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Gentrification; Bloods & Crips And an Institutional Racist System

4/30/2018

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Eighty plus year old Ms. Annette Steele speaking to reporters during a press conference in July, 2012, in Portland, Oregon, U.S., after we (I'm standing at right) helped her regain her house from predatory lenders and developers
 In 1987, the day after returning to Sacramento from one of many organizational trips we took by car to Los Angeles in those days, I picked up the Sacramento Bee newspaper to see a front page article about African “gang violence” in the city of Portland, Oregon, U.S.  At that point, my knowledge of Portland was limited to a road trip my family had taken there when I was 12 in 1974.  And, the thing I remembered most about that trip was being chased by a dog while riding my cousin’s bike and having my father and uncle threaten to shoot the dog, and its owner. 

That article was what the Bee considered one of its deep studies of an issue – in this case, Bloods and Crips and their expansion up the Interstate 5 corridor through Sacramento, Portland, and Seattle.  The article painted a picture of a highly organized street organization network that sold large quantities of drugs.  As I mentioned, we had just returned from L.A. where we had done some community organizing work in South L.A., or what popular culture deems “South Central.”  I knew from my personal exposure and experience that 99.9% of these L.A. street organizations lacked the experience, resources, or capacity to organize anything even closely resembling what was being described in that newspaper article.  I remember having a huge laugh with the comrades I was with when I read to them how the article claimed that Bloods and/or Crips in Portland had the ability to communicate in sign language in such a sophisticated fashion that police were unable to understand what they were saying.  Yes, we laughed at that.  The level of organization described there was the type of organization we strived and worked for, and yet we were no where close to having those capabilities.  We certainly knew that these street organizations didn’t possess that in L.A., not to mention Sacramento or Portland.  In fact, the more we thought about that, the less funny it became.  Without knowing anything about Portland at that time, it was clear to me then that the objective of that article was to set up something against African people, but just what that something was, I didn’t know.

Today, 30+ years of organizing experience later, and with 10 years of that experience living and organizing in Oregon (70% of that time in Portland) under my belt, I have a much better understanding of what was at play in that 1987 article.  Ironically, I ended up doing quite a bit of intensive housing justice work during my initial years in Oregon.  This work permitted me to gain a very deep understanding of the foreclosure and eviction industries, how those industries are connected to Bloods and Crips, and how institutional racism is used to make profits for development companies. 

Since we are talking about a span of almost 40 years between my initial visit to Portland and my move there, I can’t say for certain that I’m right about this next part, but I’m pretty sure that the neighborhood where my family lived in 1974 is the very same N.E. Portland neighborhood that I lived and did the bulk of that housing justice work in 2012, 2013.  I’m also not certain about this, but I’m pretty sure that the park that 1987 article claimed these “gang members” were speaking in sign language in front of police was and is Woodlawn park in N.E. Portland.  Today, Woodlawn Park and most of N.E. Portland is primarily inhabited by yuppie, petti-bourgeois, European urban professionals.  There are approximately 50,000 Africans in Portland and historically, most of them lived in N.E. Portland.  Although the King neighborhood in Portland is still the most densely populated area of African people in all of Oregon (according to the 2010 Census), no where in N.E. Portland are African people the majority any longer.  And, I know from the countless doors we knocked on in those neighborhoods while doing the housing justice work that a large percentage of those yuppie white people bought those properties sight unseen while living in Idaho, Wyoming, Ohio, Montana, etc.  Nowadays, Africans are arrested from so-called “stop and frisk” activities in N.E. Portland at a rate of hundreds per month.  Having lived in this “traditionally African neighborhood” I can tell you that the actions of city institutions and their message is clear to us there – “you may have been here longer, but you don’t belong here now!”

If you haven’t caught on yet, what all of this has to do with Bloods and Crips is that starting in the early 90s, city officials in Portland were exposed for having worked out deals with private development companies.  Their strategy was for the city development commissions and agencies to secure funding for city projects.  The role of the developers was to tap into that money in order to help finance their efforts to seize as many properties as they could so that they could “flip” them and make handsome profits.  Their methodology for doing that would require property values to sink at an alarming rate in order to make these transactions profitable.  The way these public agencies and private companies, along with a strong assist from the capitalist media, were able to accomplish this was to create this image that African youth e.g. street organizations – Bloods and Crips – were taking over N.E. Portland.  And as Boots Riley raps in the classic anti-gentrification song “Fat Cats and Bigga Fish” – “We’ll say that gangs run the streets…Then we bring in the police fleets, to beat and harass people until they look inebriated…Pretty soon people will appreciate it!”  This was the basic strategy in Portland, Sacramento, L.A., San Francisco and cities all across the world, including Accra, Ghana, West Africa.  Move African people around like pawns to make profits for big capitalist corporations with assistance from municipal agencies which are basically government appendages for capitalism.  
As was just mentioned, its important to understand that the model used in Portland isn’t new.  It was perfected in larger cities like L.A. long before it happened in Portland.  Even the development of the Bloods and Crips is rooted in this gentrification model of moving African people around in very racist and systemically oppressive ways. 

There was virtually no African population in L.A. until the 1950s when literally hundreds of thousands of African people packed up from Mississippi, Louisiana, Texas, etc., and moved out to L.A. in search of the suddenly available industrial jobs that were hiring African people as a result of their need for labor due to World War II and the Korean War.  As these Africans arrived into L.A. to claim those jobs, we were brutally redlined and only permitted to live in what is today known as “South Central.”  The whites who lived there when we got there were committed to continuing the institutionalized tradition of white supremacy.  So, they formed brutal gangs like the “Spookhunters” who were committed to terrorizing African families in South L.A.  Since the role of police is always to contain and repress African people, our folks in L.A. knew they would have to develop their own solution to the Spookhunter problem.  Consequently, African street organizations like the “Gladiators, Businessmen”, and “Rabblerousers” were formed with the intent of protecting African people from these white supremacist gangs.  This continued until the industrial jobs vanished in the 60s.  At this point, white flight had eliminated any white people in South L.A., thus also eliminating the Spookhunters.  Meanwhile, mounting poverty from the lack of employment, coupled with continued police containment and repression keeping Africans locked in South L.A., caused tensions to grow.  Resources were few, opportunities non-existent.  As any social experiment on these types of tensions will bear out, people will eventually turn on one another in these types of circumstances.  And, as would be the case with any people, those African street organizations began to battle each other for a little piece of something, anything.

