Ahjamu Umi's: "The Truth Challenge"
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Understanding Political  Identity instead of Identity Politics

2/27/2017

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 The All African People’s Revolutionary Party’s (A-APRP) 2017 African Liberation Day theme focuses around youth organizing and fighting back against settler colonialism “from Africa, to Standing Rock (U.S.), to Palestine.”  When we say settler colonialism, we are talking about a system where the elite European invader classes forcibly take over the land and resources of another people so that they can extract, control, and exploit those people.  In other words, the European settler classes came to Africa, the Americas, and Palestine.  They developed relationships with the elite classes of people Indigenous to those places, and they proceeded to enact systems of oppression and exploitation that subjugated the populations in those countries while enriching Europe, the U.S. Canada, Israel, and Australia, as the industrialized capitalist countries who still dominate much in the world today.
Every settler colony, whether it’s Azania, South Africa, Zimbabwe, Kenya, Ghana, other areas of Africa, Palestine, or the Americas,  is ruled through an organized system of violence and intimidation.  In Azania, South Africa, this system included the pass laws where every African had to hold a special identification book that confined them to specific areas.  To be found anywhere without that pass book, or within an area not authorized by the pass book, meant immediate imprisonment and worse.  The same conditions exist for the Palestinian people today where Palestinians born and raised in areas historically defined as Palestine are not permitted free movement through those territories by the Israeli government.  And, the Indigenous people of the Western Hemisphere have been subjected to countless systems of control and oppression such as the Bracero Program and the boarding schools.  Although this violence and control is a central element to maintaining power within these colonized areas, probably the most important tool used by the colonizers is ideological control through theories rooted in white supremacy.  An example of this method is the education system most, if not all, of us have experienced.  Despite the fact we have all experienced school in various ways throughout the world, if each of us was called upon to express what we learned about Africa and African people, the Palestinian people, and the Indigenous people of the Western Hemisphere, all of us, whether in North, Central, or South America, Africa, the Caribbean, Europe, Australia, or anywhere else, would all have to say in unison that our knowledge was limited and what we received was drenched in racism and misinformation.  The reason for this is white supremacy, the primary appendage of capitalism, had to be created as a universal theory to justify the exploitation taking place within the settler colonies.  Consequently, if oppressed people within those settler colonies are going to develop a healthy perspective of themselves so that they can galvanize to be free of oppression, they must deconstruct the ideology of white supremacy and construct an ideology of liberation and human progress.  By deconstruct, we mean confronting and dismantling backward concepts like the people of Africa are incapable of governing themselves and replacing that dysfunction with a clear statement about how African people have successfully governed themselves thousands of years before the Europeans set foot in Africa.  This is important because once Africans can believe we can fulfill our own needs, then we can begin to seriously organize to do so, but the as long as we believe we need Europeans in order to survive, we can never take the independent steps towards our liberation.   This process of decolonialization is what is meant by the term political identity.  For example, Africans are oppressed because we lack power.  We lack power because colonialism has stolen our land and separated us from Africa physically and psychologically.  Our enemies have taken control over Africa’s vast mineral resources.  And, they control the African masses by controlling all the wealth at their disposal making our existence one of constantly seeking resources from the European capitalist system when the resources they control actually belonged to us in the first place.  Using Africans within the U.S. as an example, the way white supremacist ideology manifests itself within this process is these Africans are taught that we are fortunate that Europeans permit us to live in the “great” U.S. (thus the refrain; “if you don’t like it, go back to Africa!”)  Never is it acknowledged that the so-called “greatness” e.g. the massive wealth within the U.S., has been created by this system of colonialism and settler colonialism that is stealing Africa’s wealth and funneling that wealth into the capitalist countries.  If Africans were able to recognize this process and how it impacts us, we would be up in arms fighting, demanding, that Africa be free so that we could benefit from the riches our homeland has to offer.  Since our enemies have created this white supremacist system which has convinced us that we are not Africans, but African-Americans, we have been taught to see the U.S. as primary.  Thus, many of us see the U.S. as our only option.  This approach teaches us to ignore Africa (and/or look at Africa through the same white supremacist lenses that most Europeans view it) while we fight for inclusion into the U.S.  That’s why the A-APRP calls our people African uncompromisingly.  We don’t exchange African with Black or any other identity label because we understand that until we see ourselves as Africans, we cannot embrace the concept that our future is tied to the future of Africa.  So, by calling us Africans, it is a form of political struggle against the forces of oppression.  It’s a way for us to declare our political loyalty to Africa as a method of liberating our minds so that we can pave the way to liberate our people and our homeland.  This is the process of us claiming our political identity as African people.  This act automatically links us with African people in Canada, Mexico, Honduras, Guatemala, Brazil, Cuba, Jamaica, Puerto Rico, the Dominican Republic, England, France, Australia, India, and all of Africa.  By calling ourselves African, it asserts that we recognize that we are the same people and that we will define our reality, not our enemies.  When we say the only thing that separates us is a boat stop we are crushing the narrative of colonialism and refusing to submit to it.  We are defining our political identity.  This is a healthy and liberating practice that we must endure.  And while we do, we cannot get confused into letting anyone confuse this necessary process with identity politics.
Identity politics is a concept that is quite different from political identity.  Identity politics seeks to define the world based on how we interpret our identity instead of what our identity actually is.  As a result, identity politics tells us that based on subjective definitions, we get to define what is good and what is bad.  Those subjective definitions are “I’m Black so although I haven’t read one book on African people, I can define what being Black is based simply on how I feel about it.”  There is no reliance on history or science.  Just our subjective feelings.  For example, within the construct of identity politics, persons will assert that only they as African people can define what is racism or that all Europeans are subject to anything anyone African says about racism because our identity as African people gives us the definitive rights to determine everything related to being African based not on our analysis, but our interpretation of our identity.  Of course, there are many African people who know absolutely nothing about white supremacy.  In fact, there are Africans who will deny its existence!  So, any definitions cannot be based on subjective and unscientific premises, but must be based on political analysis.  In other words, being African based on political identity claims a political connection to Africa that presupposes a commitment to see Africa free as a prerequisite to all African people being free.  The same can be said about the political identity of the Indigenous people of the Western Hemisphere as it relates to the Americas, and the Palestinian people as it relates to occupied Palestine. 
Students of history must learn to make this clear distinction between political identity, which is a methodology to break the chains of colonialism, and identity politics, which is a method that relies on bourgeois liberalism (creating false premises to deny dealing with the truth) to cloak the real contradictions of white supremacy within capitalist societies.  Those real contradictions are that the capitalist system is built on settler colonialism as a means of financing itself and when the survivors of settler colonialism free their lands and their people, they are weakening the capitalist system so that it makes it possible for the masses of humanity to march towards justice and freedom.
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They Killed Malcolm X 52 Years Ago Today.  What We Should Learn

