Ahjamu Umi's: "The Truth Challenge"
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Helpful & Effective Tips on How to be More Productive In Your Life

3/31/2019

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It has to be said that the term productive, within this dominantly bourgeoisie societal framework, has a subjective foundation.  Within this reality, being "productive" can mean everything from successfully causing as much drama and confusion in everyone's life around you to being great at just taking up space with everything you do.  So, to clarify, when we are using the word productive, we mean being able to contribute more to the planet than you receive from it.  Not breaking even and certainly not being toxic, but giving more than you receive.  More credits than debits.  That's our definition for productive here.

And, we also have to say that within this bourgeoisie capitalist reality where profits are much more important than human beings, a consequence of such dysfunction is an overabundance of mental illness as people try their best to reconcile this insane situation we find ourselves in.  For those suffering from mental illness on a level that unfortunately prevents them from being able to control important elements of their lives, this analysis is not intended for them.  Our hope is to continue to fight for a better reality where those folks can have the resources they need to heal.  

For everyone else, this is a statement about how to step up your game in life.  Despite the allegations thrown at us by unwitting and willing accomplices and agents for imperialism, we harbor no visions of restrictions in anyone's abilities and sincerity about making this world better based solely on what they look like.  On the contrary, we believe everyone on earth has the potential to be a productive and valuable member of this world.  The question is how we will determine how to do that?  How we will make positive more dominant than negative?  Those values are the basis of this writing piece.

I certainly don't need any reminders about my shortcomings.  In fact, people are always  magnificent in pointing out any potential issues that any of us may have.  We all know this.  So, my comments right now are not being made in a bragging manner, but to illustrate how this simple ghetto child, who virtually no one had much confidence would ever amount to anything at all, has been able to work through overwhelming adversity to be a person today, who unquestionably has positively influenced countless people's lives.  I've been able to develop some very strong and stable organizing skills.  I'm a strong presenter, writer, and facilitator.  I am frequently sought after by experienced organizers to help them figure out how to take work to a higher level.  I not only regularly engage in "courageous conversations", and difficult collective capacity building work, but provide training on how to carry out those skills.  I've engaged in organizing work in several countries and I can say humbly, yet confidently, that I've been able to provide significant inspiration to others on how to stay on the positive and correct path when being faced with unspeakable trauma and pressure.  As of yesterday - with my release of my third novel; the 500+ page "The Paradox Principles (through Amazon Publishing - see my BOOK tab for more information)", I've now written and published four full length books in ten years.  I'm working on my fifth and sixth books currently while writing two or three articles per week on this blog and contributing additional articles to other sources on a regular basis.  Meanwhile, I continue to engage in regular and effective on the ground organizing to build our Pan-African work within the All African People's Revolutionary Party, and I work full-time as a senior organizer within the labor movement.  I exercise daily and although my diet isn't perfect, I haven't eaten a single dessert in over a year and I'm down to only eating seafood as my sole meat consumption.  

Again, not bragging about anything.  Clearly, if self promotion was my objective I would approach every aspect of everything I mentioned above in a much different fashion than I do.  You know that because you see people do that everyday.  Nothing I'm doing is centered around me as an individual.  I didn't even have my name on this blog until the last year when people I trust pointed it out to me.  This is true to an absolute fault.  I've actually pledged to myself to do a much better job promoting this latest book because I really did absolutely no promotion on my previous books.  So, to the multitude of enemies out here, don't even try that one.  My points here are to demonstrate to people that I get a lot done.  I make that point because I want to share with you how you can do the same if you struggle with procrastination, lack of personal self confidence, and you find it hard to believe you can move to the next level.

Kwame Ture said it all the time.  "Organization decides everything!"  I can't think of any statement that's any truer and that statement is the perfect way to start these tips.  I can guarantee you if you are struggling to be productive, lack of organization is the key reason why.  By organization, we mean the ability to control your days.  I do this very effectively by having trained myself to plan out my days in advance.  If you don't do this, and you live in an environment where things constantly distract you from completing what you start, this is definitely the area where you need focus.  You can start on a Sunday night before your work week starts (or whatever night before your work week - whatever type of work - starts).  Take out a pad and pen and write down what you have to do the next day and estimate how long it will take you to accomplish all of those tasks.  This step may include you prioritizing your tasks at your slave (job) if you have one also.  Then, once you complete that task, take your list and let it guide you throughout that next day.  Focus on sticking to the schedule you made for yourself.  Being able to do this will require you being realistic in setting the times for each task.  Even if you don't make every time goal, you will still find that you are getting much more done.  For example, for me, my Sunday night would consist of the following organization:
1.  Get up at 6:00am and workout until 8:00am
2.  Get dressed and be on my way to the office by 8:30am
3.  Complete a presentation and talk to the following people, attend these meetings by - - 
4.  Leave work by 5:00pm and make it to the coffee shop by 5:30pm.  
5.  Write a blog article and post it by 7:00pm
6.  Eat dinner while writing more in my manuscript until 8:00pm
7.  Organize my clothes for the next work day and set up my gym bag
8.  Go to bed by 10:00pm for at least 8 hours to 6:00am

If you repeat this exercise everyday you will teach yourself several things.  You will institutionalize how to respect your time and organization which will help you learn how to teach other people to do the same.  When this starts to happen you will learn that you have so much more time than you actually realized because much of your time is spent with being distracted and going back and forth over the same thing.  Or, as the capitalists say - "having the same hands touch the same thing over and over again."  For the capitalists this level of operation is extremely inefficient and unprofitable since they are always focused on getting products out as quickly and cheaply as possible.  For completely different reasons, we agree on this point.  Our focus is the more you organize your time and make your efforts more efficient, the more you realize your potential to get things done.  The more you will learn to respect what you can do and the more your attitude and how you carry yourself will reflect that.  

If you practice this sincerely and consistently for a few weeks you will start to institutionalize this level of organization in your life to the point where you will start to organize your day automatically, in your head, before you do anything.  For me, this has developed to the level where anything I'm doing, going on a trip, completing a project, etc., I'm automatically going through this process.  It has helped me in so many ways.  I rarely forget anything because my process is institutionalized.  I'm never late (which would stress me out if I was).  And, my body and mind have developed their own internal clocks which keep me on task.  Its like I have an assistant inside me helping me all the time.  Consequently, my stress levels are less.  My blood pressure, according to the doctors, is that of a 25 year old (now I just need to work on reducing stress from insane people).

These pieces I'll write in segments, but if you commit to seriously and consistently trying the method expressed here, you will see results.  It does work.  And, I'm not charging you anything to learn it.  In fact, I'm even publicly committing to help anyone anywhere learn these practices if you need support walking through how to implement them.  The only requirement is that you be doing so to enable you to contribute towards being productive.  Not just on a personal level for capitalist gains, but for the reasons and definitions indicated above.  




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ADOS, Class Struggle, & the 6th Pan African Congress

3/29/2019

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Delegates from the 1974 6th Pan African Congress in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, participate in the proceedings
A lot is being written about this so-called "American Descendants of Slaves (ADOS) movement.  I've written a lot about it here.  Since plenty of people re-post, forward, etc., the articles written on this blog, I'm often able to see comments from many people outside of the ideological spectrum I occupy.  And, often, those comments are critical of the material produced here.  Any self respecting revolutionary would have to expect that.  And, we certainly cannot ever be thin skilled about criticism.  Instead, what I look for is validity in the arguments being made against the material I'm producing.  Most of the time, what I get are arrogant, short sighted attacks by Europeans (Whites) defending some version of this status quo.  We certainly are never concerned about those attacks.  As I've challenged the integrity of this ADOS argument, I've noticed quite a few Africans within the U.S. who tend to share my writings while offering lots of critiques, but very little that does much to discredit the materials I'm producing.  This is important to note because one of the many challenges facing those of us who sincerely wish and work to dismantle capitalism is in us figuring out how to convince more minds of the people over profit values we hold dear.  How we can do this when information, data, objective reality, all of these things seem to mean very little in this environment where truth and justice are 100% divorced from material reality. 

A good example of history that helps explain why this struggle has become so difficult for us lies in evaluating the 6th Pan African Congress which was held in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, in 1974.  The history of these Pan-African Congress meetings is available for all who want to know about it, so it won't be repeated here (its repeated in  many articles on this blog).  What we will say is the disconnect between the historic 5th Pan African Congress, held in Manchester, England, in 1945, and the 6th Pan African Congress, held 29 years later in Tanzania, is critical to understand in order to develop a proper assessment of where phenomenon's like ADOS come from.  