For their actions, these youth are not the real criminals.  The real criminals are the agents for the system who designed redlining, the private developer industry, and all forms of systemic racism.  The city government’s are complicent as is the capitalist media which has played a prominent role in presenting such consistent anti-African youth propaganda that many African people have foolishly bought into that nonsense.  There were plenty of Africans who called for a “war on drugs” which ended up being a war against African people.  And this discussion could never be complete without a focus on the federal government’s counter intelligence program that was designed in the 60s to target the African liberation movement for liquidation.  Federal agencies like the so-called Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), under the direction of J Edgar Hoover, raised the stakes on their counter intelligence program (cointelpro) “designed to prevent the rise of a Black Messiah who can electrify the African (Black) masses.”  The cold blooded objective of the FBI’s cointelpro was to create a national atmosphere with police departments in every city where the message was that any African liberation movement was anti-white with the potential of violence against police (why do you think so many primarily white people even today view the Black Panther Party, Nation of Islam, and any African liberation organization as anti-white and violent toward police).  This meant it would be ok for those police to do whatever they wanted to anyone participating in the African liberation movement.  When Hoover stated in 1968 that “the Black Panther Party is the greatest threat to America’s security” he wasn’t so much talking about any imagined military might the Panthers possessed.  He was talking about the fact the FBI had determined that 44% of all African youth 25 and under supported the Black Panther program.  It was the Panther’s potential to galvanize the African masses that scared the power structure.  And, their way of addressing their fears was not only to destroy the Black Panther Party, which they did, but to also attack African communities everywhere.  Besides the influx of hard addictive drugs like heroin, another way this was accomplished was by partnering with those same city commissions (yes, in the 1960s) and devising plans to “redevelop inner city communities.”  In other words, what they called “urban renewal” was in fact African removal.  Their objective?  Break up African communities in the inner city to eliminate the potential of those communities to become breeding grounds for developing revolutionaries. 

Inner city people who commit so-called crimes (nothing in comparison to the mass crimes committed by capitalist corporations) do so to survive.  Until the conditions that oppress them change, they will have to continue to engage in whatever behavior is required to  survive.  Capitalist media is now trumpeting this tune that crime is down.  Of course its down in cities like Portland and L.A. because it’s the poor who are disproportionately arrested and convicted.  And, it’s the poor who have been systematically removed from those cities.  So, while these bogus crime rates in L.A. decrease, the petty crime rates in smaller metropoles like Pasadena, Rosemead, and Culver City, have risen.  But, we are not concerned about petty crime rates and neither should you.  We are expressing the reality that this disbursement of African people was designed to eliminate African communities within the inner cities because doing so would eradicate the potential for those communities to become power bases for the African masses.  And, that’s power bases on all levels. 

So, gentrification isn’t just about white people buying homes in African or Indigenous neighborhoods.  It isn’t just about white people taking spaces we previously occupied.  Its really about breaking up the organizing potential of those neighborhoods while providing vulture capitalist developers the opportunity to make money in the process.  And, as always, the African masses are used in Southern Strategy code language to justify for the racist white masses why this entire process is necessary. 

Even a child could ascertain that the most dangerous gangs are always going to be the organized and resource rich police departments across this society.  Those entities have been terrorizing innocent people for centuries.  Any reference to African street organizations going criminal can be directly traced to the objective conditions of Africans within this racist society.  That’s why Geronimo Ji Jaga (Pratt), one of our many victims of the FBI’s cointelpro (Geronimo spent 27 unjust years in prison) was correct when he said “all people in prison are political prisoners because if the people in prison for committing crimes had been placed in different circumstances where committing crime wasn’t necessary, they wouldn’t have done it so the fact they did is a political condition.  The fact they participated in street organizations is a political situation as well.  And, the fact those street organizations are criminalized, demonized, and targeted for repression is a very defined political process that is designed to continue to exploit, and oppress the African masses while making sure we never develop the capacity to come together and deal conclusively with this backward system.  

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Defending Cosby While Ignoring Mumia & Sundiata is Disgraceful

4/28/2018

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I remember back in 1995 when O.J. Simpson was acquitted.  I was dating a sister and we went to her family's place in Oakland for a BBQ.  Of course, the "trial of the century" was the topic of conversation.  The conspiracy theories were flying that day and the overall feeling was joy that O.J. had "beat the system."  At one point, probably because I was remaining out of the conversation, I was asked point blank what my position on the trial was.  With all eyes on me, I asked if anyone heard O.J. lawyer Johnnie Cochran's statement after the verdict was read?  In his statement, Cochran said that now that the O.J. trial was over, he was focused on representing his "most important client."  I asked all assembled if they knew who that "most important client" was?  Unfortunately, no one knew anything about Geronimo Ji Jaga (Pratt) who at that time had served 25 years of a frame-up conviction because of his work with the Los Angeles chapter of the Black Panther Party.  To their credit, a couple of people asked follow up questions about Geronimo, but eventually, the conversation turned back to celebrating O.J.'s victory.

Today, you would be hard pressed to find anyone who will admit they celebrated for and/or defended O.J., but even more tragic than that, you will find even less people who know anything about Geronimo Ji Jaga, Mumia Abu Jamal, Sundiata Acoli, Jamil Abdullah Al Amin, or any of the African political prisoners who have spent decades in prison because of their principled work fighting to liberate African people from oppression.  Kwame Ture talked often about how sad it is that we African people "are so disorganized and ignorant that we leave our soldiers on the battle field!"  Our thinking is that our soldiers aren't the people who enlist in the imperialist U.S. military (they aren't fighting for us).  Our soldiers are those people like Geronimo, Mumia, and Sundiata.  And, we have shamefully left them on the battle field.  A few months ago, I went to see one of those honored soldiers.  Sekou Odinga was a political prisoner for 33 years.  Recently, he was released.  I've read and followed Sekou's case, along with the others, for decades so I didn't hesitate at the opportunity to go meet and talk to him.  It was difficult for me to sit and listen as this brave warrior talked about how state terrorists pulled his fingernails out and tortured him relentlessly because of their hatred of his integrity for standing up against them, for us.

That's why I'm so disgusted that we continue to ignore our true freedom fighters who deserve our love, respect, and support, but just like with O.J., we are quick to jump up and defend an absolute loser like Bill Cosby.  Then, to add insult to injury, some of our most misguided elements have the audacity to even equate what's happening with Cosby to our collective oppression as African people.  There are several absolutely disgraceful aspects to this.  First, besides the fact Bill Cosby has been an ally to white supremacy for decades, he is the person who recently remarked that the reasons behind mass incarceration are we name our children cultural names that cause us to deviate from a path of legitimacy.  He has a history of making these types of new age uncle tom remarks.  I saw him speak in person back in 1984 here in Sacramento.  This was I believe at the height of the Cosby show's popularity.  He spoke during Black Culture Day at the state fair.  I recall that a woman made a comment about how important it was for us to have positive role models on television and this fool cut her off exclaiming assertively that his show wasn't an African (American) show, it was an American show and that the problem we have as a people is we are so unwilling to just accept the fact that we are Americans which prohibits us from being able to properly integrate into this "wonderful society" the way other people have.

At that point, my experience with Cosby was primarily his movies with Sidney Poitier in the 70s which were important cultural components in my life growing up, but after that day at the fair, I lost all respect for Cosby, his show, and anything he was doing.  Over the years, I've followed his ignorant anti-African statements and his efforts to buy a Major League baseball team, etc.  And, now we come to this conviction against him.  Its sick how we can take the most basic and low quality human being and wrap them up in imaginary principles because of our need to acknowledge the trauma we feel from the oppression we experience everyday.  Its also sick how someone like Cosby, who has consistently denied our oppression as a people, immediately gets a pass as being victimized by systemic racism.  And, its absolutely gruesome how because of these dysfunctions, so many of us, particularly our men, can so quickly and effortlessly throw away the assertions by so many women - African women, European women, regardless.  And we can do this without offering even a semblance of a case to support Cosby.  The only thing people are able to say in his behalf is that he tried to buy a baseball team?  That a small percentage of the many women accusing him haven't polished their stories to a level of our acceptance (a level that will never be achieved)?  That he's being convicted when European predators aren't?  That we should have sympathy for him because he lost two children?

