Ahjamu Umi's: "The Truth Challenge"
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The Federal/Police Response to the Malheur Occupation; A Revolutionary Perspective

1/30/2016

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First things first.  A bunch of European/White people invading and occupying Native Pauite lands, or any Indigenous people's historical birthright - is never acceptable and/or justifiable under any circumstances.  Secondly, I was born and raised in the U.S.  Since I would never serve in the imperialist U.S. military, I don't have that type of training and background.  What I do have is the benefit and experience of many inner city street battles, confrontations with white supremacist groups, and numerous - I'll call "political confrontations" - with various police agencies over the years.  Most importantly, I've benefited from years of strong ideological struggle.  This ideological struggle has permitted me to develop a formidable foundation based on the revolutionary ideological principles of our Nkrumahist/Tureist ideology.  In many ways, I see my practical experience having many advantages over formal U.S. military training because my experience comes with a sharp revolutionary analysis opposed to the capitalist propaganda training that comes with U.S. military service.  So, its from this perspective that I make these observations of the events from last week.

It must be understood that once you confront the U.S. government with an armed presence, you have to acknowledge what you are placing into motion.  From the standpoint of all government agencies, you are not going to be seen as peaceful protesters, regardless of how White you are and what rights you have convinced yourself that you think you have.  In fact, this may have been the occupiers biggest error.  They may have started to believe their own propaganda that the government was not going to move against them, but there is a very valuable history lesson here that I hope all serious activists for positive change do not miss.  Many well meaning left activists were quick to make the point that if it were African Lives Matter activists, Indigenous activists, or anyone else carrying out an occupation, the feds/police would have moved on them immediately.  History gives us more than enough evidence to underscore that point, but the reason why you didn't see any of that sentiment being displayed in any of our writings on the subject is because focusing on that disparity misses the primary point.  The capitalist system doesn't give a rat's @ss who you are.  Their interest is in controlling dissent, no matter what sector of the society it emerges from.  If you think the FBI sits around talking about "these people are White so we cannot move against them with force" you are being very naive and a-historical.  They proved with Waco in 1993 and Ruby Ridge in 1996 that when it comes to armed resistance against the state, once they feel the time is right, they will order their troops to attack that resistance with the same intensity and force, regardless of who makes up the resistance.  They do need to care about public perception because controlling that is the capitalist system's most potent weapon.  You see, despite what they want us to believe, they really don't have the military might to control everyone because working class people make up the ranks of their military and police.  So, they realize they have to insure that with everything they do, the masses of working people are firmly behind them.  So, a deeper understanding of the Malheur occupation would suggest that the feds, maybe recognizing that European lives hold more value in people's eyes than our lives, knew they would have to calculate their actions much more carefully than they typically do when they are moving against us.  So they waited.  Once they realized that there was no mass support for the militia occupiers, and that the longer the occupation occurred, the more the people of Harney County wanted the militia people gone, I can guarantee you the feds assessed that the climate was right for them to move in, and that's what they did.  And when they needed to shoot and kill, they did so without the slightest hesitation. So, it may take them longer, but they will eventually move on Europeans too because the government's responsibility is to insure that the capitalist system's power is preserved so that means anyone who rises up to challenge their authority is going to have to deal with them at some point.  They cannot ever risk giving you hope that you can win.

Going back to the earlier portion of this article when we said the lull period of fed/police inaction apparently emboldened the occupiers.  It is interesting how the European militia movement bases it's existence on the premise that it represents a well armed populace that isn't afraid to confront the U.S. government in a military way.  Unfortunately for them, this scenario from last week may have gone a long way in deflating whatever mystique they may have developed around this image.  we say this because these occupiers seem to have been alarmingly amateurish and disorganized.  They don't appear to have worked out even the most basis strategic questions.  What was their plan to insure supplies could continue to be brought into the refuge?  They had to realize that at some point the feds/police would block the roads.  How did they think they would be able to go back and forth?  Did they really foolishly believe they would be permitted to have free movement indefinitely without any federal/police response?  The Native persons who took back Alcatraz from 1969 to 1971 engaged in consistent military fire and exchanges with government forces during that two year period.  Yet, they had a plan for continued deliverance of supplies to and from the island that permitted them to endure there for two years.  The American Indian Movement did the same thing in the town of Wounded Knee, South Dakota, in 1973.  In that scenario, the feds/police attempted to block all the roads in and out of the town, but the Indigenous people were organized enough so that they seemed to had no difficulty moving around the fed/police checkpoints for an extended period of time during that ordeal.  In fact, Mary Crow Dog even delivered a baby at Wounded Knee during that siege.  The warriors from the American Indian Movement clearly had a plan and a network of support among the surrounding population and this is why they, being heavily over matched, were able to last as long as they did.  

The points and lessons that can hopefully be learned here are that this model of dissent that keeps popping up where a few people are going to challenge the entire capitalist power structure really needs to be put to death for an eternal rest.  The masses of people make history, not a few individuals.  The Malheur occupiers were not interested in building any type of movement and their ignorance and arrogance around that illustrates why, despite the macho waving of AR-15s and AKs,  they are being eliminated without even the slightest whimper.  Assume for a moment that their claims had validity and were based around principles of justice.  With the support of all the local residents, they could have stayed there for much longer with much different results.  But, their movement isn't based  on principles of justice. Its based on the same manifest destiny white supremacist dogma that Europeans like them have been evoking for decades.  Actually, much of their rhetoric e.g. the federal government being a tyranny that the people must rise up against in the name of the constitution, is nothing more than a retread version of the tired program of the old racist Posse Comitatus from the 60s and 70s.  So, their efforts, heaped in dishonest history and injustice, coupled with their complete disorganization and apparent incompetence, explains the results from last week.  But, for those of us who see ourselves fighting for just causes we should still take note of these events.  You cannot expect to defeat the most powerful entity on the planet with just a few people.  You have to build a mass movement.  It's about the mass movement, not how many guns you have or how well you can use them.  Even if you are Rambo, eventually you will run out of ammo.  You will get low on food, water, meds.  Without a network of support, even if you are the whitest European on Earth, they will be able to wait you out and overpower you.  Until we move to being willing to do work among the masses of people to build sustainable capacity, all we are doing is engaging in a rugged individualistic movie script similar to what we all have seen from Sly Stallone, Arnold, and Clint, for years.  Works great for entertainment, but does not translate into people power and victory.  So, although many people may see the work we do with six, eight, or ten children every morning during our breakfast program as tedious and non-eventful, in our eyes, it's the most important work we can be doing.  The more work we can generate to create better understanding about our station in life and our ability to transform it ourselves, the better positioned we will be to have future generations that won't be afraid, selfish, or confused about who they are and whose interests they represent.  

We continue to call upon everyone to stop romanticizing the struggle.  Join an organization rooted in positive change for justice, and start doing day to day work to wake up whatever sector of the society you come from and/are organizing within.  Use your organization to study victories.  Let's understand how the Cubans were able to defeat a much stronger enemy because they had a solid July 26th movement in the urban areas of Havana, Trinidad, Santiago de Cuba, Santa Clara, etc.  Frank Pais and Vilma Espin are as much the cause of their victory as Fidel Castro, Raul Castro, and Che Guevara.  It was this urban network that supported the efforts of the guerrillas in the mountains.  This is the same for the Vietnamese fighters and their Viet Minh Front against the U.S.  If we understand all of this, we realize there is no reason to romanticize guns.  The best weapon for us right now is the book.  That means if you are just talking about self defense and guns without revolutionary ideology and political education being your foundation, your program is based in romanticism.  We can't mobilize effectively against the enemy when we can only turn out the same few faces into the streets while the masses of people are more concerned about the Super Bowl.  

Although we have no common identity with the occupiers in this instance, we are concerned that as the memory of this incident fades into history, people are left with the perception that all militant efforts to challenge the system will end as the Malheur occupation is ending.  Or, as one FBI agent expressed during a press conference "when you challenge the U.S. government, you can expect to face justice."  Well, the criminal cannot hand out justice.  Our only task is to do the work to convince the people exactly who the criminal actually is and to show them the examples of where we have organized effectively to defeat the enemy on any level.  When the day finally arrives when we began to truly grasp the need to approach our struggles this way, and when we take a serious approach to doing the necessary mass work - instead of being satisfied to do posturing individualistic focused work, victory will appear quickly upon the horizon.
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What is Liberation Literature?

1/29/2016

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Sekou Ture, that leader and ideologue for African dignity and self determination, defined culture as the sum total of every experience the people have from which to create, define, and assert their legacy.  What that definition tells me is that the value of every expression we have is in that expression's ability to positively inspire and spur humanity forward towards a positive action for a better future.  So, everyone of us who dances, sings, recites poetry, raps , acts, writes, draws, paints, etc.  Somewhere embedded in the art we produce must be a message of determination.  A statement of justice.  A pronouncement of our desire to see a better world for all of us.  Without that within our art, our efforts lose their vitality.  They cease to even be artful.  Instead, if the foundation for what we produce is money, a desire to make money, a focus and commitment to responding to the demands of making money, then what we are doing isn't art.  It's propaganda for the ruling class system.  And those of us producing it are nothing more than the pitiful clown prostitutes for this decadent system.  Within this realm, there is no dignity and integrity in our work.  It becomes soulless. 

