If you don't, and chances are you don't, you are in good company.  It took me years of dedicated study within an organized work study process to begin to wrap my mind around the concept of revolutionary struggle so if you aren't engaged in a similar process there's no way you can have a fluid understanding of these concepts based  simply on watching and reading capitalist news sources.  That's true because those sources work night and day to confuse you around this question.  Their agenda is always in keeping the masses of people dead-set against revolution, even if you can't coherently articulate what it is.  Just be against it because revolution doesn't serve the interests of the multi-national corporations that own and control media in the world today.  

We don't have time and space to define things like capitalism and multi-national corporations here.  You can find a lot of information about each in other posts on this blog, and certainly through other sources (its about that dedicated study thing again), but for the purpose of this post, the point is that instead of getting a balanced assessment of anything from capitalist media, educational institutions, etc, what you consistently receive is a framing that suggests overtly and covertly that any form of armed resistance against the capitalist state apparatus is incapable of success as well as out and out insane.  So, the message is no matter what the grievance, no matter how legitimate the outrage, your options for response must fit within the parameters provided to you by the capitalist system and any thoughts that even suggest something else are subversive and foolish on your part.  It's foolish because there is no force on Earth that can expect to successfully defeat the capitalist/imperialist network (led by the U.S.) in a military confrontation - right?  Capitalism has all the weapons, they're certainly better than anyone in history at making weapons.  They have the firepower so give up any thoughts of challenging them in a physical way because you will definitely lose.  You will definitely die.  

Well, that's definitely the analysis of the power structure and at the present time, the sad truth is they have convinced the majority of the people on Earth to believe that analysis unquestionably.  That reality doesn't discourage us one bit though because we know that Sekou Ture was correct when he said "truth crushed to Earth a thousand times will rise again!"  That truth is that what we have seen in the U.S. Jamaica, throughout the rest of the Caribbean and South America, Europe, and Australia, from Africans tired of state repression is uprisings.  The definition of these uprisings being people rising up in a spontaneous fashion and striking out in a dis-organized method against the state.  Uprisings have been happening for over 500 years.  Kwame Ture (Stokely Carmichael) characterized them correctly when he said "we have been burning these societies from plantations to cities!"  Uprisings.  Spontaneous.  Bold, yet dis-organized.  Focused primarily on expressing the rage of the people, not in creating a new system that replaces capitalism.  Why are these uprisings not sustainable?  Why, whether it's Paris, London, Sydney, Australia, Los Angeles, Ferguson, or Baltimore, is the result the same; people rise up in that spontaneous way for two or three days until the national guard or military arrives and the rebellion is crushed?  The answer is that uprisings aren't built to be sustained because the necessary political work that separates uprisings from revolution hasn't been done.  The mass political education work where the people (women, youth, elders, students, workers, etc.) learn that a social economy where people are more important than money (socialism you'all) is what we need and until we organize and fight to achieve it, the state will continue to do what its in place to do, oppress us.

Uprisings don't contain the component of this work so they don't last, but what they do accomplish is they show us how even a dis-organized rebellion can push the system to the brink.  This should demonstrate to us just how possible revolution actually is.  What's missing?  That day to day work to politicize the people.  When that work is done the people's consciousness prepares them to take control of the production apparatus in a collective way.  Need an example?  The Cuban Revolution provides one.  Its not a perfect revolution, but there really isn't such a thing anyway.  What the Cubans have done is provide a clear example that collective consciousness is possible.  They took a small Caribbean country, just 90 miles from the most powerful capitalist country in human history, and staged a revolution that seized power from a U.S. surrogate dictator named Batista and those Cubans have maintained that revolution for going on 60 years.  And, in spite of the U.S. propaganda effort to convince some of you that the Cubans will wilt under the seduction of being able to have a relationship with the wonderful uncle sam, if you study the Cuban Revolution you will know better.  Everyone from the United Nations to the International Monetary Fund admits that the Cuban Revolution is consolidated among it's people.  Approximately 75% of the people there were born after the revolution.  As a result, they have no experience living in a society where you have to pay for basic healthcare.  Where you have to take out corporate loans to get a college education.  Where there are no limits on what you have to pay for living expenses and where if you are willing to work, you have absolutely no guarantee that you will find employment, despite your best efforts to do so.  Don't fool yourself.  No one there is anxious to lose all those hard fought for rights, but all of that represents some of the gains of the revolution where the point being made here is in differentiating revolution from uprisings.  In the Cuban Revolutionary war, they had the guerrillas who descended down the Sierra Maestra Mountains in Santiago De Cuba in 1956, but they also had a well organized force working with people in the cities.  Building consciousness to create mass strikes, work stoppages, school walkouts, etc.  The pressure these direct actions brought on the corrupt regime created conditions that the guerrillas in the mountains were able to capitalize on.  As morale began to fade for those fighting to protect the corrupt regime, the guerrillas began to win more battles.   They captured military troops, but they never abused them.  Instead, they gave them political education lessons and released them.  In time, the word began to spread among the troops because people are not stupid.  They had been treated better by the "dreaded communist rebels" than they had experienced in the military.  Plus, what the guerrillas were telling them, coupled with what more and more of their friends, co-workers, and family members were saying as they were influenced by the city campaigns, began to convince them to abandon any efforts to fight the rebels.  Massive numbers of troops began abandoning their posts.  Many of them joined the guerrillas, along with peasants who the guerrilla fighters encountered (who the guerrillas also treated respectfully while explaining their mission in the process).  This is the strategy revolutions employ to overcome the massive military might of the imperialists.  The weaponry is only as good as the people operating it who are working people.  The issue isn't the equipment, its revolutionaries winning the hearts and minds of the people who are currently maintaining the capitalist system.