2/21/2017

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"I just knew they had shot my husband!"  Those were the ominous words of the late Dr. Betty Shabazz - the widow of El Hajj Malik  El Shabazz (Malcolm X) - just moments after he was viciously assassinated in front of his entire family on February 21st, 1965.  Fifty-two years later, the conditions Malcolm X spoke so eloquently about still exist and in many ways have been intensified.  Its essential that we recognize the reasons the state thought it necessary to silence Malcolm's prophetic voice.

Most students of history know about Malcolm's transformation from street hoodlum into dedicated soldier within the Nation of Islam.  Malcolm's efforts to strengthen the Nation are also known and his impact on that organization remains significant enough so that the Nation still struggles around addressing their relationship to him.  His travels to the Middle East have been repeatedly referenced in documentaries, Spike Lee's 1992 motion picture, and even Malcolm's own autobiography as depicted by Alex Haley, but very little, almost nothing, has been said about Malcolm's work in Africa and throughout the African world.  And, even less has been said about Malcolm's clear push to become a force within the Pan-African world.

One only needs to start with Malcolm's own words in his autobiography when he says that "the highest honor of my life was an audience with Kwame Nkrumah in Ghana."  Malcolm went to Ghana in 1964 in response to Nkrumah's call for Africans everywhere to go there and help build Ghana as a method of strengthening the entire African continent.  He was not alone in answering Nkrumah's call.  Louie Armstrong, the Trinidadian Pan-African George Padmore, W.E.B. DuBois and Shirley Graham DuBois, Muhammad Ali, and Maya Angelou, are just a few of the people who wanted to support Nkrumah's call.  And Malcolm arrived there essentially a private citizen.  And what's never discussed is how this private citizen, from the U.S., who was a former convict, was able to gain an audience with the president of Ghana.  What did they discuss in their multiple meetings?  Neither Malcolm or Nkrumah divulged any details, but some things we can ascertain.  Nkrumah, having experienced the debacle of attempting to defend his student Patrice Lumumba and the National Congolese Movement in the Congo, as well as fending of the eventual overthrow of his own government, was learning how sophisticated imperialism is.  He knew he had to organize an organic, revolutionary, Pan-African force to have any chance of challenging imperialism's hold on Africa.  And, he wanted Malcolm to play a direct role in this work.  There are several substantiated reports that Nkrumah told Malcolm that Ghanaian intelligence forces had advised him that they had uncovered communications that led them to believe U.S. intelligence forces were plotting to assassinate Malcolm.  There is also collaboration that Nkrumah relayed this information to Malcolm.  Nkrumah himself suggests  in his personal letters (Kwame Nkrumah - "The Conakry Years") that he told Malcolm of his fate as a way of attempting to entice him to stay on in Ghana.  Malcolm's response to Nkrumah is not clear, but what we do know is that Malcolm was indeed assassinated and Nkrumah's prophetic vision of it confirms that clearly, that assassination was not directed by the Nation of Islam as imperialism would have us believe.  Or, as a wise elder once said "they may have fired the guns, but they didn't buy the bullets!"

Malcolm was primed to serve as a key organizer and activist for a developing worldwide Pan-African movement.  And his position as a chief and credible critic of U.S. imperialism made him an essential character in this growing work.  There is even evidence that Malcolm's 1960 meeting with Fidel Castro in Harlem established a relationship that was maintained between Malcolm and all of the anti-imperialist world.  Malcolm also visited with Guinea President Sekou Ture and although Malcolm wrote about how impressed he was with Ture, and how Ture told him that our people's fight for dignity was the central focus that our fight should entail, there are key questions that logic should dictate that we ask.  Malcolm never spoke in public about what he discussed with Nkrumah.  He never spoke about what the relationship was between his meetings with Nkrumah and his meetings with Ture.  He never spoke of any follow up from his 1960 meeting with Castro, but one thing is clear.  Malcolm named the organization he started after leaving the Nation of Islam the Organization of Afro-American Unity (OAAU).  This was a clear tribute to Nkrumah who one year before had started the Organization of African Unity (OAU - now the African Union).  Malcolm spoke in general terms about the OAAU being the  U.S. branch to the OAU.  And, there has always been chatter about Malcolm receiving funding from Nkrumah, Ture, etc., to travel and blast imperialism since they, as heads of state over tenuous governments, didn't have the same leverage to carry that out.  Since none of this was ever confirmed by Malcolm, we are left with speculation.  The other challenge is Malcolm and Nkrumah, etc., were still in a stage of development with each of their political understanding of the forces at work.  Consequently, we know that imperialism destroyed any potential of the OAU (the AU) and the OAAU for that matter, but the efforts Malcolm was making, in clear cooperation and encouragement from Nkrumah in our estimation, were sincere and represent the work we continue to carry out today.

