Ahjamu Umi's: "The Truth Challenge"
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4th of the Lie and American Identity = white supremacy for All

6/30/2018

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Here it comes again.  Every year we are subjected to this absurd charade.  This year's July 4th will happen with a backdrop of this filthy government terrorizing thousands of Indigenous families and children.  This upcoming 4th will take place with parades, barbeques, and fireworks while state sanctioned terrorists - known as police - continue to shoot down African people and other oppressed folks like they are participating in a contest or something.  This coming Wednesday, the fourth, comes just one week after U.S. Supreme Court Jesters struck down a 40 year labor standard that threatens to challenge progress for working people for generations.  

Don't get me wrong.  I fully expect the capitalist system to do everything in and above its power to continue to exploit all of humanity.  That's who they are.  That's what they do.  What gets me about July 4th is this year, despite all of the above mentioned and much more, this annual fake out will take place with the full compliance of millions of otherwise decent and honest people.  That's the part that has always struck me.  How conscious people, who I have conscious conversations with on June 30th can turn around and wear red, white, and blue and "celebrate America" on July 4th.  There is literally no conceivable way that people could actually be this confused.

First, the day itself is a complete lie just from a basic historical standpoint.  How the hell can you claim a day that's supposed to represent freedom for 300 million people who live in this country when most of those people were either slaves and not acknowledged as human beings (Africans), systemically exterminated and not acknowledged as human beings (Indigenous peoples), and oppressed and not acknowledged as equal human beings (European women), on July 4th, 1776.  Apparently, either the propaganda of this capitalist system is something people just have no capacity to resist, or folks are just burying their heads in the sand (probably a little of both) because come next Wednesday, most everyone, including sizable populations from all those segments I mentioned, will be celebrating "freedom" as if nothing previously mentioned here is reality.  

For me, the 4th of the Lie has always been just that.  Well, there was the celebration of my parent's wedding anniversary on July 4th.  My parents, fresh victims of Jim Crow racism in Louisiana and California once they moved out here, told me from the time I could talk that the 4th had absolutely nothing to do with our family and our people.  We did celebrate their anniversary until my father passed away in 1999.  Since then, I've been free to focus on that day as a day of mourning for the suffering of humanity.  Pretty much every year for the last 20 years, I wear my "African in amerikkka" shirt on that day.  If I don't, I wear some form of resistance clothing.  And, every time I wear that shirt on that day, someone sees it and asks me why I'm wearing it, on that day.  The degree of civility I utilize to respond to them depends completely on the degree of civility they use in asking the question, but even the most innocent inquiry challenges basic sanity.  Isn't asking an African that question the same as asking a mouse why they don't seem to see the need to celebrate the glory and wonderful existence of cats?  

The last question was completely rhetorical.  I think I understand very well why people respond the way they do to the 4th.  We have been completely remote control programmed to celebrate all of these imperialist holidays.  The capitalist classes are master propagandists.  No one knows how to deliver a message better than multi-national corporations.  They use their massive influence e.g. control of the mass media, to institutionalize all these imperialist holidays as propaganda for their message of supporting them, at all costs.  American nationalism is fueled by fear and ignorance.  There is no credible threat to the safety and security of the United States and there never has been.  Even the Soviet Union at its top nuclear capacity only had a portion of the weaponry held by the U.S. and today there is no other power on Earth that can even come as close as the Soviets to the U.S. stockpile.  The U.S. has more military in more parts of the world than any other country.  And, any threat the U.S. claims e.g. North Korea, Iran, Cuba, etc., can be directly traced to historical and systemic U.S. aggression against those countries.  So, there's no threat, but the capitalists know they have to convince people here that there is a threat and the way they do that is by constantly promoting the concept that your "freedoms" and way of life in this country are under threat by somebody.  This week its North Korea.  Last week, ISIS.  The week before, Al Queda.  Before that Qaddafi, then Khomeni, etc, etc., etc.  The capitalist classes know that 95% of you are not going to pick up a book about anywhere else in the world and read it if someone put a gun to your head.  So, they know they needn't worry about you developing an understanding and analysis of what is actually happening in the world.  They have worked so hard to get most of you so uninterested in the world that 75% of people born in the U.S. have no passport, the lowest percentage by far of any technologically industrialized country.  They know most of you are not reading about anywhere and you aren't traveling anywhere, so that leaves you 100% dependent upon them for your interpretation of the world.  If they feed you their crap that the world wants to kill you, they can then easily convince you that your only salvation is clinging to their flag and their empire.  This system is absolutely ill-refutable.  That's why the capitalists can kill and plunder the entire planet and no one in the U.S. even blinks.  That's why you not only cannot get an intelligent conversation with people, even U.S. military personnel who engaged in the countries, about Iraq, Afghanistan, Iran, Vietnam, etc, you can't even find too many people who are even qualified to point out these places on a map.  And any questions about the history and geo-political realities of these countries would produce an absolute oblivion.  Yes, American nationalism is a tool to control you.   And, the 4th is a propaganda mechanism to perpetuate the tool.  

That's why anyone who has a true sense of justice has to take the position that American identity, in any form, shape, or construct, is the complete and undeniable equivalent to white supremacy.  In other words, it is absolutely impossible for you to be an American and not be white supremacist, and that's with the advanced understanding that white supremacy is a philosophical construct which means even brown people can be white supremacists e.g. advancing the notion of white supremacy.  You can't justify it.  You can't rationalize it.  There is no separating the two.  So, every  time you say "we bombed them" you are buying into the myth that you are a part of the U.S. war machine.  When you say "our troops" you are buying into their agenda.  Whenever you say "we" when referencing this criminal empire you are defacto identifying yourself as a part of the empire.  And, when you do that, you are subconsciously saying what the empire does is ok because in that mindset, you are not going to be able to seriously denounce this system as corrupt because doing so would require you to denounce yourself as corrupt.  What you are also doing is putting into place the belief that this system can be saved.  It would have to be saved because you are a part of it and if you are a part of it, destroying the system means destroying you.  All of these mind tricks are the work of imperialism.  You see, the 4th is their commercial.  Each year that they run it, they convince you, reinforce within you, that you are with them.  That's their design.

