dominant arguments from the so-called Trump right-wing around white supremacy are so paper thin that they can be destroyed by the most basic talking points that exist beyond capitalist news media propaganda (from either the so-called “left” or “right”).

Without question, white supremacy objectively is a system of institutionalized discrimination against colonized folks (people of color), period. By institution we mean this system of oppression operates independent of who is the conduit. That is why the Trumpian view that someone like Candace Owens denying the existence of white supremacy is valid to them simply because she is (biologically) an African is ridiculous. This poor understanding of the mechanisms of white supremacy is absurd to anyone who has read even one simple book on the subject. Yet, this backward approach of analyzing systemic challenges through an individualistic, subjective, and ahistorical viewpoint is almost universally practiced and supported by Trump supporters on every issue.

What’s interesting is if we are to take a look at that same individualistic, subjective, and ahistorical approach as it relates to people who support Barack Obama the same way we do with people who support Donald Trump we find very little difference between the two camps beyond the appearance and style between Trump, Obama and their respective supporters. This is true because truth is universal and objective and capitalism is the economic system that drives white supremacy, patriarchy, etc. So, regardless of who is at the helm of the capitalist system, regardless of what they look like, what they sound like, how they walk, and whether they prefer chicken or beef, as long as we are talking about capitalism, at the end of the day, we are talking about people who have the same objective. Even if their route to achieve that objective looks and/or feels different.

Trump supporters deny reality by denying their support for Trump is rooted in white supremacy, regardless of whether they are African or not. They do so because there is something in racist ideology that they feel is of use to them i.e. Candance Owens, Larry Elder, and others figuring out that there is a niche for Africans who agree with white supremacy and a lucrative payday that comes with that. Or, for the majority of Europeans who support Trump, they feel a sense of emotional validation because his rhetoric speaks to their insecurities about living in a world where white supremacy will no longer be tolerated. Most of them will never be in a position where they will have to admit those illogical insecurities. And since their entire thinking is motivated by fear perpetuated by the capitalist system, which feeds upon the scarcity model to convince people they have to be fearful of each other instead of the people on top, we know that capitalism has produced an entire society of people who do not know how to think critically. Consequently, when they don’t think, their actions are facilitated by sentiment instead of reason. And, that explains the entire Trump phenomenon.

In a different approach, it also explains the Obama phenomenon. The perspective that individual advancement within the capitalist system can somehow represent progress for the masses of people is a theory rooted in sentiment because there is no practical evidence to support that claim. Clearly, an Obama, Kamala Harris, or whomever, who advances through the capitalist system as in individual, while the masses of Africans remain powerless, does absolutely nothing to advance the masses of people. Even if Obama, Harris, etc., were determined to fight 100% for the advancement of African people, with the masses of Africans disorganized, there is no collective power to hold the capitalist system accountable to us in any way shape or form. And, that’s still true even if every individual African who advances to hold positions within the capitalist system is sincere about our liberation when Obama, Harris, and others clearly are not.

All one would have to do is evaluate the track record and policy work from Obama, Harris, etc., to see that their existence has nothing to do with our advancement. Since 2008 when Obama was first elected, African people are still victimized by mass incarceration, poverty, healthcare disparities, police terrorism, etc., None of things have gotten better and its not as if Obama developed any type of campaign to even attempt to address any of those things in a serious way. He couldn’t do that even if he wanted to because again, our people are disorganized. We control no power base within the Democratic Party that elected him. We are only continuously pimped by that party, nothing else. And for those who trot out the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) as evidence of something that supposedly separates Obama from Trump and/or others, that’s a historically low bar argument. It’s the equivalent of praising McDonalds for feeding starving people from their scraps. It looks good, but does virtually nothing to address the fundamental problem.

And, we haven’t even offered an evaluation of Obama’s devastating policies internationally of which the overwhelmingly majority of African people who support him could not even give you a comprehensive discussion around. Africom in Africa i.e. up to 80 U.S. military bases overseeing neo-colonialism in Africa. The annihilation of the Libyan Jamahiriya in 2011. The support for the illegal and immoral coup in Honduras in 2008. The support for the fascist regime in Brazil. Support for fascist elements who led the coup attempt in the Ukrainian government in 2014. All of this terror and more was carried out under Obama’s watch as president, but if you bring any of these things up to Obama supporters, they will always respond with the same subjective sentimentality about how good he looks with Michelle and their daughters. How good it makes people feel to see them in that position.

How is any of this any different than how Trump supporters see Trump? The dismissal of actual and factual devastation against human beings while raising up ill relevant emotional responses based upon our individual desire to feel better about our personal realities and what space we occupy within this backward society without recognizing the necessity to take action and make changes.

Its an absolutely sick dichotomy that is a systemic indictment against the capitalist system as a whole. Its only this capitalist system, with its unprecedented 24/7/365 propaganda mechanisms, that can so effectively program millions of people on a consistent basis who come from completely different backgrounds to respond to phenomena the exact same way. In the case of Trump supporters its rural people, people with no college education, people with college education, primarily European people, non-white people who see a lane for them to benefit in supporting Trump, whomever. Appeal to their insecurities and fears and convince them that as long as Trump and what he represents validates them in some emotional way, there is absolutely no reason to consider any other critical pieces of information about the consequences of his work on all of humanity.

In the case of Obama supporters its city based working people, people of color, people with college degrees, people without college degrees, people suffering from white supremacy, patriarchy, and all forms of institutional oppression, whomever. Appeal to their pain and suffering and convince them that as long as Obama and what he represents validates them in some emotional way, there is absolutely no reason to consider any other critical pieces of information about his work and the devastating impacts it has on all of humanity.

Just for context and for the record, we are revolutionary Pan-Africanists who stand for and organize for the total liberation and unification of Africa under scientific socialism. We are 100% opposed to the capitalist system anywhere it operates in this galaxy. We have no dog in the bourgeoise political arena of the Democratic and Republican parties and any capitalist political parties anywhere. Like Malcolm X, another revolutionary Pan-Africanist, told us in 1964, we aren’t politicians. We aren’t students of politicians. We’re neither Democrats, nor Republicans, nor Americans, and got sense enough to know it! We are people who recognize that the capitalist super rich classes know that they do not have the capacity to defeat the masses of people. They know they rely on their propaganda to keep the masses loyal to their elite interests. They know that to ensure their system continues, they have to make sure that we never learn how to truly think for ourselves. If you understand that, then you should be able to understand that even if they sound different. Even if they look different. Even if they come from different places. Even if the people who support them come from different places. Even if the two sides kill each other on sight. At the end of the day, Obama and Trump will always have more in common with each other then they will ever have with any of us.