What we can say confidently is that Nkrumah and Ture were without question political comrades of the closest nature.  As a result, it is difficult for me to see any political scenario where Malcolm, who had a relationship with Nkrumah, could develop a similar relationship wtih Ture without it being a coordinated effort.  In other words, those relationships were coordinated and they were done in an effort to build this Pan-African network.  Of course, Malcolm was assassinated and was therefore never able to fulfill his potential to this work.  The young Stokely Carmichael - later to become Kwame Ture - did arrive in Guinea-Conakry four years after Malcolm arrived in Africa.  And, we believe Kwame Ture fulfilled the work Nkrumah initially wanted Malcolm to fulfill and Nkrumah himself essentially verifies this in his personal letters.  The work Kwame did, that Malcolm was starting to do, is the same Pan-African work we continue to do throughout the African world today.


What's odd is all of these revitalized efforts to commemorate Malcolm go to great lengths to avoid any mention of this work.  There is no mention of Nkrumah, Ture, Castro, or anything even remotely connected to this work in Spike Lee's movie, any of the documentaries about Malcolm, and virtually nothing in any of the books.  Manning Marable's 2011 study on Malcolm, which was filled with contradictions, barely scratches the surface of these relationships because Marable was more interested in pursuing gossip and accusations about Malcom's personal sex life, preferences, and alleged affairs with a White woman in Egypt.  Not to mention alleged affairs Dr.Mrs. Shabazz was supposed to be having.  Sex sells, but revolutionary struggle educates.

So, we know that the best way to honor anyone is to continue their work. As a result, in order to live by their values, we encourage you to use this 52nd commemoration of Malcolm's assassination to focus in on Malcolm's legacy as a revolutionary organizer.  A developing Pan-African organizer and the importance of continuing that essential work.  And also, since Malcolm was much of what he was because of his decision to discipline and focus his life, I encourage everyone to engage how you can become better organized?  Better able to confront problems withiin yourself and/or with others and to develop the skills to help you learn how to resolve those issues.  If you are serious and just need help, check out my button on Personal Advising if you are interested in trying to strengthen your abilities in order to reach your full potential as an oranizer and as a person. 

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Valentines Day and the State's Assault against Any Real Intimacy

2/14/2017

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It was during a conversation with comrades in Tanzania in December that one of them said something that perked my interest.  They mentioned that Western holidays, like Valentines Day, are now regularly consumed by people in Tanzania and throughout Africa.  Of course, we all know that the capitalist system's advocacy of every holiday it promotes is motivated by a profit motive.  So the fact they have discovered that there are further markets to exploit in Africa isn't any big surprise.  What it did make me think of was how much dysfunction we suffer from as a result of the onslaught of money grubbing propaganda.  Think about it.  Here is a day where you are supposed to have someone you are romantically involved with.  Someone you should demonstrate your commitment to through spending money - whether you can afford to or not is immaterial - to cement your relationship to this person.  And, it doesn't matter one bit whether you and your person have an understanding as it relates to not spending money on this day, the pressure from the capitalist system is so intense, if you cannot afford to buy something, you still feel inadequate.  This is true because everything within capitalism is based upon personal competition.  Upon devaluing us as individuals in order to reduce us down to consumer commodities.  As a result, you can have that principled understanding with your partner, but then all the people next to them at work got something today.  Or, even if only one person got something, it was something.  And even if you don't see what that person next to your person got.  Even if you wouldn't even know what that person who got something looked like if they walked up to you and slugged you in the jaw.  Even if none of your partner's co-workers actually got anything  Even if you don't even have anyone to buy something for, you still feel that little pang.  That little jab that's telling you that you couldn't deliver.  Another shot at diminishing your self being courtesy of the capitalist system which depends upon that little taste of insecurity to drive its profits every day.  

And, all of that trauma only scratches the service.  There are millions of people who struggle on days like today because there is such a systemic apparatus working within the capitalist system that has successfully trained us that we are not worthy as human beings.  That something is inherently wrong with us.  That something is always wrong with us and it will always be wrong with us.  Consequently, the reason why we haven't been able to find that special person, and keep them, is because of these undeniable and non-negotiable flaws.  And this negative propaganda infects pretty much all of us.  No matter what.  You can be a genius.  You can look like a movie star.  You still are held hostage to that voice inside of you telling you that you are a failure.  And that voice has a strong life expectancy and its always working.  All the time.  I know because like most of you, I've battled that voice my entire life.  Young women made fun of me when I was in high school.  I mean, openly laughing in my face when I asked them out.  And, laughing not just when I asked, but weeks afterward, whenever they saw me.  They used to mobilize on the steps at my high school to laugh at me as I walked by.  Looking back, I can't even blame them.  I was skinny as a rail with huge, thick eye glasses, terrible skin, especially my facial area, and a head full of nappy hair long before anyone was celebrating it, at least where I could hear them.

There was much more than just the physical stuff.  A reoccurring message that I had no value.  That message was orchestrated and articulated with such consistency by everyone from my parents to my teachers, etc., that I had to believe it was true.  And, I've spent my entire life fighting against that dysfunction.  I've done enough work around it that I now know why my parents said and did what they did.  And I don't blame them at all.  In fact, I miss them terribly.  So, a day like today has never been a friend to me.  It wasn't a friend when I had someone in my life, and it isn't a friend now.  