This certainly doesn't have to be the end of the road or the conclusion of this story.  We believe that oppression breeds resistance.  So, since we know the 4th is nothing more than a propaganda tool for big business, you can decide not to play along.  You do have that capability.  I was proudly one of the persons who started commemorating and organizing 4th of the Lie commemorations on July 4th several years ago.  I worked with other party comrades to initiate this idea in Miller Park in Sacramento, California, U.S., in 2002 because we got tired of sitting around on this day just having to bear the hypocrisy.  We wanted to build an institution that would promote a different healthier message.  That we the message that Africans are always fighting against the U.S. empire.  We were not free on July 4th and the day is a slap in the face to all of us who maintain our dignity.  Instead, we should use the day to strengthen our resolve to fight back against this backward, decadent system.  We use this institution to suggest to other communities that the decision to be American - and unwittingly support white supremacy - is your choice.  You can chose not to do that.  You can decide that instead, you are European descendants of colonizers who denounce the ideas and actions of your ancestors. You can declare that you prefer instead to embrace a narrative of justice, not skin color.  For all people, these are your choices.  And since its your choice its not my job to do your work for you.  In the Western U.S., our organization is doing some version of a 4th of the Lie commemoration in Oakland, California, U.S., Portland, Oregon, U.S., and Albuquerque, New Mexico, U.S.  If you are not near any of those cities, you can do what we did in 2002, just organize a simple potluck and invite people.  Start with 15 people.  Bring some music.  Have a discussion about what the day actually is compared to what they want you to think it is.  That may not sound like much, but those of us who understand movement building realize that if people in different pockets, in different cities, met in groups of 10/15 people and did that, millions of people would be doing it.  If millions of people are engaging in this type of rejection of the capitalist version of the 4th, we are actually participating in a concerted effort to change the narrative.  That level of conscious building is how revolutions form my friends (and enemies).

There is no grey area.  There is no middle ground.  Make the correct decision to resist being an American because you don't want to be a white supremacist.  And make absolutely no mistake about it.  Whether you are a liberal bourgeois white supremacist, a white supremacist in blackface, or a white sheet wearing white supremacist, to us, its all the same thing at the end of the day because the results are the same.  Justice is being trampled upon.  You still have a few days left to decide to do something different.  



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How Justice People Prepare for War Against the Super Rich

6/27/2018

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At a cursory glance, the world today is not providing much inspiration for future progress.  Poverty and disease are on pandemic levels throughout the world.  U.S. military dominance represses genuine resistance to imperialism in Africa as accepted public policy.  Similar efforts dominate the lives of millions in Central and South America.  Native rights are constantly threatened in Canada and the U.S. demonizes and brutalizes children born in other countries while completely eradicating the rights of working people to organize for better futures.  Meanwhile, police terrorism is common practice against oppressed people all over the world and global warming threatens to sabotage any vision of a future for all of humanity.

Despite all of this gloom and doom, revolutionaries are never discouraged.  We have the tools of science that help us place whatever is happening within its proper historical and political perspective.  Dialectical materialism teaches us that every material element within the world has weight and occupies space.  And, all of those material entities have within them the process of positive and negative components.  Those positive and negative components are engaged in a constant and relentless struggle for dominance.  This is universally true of every element that exists.  By understanding this scientific phenomenon, we know that regardless of whatever bad is happening to us, the fact that its happening, tells us that there has to objectively be a way to correct the injustice.  No matter what it is, this science confirms there has to be a way to change it.  Revolutionaries understand this as our basic operating principle so we cannot ever be discouraged and disillusioned.  Instead, the problems of the day provide us with opportunities to come up with methods to prepare the people on how to effectively fight back.

Since reformist methods designed to gain influence within the capitalist system have plenty of airspace everywhere, we will instead focus here on revolutionaries strategies to confront the challenges of this day.  First, we must ask everyone to join and/or start an organization working for justice.  We say this often, but we recognize that people are programmed to view the world through a strictly elitist and individualistic vision.  Consequently, it will take some time for us to process the significance of this statement about organizations.  We need each other to build capacity to win.  And, in order for us to learn how to shed that individualism and learn how to respect and work with each other, we have to first get involved in the vehicles - organizations - that permit us to work together.  Look at it like this, the organization is the motor vehicle.  If you have a vision of getting somewhere, and the vehicle is your mechanism to get there, the only way you will understand the journey is by getting in that vehicle and moving in the direction you wish to go.  If we understand this concept, we wouldn't waste time arguing about the type of vehicle (like we want to argue about the type of organization or which organization).  Even if the vehicle is a bucket, if it moves, it helps you participate and understand the journey.  Once you are moving, you can then learn that you can potentially find a vehicle that has a better stereo system, more comfortable seating, better gas mileage, etc., to help your journey advance more effectively.  Its the same with organizations.  By participating, you can decide whether the mission, philosophy, ideology, and action program is acceptable to you.  If you don't ever start out on the journey, despite the vehicle you use to do it, you will never understand what it takes to have a more effective journey.  You won't even ever know for sure if you can even complete your journey.  Equally so, if you never belong (meaning participate and do the work, not just belong on paper) to any organization, you can never understand the factors needed to build capacity to win.

Once we have people involved in organizations, we must push our organizations to focus on organizing various sectors of our communities.  There is enough work here for everyone.  Students, elderly people, workers, women, non-men, peasants, criminals, etc., all of these segments of society must be organized.  The way to approach this is for organizations to work together to work with sectors.  We build self-determination infrastructure.  We can start with housing for example.  Pick a neighborhood and canvass it explaining to people that vacant houses in their neighborhood will soon be filled with needy families.  The conversations are focused on helping people understand that it benefits banks, not them, to have empty houses in their communities and that everyone deserves a place to live.  Introduce the neighbors to the people moving in and organize block parties to introduce the new families to the community.  Have the family participate in community work designed to help people see the benefits of having them there.  Sign people up to protect the new family and create an environment where people begin to see police as enemies coming in to evict a great family that you know.  After this work in instituted, the people in the neighborhood will decide to refuse to let police evict that family and you will have a dynamic where people are learning to solve their own problems without police in healthy and collective ways.  We can organize this type of self-determination on all levels and the same models can be utilized in the work place, schools, etc.  The objective?  To raise people's consciousness to the reality that the capitalist system is not here to serve our needs.  We will have to do that ourselves and when we learn to do that, we learn that the only thing we need from capitalism to do it is control of the resources that the capitalist system stole from us in the first place.  In other words, you are instituting socialist consciousness among the people.  The more they get, the more they are going to want it.