The old African proverb is that "even a dead fish can go with the current."  That's what we are as so-called artists, if our work isn't focused on upholding our dignity as human beings.  And since our dignity is inseparable from the oppression we experience from this backward capitalist system, then that means our work must be about challenging this system.

With this statement being made, we plead with all reading this to make a commitment to support independent artists who are dedicated to producing inspiring messages for the masses through their art.  I say independent because once an artist decides to base their work on integrity, they are essentially making the commitment to remain independent because the industries for all art forms are nothing more than manufacturing mechanisms for the crushing of the creative spirit. 

So, for those in the Portland, Oregon, metro area, myself and a Florida based artist with the same commitment to integrity that I do, are being hosted for a book event on Saturday, February 6th, 2016.  The Marilyn Buck Abolitionist Collective is hosting the night, which is being called "Liberation Literature."  I will be discussing my latest novel "The Courage Equation" and Michelle Matisons from Florida will be discussing her latest novel "Left to our Own Devices."  Our objective is to inform the public about the need to create and produce a genre of literature that doesn't apologize for making the need for structural change in this society front and center to the plots of our stories.  In extremely creative ways, we weave in exciting and interesting characters and plot lines that demonstrate repeatedly how to have difficult conversations with people.  How to approach and engage the hard work required while maintaining your dignity and even having as much fun as possible.  In other words, inspiration.  Read our books and leave feeling like we can win, because we can win.  So, if you are in the area, come out to the "In Other Words" Bookstore at 14 N.E. Killingsworth in Portland from 6:30pm to 8:30pm on 2/6.  Food will be served and all are welcome.  If you are not in the Portland area, as most of you reading this will not be, then make it your business to locate and support local artists in your area who are dedicated to this same mission. Go online and purchase our books and the efforts other artists produce such as music, paintings, etc.  I can guarantee you that they are there, struggling to find a way to reach you.  Help them out.  Your neighborhood, community, and your planet will be better off because of syour effort.
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Our People Did Not Die (Just) for the Vote

1/24/2016

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So, I wish all of you who parrot that lie would stop doing it.  The theory that people fought and died for the right to vote in capitalist societies is based in the flawed thinking that voting is a principle so therefore, refusing to participate must be construed as a slap in the face to those who struggled to achieve that treasured right.  That thinking doesn't stand up to our actual history.  For example, using African voting rights, the history of the so-called right to vote in the U.S. is a tricky and complex history rooted in the passages of the 13th and 14th amendments of the so-called constitution.  I say tricky because although those laws were created over 100 years ago, the enforcement of voting rights, particularly, but not limited to the Southern states, was never enforced.  And, as we have seen in recent elections e.g. the 2000 presidential elections in Florida, those rights are still not enforced today.

Most people who claim that our people died for the right to vote are primarily referencing the civil rights movement which produced the Voting Rights Act of 1965 which greatly bolstered our ability to vote in mass.  This movement was carried out by the courageous activists of organizations such as the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC - Dr. King's group), the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), and the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC).  These organizations placed organizers on the ground in the most brutal and dangerous battlegrounds; Mississippi, Alabama, Louisiana, etc.  States with strong attachments to their confederate and slavery histories and a commitment to maintaining systems that subjugate the large African populations that live there.  Its important to understand the history of these organizations because those organizers who sacrificed so much on the ground during those segregation days, actually have had quite a bit to say about voting rights in the U.S. since that time, although it appears no one is listening to them.  By virtue of belonging to the All African People's Revolutionary Party  (A-APRP) I've had the privilege of having working relationships with many of SNCC's most well known and skilled activists.  I just spent two weeks staying with our legendary Baba Seku Neblitt in Ghana, West Africa.  During the early 1960s he was one of the original members of the SNCC Freedom Singers.  This was the group who participated in the most dangerous civil rights work in the South.  Marches and activities where klansmen and women came to commit violence against those workers who would challenge their segregated vision.  Brother Seku, known as Chico then, was present at many of the most contentious civil rights confrontations with Southern racists and more often than he can probably count, he had to face death just for standing up for his rights as a human being.  I also spent a lot of time organizing with Kwame Ture who was then known as Stokely Carmichael.  As the person who defeated (now congressperson) John Lewis as SNCC Chairperson in 1966, Kwame was the poster child for the developing militancy within SNCC, as well as the Black Power movement overall.  Brother Kwame was arrested over 40 times for his voter registration work in the South.  He was repeatedly beaten and tortured for this work and he and his comrades in SNCC and the other organizations are the reason the Voting Rights Act of 1965 was passed.  So, the opinions of people like Kwame, Seku, Ms. Fannie Lou Hamer, etc., they matter.  Their opinions on this subject mean much more than any person working for the vote today, any academic pundit, intellectual masturbation specialist, or self proclaimed expert on our struggle for liberation.  And what that militant leadership from SNCC went on to say after leaving SNCC, and joining the revolutionary Pan-African struggle, is that African people did not die for the vote.  We died for freedom and liberation and the vote was and is simply a tactic from which to achieve that freedom.  This proper understanding applies to everyone. As Kwame never tired of saying, "we must understand the difference between principles, strategies, and tactics.  Principles are values we can never compromise."  Further, an example of a principle is the belief that in order to be free, we must destroy capitalism and bring about (in our case) one unified socialist Africa.  This belief we can never compromise on.  We can never say we will build capitalism because to do so would be a betrayal of our principles.  Gong further with Kwame's point, the vote is a tactic.  So, like demonstrations, sit ins, boycotts, and teach ins, and unlike the our anti-capitalist beliefs, these are all tactics that we use based on how effective they are.  When they work, we use them, when they don't, we utilize something better.

This is a much healthier perspective on voting, but its one that capitalism will never permit to be promoted because capitalism's interest in promoting the "vote or die" narrative is to continue to program us to believe that our only option, our only alternative, is to find some space, some area, some framework within the capitalist system to try and address whatever issues we have because there is no answer outside of capitalism.  You hear this all the time.  "I'm addressing people where they are at.  Right now, the electoral process is what we have to work with.  The Democrats are the lesser of two evils."  Again, extremely flawed logic.  Its like saying that one rapist is better than another.  Rape is rape.  Bad anyway that you slice it.  My all time favorite is "if you don't vote, you don't have the right to an opinion."  This ridiculous statement suggests that voting in capitalist elections is the only validated form of political participation.  So, following this crazy thinking, the contributions of people like Marcus and Amy Garvey, Malcolm X, Elijah Muhammad, Assata Shakur, and the Black Panther Party, have absolutely no value because their work occurred outside of the capitalist electoral process.  A more logical analysis of voting in this capitalist society would be to adhere to the wisdom that insanity is doing the same thing over and over the same way and expecting a different result.  That's what we do with these elections.  Every two to four years they come along and someone is telling us that this is the election that's going to make a difference so we stop doing any concrete independent work and instead focus all our energies on these capitalist elections.  We continue to do this without at least stopping to ask how we are supposed to hold the capitalist candidates accountable to the promises they make to us while they are courting our votes.

I already said voting is a tactic.  That means it can have some meaningful value if used appropriately.  What would appropriate look like?  How about organizing an on the ground campaign that would be designed to do work specifically focused on keeping the Demopublicans and the electoral system accountable to the masses of people?  This approach will never solve all of the problems we have with the capitalist system. Only revolution can do that, but what this strategy will do is position us to get much more out of these elections.  Even in a bourgeois sense, the Ross Perot campaigns from 1992 and 1996 at least gave some insight into what I'm talking about.  The on the ground campaign they organized had an estimated 11,000 workers throughout the country and they are credited with helping expose the congressional non-sufficient funds scandal where congress people were getting thousands of dollars of overdraft fees carried by their banks for them (instead of being forced to pay the overdraft fees like you and I). This on the ground campaign would be responsible for tracking policy issues like a full employment bill, free universal healthcare, etc., where these on the ground organizers would engage in relentless work to insure the issues that matter to everyday people are forced upon the elite legislature in a way that forces them to address our concerns for fear of what we will do if they don't  At the very least, those of you who advocate voting as a solution, and especially those of you who continue to claim we died for the vote, would have a tangible organizing approach that millions of people would respect and be willing to get behind which would create the potential for much increased reforms from the system.  Again, it ain't revolution, but its far better than what you have to offer us today.  Plus, this type of work will only help set the table for real socialist transformation because once people are intimately involved in the system on that level, they will see clearly the shortcomings of this system and this will make our revolutionary work easier.