I try to live my life based on principle.  For me, that means doing what's right.  That means recognizing and acknowledging the systems of oppression that dominate this society.  It means understanding how patriarchy works and how men are socialized not to believe women and that women are commodities who can be assaulted raped, etc., and the burden of proof is going to be on them to prove they weren't.  What all that boils down to for me is we cannot expect justice for us when we are unwilling to consider granting it to anyone else.

Last, but certainly not least, one of the most heinous elements of this reaction is that we cape for a loser like Cosby while ignoring and remaining ignorant about all those legitimate freedom fighters who languish in prison today.  You directly benefit from their sacrifices whether you know it or not.  Their bold stand against injustice has reshaped much of the institutional structure in this country in ways that opened many doors for you to walk through.  Educational doors.  Employment doors, etc.  You owe them, yet you don't even have the integrity to find out who they are.  Meanwhile, Bill Cosby hasn't done anything for you because his opportunities resulted from the same movement that yours did.  Its no accident that his ability to land the first full-time role for an African in a drama series (1965's "I Spy" with Robert Culp) came about during the height of the civil rights movement.  Instead of honoring that movement, he has repeatedly spit on it by denouncing the people it represents.  And, with his shameful comments on why we go to prison, he has poured acid on the sacrifices of our brave soldiers who are not in prison because of the ignorant reasons he expresses, but because they posses a courage and integrity he could never even imagine.  And he is the type of person you choose to defend?  That tells us all we need to know about you and him.  As for me, I celebrate when our freedom fighters like Herman Bell gain justice.  I do work to educate people about our heroes and sheroes who still remain trapped by our enemies.  As for Cosby, if he rots in prison I won't give it another thought.

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The Unknown Connection Between Ho Chi Minh & Marcus Garvey

4/25/2018

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If you possess even a cursory history of oppressed peoples, then you have undoubtedly heard of the great Vietnamese leader Ho Chi Minh and the outstanding Pan-Africanist Marcus Garvey.  Ho Chi Minh, who's actual name was Nguyen Ai Quoc, was the founder and leader of the Viet Minh Front, which was the organized force of Vietnamese people that led their national liberation against colonial invading forces (including the U.S.) from the 1920s through the 1970s.  Marcus Garvey was the Jamaican born African who helped initiate and lead the Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA) which grew to be the largest liberation organization African people have ever known.

Both Ho Chi Minh and Marcus Garvey have been targeted by reactionary forces for their work.  We would be more than happy to take on those charges against both men here, but that is not the topic of this piece and there are plenty of other pieces on this blog that directly address those charges as it relates to the contributions of both men.  For this article, we focus on the connection between this Vietnamese political organizer and military tactician and this Pan-African leader and organizer.

Garvey started the UNIA in the 1916 in Jamaica, but the organization didn't began to take on steam until he moved to New York City and began to establish roots there that same year.  By the mid 20s, the UNIA had millions of members on three continents and the Caribbean.  To help the UNIA spread their message of African identity and the need for African self-determination, they had the "Negro World" newspaper which was published in English, Spanish, and French in 33 countries.  The UNIA's success in capturing the imagination of the African masses towards a vision of a united Africa for African redemption caught the attention of the 24 year director of the newly formed U.S. Department of Justice in 1919.  That director - a man by the name of J. Edgar Hoover - would go on to become director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) until 1971.  Hoover played a significant role in working to discredit Garvey and the UNIA, and Hoover orchestrated the trumped up charges of mail fraud against Garvey that led to the creator of the red, black, and green flag being deported from the U.S. in 1927.  After Garvey's imprisonment and deportation, the UNIA struggled to maintain the clout it enjoyed in the mid 20s and by 1940, Garvey had died in Britain, depressed, and separated from the organization he helped make into a worldwide fighting force.

Ho Chi Minh was completely unknown to Hoover or any other U.S. bureaucrat when he researched, penned, and mailed off a multi-paged document to U.S. President Woodrow Wilson in 1918.  The document was Ho Chi Minh's declaration for independence for the Vietnamese people from French colonialism and an appeal for the U.S. to help Vietnam achieve this objective.  Its unlikely that Wilson himself ever saw the document.  Ho Chi Minh held out hope that the fact he had modeled his independence document from the U.S. constitution would be enough to encourage U.S. officials to take his efforts seriously, but he never received any type of response to his document.  Undeterred, Ho Chi Minh went to work building his consciousness around struggling for his people.  In doing so, he began to question capitalism as the solution to those problems.  Consequently, he began working to lay the initial foundation for the creation of the Vietnamese Worker's Party, or the Vietnamese Communist Party.  The party then went on to play the crucial role in creating and developing the Viet Minh Front which was comprised of local organizations of Vietnamese workers, students, peasants, women, and all segments of the country.  In the early 1960s, the U.S. had military advisors in Vietnam making assessments of this Viet Minh Front, or what the U.S. called, in typical racist fashion, the Vietcong.  By the mid 60s, U.S. troops were present in Vietnam and by the late 60s, the U.S. was engaged in a full scale war against the Vietnamese people.  By 1975, Ho Chi Minh had been deceased for six years and the Vietnamese had lost approximately 1.5 million people in the war.  The U.S. had lost over 55,000 troops, and Vietnam was free and independent.

What's amazing is that despite the fact the U.S. lost so many people in the Vietnam war, one is hard pressed to find any comprehensive material about the Vietnamese people, especially Ho Chi Minh and the Viet Minh Front anywhere in the U.S..  This is so much so that even in 2018, most people in the U.S. would be surprised to learn that Ho Chi Minh actually went to college in the U.S.  He attended Columbia University in Harlem, New York in the early 20s.  It was there, working as an undocumented dishwater at various restaurants, including soul food outlets, that Ho Chi Minh became quite acquainted with life in the U.S.  Particularly life in the U.S. for a poor man of color.  And, since he lived and worked in Harlem, then the most vibrant African community in the U.S., he had specific exposure to the rampant, brutal, and systemic white supremacy that permeated every aspect of U.S. society.  And since all repression always breeds resistance, since Ho Chi Minh did live in Harlem, he got the opportunity to observe first hand the methods African people employed in standing up and fighting against that oppression.  Ho Chi Minh wrote in his memoirs that one of his favorite past times whenever not working or studying in Harlem was listening to African street speakers who displayed daily passion and determination to challenge the African masses to stand up against the system that was dedicated to holding us down.  The speakers he indicated he enjoyed hearing the most were Father Devine, Daddy Grace, and several others, but the one he mentioned most consistently was Marcus Mosiah Garvey.  