If we cannot move to these levels of fighting back, the best you can hope for is electing a politician who will hopefully hold off the negative results for a year or two.  We deserve much better than that and the reason we don't have it is the masses of people are not organized to empower themselves.  All we have working right now are efforts to empower individuals to influence within the capitalist system when our true objective has to be destroying this backward system. 

No one is saying organizing our communities will be easy.  In fact, the reason we don't have it today is everyone is looking for the easier shortcut out of dealing with our oppression.  Dialectics teaches us there is no shortcut.  As Malcolm X said and as dialectics teaches us "extreme conditions require extreme solutions."  As long as we attempting to resolve extreme conditions with shortcut solutions we will forever be stuck with shortcut results.  All of the tragedies I mention occurring today as daily policy are happening because the capitalist system is declining and as a result, its ruling classes, and its class flunkies (national bourgeois everywhere) are trying to consolidate their power by turning the screws tighter around you.  Are you ready to get serious about this?  Or, are you content to just continue to pretend you are fighting back for a better world and a better future?
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African (Black) Women; The Living Definition of Loyalty

6/26/2018

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It was listening to abuser Chris Brown's "These Chicks Ain't Loyal" (or whatever the name of that stupid song is) that prompted me to write this.  African women aren't loyal?  There is no qualified evidence anywhere on Earth that can back up that claim, yet for many African men, those words hold a lot of validity.

Speaking through my own voice, I'm a recovering and born again appreciator of African women.  Its not that I ever did anything to not appreciate African women.  My wonderful daughter is the product of my early marriage to an African woman that I have spent the last several years co-parenting my daughter with.  For me, I've diagnosed that I really took a hard life fall several years ago that really required me to spend a lot of time rebuilding myself.  In the course of that, I realize I convinced myself, somehow, that I didn't qualify for the African woman I would have wanted.  That I wouldn't qualify.  That's my dysfunctional story and I take full responsibility for it.  Its only been the previous year and a half that I've had time to think through this dysfunction.  I've made a lot of changes and consequently, a magnificent thing happened for me, but the point here isn't to talk about my personal life.

I want to make the point that despite my struggles over the years, I found myself struggling over the loss of an important person this past weekend. Someone who I hadn't had much contact with over the last several years, but who had quite an impact on me in my developing years.  As is typically the case when death happens in this scenario, you are hit hard by the realities of what you had with that person that can never happen again.  Here, this past weekend, I was fortunate to be consoled by the wonderful African woman in my life who never knew this person lost, but she knows me.  And, she wants to support me.  And, she did in a way that I just hadn't experienced in quite some time.  

This doesn't need to be a long artticle/post because the thesis is simple.  For every African man out there who is claiming African women aren't loyal.  They aren't honest.  They aren't good enough.  Whatever the dysfunction.  All I'm saying is if you handle yourself with honesty, integrity, bravery, and selflessness, there are more than enough African women who have always historically been willing to step up to the plate and meet your effort with an equal amount of all of those principles and more.  And, this is true despite the undeniable truth that we as men do not have a stacked resume of accomplishments with our sisters to justify that level of commitment from them, yet they are here, waiting for us.  

None of this is to say that any of us are perfect.  Of course, there are African women out here who behave in reprehensible ways.  Still, by the numbers, if you as a man do all of the above that I mentioned, that sister is out here for you.  I mean, its not like European women with integrity are just knocking your door down left and right.  In other words, for every African woman you claim let you down, I'm sure that's universally true for all types of women because we seldom look in the mirror first to identify why things don't go the way we desire in our lives.

That's all I'm saying here.  Love who makes you happy, but don't attack and/or reject African women on some insane dysfunctional level.  Its time for us to stand in front of that mirror. Its time for us to approach our sisters with principles of integrity and justice.  And, then I'm suggesting that we meet back here at a later date to discuss the results.   I already know that most of us are going to come out in wonderful shape.

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Smashing the Violent Lie of American Exceptionalism

6/21/2018

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We have currently been witnessing the national policy of violently forcing the separation of babies from their families.  To far too many people within the U.S., this is acceptable.  Its ok to them because those people constantly reassure themselves with the often repeated refrains; "being inhumane is not who we are!  We are the beacon on freedom and democracy.  Our forefathers established this nation based on the principles of freedom and justice."  I even heard a new one from some petty-bourgeois intellectual of dark skin who exclaimed "when we say this isn't who we are, we are talking about the ideals and promises of this country, not its history."

Ponder that last statement for a moment.  What a wonderful thing for imperialism.  They have created a reality where they can pretend that the only thing that matters is the nonsense in their heads.  According to this logic, the material history, the things that were done, can have no impact on the perception of this country as long as the leaders of this empire continue to vomit out platitudes of how great this nation is.

Let's reiterate that infants, babies, were wrested from the bosoms of their mothers and placed in jail cells and this was/is the national policy of this country.  Saying that something like that happening is simply a one off departure from the values of this country is like saying a dog eating a bone is a misnomer.  Regardless of how many people in this country have their head's shoved firmly up their rear ends, there is absolutely no question that this latest inhumane treatment against the Indigenous people's of the Western Hemisphere is nothing except the most recent example of exactly what this country always has been.

This is the country that kidnapped millions of Africans and separated their children from their parents in a systematically violent and dehumanizing process that existed as day to day procedure here for 350 years.  This is the place that separated scores of Indigenous children from their parents in their effort to systemically destroy Indigenous capacity to defend their stolen lands.  This country violently separated Japanese children from their parents during World War II, placing them in similar cages as the ones they are placing Indigenous children in today.  This country violently murdered millions of children in Korea, Vietnam, Greneda, Panama, Libya, Sudan, Iraq, and Afghanistan for nothing except corporate profits.  There is no confusion here.  This country cares only about its political and economic interests. Its cares as much about a bunch of brown children as it cares about a bunch of rats.  In fact, many of these mini brained people in this society would probably raise an even louder outrage if animals were being mistreated as these brown children (and adults) have been treated since the beginning of this settler colonial regime.

