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Colin Kaepernick: A Clear Case of Truth Disconnecting from Reality

6/24/2017

I've never met Colin Kaepernick. Being from San Francisco, anyone who knows me knows that sports, including professional football, is one of the many tools I use to decompress. So, as I've said in each of the previous article posts I've written about Kaepernick and his evolving political consciousness, I liked him before his political engagement, simply because he was the quarterback for my team. Having an eye for white supremacy that is extremely sharp, I can easily imagine the challenges any young African must face in being the leader of one of the most storied franchises in U.S. professional sports. So, in 2012 I immediately connected with Colin Kaepernick, and he has been a major reason why I re-energized my focus on San Francisco football over the last five years. Still, I've never met him, but when the furor erupted over his first protest over U.S. capitalism's battle song, my connection with him deepened. And, when I wrote my first piece about him, it was widely read. I was humbled when friends informed me that his personal site had uploaded that article and sent it out through their own mechanisms.

Since that time I've written several pieces about Kaepernick's evolution. I've done that to make it clear that we should provide him nothing except our most dedicated and sincere support. My writings about him haven't been uncritical. I wrote one piece that challenged his early "surrender" to the reactionary political forces in this country that extort people into submitting to this insane support for U.S. troops. In that piece, I argued that the logic of this backward system is because the people who fight for it are our relatives and loved ones, we are supposed to forget that they are fighting on the wrong side of history. We are supposed to ignore that they kill hundreds of thousands of innocent people, not to achieve any freedom for those people or any of us in this country, but to advance the selfish and money first agenda of the multi-national corporate interests that they truly represent when donning that uniform. I don't know if Kaepernick ever saw that article, but I do know that he gets full credit for the continued evolution of his politics since that time. I haven't heard him talk in those initial glowing terms about the military since that time and his insistence on appearing with images of Fidel Castro, Malcolm X, Che Guevara, Huey P. Newton, and other clear anti-capitalist and anti-imperialist revolutionaries, makes it obvious that he has definitely come to some of his own conclusions about imperialism and the evils it presents for humanity.

So, despite the sad reality (for me) that its highly doubtful Kaepernick will play in San Francisco again, he has become my favorite football player ever, even if he never plays for any team again. For me, this is significant because I realize I basically define my identity today based on my political consciousness and activism, and my athletic pursuits to provide relief and balance. For decades now, I've worked out hard everyday and battled capitalism and imperialism with equal intensity. In a strange way, those two things define who I am in my mind and Kaepernick at this stage in his life, represents all of the best of both of those things in my life. So, even though I don't know him, he means a lot to me. And the fact he has most certainly backed up his on the field protests with concrete material assistance to the struggles against injustice all over the world, solidifies my connection to him. What all of this does is ensure that I will continue talking about him, whether he ever throws another touchdown or not, because people, especially our people, need to know about folks like him.

And what they need to know most about Kaepernick isn't that the spineless and cowardly people who are dishonestly attempting to argue that he hasn't been picked up by any team because of his lack of skill are all a bunch of lying horse manure scum. The numbers quickly prove how brainless those people are. Kaepernick completed 60% of his passes last year which by National Football League standards is more than acceptable. Certainly, more than enough to silence Kaepernick's critics who claim he cannot consistently hit receivers. He threw for 16 touchdowns and only four interceptions and last years numbers were no exception. Throughout his career, Kaepernick has thrown for over 70 touchdowns with only thirty interceptions. In professional terms, these numbers clearly indicate he does a great job taking care of the ball. And taking care of the ball is one of the defining characteristics of the quarterback position. I'm not arguing that he has surpassed Joe Montana and Steve Young as San Francisco's greatest quarterback, but to say he isn't good enough to be signed by any professional team in the U.S. is a straight out lie that is designed to serve the interests of those who wish to punish him for his political stances. Clearly, he's good enough to play in the National Football League. What he isn't is strong enough as an individual to battle the white supremacy that dominates every crevice of this society. And he shouldn't be expected to wage that battle on his own. That battle belongs to all peace and justice loving people. So, whether you like football or not is ill relevant. We all should use this situation to expose the corruptness of this capitalist system.

What are we exposing? Here is a man who did everything the capitalist system says you have to do to "make it" in this backward society. He worked hard (every teammate he has had from high school, college, and the pros, has confirmed this), had a great attitude, and reached the point where he was one of the very best football players in the world. Isn't that what making the National Football League as a player means? Then, after having great success on the field (coming to within five yards of winning the Super Bowl and then coming to within five yards of reaching the Super Bowl again the very next season), he decides to wage a silent and non-disruptive protest against a raggedy ass song that no sane person can argue represents anything except a glorification of slavery and oppression. Instead of people taking his brave example to examine how it could be that the song considered the national anthem of this country could have such offensive lyrics (that most of these people yelling the loudest at Kaepernick had no idea existed) to millions of people who were born here, these cowards chose to attack Kaepernick instead. And while he didn't buckle to this unfair and unwarranted pressure, he struggled to learn how to navigate the pathways of truth, which have absolutely nothing to do with how people live in this country. One of his first stops on this truth journey was the realization that voting fools people into believing they are charting the direction of this country when it actually only permits you the opportunity to rubber stamp an agenda that you have no ability to influence. Instead of people using this notice to have a real and long overdue debate about the uselessness of this bourgeois electoral process that passes as a democratic exercise, people attacked Kaepernick. And, often leading this off key chorus were multitudes of highly confused Africans, including many hollow heads in the world of professional sports. Now, Keap has apparently announced he will not sit around waiting for spineless executives within the National Football League to call and offer him a job. Instead of people using this as a great opportunity to have discussions about how challenging this political establishment will get you punished in this society (despite the lie that you have so-called rights that protect you) people are engaging this phony and cowardly argument about whether he is good enough to play professional football?