Yesterday, there was a large rally in Portland in support of the Bernie Sanders campaign for president.  One of the organizers of that rally contacted me earlier this week and asked me to speak at the rally, encouraging people to vote for Bernie Sanders.  I have a lot of respect for this organizer and I think their intentions are 100% sincere.  Of course, I had to decline the offer, explaining my presence would be dishonest as I could never ask people to vote for Bernie Sanders.  I understand that the only reason his rhetoric caters to socialist values is because the people of this country, although programmed to react negatively to the word "socialism", still desire the components of socialism e.g. affordable education, healthcare, public services, etc.  Socialism can only happen with the full support of the masses of people.  Its a system where the masses are the governors of society so without the mass political consciousness that socialism requires, there can be no socialism.  It certainly cannot happen based on an uneducated mass (as it relates to anti-capitalism and pro-socialism) voting one man, woman, martian, whatever, into a capitalist power structure where we have no mechanisms to hold the system accountable to us.

Kwame Ture, who's voice (again) matters on this subject, said it clearly 25 years ago.  In 1960, Africans had no elected officials.  In 1990, Kwame indicated that African people had over 7000 local elected officials.  There were 370 African mayors, and 20 congress people.  Then Kwame went on to state that as a people we had less power in 1990 than we had in 1960.  This is even more true in 2016 for Africans and everyone else.  The choice we have is either to move up the ladder by understanding that consciousness and organizing work is required to build the structures we need to seize power, either inside or outside the system.  Or, we continue with business as usual where another four years from now and beyond, we are still talking about how this next election is the one that will finally do it for us while we continue to be picked off daily by this backward system.




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Whiteness Month at Portland Community College Must be Focused on anti-capitalism

1/21/2016

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My how Oregon has been in the news a lot lately.  In just recent months, this state of little over 3 million people has been front page news for the mass shooting in Roseburg, the armed occupation of Native lands at the federal bird refuge in Southeast Oregon, and now because Portland's community college is planning a "Whiteness" month.  Critics of Portland Community College's (PCC) plan are calling the programming "white shaming" and an attack against European people.  It appears that the intentions of the folks at the community college are to take time to reflect on how oppression operates in this society.  This is a noble intent, especially since Portland Community College, which is currently 68% European - actually has a lower white percentage than the 80% white that signifies Portland as the whitest city in the U.S. with a population over 500,000.  The irony of the school's plans, and an explanation for the lower percentage of Europeans at PCC, is that the college sits in the heart of the area of Portland in which ruthless land grabbing (gentrification) has taken place over the last 25 or so years, violently displacing the African population that previously dominated that community. 

Still, good intentions can never be enough.  No, what's needed is truth driven programming for justice and an agenda for justice must include an honest and direct critique of the role of capitalism in oppressing African and other people of color, as well as poor Europeans.  I'll even make this statement with clear confidence - any problem we have as oppressed people we can trace it back directly to the capitalist system.  So, this is a call to stop this focus on any type of so-called "whiteness" because there really is no such thing.  What people are identifying when they use the term whiteness is the system of oppression and discrimination right?  Well, then the question is what is that system?  Is it a system based on skin color?  Although there are plenty of forces operating overtime to confuse people into thinking that color is the core of the problem, we know that to be false.  The system of oppression is based on the people on top owning, controlling, and continuing to steal the human and material resources that make the world go around.  Those people who own those resources do so because they have robbed, stolen, murdered, and subjugated the majority of people on the planet.  As a result, at the present time, they control all the oil.  All the water.  All the coltan.  All the cocoa.  All the gold, diamonds, bauxite, rubber, phosphates, uranium, and cheap labor.  This makes this ruling class the capitalist class and it makes us the people working for them.  The people engaged in a class struggle against them for control of the planet.  That's why the earlier statement about directing every problem back to the capitalist system isn't a stretch.  Whether it's poor education, healthcare, police terrorism, the prison and military industrial complexes, GMOs, the environmental crisis, abuse against women, etc., it's all directly related to capitalism.  It's all the result of capitalist exploitation and domination.  I won't take time to break down each way it's connected.  There are more than enough posts on this blog that address each and every one of those questions.  The point that needs to be made here is that we have to get people to focus on capitalism and not this arbitrary concept known as "Whiteness."  The only reason we are talking about skin color, white skin color, is because the capitalist system has spent hundreds of years convincing European/White people that their culture, social existence, and very definition of who they are as human beings is 100% tied to the capitalist system.  Capitalism tells White people that the world e.g. manifest destiny, colonialism, and neo-colonialism, are in existence to protect White people.  It tells them that capitalism has their best interests at heart and that the people opposed to capitalism want to take what White people have - their freedom to continue to support a system that oppresses the majority of people on the planet for the receipt of a few crumbs that capitalism permits to be dropped from their economic table onto the laps of the White masses.  It is just a few crumbs we are talking about and that is the reason we are talking about White skin because if that isn't true, how do you explain why there are masses of European people who are also being exploited by capitalism?  The answer is the capitalist system has been a state of decline for quite some time now.  For decades.  The system is an exploitative system and just as Karl Marx and many others have predicted, the system has reached a point where it can no longer provide for the needs of the people who support it.  In the 1950s, Europe and the U.S. were able to benefit so strongly from colonialism that most White people didn't even know colonies existed.   They thought, as they still do, that the wealth and comfort in the U.S. resulted from the hard work of White people.  The difference today is the capitalist system, stretched to its limits by the mass struggles being waged against it by the majority of people on the planet, can no longer meet the needs of its supporters.  As a result, for the first time since the 1940s, people in the U.S, - White people - are having to face that their future isn't rosy.  There is no American dream for them, something the masses of Africans and other people of color have always known.  The capitalist system is blowing seams all over and the resistance isn't just coming from the African masses who have historically been the most militant opposition to this system's oppression ((Kwame Ture did say we have burned this society from plantations to cities).  Today, the resistance is coming from all elements of the working classes within the U.S. and its coming from the masses of exploited people all over the world.  For example, people in Africa are standing up in mass against neo-colonialism in Guinea, Burkina Faso, Senegal, Azania, South Africa, Somalia, etc.  The people of the Philippines are resisting.  There are growing levels resistance in Central and South America and the Caribbean.  Even the peoples of Europe are not immune.  The folks in Eastern Europe, who were told capitalism would solve every problem they had if they just overthrew the Soviet Union, have learned that was a clear lie.  Wages are stagnant in capitalist societies.  More and more people are being forced to live in poverty and people are rising up. 

White people are capitalism's last line of defense.  That's why its more important than ever for the capitalist system to convince them that in spite of whatever comes over the horizon, they must stay loyal to the capitalist system.  They must see every essence of themselves as being defined by capitalism.  U.S. identity is capitalism.  U.S. patriotism is defined as a loyalty to capitalism.  European/White culture is capitalist culture.  By pushing this ideological concept, the capitalists have created a reality where the masses of White people are trapped.  They cannot rise up against the military industrial complex because that's their identity.  They cannot oppose the police because its' them.  They cannot oppose capitalism because in doing so, they are somehow opposing themselves.  What European/White revolutionaries and true activists for change have on their plate is convincing their communities that European/White identity has nothing to do with capitalism.  European people are people who have a culture and history that has defined their existence.  Like all people, some of that history is good, some of it is bad, but the masses of White people have to understand that they can decide to step out against the exploitative mechanisms of capitalism.  They don't have to claim those mechanisms as their own no more than African people have to claim responsibility for the African chiefs who sold us into slavery.  My ancestors were not chiefs.  If they were, I probably wouldn't be here in the U.S. My people had to be the people on the bottom of the slave ship fighting against the chiefs and sell outs.  So, White people don't have to claim to be the heirs of J.P. Morgan Chase, Barclays, Lehman Brothers, Aetna, and the other benefactors from slavery, colonialism, and manifest destiny, because the masses of White people didn't participate in that system.  Of course, it has to be said that in doing this, we are in no way taking Europeans off the hook for benefiting from our exploitation.  If someone kidnaps someone and brutalizes them and you refuse to do anything stop it you are just as responsible as the primary persons perpetuating the oppression.  This is the place most White people occupy in this society today.  So, make no mistake about it.  You are responsible until you do something to stop the bleeding. 

So, PCC has to be about exposing this class conscious version of history.  They have to make the effort to avoid lumping all White people into one huge oppressive class.  White people, you have a choice as to whether you have to be a part of supporting the oppressive classes.  Why not make that correct choice?   Instead of saying "Whiteness" call it "American Identity Equals white supremacy!"  Denounce American identity because that you cannot separate from capitalist oppression, but American identity is not the same as the cultural identity of the masses of European/White people.  What that actual culture and identity is, White people will need to start discussing and defining.  That's what the month at PCC should be dedicated to doing.  And that discussion should include deep conversations about how the anger coming from the most confused elements of White society has validity that should be dissected and aimed where it should go - against the capitalist system.  That's really who those people are angry with.  Capitalism is failing them and they are just realizing this for the first time, but they are being misled by capitalism into believing the source of their suffering is us.  The discussion should be about how to start having healthy discussions in White communities about capitalism and White identity.  If all of that begins to happen, the natural progression will be clarity into how to accurately perform as productive partners to the African liberation movement and other movements by people of color for freedom.  If European/White activists continue to shy away from the analysis of capitalism and it's role in oppression, and instead focus on this nebulous concept of "Whiteness" then the message will continue to be distorted and we will keep seeing White people trying to deny their existence and separate themselves from the masses of their people who they see as "White."  This approach benefits no one except capitalism because White people cannot escape from being White.  And, we should have no desire to see them deny who they are.  Our interest should be in seeing them deny identifying and working in the interest of the capitalist system which is causing all of the oppression we experience.  So, we don't want them to escape being White.  We want them to redefine European existence and culture in the fight against capitalism. 