What we are presenting here is that class struggle is one of, if the the dominant, challenge that defines what characterized the differences between 5th Pan African Congress and 6th Pan African Congress (from here forward to be referred to as either 5th PAC or 6th PAC).  This is not to say the 6th PAC had no historical value.  Far from it.  The 6th PAC was the first Pan African Congress held on African soil.  That by itself, is historically significant.  There was much struggle that was waged at that meeting that has continued to feed the international discussion and that is good.  But, its that same class struggle that was expressed at the 6th PAC that reflects the same type of class struggle that has led to ADOS and similar currents.  By class struggle, we are talking specifically about the question of who will own and control the means of production - the resources we depend upon to live on, grow with, sustain the planet and human and other life within it.  Who will control those means?  That question can only be answered two ways.  Either some people will own it - capitalism, the current system, where a few people own and control the world's resources.  Or, everyone will own it - meaning socialism, where the means of production are owned and controlled by the masses of people.  We cannot determine any additional way to answer that question of who will own and control resources.  And, we are convinced this question is the central question.  Its central because the people who choose for all to own the wealth are the revolutionaries who are fighting to win the hearts and minds of the masses of people to carry out this relentless struggle to wrest control of these resources from the few capitalist elites who will do absolutely anything to maintain and sustain their control.  Everyone else is working simply to find their place co-existing with the capitalist world order.  These latter people wish to find compromise and common ground with capitalism.  And, they will come up with any number of different looks to make capitalism seem more acceptable to the rest of us.  In other words, for this latter group, continued oppression under capitalism is okay, as long as its not them receiving the brunt of that oppression.  For revolutionaries, we desire for all our people, and all of humanity to not suffer oppression.  We believe that ADOS - with its bourgeoisie position that Africans in America should break off from the rest of our worldwide African family to find some sort of financial settlement with capitalism - are clear examples of this class struggle.  No where do these people in ADOS see our liberation as being inconsistent with capitalism.  As a result, this struggle becomes a dominant struggle over whether we can be free under capitalism or not.  We say we cannot.  They say a few of us can.  And, we say all of this fully aware of how this manipulative argument is carried out.  Capitalism is so dominant and so systemic that those who support it don't even need to mention it.  In fact, there is a strange reality at play here where some people never mention capitalism and therefore act as if by not mentioning it, they are somehow removed from it.  As if they can operate with a neutral economy in place.  The truth here is that no mention of capitalism automatically means support for capitalism because it is the dominant system in place in the world today.  Its like when people don't mention white supremacy.  By not mentioning it, they automatically contribute to its continued existence.  

What we are saying here is these class contradictions didn't just start with ADOS, or the often class analysis lacking Afro-centricity movement before it, etc.  This type of class struggle and antagonisms among African people, among all people on earth, have existed for thousands of years and ADOS is just simply the latest edition of African people anywhere who come up with a package deal that claims salvation under capitalism can be achieved by a few of us at the expense of the majority us.  The age old divide and conquer technique used by ADOS explains why much of ADOS support comes from elements that possess extensive experience working to destabilize African and other movements for justice and forward progress (Progessive for Immigration Reform - the group Yvette Carnell - a main spokesperson for the ADOS movement, serves as a board director for that group, etc).  

The 6th PAC is an effective example here of this class struggle because it occurred almost 45 years ago.  Convened from June 3rd, to June 13th, 1974, in Dar es Salaam, 6th PAC served as the primary statement that the mass working class based foundation of the 5th PAC 29 years before was being replaced by this subtle compromise with capitalism that has come to define neo-colonialism.

The 5th PAC united Africans from all over the world under the primary resolution that Pan-Africanism must be defined as one unified socialist Africa.  This definition solidified Pan-Africanism as an objective that sought to contribute to the worldwide socialist movement.  The militant delegates at 5th PAC resolved to use mass parties to bring immediate independence to Africa and it was 5th PAC that ushered in the African independence movement.  And, it was that African independence movement that heavily influenced the launching of African civil and human rights movements around the world, including the U.S. civil rights movement.  And, don't take our word for that part.  Study the words spoken about it from every major figure in the U.S. civil rights movement from Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. to Ms. Fannie Lou Hamer, to Ella Baker.  The 5th PAC made a specific call for liberation movements in Africa to form and for those liberation movements to build mass political parties that would serve to organize African people not just for nominal independence, but for the continued push for this one unified socialist Africa.  In other words, 5th PAC was the line drawn in the sand.  You were either for the masses of Africans and humanity, or you were with the enemies of humanity.  There was no middle ground.  What 6th PAC did was seriously muddy that line in the sand.  The 1960s was the decade of class struggle in Africa and within the worldwide African liberation movement.  As that decade came to a close the results were the overthrow of the National Congolese Movement and Patrice Lumumba in the Congo.  The overthrow of the Convention People's Party and Kwame Nkrumah's government in Ghana and Mobido Keita's government in Mali.  Meanwhile, the militancy of the Black power movement in the U.S. was being devastated by the illegal counterintelligence program as well as the compromising of the aims of Black power from Malcolm X's call for our liberation "by any means necessary" to dominant efforts to compromise by limiting our approach to absolutely nothing outside of the capitalist electoral system.  The 1970s was the decade of neo-colonialism where European capitalist interests became firmly institutionalized throughout Africa.  What this means is the Europeans may have physically left Africa, but the Africans who replaced them were 100% trained by them, loyal to their interests, and willing to do their exploitative bidding for the right price.  So the operation of colonialism stayed in tact throughout Africa where African leaders became people who were most committed to maintaining Western capitalist interests in order to ensure their continued privilege.  In the U.S., on a smaller scale, this was African mayors and other elected officials as the response to mass uprisings in the late 1960s.  Eventually, this would even mean Africans occupying other more prominent positions within U.S. capitalism, like president in the person of Barack Obama from 2008 through 2016.  Capitalism fully in force, undeterred, everywhere in the world from the U.S. throughout every state in Africa, but now in blackface.

The blueprint for this reality was revealed in the 6th PAC where the militancy of the 5th PAC was effectively disintegrated.  C.L.R. James, the respected Pan-Africanist from Trinidad, was one of the original persons who called for the 6th PAC and because of his status in our movements, he was asked to be the Secretary General for the 6th PAC, but he resigned when the 6th PAC Secretariat prevented  revolutionary elements to attend the 6th PAC.  Much of the leadership for the 6th PAC was dominated by former militant activists within the U.S. civil rights movement.  In fact, the tone of the 6th PAC was in many ways dominated by Western race/Black nationalist dialogue.  Democratic Party of Guinea Secretary General and President of Guinea - Sekou Ture - was invited to give one of the main addresses during the 6th PAC and that he did.  Still, one can easily research reactions to Ture's speech to find out that many of the delegates, dominated by Africans from the U.S., had a very hard time accepting Ture's call for class based revolutionary struggle where solidarity with non-African revolutionaries like the (then) Palestine Liberation Organization and Irish Republican Socialist Movements  was lifted up above simple classless unity based on being "black."  This reality is clearly born out by looking at the resolutions and their results at the 6th PAC.  All of the militant pro-working class positions advanced from the 5th PAC were introduced at the 6th PAC for reaffirmation, but all of these revolutionary positions were voted down by the hundreds of primarily Western delegates in attendance in Dar es Salaam.  The resolutions on making the destruction of capitalism, destroying neo-colonialism, liquidating foreign military bases in Africa, and eliminating patriarchy in our movement were all effectively voted down.  Meanwhile, resolutions that highlighted "economic development" with no clear definition of what that meant, were approved which opened the way for imperialist dominated International Monetary Fund and World Bank re-colonizing of Africa to take place.  

In summary the 6th PAC signaled the suppression of the revolutionary spirit of the 5th PAC and the lack of militancy and the cozy lying in bed with capitalism that ADOS and others proudly proclaim.  The result of this class struggle is between 1945 and 1974 the forces of neo-colonialism effectively extinguished the revolutionary character of Pan-Africanism's most visible launching posts, the Pan-African Congresses.  This current state should be viewed in the context of the massive amounts of resources imperialism is pouring into these neo-colonial efforts to ensure their success.  ADOS supporters often say Pan-Africanism isn't relevant, but they cannot even attempt to address why something so ill relevant has sustained such horrific terror aimed against it from the assassination of Pan-Africanist leaders, the destabilization of the Pan-Africanist parties in power, the strangling of Pan-African societies, the sabotage of Ghana, Guinea, Libya, and other legitimate Pan-Africanist governments, etc.  In other words, why was so much effort placed into suppressing militancy and international anti-imperialism at the 6th PAC to the extent that the 7th PAC in 1994 in Uganda, and the 8th PAC in Ghana in 2008 continued much more so in the compromised vein of the 6th PAC, further distancing themselves from the anti-colonialism, anti-imperialism, and pro-socialism and revolutionary Pan-Africanism of the 5th PAC?

The answer here is probably contained in the sad yet true lyrics of Publc Enemy's classic jam "Welcome to the Terrordome" where Chuck D raps that "every brother ain't a brother..."  The analysis is still the same in 2019 and beyond.  Some of us want liberation for all our people and all of humanity.  Some of us just want to secure a place for privileged segments of our population.  The proof is in the analysis.  The folks wanting complete liberation have a plan for how everyone can become free.  That plan can be partially understood by reading Nkrumah's "Handbook of Revolutionary Warfare."  That plan is being worked on and built by revolutionary Pan-African forces today.  Meanwhile, the folks wanting class privilege cannot even speak to mass liberation coherently.  They cannot point you to any clear plan about liberation and certainly no practical work taking place for liberation.  Many of these latter people want to continue to carry out this charade that there is a middle ground.  We don't have to be revolutionary.  We can compromise with imperialism and win.  Its time for us to go back to the spirit coming out of the 5th PAC.  No middle ground.  The question for all of us needs to be simply, what side will you be on?



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Yvette Carnell's Ties to the Racist Right & Black Power Pimpism

3/26/2019

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Yvette Carnell, one of the primary voices behind this so-called "American Descendants of Slaves (ADOS)" movement, is a director for the so-called Progressives for Immigration Reform (PFIR).  That's not the most egregious element here though.  Carnell is the type of person who presents serious miss information while draping herself in the American flag, the height of personal opportunism.  So, we certainly aren't surprised that such a selfish opportunist would be affiliated with losers like PFIR.  Our concern is that so many African people are warming to Carnell's rhetoric on critical issues like the very real connection between Africans born in the U.S. and outside the U.S.  Carnell and her ADOS movement are doing everything they can to increase the wedge between our African family and that's dangerous.  And, for no realistic reason that will benefit African people anywhere, but for simple opportunism as her connection to PFIR clearly illustrates.