We should have thousands of Kaepernicks. We should be nurturing this by the dozens each day. He has shown us how to stand up and I'm eternally proud of him for that. I don't know if I will ever get to talk to him, but either way, I respect him for what he is trying to do for our people and for humanity. I know he must understand that the people who oppose him are people who have no idea how to live with principle and dignity. They are operating on a platform fueled by fear and ignorance. And, we shouldn't be angry at them because this all results from the capitalist systems desire to keep us all ignorant and afraid because being in that state prevents us from thinking and learning how to think is what will ultimately move us past this pitiful situation we are in right now. As for Kaepernick, you keep going Brother. There are many, many, of us who are doing the work like you are and we are with you. You are providing a strong example and the people who need to see it are seeing and being influenced by it. There are many of us who do know how to unite truth and reality.

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A Brief History of Juneteenth or June 19th

6/19/2017

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For those who scoff whenever we express how oppressive and racist the capitalist system is, all one has to do is look at today's date in history. June 19th is a very significant day for African people within the borders of the U.S. Since the transatlantic slave trade violently forced millions of Africans out of Africa and into the Western Hemispheric countries, the same significant day for Africans in other Western countries is different than it is for Africans in the U.S. In Jamaica, the day is August 1, 1834. In Cuba, its October 7, 1886. In Brazil, its a day in 1872, but for Africans in the U.S., its June 19th, 1863, and like most things connected to African history post-colonialism and slavery, even that date is unsure.

January 1, 1863 is the date Abraham Lincoln signed the final Emancipation Proclamation, but this was the second time Lincoln had signed this document as president of the U.S. The first time was September 22nd, 1862, when Lincoln signed the initial document as a tactic designed to push the Southern slave states into surrendering to the federal government during the Civil war. Lincoln's idea was to use the document, which was designed to eradicate slavery of African people in this country, as a threat against the Southerners because no one obviously had more motivation for the South to lose the war than the Africans. This is a critical note because Lincoln has gone down in capitalist history as the person Africans should owe some level of gratitude for signing this document. As if to say in typical white supremacist fashion that we would not be free where it not for the benevolent act of this kind white man. As with everything pertaining to capitalism, the truth is much different. Lincoln viewed Africans as simply pawns in his struggle to weld power to keep his precious Union intact. We were nothing more than a bargaining chip. In fact, the North wanted industrialization, which was being financed from seed money produced from slavery, because it was a much more efficient and profitable system of production. Obviously, machines produce faster than human hands and the developing Northern capitalists correctly saw the cotton gin as a vast improvement over the ability of our people to pick cotton by hand. The South, seeing slavery as a critical element of their crass white supremacist identity, was not nearly as interested in efficiency. The class struggle was intense in the South. There was not nearly as much to delineate the difference between poor white people and the enslaved Africans except the fact the white people were not Africans and this was all the small white aristocrats in the South had to motivate the exploited white workers. And it worked then just as it continues to work today. So, the threat in September of 1862 did not work so Lincoln issued the final Emancipation Proclamation on January 1, 1863, officially ending slavery as a method of recruiting recently "freed" Africans to fight on the side of the North against their former slave masters. These Africans, understanding that the fall of the South meant an end to slavery, fought courageously and valiantly, thus securing the only real chance the federal government had of keeping this country united as one political entity.

Still, African people were never the concern or the priority in any of this. So, although Lincoln signed the document, he and his administration took no steps to make the process public beyond the word reaching those Africans who would abandon the plantations and conscript with the North. So, Africans in states like Texas didn't even receive word that slavery had ended until Northern troops, many of them Africans, advised them on June 19th, 1863, thus launching the celebration that would forever be known as Juneteenth, or the officially recognized end of slavery in the U.S.

There were still problems and the federal government still never recognized slavery as being officially over until the 13th amendment was added to the so-called constitution (toilet paper) on January 1, 1865, or as the Civil war wound down to its conclusion. So, African people celebrate June 19th, or Juneteenth in this country as the African independence day. Its understandable because July 4th, 1776, or the so-called Declaration of Independence (more toilet paper), was enacted 87 years before the Emancipation Proclamation so although the official history of this country ignores Juneteenth and acknowledges July 4th as the day of freedom in the country, clearly African people have no reason to celebrate and respect July 4th for any reason that can be categorized as sane. I choose to honor Juneteenth as a way of acknowledging the overwhelming sacrifices of my ancestors, but I look more at African Liberation Day as the day that symbolizes our desire to be free, not just in the U.S., but all over the world. This makes sense to me because the transatlantic slave trade and colonialism were systems of oppression that were and are linked and they were international events, just as our struggle for liberation is an international fight, but I still ride with all my people who recognize Juneteenth.

And although most Europeans know nothing about Juneteenth, like most everything else in this country, that has absolutely no impact on how we look at anything. Our journeys through this society are always on different pathways. I read something the other day where one of these intensely ignorant right wing idiots was vomiting out how white people fought to end slavery and we should be thankful to them, blah, blah, blah. It was just a reminder as today should be for everyone that the Civil war was fought to preserve the development of the Union as one capitalist entity. Had that not happened, there is no way the U.S. would have industrialized and emerged after World War II as the preeminent power in the world. So, stop spreading ignorance by saying the Civil war was fought to end slavery. Ending slavery was simply a tactic to expedite defeating the South so capitalism could grow and expand. Any African in their right mind has absolutely no responsibility to be thankful to racist Lincoln or anyone in the U.S. for the eradication of slavery. The fact we were resisting slavery, often violently, throughout this country and all over the Caribbean, Central America, and South America for that matter, made the prospect of continuing the institution untenable and all the developing white capitalists recognized this. It was only the street level racism of the South that prevented them from seeing this. And it apparently prevents a lot more white people from understanding and seeing any of this today. Either way, our journey has never been defined based on what white people see or believe. We will continue to use Juneteenth as a vehicle to educate our people about the real purpose of the Civil war, how our labor produced capitalism for our enemies and how our salvation is intrinsically linked to our ability to redeem Africa under the opposite of capitalism - scientific socialism!