In 1964, after returning from Africa and the Middle East, Malcolm X was asked to describe what he had experienced on his journey.  He responded correctly that a White man in the U.S., when he says hello to you "he's actually saying - hi, I'm a white man."  In saying that, Malcolm was making the same point being made here.  White people have been taught that they must identify with the capitalist system as an expression of who they are.  And since capitalism is the system that oppresses African people, that means Europeans have to take a conscious or unconscious position as overseers against the African masses as a part of their identity.  Want to test this theory?  Just have two Africans in any public place dominated by Europeans start a loud and aggressive conversation about racism in this society.  It won't take long for some European to interrupt and try to insert themselves, without invitation, into the conversation.  Why?  Because of that overseer thing, but if this is analyzed correctly, the real reason for this is because of the lie European people have been told.  The belief so many of them have that the future of themselves and the future of capitalism is one and the same.  And the training they have received that we are always the ever present threat to capitalism e.g. to themselves.

If PCC wants to do some good, it will start talking about how the future of capitalism and the future of White people has to be seen as having absolutely nothing to do with one another and that the role of White people is to gain a revolutionary consciousness and culture and work to destroy capitalism.  It will talk about how White people will continue to bear the legacy of colonialism, slavery, and neo-colonialism, and oppression until they decide to stop either working in the interests of capitalism or serving as liberal bystanders and/or apologists for the capitalist system. 
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Martin Luther King Wouldn't have Supported Shutting down the Bay Bridge?  Really?

1/19/2016

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​Immediately following the African youth action to shut down the Bay Bridge yesterday, in commemoration of the Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. holiday, the propagandists for the capitalist system went into overdrive.  You can guess what their corrupt message was.  Martin Luther King would have never supported shutting down the Bay Bridge.  The Bay Area action was a disgrace to the legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King.  Then, right on que, many of you started doing what you do best, parroting the instructions from your master.  Martin Luther King wouldn’t have approved?  Really?  Not the Martin Luther King I know.  This is bait and switch at its finest.  Look, I’ll be very transparent.  I’m not going to pretend that I’m the one to trumpet the merits of these shut down actions.  I’m of the belief that if we are going to engage in actions, they should be mass based, where we are doing work with the masses of people to support the actions.  Not actions based on the work of a few individuals.  I also think there is a severe lack of political analysis to guide the actions e.g. no clear critique of capitalism and its role as the fountain that sprouts out white supremacist institutions and practices.  Plus, I wish the disruption events were more aimed at the direct sources of the power structure e.g. the corporate entities of this society, instead of the average person who commutes across the Bay Bridge.  My fear is since the work with the masses isn’t taking place, the average person who was held up on that bridge just simply isn’t going to  understand the necessity and logic of what took place yesterday.  To them, all they understand is they were apparently targeted.  They don’t know why.  More than likely, they were just trying to get to or from work.  They are trying to get to family members, etc.  These are not the people we should want or need to inconvenience.  These are the people we should want to educate and organize.  I wish the work and protests were more geared towards that education, organization, and stopping large corporations from carrying out business as usual. 

The work I do, which is guided by the principles I believe in, is that we have to organize people to commit their lives to working for justice and liberation.  Meaning, this work isn’t an event, it’s a protracted struggle, much of which will take place outside of the camera lights.  So, I’m not attempting to project myself as the spokesperson for any of these protest actions, but I’m not confused.  For anyone to suggest that anything that happened on the Bay Bridge yesterday was contrary to the vision, philosophy, and practices of Reverend Doctor Martin Luther King Jr. reveals that person as either a liar or a fool (or maybe both).

Dr. King was a rebel against the capitalist system.  In spite of the Coca Cola, Ford commercials depicting his image, he was against the interests of those corporations shaping his words today.  He was a protagonist for change and he understood deeply that power never concedes anything without a demand.  Dr. King shut down bridges himself.  What do you think the Selma action on the Edmund Pettis Bridge was in 1965?  You saw that worthless movie so you should at least be able to understand that.  Those youth yesterday were carrying out Dr. King’s vision and thank goodness for them and their work.  Whatever shortcomings exist in the current protest movement, we will continue to do that work to connect the head to the body.  The capitalist system has done its work to destabilize the African cultural framework as a method of destroying African self-determination.  As a result, many of our youth today have grown up without reliable adults who they can trust who interact with them with dignity and integrity.  So, it’s not a surprise that many of these youth are distrustful of older activists and that many of them are unwilling to listen to what we have to say to them.  Those of us who are serious about this work have to always have an analysis of the problem.  And as Kwame Ture correctly stated, our analysis can never exclude the enemy.  In other words, in order to understand any dysfunctions within the African community, we must understand the cause and effects of capitalism against our people.  Once we know that, we won’t take the youth’s lack of trust personally.  Instead, we will continue to work with them to help them develop that analysis and focus, that Pan-African consciousness.  We will do our work, but while that’s happening, those of you who do the bidding for the capitalist system (either consciously or unconsciously) will not be permitted to further confuse our people, and any justice loving people.  Dr. King was not some pacifist who supported and respected the capitalist system.  He was not some fool who was in favor of the U.S. war machine. He was a principled man who would have supported those youth out there yesterday.  Anyone who doesn’t know that doesn’t know much about Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.  Leading up to his murder, he was in the midst of mobilizing the largest mass movement against the power structure in this nation’s history.  The poor people’s campaign was not going to be a parade.  It was a protest and it was going to make waves in the capitalist system.  The Johnson Administration, in its effort to get Dr. King to speak out against the growing number of urban rebellions taking place in 1967, could only get King to speak of the need to address the conditions of poverty and white supremacy that produced the uprisings.  They couldn't get him to denounce the people without that analysis being attached to his perspective.  If they couldn't get him to denounce urban rebellions in which people were killed, what type of fool thinks he would be against a non-violent shut down of a bridge today?  This is why Dr. King had to be stopped.  If he was really the soft tissue paper version activist portrayed by the capitalists, he would still be alive and well today.  So, many of us contributed on Monday doing work to advance the true ideas of Dr. King.  We commend those youth for taking similar action.  If you are trumpeting the backward position of the capitalist system as it relates to Dr. King, stop doing the enemy’s work for them.  If you don’t agree with those youth, or you don’t agree with what’s written here, that gives you no excuse to settle for being an internet revolutionary.  You must join some organization working for justice.  Whatever issues there are with our youth who are engaging in mobilizing work, at least they have that critical one figured out much better than most of you.

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What Reclaiming Dr. King's Legacy Looks Like

1/17/2016

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Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Kwame Ture (Stokely Carmichael) marching during the "March Against Fear" or the Black Power march, in June, 1966, in Mississippi
On this birthday weekend for Dr. Martin Luther King, and the 30th commemoration of the holiday honoring his life and contributions, there is a wonderful call being waged by activists everywhere to reclaim the image of Dr. King.  This is a critical call because it challenges the method in which Dr. King's legacy is presented today.  Most people in the U.S. have very short and selective memories.  This isn't our fault.  It's the programming we have received our entire lives.  Short memories benefit the capitalists who depend upon our lack of memory to maintain their dominance over the world.  I was a student youth activist before the King holiday came to be.  What that means is instead of participating in the sanitized version of Dr. King you will see in most presentations this weekend, I was involved in shutting streets down, disrupting commerce, encouraging Africans and other people to boycott work and school on January 15th, and doing everything to force the power structure to bow down and accept our demand for a holiday to honor King's contributions.  During that time, in my mind, the holiday was a victory of sorts.  I thought that way because I didn't have the slightest understanding of how insidious the capitalist system is.

I did have enough clues being revealed to me that helped lead me to the truth.  In 1984, I had just read the Federal Bureau of Investigation's counter intelligence files on Dr. King so I knew that they had worked very hard to characterize King as a womanizer.  I knew they had compiled a packet of tape recordings of Dr. King's alleged flings with various women and that they had sent a copy of that packet to King and Mrs. Coretta Scott King.  Since I knew this, I understood why Ronald Reagan was trying so hard in the 80s to get Congress to agree to open the FBI's file on King before the holiday was voted upon.  Reagan's sick hope was that the contents of the file would be made public so as to discredit Dr. King and eliminate any possibility of the holiday gaining traction.