We say the above because PFIR is nothing except a 2019 representation of the old Southern Strategy approach to racist xenophobia.  With the number of African sellouts who have figured out there's money available for any of us who will cape and coon for their capitalist masters, none of us should be surprised by the fact an African woman would/could be considered a spokesperson for our people while at the same time being a board member for something like PFIR.  This so-called immigration reform organization relies on the subtle racism of the Southern Strategy approach by claiming their position is based on a desire to (quoting their website) "protect American workers from unemployment and wage suppression."  The irony of this is the inference that our Indigenous (Latino/a) family members, as well as Africans who have come to the U.S. recently, are somehow the reason Africans within the U.S. cannot find employment and stability.  We challenge anyone anywhere to question the fact that African people in the U.S. have had the highest unemployment in this country since the days of chattal slavery when all of us were "employed" as free and brutalized labor for the construction of this country.  The reason for this is that capitalism has been built and maintained on exploiting Africa and Africans (along with everyone else).  So, this system - which is based on our subjugation - is never going to provide stability for us.  Our purpose for being in the Western Hemisphere was simply to provide the stability for this backward system, at our expense.  No immigrant labor is taking employment opportunities away from us and not a single person reading this can prove otherwise.  The capitalist system is solely responsible for our suffering.  Thousands of jobs each year are shipped overseas in order to save costs for capitalist corporations.  The future and this increasing reliance on artificial intelligence indicates continued loss of employment opportunities for the most expendable labor communities in this country.  The massive push to weaken labor unions by big money and to privatize anything public sector is a part of the agenda of multi-national corporations.  Not immigrant labor.  The U.S. Post Office is an example.  Big money has been working since 2006 to destabilize the Post Office.  A large percentage of African people historically work within public sector institutions like the Post Office and other government agencies because the hiring process is at least slightly more objective than the private sector and public sector unions at least provide some protection against racist employment practices.  Our people know that the privatization of public sector jobs means disaster for us because employers can more easily hide their racist hiring and managing practices.  None of that has anything to do with immigrant labor.  Absolutely nothing.  

We are a people who have been blessed with outstanding spokespeople.  Even if you just look at Africans within this U.S. alone, this is true.  Malcolm X, Marcus and Amy/Amy Garvey.  W.E.B. and Shirley DuBois.  Paul Robison.  Kwame Ture (Stokely Carmichael).  Ruby Doris Robinson.  Assata Shakur.  Jamil Abdullah al-Amin (H. Rap Brown).  People who are/were principled and focused and dedicated solely to our liberation by any means necessary.  People who died for the most part with little to no personal assets because their lives were dedicated to one thing only - courageous and selfless confrontation against the forces who oppress Africa, Africans, and humanity.  As a result, all of those people had sense enough to understand the forces that hold us down are international in operation.  Therefore, common sense dictates that an international formation of African unity is absolutely necessary to facilitate bringing down the beast that disrespects us.  

On the other hand, we've also had a series of race hustlers and phonies who prey upon our vulnerabilities (and our unwillingness to study our movements and histories) to develop messages designed to appeal to our sensitivities while draining whatever limited resources we possess.  I'm talking specifically about people like this Candace Owens, Umar Johnson, Tariq Nasheed, and Yvette Carnell and this Antonio Moore.  Social media celebrities who rely on our ignorance to exploit us.  These people are great preachers.  They sound great, but when you peel back the surface, there's nothing there.  No reparations for the masses of African people.  No wealth building.  No independent schools, nothing.  We have schools we operate/support from Sacramento/Portland to Ghana, Sierra Leone, Tanzania, with little to no money.  We are talking about thousands of African youth in Kiswahili, Twi, Malinde, and English, etc.  All learning about revolutionary Pan-Africanism and building a worldwide African liberation movement.  Meanwhile, some of you are contributing millions of dollars to a hustle that hasn't liberated one African mind.  And, you wouldn't contribute five cents to sincere and operational efforts like those we are working so hard to build.  

These ADOS people are pushing an agenda of reparations that really tarnishes the legitimate legacy of the reparations movement so principally represented by organizations like N'Cobra, Garvey's Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA), Black United Front, and other organizations.  Carnell and her ilk have reduced this question of reparations down to a weak attempt to parlay themselves into some money and many of you are unwittingly (or maybe you see dollar signs also) playing along with this foolishness.

Meanwhile, we permit Carnell to claim to speak for the interests of Africans within the U.S. while she shamelessly represents this PFIR which employs people like Leah Durant who was the attorney for the John Tanton Network which has promoted eugenics e.g. the studies advanced by people like "Professor" Benson from U.C. Berkeley and William Shockley from Stanford and others who produced the racist "Bell Curve study" which attempts to make a civilized argument (Southern Strategy) to justify claiming African people are intellectually inferior to Europeans.  Just to be clear, eugenics isn't something opposed by PFIR, but supported.  So, knowing all of this, if you continue to support opportunists like Carnell, then at this point, you are as much a part of the problem as she is.  Reparations, organized for in a principled way, has never been advanced outside the paradigm of Pan-African unity.  Liberation for African people can never be seriously argued within a micro nationalist framework.  African identify is a political statement against the forces that oppress Africa and African people worldwide.  Similarly, any African who actively embraces American identify, as Carnell and her people do, make the political statement that their personal interests supersede any legitimate concerns for the conditions of the masses of Africans, even within the U.S. alone.  

Kwame Ture used to often repeat the old African proverb that "when you boil dirty water, the scum always rises to the top!"  If you understand Carnell and her relationship to PFIR, yet you still see her as champion for African people without smelling the disgust of her actual political foundation, then you clearly are not seriously concerned about advancing African people.  So, we aren't speaking to you, but to those who sincerely wish to understand and do something about this terrible situation we remain in that so many of these hustlers work so hard to capitalize off of.  


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Why So Many Prefer Waddling in Suffering to Fighting for Victory

3/21/2019

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Examples are everywhere. Whether you live here in Sacramento, California, U.S., where the most recent indignity was the decision by the enforcers of capitalism to (big surprise) not press charges against the armed slave catcher terrorists who shot down Stephon Clark.  Or, whether you live anywhere else on Earth, the pattern is still the same.  Immediately after that decision here in Sacramento, people hit the streets to express their righteous anger.  For a few days after that decision, hundreds of people did this.  Now, a week or so later, quiet again dominates the streets of Sacramento.  Business as usual.  Capitalism flexing its power and oppression over us without the slightest consequences.  That same subtle message, that we can yell, but we can't win, is reinforced.  And if you don't live in Sacramento you hardly have space to scuff.  I can take the last several sentences, change the names and places, and the same scenario played out for Eric Garner in New York, Tamir Rice, Kendra James, Sandra Bland, everyone shot down by British police, French police, Australian police, etc.  Yet, there is never going to be any shortage of people who have strong opinions on the issue.  And, each time, every time, we continue to play out Kwame Ture's often cited theme that "African people rise up, tear up the city, and then sit down for 29 years!"  

We all know that its just a matter of minutes before state terrorists take one or some of our lives.  The next time it could be you.  It could be me.  No one is safe.  Yet, we continue to believe, irrationally, that the institutions belonging to this same system that perpetuates our oppression will serve to protect us.  All of this seems overwhelmingly dysfunctional.  You can literally talk to people about very clear and achievable solutions.  People will agree wholeheartedly with you, but no one will do anything.  Why?

There are many, many reasons, but here probably the most important ones.  Most of us possess absolutely no confidence in our ability as a people to come together to solve our own problems.  That fact that we provide more faith in, and provide more resources towards, the institutions that represent the system of oppression against us, than we do towards independent organizations working for us, indicates clearly this reality.  Since we don't have this self confidence, we truly, deep down inside, deeper than most of us are willing to admit, will never place our eggs in any baskets dominated by the masses of our people.  Meaning, we truly don't really believe we are ever going to do anything.  Consequently, for a lot of people who have accepted this sad and dysfunctional world view, what they really want is an out.  A way to build some sort of safe portal for themselves while maintaining the appearance that they have not sold our people out.  They want a compromise with this terrorist system.  A way to co-exist with it while being able to feel alright about that.  For these people, discussing truly doing anything to solve our problems will never advance beyond the rhetorical level.  In other words, they are only going to talk, talk, talk, while their true energies will always be directed towards this compromise with capitalism.  Unfortunately, since this, like everything else, is dominated by class contradictions, the people most likely to be in the positions to articulate our positions on these issues are the petti bourgeoisie among us.  Those who have been trained by these miss education institutions to believe in this system.  So, their entire portfolio is about how to make this thing work, not rip it apart.  And, these folks have the skills and resources to create the messaging that influences everyone else.

Another problem is far too many people just simply lack the personal organization, discipline, and commitment to anything in life, not just our liberation struggle, to really carry out any sustainable effort towards solving these issues.  That's why these people prefer the anger, spontaneous approach because that approach doesn't require any of those attributes.  You can go out tonight to protest and out tomorrow to nightclub and the next night to club, etc., and never do anything else for the movement for another five years and no one will bat an eye.  This can happen because accountability is one of the most foul words in today's world.  Everyone wants it for any and everything connected to anything benefiting them while no one wants anything to do with it for anything remotely pointing in their direction.  