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Revolutionary Organizing in Babylon. A Lonely Life

6/16/2017

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And I say that not as a complaint, but as inoculation for newer revolutionary organizers and/or people who are wanting to get involved with this work. With the proper political education, which to me is the best inoculation, revolutionary organizing serves as the healthiest medicine for living in such a backward and decadent society? Or, have you ever experienced being bullied by someone? Once you decided to stand up and confront them, didn't you experience an amazing explosion of dignity and self esteem? Well, try standing up against the largest and most powerful imperialist country in the world? By standing up against this unjust system, you will experience that feeling. And, the longer you stand up, the stronger that feeling will get, but that doesn't deny the fact that doing this work is extremely isolating and alienating. And, unfortunately, most of the reasons for that have little to do with direct attacks from imperialism.

The super rich who navigate this system and all its institutions recognize that their best weapon is to control the thinking of the masses of people in the world. They realize that when they do that, as Carter G. Woodson taught us, they won't need to worry about our actions. Or in other words, for all of you who continue to mistakenly claim that ideology has no practical application, the ideas in your head completely dictate what actions you will take. Or, what actions you won't take. Either way, the imperialist system learned in the 1960s that it must prevent people from receiving correct education. That's why the Iraq and Afghanistan wars were/are carried out in a completely different fashion than the Vietnam war. No visuals of U.S. service people being shipped back to the U.S. in body bagged are aired today. This way, people in this country are prevented from seeing the consequences of these unjust wars and as a result, a non-conscious and dominant state where any price that needs to be paid, whether it be thousands of lives, is ok if it sustains your level of comfort. Effectively removed from the actual results and reasons for any of this, people are steered into becoming unknowing propagandists for imperialism. And, this reality is where the largest and most taxing challenges are faced by those of us who choose to fight against imperialism. By making this decision, you choose to position yourself in 100% opposition to everything this system represents and in doing so, you will be consistently and relentlessly discredited, dogged, disrespected, and dismissed. In fact, these things will become such a regular aspect of your day to day life that you will become forced to either develop a method of dealing with it or you will risk becoming overwhelmed by it.

Here are some examples. No one can honestly and articulately argue against anyone who stakes a claim that the U.S. Military is a terrorist organization, but that doesn't matter in this current world where truth and justice are completely disengaged from the dominant narrative that serves as normal discourse in this society. If you speak out forcefully and truthfully about this clear reality about the U.S. Military, you will be attacked from all angles. You will be threatened with violence and you may even become the victim of violent attack. And that would be tolerable if those types of attacks were the worst you experience. What is even more difficult to swallow are the subliminal attacks against your sanity. What I mean is any effort you make to structure your life with discipline, organization, and principled existence will be met with suspicion, disrespect, and even anger. For example, if you choose, as I have, to protest this system's stranglehold on people's consciousness by deciding to do basic things like change my name to an African name, refuse to drink, smoke, get high, etc. - as my single effort to protest this system's mind control, you can expect to be treated as a criminal, even by people in your family, etc. The reasons for this? There are many and honestly, I don't pretend to even understand them all. Sometimes, I continue to wonder, but one thing I'm pretty certain about is any efforts you make to push yourself into becoming a stronger and better person will cause you to intimidate many people. This happens because clear efforts you make to improve yourself represent an understanding and acceptance on your part that you are fallible. Doing this requires a certain level of humility that requires character. Many people lack any amount of character and the fact that you do will intimidate them. As a result, instead of being the inspiration to their lives that you should be, they will see you as a threat and they will treat you accordingly. This applies equally to any sincere efforts you make to be honest, vulnerable, and willing to admit wrongdoing. Instead of all of these being symbols of your strength to serve as inspirations to others on how to do the same, they will most often be met with contempt by those who are afraid that if you realize how to look deeper into yourself, there's a strong possibility you will also learn how to look just as deep at them. And, the thought of people being able to do that frightens many of us since capitalism's greatest hold over us is its ability to convince us that we are never good enough. This system works day and night telling us that the minute we are exposed for what we are, no one will love us. And, instead of helping us learn how to process through that dysfunction in healthy ways, this system feeds on this insecurity by telling us there is no need to improve ourselves (because doing so is impossible - recall the so-called Christian belief that you are born in sin?). What they teach us is we need to instead get very good at covering up our shortcomings.

The results of all of this is the more real you become, the more some people will distrust and mistreat you. The more many people will be uncomfortable around you. And, the more it will become increasingly difficult for you to escape being alienated, but there are ways to overcome this phenomenon. First, its important to properly understand the political education piece. The better you understand why you are doing the things you are doing, the more equipped you will be to absorb the attacks against you. In fact, you will learn to be empowered to some degree by the attacks because they will serve, in your eyes, as proof that you are doing something to advance yourself into becoming a better human being. You will understand that by doing so you will be making a contribution towards making the world a better place and in time, you will even begin to be able to detect the inspiration you have on people around you. The better you use political education to create your own healthy perspective of the world, the more you will be able to create a value structure that feeds your spirit instead of depleting it. The way you do all of this is by focusing on being true to yourself and the truth. Not your truth, but the truth. Some people want to act as if objective truth is impossible to find, or at least interpret properly, but truthfully, its not that difficult to find. Two plus two equals four is a universal truth and most universal truths are just as easy to find if your senses for what's happening around you are functioning properly. The best gauge for ensuring this is happening is by teaching yourself to engage in critical self analysis. Teach yourself to identify what you need to improve about yourself and practice working on making those improvements. If you learn to do this, you will also learn to feel so much better about yourself because the more you try to do better, the better you will feel. Achieving this progress will do so much to strengthen you with doing this work because seeing the truth in yourself helps you see the truths in everything around you. I have developed many successful techniques to do this, but its much more than I can explain in a blog post (if you want more information, contact me). And seeing all those universal truths does wonders at redefining your world vision, thus making it much more positive. Much more willing to see us as having the capacity to win. Once we begin to start thinking about that, we will win. And this is exactly what the imperialist system wishes to destroy. That's why it seeks to alienate you and make you believe victory against it is as impossible as it is to breath in outer space. This is what this system has done. It has made organizing against it, not organizing to reconcile with it, but organizing against it, to overthrow it, as unlikely in people's minds as inhaling in space. Consequently, if you talk and act towards organizing against it, you will feel that isolation. And when you do, hopefully, these thoughts on how to prepare yourself will help you to not be overcome by it. If you prepare yourself properly, you will create a snapshot on the world you want and deserve. Once you do that, you will want more and you will weaken their hold on you. I am with you and I can't wait for us to organize together.