Another sickening development is the liberal white establishment - equally guilty as their alleged "conservative" class partners - is fond of saying "highlighting past wrongs diminishes what's happening with these children today."  That's a smooth talking point, but it won't work.  Bringing out this country's brutal history is cathartic for oppressed people who have been hoodwinked by the massive 24/7 propaganda machine that pumps the lie of a free and democratic country.  We have to make sure people understand clearly that the reason this is happening today is because that type of action is what fuels this country.  The larger picture is that U.S. led policies and efforts over the last several decades have been the exact cause for why the countries of origin for these suffering people have been devastated in the first place.  The U.S. insistence of forcing imperialist financial control over Central America through International Monetary Fund and World Bank structural adjustment financing (almost half of those bank organization's budgets come from the U.S.).  This "financing" has destroyed social infrastructure in Mexico, El Salvador, Guatamala, Honduras, etc., in order to create profitable finance projects for these large banking institutions.  These country's inability to pay these illegal loans has caused them to lose the ability to maintain basic human societal structures like schools, healthcare, and security.  This reality has paved the way for decay, violent drug cartels, and inadequate infrastructure that has completely destabilized these countries to the point where their people are desperately trying to find peace and stability for their families.  That is the reason they are seeking asylum in the U.S.  To equate this development to people seeking "freedom and democracy" is like having a thief for a next door neighbor and having that neighbor bomb you out of your house and then receive praise and adulation for locking you in a cage in their front yard when you no longer have anywhere else to go.

There never has been any exceptionalism in this country.  God has never blessed this cesspool.  What's happened is this country has attacked and destroyed anything in its path that stood in the way of it stealing everyone else's resources, and to get people to support that systemic theft, they came up with white supremacy and this myth of the blessed U.S.  Along with this sickness, Europeans in this country have been taught to believe all of this belongs to them and them alone.  That they created all this wealth, when the truth is the wealth only exists because it was stolen from other peoples.  We even learned in school that people fled Europe to escape shortages so how the hell did that evolve to Europeans creating a land of "milk and honey" here in the U.S.?  The wealth is stolen and we have never stopped fighting to get our wealth back.  The only God that matters could never be on the side of the U.S. and any God that is on their side we should rush as fast as we can to the other side to get away from them.

This latest episode is just the last in a long line of evidence about how wicked this country is.  Everyone who sides with that wickedness is making a decision to stand opposite to the masses of people on Earth.  One day soon, those still living who made that decision will greatly regret agreeing to stand on the wrong of history, but by then, it will more than likely be too late for them.

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Discussing the Major Trauma Fueling Our Rejection of Mother Africa

6/17/2018

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This article is really aimed at every African (every person of African descent) wherever you live on the planet Earth.  This article isn't directed at non-Africans, although you are welcome and encouraged to read it (since your confusion and ignorance about this question is a significant element in why this is an issue for us in the first place).

We start by expressing in clear language that whether evolutionary development drove us from Africa 70,000 years ago (the Aboriginals in Australia), the transatlantic slave trade forced us out of Africa 300 years ago, or Africa's challenged economic infrastructure caused us to leave Africa last week, we are still all Africans.  On this question, we should take direction from the Australian Aboriginal Africans, who left Africa so long ago, but still saw the importance of participating in the historical 5th Pan-African Congress in 1945 (the Aboriginal Rights Society).  They made that connection to Africa, despite thousands upon thousands of years of separation from Africa, because they knew that their need to connect to Africa is not about it being the place they came from.  The connection is all about them understanding the relationship between the future of Africa and their future.

So, for the sake of argument, we start by declaring we are all Africans whether in the U.S., Canada, Europe, the Caribbean, Central/South America, Australia, or Africa.  We are Africans.  Now, from that point we transition to discuss the major trauma, particularly Africans born and living in the U.S., have about connecting to Africa.  I've spent over a half century on this Earth and 66% of that time has been spent as a Pan-Africanist - meaning I believe every person of African descent is an African that belongs to the African nation.  With Africans within the U.S., we are being faced today with a reality where we are pushing back against the concept of being Africans.  Anyone who studies the scientific evidence would immediately have to relinquish to the clear reality of who we are.  Everything from the origins of Sickle Cell Anemia to our common usage of clear African verbal communication techniques (uh huh, um, um, um - how many non-Africans have you seen communicating like that?) makes it unquestionable that we are African people.  Unfortunately, the challenge with this understanding today is the intense trauma Africans in the U.S. feel around this question.  As Malcolm X so eloquently articulated, "you know nothing about Africa, and you aren't accepted in America."  So, the African in the U.S. is in a strange and unique emotional condition where, based on our understanding of this dilemma, we are forced to go with the devil - the U.S. - because that's the only thing that we know and this reality is extremely traumatizing for us.  Its the equivalent of a child being forced to be with a parent who clearly has contempt for them.  That consistently brutalizes and rejects them.  That child is going to grow up extremely dysfunctional and that's the sad situation Africans within the U.S. find ourselves in today.

This is a problem that doesn't impact other Africans stolen from Africa to the same extent and there are historical reasons why.  In South America - places like Guyana, Brazil, etc., and Central America and the Caribbean, enslaved Africans outnumbered our European captors.  So, even though they had superior weapons and were able to physically dominate us at various times, there were many more of us then them in places like Cuba, Brazil, Belize, Jamaica, Haiti, etc.  As a result, those Africans were able to retain much of our African culture.  Culture is a people's definition of who they are.  So, despite our impoverished conditions in Haiti, Brazil, etc., we still knew who we were.  This is unquestionably documented.  Its the reason West African Ife is still practiced in the Caribbean (Santeria) and Brazil.  In fact, in Bahia, Brazil, Africans can still be heard speaking West African Yoruba.  And, for anyone who has traveled to places like Jamaica or Haiti, as well as Africa, much of what is happening appears very, very similar.  So, Africans outside of the U.S. in the Western Hemisphere have been able to hang onto their sense of who we are and that sense has permitted us to hold that basic level of humanity that has helped us cope with the inhumanity of this backward capitalist nightmare we have been living for the last 500 years.  If you need an example of why this is important, think about the old saying that everyone needs something to believe in.  If someone doesn't have that something, their reasons for living diminish to the point where they are a danger to themselves and others.  Well, a people with no sense of who they are can be that danger to themselves and others.