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Dignified Reasons I'm Sick of the Oscars, Will Smith & Chris Rock

3/30/2022

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As usual, the blatant hypocrisy of the capitalist system is so sickening it turns my stomach. And, it should turn yours also. Just to be clear, I don’t care one bit about Will Smith, Chris Rock, Jada Pinkett Smith, the Oscars, the U.S. government, capitalism, any of it.

I’m sick of the people claiming that Smith was defending African women. If you really think a stupid, spontaneous, and emotionally generated reaction (if it was even authentic) is a strong example of defending African women than that goes a long way in explaining why African women are never defended in the concrete and dedicated ways that they deserve.

I’m sick of the liberal capitalist bourgeoisie immediately reacting to this foolishness by gasping and denouncing “violence in any form.” If they really believed in denouncing violence in any form they would consistently denounce the terrorist actions of the U.S. military in every endeavor its engaging in throughout the world. They would denounce U.S. unprecedented support for the racist settler colony of Israel and its daily violence against the Palestinian people. They would denounce the systemic violence against the Indigenous people of the Western Hemisphere and the African masses scattered and suffering in 120 countries worldwide. They would denounce the 70 years of terrorism from the so-called North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) which is the core reason behind the conflict in Eastern Europe today. They would denounce racist police gestapos. They would denounce AFROCOM in Africa. They would denounce murderous sanctions by this backward government against Zimbabwe, Cuba, Venezuela, and other countries whose only crime is asserting their dignity.

We all know none of those things will ever be denounced because the purpose of the Oscars and the people who finance and support them like AT&T, Coke, Chevrolet, Will Smith, Jada, Chris Rock, etc., is to uphold the capitalist system. So, in tune with everything within the day to day operations of capitalism, everything, every time can be attacked and criticized except the very thing that is perpetuating all of the violence in the world, capitalism.

I’m sick of African petti bourgeoisie celebrity culture and the people who consistently frame these foolish people and their antics as representative of the actions of the masses of African people everywhere. Will Smith, Chris Rock, and the like are nothing more than 21st century jesters for the master. Just as Malcolm X told us 50+ years ago when he warned that the capitalist system will always get its jesters to speak for and represent the African masses. Fast forward from 1964 to today and Malcolm was clearly prophetic. Most of us live our lives based upon what these clowns say and do. The bar is so low that they can use our African culture, which belongs to the masses of African people, and make millions, give a small percentage of that to some insignificant cause like petti bourgeoisie African colleges, and for most of us, they are donig something for our people. We believe this nonsense whiie we consistently ignore the true solders for our people's liberation who have nothing, yet sacrifice everything for us and we don't even know their names.

I’m sick of the fact African people are so desperate for positive images that we pander to these rich celebrities who the master scoots out for us. We refuse to study our history because if we did, we would find out rather quickly that we have multitudes of people who serve as outstanding role models for us and our future generations. The people I talked about in the last paragraph who's names we don't even know. People who had enough dignity to know that we are oppressed. All of us have to perform at some point under this oppression, but there’s performing, and then organizing against the master, and there’s what happened at the Oscars; performing for ego, additional market share, nothing…

For anyone serious about protecting African women that has to start with African women and it has to include African women organizing themselves against the forces oppressing them. As men, there is an overwhelming level of work we can do to defend African women. Those of us who struggle to do that work understand this clearly and that work doesn’t include theatrical performances of protection. They involve fighting to create conditions to build capacity for true women empowerment. An empowerment that can only happen when African people achieve our freedom and independence. None of that is ever going to happen on the master’s stage, in between the master’s commercials, in front of the master’s vision. Some of us have enough of our brain cells to be sick of that type of nonsense. Some of us want so much more for our people and humanity. And, we know that the work to get us there can never be reduced to anything Will Smith or Chris Rock can perform in real life or on film.

Our lives are no Hollywood performance. If you truly want African women protected, join and/or start an organization that is fighting against capitalism, white supremacy, and patriarchy and turn the damn television off.

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The Missing African Social Movement & the Democratic Party

1/12/2022

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Everyone has seen the iconic picture of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and El Hajj Malik El Shabazz (Malcolm X) shaking hands and smiling. That picture took place on March 26, 1964, on the floor of the U.S. Capitol. Both men were there for the same reason. The civil rights bill (Act) was being debated on the floor of the U.S. Senate.

Malcolm was there to gather information to support his political view that the fact the 1964 civil rights bill had to even be created in the first place was proper evidence to its worthlessness. That 1964 act sought to provide the same “rights” that the 1863 Emancipation Proclamation and the 1870 15th Amendment of the U.S. constitution were supposed to provide to the African masses, but hadn’t as of 1964 (or 2022 for that matter).

Malcolm and Martin’s meeting on the Capitol floor wasn’t planned. It was spontaneous. They had a few moments of interaction and that was it. The two of them had never met before that and they would never meet again. Malcolm of course, continued in developing his international Pan-Africanist focused work (after leaving the Nation of Islam). This work led him to strengthen relationships with revolutionary Pan-African leaders like Kwame Nkrumah, Sekou Ture, Gamal Abdul Nasser, etc. As we know, his work was cut short on February 21, 1965, less than a year after his one-time meeting with Dr. King.