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Neo-colonialism in The Gambia: Breaking It Down

6/8/2017

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The current political situation in the Gambia of course has its specific aspects and particular characteristics, but there are also the same stinging similarities that you will find throughout the entire continent of Africa. Gambia, or what many people call The Gambia, is a small country of approximately 2 million people. The country is bordered by Senegal and just to give those in the West some proximity, Senegal is the closest country in Africa to New York City. The national languages in Gambia are Mandinka and Wolof, but the official language continues to be English although with schools being uncommon, or at least inconsistent, as a result of International Monetary Fund (IMF) structural adjustment (imperialist robbery) programs, many people have never had the opportunity to learn English. When I was in Gambia 13 years ago, about half the people I encountered there didn't speak English.

The purpose of this written piece is to address, define, and breakdown neo-colonialism in Gambia. I know that Pan-Africanists, especially the revolutionary Pan-Africanists within the All African People's Revolutionary Party (A-APRP), always use the term neo-colonialism in speaking about the political conditions throughout Africa. And, although I think we do as good a job as anyone in clarifying what that vicious system is and how it operates, I'm hoping this piece can serve as a reference point for those who want to learn the A, B, C's, of neo-colonialism because trying to understand Africa's political situation without understanding neo-colonialism is like trying to understand where most babies come from without talking about sex.

Gambia is one of Africa and the world's poorest countries. The primary product produced, and the main export of the country, is peanuts. One of the central problems that keeps African countries poor is that most of what they are able to produce under their current structures, like Gambian peanuts, is something that can be bought by consumer countries in any number of markets and countries. This makes it impossible for Gambia to ever have any say in setting market prices for the product(s) they produce. Since you are a consumer within capitalism, I'm sure you understand that when there is more of a product than there are consumers to buy it, then the consumer determines the pricing. Well, on the imperialist level of governments, the rich countries like the U.S. and European countries (either in Europe or the settler colonies like Australia and zionist israel), determine prices for everything because they price based on what they are willing to pay while holding the world hostage to the technologies and resources they control to back up their price robberies. So Gambia, having just peanuts to negotiate with, is doomed to remain a poor country forever under the current system.

The capitalist countries, intent on keeping the majority of the world under their political and economic thumb, established neo-colonialism as the dominant system in Africa once they recognized that it would impossible for them to maintain the colonial system. So, in the 50s and 60s, every territory in Africa - except Southern Africa - gained "political independence", but what this actually meant is that the Europeans who lived and ran these countries from within, simply left, but not before establishing and instituting a system that would ensure their interests - the interests of international bourgeois capitalism - were maintained. The way they did this was by controlling and instituting the educational systems in the countries to make sure Africans were taught to view Europe, European culture, and most importantly, the methods in which Europeans governed e.g. capitalism, as dominant and absolutely necessary. Then they continued to instigate conflict as a method of divide and conquer. That's why the supposed conflicts between Eritreans and Ethiopians has existed for decades although there has always been extensive mixing between the two ethnic groups in many ways in spite of the fact the two countries had a 30 year war. That's why the Hutus and Tutsis, having similar connections between the ethnic groups, were instigated so badly against each other by Belgium and France that millions were killed. The movie "Hotel Rwanda" showed you that, but it didn't show you these reasons why. I can go on and on with examples, but the point is the system is designed to keep Africans from gaining independence from imperialism. And to guarantee that this system would stay in place, the capitalist countries set up an economic system of strangulation that punished countries that tried to go independent with wicked tariffs (excessive taxes on products). Many of these vicious taxes take the form of continued forced payments Europe demands from her former colonial colonies, 50 years after colonialism supposedly ended as ransom for technical, military, and other forms of knowledge and skills. This economic extortion keeps Africa poor. And, in instances where the masses of people decide to stand up, as in the case of the Congo in 1960, when imperialism cannot stop it by these methods, they move to out and out murder (of Patrice Lumumba, the democratically elected Prime Minister of the Congo) and vicious campaigns to destroy even the basic ability of country's like the Congo to function on a rudimentary level without imperialism. Meanwhile, because this system of control and exploitation is so dominant, the only people who are permitted by Western imperialism to govern in these former colonies are people who will manage their interests for them. That's why a man like Yahya Jammeh can be president in Gambia for almost a quarter of a century, do absolutely nothing for the masses in Gambia, and then refuse to leave office even after the people democratically vote to have him replaced. After this happened in Jammeh in January, he was not successfully removed from office until recently and this probably only happened when it did because of intervention by a military coalition of West African countries under the banner of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS). In other words, despite the clear illegalities of Jammeh's initial refusal to leave office, he could conceivably still be in the way in Gambia if ECOWAS hadn't interceded.