All of these problems are not operating in isolation.  The capitalist system is the prime driver for all of this dysfunction.  It is this system that benefits the most from us doing nothing so it always has a vested interest in keeping us from taking any action against it.  Its this system that trains us in every institution in this society, from school to church, to work, to watching a ballgame, that the capitalist system is the end all, be all, absolute only option available to anyone on earth, period.  That thinking, which is reinforced everywhere you can turn your head, fuels the inability of people to believe we can win against this system.  And, another element of that conditioning is capitalism's specific focus on the individual e.g. individualism.  They have convinced most of us that whatever problems we have are our individual fault, meaning we didn't work hard enough and/or something is just wrong with us - individually.  This thinking fuels this inability many of us have to handle any adversity.  The thought of self reflection and criticism frightens so many of us to the point where we will do absolutely anything to avoid receiving it and that means lying, being deceptive, and certainly refusing to be accountable when its abundantly clear that we should be.



Despite all of these weapons being aimed against us, we still have all of the resources we need to win.  There are plenty of people, myself included, who are available and willing to spend time, valuable time, training people on how to establish and build community defense models that will help organize our people all over the world in ways that will provide self determination to our people.  This is organizing work that is rooted in strengthening our people and communities, not relying on the system ran by our enemies to continue to disappoint and sell us short.  The ability to build these models is here for us and I for one would love the opportunity to talk to as many people as possible on how to engage this work.  I have decades of experience organizing against armed and violent white supremacist groups, police terrorism, and forces of degradation within our own communities.  I've been able to develop these experiences into methods that we can use to protect ourselves.  And this is something all justice loving people, not just Africans, can benefit from and utilize.  Yet, I, like most organizers like me, stand mostly under utilized while opportunists who offer people nothing more than the type of temporary feel good that you can get from any momentary high continue to be more popular in spreading their worthless messages than there is time to calculate.  This is astonishing to me, but its the reality, clear as day.  


The only thing I can think of to do about this serious challenge is to continue to make that call to action.  Let's organize.  Let me help you learn how.  Let's talk about how we can do this.  The requirements for my assistance are minimal.  The important way that rubber meets the road here is how serious you are?  Are you willing to put time into this work?  Are you willing to invest yourself into this work?  If you are, the rewards against our oppression are well documented, but as long as we remain in this everyone wants to to go to Heaven, but no one wants to die, framework, we will continue to be sitting here, waiting to be picked off like ducks, until the next three day protest arrives with limited to no serious results.

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Sacramento, Calif; Round Two & The Strange Differences This Time

3/18/2019

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I currently live in Sacramento, California, U.S., the sixth largest city in the largest state within the U.S.  Sacramento is nestled in between the world famous city of San Francisco (from wence I hail) and the breathtaking Sierra Nevada, the home of Lake Tahoe.  This city stands with the San Joaquin Valley, one of the largest food producing regions in the world, just minutes to the South.  Sacramento's the capitol city of California with one of the most racially diverse populations anywhere.  The metropolitan area is slightly over 1 million people with Africans, Asians, Indigenous people (Latinos/Natives, etc.), and Europeans each accounting for no less than about 15% of the state's population.  

I resided in Sacramento from August, 1981, until January, 2007.  That's 26 years.  Then, after a 10 year experience living in Oregon, I returned to Sacramento in March of 2017.  I've been back here two years this month.  Based on the numbers I've just recited, I've spent half my life living in Sacramento so I think that warrants some type of assessment of this place, especially since returning here in 2017.  

Demographically and geographically, Sacramento has changed a lot in some areas and is still basically the same in others.  I still love all of the outdoor opportunities here although I'm sure most of my Oregon people would turn their noses up to many elements of it.  Sacramento is a dry person's dream for the most part.  The climate here is warm, very warm in the summer months and rain, besides the consistency of it this winter, is not a common occurrence here.  So, we don't come close to the lushness that is common place everywhere in Oregon.  Still, I like it.  I have tons of spots throughout the Sacramento Valley that I have extensive history escaping to.  I've studied, relaxed, contemplated, reflected, and done a lot of soul gratifying work in those areas.  After being gone 10 years, once I hit up some of those places for the first time since returning, I enjoyed positive emotional reunions.  One of the worst experiences I had previously in Sacramento was extensive allergies.  And, to be honest, much of that was my fault because I chose, because of my aversion to taking medicines, to just suffer through it.  Once I returned two years ago, I thought about how I did not wish to experience that torture again.  So, I developed a nature plan based around bee honey and a morning ritual that made last spring easily the best spring I ever had here.  I'm already on top of that process again for 2019.  So, I anticipate having another victorious spring this year as well.

That leaves me with what else has changed for the worse.  And, as can already be imagined, those elements exist within the social/political realm.  During my previous 26 years here I organized face to ground for the All African People's Revolutionary Party every day.  I built and maintained numerous relationships that extended from the radical African nationalist community to the petti bourgeoisie African community to the radical European, Indigenous, Arab, and Asian communities.  During those years, my interpretation of doing revolutionary work was to try and do everything I could to help people understand who we were and what we are doing.  In the course of that, I made incredible sacrifices.  Painful sacrifices.  The sacrifices are fine.  That's just a part of revolutionary work, but what I didn't know how to better manage before was the extent to which I was savagely taken advantage of by many people e.g. exploiting and taking for granted my labor and efforts.  This isn't uncommon for revolutionaries engaged in organizing work.  Our work won't ever help people achieve any of their bourgeoisie inspired personal objectives so we are never going to  be the priority for many people in this society.  We are never going to be worthy of respect from them, but they have no issue using us if it can help them in any way.  A great example of this is stories I've been told about Fred Hampton in the Illinois Black Panther Party and how people like Jesse Jackson used Hampton's organizing skill and popularity to advance Jackson's program while dissing and dismissing Hampton and his work whenever possible.  That's a theme that rings painfully true.  On some levels I understood how I was permitting this to happen, but it wasn't until I practiced testing how to interact with people like this during my time in Oregon (of course, this problem was a major reason why I wanted a change of locale in the first place).  By the time I returned in 2017, I had learned some things.  

I've always had great faith in people.  If someone tells me they want to help our people and/or humanity, I believe them until they prove otherwise.  This contrasts with lots of people who have given in to the capitalist directive that you cannot trust anyone e.g. people have to prove themselves to you before you will trust them, which essentially means you won't ever trust them.  To me, doing work designed to transform society is not possible if you don't have faith in people.  So, I'm proud to have this disposition, but I've learned how to manage it so I'm not taken advantage of.

What I'm saying in essence is many people here have learned that the old "do anything to support you Ahjamu (despite the fact you do nothing to support our work)" is gone.  Consequently, this has resulted in many people, who I've known and worked with for years.  Who I thought I had strong relationships with, basically acting as if they don't know me.  At first, this was painful.  I can admit that.  As I thought more about it, I began to realize that the issue was I didn't really have healthy relationships with a lot of people like I should.  People will always treat you the way you train them to treat you.  So I've changed.  Before, when something like Stephon Clark being killed had happened here, and people called me to come out, I went out and tried to plug myself in anyway I could to support what was happening, despite the fact I didn't agree at all with what was happening (not my politics).  And, I mean I would make contributions to their work.  Often, better contributions than people who did agree with what was happening.  Now, when people urge me to go out to police stations to protest, I don't go. And, I explain to them why I won't go.  I've learned that doing this won't endear you with many people, despite whatever work you've done over the years.  I've also learned that its ok for me to refuse to permit my resources, which are not small, to be used for people who won't help me do the work that's important to me.  That too won't win you any popularity contests.  For example, I've learned to require a fee to use my sound equipment, when I used to always let people use it, and my labor to transport and set up/take down, for free.  After doing that for an event that was homophobic and patriarchal, I pledged never to let that happen again.  So, I require a fee.  Not because its about money, but because I know that once I say that, they won't bother me anymore.  And since everyone is trained by capitalist values, if they agree to the fee, and I follow through, I've learned people will respect you that way.  That dysfunctional way.  

So, these changes have caused my relationship to people here to change.  I'm not nearly as popular here as I was previously.  And, I'm perfectly fine with that because the attention before wasn't for healthy reasons.  I am retired from being people's pit bull to sic on the forces they are not equipped to argue with.  I've developed a much healthier respect for myself and the work that I engage in.  

I don't even approach organizing A-APRP work study circles the same way I used to when I was here before.  Now, if you want to join, you will need to demonstrate your seriousness.  That has certainly weeded out the pretenders.  And, trust me, I know the difference between those who just need time to develop and the pretenders.  

Whereas I used to be at anything African in this town, I rarely attend any of those things anymore.  And believe me, I don't miss it.  I guess I've reached the point where I am more than a little tired of always being in environments I don't agree with.  Being a revolutionary Pan-Africanist, I recognize that my ability to be in those spaces isn't going to change anytime soon.  And, if I wish to organize, I will need to figure out a methodology to do so in a way that upholds and doesn't compromise my beliefs.  That's the part I'm working on now.  I'll figure this out.  I always do.  