Finally, there's all the bourgeois confusion that interferes with us learning how to be comfortable with ourselves. Confident in ourselves, so that we can overcome all of the previously mentioned trauma.  By bourgeois confusion I mean the way we are trained to search for companionship.  The process where we attempt to hide our insecurities and uncertainty about ourselves (remember, we are taught to believe something is inherently wrong with us) by carefully and consistently building a wall up around us that prevents you from seeing the real us.  The afraid us.  The part of us that is totally buying the facade you have perfected in front of us that makes us believe you are perfect so therefore there is really no way you would ever want to have anything to do with someone as flawed as me.  We spend so much time in our lives developing these fake acting skills that most of us never learn how to become comfortable with the flawed selves that we are and as a result, we never find that person who is ready to face reality with us, thus creating a genuine intimacy and partnership that ironically, we spend our entire lives desperately looking for, and most often never finding.  All of this is bourgeois because the definition of bourgeois class values are believing in class interests that are based in idealism (the facade) that go firmly against what's best for us.  

Valentines Day is problematic not because there is anything wrong with people expressing their love towards one another.  The problem is the platform from which this is messaged is one from which perfection is assumed.  And since our lives are anything except perfection, the fact many of us don't have that perfect mate - we have a highly imperfect situation, maybe even a dysfunctional one, or no situation at all - reinforces that loneliness for us on a day like today.

I'm going to fight my battle against all of that dysfunction and I encourage you to do the same.  Its ok to maintain your fantasy person that will one day sweep you off your feet.  I want to be able to do that.  My person often comes in many different physical forms, but she's always ready to bring the values into my life that I've long wanted.  A genuine interest in me as a human being.  An interest in me.  Something that I feel has escaped me my entire life.  My person won't see me as a puzzle piece e.g. the person with the looks, build, maybe even some personality traits, that they admire, without taking in and valuing the person I am in its entirety.  And, I fully realize that I've missed a lot of great values in people over the years because of my dysfunctional issues as well.  Well, that battle I'm waging today is centered around committing to continue working on myself to push myself outside of whatever I think is comfortable for me.  Pushing me to question everything I'm doing, which I've actually gotten quite good at, and demanding more of myself.  Like I have made a commitment to think through everything I say I want in someone with a counter of what I will offer them.  And, I want to hold myself accountable to doing that.  Also, since I know I can't battle this on an individual level, I pledge to myself to try and bring these issues into my patriarchy groups with other men folks.  To continue to write about it as I'm doing now and to use all of that to continue to push myself and everyone around me.  The pushing piece is essential because this is such a backward society, anytime we are defending questionable values, its a pretty strong bet we are perpetuating the values of the enemies of humanity.  So, push, push, push, yourselves beyond what you think you believe in.  I'm certainly doing my best to do that to myself.  I question even my core beliefs daily.  The one's that are questionable, I have no issues with confronting them and working to change.  The one's I'm strong in I hold that way because I've thought of the counter arguments against them, and worked through them, before you even articulated your thoughts against the concepts to me.  

By seeing Valentines Day as a day of reflection, it helps a lot.  I still feel the loneliness many of you feel, but it does help.  I don't know if I'll ever get to that fantasy place with that fantasy person, but the point is the more work I do, hopefully that will matter less and less.  Hopefully, I'll get to a place where I appreciate the people I do have, more and more.  And less and less of how I define myself and the people around me will be dictated by this money first system.  I also encourage all of us to really focus on confronting that negative self talk that is telling all of us that something is wrong with us.  That we are worthless.  None of that is true.  I don't care what you think you have done wrong or what you have actually done wrong.  Its still not true because I know that despite whatever it is, I could not even know you and I could sit down with you and ascertain in a very short period of time the logical reasons why you did whatever you did.  There are reasons and none of them are based in what's wrong with you.  Its based in what's wrong with this backward system.  And, I know we can't change the system, or ourselves, without working to change all of it, us and the system, at the same thing.  So, let's start working on that piece.  That huge piece.  One thing for sure.  The day we start making that type of progress will be a real day worth celebrating and doing some won't cost us any money.




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Ten Years and 17 Days Left in Oregon...Honest Reflections

2/11/2017

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Let me start this honesty by admitting that I originally rolled into Oregon back in February of 2007 without any real knowledge about this place.  That's because a very good woman I wanted to be with was up here.  That's all I needed to know at that time.  That's some honesty for you.  The job I had didn't work out (neither did the relationship, but that woman is still a very dear friend and I'm thankful to still have her in my life).  So, I moved on after a year and a half to take another job in Bend, Oregon.  If you don't know, that's a town of 80,000 people in Central Oregon.  The African population in the entire county where Bend is located is 0.02% African.  That fact alone gave me severe anxiety about moving there.  And, the racist job I was starting was another red flag, but I had a sick mom and a daughter in college so I did what I thought I had to do.  

Two and half years later I left Bend with my tail between my legs.  Unemployed and living on selling all my personal effects which mostly consisted of guns, books, and sound equipment.  Living in that town had taken an awful lot out of me.  Its racist as hell there while everyone was telling me its all in my mind.  That was always so frustrating since I know I can detect racism with the finest and most exact precision.

In late 2010, early 2011, I returned to the Portland area without a decent job and although I didn't realize it then, it was going to be like that for a while. I had always had recession proof job skills, but my luck had apparently run out.  In fact, I spent from the beginning of 2011 until mid 2012 bouncing from hustle to hustle, barely making enough money to put gasoline in my vehicle.  Things got so bad that I spent about 10 months during that time sleeping in my truck.  Thank god for the 24 hour coffee shop on Powell.  I'd park on that street and often stay right there, all night.  During that time, my largest fears were my truck breaking down and my not having enough money in my account to pay my monthly gym dues since that place was providing my daily showers.  Those were lonely days, but I'll never forget that coffee shop and the gym on McGloughlin.  That was my community during that time.