As Garvey railed against the evils of white supremacy and the necessity for African people to look towards Africa to achieve our salvation, the young Ho Chi Minh paid close attention.  Decades later, he used what he learned from Garvey about the racist system in the U.S. to employ strategies that would help lead his country to defeat U.S. imperialism.  The scenes utilized in popular movies like the 1995 "Dead Presidents" (starring Lorenz Tate, Keith David, and Chris Tucker) where U.S. troops fighting in Vietnam were presented with leaflet drops where the Vietnamese encouraged African troops to abandon U.S. forces by declaring "Black man go home!  This is not your war!" actually happened.  There are numerous documented accounts of the Vietnamese capturing African U.S. troops and engaging in political education sessions with the captured troops, imploring them to abandon the immoral war effort because the Vietnamese were not their enemies.  The Vietnamese explained over and over to these U.S. Africans that they should join the Vietnamese in fighting the U.S. government for the same freedom and democracy that neither the Vietnamese or the Africans enjoyed.  There is no question these efforts played a central role in demoralizing a significant number of Africans and other U.S. troops fighting in Vietnam.  A great portrayal of this process is outlined in the 1984 book "Bloods" edited by Terry Wallace.  This book presents several perspectives of the war from African troops and how much the Vietnamese efforts began to cause African troops to openly question the war.  The stories recount how this effect, coupled with the massive anti-war effort in the U.S., and around the world created an unwinnable situation for the U.S. in Vietnam.

Another significant historical element that has been left out of most history books is the role Ho Chi Minh played in helping contribute towards Pan-Africanism with one simple act in 1967.  Kwame Ture, who was known then as Stokely Carmichael was the main voice and face for the emerging Black power movement.  Due to his militancy and defiance, the then Stokely Carmichael was branded as public enemy number one.  He was a chief target of J. Edgar Hoover's counter intelligence program (COINTELPRO) which illegally targeted African liberation leaders and organizations for murder and disruption.  The system's disdain for the young Stokely Carmichael of course caused him to be loved by the masses of African people.  Due to this reverence, the Black Panther Party in its ongoing discussions with the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee to unite their efforts, drafted Ture as its Prime Minister in 1967.  Unfortunately, COINTELPRO was in full operation and the FBI's concerted efforts to plant seeds of distrust began to bear fruit.  As Ture began to question the Panther's apparent lack of commitment to systemic political education and other contradictions he observed in the party, the FBI continued to pour oil on the fire.  There were rumors of contracts being put out on Ture's life by Panther leadership.   In an effort to sort out how to proceed with making his best contribution to the struggle, the young Carmichael arranged to take a trip to Hanoi, Vietnam in 1967 to have an audience with Ho Chi Minh.  While sitting in the war torn country having lunch with the leader of that country's resistance against U.S. imperialism, the young Ture explained his dilemma and asked "Uncle Ho" what he thought he should do.  While pouring tea, Ho Chi Minh quietly told the future Kwame Ture; "your African...Why don't you go to Africa?"  Already being steered in this direction from a number of objective circumstances, Ture went to Guinea-Conakry the next year and by 1969 he was political secretary to Kwame Nkrumah.  House guest to Sekou Ture.  Comrade to Amilcar Cabral, and he would spend the last 30 years of his life in Guinea working to to contribute to the struggle for one unified socialist Africa.

This virtually unknown history of Ho Chi Minh and his connection to Marcus Garvey, Kwame Ture, and the African liberation struggle gives an entirely different perspective to Muhammad Ali's famous declaration in 1967 that "No Vietnamese ever called me a n - - - - r!"  And, today, we believe that from a political standpoint, the initial ideas for African unity that were articulated by Marcus Garvey in the 1920s, have been solidified through the work of Kwame Nkrumah in the "Handbook of Revolutionary Warfare."  As 2018 represents the 50th year since the publication of the Handbook, we can say confidently that the concrete on the ground manifestations of Pan-Africanism are stronger today than they have ever been.  This is part of the legacy of Kwame Ture, Kwame Nkrumah, Sekou Ture, Amilcar Cabral, Marcus Garvey, and many, many others.  In a very seldom talked about, but no less significant way, its also the legacy of Nguyen Ai Quoc aka Ho Chi Minh.






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Cuba's New President.  Its Revolution & The Haters It Inspires

4/19/2018

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PictureRaul Castro (right) Cuba's president since 2006, long time military commander, and brother to Fidel Castro, the Revolution's president from 1959 to 2006, celebrates with Miguel Diaz-Canal on the announcement that Diaz-Canal had won the vote to become Cuba's new president.
They have been promising since the Cuban Revolution first declared victory on January 1, 1959.  I can recall hearing their promise since being a little boy up to the present day.  Their claim has never wavered; the day a Castro was no longer president in Cuba is the day the Cuban Revolution would topple overnight. 

Today, the Cuban Revolution announced its first president not named Castro and despite the U.S. governments greatest efforts for almost 60 years, there is no armed insurrection in the streets of Havana, Cuba, tonight.  This reality is something we need to stop and think about for a moment.

I fully admit, just to be completely clear, that my motivation for what I'm about to say is very personal to me.  There are so many people that work, consciously and unconsciously, to sabotage the Cuban Revolution that I want to stress first that this piece isn't directed at the reactionaries and counter-revolutionaries.  They are established enemies.  This piece is directed at the so-called revolutionaries, progressives, liberals, socialists, anarchists, and whatever the hell else the people in mind call themselves.  You see, I'm offended at your attacks against the Cuban Revolution.   I see it necessary to point out that oppressed brown people on the planet are critical thinkers too.  We understand the shortcomings and contradictions in all our struggles, including the Cuban Revolution, better than the vocal critics ever will.  We make our critiques and our assessments.  We even have outstanding contacts and relationships with the Cubans so that we are able to engage them with our critiques.  That's why we know they take them earnestly and seriously to heart.  We also are aware that by and large, it isn't the people of Africa and/or African people, Palestinians, or the Indigenous peoples of the Western Hemisphere making these critiques against Cuba.  Its primary these so-called White allies we are talking about here.  The White allies who ignore Cuba's outstanding contributions to Africa (over 40,000 Cuban troops fought for African liberation).  Cuba's overwhelming support for the African struggle in the U.S. (more than 100 years of so-called support from these so-called allies).   Cuba's unmatched commitment to helping humanity.  The brown peoples know first hand Cuba's work to make the world better and most of us know Cuba's work to make Cuba better.  More importantly, most of us understand that revolution is a process, not an event.  And, we don't enjoy the luxury of being armchair revolutionaries like most of these people I'm naming.  We know how difficult it is to get a society of millions of people to change their consciousness.  Only someone who has never actually done that work could so easily dismiss the progress of the Cuban Revolution in this area.  In other words, while the Cubans are slowly transforming millions of people, their critics don't possess the skill-set or experience to change one person's mind about anything.  Its that paradox which clarifies who these critics are because oppressed people typically don't have that level of entitlement in our analysis of the world.  We understand struggle.  Therefore, we certainly understand, appreciate, and respect the deep degree of struggle the Cuban Revolution engages in everyday while most of their critics run and hide at the very first sign of struggle.