In the meantime, I'm really enjoying organizing in and instructing in the Pan-African Saturday School here in Sacramento.  I'm also enjoying focusing so much energy into writing political pieces for our central A-APRP site, for this blog, and for publication as books, etc.  I also am liking getting the opportunity to do workshops on revolutionary organizing.  I really want to expand the ability to do workshops on community defense building.  And, I'd also like to continue working with people to help them in building that work.  Meanwhile, I'll continue writing the community defense manual I'm currently working on that explains how to build community defense projects to compliment the work we are doing in Africa to support our vision for Pan-Africanism as articulated in Kwame Nkrumah's "Handbook of Revolutionary Warfare" or organizing manual as an organization.  And the beauty of these self defense models is African people can build them and we can show other people how to build them also.  Still, people will need to demonstrate to me they are serious before I'll initially extend a lot of resources their way.  That's the approach the ancestors have been badgering me with for years.  Now that I'm finally learning how to listen to them, I'm much more at peace with myself.  And, a lot of that is because I'm not wasting a lot of my valuable time like I used too.  My organizing these days is much more efficient and much more effective.  That means I could have time this weekend to take that writing retreat weekend I have put off since finishing my last novel.  After two years back here, I'm finally at a place of readjustment where I'm ready for that.  There are so many spots I can camp out at around here where I won't freeze to death.  Just that thought alone is really exciting for me, regardless of what anyone else feels about it.  And the fact I've learned that lesson, is the most gratifying aspect of them all.  

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Recognize:  The A-APRP is Much More than the People You See

3/17/2019

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Kwame Ture (Stokely Carmichael) fourth from right, at the Democratic Party of Guinea headquarters in 1997. With him are cadre from the Pan-African Union of Sierra Leone, African Party for the Independence of Guinea-Bissau, Convention People's Party of Guinea, Gambia, and other Pan-African formations. Laying the groundwork for Pan-Africanism as Kwame Nkrumah articulated in the "Handbook of Revolutionary Warfare." Much more than what you have probably have as your perception of the All African People's Revolutionary Party today.

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These are the Truths, No Matter What, About White Supremacy

3/16/2019

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The truths we need have always been here, but I can say that's its never more obvious than it is today.  Those truths are that capitalism as a system developed and evolved out of the enslavement of my African ancestors.  The systems of colonialism and slavery that were set up for this process still represent the mechanisms that drive the world today, meaning our people are on the bottom for a reason.  That reason is we must continue to be oppressed because the capitalist world depends on the human and material resources of Africa, African people, and the rest of humanity, to survive, function, and maintain its control.  

The truths are that the majority of Europeans either identify and/or benefit from this system of oppression.  Consequently, most of them are never going to turn against this capitalism.  In fact, most of them will spend their entire lives thinking of every thing possible to justify their support for this system, despite whatever horrors this system directs against the rest of us.  The truth is it doesn't how many Europeans terrorize us and it doesn't matter how shocked any of you are whenever it happens.  The truth is they can't stop us.  And the truth is the rest of those people are not going to care so we are completely wasting our time attempting to appeal to a conscience that has proven, after 500+ years, that it doesn't exist.

The truths are that white supremacy, patriarchy, and homophobia are appendages of capitalism and imperialism, meaning you cannot separate capitalism from any of those backward systems.  The truth is capitalism produces, nurtures, and protects all of those subordinate systems.  The truth is anyone who claims to represent justice and forward progress, without acknowledging and recognizing that capitalism must be destroyed, isn't really trying to bring about justice for humanity.  At  best, those people are simply trying to find a way to co-exist with the oppression.  And, this includes many Africans who continue to try their  best to put an attractive face on, and redefine capitalism.  The truth is attempting to redefine capitalism in some sort of humanistic terms is akin to how capitalism has so many people convinced that sharks are villains.  There are about 100 shark attacks against humans every year while there are about 700,000 sharks killed by humans every year.  And, none of these shark attacks against humans happen because somebody ran into a shark in the aisle of the supermarket, or at the bus stop, or at the barbershop, while every shark killed was killed by humans who invaded the shark's habitat.  The truth is capitalism is the true killer, not the sharks of the world.

The truths are that African people in Africa, the middle passage of the transatlantic slave trade, and throughout the Americas, always fought back courageously against European, Arab, and African efforts to enslave and oppress our people.  The truth is there has never been any place in the world where we haven't fought back.  The truth is the fact we are currently not on top isn't in any way a gauge of our ineffectiveness in fighting back no more than a basketball or soccer team in last place at the beginning of the season is any indication of how that season will end.  

The truth is any African anywhere in the world can be biologically related to any African anywhere in the world.  The truth is we are the most spread out people on Earth against our will.  The truth is we speak more languages than any other people on earth.  The truth is you could live in the U.S. and have biological relatives in Guatemala, Mexico, Jamaica, Cuba, Brazil, Venezuela, Guyana, Canada, Congo, Ghana, Ethiopia, Sudan, Tanzania,  France, Britain, Germany, Denmark, Australia, etc.  The truth is you may never meet them.  You may never know them.  You may meet them, but be unable to communicate with them because they speak Spanish, Portuguese, Creole, Twi, Ki-Swahili, Zulu, Fulani, French, or Patwa, but the truth is they are your biological family.  The truth is our enslavers never asked the people they were kidnapping on those slave raids if they had relatives being kidnapped with them.  The truth is they didn't try to keep those of us related together on the slave ships.  As a result, the truth is we were separated.  So clearly, our relatives are scattered all over the world.  The truth is because of this reality its absurd for anyone to fix their mouth to criticize the dysfunction in our families when this is our history.  The truth is how the hell is your family just as dysfunctional, if not more, when your people were not even viciously separated the way ours were?  For the period of time ours were?  To anything close to the degree ours were?

The truth is African women, and all women, are oppressed even more than men.  The truth is there are many ways to oppress a people.  There is physical liquidation.  There is psychological warfare.  There is chemical warfare, etc.  Our people and all of humanity are attacked using all of these methods and patriarchy ensures women are consistently oppressed, repressed, and controlled for the benefit of capitalism.  The truth is there are people who will not, and should not, identify with either the male or female gender.  The truth is there is plenty of historical precedent for these folks, even in Africa.  The truth is when we condemn them for not being a part of the gender binary, or we condemn our people for being LGBTQ, we are actually doing the work of the vicious European capitalists who wish to keep our people divided so they can hang onto their cash cow = Africa.  

The truth is European (white) women have always aided and abetted white supremacy.  The truth is men have aided and abetted patriarchy, including us African men.  The truth is all of us aide and abet capitalist oppression all over the world everyday when we refuse to become a part of the worldwide movement to organize against this terrible system.  The truth is this is true, even if you engage in some softer liberal ways to speak against the system, while never wanting it to come apart.  The truth is you are aiding the system when you do that.

The truth is African people don't have any more difficulty being united than anyone else.  The truth is this system works overtime to keep us divided.  The fact is capitalism has done more than any other entity on earth to keep us divided.  The truth is when some of you wake up and get serious about liberation, you will understand much better how this government and their subordinates, work to keep us divided.

The truth is despite all of these problems mentioned up this point, we will win.  The truth is we will overthrow capitalism.  The truth is we will achieve one unified socialist Africa.  The truth is Palestine will be free.  The truth is Ireland will be free.  The truth is the Philippines will be free.  The truth is the Western Hemisphere will be free from settler colonialism.  Australia will be free from settler colonialism.  New Zealand will be free of settler colonialism.  The truth humanity, united, will figure out how to save the earth.  The truth is African people around the world are more conscious of the fact that we are one people and that our destinies are tied together than at any time in the last 500+ years.  The truth is our enemies recognize this and are working overtime to try and ensure that they do everything they can to keep that unity from happening.  The truth is they know, even if most of us don't, that our unity automatically will mean their destruction.  The truth is despite whatever they throw at us, and it will be a lot, we will weather it, and we will keep fighting them.  The truth is we will fight them in indirect ways, subtle ways.  We will fight them in spontaneous ways.  And, eventually, we will fight them in organized direct ways.  The truth is when we get to that last part, we will defeat them.  The truth is we will then make our contribution to making this entire world better.  

The truth is my responsibility to the last paragraph is to do everything I can to make that day come closer.  The truth is I won't live to see that day.  The truth is that doesn't matter one bit because its not about me.  The truth is it isn't about you either.  The truth is its about everyone. That's the truth, despite what they tell us.  Despite what some of us want to believe.  All of this is the ill refutable truth.

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Russell Westbrook Incident:  A Case Study in white supremacy

3/12/2019

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If you don't follow professional basketball and/or just missed it, an accident happened last night in the game between the Oklahoma City Thunder and Utah Jazz in Salt Lake City, Utah, U.S.  During the second quarter, Thunder point guard Russell Westbrook got into a heated exchange with a fan sitting closely behind the Thunder bench.  Anyone who follows pro basketball knows that Westbrook, one of the game's best players, has a long history of extreme intensity and quirkiness, but none of that excuses the immediate racism that displayed itself immediately after this incident became public.

First, there was the extremely unusual occurrence where the fan in question was provided a full length interview about his version of events.  As is usually the case, Westbrook, was able to talk about the incident during the post-game press conference.  Obviously, the version of events differed significantly between the story told by Westbrook - an African player, and the fan - a European (white) man named Keisal, weasel, something like that.

The early news and sports talk shows this morning were immediate in focusing the blame for the incident primarily on Westbrook.  Its true, there was a video produced by a fan that showed the tail end of the incident where Westbrook is seen spewing out a profanity laced tirade against this fan and his wife who was presumably sitting next to him. These early morning reports relied heavily on this video and Westbrook's history of getting into confrontations with people to suggest that Westbrook should be punished for his tirade.