In late 2011, the Occupy movement happened and since I didn't know many people in Portland, and I knew I had strong organizing skills, I decided, against that voice in my head, to venture down there and get involved.  I ended up writing the code of conduct for Occupy Portland.  Physically chasing some abusive men out of Portland, and making many friendships that I plan to have for the rest of my life.  From Occupy I was informed about a group of African people in N.E. Portland who were forming to fight illegal foreclosures.  With my finance background and organizing experience, I was the first one at the new group meeting held in the former Reflections Bookstore/coffee shop.  By the conclusion of that meeting, I was the chair of that group and that led to me helping guide the Black Working Group as it was called into several successful home defense actions that led to my opportunity to get the job I've had for the last five years.  There's a video that captures all of the intensity of that work on youtube called "We are Unevictable."  

From that housing justice work I met enough people to create enough of an organizing foundation for myself in Portland that I felt confident enough that I could successfully move to doing the work that I've done all of my adult life...Organizing for revolutionary Pan-Africanism inside of the All African People's Revolutionary Party (A_APRP).  It was April of 2013 and I can't even remember how I got the room at Portland State University, but I organized a seminar on Pan-Africanism that night that I worked hard to put together and get the word out.  I did all of that without any help.  Actually, at that time, when I talked about wanting to organize the A-APRP here, most of the time what I got was deer in the headlights from people.  The event that night was very well attended.  About 50 people.  I did the standard thing.  I took names and I followed up with people, abiding by the holy axiom of the A-APRP; "its not the event, its the work that comes after the event."  There was an orientation and the first work study circle for the A-APRP in Oregon since the early 70s was birthed.  I'm keeping it honest here so I'm not going to say anything except the truth when I say that circle was a collection of dysfunction and immaturity.  Still, I did what we do in the A-APRP, we try our best to work with what we have to work with because we are only concerned about one thing.  Building capacity to organize our people for liberation and elitism can never be an ingredient in that formula.  We had a revolving door of that dysfunction for about a year or so with some very serious accompanying problems, but with a strong focus, we continued and eventually, we started to get people who were at least willing to engage the A-APRP's stated objectives.  With quite a bit of pushing and follow up, there was a meeting in December of 2014 in N.E. Portland where the plan for work in New Columbia was laid out in front of an all African crowd of about 75 people.  From that process evolved the breakfast program in  New Columbia, a twice a week effort to use pancakes as a strategy to talk to our youth, and their parents, about Pan-Africanism.  There were still a lot of internal issues that we struggled to work through, but the program developed and the A-APRP in Oregon began to build some real credibility.  Today, that effort has evolved into the School of African Roots and the A-APRP has produced some very quality institutions here in Oregon with the annual Fourth of the Lie and Pan-African Women's Day programs along with the Pan African Film political education series.  

Some reflections on all that work includes an assessment that there's something in Oregon that really breeds a strong fragility and a complete unwillingness on the part of far too many people to face the simple reality of a very bad word in Oregon - accountability.  A lot of people see the work for justice through the lenses of their personal trauma and if you are going to seriously organize here, you are forced to engage that sad reality and try your best to struggle through it without being pulled down in the carnage.  People have allergies here to addressing contradictions head on and the way people use the internet is a postage paid package for police sabotage and infiltration.  And, I think the biggest problem is people here love to talk about revolution, but the minute there is difficulty they disappear.  Revolution is always about dialectical struggle and if you understand anything about dialectics, its that everything has opposite forces of nature that are struggling against one another for dominance.  So, if you understand these scientific principles, than you have to accept that if you are not willing to struggle through problems than do us all a favor and leave this work alone.  We will move forward with or without you.  Just stop talking and talking about revolution when you know that you have no intention of engaging any struggle that falls even a hair outside of your personal comfort zone.  In other words, there is a lot of wasted time and energy here and that isn't going to change until people get mature enough to seek out emotional support if you need it so that we can stop using our justice organizations as vehicles for us to try and work out our personal dysfunctions.

On the positive tip, as I leave this place, my overall memories will be overwhelmingly positive.  That's true even of Bend.  The truth is had I not lived in Bend, I would never have started writing literary fiction.  It was the benign racism in that town that motivated me to pin my first book in 2008.  I got tired of people there telling me that there was no racism.  I was thinking one day and it occurred to me that if there were suddenly 800 Africans who appeared in Bend, the racial conflict that everyone there kept telling me was in my head would blow up so fast it would cause Oregon to fall into the Pacific Ocean.  So, I sat down one day and started writing "Find the Flower that Blossoms" which is a story based upon 800 Africans moving to a fictional town called "Central Oregon."  From there the sequel "The Courage Equation" was released in 2014, and I'm currently working on the third installment.  Literary fiction is my personal therapy and I'd be lying if I didn't give Bend at least an assist here.  Regarding Portland, and the rest of Oregon, there are a number of extremely positive people here who are good people who really want to do good things.  There are enough that its not fair to try and name people, but I love you and I'm going to be intentional about maintaining contact with you even after I leave.  You have transformed my life in ways that I am eternally grateful and I'm just hopeful I have been able to have the same effect on you.  There are also many organizations in Oregon that deserve respect.  No names again, but I'll just use some initials and say one is the A-APRP here, with or without me, and ROP is another one.  Nothing like organizing effectively in the most neglected neighborhood in North Portland and facing off armed white supremacists with some of the bravest people I've ever met.  I love and respect all of you.