The primary element fueling this contradiction is I have met and engaged with many critics of the Cuban Revolution, but not once have I encountered anyone who has a scientific understanding of revolutionary organizing and/or any concrete study of the Cuban Revolution.  For example, most people who call Cuba undemocratic cannot even explain Cuba's legislative process.  I don't claim to be an expert on it either, but at least I've studied it intensely for years and I've actually observed it in progress in person.  At least from that perspective I have a clear understanding of how they make legislative decisions.  I know that Miguel Diaz-Canal, Cuba's new president, was voted into that position by Cuba's national legislature - its National Assembly (NA).  I know that local neighborhoods elect their own NA representative and that the NA is made up of everyday people.  Since campaign finance is illegal in Cuba, anyone can run for office and many of the people who represent elected positions in the NA are everyday working people.  This explains why the vote to elect Diaz-Canel was carried out with a large, approximately 40%, vote by people who identify as African and about 50% women.  Unlike bourgeois elections in capitalist countries, these positions are not denied to these sectors of society in Cuba.

So, while all the critics of Cuba can generally offer is the same tired and long ago dis-proven allegations against two men - Fidel and Che - we can easily point to all the actual errors the Cuban Revolution has made e.g. its lack of consciousness around Africa and African people (approximately 70% of Cuba's population).  Its backward position on women and LGBTQ communities.  We can also correctly inform you that Cuba has readily acknowledged these errors.  And, they consistently make strides in all those areas to challenge those shortcomings (which existed long before the Cuban Revolution).  In fact, it can be accurately stated that the Cuban Revolution is simply cleaning up these dysfunctions that resulted from hundreds of years of colonialism, slavery, and theft of Indigenous lands, like the rest of the Western Hemisphere.

Haters gonna hate and the Cuban Revolution will keep on building.  I've heard these haters all my life.  The Castros are slowly descending into history, but the Cuban Revolution, which has always belonged to the Cuban people, is marching forward.  I've had a saying myself that I've responded to these haters with for years.  My saying has been all those who think the Cuban Revolution will fall as soon as the Castros are gone, I'd bet you any amount of money that you are wrong.  Today, I have to update that bet (had any of you cowards actually been willing to back up your mouths with your wallets, I could retire today).  Now, I'll say I bet the Cuban people will carry their Revolution forward.  They will fight the never-ending propaganda against them.  They will continue to prove their haters wrong.  And, more importantly, they will continue to serve humanity while putting in the necessary pieces to make their Revolution, better, stronger, and more sustainable.  The question isn't what the Cubans are doing and/or what they are going to do.  They are cementing their legacy every day and if you want proof of that talk to people in Guinea-Bissau.  Guinea.  Angola, Mozambique.  Zambia.  Tanzania.  They have first hand experience while most of you critics refuse to even read a primary source book about Cuba.  

Revolutionaries don't deal with dreams.  We deal with science and revolution is the most important science on the planet Earth.  We are continuing to observe the Cuban Revolution with respect and critical analysis so that we can build on what we learn from them, and correct what we need to correct from their experiences.  Meanwhile, we will continue to support them and encourage them to continue on, despite how much so many of you so-called progressives do the work of imperialism by working against them.



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Starbucks:  So-Called Racial Bias Training Won't Solve Anything

4/17/2018

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If you missed it, two African men, waiting for a third business partner, were camped out in a Philadelphia, PA, Starbucks when the store manager, without checking in to determine what the circumstances were, called the police on the Africans, who hadn't made any purchases yet because presumably, they were waiting for their third before doing so.  As can be predicted, the police arrived and continued to demonstrate their unmatched inability to logically deduce any situation where African people are involved.  So, they arrested the two Africans and charged them with trespassing.

Without verifying it, I'm sure every pea brained racist from here to the moon is playing the keyboard warrior role and suggesting any and every scenario to justify this mistreatment of these two men.  Clearly, anyone who attends coffee shops, whether Starbucks, Peets, independent, whatever, knows that its quite common for people to delay ordering until all their party arrives.  And, the extremely unusual response from the surrounding European (White) customers who vehemently protested the treatment of these Africans confirms how absurd the entire incident was.

So, why and how does something like this happen?  The answer is that African people are wholesale criminalized in such a remote controlled and programmatic fashion today that anything we do from sitting in a coffee shop to walking through a neighborhood minding our own business subjects us to being harassed and possibly killed.  Since this oppressive conditioning is systemic, there is a scientific connection between the criminalizing practice of the store manager and the police.  

What we desire to talk about here is the corporate response from Starbucks.  They announced today that they will be closing 8000 stores (not sure if this is all their stores, but it must be a considerable number of them, if not all) concurrently to conduct some racial bias training for all Starbucks employees.  This announcement came on the heels of Starbucks evidently firing the manager who called the police.  

If you are not familiar with what racial bias training looks like, its a workshop type setting where people are asked to engage modules designed to help them understand the realities of life for people who are discriminated against because of their race.  There are scores of these modules out here like the social identity exercise.  In this case, people stand in a circle and they are prohibited from expressing anything verbally except calling out identities like "man, women, LGBTQ, African, sexual assault survivor," etc.  When an identity is called out, the people who identify with that identity are expected to enter the circle, stay there a moment, and move back to the circle.  After about 20 minutes of engaging in this exercise, people sit and debrief the exercise.  What generally comes out of the exercise is people learn several things.  They are not alone in their connection to certain identities they feel alienate them.  They realize they have much in common with people they previously may have thought they had nothing in common with.  The point is from these experiences, people learn to see people from oppressed communities as full human beings which hopefully helps them think twice before remotely criminalizing them.  I've participated in these types of activities many times.   I've even facilitated them for work countless times.  They are great exercises and coupled with some information, they can help, but they cannot effectively solve the problem of racial profiling.  The reason they can't is because this type of dehumanizing behavior is only possible because the people victimized by the behavior are not respected.  The trainings can help people learn to look a little closer at people as individuals, but they cannot resolve the issue of the collective disrespect for a people.  That collective issue is so ingrained that nine out of 10 times, it will overpower the effects of any training.

This issue of respect can only be resolved by one thing.  The oppressed people must find the method of achieving respect for themselves. The only way African people can reverse the impacts of the deep levels of disrespect that we experience is by us being able to systemically change the way we perceive ourselves.  The only way we can accomplish this is by changing our conditions, or at least gaining and owning the process we engage in to achieve this.  In our humble view, the key to this is the unification and liberation of Africa (under scientific socialism) e.g. Pan-Africanism.  The key to changing how we view ourselves is in how Africa is viewed.  As long as Africa is viewed with disrespect, contempt, and paternalism, African people can never be expected to view themselves any differently and certainly others cannot view us in healthy ways.  On the flip-side, if we are a united people with a strong land base backing us up, how would sitting in a Starbucks play out?  For starters, people would learn quickly to think first before acting out towards us.  They would do this because they would know there are consequences for disrespecting African people.  Potentially, trade wars for cell phone products, gold, diamonds, oil, cocoa, etc.  The message would spread fast that these African people are to be treated with respect.  Sort of like how Chinese people are treated today around the world.  Africans who live in Africa can tell you stories about how privileged Chinese people in Africa are all the way down to how much people hate having traffic accidents with Chinese folks in Africa.  This is true because the level of financing and infrastructure the Chinese currently control in Africa makes Africans hesitant to do anything to offend their Asian visitors.  Hell, the Chinese built the new African Union headquarters in Ethiopia.  So, respect.  That's the key.  With that, I guarantee you that store manager doesn't call the police and the police don't react the way they did even if they happen upon the scene.  The results we get now are without question connected to the low position African people occupy in this society and that position is here because of Africa's low position in the world today.