So, we don't need to debate about how uprisings won't defeat capitalism.  We agree with you on that.  What those of us who are revolutionaries need to do is start engaging in the political work to heighten the people's consciousness because when this happens you see the meaning of Huey P. Newton's statement when he said "the man's technology will never match the will of the people!"  History is full of examples.  From the Haitian Revolution to Hezbollah's defeat of Israel in 2006, these things occurred because the Lebanese people supported Hezbollah.  They did so because of the work Hezbollah did in building the community in the years before that.  Their example was so consistent that people protesting the government's non-response to the flooding in New Orleans the year before began carrying signs that said Hezbollah is the model that FEMA should emulate.  I'm not saying Hezbollah is the model for revolution, but you can certainly understand some of the concepts of relationship building and creating conscious capacity from looking at them.  It's that understanding that will help you understand how revolution is completely different than uprisings.  And its that understanding that will ultimately be the undoing of the arrogant capitalist system.

For the last twenty years or so, the legions of mindless (primarily white) right-wing idiots and their liberal apologists have been waging a relentless and dishonest campaign of lies and misinformation against the legacy of one Ernesto Che Guevara.  The focus of these lies has centered on a fictional narrative this scum has created through aggressive radio and television talking heads that claims that Che, as he was affectionately called, was a "psychotic killer" who murdered innocent people while he was an official for the Cuban government.  This misinformation campaign has been so aggressive that many people with good intentions are falling victim to it.  So, as someone who possesses a great deal of respect for the Cuban Revolution in general, and Comandante Guevara in particular, I'm fed up with it and want to start striking back.

A little context to these accusations against Guevara.  These fools are speaking about the period immediately after the Cuban Revolution's victory in 1959.  Guevara was appointed as Chief prosecutor in a series of very public trials that took place at La Cabana Fortress in those early days of the Revolution.  What the liars and propagandists always leave out (and that includes any of the scum sucking former Cubans who are experts at lying about the Cuban Revolution) is that all of the 200 persons tried and executed during those trials were secret police, military, snitches, and other worthless parasites who committed crimes against the Cuban people as operatives of the oppressive Batista regime that the revolution overthrew.  Those crimes included actual documented torture against innocent persons who dared speak out against the Batista regime.  Another important fact about what happened is those 200 persons were ALREADY sentenced to death by Revolutionary Tribunals BEFORE Guevara was assigned as Chief prosecutor.  So, his actual job was to review those cases and make final determinations on the fate of those persons.  

In spite of intense public anger and demands for justice, Guevara and his assigned staff carefully reviewed each of those cases before making final judgment in each case, often at the consternation of loved ones who suffered from the terrorism those convicted had inflicted on their family members.  Once the decisions were made final those 200 persons were indeed executed by firing squads.  

The final important missing piece is there have volumes of material researched and written about this entire situation.  The exhaustive biography on Che Guevara by John Anderson being one of them.  What we know from that research is although the reactionaries claim so many of those 200 were innocent, not one person had ever stepped forward, either in Cuba or the U.S., to provide proof of that.  If it exists, please show it to us or shut up!