The fact that the very leadership of this capitalist empire would stoop so low was telling for me.  I knew that the masses of people supported the holiday for Dr. King based on his work and vision for justice.  That was his legacy.  Whatever issues existed within him and his marriage, that was between him and Mrs. Coretta in my mind.  Clearly, Mrs. King felt the same way because she never uttered a single public word about the packet she received and she maintained her dignity as it related to her husband until her death.  What all of that motivated me to do was get a much clearer understanding of who Dr. King was and why he should be honored.  From there, I continued to grow within the All African People's Revolutionary Party's (A-APRP) work study process and I became a voracious reader.  For many years, before I started writing as I do today, I read three or four comprehensive books per month.  I gained a pretty solid understanding of the work Dr. King engaged in and I began to understand that the capitalist system's acceptance of the holiday was not the humble and honest effort to honor him that they want you to believe it is today.  The power structure, as evidenced by the actions by Reagan, fought the King holiday tooth and nail until it became clear the people would accept nothing less.  So, the capitalists, always organized, always working to stay one step ahead of the disorganized masses, began plotting about how they could take the holiday, how they could take the image of Dr. King, and manipulate it into the image they want you to have.  They began promoting the less militant version of Dr. King.  They focused exclusively on one speech the man gave; the "I Have a Dream" speech.  It was a good speech, but compared to the speeches Dr. King gave in his final year, that speech was juvenile politics.  

From 1963, when King gave the "I Have a Dream" speech until his death in April of 1968, King began to understand much better the forces that fueled the capitalist system.  He was pushed by the younger more radical elements within the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee, Congress of Racial Equality, and the Black Panther Party, to look more squarely at the system we are fighting against.  King began to realize that his belief that the fight was one of appealing to the moral conscious of the capitalist system was flawed at best and impossible at worse.  He began to see that this capitalist system is a system of imperialism which means it depends upon exploiting the resources and labor of other countries to maintain the profitability of the corporations that run this society.  He knew that the Vietnam war had absolutely nothing to do with protecting the Vietnamese people, not to mention the people of the U.S., from a communist threat.   King comprehended that there was no communist threat.  Only a mass of people worldwide who would no longer permit themselves to be subjugated to capitalist domination.  So, when King gave his "Why I Oppose the War in Vietnam" speech on April 4, 1967, one year to the day that he would be assassinated, he knew exactly what he was placing into motion.  That's why he called the young Stokely Carmichael (later Kwame Ture of the A-APRP) and personally invited him to hear this speech.  King knew that he was crossing over from the world of reform civil rights into the world of revolutionary radicalism.  He was putting himself in direct opposition to the power structure, the Johnson Administration, and even most of the "respectable" civil rights organizations and leaders.  King knew that he was calling the beast out and he knew that action would cause his days to be numbered.

It's critically important that people understand that about King because today, everything is being projected as if King was a person who challenged working class white racists on the streets, but he was celebrated by the elite power structure.  In fact, if you didn't know better, you'd think King was a part of the power structure.  So many people today trying to make King the adviser and supporter of Barack Obama.  This is either a fantasy you have based on misinformation about what really happened, or you are actively attempting to sabotage the true image and legacy of King.  Most of the people who celebrate King today wanted nothing to do with him when he was alive.  Many of them actively worked to destroy King when he was active.  He was not celebrated when he came out against the Vietnam war.  He was demonized.  That's why he reached out to Kwame Ture before he made the speech because he understood that the most radical elements of the Black Power movement were going to end up being the only trusted comrades he would have.  And history has borne out that he was correct.  You see, unlike the people pretending to uplift King today, King was a person of principle.  He knew better than to denounce the militant African nationalists in the movement so he never did.  While Roy Wilkins of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and Whitney Young of the Urban League, were regular public critics of the young African radicals, King never joined them in criticizing our youthful organizers.  King refused to denounce the armed Deacons for Defense and he even welcomed the armed companionship of Charles Sims, a Deacon leader.  So much for the pacifist King image they want you to believe.  King actually had gun permits and owned guns.  This is an easily verifiable fact.  King was a man of principle.  He always maintained contacts and perspectives that were rooted in the struggle for liberation.  He was never a system man and although he held contact with the established leaders of the capitalist world he also held contact with people like Kwame Nkrumah, the first president of Ghana, co-president of revolutionary Guinea, and the founder of the A-APRP.  Nkrumah was the one who encouraged King to continue on the civil rights path when King traveled to Ghana's independence in 1957, and King and Nkrumah maintained personal contact until King's assassination.  

So, this system doesn't love Martin Luther King.  They despise him, but they realize they cannot come out in public and admit that because you love Dr. King and they need to keep you pacified.  Their tactic instead is to give you the image of King that they want you to have.  And this propaganda didn't stop in the 60s and 70s.  It still continues to this day.  The film "Selma" is just one of the latest misrepresentations of Dr. King and his work. The film was a subtle effort to take the militancy out of Dr. King's work because they can't risk you connecting the dots.  And, those dots are that you cannot be a supporter of Dr. King and a supporter of capitalism.  Dr. King was not advocating "black business" under capitalism as any type of solution for African people.  He knew that was a false promise.  That's why you can bet he would have opposed the war in Iraq.  He would have opposed the war in Afghanistan.  He would have opposed the bombing of Libya into submission and he would have opposed the politics of many of the people who are claiming his legacy today.  He would be 100% against the military and prison industrial complexes and he would have opposed the rampant police terrorism taking place.  All of that means he would have most likely been Obama's chief critic.  I'm actually convinced that had King lived longer, he would have had no choice except to embrace socialism and to eventually call for revolutionary change.  I'm sure our enemies agree with me as that is the only logical explanation to explain why they assassinated him.  They wanted to prevent his evolution because they knew he could not be compromised.

So, when our youth call for us to reclaim his legacy, what they are demanding is that we stop letting our enemies define his image for us.  King was a revolutionary and an uncompromising man who put his body on the line for justice.  He was not a politician for the capitalist system.  He was a person who mobilized millions against the system.  So, if you are going to claim to be a part of Dr. King's legacy, then you have to start by denouncing the same things he would have denounced which is all of the above already stated.  You have to acknowledge that Malcolm X was correct when questioned after his one and only brief encounter with Dr. King.  Malcolm said he and King were not opposed to each other.  They actually believed the same thing.  They just had "different ways of getting at it."  Reclaim Dr. King by refusing to accept that he would be an accomplice to this mega anti-human system known as the U.S. today.  Dr. King died mobilizing for the largest poor people's campaign in this country's history.  This was an aspect of the worldwide class struggle against capitalist exploitation.  You cannot be for the masses of people without speaking out, and organizing against, that system of exploitation.  So, make a commitment to study more about Dr. King.  Read his books like "Why We Can't Wait."   Read his speeches like the classic speech against U.S. militarism and capitalism delivered on April 4, 1967.  Play a role and make a contribution towards quashing the lies being told about Dr. King.  You can't put King and Malcolm on a shirt with Barack Obama.  That's like placing a fox in a chicken's den.  Dr. King was for education, health care, and justice.  Everything this system is against.  Do like Dr. King.  Pick a side.  When you do that, then you can claim his legacy.
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A Discussion on Preventing Working Class People From Turning Against One Another

1/16/2016

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Kwame Ture summarized it perfectly.  "The Democratic Party has poor people and billionaires as members and it has the poor people convinced that everyone's interests in the party are the same!"  Of course, his statement is ill-refutable.  The Democratic Party is the home of the Rockafeller family and fast food workers.  This is reality, yet the logic here is incomprehensible.  The Rockafellers have spent the last century dominating working people all over the world through their diversified economic interests, so clearly, a fast food worker has nothing in common with them.  Yet, this is such a common contradiction that very few people are even questioning it.  And that's just one of the paradoxes operating today.  The Rockafellers own controlling stock e.g. interest in Chevron, NBC (and all its affiliate networks), and Chase Manhattan Bank.  They are a family that has been firmly entrenched in the capitalist class since its inception.  There have been dozens of congress seats, governor spots, foundation chair persons, Ivy league university presidential positions, and other influential posts held by their family members for decades.  They are a part of the select group of super rich that dominates world politics and economics.  So, you may belong to the same political party that they do, but your roles within that party are very different.  You simply cast a single ballot for a candidate they gave you in that party.  They use the Democratic Party to chart and carry out their political/economic agenda internationally.  I would characterize the relationship as one where your vote is simply a rubber stamp mechanism for their interests.  They have concerns about oil access in the Middle East so they use their media outlets to paint Saddam Hussein as a monster.  Many people are influenced by their propaganda around this and carry out their will by joining the military and/or supporting those who go, and fighting to overthrow the monster.  This is all done without anyone making the connection between what working people are doing in relationship to what the Rockafellers are setting in motion.