Keep banging Portland and stop avoiding the problems I mentioned earlier and get to work confronting them directly so that you can really move forward.  Really.  Start doing that and stop faking the funk and fronting.  As for me in Cali, I'm going to hit the ground running.  I joined the A-APRP in Sacramento in 1984 and from 84 through 2007 I worked hard to build capacity for us there.  I'm humbled and offended at the same time that today, there is no A-APRP activity in Sacramento, but like mice reproduce, you can be assured that once I get there, that's going to change.  I blame myself, as I often do about everything, for things falling apart in Sac, but I've learned a lot over the last 10 years in Oregon and I plan to use that wisdom to help me build better in Sacramento this time.  If you are sincere, let's please stay connected.  You are always welcome at my place (even though as I write this, I don't yet have one, but I'm a determined organizer.  You should know that about me by now).  I don't recognize these imperialist borders anyway.  Its all Indigenous land.  So, we'll meet again and lets make sure that when we do, we are just a little farther up the ladder towards our chimerenga!

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An Untold History of Those  African Nationalists Owed Your Respect

2/10/2017

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Bob Brown, has been a major contributor to the African liberation movement for 50+ years and he still continues to make his contribution
PictureKwame Ture (Stokely Carmichael) on the right and Seku Neblett on the left circa late 60s, early 70s
A year or so ago, Angela Davis came to speak at Portland State University.  A number of people I know were going to listen to her and a few of them were participating in the program itself. As a result, many of them were surprised when I told them I wasn't planning on attending.  I explained that my reasons have nothing to do with any negatives about Sister Angela.  I'd heard her speak about a half dozens times previously.  I had even body-guarded for her in the late 80s in California after some threats were made against her during a speaking tour.  I told everyone who asked all of that, but I think most of them, being star struck, stopped short of understanding why and how anyone couldn't be as excited as they were. 

In truth, it took me a couple of days after her presentation to understand the reasons for my lack of desire around seeing her again.  When I thought about it, I realized my lackluster attitude reflected some feelings of resentment, not against Sister Angela, but against the horde of White adulation that surrounds her whenever she appears and speaks.  Angela's Davis's message, from her days of being on trial in the early 70s as a member of the Communist Party USA (CPUSA), to the present time, has been an important message of inclusion and collective unity against the forces of injustice.  Still, I could never escape the feeling that a lot of that adulation by the great white left was in large part because Angela was that African organizer/activist with incredible credentials who came out of a multi-racial organization that called for multi-racial organizing.  Consequently, she was never known for calling out white activists for their arrogance and cleverly disguised white supremacy.  So, in her, these people always found credibility and to me, that's at least part of the reason why they flock to her so easily.  My anger about this is connected to the fact that I know there are a number of African organizer/activists who did not come out of the white left bosom centers like the CPUSA.   They came directly out of the African liberation movement or what some would even call the Black Nationalist movement.  These people didn't advocate multi-racial organizing.  They argued, even demanded, that the only safety valve African people can ever have is self-determination.  They called for African only organizing efforts where Europeans (White people) were encouraged, even forced, to organize in White communities against white supremacy, patriarchy, etc.  This position, although widely accepted and acknowledged within African organizing spaces, is still an extremely sensitive and controversial subject among the white left.  Why it is that way is a mystery to us.  The logic advanced by SNCC in 1966 is rock solid even today.  African people, as well as other brown communities, have to deconstruct colonialism and this requires us working with our people because capitalism has created this thing called white supremacy that has us convinced that "the white man's water is always sweeter."  Plus, white communities, always the shock troops used against us by the power structure, need to be organized to prevent this tired ritual where we cannot confront the system because too many working class white people are in our way.  You white left people know that because many of those people getting in our way are your relatives and sometimes, even you.  We know our history.  We know of the overwhelming racism and challenges African communists in Harlem and other places in the 1920s faced.  George Padmore, Joseph Stalin's political secretary in the early 30s, wrote extensively about the contradictions within the Communist International before he abandoned it and joined the Pan-African movement.  Despite all of this clear history, the white left still expects us to agree to just shoulder all of its racism so that their myth of one monolithic class force against capitalism can be sustained.  No thanks.

Its clear to us that the people who advanced this self-determination position made contributions for justice that matched and even exceeded contributions by wonderful people like our Sister Angela, or Nelson Mandela, or other African organizers/activists who called for the multi-racial approach, yet, these nationalists continue to be ignored, shut out, and written out of history.  That's the part that irks me and its a contradiction that I'm sure even Sister Angela wouldn't support.