By this afternoon, the tide on this issue had changed considerably.  The reason for this switch was the account of the incident from the fan began to be brought into question due primarily to social media research a number of people did on this white man's history.  His previous tweets and posts apparently were littered with racist comments, etc.  There were also tweets where he requested someone to physically beat up Westbrook specifically.  All of this after the fan, during his interview, spoke as if he had no idea what triggered Westbrook.  According to this fan, all he said to Westbrook was "put some heat on your knees!"  This person also claimed his wife, who was clearly called out by Westbrook during his tirade, had said nothing and should have never been "threatened" by Westbrook.  During his account of the incident during the post game press briefings, Westbrook said the man said "get down on your knees like you used too!" and that his wife immediately repeated the racist comment.  

What makes this entire thing reek of white supremacy is that the history of the man should never have had to come into the picture in order for most people to recognize the smelly nature of this European's account of the incident.  And, the fact so many people do not possess the skill to detect white supremacy in its subtle forms of operation, is proof why so many of you need to shut up when these incidents take place.  Most African people, especially those of us dedicated and involved in the African liberation movement, have learned to have razor sharp white supremacy detection mechanisms in our day to day lives.  So for me, the first sign of b - - ls - - t was when I saw the picture, not the video, but the picture of Westbrook standing and yelling into the stands.  When you look at the fans they are staring back into the stands, any of them with looks of shock on their faces.  And, since this is Utah we are talking about, all the people in question are Europeans.  If Westbrook had experienced a complete meltdown simply because someone had given him rehabilitation advice, as this white man is claiming, its doubtful that people would be so focused on whomever was behind him in the stands the way people are looking back at them.  Typically, when someone is having a meltdown, you would expect people to be observing the person yelling and screaming, not the person they are screaming at.  The other silly thing about this is the man's claim that all he did was give heat pad to knee advice.  C'mon now.  Westbrook is one of the game's biggest names.  He has played professional basketball for 11 years now.  That means he's probably played about 900 games in front of millions of people.  Surely, he's heard just about everything yelled at him by now.  There's no way you are going to convince me that after all that experience he is going to flip out because some big gut idiot suggests he use heat on a sore knee.  In fact, I knew as soon as I saw how Westbrook was triggered that racism was probably involved.  And, I knew that before knowing anything about the situation because again, after a while of studying and participating in this work, not to mention experiencing white supremacy at an expert level, I know what it looks like when a colonized person feels the need to express their dignity.

Now, like Malcolm X so correctly told us, when people are oppressed, they are not always going to always express that pain in calm ways.  Malcolm used the example of a child touching a hot stove.  The stove is hot.  The touch produces extreme pain and the child reacts accordingly.  Malcolm makes the point that oppressed people react to pain often in the same manner.  So yes, Westbrook, as is often the case when we are assaulted with white supremacy, reacted with profanity, anger, and overall emotion.  And, I'm here to say he had every right to do so.  That white man is lucky that's all that happened to him.

The other filthy part of all of this is the unspoken mechanisms of white supremacy and how they work.  Besides the fact other players on the Thunder bench completely backed up Westbrook's version of events e.g. what was said to him that triggered the incident, no one has backed up what the white man said.  The only evidence he has produced is the video which only captures Westbrook's response, not what the man said that triggered the incident which means there's also no evidence to support his ridiculous claim that he only made a simple medical suggestion.  And then, the white man invoked the innocence of his wife and the fact Westbrook allegedly threatened her.  There are a couple of racist problems with this and there are also some cultural misunderstandings happening as well.  The racism is every European knows that if they articulate any encounter they have with any of us, because they speak the language e.g. verbal and non-verbal communication techniques of Western European culture - the norms in capitalist societies across the world today, and they fit the image of this societies - they will be instantly believed against whatever we say about them.  Whether they are telling the truth or lying is ill relevant.  All they have to do is the above and that, juxtaposed to one of us yelling and cursing at them, will ensure that the majority of people in this society, regardless of their ethnicity (this is about institutional training and conditioning) will believe them over us.  Then, to invoke the white woman in trouble from being attacked by the big black beast racist tradition, that deal is sealed!  This man was even conscious enough to throw in during the video that Westbrook is "a big guy" the subtle reference to the big black buck who is always a danger to the purity of the most sacred white woman.  In other words, although its very popular with white people to hear them say "I don't see color" since we know everyone in these capitalist societies is trained from birth to see color, all a European has to do in reference to one of us is talk about our size and our race is remote control, placed in the equation with a formula result of guilty!  As for further evidence, since white people don't have a sterling history of stepping forward to speak truth when racist incidents happen against us, I'm not holding my breath waiting for that to happen, but I also wouldn't wait for any further evidence to come from Mr. white man cuz, chances of that are slim to none. 

And, in 2019, all of this dysfunction works 99.9% of the time.  The internet has only been around for 20 years so imagine how much we have been railroaded into prison and death behind this type of cowardly activity in the course of history.  Emmet Till?  George Stiney?  The Scottsboro Boys?  I can go on and on.  

The cultural misunderstanding is in white supremacy's intentional effort to make every African seem unreasonable and violent.  So, with this backdrop, whenever one of us expresses anger, which we have every right to do just like everyone else, we are immediately labeled as trouble.  Coincidentally, this is why so many African families train their children not to react to anything which unfortunately teaches us to internalize our oppression.  If you understand this, then you realize why we have so many health pandemics e.g. diabetes, hypertension, etc., but back to cultural misunderstandings.  African culture is fundamentally different from European culture.  Wherever you go in the African world you will see people who are extremely expressive and outgoing in articulating our feelings.  Doesn't matter where.  This is who we are and how we function.  No matter where you go in the European world its mostly opposite, at least compared to us it is.  We are primarily abstract culturally.  Europeans are primarily linear.  So, African people understand that when an African says something like "I'll beat yo @ss and your womans!" that African isn't literary saying they are going to physically attack your woman.  What they are communicating simply put is that both of you need to just get the hell away from them.  To European culture, if you say something, that's exactly what you mean so these racists are trying to say Westbrook threatened this white woman when that's not really what he was saying, despite his very believable claim that she, like most white women, is far from innocent in this matter.  Much of these types of cultural misunderstandings are underpinnings of white supremacy.  This system dehumanizes us which makes it much harder for people to see us as complete human beings, thus making it impossible for people to understand anything I've explained in this paragraph.

A few years ago, there was a study done on a community somewhere in the Midwest, U.S.  This small community, all European, was up in arms because it was proposed that the local  middle school be renamed Martin Luther King Middle School.  There were no African people to speak of in this community.  When reporters asked the parents and community members why they opposed the name change so vehemently, the people responded that they had no issue with Dr. King - which of course is a lie, but that they were just concerned because to name the school that would bring unwanted stigmas they didn't want their children subjected to.  What they meant was stigmas about performance capabilities and other problems with academic recognition.  When I read that, my first thought is if these white people reject naming their school after an African like MLK because they don't want the problems that come with that, imagine how it must be for us to live this experience 24/7, 365 days a year?

So, for those of you who genuinely wish to understand the day to day mechanisms of white supremacy, but struggle to do so, hopefully, these examples will help.  The primary issues are this system operates in a very subtle fashion.  There are tons of subliminal messages that are pumped into us all the time by all institutions from school to church to work, etc.  By the time we can talk, we already understand many of these messages on some level.  One of them is that white people will always be believed over us.  Another is that white people can treat us anyway they wish because they will be believed over us.  Another is the reason they will always be believed over us is the system is designed for them to plug into it and function, something not afforded to the rest of us.  And, that last part is where the white privilege comes in.  

With living with this sick reality everyday, people are always asking me why I shut down white supremacy with such aggressiveness.  And, I admit, when I'm confronted with it, I do take a smash mouth approach to the person perpetuating it (which is something I love to teach/train people how to do).  The dignity for oppressed people can never come from the system perpetuating that oppression.  Our dignity comes from our culture and our experiences.  It comes from our desire to be free.  Westbrook's response may seem obscene to those who are trained to see life through that white supremacist visual, but for me, its simply a sign of better things to come.  After 500+ years of this, any type of response we give that centers us is warranted and long overdue.



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Gentrification; Sutro Tower; & Stealing my San Francisco Birthright

3/11/2019

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I was was born and raised in San Francisco, California, U.S.  Born in the Kaiser Hospital on Geary Blvd that is still there to the best of my knowledge.  I lived there until a few months after barely graduating high school.  In the summer of 1979, after spending my first 17 years in San Fran, I left the city to pursue my growth and although I visited the city regularly to see my parents/family, I haven't lived in the city since.  

I was there this past Saturday for a solidarity rally against intervention in Venezuela.  I was our speaker at this rally for the All African People's Revolutionary Party so I was focused on the message I would deliver, but also in my mind was the fact that I was in the city that birthed me, something that rarely happens anymore.  