Finally, to those who continue to badger the Cuban Revolution for it's developing progress in areas of social progress e.g. those who choose not to participate in society, LGBTQ community members, etc., please remember that Cuba is a former slave society that has done the primary thing needed to progress ideologically; the revolution has made education free and available to everyone.  What that means is in a matter of time, once more and more people develop new ideas, backward thinking will gradually be wiped out.  If you want examples of that, point to the program being currently headed up by Mariela Castro; daughter of Raul Castro and Vilma Espin. She is the Director of Human Services in Cuba and she is leading an aggressive campaign to protect and support LGBTQ persons in Cuba.  There are a number of campaigns designed to educate the populace around this question and a strong push for legislative protections.  We challenge you to find any other society that is doing anything more on this question, including this U.S.   

Was Che perfect?  About as perfect as any of you reading this, so end of discussion there - right?  But, was he a "psychotic killer?"  Absolutely not.  Was he deeply concerned about human progress, and more importantly, did he put his life on the line, repeatedly, to contribute directly towards this end?  ABSOLUTELY!  One need only look to his outstanding contributions on a personal, dangerous, level, in Africa and South America to illustrate this.  In fact, it's because of his great sacrifices, which ultimately cost him his life, that we love and respect him so.  It's because of his selflessness that he is an iconic hero around the world, but no where more so than Cuba and this is something I've witnessed myself after going there.

So, study up some true history and don't let these lying fools distract you from knowing the truth about Che Guevara.  They are only attacking him because they don't want you to be inspired by his example of selflessness, socialism, and taking initiative to bring about forward human progress.  These liars don't care about stopping any killers or terrorists.  If they did, they would never stand for the fact that unquestionable terrorists like Luis Posada Carrilles and Orlando Bosch have been permitted to live in Florida for years when they have without question committed violent and unspeakable crimes against the Cuban people (shooting down the Cuban airliner in 1977, killing 73 passengers).  These actual terrorists walk around Florida on your dime and the hypocrites who claim to be so concerned about "killers" never mention them.  It's because their only concern is stopping true revolutionary inspirations like comrade Guevara who was more man and human being in his tailbone than any of these cowardly shucks can claim in their collective worthless bunch.

From Martin Delany to Anna Julia Cooper to Henry Sylvester Williams to Marcus/Amy Garvey to Kwame Nkrumah to Patrice Lumumba to Sekou Toure to Malcolm X to Amilcar Cabral to Thomas Sankara to Kwame Ture to Pan-Africanists today, we have been talking about for literally centuries.  Still, so many people are 100% confused about what Pan-Africanism is, why we want it, why we need it, and why we won't stop until we get it.  Before we get into that, we have to acknowledge that it's not hard to understand the confusion.  The capitalist countries, the societies geometrically opposed to Pan-Africanism and any humanistic movement, continuously pump misinformation into the mix.  Plus, most people within the industrialized societies, especially the U.S., don't read, don't study, don't know squat about the world outside of their personal lives, and don't want to know.  And, we have to also be very truthful about the fact too many of the people claiming to be Pan-Africanists haven't done a great job representing us with integrity and commitment which only discourages people from wanting to know more.  

In spite of those problems, you cannot refute the fact that any program/system/movement etc., has to operate and be judged based on it's principles.  That goes for Christianity, Islam, Judaism, Yoruba, Rastafarianism, and Pan-Africanism; properly defined as one unified socialist Africa.  In other words, we cannot judge those entities simply by the people who claim to represent them, we have to judge them by their principles.  For example, are they grounded in justice?  Is their objective to make society advance and improve the conditions for the masses of people?  Is there a methodology to produce tangible progress that can be measured and assessed?  For Pan-Africanism as an objective for African liberation, the answer to all those inquires is an unquestionable yes.

Let us quickly explain why this is so.  

Question?:

Why is Africa important even if I've never been there, have no plans to go there, and don't know anything about it actually?