The people I'm talking about are people like Kwame Ture (Stokely Carmichael) who I write about often.  I had the honor and privilege of traveling with him often so I saw firsthand the large crowds that came to hear him, but I also saw the extreme difference in demeanor that greeted him compared to that of Angela Davis.  Here was a man who went to prison over 40 times for fighting for justice.  Twenty-six of those times were in rural Mississippi and Alabama and several months were in the infamous Parchmen Prison.  This man was the face of the militant Black Power movement that transformed the world.  It was that movement that ushered in the women's liberation movement, the LGBTQ movement, the ableist movement.  And all of this opened up this country and the world in ways that its still struggling to adapt to.  Yet, I saw this man, who sacrificed so much, and asked so little, being treated like he had just spent 25 years in prison for murdering humanity whenever he spoke.  None of the love and adulation reserved for Angela was directed at Kwame by white people.  And, I knew the reason why.  He was a part of that movement within the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) that demanded that white people leave SNCC and organize their own people.  Then, to add insult to injury, he elevated from Black Power to Pan-Africanism, moved to Africa, and continued to advance African Nationalism, unity, and socialism.  From the perspective of the white left, and far too many African people, surely this man was insane.  And, it wasn't just Kwame.  Its never spoken of, but there are a number of Africans who traveled that same route of SNCC, to the Black Panther Party (BPP), to the All African People's Revolutionary Party (A-APRP).  David Brothers was a co-founding member of the Brooklyn BPP in the late 60s and he served tirelessly in the A-APRP until his physical transition in 2007.  Yet, virtually no one outside of the African liberation movement, the movement - not the community, knows anything about him.  Bob Brown helped found the Illinois Chapter of the Black  Panther Party while playing a significant role in Fred Hampton's recruitment into the BPP and Bob continues to organize within the A-APRP GC as this is being written.  This man was the field organizer for the original Million Man March in 1995 - which despite the recent women's march, is still the largest single assembly of people at the D.C. mall in history, yet again, no one outside of the African liberation movement knows anything about him.  Seku Neblett was a SNCC freedom singer and then one of the few field marshals inside of the Black Panther Party.  For decades, Seku has been an active member of the A-APRP's Ghana Chapter.  He remains active today.  I promised him when I was there in December 2015, that when I retire I'll come to Africa and make a home that he is welcome to come and live on.  And, Brother Seku, with all you have done for our people, if I live long enough, you can rest assured that I will keep my promise to you.  Then, Mukassa (Willie) Ricks was the field secretary in SNCC who braved KKK and/or police terrorism to spread the word about Black Power in June of 1966 in Mississippi.  He played a major role in facilitating the process vote regarding white people leaving SNCC, yet again, no one outside of the African liberation movement knows anything about him.  Jamil Abdullah Al Amin, formally H. Rap Brown, didn't travel the route into the A-APRP, but he was one of the Nationalist Africans who went from SNCC to the BPP.  Brother Jamil continues to serve an unjust prison sentence that is clearly a COINTELPRO action from his work in the 1960s and beyond.  Yet again, most people still have no idea about his suffering.  And that's just the brothers.  As always, there are plenty of sisters who played leading roles that we never know anything about.  There's Ethel Minor who was a member of the Nation of Islam.  When Malcolm X left the Nation in 1964, Sister Ethel left with him, but she took his well developed anti-zionist position with her and when she joined SNCC, she brought those politics with her into that young organization.  She had a profound impact on SNCC organizers like the young Stokely Carmichael (Kwame Ture) and in 1967, SNCC became the first national organization in the U.S. to take an anti-zionist position against the state of israel.  As all of those giants left SNCC/BPP to join the A-APRP, all those politics came with them and that explains how in 1991, the anti-defamation league, or as Kwame called them "the African Death League" labeled the A-APRP "the most anti-zionist organization in the U.S."  I remember reading that news story in 1991 with great pride. I still have that pride today when articulating our anti-zionist position.  And, when we host Brother Mukassa in a few short weeks here in Portland, in a room provided by Students United for Palestinian Equal Rights (SUPER), I'll be thinking about Sister Ethel Minor.

All of these African Nationalists deserve all of the respect and adulation that Angela Davis, Nelson Mandela, and any  African activist/organizer deemed friendly by the white left deserves, but they won't get it.  And, we aren't sitting around waiting for expecting it from them.  In fact, this piece isn't even being written for those people.  Its being written for those who want to know the truth.  And, that truth is people like Bob Brown, David Brothers, Seku Neblett, Mukassa Ricks, Ethel Minor, and certainly Kwame Ture, are the torches of our movement for self-determination and justice.  We refused to let neo-nazis, zionists, and yes, white left people, disrupt their messages in the 70s, 80s, and 90s, and we refuse to let them disrupt that message today.  The message is for our people, our family members in the Indigenous and Asian communities, and any true White accomplices who are truly living in the spirit of Marilyn Buck and John Brown.   For anyone else we are just saying we see through that fake stuff when Angela speaks.  And, our people can see through it too.  That's why you will never get the number of African people to join your ranks that we can.  But, that's not our point here.  We just want to express respect for our true soldiers because we know that if we don't, no one else will.  And, we also intend to continue to press the point home that everyone should do anything you can to support soldiers like Seku, Bob, Mukassa, etc., who are still alive because they have a wealth of history, of pain, of struggle, that we have all benefited from.  That message about white people leaving SNCC is even more valid today then it was in 1966.  Sometimes, your best friends are the people who tell you not what you want to hear, but what you need to listen too.  




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A Revolutionary Pan-African View of Current U.S. Events

2/7/2017

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All over the world today, people are trying to assess, predict, and prepare, for what will be coming out of the U.S. Trump administration next.  Obviously, because of the proximity of the U.S. to world power, there is a logic in taking this approach, but its critically important to remember that there are always multiple ways to view the same thing.  Unfortunately, most of the assessments we are observing are only looking at these events through their usual America/capitalist centric perspective that is dripping with white supremacy.  And, many well meaning people, who are sincerely dedicated to constructive social change, are just as much a part of this dilemma as the hardcore reactionaries and racists.