The focus of this piece is on the work King was doing at the Capitol building in March of 1964. Although, as has been stated, everyone knows of the picture of King and Malcolm, most people don’t give much thought as to what either of them was doing there that day, especially King. Its critical to understand King’s purpose because today in 2022 and beyond, most Africans and other people within the U.S. who believe that that U.S. capitalist system can be reformed to provide justice for people oppressed under this backward system, believe that this can be accomplished through the current bourgeoisie model. That model is people voting for candidates and issues in local, state, and national elections. The continuing theme in this sick scenario is that every election, the masses of people will be told that this election is the most important one. Political leaders will be marched out. One may even show up at your door. And, when they do, they will preach to you about how important the election is to preserve our “rights.” For anyone who doesn’t respond positively to this, you will be bombarded with judgement and pronouncements about how you are betraying your ancestors by refusing to participate in the U.S. capitalist electoral process. The logic behind this strange approach is rooted in the firm belief that this capitalist process is the absolute only methodology available to oppressed people to address our suffering conditions.

Then, these elections happen, every two and four years. Each of them the most important one ever. And, historically, as it relates to the Democratic Party since the mid 1940s, the African masses vote upwards of 95% or better for the Democrats. In fact, you cannot find a Democratic president since Kennedy’s victory in 1960 who would have won without the reliable support of the African masses.

Unfortunately, once these capitalist politicians, from Kennedy through Obama, to Biden, get in office, the question becomes what mechanism do we have to hold them accountable to fulfill our interests? In 2020, Biden campaigned strongly to get the African vote. He and Kamala Harris won and declared that the African masses put them there so they would have our backs. When and how has that happened? Even now, a full year after they were elected, the bourgeoisie bureaucracy is debating voting rights/suppression in the racist Southern states of the U.S. The exact same issue that the 1964 Civil Rights Act and the 1965 Voting Rights Act were supposed to be enacted to address. Now, there are those would respond to the question about Biden/Harris/the Democrats by attempting to argue that the Republican Party plays the role of sabotage which prevents any progress from happening, but this is also a strange argument because the Republican Party has played that role for the last 80 years and yet, in the 60s, there was still legislation created like the acts mentioned. Acts that most of the supporters of bourgeoisie electoral politics continuously point to as validation of their approach.

This brings us back to what King was doing at the Capitol in March of 1964. And, this analysis should be expressed with the clear understanding that our politics are those of revolutionary Pan-Africanism. We work to achieve one unified socialist Africa. We are not concerned about, focused on, or interested in engaging the U.S. capitalist electoral process, but because we have active experience engaging our people’s struggle for justice on the ground, we do have a valid perspective about how we can make positive progress in the reform arena, even though that’s not a part of our political objective.

King’s role at the Capitol on March 26th, 1964, when he had his chance meeting with Malcolm X, was to apply in person pressure to members of the U.S. Senate to vote in favor of the Civil rights bill. On that day, King met with multiple senators from both political parties. His objective in doing that was to remind them that he was there as the voice of a movement. A mass civil rights movement that the year before had demonstrated its strength by assembling 250,000 people at that same U.S. Capitol building for the historic March on Washington. The same movement that was challenging segregation laws in the Jim Crow South and slowly, but surely, knocking them down. The same movement that had organized in 1964 (through the work of the legendary Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee – SNCC) the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party (MFDP) which effectively challenged the white supremacist hegemony within the Democratic Party (that broke down the segregation within the Democratic and Republican parties that paved the way for Harris, Obama, Stacey Abrams, etc.).

The point is that King represented a mass movement and his role on March 26, 1964, at the U.S. Capitol was to remind those bourgeoisie politicians that if they didn’t stand up for us, we would mobilize against them. Again, we are revolutionary Pan-Africanists so we are not arguing that this was and is the most effective way for us as a people to move. Clearly, that is not what we believe, but our point is if you are going to promote reform politics within the capitalist system, you don’t have a logical argument to suggest that any progress whatsoever can ever be made through that approach without a mass movement to serve as the political strength to back those efforts.

Today, unlike in the 60s, no such movement exists. Today, there is no mass movement such as the one represented by King and others on March 26, 2964, pushing to hold those people in elected office accountable to us. Today, all you have is a completely subjective hope and desire that the Democratic Party and those within it in power who are beholden to capitalist corporations, can somehow find it within themselves to prioritize your interests above all else. Above the money coming in the millions from those corporations. A continuing and naïve belief on our part that appealing to the morality of this system will bring justice to us when the system has been unquestionably clear for quite some time that it doesn’t possess a single shred of morality, especially when it comes to us. That’s why there isn’t an effective argument that the approach of today has shown any semblance of strength in moving us forward. That’s why no progress has been made against mass incarceration since it was proliferated during the 90s. No serious progress against health disparities as the pandemic clearly illustrates. No serious progress against police terrorism against the African masses and other oppressed communities.

One last time, our work is different, and we are doing our work, and our work will be successful, but this piece is primarily an observation for those who love to let us know they are opposed to revolution (although they have no idea what revolution is) and instead are always going to stick with capitalist reform. Our message to you is if you stick with reform, spend the necessary time to learn from the practices of Dr. King and others who understood then, as we fail to understand now, that Frederick Douglass was 100% correct when he said “power concedes nothing without a demand!” No movement, no power.

Revolutionaries know how to engage in mobilization work (reform work) and organization work. Every effort made to organize oppressed people makes the conditions for revolution closer so any true revolutionary would see the necessity to help reformists build stronger reformist movements, but the desire to do so must exist for the people who claim to want to see positive changes inside of the capitalist system. Until those people are willing to recognize that the collective struggle that our ancestors displayed for us in the 60s, is our proven cultural method to make progress, and that the individualist practice of just voting will never accomplish such (without a movement back it), we will continue to be prostitutes for the Democratic Party while being systemically ignored by the Republican Party while the masses of our people continue to suffer. And, just to bring the point home farther, if you participate in the capitalist electoral process, but you are not an active part of an organization working to build movement, then you are without question, a significant part of the problem.

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A Revolutionary Pan-Africanist Perspective on Events in Ethiopia

12/19/2021

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Of course, any news about anything happening in Africa is never a primary news story in the capitalist media. In fact, most people in the West probably have absolutely no idea that there is a crisis situation taking place in Ethiopia (East Africa) right now, but there is. A very serious situation. And, just like every other urgent tragedy in Africa, this one has its roots in international imperialism.