There are many other examples of working people believing in concepts and acting in ways that go completely against their interests.  White supremacy - the system of institutionalized discrimination against Africans, Indigenous people, etc., has historically been one of the most reliable tools for the ruling capitalist class to control the working masses.  Due to their complete corruption of the educational systems in every part of the world, millions of school children have learned, and are learning, to see the world through the lenses of the people who exploit them.  This is why the dominant educational approach today, whether you are talking about Europe, Africa, Asia, or the Americas, has a heavy focus on the contributions of Europe to world civilizations.  Places like Africa and the Americas are completely left out.  This is true even in educational centers on those continents.  For example, people in the U.S. know nothing about the U.S. before 1492.  They don't know who lived here e.g. what people.  They don't know what happened to those people.  They don't know what's happening to them now.  This is why European militia members in Southeast Oregon can confidently claim (through complete ignorance) that the Pauite Indians, the original caretakers in that region, "lost their claim on this land."  How did they lose it?  Who took it from them?  What was their authority to take it?  To these questions there will be an oblivion.  People don't know because the misinformation is intentional (remember, we gave the example of the Rockafeller's strategically placing themselves in positions to influence educational institutions.  None of this is accidental).  The result being a complete acceptance of the white supremacist concept of manifest destiny - meaning Europeans have the right to control all lands of all peoples.  So, it was divine intervention to steal this land from the Indians.  It was divine intervention to steal Africans and resources from Africa, etc.  Those places and those people are better off because of manifest destiny.  This thinking fuels the understanding of everyone today.  Since we don't know what we accomplished and you don't know what we accomplished, the subconscious conclusion is we didn't accomplish anything.  At least anything comparable to Europe.  Then, on top of that, because we are dehumanized in the capitalist interpretation of our history, it is easy for the Rockafellers and others to depict us as criminals and less than human.  This creates distrust and fear and prevents Europeans from being able to see how Africa is being exploited.  It prevents Europeans, and everyone else in the U.S. from understanding that the system you live in is based on the devastation of Africa.  Your car running is based on African resources.  Your computer and cell phone is based on those resources.  Your food is based on those resources.  And, every time you eat, use that phone, or drive that car, you are giving an assist to the further subjugation of the people of Africa.  This relationship is also ill-refutable, but the system is so well oiled that even most Africans in the U.S. are unaware of it.  Therefore, the average European worker, who probably doesn't really know any African people, can be very easily dragged into the realm of dismissing the suffering of African people as a product of our own laziness, criminality, immorality, or lack of good decision making.  This is the reason the very same Europeans who sympathize with the claims of the ranchers in Southeast Oregon, the farmers in rural America, the working classes in Europe, and White workers around the world, are the very same people who criminalize African people protesting on the streets against police terrorism.  The point is the European working class and the African working class have much more in common with each other than they do with the Rockafellers and the capitalist ruling classes.  And, those working class communities have much more in common with the Pauite Indigenous people than they do with the ruling classes.

Its important to understand that these problems are ideological.  Although it should be fairly simple for working people to see the tricks being played against us, most people miss it because the capitalists have very effective methods that they have used for centuries to keep people ideologically confused.  Its not an accident that they have been able to get workers to think they can find liberation in that Democratic Party.  The capitalist class has worked overtime convincing all of us that our culture is capitalist culture.  Our interests are capitalist interests.  They have many of us believing that there is no other definition of our interests besides capitalist culture.  You hear this all the time.  Many Europeans will tell you that they envy African cultural expressions because it demonstrates the pride we have as a people and "all I have is Coca Cola.  I don't have any cultural identity."  Everyone has cultural identity.  Your task is to discover it and define it in the interests of eradicating capitalist domination of your culture.  African and Indigenous people are providing examples of how to do this, but its important to state again that European people, and everyone else who is confused about this, must understand that the trick is to force you to believe that capitalist culture and you are one and the same.  If they convince you of this, then whatever they do, you will believe it is in your interests.  "We invaded Iraq.  We sent national guard troops into the inner city to squash the protests.  We killed Qaddafi."  You didn't do any of that unless you were the soldier they ordered to carry out the attack.  So, why are you claiming responsibility  for these anti-human actions?  Wouldn't a better response be "the capitalist class invaded Iraq.  It attacked the peaceful protesters fighting for justice and it assassinated Muammar Qaddafi to prevent African self-determination!"  You can say that, whether you are African, European, Indigenous, Asian, etc.  

We are in a war to win the hearts and minds of the masses of people on the planet.  This war is at first an ideological war because the most potent weapon the capitalist class has is its ability to convince working people to work for its interests.  As long as large numbers of working class people believe the capitalist class lie that they deserve to receive poverty wages, it will be very difficult to eliminate poverty wages.  So, the battlefield right now is ideological.  Work is being done in African, Indigenous, etc., communities to awaken our people to the need to stand up, organize, and fight against capitalist exploitation.  That same work needs to start taking place in dominantly European communities to convince White working class people that we are not their enemies.  In Europe, America, Australia, etc., whenever there are economic issues, there is a resurgence of white supremacist activity.  We see this time and time again in history.  White people have to start working with White people so that alternative ideas are placed out there that challenge this backward concept.  Europeans should be organizing against the capitalist class, not African and Indigenous peoples.  There appeared to be some tiny steps forward with this in the 1990s when the White right began attacking the state, which is the organizing vehicle of the capitalist class.  We are not endorsing or advocating cowardly violence like the destruction of the Federal Building in Oklahoma City in 1995, or the standoffs at Waco a few years before that, but they do illustrate examples where White working people are focused on the state and not terrorizing us.  Now, we appear to be firmly back where we were in the 1960s where White people are organizing armed militias to intimidate African people in our own ghetto communities.  Working class White people are responding to the ignorant and racist rants of complete numbskulls like Donald Trump.  There is a greater need than ever for that legion of White working class organizers to commit to do work with your people.  

There are many other divisive ideologies that must be confronted and organized against as well.  The rampant homophobia being aimed at African communities, among others and the anti-women culture which is a historical part of capitalist culture and is embraced enthusiastically by many women e.g. "slut shaming", justifying rape culture, etc.

As long as working people permit ourselves to be pitted against one another by the whims of the people who are exploiting us, we will continue to be unwitting pawns in our own destruction.  Here is a call for people to link up with organizations that have programs designed to study through the confusion generated by the ruling capitalist classes.  These formations must be fortified to achieve full fighting strength so that we can effectively challenge the backward ideas dominating within our communities.  Then, maybe we can build an internationally conscious working class movement that overtly acknowledges and rejects white supremacy, patriarchy, homophobia, and all forms of oppression that benefit the enemy.  A movement that recognizes the value of labor based on the role and contribution labor plays in our daily lives.  So, a person who pumps gasoline, or a food server, or a grocery clerk is seen, respected, and paid based on the value they provide to us everyday we interact with them.  Once we can begin to see our way towards that sort of working class consciousness, I'm telling you as the stars will be in the sky tonight, victory will be on the horizon for us!
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Its Time for Us Men to Grow Up

1/15/2016

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There's a lot discussed and written about how women are socialized (I'm not saying its accurate, just that it's out there), but there is very little information discussed about how men think.  How men feel.  How men are programmed to do both.  A lot of the reasons for this are because the capitalist media machine is focused on controlling the minds and bodies of women because capitalism sees women as commodities, but there are other reasons.  Some of them are because as men, we are programmed to ignore our feelings.  There's is no reason to talk about something you don't acknowledge, but unfortunately, our inability to talk about what makes men tick on a psychological level is killing us.  So, let's break the silence.

The capitalist system prioritizes money over people.  Not some of the time.  All of the time, as policy and standard operating procedure.  Since the capitalist system is such a backward system, it relies on keeping the people within it backward in their thinking.  It pushes to make human beings reactive and not analytical.  In the case of men, we are programmed to be the strong silent types.  All the messages broadcast to us from the heroes in movies and television are that strong silent type mold.  Clint Eastwood.  Arnold.  Sly.  In the Will Smith movie "Focus" he plays the strong type who's always in control.  Manipulative, and cold and unfeeling.  This is how every Batman movie portrays that character.  It is how the most respected athletes in society are presented.  Michael Jordan is the best because you never saw him sweat.  Reggie Jackson was Mr. October because he could handle any pressure without melting.  Mike Tyson was "Iron Mike."  As men, we grow up being preached to constantly about strength being defined as not ever showing any weaknesses.  What this tells us is if we show weakness e.g. the inability to overcome any issue and obstacle that comes our way, then we are less than Jordan.  Less than Batman.  Less than Will Smith.  We are less than a man and no one is ever going to want us, respect us, or look to us with any regard.  Of course, the man who falls short here is a loser and a loser is the poster child of being exposed as being weak, something we can never let happen to us as men.

So, instead of learning - correctly - that problems, failures, and the inability to win every time is a part of life and true strength is not denying that aspect of life, but learning how to effectively navigate through it in a healthy fashion, we learn that since we cannot live up to the model provided to us, our first priority is learning how to effectively mask our reality.  Something to give appearances that we are in control because we all know that having your front exposed is worse than death itself.  What this backward thinking has developed is a culture - an international patriarchal culture - that has taught us that we cannot express our fears at being unable to achieve this Batman level of emotional steel.  So, we don't.  We keep it all in because doing so is what the strong silent type does right?  This is the part that's literally killing us.  It's killing us because although we have learned to be quite good at putting up that mighty shield, inside, we are mostly a combination of dysfunctional fear and insecurity.  That's why the minute we have problems communicating and we get pushed, often by the people closest to us, many of us react with violence and abuse.  How dare they put us out there like that?  How dare they force us to be honest, right?  We look at it in this extremely immature way because we never learned that it's perfectly ok for us to acknowledge that we don't have a clue how to proceed.  We don't know how to express our fears.  We don't know how to say we don't know how to be Batman.  