Unlike our family members who were able to retain some element of our culture, Africans in the U.S. were physically dominated by Europeans.  We were brutally punished if we even thought about attempting to speak our languages and practice our cultural norms.  Why?  Because the Europeans knew that the way to subdue and subjugate a people is to eliminate their understanding of who they are.  So, here we are today with our only understanding of spirituality being provided to us by the system that oppresses us.  Actually, pretty much everything we do, all the way down to what we call ourselves, has been provided to us by our enemies.  This tragic phenomenon has caused an almost psychological breakdown among the African masses in the U.S.  I would argue, ironically, that it has only been the undetected African elements within us that have permitted us to survive.  Or, as Africans within the Uhuru movement say "unleash the African within you struggling to be free!"  Still, all struggle is of course dialectical, so on the surface, we feel abandoned, rejected, and forced to identify with a system that has made it quite clear it wants nothing to do with us.  That would cause anyone to go insane.  For many of us, this trauma has resulted in our having intense anger against Africa just as any abandoned child would have against a parent who they perceive left them to face misery unprotected.  This backward system has repressed any knowledge of our African experience so most of us have no idea of the many, many, efforts our people made to recover those of us who were lost.  History is full of examples of Africans who overtook slave ships and directed them here, many of them to never make it, in sincere efforts to rescue those of us who were captured.  Another thing Africans in the U.S. aren't thinking about, because of this trauma, is the extent to which our kidnapping crippled Africa.  Imagine yourself on a camping trip with all the people you love.  Picture these beautiful people being picked off one by one.  Would you sit there and say "well, that's them."  Of course you wouldn't.  You would try to defend them, but at the same time, you had to ensure you were not captured, that your remaining loved ones were safe.  And, even after the captors left, wouldn't you be forever haunted by being unable to stop this carnage from happening to you and your family?  All one has to do is explore the Elmira Slave dungeon in Cape Coast, Ghana, Goree Island, in Senegal, and other locations and you would see the scars of pain left from those who could not stop our holocaust from happening.  This history has been kept from Africans in the U.S. because doing so serves the interests of our enemies.  They know they have to always make you think you have absolutely no alternative except to stay with them, no matter how much they abuse us.

The other traumatic piece is the shameful and disgraceful analysis of Africans in the U.S. that is consistently being provided by Africans born in Africa who come to the U.S.  For most Africans in the U.S., this is their primary and only source of information about Africa.  The first thing that must be said about that is if you lived next door to Jeb and Jethro in any U.S. city, I doubt you would stroll over to them while they were drinking beer on their porch and flying confederate flags to secure their insight into what makes the U.S. tick?  My point is just because someone is from somewhere doesn't mean they know a damn thing about that place.  People have all types of selfish and opportunistic reasons for believing the things they do.  Or, as Malcolm tried to educate us 50 years, we have always had field and house negroes, in Africa as well as in every other place in the African world.  

If you stop and think about all the anti-immigration rhetoric happening within the U.S., its important to understand this racism didn't come out of nowhere.  Prior to 1965, practically no immigrants of color were even permitted within the U.S. because of the quota system that was in operation then.  It was only because of the African civil rights movement that this racist quota system was disbanded and since that time approximately 85% of the immigrants coming to the U.S. have been non-European (white).  With this understanding, its certainly absurd for any African born in Africa to look down their noses at Africans in the U.S. since our struggle here is the only reason they are here.  And, if you have been to Africa as often as I have you know how difficult it is to get a visa to come into the U.S.  Its even harder now, but its never been easy.  I've even experienced struggle getting back in this country and I was born and raised here.  African activists used to have to marry Africans born at home in Africa as the only way they could stay here.  What else would you expect from this racist country?  So, my point is with women advertising in African newspapers for U.S. "citizen" men to bring them over here, any African here with a visa is an African who comes from some level of influence in Africa.  They are not the everyday African in Africa who by and large, are lucky if they travel 100 miles their entire life.  Most of you in command of your sanity would never accept someone like Clarence Thomas (sell out U.S. Supreme Court Justice), Ben Carson (Trump Secretary), or Kanye West as your spokesperson in other countries, so why would you accept just any random African born in Africa as the voice of the entire African continent?  This isn't to say every African born in Africa is a mouthpiece of our enemies.  I have had the honor and privilege to recruit and/or work with scores of African youth born in Africa who see through the games of our enemies just as we see them from our vantage point.  Its just that far too many of our people born in Africa see coming here and "fitting in" as the pathway to "success" in the U.S. and unfortunately, a portion of that pathway is mistreating the African masses here, an unquestioned requirement in advancing through the social code system of this country.

Confusion about Africa is a key component to capitalism's continued exploitation of cheap African resources.  The minute Africans wake up to this 500 scam against us, its over for imperialism.  They know that, but as long as we continue to play by their rules, they know they have little to worry about.  Playing by their rules means refusing to engage in serious study about Africa, its history, and its relationship to you as an African in the U.S.  The trauma we have because of how we have been brutalized by this system is understandable, but what isn't acceptable is how many of us know we have never read a single book on Africa and wouldn't know a passport application if it slapped us in the face, yet we are insistent on arguing against being Africans or having any connection to Africa.  That's just lazy and ill-responsible.  If you are satisfied with that, then stop reading this right now, but if you would like to do better, there is a pathway for us out of this sad situation.  First, you must decide to commit to learning about Africa and the only way to do that in a healthy way is for us to decide to join and/or start organizations that have or develop study programs on Africa.  We are certainly willing to help you do this.  Its that important.  Also, if you don't have a passport, get one, today.  And, don't just use it to go to Europe.  Go home to Africa.  We can help you do that as well.  We can guarantee you that if you go to Africa with the right people, meaning people who understand Africa's history and our relationship to our mother Africa, you will have an experience that changes your life for the better.

Our trauma is real. Its understandable.  Our unwillingness to do anything to address it is not.