Finally, let's be clear that Starbucks announcing and carrying out this training isn't the result of them having any sincere commitment to eliminating racism from their employees.  If they had that, this training would have already been in their process.  It wouldn't have taken an incident like this to make it happen.  The only reason this training is happening, and certainly the only reason they announced that they are doing it, is because their corporate leadership recognizes that African people buy coffee and tea too.  And there are some Europeans who are appalled by that type of overt racism (even if the subtle institutional varieties of racism are fine with these types of White folks).  Plain and simple, Starbucks is engaging in a marketing effort by announcing and carrying out these trainings.  Still, its worth noting that their fear of losing our dollars speaks to, without us doing anything at all, the potential power we have that we possess even if we don't know it and our enemies do.  If we have that type of power that we don't even exercise, imagine what type of power we could have if we controlled what is rightfully ours?

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Sekou Ture's Example of African Dignity:  A Must Need in 2018

4/11/2018

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Sekou Ture (right), visiting with Cuban comrade Fidel Castro during a state visit to Cuba in the 1960s
Most people in the world know very little to nothing about Sekou Ture and his leadership within the Democratique de Guinee-Rassemblement Democratique Africain (Democratic Party of Guinea - African Democratic Rally or PDG) from the mid 1950s until his physical transition in March of 1984.  This is especially true of people in the Western World and unfortunately, its overwhelmingly true of African people everywhere.

Ture leading the PDG and the people of Guinea to vote yes to complete independence (while other French colonies like Senegal, Mali, and Burkina Faso voted to stay within the control of French colonial authority) is impressive.  And, the resulting brutality inflicted on the Guinean people by the French as punishment for their vote for independence tells the story of the self-determination of the people of Guinea.  This history is movie level material.  The people of Guinea faced and overcame incredible obstacles in establishing and maintaining their country's independence, and Ture's leadership was a major element in that process.  If you don't know that history, it is one well worth studying, but the focus of this piece is to highlight the message of Sekou Ture to African people to pursue, preserve, and protect our dignity more than anything else.

Ture understood the importance of dignity and the key role it plays in our ability to alleviate our oppression and chart our own direction as a people.  You see, dignity is at the core of why we need Pan-Africanism.  Lack of dignity is the reason we suffer as we do as a people.  And, our inability to recognize the importance of dignity in our struggle is the reason we often struggle to maintain forward progress.

Dignity cannot be won by electing people to political offices.  It cannot be achieved by acquiring large sums of money.  It cannot even be accomplished by us pooling our monies together.  Dignity, as Ture often wrote and said, is our ability as a people to demand respect for ourselves.  The key ingredients for upholding dignity are maintaining integrity in everything that we do and demanding that everyone respect us with the same degree of respect that people demand for themselves.  Since most of the African elected officials in the world are loyal only to capital, and not our people, their participation in capitalist politics does absolutely nothing to uphold our dignity as a people.  And, since so many of us believe, incorrectly, that economic independence comes before political consciousness, we will not, and cannot, achieve dignity through money accumulation.  Since the only model most of us know for financial management comes from the very same capitalist system that placed us, and keeps us, in an oppressive condition, clearly following the dictates of this system is not going to produce our salvation.

When France was fighting so vigorously to keep Guinea in a state of servitude and the U.S., Britain, and the former Soviet Union were viewing Guinea simply as a political and economic football (Guinea boasts the worlds most lucrative bauxite reserves.  Bauxite produces aluminum products like car rims, soda cans, foil, everything made from aluminum) in 1958, Ture's insistence that the Guinean people focus exclusively on dignity is a key lesson for those concerned about our liberation today. 

After Guinea's courageous battle for independence from France in 58, Guinea immediately fought for admission into the United Nations.  They did this not because of any great respect they had for the United Nations as a neutral vehicle for people's rights, but because gaining admission served as a tactic to validate their independence from France, the U.S., and all the imperialist powers.  When Ture visited the U.S. for his first state visit in 1959, the government leaders in the Eisenhower administration, operating with full racism and contempt for African people, devised that all they needed to do was offer Guinea economic aid packages in order to sway Guinea into the Western capitalist camp.  At that time, Guinea was very easily one of the newest, and poorest, countries in the world.  Economic aid was desperately needed to correct problems caused by France's terrorist strangling of Guinea's limited resources as a method of attempting to force the young country to stay within French control.  Still, defying the frustration and irritation of U.S. officials, Ture steadfastly explained to them repeatedly that Guinea was not interested in aid.  Although he explained it often, including during his admission address at the United Nations, U.S. officials, due to their inability to see African people as free thinking people, were completely unable to grasp why these poor Africans would reject imperialism's hand of assistance.  For the former slave masters, the reason for this could only be Ture's desire to become a part of the Soviet Block, although Ture made it quite clear that Guinea's interests were in African unity and that his country would stay neutral in the East-West cold war conflict.

What Ture asked the U.S. for during that visit was for them to respect Guinea as a free country, despite Guinea's technological shortcomings.  In Ture's mind, and in the mind of the PDG, this request would be all they needed.  And, if imperialism could have granted this request, which Ture soon figured out was impossible, it would have been all that Guinea and all of Africa needed to reclaim our destiny.  

French, U.S., German, and British imperialism schemed on how to manipulate the new African country and its leader to ensure that their interests in pilfering Guinea's bauxite resources would continue unabated.  As a result, they felt that Ture's refusal to accept their aid signaled an obstacle to their objectives.  What they didn't understand, and what they are incapable of understanding then and today, is that Ture meant what he said when he said Guinea and Africa prefer dignity in poverty to slavery in riches.

That statement by Ture is one the African masses, and all oppressed people, would do well to reiterate today.  Our struggle as African people is not one of begging and convincing the capitalist system to recognize our dignity.  We cannot win by placing all of our efforts in begging them not to shoot us down in the streets.  By accepting their aid packages, as was done recently in Ghana when that country agreed to a contract to permit U.S. imperialist military bases to expand in Ghana.  What Ture taught us was that the Guinean people, at least some of them, knew that freedom cannot be won without a price.  Or, as Dr. Martin Luther King said "if we want freedom we are going to have to suffer for that freedom."

There is no alleviation of oppression without discomfort.  Our problem today is too many of us believe we can eliminate our condition by taking shortcuts.  By avoiding difficult struggle.  That is not possible.  The only way we will win is by confronting difficult struggle head on and doing it with commitment and integrity.  By using those principles to learn to work together.  By realizing that by working together, we can learn to solve our problems together.  Despite extensive propaganda against the PDG in general, and Sekou Ture in particular (our enemies write our history), one of the interesting comments from U.S. officials during that 1959 state visit was how impressed they were with the PDG delegations consensus decision making.  Although Ture was their only spokesperson, it was clear to the U.S. government participants in those state meetings that decisions were made by the Guineans collectively.  They commented on how often Ture had to confer with his delegates.  This type of democratic process only happens with hard work.  And, all of this hard work and commitment that the PDG showed during this visit reflects a strong sense of dignity.  Something we desperately need to study and resurrect in our struggle today.