Currently, the Ethiopian government, led by Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed, is tottering on collapse from a serious armed offensive led by the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF). Tigray is a region currently within Ethiopia that consists of about seven million people. For many years now, Tigray, like Eritrea before it, wants complete independence from Ethiopia to establish a sovereign country of Tigray. This has been a movement the Tigray people have developed since the creation of the TPLF in 1975. In 2020, the question was scheduled to come to a vote, but the national election in Ethiopia never happened. It was stalled due to a decision by Ahmed’s government and the Tigray people reacted by carrying out their own election before deciding to take this question further into their own hands by carrying out a military offensive against the Ethiopian government.
These types of internal explosions in Africa are not uncommon. The phenomenon can by explained through the analysis of that revolutionary Pan-Africanist Sekou Ture when he talked about Africa’s evolution from states into a nation. Ture discussed how colonialism divided Africa into states based upon the interests of European capitalist development. He argued correctly that this intrusive control of Africa was against the interests of the African masses (everywhere on earth) and that Africa, in her forward march towards justice, would utilize revolution to expedite the evolutionary process of unity for the African continent as our way of combating the efforts of our enemies to divide Africa and African people. In other words, on the surface, it may look like the struggle for division and/or the creation of newer states, is contrary to what Ture argued, but in essence, this phenomenon is further proof of his analysis.

The geographical areas surrounding the Horn of Africa (Ethiopia, Somalia, Eritrea) were and are brutally exploited by colonialism from Belgium, France, Britain, zionist Israel, along with capitalist exploitation from the U.S. starting in full force in the 1940s. And, even though Ethiopia didn’t ever have a European government installed within Addis Ababa, it was challenged seriously and consistently by Italy to the point where many people in Ethiopia today speak Italian. As a result, colonial influence in and around Ethiopia and the Horn of Africa has been as definitive as anything else in determining political, economic, and social control of that region.

A brief history of Ethiopian politics is important in order to dissect the events happening today within the region. For forty-four years, Ethiopia was governed by Emperor Haile Selassie until 1974. There are a number of Africans worldwide today who continue to view Selassie as an immortal being. Although its not our desire to upset or offend any of them, we will just say that there are essentially three models of human governing in existence in the world today. Feudal or monarchy such as the model Selassie represented, military regimes, and societies governed by elections (whether bourgeoisie like the U.S. or actual people’s democracies like Cuba and Venezuela). In this reality, feudal/monarchies are clearly the lowest level of development, yet for almost a half century, this was the model in Ethiopia. After Selassie, a power struggle from several quarters erupted which led to the country being governed from the mid 70s until 1991 by a collective of people known as the Derg. This governing entity initially claimed to represent a socialist government after the fall of the emperor, but Kwame Ture taught us that we must always judge a system by its principles and practices, not the professions of the people leading and/or participating within it. And, although many people, including the usually correct Cuban revolution, incorrectly accepted the Derg initially as a socialist entity, it was soon proven once Mengistu Haile Mariam emerged as the leader of Ethiopia within the Derg, that this government was anything except socialist. In fact, Mengistu closed out the 70s courting U.S. imperialism and zionist Israel for closer ties, largely to secure assistance in preventing the Eritrean people, led by the Eritrean People’s Liberation Front (EPLF) from gaining independence from Ethiopia. The zionists in Israel wanted greater ties with Ethiopia because the EPLF maintained strong and principled relations with Palestinian resistance fighters. The U.S., British, etc., imperialism wanted those ties for those reasons and broader reasons for ensuring imperialism’s interests were sustained in the Horn of Africa. Ethiopia wanted those ties because aid from imperialism would permit them to become a regional power in East Africa. Consequently, Ethiopia began receiving millions of dollars in annual military aid, training, equipment from imperialism. In return, Ethiopia would serve as the Horn’s enforcer against the Eritrean, Oromo, Tigray, and Somali uprisings, even expanding into Sudan and Chad, etc., to prevent further influence from the Libyan Arab Jamihiriya revolution throughout Africa.

As previously mentioned, In 1975, the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) was founded in an effort, like Eritrea, to bring independence of the Tigray region from Ethiopian control. The TPLF has been waging this struggle for independence from Ethiopia for the last almost half century and its this conflict which has heavily influenced the current instability within that region.
After Ahmed’s government cited the pandemic as justification for canceling national elections in 2020, the TPLF reacted because they were eager to use these elections as the potential for creating more regional autonomy which they felt would pave the way for future independence. After Tigray’s regional elections in August of 2020, the Tigray Regional Elections Commission called their election a success with 97% turnout calling for an end to Ahmed’s & Ethiopia’s authority in the region. For many in Tigray, Ahmed’s government represents nothing more than the continued brutal rule against the Tigray people that has been the policy of the Ethiopian government for decades. Even the imperialist supporters of Ethiopia, like the U.S., have had to acknowledge the systemic human rights violations against Tigray and it was the U.S. that was largely responsible for pushing Ahmed to present a much more favorable public face, which led to Ahmed winning the Nobel Peace Prize. We know that many an imperialist leader has won that award, so its meaning is ill relevant to true seekers of peace and justice. And his international accomplishments did little to diminish the efforts of Tigray to push against Ahmed’s government even harder.

Today, there is without question a serious human rights crisis in the Tigray region. Death, destruction, and the forced movement of hundreds of thousands of people, maybe millions, due to the military conflict between Ethiopia and the TPLF has created an even higher level of havoc within the region. Fingers are being pointed from all sides. The TPLF has been labeled a terrorist organization for committing atrocities against the Ethiopian people. The Ethiopian government of Ahmed continues to be called a brutal regime from many sources. Even the imperialist U.S. government has moved away from its long time enforcer in the region (although this is probably because Tigray’s military advances against Ethiopia leads the U.S. to believe Ahmed’s days in power are numbered.. Often, within a worldwide leftist community that has been shaped largely, even today, by the politics of the cold war period of the forties through the nineties, where everyone in the world was consistently forced to “take a side (either the Western capitalist countries or the Eastern so-called socialist countries)”, people approach every political situation from this standpoint i.e. either Ahmed’s government is right, or the TPLF is right. We suggest here that the actual solution is much more complex than that.