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"He's Coming to Start Riots"; A Sham Attack against Our Militancy

6/14/2018

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Dr. King, Kwame Ture (Stokely Carmichael), and Baba Mukassa (Willie Ricks), during the historic March against Fear where the Black Power slogan was used for the first time in the 1960s U.S. civil rights movement
“He’s Coming to Start Riots” by Gary G. Yerkey is billed as a short biography for Baba Mukassa Dada, formally Willie Ricks.  Baba Mukassa was one of the leading most militant cadres within the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) in the mid 1960s.  He of course was the SNCC organizer who tested the phrase "Black Power" with the African masses in Mississippi in June of 1966 at great personal peril to himself.  He was the one who chided an admittedly uncertain Kwame Ture (Stokely Carmichael) to express the term "Black Power" during that night time rally.  Had he not played that significant, but basically unheralded role, "Black Power" wouldn't have emerged from that dark Mississippi night to become a national movement.  Giving more credibility to Kwame Ture's statement that Pan-Africanism is the highest expression of Black Power, after the 60s, Baba Mukassa went on to continue to make significant contributions to the revolutionary Pan-African movement.  In fact, he still participates heavily in that work, largely supporting the work of the All African People’s Revolutionary Party (A-APRP) e.g. his recent trip to visit Guinea-Bissau as a guest of the A-APRP/African Party for the Independence of Guinea-Bissau (PAIGC). 

As recently as February, 2017, exactly one week before I left Portland, Oregon, U.S., I was able, along with my A-APRP comrades in Portland, to host Baba Mukassa at Portland State University.  He gave a fiery and mesmorizing verbal representation of the raw terror of the civil rights movement and the inspiring events that he participated in that led to the birth of the modern Black power movement on that dusty road in Mississippi in 1966. 

Unfortunately, Yerkey’s book fails in capturing that inspiration that thousands of African youth and students experienced with Baba Mukassa in Guinea-Bissau, Portland, Oregon, U.S., and every other place he visits.  Maybe the book's strange title gives away the author's intentions, but let's go further.  The reason for this failure is Yerkey’s primary point throughout the book is that Baba Mukassa, and all of the militant SNCC leadership, was focused on the Black Power message simply to advance a “personal agenda”, but he never bothers to define or prove what this agenda is. Yerkey, a European author who’s most notable work has been through the Christian Science Monitor, uses this book not as a vehicle to understand the sincere motivations of Baba Mukassa and the rest of the young and militant SNCC staff in the mid 60s, but to replay a tired and racist narrative that SNCC became anti-White and that the move to Black power was violent, destructive, and counter-productive.

The proof of Yerkey’s intentions are visible in the subtle signs that all racist “curators” of African history carelessly display in their sloppy work.  First, although he references Kwame Ture repeatedly throughout the book (Kwame and Baba Mukassa were close comrades and associates), Yerkey never once refers to Kwame by his chosen name.  Instead, he refers to him as Stokely Carmichael exclusively throughout the book.  This is done even when referencing Kwame’s statements from his autobiography “Ready for Revolution” which was released in 2003, a full 26 years after Kwame officially abandoned the European slave name “Stokely Carmichael” for Kwame Ture – his personal tribute to our two great Pan-Africanist revolutionaries – Kwame Nkrumah and Sekou Ture.  Even a child would understand that anyone who changes their name does so because they want to represent the values contained in the new name they’ve chosen.  By refusing to call them their new name, when you clearly understand that’s no longer their name, you are making a conscious effort to disrespect them while perpetuating some sick colonial thinking.  The first rule of respect is giving people the recognition they deserve.  Having changed my own name years ago, I’m very familiar with this cowardly and passive aggressive form of attempting to put us field slaves back in our place by refusing to recognize our desire to connect with Africa and not our slave masters.

Secondly, Yerkey spends a great amount of time in the book attempting to portray Baba Mukassa, Kwame Ture, James Forman, Ruby Doris Robinson, and Cleve Sellers, the militant leadership within SNCC, as reckless and ill-responsible.  He does this several times when replaying how SNCC leaders refused to back down to racist whites.  Its completely reasonable that a people who have been systemically brutalized would reach a point where they are no longer willing to accept that brutality, even if their decision means death.  This isn’t something that hasn’t been thought out.  James Brown’s iconic song “Say It Loud, I’m Black and I’m Proud” illustrates this point when he sings “we’re people, we like the birds and the bees, but we’d rather die on our feet than live on our knees!”  I’m not suggesting that everyone who has a gun in their face should ignore that and forge forward against the danger.  What I’m saying is all oppressed people have the right to determine how to express their dignity and if the people of Mississippi decided they would follow Baba Mukassa, Kwame Ture, or whomever said it was time to fight back, its their right to decide that.  Not some white writer who clearly has an interest in suggesting that docility is always the only solution our people have at our disposal.  And Yerkey’s constant reliance and deference to the accounts of some random white woman writer in Mississippi, who was nothing other than a liberal racist, is insulting at best.  This foolish woman refers to all SNCC members as “troublemakers.”  And, while our people are getting their heads beat in, we are forced to listen to this idiot woman talk about how “worried” she is about what will happen to her beloved town.  This false equivalency this woman makes between SNCC workers, who are just fighting for justice, and the racist KKK and every other European who refused to stand up for justice, is the template for that same backward and dishonest equivalency in the world today around the question of white supremacy.  We are not stupid people.  We can easily detect when another European – like Yerkey – is trying to pull our strings by telling us what to do.  Or, what we should be doing.  No matter what, their solution is always one that upholds the same racist power structure that they pretend they are so against. 

Another laughable tactic in this book is Yerkey's constant efforts to literally pit the militant SNCC activists against Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.  As is common in this tired refrain, King is portrayed as the voice of reason while the militants are blood thirsty anti-white revenge seekers.  Were one to survey what all these Europeans have to say about Dr. King today you would get the impression that Dr. King was widely loved, respected, and supported.  In truth, these very same devils who pretend to support King today as this voice of reason were the very same people who were violently critical of him when he was living.  It was never King against the militants.  Its always been white supremacy against all of us.