This type of corruption is not the exception in Africa, but the rule of the day because people like Jammeh, Paul Biya in Cameroon, the late Lasana Conte in Guinea, Museveni in Uganda, and that Central Intelligence Agency (or criminals in action as we prefer to call them - CIA) man - Paul Kagame in Rwanda, all of them and many others on the continent, answer only to their European masters, not to the masses of the suffering people in Africa. And, this is the foundation from which neo-colonialism functions in Africa. The political leadership is there not to serve the people, but to exploit them in the interests of imperialism. In fact, that's the definition of imperialism you should remember - a system where the resources, human and material, of a country are exploited by another country at the expense of the people in the exploited country.

Overall, this system that subjugates Gambia serves imperialism at the highest level by ensuring that the people of Gambia are kept from deciding that they want to do away with imperialism. This is where entities like the U.S. dominated African Command, or Afrocom, come into play where the U.S. has installed approximately 75 military bases throughout Africa under the Bush and Obama regimes. The stated objective of this military presence is to eliminate the allegedly ISIS based Boko Haram and al Shabad from operating in Africa, but no one can point to any effective efforts these U.S. military personnel are making in those areas because such work doesn't exist. For those who are having trouble following along, that means the U.S. military isn't setting up these bases for anything besides ensuring the masses of Africans, like those in Gambia, or Senegal, or Zimbabwe, Guinea, Ghana, Guinea-Bissau, Somalia, Sudan, Chad, etc., don't decide they are sick of the Biyas, Jammehs, etc. That in the case of Gambia, there isn't a force that organizes the people of Gambia to decide to not play the waiting game for new president Adama Barrow to implement the same system of neo-colonialism that has been traumatizing them since they supposedly became independent in 1965.

One clear positive we see in Gambia and other places is that Africa already has the capacity to come together on regional levels like with ECOWAS to help resolve conflicts in West Africa and other structures can be built and utilized to do the same throughout all of Africa. Kwame Nkrumah and Sekou Ture, two great sons of Africa who had a vision for African liberation, were instrumental in launching ECOWAS. Now its up to us to make sure those entities are operating in a way that can help us build stability and not continued domination by imperialism. Of course, regional cooperation is just a stepping stone to continental cooperation which we know is our only real solution. Gambia cannot and will not ever become an independent actor with just peanuts to work with. And, as we discussed with agreeable community folks in Dar Es Salaam, Tanzania, last December, Tanzania could not become socialist under Julius Nyerere's "Ujaama" in the 70s and 80s, because no one country can expect to be successful at independence in Africa on any level because none of the existing countries were created for success. They were created to serve the interests of European capitalism. Just like Africans in any of the countries outside of Africa, including the united snakes of amerikkka, cannot expect to find collective success just in those countries. We were not kidnapped and brought here to become successful and the longer we continue to buy into that lying narrative they tell every naive person who comes here, we will continue to be confused about our reality. This system continues to breath from keeping us down. It will never deliver collective success opportunities for us. Only token opportunities to benefit from the oppression of the masses of our people. The people of Gambia and everywhere else around the African world are sick of that lie. It isn't working out for us because it cannot work. Only our unity will save us, whether we are in Banjul (Gambia) or Baltimore, this remains as true today as it was the day the first African was stolen and forced to board a slave ship hundreds of years ago.

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Stop Faking Ignorance about What's Needed to End this Oppression

6/5/2017

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Someone sent me a sound bite from one of those cowardly white supremacist piles of diarrhea where he was steadfast insisting he harbored not one racist sweat gland in his body. Then he went on to talk foolishly about how European people are the ones responsible for all advances in civilization. Besides the obvious and overwhelming ignorance in that comment, I surprisingly found myself getting angry after watching that filth. After thinking about it for a while, the reason for my anger became clear to me. Its really time for us to make it very uncomfortable for people to keep walking around here acting and talking like they have no idea what white supremacy is, how it brutally oppresses brown people, and how European (White) people benefit from this system. The same needs to happen as it relates to the oppression of women identified folks, LGBTQ folks, physically challenged folks, and anyone else oppressed that I failed to mention.

Yes, its time for you Africans and other brown folks to drop this struggle into the laps of your family, friends, co-workers, neighbors, etc., who act as if they don't understand what's happening here today. And, yes, White folks, its certainly time for you to disrupt the mindless ramblings of the folks around you who are watching FOX News, or whatever the hell they call themselves doing, while acting like they don't have a clue what people crying oppression are talking about.

You all know what I mean. People who claim that there is no systemic oppression of anyone. That all people have to do is stop blaming anything outside of themselves for being oppressed. The people who say those poor people in Africa are that way because they don't believe strongly enough in Jesus. Those people who claim that the Muslim woman who was beaten was beaten because she is a Muslim and that's a terrorist religion. The people who claim that group of Africans harassed and killed by the police in London, England, New York City, or Sydney, Australia, were killed because they didn't cooperate. You know, those people who say life is "all about the decisions you make" while ignoring the times the police let them go. Yeah. All those sickening people. Its time to make their lives much more uncomfortable. Why? Because agitation is a necessary tactic when organizing. Kicking up dust is a proven way to get people going and the very definition of kicking up dust is making people who are sitting on top of oppression (by denying it) as uncomfortable as is humanly possible.

Why is this necessary? Because they are straight out lying! All of them. They all know damn well that this is an oppressive system that was built on oppression and is maintained that way. Yes, I'm talking about your racist parents (whether they are African, European, Indigenous to the Americas, many of them support this racist system against brown people, especially Africans. They justify it just like their white masters have trained them to do). I don't give a damn how much they mindlessly parrot what they see on FOX, those people are playing you. They know much more about how this oppression system operates than they are acknowledging and despite the fact I don't know your racist parents, I can prove it.
You see, clarity came my way several years ago when I was reading an article about a group of well to do White parents located somewhere in all White land. These people were up in arms about a decision to change the name of their local elementary school from that of one of the many violent colonizers that most of these schools are named after to the Martin Luther King Jr. school. These parents, ever insisting that it would be impossible to find a drop of racism in any of their saliva, kept saying that the reason they opposed the name change was because changing their neighborhood school to the MLK school would bring a stigma that would adversely impact their children's ability to succeed in life. The irony should be obvious to even the most dense people reading this. If these White parents could recognize that their children would be stigmatized for going to a school named after Dr. King, how the hell is it that they can't possibly understand the systemic stigmatizing that happens to our children on a daily basis?