Malcolm X, in his personal diary, talked about how impressed and inspired he was by Ture's insistence during one of their meetings that Malcolm focus his work "with our people in the U.S." on us achieving our dignity.  What Malcolm took from those comments, and what Ture meant by them, was that our freedom is tied to achieving that dignity.  Pan-Africanism - the total liberation and unification of Africa under scientific socialism, is simply the manifestation of our dignity being achieved as a people.  A testament to us coming together, subverting our collective egos, and unifying as a method of solidifying our power against those who would oppress us.  This very action demonstrates us reclaiming our dignity and by the very act of Pan-Africanism, we will instantly demand respect.  So, Pan-Africanism is the vehicle that stops the police shootings and all the other oppressive acts aimed against us.  And we do that not by imitating the capitalist system that oppresses us, but by acting decisively to destroy it.

This is the lesson Sekou Ture taught us.  Its the practice he maintained until his death.  Even without any money or resources, he used dignity to shake the U.S. with his resistance to the (U.S. inspired) assassination of Patrice Lumumba in the Congo in 1961.  And Guinea's union with Ghana and Kwame Nkrumah caused the same concerns when proposed.  Just two years before his death, Ture, during a state visit to the U.S., upset US. officials, including then President Ronald Reagan, by going to Howard University at the invitation of the All African People's Revolutionary Party, to speak to the African masses.  Dignity.  Respecting ourselves, demanding others respect us, and being willing to pay whatever price to accomplish this.   The minute we hear Ture's lesson to us on this question, our freedom will come to us overnight.

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Stephon Clark Debate: Without the C Word, Most Will Miss the Point

4/5/2018

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Ever since Sacramento, California, U.S., police shot and killed Stephon Clark, much has come to the surface.  We learned that police terrorists shot him several times in the back, thus further questioning their standard excuse that they feared for their lives.  We have also learned that Stephon Clark may have had very questionable behavior patterns.  As a result of the latter possibility, the debate has raged in many directions around the question of whether and/or to what extent, people should stand up when state terrorism strikes people of questionable character.  To those of us who have revolutionary politics, and who engage in revolutionary organizing work, its difficult for us to understand what the controversy is around this question.

Capitalism is without question the dominant economic system in place in the world today.  Its a system that is defined by its theft and exploitation of the world's human and material resources.  This is especially true as it relates to Africa, Asia, and the Americas.  To justify this exploitation, the original capitalists had the vision to create a framework that would justify their actions against the majority of people on Earth.  And, they knew that justification had to be one that would work with the majority of European descendants, as well as the descendants of those people from Africa, Asia, and the Americas.  That justification is the system of white supremacy, the chief appendage of capitalism.  The job of white supremacy is to convince the majority of people that racial discrimination is required in order to maintain order and forward progress in the world today.  Besides white supremacy, capitalism has class oppression components that it equally employs.  For example, working people are always portrayed as lazy and incompetent.  This is true even of European (White) working people.  In fact, think of popular culture shows like "The Flintstones" cartoon.  Or, the "Honeymooners" sitcom.  Or, "The Jetsons" cartoon.  In each of these shows (and there are many more), working class White people are portrayed as stupid, lazy, and untrustworthy.  Look at how Mr. Slate, Fred Flintstone's boss, treats him.  And, how Fred always has some scheme to get out of having to work.  The point to all this anti-human propaganda is that money in capitalism is more important than people.  As a result, people are inherently dehumanized to justify this hierarchy.  This dehumanization is systemic.  Its perpetuated through every cultural, educational, and (so-called) spiritual institution within capitalist societies.  

So, if you understand this context, then of course Stephon Clark, and most everyone living within capitalist societies, is imbued with anti-human tendencies and ideologies.  Think about it.  How many people have heard the phrase "it starts at home."  Unfortunately, capitalism as an economic system has eliminated the existence of a family structure that can provide support and nurturing needed to produce healthy and productive human beings.  Instead, capitalism has forced families to become economic production units.  That's what the nuclear family is.  And, as a result, unless there are some exceptional families that have the capacity and resources to create their own version of support for each other, most people are forced to grow up with extremely dysfunctional values, perspectives, and experiences.  Backward philosophies like white supremacy and patriarchy, are ingrained in every institution in the capitalist society and most often, those insane philosophical systems are unchecked in their dominance in every sphere of everyone's lives.  

Within this backward paradigm, why is a single sane person surprised that men are dominantly anti-women.  That Europeans are dominantly white supremacist.  There is no logical way that people in this capitalist nightmare could turn out any other way.  We know this.  There is no empirical evidence that can refute this reality.  So, we know the majority of people are going to be reactionary in their thinking and behaviors.

That great son of Africa Sekou Ture, taught us to learn the difference between people who are reactionary and people who are counter revolutionary.  Again, the majority of people are reactionary.  That means they have backward ideas that dominant their lives.  As was stated, that's what is available to them in the capitalist system, but by reactionary, we mean they don't consciously work against humanity.  They have just learned dysfunctional approaches like women are commodities to be used.  This type of thinking is so imbued within men that they honestly think someone is insane to suggest otherwise.  Still, we know that reactionary ideas can be overcome with healthy revolutionary ideas/values that elevate people over money.  A clear example of this is the life of El Hajj Malik El Shabazz e.g. Malcolm X.  His story is well known, but clearly it demonstrates that a person who has been imbued with the most backward ideas about woman can grow to have much healthier values about women.  When we look at each of our lives, especially those of us who have placed ourselves on a journey committed to justice, we can see many commonalities with the journey traveled by Malcolm X and others.  Since we know this, we know that someone like Stephon Clark, who to the best of our knowledge did not benefit from the type of political, cultural, and spiritual awakening that Malcolm X and/or many of us benefited from, could change for the better if given that opportunity.  If provided a society that prioritized political education and healthy human development.  So, revolutionaries are not dismayed by reactionary behavior because we know that the correct people's movement and work can correct that problem.

On the other hand, Ture informed us that counter revolutionaries are people who very consciously and deliberately work against the interest of the people.  These people belong to what Ture called the "anti-people's class."  And, we know from Ture's illuminating works on class struggle that the definition of a person's identification with a specific class is that person's commitment to the interests of that class.  That means a person is committed to serving the interests of the bourgeois class, the capitalist classes, over the interests of the masses of people on Earth.  Examples?  Wait for it...Barack Obama.  He was the guardian for capitalism, and by default the guardian of white supremacy and patriarchy, the armor for capitalism.  He is not someone who is confused.  He knew exactly what he was doing.  He oversaw the creation of almost 100 military bases in Africa.  He couldn't do that by mistake.  He used those bases to engage in brutal terrorism against the Libyan Jamahiriya in 2011, wiping out the most promising and prosperous society in Africa.  He didn't do that ignorantly.  He knew what he was doing.  He knew what he was doing when he bombed Somalia.  When he oversaw the mass incarceration of Africans in the U.S.  That's why he never spoke about those things.  That's why he never condemned the majority of White people in the U.S. for being the cowardly legacy protectors of the white supremacist system.  Instead, he cowardly attacked African men and accused us of being more ill-responsible than any other men in fulfilling our commitments to raising our children.  That's why he mouthed the talking points of white supremacy.  That's why he was capitalism in blackface.  