Revolutionary Pan-Africanism has never bowed down to the cold war politics. As Kwame Nkrumah correctly stated 60+ years ago, our struggle is neither on the side of the East or the West. And, it was that philosophical foundation which has permitted us to always maintain an independent point of view of world events, obviously as it relates to anything happening at home in Africa. So, instead, we suggest that everyone look at the conditions in Africa, some of which we have detailed within this piece, to substantiate why these conflicts continue to happen in Africa. Whether its Sudan, the Western Sahara, the Horn, the Congo, etc., the common denominator is that people are fighting for rights, resources, and the ability to govern their lives with stability and the ability to reach their fullest potential. And, the reason this reality is necessary is strictly because of the dominance and control of imperialism in Africa for the last several centuries. No African anywhere on earth should have to struggle for food, water, shelter, stability. There is more than enough in only a small portion of Africa to take care of all of those needs for all of Africa so without question, the problem is that the resources Africa produces are not controlled by the African masses, but by imperialism. And, this control is so institutionalized and consistent that most people unwittingly accept imperialism’s strategy of convincing all of us that there is scarcity and therefore, we must fight each other for what we need when its them we should be fighting.

Revolutionary Pan-Africanism accepts the definition of liberated zones articulated by Kwame Nkrumah in the “Handbook of Revolutionary Warfare.” By liberated zones we mean territories that are under the control of the masses of African people. With international imperialism so dominant throughout the entire world, and the defeat of the Libyan Jamihiriya in 2011, at best, we can clearly agree on contested zones existing today in Africa, but no clear liberated zones. Since we know this is our reality, we know that no government in existence today in Africa is there to serve the interests of humanity. And, with the absence of organized political education on a mass scale, every so-called liberation movement that doesn’t institutionalize political education is suspect. And, by political education we mean the ideas and practices of proven principled revolutionaries like Nkrumah, Sekou Ture, Amilcar Cabral, Mangoliso Sobukwe, etc. There are certainly many entities struggling to institutionalize this such as the Pan-Africanist Congress of Azania (South Africa), the Azanian People’s Organization, African Party for the Independence of Guinea-Bissau (PAIGC), and others. And, the All African People’s Revolutionary Party and others are working diligently throughout Africa to further cement these efforts, but this work is without question a work in progress and it will remain so as long as the majority of people are operating under the narratives of international imperialism. So, in the meantime, what we are left with is the scramble for resources, limited resources. Whatever imperialism has left for us to fight over. The solution to the problems in Ethiopia are not going to come from Ahmed’s government or any neo-colonial government in Africa. The solutions will only come from the people of Ethiopia. The people of the Horn of Africa. The people of Africa as a whole, and the two billion Africans scattered and suffering all over the world, crying out for our mother Africa. And this effort cannot come through individual consciousness, but only through the organized expression of the African masses. Without that Pan-African struggle, wherever we are on earth, we are like roaches scrambling for crumbs while doing our best to avoid being stamped out in the process.

A great way to push back against this somber reality is to make your own commitment to be a part of the solution and not perpetuate the problem. Be a part of an organization with a revolutionary Pan-African focus and an organized political education program. Commit to and develop this process and smash the backward concept of relying on imperialism to provide your world analysis, pretending that this is an objective approach to acquiring information. Without question, if even a slightly larger percentage of us committed to operating under this approach, the quality of our movement towards justice would increase substantially overnight.

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Dating Apps; Capitalism & Individualist Isolation as the Norm

11/8/2021

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Like many single people, I’ve invested time over the last year or so in various dating sites. I’d used them off and on before that, but never for any extended period of time. Over the last year, I’ve learned some things that I didn’t understand before.

First, unlike many people, I believe that every action I take is guided by ideology. A lot of people don’t believe that because they probably don’t understand what’s meant by the term ideology. It simply means the values behind the thoughts that drive your actions. Using that definition, its difficult for anyone to seriously argue that your life isn’t governed by ideology. This is really a question of whether you understand clearly what ideology you are functioning with, not whether it exists or not. Or, in other words, give me any action you take, and I bet I can identify for you the ideology that guides and shapes your action(s) because ideology generates from the culture we exist in. Capitalist culture, capitalist ideological domination i.e. individualism, elitism, impatience, etc., you get the point.

So, since I know ideology guides everything, I’m always conscious of how I move through life. By conscious, I mean as policy, I think through the actions I take. I consider the variables, the results (consequences) and the deciding factor is always how the action I end up taking lines up with my principles as a human being i.e. people before profit, dignity, etc. As you can imagine, I mess this up consistently and I don’t know how to not do that, but my objective is to ensure that if I mess up, its not because I wasn’t being sincere in my application and trying to do the right thing as I move along.

What I’ve learned from dating sites is the overwhelming majority of people on them, regardless of gender, are not really on them to meet and date someone. As a man, I find continuous profile statements from women indicating how they don’t play games, don’t like drama, etc. I respond in kind that I unite with them around those principles. I initiate conversation and 90% of the time, nothing happens.

This isn’t some mansplaining analysis based on the patriarchal premise that women must respond to men. No one has any responsibility to respond if they don’t want to. I fully embrace this principle and that is why I make it a point to initiate communication and if there is no response, as there most often isn’t, I don’t make any further efforts because I am not that dude who refuses to respect consent and a woman’s choice for whether they respond or not. If they don’t respond, that’s my signal to keep it moving.

Still, my point here is not really about the women who aren’t responding, but more so about the ones who do. For example, I reached out to a woman last week. A woman in my age range. African woman with positive things to say on her profile. I responded that I enjoyed her profile statements and I asked her how the dating world is treating her? She responded with a joke and we had three or four back and forth communications through the dating app. That seemed to go pretty well (we were talking about the things we enjoyed in common), so I asked her if we could graduate to communicating by phone. I gave her my phone number with the explanation that I was providing my number to give her 100% respect for whether she wanted to respond or not (again, if she doesn’t respond, I keep it moving). She responded by texting me “Hi baby!” That was a strange response to me because we are still just speaking in an introductory way to one another, but whatever. No judgment. We started communicating by text and that happened back and forth for a complete day. I then asked if we could speak by phone. You know, stepping it up a little, but nothing intrusive. In fact, she had commented by text that she felt comfortable with how we were moving and that it would be fine if we talked. We set a time for the next day and when that time came, I called her to get a voicemail message. I left a quick message just indicating I was calling as we discussed whenever, it would be cool to talk to hear back. Again, nothing intrusive. I never heard anything else from this person and that was four days ago.