The truth is they do understand it. And if you don't believe that just ask the racist white people surrounding you (if you are White) or the bourgeois brown people surrounding you (if you are not white) if they would change places with poor brown people? Just ask them if they would be willing to start their lives over and just change places with any poor brown person anywhere. It isn't a trick question. You see, these are the people who say life is about making decisions. That if someone has misfortune, its only because they haven't put in the necessary work to pull themselves up by their bootstraps. That's what your lying people always say right?

Now you know as well as I do that your people are not going to say they would change places with poor brown people (if they said they would you also know they lying through their racist lips). Now the issue is if they truly believed the worthless rhetoric they are forcing all of us to hear all the time, there should be no reason why they wouldn't change places with anyone. If life is all about choices why wouldn't they trade places with someone in the ghetto? Someone in the barrio? On the Rez? Someone in the poorest place in Africa? Its all about choices right? They could demonstrate to the entire world just how to pull those boots up and overcome that adversity, but they won't agree to do that because your lying people know that there's much, much more at work here. They know that there are forces at work that are in place to keep us oppressed and they damn sure don't want to have to encounter and deal with those forces because they know that they have never had to deal with them. And, they know that they wouldn't be nearly as determined, mature, and strong enough to deal with them as we do on a daily basis. But, they will never admit that in public (although I've had countless white people admit it to me over the years - always after they had downed a few drinks).

This raising of the bar as it relates to stopping their dishonesty is important. It will help us in several ways. It will eliminate the ability of these lying lack of character people from diminishing the experiences of oppressed people as they routinely do right now. It would also save us time. When these people, in their bourgeois liberal form, tell us that we should respond to oppression by somehow going to the system oppressing us to seek justice, we can just avoid all that confusion by telling them how stupid they are for suggesting something that they themselves know would never work to solve the problems.

Of course the real problem isn't just your lying people. The real problem is many of us who permit the conditions to continue to exist where your people can maintain this lie. We do this by pretending that this system will change just because we want it to. That we aren't going to be required to change along with it. We deny that the change we need will require us to be much more uncomfortable ourselves than we are willing to be right now. We are not willing to stop relying on fantasy. We instead prefer to continue to perpetuate our own lies that we can bring about justice just by getting upset about oppression instead of committing our lives and raising the bars to become much more consistent. To listen to things we don't want to hear and submit to them when they make more sense than what we are doing now. Many of us aren't willing to do any of those things. Instead we keep doing the same thing over and over while expecting a different outcome which we all know is the definition of insanity. Than, we have the audacity to look down at our noses at our lying people when we are all playing the same game, just with different cards.

Kwame Ture said is perfectly in 1967 when he said "the white man has been playing God for centuries. Its time for us to tell him play time is over!" I'm going to humbly add to that statement by saying that play time is over for all of us. If we are not uncomfortable in ways we cannot control and we are not willing to sit in that uncomfortable space while engaging the work to build ourselves beyond that place in healthy ways, we are not willing to grow. And if we are not willing to grow we are not serious about challenging this system. And, if we are not serious about challenging this system we are not really about working to agitate our sick and dysfunctional people into becoming better people. Its time to make a decision. You should know that whatever you are, you are not fooling anyone besides yourself. Make that decision to do something you are not doing that raises up your effort and stick to it. Push yourself and stop settling for projecting an image. I was 22 years old when I changed my name, thus eliminating the name that was identical to my father's name. It took four years, but he got used to it and accepted my African name. Why, because he saw the hard work and commitment I engaged in to live up to the principles my name projected e.g. "fighting for what I want." He saw me do my best to represent that in my day to day life, in raising my daughter, and how I presented myself. He saw the challenges I faced. He grew to respect that despite the fact I had abandoned his source of pride, his name. By the time he died, he was playfully asking me to give him an African name. I don't relay that story to brag. I tell you that to hopefully inspire you. It wasn't easy having an African name in the 1980s and I suffered extensively because of it, but that's how you build character people. So, can we do something to stop this fakery, lying culture that dominates us? Can we start putting in work? Serious work that improves upon whatever serious work we are putting in, or at least think we are putting in, now?

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Battling white Supremacy: Confusing Mobilization with Organization

6/3/2017

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I posted a piece a few days ago making a critique against the tendency from activists from all elements to appear satisfied to stay on the reactive end of every thing violent white supremacists do from the rallies these creatures mobilize to their simple display of their backward ideologies. Everyone from Charles Barkley to prime time capitalist news are running all over themselves attempting to interview and get the perspectives of these vicious liars and manipulators. In other words, white supremacists are becoming something akin to celebrities when they shock troop for the capitalist system in its continued strategy of keeping easily manipulated European working people poised to blame all their problems on brown people. Kwame Nkrumah, that great revolutionary son of Africa, told us correctly that everything is ideological. So, in the continued effort to wage this ever necessary ideological struggle against capitalism, my article the other day was another contribution towards attempting to get more people to think about long term solutions to wiping out white supremacy. Judging from the majority of responses, primarily from our White cousins, who for the most part seem sincere about making a contribution, there continues to be a dominating confusion. Most of these people seem to think that any effort to challenge us to be more focused and organized in our efforts to confront white supremacy is an automatic rejection of the spontaneous marches, rallies, etc, that continue to happen in response to the presence of white supremacists. If you interpret these writings that way, you couldn't be farther off course.