Actually, I think it's time we said we don't want to be Batman because Batman is a fictional character that will never exist.  Unlike him, when we get wounded, it takes us a lifetime to attempt to recover.  Especially since we live in a system that constantly perpetuates the causes of our pain.  So, unlike Batman, we don't recover quickly.  We live as wounded beings.  We suffer from a patriarchal system which has betrayed our humanity and a white supremacist system which has dehumanized us.  All of this is the byproduct of the capitalist system which picks us apart. The system that is killing us every day, if not physically, then definitely spiritually.  

There is good news!  We don't have to die from this backward system.  We don't have to take out our fears and anger on our mates and the people around us.  We can stop this vicious cycle by declaring that the only legitimate violence is against the oppressive system that is exploiting us.  And, by saying that I'm talking about organized revolutionary violence, something you need not worry about because we are a long way away from that happening anytime soon.  Second, we must acknowledge that we are not in control, but the vehicle to gaining that control is us recognizing we are wounded and that we need help.  We need help learning how to be humans. Learning how to get in touch with our fears and feelings of inadequacy and that there is nothing wrong with that.  Last Saturday night, while speaking in front of a large crowd, I got emotionally choked up.  Previous to that it happened a few weeks before when I was presenting a workshop.  It will probably happen again in a venue near you and I'm cool with that.  I've learned how to feel pain and process it and I'm healthier because of it.  I'm also much more productive and supportive with the people around me.  The people who care about me.  A woman I was once involved with told me that a man expressing his emotions was too much for her.  I didn't know what to say to that then, but I do now.  Today, I would say that she really doesn't want a real man.  She wants a movie action figure, because a real man is emotional.  I'm emotional.  I'm also as strong as they come and unstoppable so don't tell me an emotional man is a weak man.  An emotional man is a well grounded man.  

We need to start advancing a completely different concept of what manhood is.  This is true for all men, but especially those of us who come from oppressed communities.  If we don't address this, the dysfunction is going to continue to play out in abuse, violence, and self destructive behavior to us and our communities.  We need to continue to advance the concepts of the social revolution where we understand we can't change the production apparatus without changing the ideological foundation from which we approach our lives.  Men who read this can help by acknowledging that you are not going to play the Batman game any longer.  You are going to surround yourself with positive men figures who are working to be complete human beings.  You are going to start to learn how to express and let go.  Women can help by no longer acting like male emotion is a crime and a sign of weakness.  When you see a man express fear and doubt e.g. emotion, don't stare at him like he just defecated in his pants, encourage him.  And recognize that we lose nothing by permitting men to be human.  We just simply grow as a civilization.  As we become more civilized we position ourselves to attack this backward system at its very core.  It's then that we are going to be in a real position to win.  Without traveling that path and doing this work, all we will ever have is a bunch of fronting men who are unable to be any use to us on things that really matter.
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I Couldn't Care Less What RZA Thinks about Police Terrorism, or Anything Else...

1/13/2016

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I'm not trying to look to him for an analysis around police terrorizing African people.  Look, I'll be honest.  I don't know what he said about that.  I also don't know exactly what Bill Cosby said about African people taking responsibility for ourselves.  I don't know what Tyler Perry said or Pharrell.  I couldn't tell you about the philosophy and opinions of Raven Symone.  I can't quote the wisdom of Stacy Dash and I don't really know what LeBron did, or didn't do, to address the Tamir Rice shooting.  The reasons I don't know what those people expressed about these issues is because I spend much of my time studying and participating in movement around all of those issues.  Consequently, if I want information and/or analysis around those questions, I go to sources who know more about it than I do.  I'm sorry, but none of those television stars, rappers, singers, athletes, and public personalities come close to qualifying in that realm.

And, why would they qualify?  Out of all of them, Cosby is the only one who at least has some degrees in education, but then, if we are honest, we know that having degrees, even multiple ones, from capitalist educational institutions doesn't provide you with the skills to properly assess the role of capitalism and white supremacy in oppressing African people.  Those degrees won't give you the foundation to articulate what's happening to us on a daily basis.  In reality, there is only one proven method to give you a qualified ability to assess our situation.  The only reliable qualification comes from actively participating in working with our people to solve those problems.  From doing that, you will know that African people are getting brutally murdered by police in all known facets of life.  Many of them are unarmed with no previous history of encounters with police.  Others of them are engaged in, at most, possible minor violations of some obscure law - nothing to justify them ending up dead. Even others, like the young Tamir Rice, are just overt victims of a backward and racist society to it's very core.  Yes, from doing this work, you will learn how to explain to people in clear terms why Tamir Rice's death was a result of this backward system.  How Sandra Bland's was as well.  How the people of Ghana are being victimized by this system every day.  The people of the Congo.  Jamaica.  Mexico, etc.  You will have the tools and analysis to understand all of this because you will be engaged in the work that will reveal all of these answers to you.

If you are not engaged in this work on the ground, then your only source of information about these issues is coming from sources who's primary objective is to confuse you.  Television and printed news from corporate entities and/or people talking to you about these issues who's primary sources are the same.  That's why I would never take my time to listen to what the celebrities I named above have to say about any of these issues because I know none of them are involved in this work.  How do I know that?  Because I am actively involved in this work and as a result, there are very few formidable African organizations that I haven't had extensive contact with at this stage in my life.  If any of these people were involved in these organizations, or any others - trust me - word would have leaked by now.  So, I know they are not.  And, since I know they are not doing this work in an organized fashion, I know that the only reason their opinion is being sought after around these issues is not because of their crisp analysis in understanding these issues, but because they tell jokes that make us laugh.  They act out characters in a quality way that makes us cry.  They rap out lyrics in ways that resonate with us.  They perform athletic moves in a fashion that inspires us.  Now, I don't know about you, but what that spells out for me is if I want to see a quality 360 dunk, then I watch LeBron, but if I want a quality analysis of police terrorism, I think I'll watch Malcolm X, not LeBron.  In fact, I'd bet Malcolm knew more about basketball than LeBron knows about our movements for justice and liberation.

I don't know for sure, but I'm going to take a stab at it.  You look to LeBron and Cosby for analysis about social issues because it intrigues you to hear what these celebrities have to say about these issues.  Fair enough, but with all that's at stake, don't you think it's time we qualified that so that it's clear that we are just intrigued?  We really aren't trying to suggest that these celebrities are our go to people on these issues?  I think that has to be clarified with urgency because I'd be willing to bet that there is an emerging generation of African youth who think the RZA is a chief spokesperson for us on issues of great importance to our people while that same youth has more than likely never heard a real Malcolm X speech in their lives.

This is a problem folks and if you are one of those people promoting what the RZA, or Cosby, or any other celebrity is saying about life and death issues among African people, and you aren't contributing the same energy towards astute and eloquent analysis around these issues from people who really know what they are talking about, then you are very much a part of the problem with our people today.

It feels to me like this energy says more about our psychology of oppression than it does anything else.  David Bowie just died.  I see scores of European people debating his contradictions as a person and artist and many of them are celebrating him as a musical genius, but I don't see any of them elevating him to the status of spokespersons for all of their social issues.  I don't see them doing that for Katy Perry, Justin Bieber, or Mylie Cyrus.  Yet, we continue to promote the ignorance of these people from our community.  What makes it worse is most of them have already made fortunes exploiting our suffering through their music, acting, etc.  Now, to add insult to injury, they are speaking out, denying the very suffering they got paid exploiting.  Were it not for the suffering of African people displayed on virtually every hip/hop record produced from the 80s on, including every record from RZA's group the Wu Tang Clan, we wouldn't know who the hell RZA is today.  

So, I don't really know what he said.  I don't know what LeBron said, and I've shut out listening to Cosby whenever he started speaking and I was in earshot for the last 30 years.  I don't know what they said and I couldn't care less what they said.   In truth, I'm thinking about them and their analysis of me about as much as they are thinking about me and my analysis of them.  We are a proud and historical people.  On a worldwide basis we continue to stand in dignity fighting for our liberation and in the U.S., we continue to civilize this country with our grace and humanism.  So, -please pledge to miss us with the stupidity of these people and start sharing the words and wisdom of people who deserve it (Marcus and Amy, Shirley and W.E.B., Kwame Nkrumah, Kwame Ture, Sekou Ture, Malcolm X, Angela Davis, Assata Shakur, etc., etc., etc., etc.)  