Again, I am not saying she had to callback, even though she said she wanted to talk. She has every right to change her mind and I don’t even believe she has to advise me of anything if she did change her mind. My focus is that I just wonder how many people are really emotionally ready to actually meet someone? I wonder if people have lost faith in the ability to meet someone. Do people even believe in putting in the work to get to know someone? I know some people will raise the question of catfishing and to that my response is that itself is a result of the problem with human interaction that I am attempting to discuss here.

Based on my cumulative experiences, I believe that the answer is no, people on these apps generally don’t want to invest any time in getting to know someone. I say that because even when I have graduated to meeting someone and even going out with them, I’ve found its difficult for people to find a comfort level in asking the types of questions you have to ask to open the door to get to know someone. What I mean is I even had someone say my question about how the dating life is going was “too deep.” I believe that’s not too deep. Its that most people are very surface level in how they approach the dating process and I believe most people are not even aware that they are so superficial.

I think all of this stems from the impacts of the capitalist system on us all. This system has effectively convinced the majority of us that we are nothing beyond an extremely flawed individual being. This thinking has been completely engrained within the very fabric of this society. Think for example the commonly held belief among those who practice Christianity that we are all born in sin. Once people believe that, we are operating from a premise that we are not good enough. And, whether people consider themselves Christians or not is ill-relevant because the capitalist system works overtime to convince us all that we are not good enough. The entire basis of this society is that you are only as good as the material gains you have been able to accumulate. They have that basis because they want you to believe, as we do, that we have to keep spending. Buying things to make us measure up. If you are 40 and don’t have a mortgage, or a damn good reason why you don’t have one, you are a failure. If you are unemployed you are a failure. If you don’t have a car you are a failure, etc., etc. I realize many people will say “I don’t believe any of those things”, but that’s not really the entire picture. The point is we are all impacted by this because even if your self esteem is really strong, and mine is as strong as anyone’s, because the dominant reality we exist in is so toxic and anti-human, there is absolutely no safety in being genuine. In truth, if you decide that you are going to be genuine, you can depend upon having a very rough go at it i.e. being ghosted, misunderstood, gaslit, etc.

None of this is to say that any of us are perfect. We are of course, all flawed and that’s really the point. The capitalist system zeros in on this reality and cultivates it. This has happened to the point where adults don’t have the skills and capacity to have grown up conversations with one another. And, clearly the domination of social media, as great as that medium is, with such stunted human growth, does nothing except further exacerbate these challenges.

Just for the record, this is no venting of sour grapes. I am perfectly content in my single life to the point where I’ll say that the only way that single status will change again is when I can connect with someone who can appreciate my efforts to be a real human being in every way (not a perfect human being). Someone who sees my 99 efforts to be there for them and is emotionally secure enough to not throw away those 99 attempts because on one attempt I wasn’t able to perform miracles. In return, I will most certainly appreciate those qualities in them as they apply them to me. Someone who isn’t existing in a fantasy world, but who understands the struggle for justice, at least on a working level. But, if that person doesn’t become evident at any time, I am not going to be upset about that. I actually really enjoy being single. Living on my own, but I am 100% willing to change that for a positive upgrade. A person who is ready to build with someone. And, by build I mean put in the work to grow with someone.

My point is I don’t think finding that is likely on a dating app. That world is completely formed by idealism and superficiality. Still, I believe its possible to find your person there (if I didn’t, I wouldn’t be doing it). I just think the odds are not high. I don’t worry about it at all. Whether its at an event, in the gym, the supermarket, or online, it will happen when or if its supposed to happen and when it is supposed to happen I will know. And, it won’t happen from me pushing for it to happen. I’ve also learned this lesson some time ago.

I just think its important for us to understand that these challenges with dating apps aren’t because men are liars, women are not loyal and non-binary people are confused. Maybe those things exist, but they are at best simply manifestations of the larger problem. The core of these challenges happen because the very fabric of this society is based in devaluing human beings and making us fearful and distrustful of everyone and everything around us. This unfortunate reality does slim to none to benefit us, but it benefits the capitalist system in so many ways that discussing those ways would be an entirely different article. I am making sure to constantly remind myself of that. Especially when I think I may be connecting with someone just to have it stop flat, instantly. Its not me being rejected. They don’t even know me because they didn’t have an interest in knowing me which if fine. I just want to make sure I am remembering all of this so I can continue to try and be as genuine as possible. I recognize that like everyone else, I am as infected by this backward system. My hope is that whomever I talk to and wherever I talk to them, they can see my efforts and find it something they can relate to with a desire to grow with that. Now, that type of conversation, that would be a fun thing to experience on a dating app for someone like me. I’ll just have to keep looking while understanding the 0.01% chance that it will happen, but when/if it does…?

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Discussing Colin Kaepernick's Mini-Series on Netflix

10/31/2021

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Jaden Michael, who plays Colin Kaepernick throughout the dramatized segments of the docu-mini-series about his life on Netflix, poses here with the real life Kaepernick

Netflix the corporation has been on a trend the last few years presenting documentary type products that tackle the African struggle for liberation. I’ve written critical reviews about their 2020 released “Who Killed Malcolm X” and their 2021 produced “Blood Brothers – Malcolm X and Muhammad Ali.” Most people are not actively involved in the African liberation struggle and as a result, 99.9% of their understanding of it comes through the forces who benefit from our continued exploitation. The unfortunate reality here is that many of those folks were “inspired” by those two documentaries which is exactly the objective of the capitalist system. Shape our history for us and provide us the narrative of how we should view ourselves and this system.