Actually, the confusion stems from our lack of understanding of the difference between mobilizing and organizing work. The difference between the two is fundamental. Mobilizing work is focused on bringing people together to bring awareness around a specific issue and/or problem. Typically, events like rallies, marches, town hall type meetings, testimonials, etc., are hallmark events for mobilizing efforts because all of these events have one common theme. People are galvanized to come out to a specific event. The event happens, and once its over, there is nothing to bind the attendees to any future work and/or follow up. Think about it. When you attend marches you often see the same people each time, but you have no common agenda and/or plan with any of them. You don't even know for sure if they will be there each time until you see them because there is usually very little coordinated communication in between these events of that nature. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was an effective mobilizer. And there is nothing wrong with mobilization work. Its very necessary and valuable because it helps bring consciousness to a problem. In fact, most of us entered this work through some level of mobilization work so there is no criticism of mobilization here. Some of the most prolific events in our movement have been mobilization activities like the March on Washington which attracted over 250,000 people or both Million Man Marches and the Million Women March which attracted millions. The attraction of people to these events, as well as the local marches taking place everywhere are opportunities to further inform and radicalize people to the core contradictions of this system because these events specialize in bringing people together who otherwise would have no connection to one another. Consequently, it gives people the opportunity to expose new people to new ideas which is a cornerstone to building consciousness in any society. So, hopefully, it is clear that nothing ever written here is intended to serve as a "you must do this and not that or you are problematic!" I've said it many times that any work is better than no work and our great African patriot Ahmed Sekou Ture correctly stated that "bad organization is always better than none!"

Still, it is important to understand the difference between mobilization and organization work. Since mobilization work is focused on events and galvanizing people for those events, organizational work uses events to galvanize people for future work and activities. African Liberation Day is an example of an organizing event. Our focus for African Liberation Day all over the world is to encourage African people to join the All African People's Revolutionary Party or some organization working for justice. Every year, our theme is centered around a commitment to this message and anyone familiar with our party knows that to be our central statement. That's true because we are consistent with that message and if you sign up with us for more information, you will receive a phone call and follow up work to try and get you involved in future activities beyond African Liberation Day. In fact, when we pass you an African Liberation Day post card, poster, etc., we aren't even all that concerned that you come to the event. Our real focus is to get you to follow up on the principles displayed in the event. I've recruited many people into the party over the years who I met handing them flyers to events they didn't even attend. I struck up a conversation with them and once it was established that they have an interest in participating in our liberation struggle I get their contact information and follow up with them to have further, more advanced, discussions. Eventually, there is an ask for them to get permanently involved. I have recruited people into the All African People's Revolutionary Party who have gone forward from this initial process to become outstanding and committed cadre within our party. Some have even enhanced that commitment by moving to Africa to continue that work for the party there. Some have left the party, but gone on to other organizations where they make their contribution. All of this is wonderful because the objective behind organizational work is to build capacity to engage our enemies - the capitalist system - on an ongoing and consistent basis for the protracted struggle we know we have in store for ourselves. We know we cannot have revolution without revolutionaries and we also know the process of creating revolutionaries takes time, patience, love, and commitment. That's why I can tell you that I've probably spent about 60% of my time in the All African People's Revolutionary Party engaged with people for this one on one work I'm describing here because that's the core work that must be done.

So, possibly, one productive way to look at it is mobilization work is an introduction for people into the movement and organizational work is the way people engage the work to build struggle institutions. So obviously, based on that example, both methods are important and valuable. The problem I expressed in the last article that I think many people are missing is that practically everyone who is involved on any level right now is involved specifically in mobilization work. There are very few practical organizing efforts where sustainable work is taking place. And this is true while mobilizers, confused about this question, call themselves organizers despite the fact they have never engaged in any work to build any institutions for struggle. We know there is confusion about all of this because most of the folks doing mobilizing work are not involved in organizations. They just show up and some of them have been doing that for so long they mistakenly believe they are organizing. You are not. You are showing up. Its not a criticism, but can you imagine the police just showing up everyday with no plan, no training, no vision. Clearly, the police have a plan. Clearly they have a vision. You don't kill and lock up millions of people as they have without a plan being in place. You could actually say the police are the very bottom of a plan that includes corporations, media, political structures, and government agencies, working hand in hand to achieve their objective of profitability. And, since this backward system is based on exploiting Africa to maintain profitability, that means the masses of African people must remain oppressed. That requires the type of systemic organization that you have seen over the last 500+ years. And, you expect to beat that system by relying on an arbitrary process of just showing up? That's my point. So, you can do mobilization work, but you must be in an organization that requires you to take your mobilization efforts to a higher level beyond just showing up. That's my message. All organizers have to have an organization. There is no such thing as an organizer without an organization because individuals cannot build institutions by themselves.

So, have your rallies and marches, but realize that if that's all most of us are doing and most of those folks are not in organizations, we are not building capacity to defeat the problem. We are continually locked in a cycle of responding to the problem. Organizing work is connected to the type of work I described in the last article. That will move us to victory when all cylinders are clicking. Not 90% doing mobilization work, five percent doing nothing and the other five percent attempting to organize while our enemies are 100% organized. Can we at least get a commitment to aim for at least a 70% mobilization, 30% organization split? At least for now?