San Francisco has changed so much from the 70s when I lived there that I hardly recognize anything there anymore, especially the people.  This challenge has caused anxiety for me over the years.  I have struggled over feeling so alienated when in San Fran that about 15 years ago, I decided I was going to disown the city that I felt disowned me.  About five years ago I rethought this approach.  Gentrification has changed the city so much that I can't tell you any good restaurants to go to there.  I don't know any social places.  Nothing.  Still, I made up my mind those five ago that this is still the city that raised me, good and bad.  And, Saturday reminded me of some of that good.  Mostly, that is the fact that San Francisco, and the Bay Area as a whole, is one of the most politically charged areas in this entire country.  Radical politics are not strange in the Bay.  In fact, they are expected in many quarters, but long before I reached that level of understanding on a political level I was just a child in San Francisco.  And when I was a child I was dominated by fear and anxiety about my very existence.  There wasn't much then that could sooth these constant feelings that my life didn't matter, but one strange, but consistent, mechanism I focused on that gave me strength was Sutro Tower.  I'm not sure exactly when Sutro Tower came to be.  It happened sometime in my early years e.g. the late 60s, early 70s, but once it did, it became a central point of my perspective on San Francisco.  Sitting as the highest point of the city and a major landmark that is known all over the world, Sutro Tower to me was several things.  First, it was the tower that once activated, gave us additional channels on television beyond just NBC, CBS, and ABC.  When that happened in the early 70s we suddenly had channels 40, 36, and 44.  Syndicated stations that offered shows like Lost in Space and the Brady Bunch.  With these new channels and those shows in recent syndication, I was able to capture two or three episodes of each show every day.  My active imagination came alive.  I couldn't wait to watch.  I was actually able to thrust myself into the Brady and the Robinson family.  Now, I realize the implications of white supremacy in doing this, but then, it was the drug I used to jettison myself out of the turmoil that surrounded me.  

That was one area that Sutro Tower played in my life, but there was a much more important way I interacted personally with the tower.  When I entered elementary school in 1972, I was bused along with everyone else in my neighborhood to schools in the predominantly European (White) areas of San Francisco.  For anyone younger who isn't familiar with the concept of busing, it was done on a federal level in the early 70s as a so-called effort to address the inadequacy of inner city schools e.g. to integrate public schools.  Instead of addressing those inequities directly by strengthening the inner city schools in my neighborhood Bret Harte or Benjamin Franklin, I was bused clear across town to Clarendon Elementary School in the hills, just beneath Sutro Tower.  It was a very strange situation.  On one hand my experiences, too many to count, in this White neighborhood reaffirmed everything I had heard the adults discussing about our existence within a white supremacist society.  When I should have been learning about fractions, division, and literature, I was getting an expert education in how racist this country and the people in it are.  I was physically attacked and verbally harassed by people much older than me, white people, several times.  And this theme continued through high school.  And, to underscore the institutional elements of this system, I had teachers who unwittingly reinforced white supremacy.  I remember one experience in 6th grade where Ms. Murphy wanted us to pen flags on a map indicating where our families came from before the U.S.  I asked my parents that night as the assignment instructed us to do, but they knew nothing beyond the state of Louisiana where the slave ships dropped my family.  Of course, Africa was nonexistent then.  It was the place of "savagery, starvation, endless wars, and loss."  That was all we were ever taught about Africa so there was no chance most of us would claim it as our own.  Ms. Murphy was a strict teacher so I panicked when I was called upon in class that next day to pen my flag and I was ridiculed by her and my co-students when I penned my flag in Poland.  I have never felt less than I felt at that moment, but that's the design of this white supremacist, capitalist system.  That's what it wants to do to us, break our spirits.

Still, before I had Pan-Africanism, revolution, and understanding the thrust for justice, I had my Sutro Tower.  I would stand in the yard at Clarendon and stare up at it.  No matter how much I didn't matter in this world, I had my tall and powerful tower friend that believed in me.  I was overwhelmed with excitement when the school bus would take the route through Twin Peaks on the way back to the ghetto because we would drive right by Sutro Tower, almost at its base.  Everyone around me would be chattering and yelling, but I was transfixed on my friend.  Tall, regal, powerful.  Red and white.  Unconquerable.  What I wanted to be.  Anywhere in the city, whether at a Giants game or inside in Hunters Point, I could see my tower.  Downtown or in the Mission District.  I could see it.  In the Fillmore, I could see it.  I could see it from North Beach, Fisherman's Wharf, etc.  Even from Alcatraz its clearly visible.  I know this because wherever I went, the first thing I would do was check for it.  I felt that if I could see Sutro Tower that meant it could see me.  It was protecting me.  That gave me strength because my tower friend was always there.  It would never abandon me.  It would always listen to me and it wouldn't make fun of my uncombed hair, terrible skin, thick glasses, and nonexistent social skills.  

Last night I dreamed I was at my sister's flat when she lived on Central in the Haight in San Francisco in the mid 70s.  My sister was 11 years older than me.  My favorite thing to do there at that house was sitting at the back window which gave me a clear view of Sutro Tower.  Tall tenement buildings where I lived blocked my view of my tower, but at my sister's place, often even when foggy, its lights were clear, blinking in and out.  I would stare out that window for hours.  No one could understand my attachment to my tower, but me.  I tried to explain it, but they laughed at me.  Soon, I stopped attempting to get others to understand.  The tower was my friend, not theirs.

When my sister and her partner were evicted from that Central Street house I panicked.  My clear viewing station of Sutro would be taken from me, but I was delighted to discover that out their back window at their new flat on Steiner, despite being much farther away, I was still high enough to see Sutro Tower.  It wasn't as dominant and powerful as it was from the Central Street house or the Clarendon yard, but it was there, clear to see.  I promptly established my viewing position as I did at their previous place.

Fast forward 45 years to this past Saturday.  It was raining and cloudy, so much so that Sutro Tower wasn't visible at all. I marched, listened to the other speakers, talked to my comrades and other people. When the march arrived at the cable car turn around at Market and Powell in the center of downtown San Francisco, my comrades and I used our large African Liberation Day solidarity banner to block the ability of some pro fascist counter protesters who wanted to shout down the speakers.  The counter protesters, probably internalizing the same racism that typically defines everyone in this wretched society, argued and yelled at everyone around us, except us three large African men.  They only stared at us while yelling at everyone else, despite the fact we were clearly the ones intentionally blocking them from the actual rally.  Once I was comfortable that these reactionaries would not attempt anything, my mind went back to San Francisco.  That intersection is a central part of the city for public transportation exchanges so it was a place I spent much time during my youth.  I actually lost my father's binoculars, one of the few expensive things we had, at that intersection years and years ago, but all the stores that were there then are long gone now.  Emporium is gone.  Woolsworth is long gone.  The record store that I bought so much music from is long gone.  The stores there now are mostly newer places I have absolutely no knowledge of.  The Westfield Mall there where the Emporium used to be looked so odd to me in that space, but I get it.  Times change.  Things change.  I have no issue with that.  Change is dialectical meaning much of it is necessary and good.  The problem with much of the change gentrification brings on is its mostly reflective of the oppressive mechanisms of capitalism.  For example, I was aware at that Market Street juncture that a large percentage of the Africans I saw were street people, asking people for change.  A phenomenon that indicates the degree in which poverty impacts our people, who maintain the bottom of these capitalist societies.  Societies that are built and maintained on us being on the bottom.  Recent studies have concluded that a family of four cannot live effectively in San Francisco on a six figure salary.  This explains why, beyond our houseless people, there are so few Africans in San Francisco these days.  When I was young, we were approximately 15% to 20% of the city.  Today, its about 3%.  Marcus Books in S.F. is gone.  The once vibrant Fillmore district where Africans dominated is gone.  The Lakeview area where petti bourgeoisie Africans lived is not what it once was.  My sister and her partner are dead.  My mother and father are dead.  All of them taken away long before they should have been.  Each of them in different ways afflicted by the health inequities that cause Africans in this country to have the lowest life spawns.  With my parents gone, the Haight St area which was so dominant with our people when I was there in the 70s, is so devoid of African people today that a stroll up the block I lived on while in high school elicits stares from the people there now as if I don't belong there.  Its such an issue that I haven't been in that area in years.  The last time I was there, the police were called because I was standing there "too long."  I was there then contemplating that intersection at Haight and Broderick where me and my childhood friends played football.  To those cops, I was intruding.  i didn't mention that I lived there because that's ill relevant and I refuse to let them dictate my dignity.

Sutro Tower is still there.  And, although I don't see it now as the tower of personal strength it was for me when I was 10 years old, it still helps me resolve this feeling of disconnect I've struggled with around the city of my birth.  The way I see it now, despite all those things I just mentioned changing, the fact Sutro is still there is a reminder that I did grow up there and San Francisco will always be the place where I began to become the person I am today.  No matter what else happens, every time I look up at that tower, I know this.  I also know that no one will ever be able to take that from me.  Now being much older, and hopefully much wiser, I will continue to maintain my personal relationship to this tower which helped me sustain and comfort myself so much when I was such a lost child.  Its continued stature for me represents what we can do.  How we can win.  Forty five years later, its still an inspiration in my mind, no matter if anyone else understands or not.



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Slavery; The Economic System Compared to Transatlantic Slavery

3/5/2019

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Slavery by definition means a system where people are forced to provide labor to another group who holds power over them.  Most people understand that definition for slavery, but most people are also overwhelmingly confused about the systems of slavery that have existed within human history.  The confusion mostly results with people conflating different periods of the history and implementation of the terrible systems of slavery.  And, of course, this confusion isn't by accident.  Its by shrewd design.

First, we must discuss slavery as an economic system.  As our great revolutionary Pan-Africanist theorist and practitioner Sekou Ture so clearly and accurately articulated in the classic work "Strategy and Tactics of the African Revolution - The History of Class Struggle", human history has evolved from one period of economic dominance to another.  And this evolution has been based on people's ability to engage the forces of nature so as to attempt to shape them in ways that would develop our possibilities as human beings to exist and advance.  Certainly, this phenomenon cannot be discussed without acknowledging the conflict that has helped shape and define this process.  That conflict Ture correctly identifies as the development of class antagonisms e.g. class struggle.  And, its these contradictions that have played a significant role in shaping human history.  