Serious activists within the African liberation movement and students of history have little difficulty seeing through the tricks of the capitalist system. We know that the purpose of those two documentaries is to defang the militancy among the African masses and to portray figures of militant history like Malcolm X as decaying dragons of an era gone past. Fortunately, the Colin Kaepernick docu-miniseries didn’t exactly follow this same trend. The strengths of this series were its brutal honesty about this system of white supremacy and the devastating impacts it has on oppressed African and other colonized peoples. And, 100% of the credit for this goes to Kaepernick, maybe Ava Duverney (I and others have justifiably criticized her work in previous presentations about our movement), and whomever had the dignity to demand that anything presented be done in a way that upholds justice for the legacy of our struggle. Netflix gets zero of this credit because all you have to do is look at previous works produced through their channel, while maintaining a clear view of the history of capitalist corporations like Netflix and how they move, to understand that there is absolutely no way they have the political consciousness and/or commitment to tell truth to power without being pushed by Kaepernick to produce what he produced.

This is not to say that the series was without flaws. We are revolutionary Pan-Africanists so as we’ve said time and time again, no true analysis of what is needed for our liberation from this backward system can ever be expected to come to us from the main propaganda mechanisms managed by the very system that carries out our oppression. And, that’s precisely what Netflix and all Hollywood inspired and produced content is – the corporate propaganda arm of the capitalist system. Kaepernick himself would be hard-pressed to disagree with this assessment. He created his own publishing company to produce materials connected to our struggle for liberation instead of relying upon the existing corporate publishers, many of whom would certainly salivate at the potential profit windfall telling his story would provide for them.

Kaepernick does a good job in the series connecting the daily racist mico-aggressions aimed at our youth and how those actions adversely affect our mental health and our physical ability to function freely in this society. He even does an outstanding job making the point that we have the right to think for ourselves and he illustrates that in a powerful moment where he displays images of African freedom fighters who are routinely disparaged and disrespected by the capitalist system like Marcus Garvey, Assata Shakur, Kwame Nkrumah, etc.

Where the series of course falls short is after the system is correctly identified for the horrific and backward system that it is (in an impressively uncompromising way actually), no in-depth analysis of the system and/or solutions are offered. Please don’t misunderstand. We are revolutionaries and as a result, we have a program to achieve the revolution we are fighting for so I certainly wouldn’t be looking for those answers within any capitalist produced show. Even one done as well as Kaepernicks, but it is our responsibility to point out this problem. If we don’t do that than many people would not even think about it. They wouldn’t think about the fact that as can be expected, the word capitalism and the fact that system is the source that facilitates all of those micro-aggressions, is never mentioned. And, the most significant and subtle as you can imagine thing that will forever define anything produced within the capitalist system is the culmination of the story resulting in a display of Kaepernick’s individual determination to play football despite all the racism and everything else. This contribution of the series contributes to capitalism’s most prioritized message that individual determination, not collective organization, is the key to overcoming adversity of any kind, even white supremacy. The fallacy of this thinking is there are Africans who have had more individual determination to challenge white supremacy than Kaepernick, myself, and millions of other colonized people, and those people were not able to overcome the vestiges of this backward system. They weren’t because capitalism’s oppression of all of humanity is a collective oppression that will never be resolved until the masses organize collectively to bring this system down to its knees.

Still, the series was a quality view because of the consistent messages that the foundation of U.S. capitalism has always been and will always be based in the lie of freedom and democracy. And, that since we know this system was built and is maintained on our backs, we have no obligation to perpetuate the fantasy this capitalist system and all the people who support it deeply desire are perpetuated. Unfortunately, the bar is so low that anything that doesn’t just lie about our history is a positive development. That of course is not Kaepernick’s fault. He is certainly to be commended for his effort. Its an effort that makes a contribution to our struggle to raise the consciousness of our people and all of humanity. Its also a strong reminder that its always the masses of people of who make history, not individuals. Without our mass movement for justice against police terrorism against the African masses Colin Kaepernick would be no more than a football player who had some success who no longer plays. He would be forgotten by now. Its our mass and collective struggle that explains why most of you even know who he is. You should always remember that because that same reality is the reason you are ever going to know anything about African people and other oppressed communities that isn’t compromised and completely controlled by the system responsible for our subjugation!

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The "Karen" Movie, White Supremacy & Our Stockholm Syndrome

10/28/2021

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Like everyone of us, Huey P. Newton had his failings, but the absolute beauty within him was his ability to teach us, as Fanon and many others before him, that our dignity is tied to our ability to stand up and fight uncompromisingly against our oppression, regardless of the consequences. The capitalist system, utilizing its Hollywood propaganda, is working overtime to dull that message

Against my better judgement, I decided to watch the movie “Karen” last night. I knew the subject would trigger me. Like most colonized people (but I’m certain at a much higher percentage due to how I walk through this life) I’ve been targeted by Karens, Kens, and capitalism, my entire existence. Plus, Taryn Manning plays the Karen role in this movie and ever since “Hustle and Flow, Orange and Black” and anything else I’ve seen her in, that woman knows how to make a role come alive.

As I anticipated, Manning played the hell out of her role, but for someone like me, who is well experienced in dealing with micro-aggressions to overt violent white supremacy, that was to be expected. The part of the movie that really actually triggered me the most was how the African couple, and every African portrayed in the movie reacted to not only Karen, but this entire white supremacist system.

I understand fully that Hollywood is nothing beyond the media propaganda arm of the capitalist system. These movies, television shows, etc., are corporate sponsored which automatically means their objective is always to promote the system that butters their bread. This is of course why you will never see any movies or television shows that show victory for socialist revolution, Africans seriously and uncompromisingly fighting back against white supremacy, etc. This is also the reason why any and all movies like “Karen” that make attempts to portray real life issues, up to and including actual stories of real freedom fighters (Fred Hampton, Patrice Lumumba, Che Guevara, Malcolm X, etc.), always follow one very subtle, yet very important trend. They all make every effort to downplay and destroy any militancy on the part of the oppressed communities against the dominant system and the people who carry out its interests.

That African couple and their friends are portrayed in this movie in ways that should be extremely offensive to any conscious African, but with bourgeoisie idealism dominant, many people will completely miss and/or misunderstand the critique I’m making here. The Africans in this movie weather repeated and consistent disrespect from Karen, including overt racist remarks made to their faces. They consistently (in ways that made me sick to my stomach) responded to this garbage with smiles and silence. Then, to add insult to injury, instead of the Africans developing a strategy to confront the racism, they begin to blame each other for what they are experiencing.