By revolutionary view we mean the perspective that there is something different, something better, for humanity than just a re-fried version of this backward capitalist system.  That we can do much more than just put lipstick on Lady Liberty's racist face.  We start by humbly suggesting that any analysis that begins by looking at what Trump's administration says, thinks, or even does, is already capitulating and resigning itself to the belief that the primary question is what the people who control this system do.  Please don't misunderstand, as was previously stated, we realize that this system sits on top of the capitalist world order so whatever U.S. imperialism does reverberates everywhere.  Still, in spite of that, our revolutionary perspective is going to always have a different way of looking at the world because we are convinced that only the masses of people make history, not individuals.  Consequently, what we see is not that the masses are held hostage to what an imperialist regime does.  Instead, our point of view is that the minute the masses of people wake up, than imperialism's time is over.  We are fully aware that imperialism has programmed us to believe that toppling it is about as likely as human's growing wings, but objective history tells us a much different story.  Even if you take the almost 300 urban rebellions in the U.S. in the late 1960s, the land and freedom movement in  Kenya in the early 60s, and the Haitian independence movement in Haiti in the early 1800s as examples, the conclusion is a clear one.  In each of those instances, our people - badly outgunned, brutally repressed, and facing a power much better equipped and prepared than we could ever be - managed to hold the imperialist force at bay.  And this was done with limited organizational capacity on our part.  Imagine what would happen if we had even a little higher level of organization?

So, we are not exaggerating or living in a fantasy when we say confidently that we know that the minute the masses of people decide they have had enough, no matter what Trump's administration, or anyone else, think, they are finished.  We know that the moment the masses of African people wake up and realize that as Kwame Nkrumah warned us -"the core of the Black revolution is in Africa and until Africa is free, no Black person anywhere on earth will be free" - there isn't a force on earth that will be able to stop us from gaining our liberation.  So, from our perspective, always, its the masses and what they do that is the final determination.  That's why our revolutionary work is always focused on the masses of people.  Organizing them.  Not on making a demand on the capitalist system.  This is the fundamental difference between revolutionary organizing work and reform mobilization work.  Both are good.  Both are necessary.  The difference is revolutionary work isn't concerned about publicity from capitalism.  It isn't concerned about money.  It isn't concerned about anything except imparting knowledge and skills on the masses of people that can move them ever closer to recognizing that the future of the world is in their hands.  Not in the hands of pollution spewing corporations.  Not in the hands of racist police.  And, not in the hands of powerful politicians.  

The other hard cold fact revolutionaries must face is that while we are engaging in the day to day work to organize our people, the continued suffering our people face isn't going to take a break.  That's why we support the mobilization efforts to stand up against this daily oppression because the revolutionary process cannot be focused on responding to everything imperialism does because our focus has to be creating our own long term plan to topple imperialism.   Its also not to say that our approach disregards our people's suffering.  We are not apart from our communities so we experience the trials and tribulations that the masses of our people experience.  I liken our approach to the scenario where you have a terminally ill relative.  There are going to be two approaches to addressing your relative.  First, you can decide that your focus is going to be on making your relative as comfortable as possible, as they go through the process of dying.  There will be nothing you will be able to do to stop their suffering so you place your emphasis on making their suffering as livable as possible.  This to me is similar to the reformist approach.  There is a lot of love, sincerity, and commitment in this approach and the people who take this road deserve nothing except respect and admiration.  The other approach to addressing the situation with your sick relative is to recognize the hard reality that there is nothing you can do to stop your loved one from dying.  So, after careful consideration with them, you decide that your focus is going to be on doing work to move closer towards a cure.  Such cure isn't going to be here to help your relative, but the work you are doing which is largely influenced, motivated, and nurtured by what your relative is going through, will contribute mightily towards creating a solution that will eliminate this problem once and for all so that no one else will have to suffer the way you watched your loved one suffer.  This approach is akin to the revolutionary organizing approach.  This is an extremely honorable approach that has vision, commitment, and courage.  Both of these approaches have outstanding merit, and if we had a significant number of people who were doing work in both areas, all would be great.  The problem is enough people see the value of the first approach, but very few see the value, merit, and necessity, of the second approach.  Very few people see the necessity for revolutionary organizing.

That's why most everyone is evaluating current events from the perspective of what Trump and his people are going to do.  I've read all of the perspectives of these activists and I've tried to look at this from their point of view, but I just cannot.  I know Trump and his people are causing a lot of harm to good people.  I know this.  I just don't think the solution to that is anywhere except in people waking up.  So, that's where I point my focus and my work.  In fact, I don't understand why some people think its a problem that some of us are marching while others of us are organizing.  Most of us started out marching.  I was marching before many, if not most, of the people doing it today were even thought of.  Its that experience that has brought me to where I am today.  So, let the marches happen, but I'll probably not be out there.  I'll be organizing.  Nothing you will necessarily see.  Nothing you will know much about.  Certainly nothing that will be in the media.  And you reform activists should appreciate that because the fact we exist makes you much more viable.  If we didn't exist, the system would have no reason to acknowledge you.  In other words, you must recognize that each reform you gain is because the system is deathly afraid that if they don't give something, people will turn to our way of thinking.  History is full of countless examples of imperialism bending whenever the people show militancy because they know that if they don't do that, the marching will turn into something much more dangerous.  Something much more permanent.  

So, Trump and his people, all of the racists and imperialists in Europe, Australia, and of course, zionist israel, can do whatever the hell it is they are going to do.  The same things they have been doing for centuries.  During that span, depending upon the circumstances, they have been everything from fascist to the promoters of bourgeois democracy.  Whatever they do isn't going to be good for us.  So, while they are doing what they do, we will be doing what we do.  The scientific evidence suggests that we are gaining serious ground on them, but our eyes aren't on them.  Our eyes are on the finish line and the people who are the makers of our victory.  This is true for us and that won't ever change.  In spite of all of the despicable things imperialism does to maintain their advantage.  We know something and the imperialists know it too.  They are so aware of it that they stress over you figuring it out.  That thing is the minute you realize that you hold all the power, they will have no where to go and nothing to do except surrender.


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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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