The egregious crime of this soap opera book that poses as a historical account of Baba Mukassa's work is the condescending, patriarchal method in which Yerkey slyly suggests that Baba Mukassa's intense bravery and passion for our people's freedom was fueled primarily by immature anger and egoism.  Besides the absurd suggestion that our people's militant demand for justice could ever be the driving source of conflict in the racist South, the miss-characterization of who Baba Mukassa (and all the SNCC militants for that matter) actually is/was is this book's most serious weakness.

Baba Mukassa came into SNCC's front-line struggle at the tender age of 22.  Within a couple of years of that, he was taking the charge of organizing in rural Alabama and Mississippi towns, on his own, when those towns had active and violent white supremacists willing and able to kill activists with no concern about impunity.  Baba Mukassa not only embraced that danger, but repeatedly and consistently refused to submit to it.  Even at the point of being brutalized by white supremacists, Baba Mukassa cursed them and refused to give in to them.  His and his SNCC comrade's examples, along with the same Black Panther Party patrol confrontations against police in Oakland, California, U.S. in 1966/67, were acts of great risk, but also extreme bravery, and a tired spirit of just accepting any and everything that was thrown at us.  To Yerkey, and other undercover apologists for white supremacy, this may mean insanity.  To us, this is dignity and so we protect the legacy of our soldiers and there is absolutely no question that Baba Mukassa should go down as one of our very best.

 
 
 
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Pseudo Black Nationalism, Toxic Masculinity & Homophobia

6/11/2018

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Eldridge Cleaver, former Minister of Information for the Black Panther Party; was a best selling author with "Soul on Ice" which was his admission that he raped African women to "practice" for European women. Cleaver, unfortunately continued his reign of terror against African women in the BPP, including abuse against his wife Kathleen. Many of our men in the struggle have duplicated Cleaver's behavior and 50 years after his participation, we must come to grips with the cost of this.
Black Nationalism at face value has its honored place in history.  Despite the efforts by racist Europeans and accommodating negroes to denounce it for centuries, the concept of Black Nationalism has always been a survival tool for the African masses.  As Sekou Ture eloquently points out in his classic, and widely missed, analysis of "Negritude", Black Nationalism was African people's response to colonialism and slavery.  Since a major component of institutionalizing those racist systems was for the bourgeois to develop and nurture the concept of white supremacy, Black Nationalism has always been our way of deconstructing racist ideology and proclaiming that we will claim our history, culture, and dignity, in the face of efforts to systemically dehumanize us.  Reviewing what Ture addresses, now that we have pushed past the period of colonialism and slavery, the efforts to frame our struggle strictly around our (constructed) racial identity presents serious limitations and weaknesses.  Echoing Kwame Ture'(Stokely Carmichael)'s efforts to build on Sekou Ture, "in the 60s, we identified as Black because we understood our struggle as a struggle against racism, but since our consciousness continued to evolve, we learned that our struggle was actually a struggle for power.  Power means land, and our land is Africa, so we no longer identify as a race, but as an African nation of people fighting for one unified socialist Africa."  

It wasn't just the question of land that exposed the limitations of the racial identification.  It was also the lack of any type of class analysis within that identification.  The promoters of this philosophy had most of the traction for a while, focusing on the "great civilizations of Africa", but we began to realize that the African slaves who built the pyramids in Kemit (Egypt) weren't buried with gold and riches like King Tut.  We began to realize that there have always been Africans who consciously sided with the enemies of the African masses for their own personal gain.  We began to have class consciousness.  We also began to develop an understanding of patriarchy and how that system that oppresses women and all non-men works hand in hand with feudalism (then), and capitalism (today), to perpetuate class and gender oppression.  We realized that having an African king doesn't and didn't equate to justice for our people.  At least some of us began to realize this.

There are plenty of us around the world who continue to cling to the most reactionary elements of Black Nationalist thought that anything Black is good for African people.  Capitalism in black face is good for African people.  Patriarchy and the continued subjugation of African women and non-men is good for African people.  That bourgeois Africans, who openly demonstrate their loyalty to the capitalist ruling class e.g. the Obamas and all the neo-colonial leaders in Africa, the Caribbean, etc., as opposed to representing the interests of the masses of African people, are all good for African people.  Not a single sane person can dispute our 50 year claim within the All African People's Revolutionary Party that in order to be free, we should work to organize every single African everywhere into our struggle.  That we should respect the dignity of every African and every person on the planet in our struggle.  No one can dispute that logic by arguing that we would be better served by excluding this group of Africans or that group from our freedom struggle.  Yet, these backward ideas continue to exist.  And support for this reactionary agenda has been building for quite some time.

In 1974, the 6th Pan-African Congress (PAC) convened in Tanzania, East Africa.  For those who don't know, the Pan-African Congresses were meetings initiated by W.E.B. DuBois, Anna Julia Cooper, Henry Slyvester Williams, and others in 1900.  These sessions were also influenced by the mass movement of the Universal Negro Improvement Association (Marcus Garvey, Amy Ashwood Garvey, Amy Jacque Garvey, etc.).  The first four congresses were primarily intellectual exercises, but the 5th PAC was the coming out party for the modern Pan-African movement.  It was at this historic movement that Africans born outside of the U.S., mostly from Africa, claimed this movement as their own and it was where the correct objective of one unified socialist Africa was born.  Although this is never discussed outside of the revolutionary Pan-Africanist movement today, it was 5th PAC that heavily influenced the African independence movement and it was that independence movement that certainly breathed fire into the U.S. civil rights movements and Black power movements all over the world.  The activities of these mass movements was the reason the 6th PAC didn't take place until almost 30 years after 5th PAC, but with his acute sense of African history, Sekou Ture recognized the need to ensure that 6th PAC continued the militant and revolutionary direction that was laid out in the 5th PAC.  Having been a labor organizer delegate at 5th PAC, Ture used his opportunity as revolutionary president of Guinea, West Africa, to serve as a keynote speaker at 6th PAC to challenge the delegates to adopt a broader, revolutionary consciousness around African liberation.  If you review Ture's speech you will see that he used it as an opportunity to attack Negritude e.g. the narrow focus on black skin nationalism, as reactionary.  He warned the participants to understand the class dynamics of our struggle and the need for us to unite as class warriors against expanding capitalist intervention in Africa.  If you research this speech you will also find that Ture's speech was widely criticized by many of the leading Black Nationalist delegates at 6th PAC like Senegalese President Leopold Senghor; a prominent Negritude "Black and proud" proponent.  Another arch critic of Ture was Mobutu Sese Seto, the neo-colonialist puppet "leader" in the Congo.  Mobutu's Congo changed the name of the country from Congo to Zaire while he also changed his personal name from Joseph Mobutu to Sese Seto.  His reasoning for this?  An African country needed an African name.  This is that same type of superficial logic that the reactionary Black Nationalist movement operates from; make everything appear to be "Black."  Meanwhile, Mobutu, Senghor, and the massive Black Nationalist dominated delegation from the U.S. who were in attendance at 6th PAC (and opposed Ture's historic speech) were and are all in bed with capitalism and imperialism.  Mobutu may have changed the names of everything in Congo to African names, but while he was doing that he consciously put the pieces in place to give imperialists free and cheap access to all of the Congo's vast mineral resources.  He was a major pawn in helping the U.S. led imperialist powers in sabotaging and assassinating Patrice Lumumba, who opposed capitalism and imperialism, so that those pieces could be put in place.  Today, Mobutu's legacy is a Congo that is the supplier of cheap Coltan to every multi-national company on earth.  Every country in the world and all the people on Earth rely on Congolese coltan for all our devices that give and receive a signal .  Meanwhile, a Congolese woman is raped every 40 seconds in the Congo and coltan miners die by age 40 with the Congo remaining one of the world's most mineral rich countries while its people are some of the world's poorest.  But, everyone has an African name.