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Listen to Those Who Know: Don't React to white supremacists

6/1/2017

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Its fashionable today to be against white supremacy and all forms of oppression. That's of course a good thing because it reflects the reality that these core principles are starting to gain some traction. That doesn't change the fact that many of us have been informing and educating about white supremacy and all forms of oppression long before many of you who talk about it everyday now could even formulate the words. So, please humbly pardon us if we tell you that you are not helping the cause by continuing to jump up and react to each and everything the white supremacists do. Every time they have a rally, stop helping them publicize it. I mean, some people even make a news day out this ground scum simply showing up somewhere. Believe me, and this goes also for many of the new school African activists who just entered the fray a short time ago, we have been battling these people for a long, long time. We were throwing blows and much more against them before you ever dreamed of any type of confrontation against them. We have studied these people inside and out. We passed the phase of reacting emotionally to them decades ago. Now, we just organize to build power to either win them over or wipe them out. And the killer is they know this. That's why you never see them coming after us although we openly challenge them. Openly taunt them. Openly question their courage. For those of you who are sincerely attempting to engage this fight, shouldn't that tell you something? If nothing else it should tell you that these people really don't want the so-called confrontation they keep clamoring about because if they did, they know exactly where to go to get it. And they know it wouldn't be the Islamic Masjid filled with recent immigrant families who mistakenly believe their key to safety is kissing up to capitalist white supremacy. These racists whites know there will be little resistance against them there so that's why that's always where they show up. If those cowards really wanted confrontation, wouldn't they go to the Nation of Islam, which really is one of the oldest, if not the oldest, Islamic communities in the U.S.? Or, even some of the more radical Masjids that exist? They don't go to those places because they know their reception will be quite different. We just had African Liberation Days all over the world. In places where white supremacists are coming out like the sun. Chicago, Atlanta, California, London, Toronto, and yet these cowardly roaches weren't at any of these events because they know the reception they would get in East Oakland wouldn't advance their struggle much. It would have only advanced the claims being paid out by their disability and death insurance companies.

These are facts friends so please stop reacting to them showing up places with no plan other than you being there when they get there. By doing that, you are playing directly into their hands and actually, you are helping to legitimize them which serves their interests for recruitment purposes. Look, we know its hard for you because from your perspective, these people don't really represent this society so you are shocked and offended that they exist. We get that even though we have been telling you for hundreds, yes that's right, hundreds of years now that these people simply are the underbelly of the much smoother and sophisticated outside of this decadent system. They always have been and they always will be. What's happening now isn't anything new. Surely you know this. Seeing them may be new to you, but its now new. So think about it for a moment. Stop reacting to white supremacists and when we say that we include the police in that category. Start planning your responses. Cut these people off at the base. That would mean going to the factories that produce them - uh, that would be the communities you grew up in. And start doing work to steer some of these people into a different more productive direction. Work in those communities on a daily basis. Do a survey. Go door to door. Ask the people what they want. When they tell you better schools, etc., use whatever they tell you as an organizing mechanism to reach them. Educate that their true enemy is this capitalist system, not the brown people who have less, and have always had less, in this system than they do. For the Europeans reading this, the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee issued a call for European (White) people to start doing this work 50 years ago and we are still waiting. For the Africans and everyone else reading this its difficult for us to understand why and how you could ever think it to be a good idea to show up anywhere white supremacists are without a plan?

My concern is that many of you really aren't all that interested in solving this problem. Compare it to dating. Some men who pursue women for example. Some of these guys have absolutely no interest in finding a woman and building towards a serious relationship with one. They want the possibility of establishing a ready entry into someone's pants, preferably on a need to have basis, but they can't say that because most women aren't going to give them the time of day once they know that. So, instead, these guys play along like they are in it to win it. We realize that this is how many of you are approaching this struggle for justice, even if you don't yet realize it. Like that guy who only wants to roll around the bed, you really aren't interested in engaging this struggle with the commitment it requires and deserves. You are just doing this while it provides you the thrill that you get from showing up when the "enemy" is going to be there. For those of you where this applies, this writing isn't for you. This writing is for those of you who want to seriously end this suffering. The only way its going to happen is through hard work. Showing up isn't anywhere near enough. It requires serious planning and commitment. Much more of that then we see happening right now.

So, consider a reality where wherever the white supremacists showed up we didn't meet them there. If your fear is if they go unchallenged that will make it easier for them to recruit that wouldn't be true if you are doing the necessary work with the communities they wish to recruit from. Just think about it. If you are white, you can do that work to a certain point where you can organize your communities enough where you can build capacity so that the communities themselves will start to refuse to permit this trash to stink up their environments. When you achieve that the police won't be able to stop you. Nothing will be able to stop you. For you Africans, we have already seen examples where our people, either through the efforts of the Black Liberation Army, Black Panther Party, Nation of Islam, Universal Negro Improvement Association, Democratic Party of Guinea, etc., have achieved levels of organization where the police could not even enter our communities. We desire to bring that back in higher levels of organization, but we need soldiers who are committed to sticking it out and doing the hard work to make this come into existence.

You know, we get it. You are sickened by naked white supremacy. That nauseous feeling you are having I've had my entire life. So we get it, but we also get what it takes to heal that nausea once and for all. And at a certain point we have to question your seriousness when we continually give you the solution and you ignore it. I mean, are you in this for a serious commitment are you just doing a hit it and quit it stint in this struggle for liberation? Ten years from now will you be one of those tired @ss people who claim to have "already done that" as it relates to this struggle? Bitter, annoying, and doing nothing except contributing to our continued oppression? Never being self aware and honest enough to admit that the "already done that" you did was nothing more than the getting in the way that are doing 10 years from now, just in a different form. C'mon now. Our children and future generations deserve much better than that, don't they? Especially when we can give it to them if we just focused a little more. If we don't, we can't blame it on the white supremacists. That one will be all on us.

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Colin Kaepernick: A Clear Case of Truth Disconnecting from Reality

A Brief History of Juneteenth or June 19th

Revolutionary Organizing in Babylon. A Lonely Life

Neo-colonialism in The Gambia: Breaking It Down

Stop Faking Ignorance about What's Needed to End this Oppression

Battling white Supremacy: Confusing Mobilization with Organization

Listen to Those Who Know: Don't React to white supremacists

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