If you don't possess a class analysis, you won't have the tools to differentiate between reactionary and counter-revolutionary.  Stephon Clark was reactionary.  Its not to say reactionary isn't harmful.  We suffer from our reactionary behavior against one another and humanity every single tick each day.  What it says is the debate isn't about whether we should stand up for Clark.  The debate is when and how we can organize to overthrow this capitalist system as a result of our work to unite and liberate Africa (as our contribution to the worldwide socialist movement).  When we do that, we can put an educational and institutional system in place that values people over money.  And, when we have that, do you think so many people would have backward ideas and practices that disgusts us so much?  I think not.  

A political mentor to me in this Pan-Africanist work once told me that we have to convince our people that every problem we have is the result of capitalism.  This isn't hard to do because its true.  just like the best lyricists can take any topic you offer and drop a verse to it, we can take any issue you express and show you instantly where the source of the problem is capitalism.  Since we know this, of course we should stand up against the state killing Stephon Clark and anyone with any backward ideas and practices.  And, when we stand up, we say that we are doing so not to protect his backward ideas/practices ,but to protest the system that produces such damaged human beings in the first place, then summarily executes them and then blames them for being executed.  Along with blaming them for being backward.  

If there is an anti-people's class, that of course means there is a people's class.  The people's class takes responsibility to organize for a better world.  It rejects the values of the capitalist system and it takes upon its shoulders the responsibility of creating that political education reality for people like Stephon Clark.  The people's class never laments how impossible it will be achieve this.  It never rejects reactionary behavior because that would mean rejecting the majority of people.  Instead, it sees its responsibility as figuring out how to reach those people.  Kwame Nkrumah, our ideological partner to Sekou Ture, told us that there are always primary and secondary contradictions.  The primary contradiction being imperialism (capitalism).  The secondary contradictions being the backward ways our people behave because of imperialism.  Don't let our enemies and their values confuse us.  The system must be our focus, but that must be only within the context of our social revolutionary work to ensure that when we defeat capitalism, we are prepared to offer something much, much better.



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50 Years ago They Killed Dr. King;  Miss Us Discrediting His Image

4/3/2018

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If you didn't know, Wednesday, April 4th, 2018, commemorates 50 years since the U.S. government conspired and killed Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.  If you missed that historical marker, you can easily be reminded of it by the recent spate of hit pieces coming out against King.  These slanderous pieces are easily available in this sound bite, call out, social media cowardice culture that exists today.  People are able to post things they would never articulate in public.  One of the latest yawn pieces is that Dr. King had a relationship with a European woman during his seminary years.

The White woman story about Dr. King is consistent with the suggestion that Malcolm X was gay.  Or, Che Guevara was homophobic and sadistic.  All of these stories are either exaggerations of the truth, partial truths, or outright lies.  One thing they all have in common is their objective of discrediting the work of the individuals in question.  And, one thing all of those individuals have in common is their uncompromising opposition against imperialism and the oppression of the masses of people on the planet.

That last point is the most critical one all of us must remember.  The only reason you know who Dr. King is.  Who Malcolm is.  Who Che is.  Its because of their work for justice.  Nothing else.  Even if all the stories about them were true, surely you realize that if the most notable thing these individuals had ever done was be with a White woman, be gay, or be homophobic, you would never know who these people were.  The reason you know them is because of their political work.  And, by extension, the reason you receive these stories about them is because of their political work.

In 2016, there was a piece of legislation that passed in the state of North Carolina, U.S.  That law - House bill 52 - was widely debated and talked about before it was passed.  The focus of the law was its requirement that people born as men or women in the biological sense use bathrooms based on their  genitalia.  Professional sports teams decided not to have sporting events in that state for passing that legislation and it was the topic of much debate throughout the U.S.  What most people didn't know about that law was the verbiage within the law that made it illegal for private sector employees in the state of North Carolina, U.S., to negotiate for pay increases.  

You see, the big moneyed interests that pushed this legislation through were always focused on the prevention of wage increases provision.  The transgender piece was only included because they knew that most people would react in support of the law because of backward religious views and reactionary homophobia.  They knew that most people wouldn't research the law deeply.  Most people would never know anything about the wage increase restriction provision because the passion against transgender people would be all that is necessary in this sound bite social media culture to push that legislation through.  Their strategy was effective.

And, that same backward strategic approach is often employed against the forces of justice to subconsciously turn you against those forces.  That's why the revolutionary character in the Black Panther movie comes from a place of impatience, violence against women, and ego, because that's how they wish you to think about revolutionary organizers.  That's also why the way these people acknowledge the 50 year commemoration of Dr. King's assassination is to focus on who he was with.  They know that subject, especially the fact that it was a White woman, will get many of you to look no further as it relates to the work of Dr. King.  Some people will be talking about this White woman every time Dr. King's name comes up from here forward.  And, as long as people are defining Dr. King this way, no one will be talking about how he slowly evolved into a class warrior against the capitalist system.  How his "Why I Oppose the War in Vietnam" speech was a clear indictment against capitalism and a call for significant change in this society.  They won't pay attention to the fact that Dr. King was killed in Memphis, Tennessee, on April 4th, 1968, because he was there to support the garbage worker's fight.  That he was in the midst of organizing a poor people's campaign that pushed to bring millions of poor people to Washington D.C. to protest injustice.  That the youthful organizers within the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), like Kwame Ture (formally Stokely Carmichael), Ruby Doris Robinson, Cleve Sellers, and Jamil Abdullah Al Amin (H. Rap Brown), were pushing King in a more militant direction.  And, that those SNCC organizers were impressed with the degree in which King had moved to the left.  If the radical youth of SNCC recognized King's shift, clearly the U.S. government recognized it.  

The widely documented and clearly articulated vision and (illegal and immoral) methods of the Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI) counter intelligence program, coupled with the facts behind the murder scene at the Lorraine Hotel in Memphis, provide unlimited proof that King was killed by powerful forces supportive of U.S. imperialism who saw King's leadership as a viable threat to their interests.  That's the King they don't want you to remember and/or learn about.

Instead, let's talk about who King was with.  That way, we are not going to be accountable to anything at all.  We certainly won't  be responsible to question what happened to King and there will be absolutely no expectation that we would even consider (shudder) carrying out his work.  

In fact, I'd actually like to close out this piece by saying that if people are aware of these types of stories about King's relationships, Malcolm's relationships, Che's personality, yet they haven't even bothered to read any of King's books, like "Why We Can't Wait, Stride Towards Freedom", or "Where Do We Go From Here?"  Any of Malcolm's books like "The Final Speeches of Malcolm X" or Che's diaries on the Cuban revolutionary war, the mission in the Congo, and/or Bolivia, then there is a lot they should be strongly thinking about here.  They are either actively working to discredit this work as an agent of imperialism or they are a pitiful lackey of imperialism, simply aiding and abetting our enemies without even being smart enough to see how they are being used as a tool.  The books by these giants are critical because if people read them, they could not be peddling cheap gossip about these warriors.  If they read these works, and they are serious people in life, they would see what's happening here and they would work tirelessly to defend the people who defended us.  Anybody with any sense cares as much about who King was with as I care about who you are with.  Zero percent.  Some of us, like Dr. King, are sincerely trying to focus on things much more serious.



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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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