Answer:

Whether you were born in Africa and are currently there or in the U.S., whether you were born in Europe or the Caribbean, whether you were born in the U.S., whether you were born and living in Africa, etc., what has happened and what is currently happening to Africa has everything to do with your day to day reality.  It doesn't matter whether you are aware of this fact or not.  It's ill-relevant whether you acknowledge it or not.  It's still true.  Why?  How?  Because if for no other reason, the economies of the industrialized societies were built and are maintained based on exploiting cheap African material resources e.g. oil, gold, rice, sugar, uranium, bauxite, iron ore, coltan, diamonds, zinc, etc., and cheap human resources such as labor to mass produce clothes cheaply for Walmart and Target, etc.  Cheap labor to provide any number of labor functions for corporate profits through the prison industrial complex.  In order for these industrialized societies to maintain their power and keep their oppressed populations fueling them everyday by supporting them and providing the labor to keep them moving, these societies have to maintain Africa in the weakened condition it currently exists in so as to permit the exploitation to continue.  A major aspect of that process is keeping you ignorant about Africa so that you will not question what happens to her.  This is the exact reason you know very little or nothing about Africa today except what the imperialists have permitted you to know which is all misinformation.  Think about that.  If you live in the U.S. for example, there are 50 million Africans who live in that country.  Most were born there, yet none of them, even the ones born in Africa, know much of anything about African history and what the current conditions are politically on the continent.  If nothing else, that should strike you as very strange at least and out and out conspiratorial at best.  Or, think of it like this, ever own something that people kept trying to get from you?  Maybe it's property.  Maybe a car, jewelry, etc.  Those persons are working hard to convince you that what you have doesn't contain much value at all so that they can wrest it from you without offering much of anything, yet, they push so hard to try and get it from you.  Doesn't make sense, but still, you oftentimes end up giving this possession up for less than you should because you don't yourself see it's real value, in spite of the fact the people you are dealing with do, and are hiding that value from you.  That is what's currently happening with you - African - and Africa.

Question:

Ok, so I get your geo-political analysis of what Africa means in today's power context, but what can I do about that?  I mean, the problem is so large, I don't even see how we could even go about addressing that problem.  I can't even get people together in my family, not to mention people who speak different languages and come from different parts of the world.  It all seems so out of control.

Answer:

No one is claiming that it will be easy.  In fact, there's an old African saying "if you see me fighting a bear, help the bear, throw honey on me."  Anything worthwhile requires a struggle.  Think about it.  If you have a college degree, was obtaining that easy?  If you are in, or have had, a successful relationship of any kind, was achieving that easy at every stage?  If you accomplish anything in your life that makes you proud, or you are proud of anyone for accomplishing something worthwhile, were those accomplishments easy and/or something anyone could do at any time?  Of course not!  What makes it special is that it was difficult to achieve.  What makes it worthwhile is that it requires work and effort.  This is certainly true of our liberation as a people.  The forces that oppress us have spent the last 500 years perfecting this system of oppression.  If you aren't willing to apply even more energy and effort towards dismantling their oppression than they have placed in applying it, than you aren't serious about achieving freedom.  In fact, what you are really doing is simply trying to carve out a portion of that oppression that will serve your personal interests.  And, don't think we aren't aware of what your doing either.  You aren't fooling anyone.  The true soldiers for justice know what's being said here is true and that in the words of Dr. King "if we want freedom, we are going to have to fight for that freedom.  We are going to have to sacrifice for it!"

Show me one part of the African world, wherever it is geographically, that doesn't have a history of humanistic, egalitarian, and collective culture.  You won't be able to do it because that's the African cultural way.  And, Kwame Nkrumah was correct when he said that we as African people reject the classic European capitalist definition of identity as a shared language and geography.  This dysfunctional definition is a crude attempt to convince you to accept the rules that colonialism and neo-colonialism have laid out for you.  Our correct definition of identity is shared history and culture.  And Ahmed Sekou Ture correctly illustrated for us that culture is the "sum total of all of a people's experiences...How they shape those experiences and how they define their legacy."  So, we are not confused.  No matter where we are today, we are there because of Africa's exploitation.  If you are getting a poor education in the capitalist countries when you could and should be getting a quality education in Africa, you are proof of this.  If you are incarcerated, you are proof of this.  If you are unemployed, you are proof of this.  If you are depressed, you are proof of this.  If you are mis-educated, you are proof of this.  If you have a hard time believing that African people will ever define our destiny and eliminate these oppressive conditions, you are proof of this.  And finally, if you cannot envision a world without white dominance and capitalism you are not only proof of this, but you are unwittingly perpetuating our continued servitude.

We implore you not to spent valuable time debating if and how we can do it.  We strongly encourage you to join the millions of us scattered across the planet who are working together to put in place the mechanisms for us to do it.  We're already oppressed so you have nothing to lose.  It's like Franz Fanon told us "each generation has it mission...You will either fulfill it, or betray it."  Make your decision today and don't waste our time...Be honest and courageous enough to admit it through deed, not just words.