As the movie progressed, I realized I was being triggered over and over again and I realized why. The movie reflected much of what we see in the countless number of videos that circulate daily of Karens, Kens, capitalism, insulting and targeting African and other colonized people. There are some exceptions where we respond to this disrespect by pummeling the perpetrators, and believe me, I enjoy those immensely, but the overwhelming majority of these videos portray us (colonized people) being consistently and uncompromisingly insulted. We are called racist names. Told to speak English. Told to go back to Africa, Asia, wherever. Completely dismissed as human beings, and while we are being berated, our responses are to attempt to appeal to the humanity in these individuals when after 500+ years it should be quite clear to all of us by now that they have none.

I was triggered because the movie channeled that passive, anti-militant behavior that the capitalist system pounds down our throats 24/7/365 as the only pathway available to us in order for us to exist. I’m triggered by this because that pathway doesn’t do a damn thing to sustain our dignity. In fact, I would argue that approach does everything to compromise our humanity. In “Black Skin, White Mask” Franz Fanon correctly argues that our psychology of oppression is fueled in part by our lack of humanity and agency in being able to stand up to our oppressors in the ways they oppress us. He talked about the liberation our ancestors felt in killing the slave masters. This is something most of us have been programmed to reject immediately, but its something we need to learn to talk about much more than we do today. I speak from extensive experience in saying there is no better way on an individual level to process white supremacy, patriarchy, and all forms of oppression in a healthy way than giving back the disrespect to the people dishing it out in droves. I understand that capitalism has socialized us to act in its interests, not our own. Consequently, many people, when I say what I said in that last sentence, have been remote control programmed to respond that “two wrongs don’t make a right” but that logic never stands up to the more rational logic that bullying never stops by simply pleading for humanity either. I learned a long time ago that the best way to stop bullying in a community where bullying was the daily policy was to convince bullies that messing with me was a bad health decision for them. As a result, they learned quickly to leave me alone. Karens, Kens, capitalism (including police, and other state institutions), have also had to learn this lesson. In truth, because I have institutionalized this approach of personal dignity and the demand for respect, this is the reason that I can go out wearing overt political statements most us wouldn’t wear if something paid us too, that clearly challenge everything this backward country stands for and no one will say a word to me. Meanwhile, other people go out and do everything in their power to demonstrate they are no threat and the disrespect rains down on them at unprecedented levels. Why? People tell me all the time that the energy surrounding me is one of “don’t mess with him.” Well, if that’s true, why can’t more of us have this same energy? Wouldn’t that be a good thing?

And, saying you don’t know how to be like me in this regard i.e. knowing how to defend yourself on a social, intellectual, or physical level is no excuse. There are people everywhere, including myself, who are offering unlimited time training people for free how to utilize the skills that I’m speaking of here. Most people aren’t interested and/or paying attention because they would prefer to roll the dice and hope they can achieve some financial compromise with capitalism that rewards them before racism confronts their lives in these types of ways. Besides a handful of petti bourgeoisie celebrities and individuals, the overwhelming majority of us never find that cash windfall, but plenty of us come face to face with that racism and we have absolutely no idea how to deal with it beyond calling the police, which is so mindboggling that even the producers of that movie were at least able to demonstrate that calling the police is not even a bad choice to make for us. It’s a life threatening choice.

I was triggered by the movie because I know we can do so much more to protect ourselves. I was triggered because it hurts me how so many of us have absolutely no safety plan besides calling the slave patrols known as police when something happens. Imagine that. The Karens are famous because they call the police on us for no reason. And, they call them because they know the police will default to white supremacy, no matter what nationality the police are (white supremacy is a system and everyone in it operates according to its laws). Most of us know this already, yet we still believe we will get some level of justice by calling the police?

I’m still eternally optimistic that people will wake up and realize, as I articulated in my book – “A Guide for Organizing Defense against White Supremacist, Patriarchal, and Fascist Violence”, we can prepare ourselves to stop this dehumanizing treatment. And, we have everything we need to do that on our own without the institutions of this society that are there, not to support us, but to keep us repressed. Yes, the movie triggered me, but not for the reasons you think. Not because I was traumatized by seeing us disrespected. I crossed that bridge years ago. I’m triggered because I have some extremely good ideas and practices for how to stop this from happening to us, yet most everyone has little to no interest in finding out more, even for free. That’s traumatizing as hell to me. I mean what am I supposed to do when I see our folks confronted by these racists, we call the police, and the situation becomes worse? At a certain point, this becomes our fault if we refuse to do anything about it. A mentor told me once that the more conscious you get about our suffering, the more trauma you will experience because you will struggle to understand why we don’t do something to stop it. Until we can get more of us to wake up and realize we have no other option besides getting organized, the triggering and trauma will only get worse for many of us because being able to take care of myself and my family is and never will be my objective. Doing that is the bare minimum and its nothing you should feel qualifies you to brag about anything because in truth, as long as we are not safe collectively, your and my individual safety will forever be compromised. I’ve helped my offspring get organized to address these situations. I’ve even helped my ex-wife and that’s why I can say that’s nothing to brag about. That’s the equivalent of the base level of operation, nothing more.

I’m triggered not for me. I know how to deal with Karens and Kens and they know that too and that’s why they never bother me with that nonsense. I’m triggered because our babies are not safe and they aren’t not just because of those white supremacist terrorists (they represent everything this country was built on), but because so many of us prefer to live in a fantasy world provided to us by Disney and the rest of capitalism to the point where when danger happens, we have no idea how to adequately address it. If you are one of those people, do us all a favor, and remember that when your time comes. Don’t be crying and wanting to know why. You already know why. You just didn’t have the courage to do anything about it. When your time comes, you should do as Kwame Ture once said. He stated “if you are not willing to do anything to help your people, if you are not willing to live for your people, then at least be willing to die for your people. Get yourself a phone directory. Call the local KKK office. Tell them that you refuse to do anything for your people so when they prepare to lynch their next victim, give them your address because if you are not willing to live for your people, you should at least be willing to die for them!” Sound harsh? It is, but so is this system and anyone paying attention should already know that. Even Hollywood motion pictures aimed at popular culture are telling us about the reality we live in.

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The "Karen" Movie, White Supremacy & Our Stockholm Syndrome

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