The capitalists, and by definition, when we say capitalists, we are talking about the ruling class families that own the overwhelming majority of the wealth in the world today.  We are talking about families like the Kelloggs, Duponts, Morgans, and Rockefellers.  And, the reason we say families when we are talking about the capitalists is these few families actually own the majority of everything around us.  In other words, the worldwide "Occupy" movement from 2011 helped popularize the phrase "the 1%", but most people can't articulate the meaning in clear terms behind that phrase.  What it means is those 1% e.g. the Rockerfellers, etc., are only 1% of the population, but that class of people own about 75% of all of the production apparatus in the world today.  Meanwhile, just within the U.S., the richest country on earth, 90% of the U.S. population has assets that are negligible, meaning practically everyone here is in debt - meaning they owe more than then they own.  Obviously, as unbelievable as it may seem, these numbers are even more one sided outside of the U.S. where the deepest poverty exists.  So, we are talking about these ruling families when we say capitalists.  And, to give further perspective on their control, we can use the Rockerfellers as a quick example.  That family owns controlling interest, e.g. dominant stock, in Chevron Oil Company and all its international subsidiaries.  They own controlling interest in Chase Manhattan Bank and all its subsidiaries.  They own controlling interest in the National Broadcasting Company (NBC) and all of its subsidiaries (like CNN, MSNBC, CNBC, etc.).  One family owns all those resources which gives them the ability to shape oil policy internationally, which you know has been, and will continue to be, a major component in shaping everything from capitalist foreign policy, armed invasions, coups attempted and supported in sovereign countries, etc., while having control of the mass media outlets that shape people's perceptions of what they are doing.  Or, as Malcolm X succinctly put it; "during World War II, they told you the Germans were the bad guys and the Russians were our friends.  After World War II they told you the Germans were our friends and the Russians were our enemies.  Each time you believed them."  So, we start by naming the capitalists because its important to name the people who pillage the planet and murder and oppress the majority of people who inhabit it.  

Next, its important to state clearly that although these capitalists, who are in control today, want all of us to believe they have always been in control, and will always be in control, that couldn't be farther from the truth.  The capitalists certainly have a strong stake in convincing people of this because as long as people believe their control is unquestioned, they won't believe they can ever do anything to stop them.  As was stated in the beginning, Ture told us already that the world is a series of human developments and economics is certainly within that historical realm.  The world hasn't always been capitalist.  In fact, the world is thousands of years old while capitalism as a system is only a few hundred years old.  In order to understand slavery as an economic system, we have to understand this history.  There were dominant economic systems before capitalism and there will be economic systems after capitalism.  The first documented system of human development as it relates to economics was the system of communalism.  This system is considered the most basic form of human production because it existed at a time in history - thousands of years ago - when human beings hadn't yet developed large cohesive social systems.  In other words, a good example of what a communal society would have probably looked like would be what you see if you watch the television show "The Walking Dead."  In that show, smaller social aggregates of people e.g. 100 to 200 people, etc., form societies.  In those societies, people organize systems of hunting for food, providing shelter, organizing their small society.  The important thing about this period in history is that these communal societies were people focused, meaning they were based and organized around meeting people's needs.  Another important element is these societies, much like the television show I mentioned, mostly don't know about any other similarly organized societies and/or don't have any interaction with them.  Communalism as the dominant economic system existed for thousands of years, but as Ture discusses, humans continue to evolve (in the dialectical sense, meaning all actions create a reaction and that reaction is going to be positive and negative with one dominating more than the other).  

As populations grew, people became more conscious of others outside their communities.  And, more importantly, people began to understand that there would come a point where they could no longer exist independent of other communities of people.  Obviously, this reality caused tensions to rise.  And, at some point during this dialectical process, people figured out that there were some people who could physically dominant other people and this power to do so would give the first group power to exploit the second group for the first group's benefit.  People identified as men during this period began the systemic practice of physically dominating other human beings, particularly women, non-men.  And, this period of history, approximately 10,000 to 20,000 years ago, ushered in the system of slavery which became the dominant economic system.  By slavery during this period, we mean the system where people work for others to create wealth for them.  Of course, this significant change from communal times where people's needs were dominant, to this period of slavery where wealth for one group was the priority over the exploitation of another group, class divisions began to develop.  As you can guess from the initial analysis of this period, its also the first time when patriarchy as a systemic system of oppression against women and non-men was institutionalized.  As slavery evolved as a system, class divisions intensified and consequently, class struggle intensified.  Still, its critically important to make a clear distinction between this dominant system of slavery thousands of years ago from the transatlantic slave trade of hundreds of years ago.  This system of slavery was the dominant system all over the world.  There is no known country in history that didn't practice slavery as its dominate system.  That's the only way it could be dominant.  This meant slavery was dominant in Africa, Asia, Europe, and the Americas.  That means class divisions and class struggle developed in all of those societies.  The concept that some societies had no class divisions is a fantasy and a myth.  

Today, the enemies of African liberation (and liberation for all oppressed peoples) make every effort to create confusion on this question of slavery.  They are so quick to point out to the Africans claiming injustice that "Africans had slaves!"  They also want it known that "the Arabs traded for slaves in Africa!"  From a scientific and historic standpoint, they are not wrong.  I have just demonstrated that every country had slavery, but there is deception at work here.  For example, when zionists, the people who justify the theft of Palestinian land in the maintenance of their illegal state of "Israel", claim their justification for Palestinian land is that "their people" inhabited that region thousands of years ago as slaves of the Egyptians (Kemitic people of North Africa).  Yes, they claim "Jews were enslaved in Egypt."  The truth is Africans, who were the people in that region during the time the Bible was written to reference, enslaved other Africans, regardless of religion, because as has been stated, that was the dominant economic system at that time.  There is absolutely no evidence that the people who run "Isreal" today, the descendants of Europe known as "Ashkanazi Jews"  were evident in North Africa thousands of years ago.  Its also true that although many people beyond Europeans, including Africans, did participate in the transatlantic slave trade, e.g. kidnapping and selling our ancestors into slavery, their participation doesn't today have any impact on the state of Africa or her children just as the economic system of slavery doesn't have that impact today, but keep that point in mind.

Another reason why this question is so confusing is because people don't understand that dominant economic systems doesn't mean they are the absolute only economic system in existence at a given time.  There always has been overlap as you can imagine would be the case when you are talking about human development.  Another way of saying that is people develop at different speeds so the systems aren't always going to be the same at the same time.  That's why we say dominant economic system, not absolute without exception.  For example, today, you have capitalism as the unquestionably dominant economic system in the world, but even in 2019, there are still areas in the world where slavery is practiced as an economic institution.  There are still areas where feudalism, the system of kingdoms/queendoms were the dominant economic system, is practiced.  There are even remote areas where communal living is still practiced, but capitalism is the system of production that controls the world today.  Feudalism isn't controlling anything for anyone not living within that realm and that also goes for all of the other non-dominant systems.  Still, because of this uneven development, of course there is still slavery in Africa and other places, etc.  The main point here, and the reason I asked you to hold the earlier point about Africans, Arabs, Indigenous people of the Americas, who participated in enslaving Africans, is because none of those people and their role in our enslavement is a factor in our oppression today.  The capitalist system, which was built on our enslavement, and is maintained on our oppression built from that model, is the priority reason we are oppressed today.  That's why we choose, unlike some of you, to focus on capitalism and not all of those other ill relevant factors.

What we are saying here is if the majority of people on Earth are starving, why would we define the world based on a few people who have enough to eat.  Of course, we recognize them and figure out how to replicate what they are doing, or in the case of modern day slavery, etc., wipe it out, but we certainly can't define the world based on the outdated models.  What we can say is due to the nature of class struggle, those Africans blaming Indigenous people, Arabs, etc., for any role any of their people played in enslaving us, we are being very dishonest to ignore that Africans did exactly the same thing to us.  And, these people cannot produce any real evidence to demonstrate that our people participated any less, etc. than anyone else, but as I've already declared, that at best, is a minor argument that doesn't in any way hold the keys to our liberation.

So, as Ture correctly articulated, communalism evolved into slavery which evolved into feudalism which gave way to capitalism which, we believe, will give way to socialism, which will give way to communism, and what comes after that we haven't evolved enough to know yet, but people will figure it out.  And, the transatlantic slave trade, the system responsible for the masses of African people in the Western Hemisphere today (the Americas), was the system that financed the so-called industrial revolution that created capitalism and its dominance today.  The point is we fight against capitalism because this system sits on the necks of our people and all of humanity.  Their system comes out of our oppression so no one who studies this question can deny our rights to be completely opposed to this system.  Meanwhile, since we are against all forms of oppression, we definitely cannot dismiss those who suffer today under slavery.  This system has to be put to bed as it will be eventually, but we also cannot permit those attempting to exploit these systems to convince people that slavery happening in remote areas here and there is the defining system in a world where most of us have no connection to that slavery.  Even those remote areas are impacted in every way by capitalism and certainly none of us reading this can claim with a healthy mind that we are not impacted by capitalism in every waking moment we spend on earth.  

We argue that we organize and eliminate capitalism and that sets the groundwork for also eliminating all of the overlapping and outdated systems.  Nothing will be absolute at the same time, but we will continue to make progress this way.  

Hopefully, now you understand why we focus our attention on dismantling capitalism.  And, hopefully, you also understand why we are convinced that some of your efforts to continue to make these ill relevant points about today's vestiges of ancient systems of oppression only serve the purpose of confusing and unnecessarily dividing us from the most pressing task at hand today - organizing against and dismantling this brutal and oppressive capitalist system.

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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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