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The Revolution Will Not be on Twitter

1/9/2016

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Since the All African People's Revolutionary Party (A-APRP) is an international organization, we struggle to utilize capitalist controlled technology to engage in our organizational work.  This morning, we had an organizing 101 seminar which our Central Program Committee asked me to facilitate.  As is typical with our meetings, we had organizers on the skype call from Guinea-Bissau, Tanzania, Britain, and several cities across the U.S.  At one point during the seminar after I had gone over the basics of how to carry out organizing work, one of the young brother comrades from the East Coast (U.S.) asked the collective for ideas on how to go about recruiting and building his chapter.  Although I had presented steps on how to do this in theory, his legitimate and sincere question reminded me how much of a disconnect we experience between talking about organizing and people actually having a vision about how to go about engaging in organizing work.  

First, it must be stated that we define revolution as the complete transformation of the systems that organize and make up society from capitalist dominated institutions, structures, and values into revolutionary socialist centered societal institutions.  To us, this distinction is critical because the role of socialism is to utilize state structures to facilitate the people's developing consciousness into that of the highest awareness and self consciousness so that state structures are no longer needed.  So structures like child welfare, police, mental health institutions, colleges, universities, which under capitalism are utilized to feed the profit making mechanism and protect and advance the interests of the super rich are transformed under socialism to serve the people as a vehicle of preparing the people to serve themselves (communism).  That's why education and health care are free under socialism so that they can serve to develop society in the ways mentioned.  If this process is properly understood, then the next question is how do we achieve revolution?  The answer is in order to have revolution, we must have revolutionaries.  So then, the question is how do we transform people into revolutionaries?

We believe the solution to that last question is based in having a revolutionary ideology that can be spread among the people in an aggressive fashion to combat the reactionary capitalist ideology that dominates the world today.  For us, that revolutionary ideology is Nkrumahism/Tureism, but any revolutionary ideology rooted in the culture of the people engaging in the struggle will serve the purpose if people are sincerely working to win the hearts and minds of the people over to the content of that revolutionary ideology.  The work to facilitate this process is the revolutionary work that we are speaking of.  So, how does this work look?  As I was reminded during the seminar this morning, that question is an important one because organizing work is vastly misunderstood in a capitalist society.  Even among so-called activists, even those who claim to be revolutionary, there is mass confusion around this work.  We will attempt to give our interpretation here.

Mobilization or reform work is that in which is designed to win influence within the capitalist system.  For example, there is rampant police terrorism so the people mobilize to come together and demand an end to the terrorism.  If enough people are mobilized for a long enough period of time and the pressure builds to a strong enough level, then the power structure will take notice.  This is especially true if the protests start to impact the ability of the capitalist system to function.  Examples are the Montgomery bus boycotts of 1955, the uprisings of the women of Guinea-Bissau in 1973, the Soweto uprisings in 1976, the Occupy Movement of 2011, and Black Lives Matter protests today.  These protests push the system to the point of agreeing to reforms e.g. police being individually held accountable, body cameras being worn, segregation laws lifted, etc.  These are all very positive examples of activism, but they are mostly spontaneous - meaning people who have no common ideology or formal working relationship gather together to protest together.  Since there are no formal relationships, often, the people at protests in the beginning are not necessarily the same people at protests later on during the campaign.  The objectives within this context are always up for debate and actually, its remarkable if objectives are even discussed on any high level within these campaigns.  Mostly, the focus is on expressing outrage at the issue.  This is the process of mobilization.  The strength in mobilizing work is it is often many people's first exposure to justice work and these activities are large enough and easy enough to access so that masses of people can find their way to participate.  The weakness of mobilization work is that it is usually not sustainable because there is no common ideology and objectives.  Plus, since its rooted in influencing the power structure, as opposed to changing it, the problems it seeks to address are never resolved through mobilization work.  At best, those problems are challenged, maybe even confronted on some levels, but never resolved.

Revolutionary organizing work differs from mobilizing work in that it's purpose is long range solutions to the problems that impact society.  Revolutionary organization isn't concerned about the immediate splash of attention. Nor is it focused on the flavor of the moment.  Its more concerned about reaching people on an "each one teach one" basis and building consciousness that can transform people.  This work is rooted in revolutionary ideology and consciousness that guides the persons participating into collective and ongoing action to change the system.  A great example of this is the life of Kwame Ture, formally known as Stokely Carmichael.  After making serious contributions to the movement as a member of the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee before then becoming the poster child of the Black power movement in the 1960s, Kwame went on to move to Guinea, West Africa and become a leading cadre in building the A-APRP.  Essentially what this means is when he was working in SNCC and the Black Panther Party, Kwame was daily national, and often international news.  His participation in protests and his speeches were broadcast widely and he was regularly featured on weekly television shows like "Face the Nation."  Once he made the choice to work for revolutionary Pan-Africanism, his presence in the capitalist media evaporated, but his work intensified.  He used his popularity (or lack of popularity) to travel tirelessly throughout the world talking to people and asking them to build work study circles for the A-APRP.  He worked equally as intensely to build relationships with other revolutionary and progressive movements establishing high level work with the leadership of the Irish Republican Socialist Movement, the American Indian Movement, and the Palestinian movement.  He established high level relationships with African revolutionary formations like the African Party for the Independence of Guinea-Bissau, the Pan-African Congress of Azania, South Africa, and the Democratic Party of Guinea, among others.  He worked to ease tensions among African organizations in the U.S.  He worked hard to insure Maulana Karenga from the US Organization was talking to other organizations in our community.  He built relationships with Omari Obadele from the Republic of New Afrika and Chokwe Lumumba from the New African People's Organization (the organizations from which the current Malcolm X Grassroots Movement emerged).  He did the same with Louis Farrakhan from the Nation of Islam and Omari Yeshitela from the African People's Socialist Party.  In fact, one of the last physical acts Kwame carried out was aggressively seeking to get Julian Bond, who was President of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and Minister Farrakhan to sit down together instead of continuing to be pitted against one another by the capitalists and zionists.  From 1968 until 1998 when he made his physical transition, Kwame did this work outside of the capitalist media and outside of the consciousness and awareness of most of you reading this.  This is why many people ignorantly still believe he spent those last 30 years "not doing anything."  We argue that the un-glamorous work of bringing people together and building relationships is the most difficult, but necessary work that needs to be done.  It is also the work that most people don't want to do because it is thankless in the sense that no one is going to appreciate your work to pull meetings together on a consistent basis, but if you are successful, years later the quality of your contribution will shine through.  We know this because although Kwame has been physically absent from us for going on 16 years, the foundation of the work he did is still growing.  His message of revolutionary Pan-Africanism, scientific socialism, unity, and organization are all being trumpeted all over the world today in English, Twi, Creole, Swahili, French, Spanish, and many other languages Kwame couldn't speak.  Organizers are all over the world continuing to do that critical work.  Organizations are working together and the call for unity and organization is heard all across the land.  The work people like Kwame did to institutionalize ideological concepts are strong today as well.  The A-APRP initiated a "Smash the FBI/CIA" campaign in the 1970s.  At that time, it was political suicide to speak out in public against those "sacred" organizations.  Today, everyone knows the terrorist nature of those criminal organizations.  How did this mass consciousness develop because it wasn't on CNN, FOX, CBS, or any of those CIA networks?  You didn't learn this in school, not even college?  How did you know to question the merits of those organizations the way you know it today?  Another example is consciousness around the struggle of the Palestinian people.  Youtube is full of videos demonstrating that Kwame was speaking militantly against zionism in the 80s, something no one else in the U.S. was doing at that time in the same way.  Today, anti-zionist consciousness is spreading widely and we continue to inform about zionism's role in sabotaging African liberation.  Kwame's not here today so where did this consciousness come from?  Again, the television news isn't talking about zionism.  Maybe you read about it on social media?  Great, but even that wasn't happening 30 years ago on these questions.  The point is people like Kwame Ture did the day to day work and built the necessary relationships to spread that revolutionary consciousness in ways that people have picked up on and continued to distribute, despite the fact they may or not may know who Kwame is or any of the people who laid the groundwork for this revolutionary consciousness to take hold.

Revolutionary organizing work is not for the faint of heart.  It requires extreme patience and initiative.  It will only work if your ego is in check and you are prepared to climb hills, fall back, keep climbing.  You will have to do extensive work and no one is going to see it.  In fact, the harder you work, the more people will tell you that you are not doing anything.  If you have that common revolutionary ideology, that's when you rely on it to comfort you to the fact that you are doing what you do not to win any popularity contests, but to advance consciousness.  You will know this is a protracted and eternal struggle and your responsibility is simply to contribute all you can to that struggle while you are still able.  If you do this work, you will have to sit with the understanding that the work you do is setting the stage for that level of collective consciousness that will one day permit us to have the conditions for revolutionary change.  That's enough for me.
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    I don't see disagreement as a negative because I understand that Frederick Douglass was correct when he said "there is no progress without struggle."  Our brains are muscles.  Just like any other muscle in our body if we don't stress it and push it, the brain will not improve.  Or, as a bumper sticker I saw once put it, "If you can't change your mind, how do you know it's there?"

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