Clearly, Sekou Ture was right in his speech at 6th PAC in 1974.  Clearly, a consciousness based solely on "blackness" without an analysis of imperialism is worthless to us as a people.  What that shallow consciousness has created is current day conditions where "militant Black power advocates" can be openly oppressive to African women, even abusive towards them, and all non African men.  They can be openly antagonistic against our LGBTQ family members and all of this is somehow sanctioned as somehow protecting African people.  Protecting us from what?  What we need protection from is these black power pimps who use our people's suffering as a shield to justify their continued manipulation of our people under the guise of helping our people.  We need protection from the toxic masculinity that permits these pseudo men to run around abusing our people with no accountability while even many of our confused women are perpetuating this poison among our young men as they grow up. 

​These pseduo's don't even possess the political sophistication to realize that they are being manipulated by our enemies to sabotage our people's efforts towards unity.  Show me any homophobic effort in African communities today (anywhere on Earth) and I'll show you how white supremacists are the forces providing the messaging behind it.  Groups like Samaritan Power, an organization ran by racist evangelist Franklin Graham (the son of that dead devil Billy Graham).  Graham's organization has pumped millions of dollars into work in African communities from Uganda to New York promoting homophobic agendas.  If you don't believe that just engage in a cursory study of Samaritan Power's talking points and then look at the homophobic work taking place in Africa, the Americas, etc., and you will hear the exact same talking points.  And most of these people listening to these so-called "leaders" don't even know where the talking points come from.  They are just reacting to what these people say the problems are and regurgitating those points.  Ironic isn't it?  The very folks who claim to want everything Black are the same folks who are taking their direction from white supremacists.  They even adopt their so-called "economic power" models from white supremacists.  "Buy black", although well meant, beyond helping us survive on a basic level, doesn't provide any type of real economic blue print for advancing our people on a collective level because capitalism doesn't give space for that.  If an African starts a business under this system, the best they can do is what all capitalists do; pay our people low wages and exploit our conditions.  The largest African company in the world; Dangote, is clear, ill-refutable proof of how the exploitative capitalist model will definitely create individual millionaires, even billionaires, but it cannot and will not empower the masses of our people. Still, we have to be astute enough to realize that to most of these pseudo nationalists, the individualistic advancement is really all they are after in the first place.  Please realize that we are not saying any African who starts a small business wishes to exploit our people.  What we are saying is that doing so under this capitalist system, which is built upon our exploitation as a people, makes even the best intended efforts nothing more than service to the continuance of our own oppression.  We are certainly wildly in favor of our business creativity being activated within a socialist construction standpoint, but that is another discussion that we are always willing to have.

Regarding our black power pimps, if you tune into youtube you can see them everywhere, from everywhere.  Promoting their products (of course) while advocating policies that turn us against one another.  These people have absolutely no interest in liberating the masses of African people.  Most of them don't even have organizations behind them.  That should serve as clear proof to you that they aren't interested in seriously fighting for our people.  Yet, some of us continue to support these people.  Its time for African people, particularly African men, to be on the front-line of calling out this fallacy.  Black Nationalism is fine, but in order to serve the African masses it must come with a class, gender, nation, analysis.  If it doesn't have that, its just a mask for capitalism in blackface.  In fact, Black Nationalism with the nation, class, gender, analysis is actually revolutionary Pan-Africanism.  Its the Nkrumahist/Tureist ideology of the African revolution.  Its a philosophical foundation that recognizes that the best way to protect our families is to get our families involved in organizational work to liberate our people.  Its building bridges with all segments of our people e.g. Christian, Muslim, LGBTQ, non-men, born and living in Africa, Europe, and everywhere in the Western Hemisphere.  Its acknowledging that capitalism is as Malcolm called it a "bloodsucker" system that will never offer salvation for our people or anyone in the world.  Its affirming that one unified socialist Africa is the key to forward progress and dignity for Africans living everywhere and is our contribution to all of humanity.  

We challenge every African man to confront this pseudo "Black Nationalist" front that is dividing our people.  We challenge you to recognize that this front is only there to permit the leeches within our communities to profit off our people's suffering while offering nothing tangible that will help alleviate that oppression.  That pseudo nationalism is what's hurting our people, not our women or our LGBTQ community members.  Its time for us to stand against the backwardness.  If we really care about our people, and humanity, we will recognize this and those who refuse to do it, we should at least organize to a level where we will be able to expose them for the roaches that they are.

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Individualism & Alienation Under Capitalism = Suicide as a Symptom

6/8/2018

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​Like most everything in this society, people measure the importance of an issue based on the degree in which that issue is promoted by celebrity personalities.  This is our reality because the capitalist system we live under perpetuates an elitist and hardcore class structure where popular athletes singers, rappers, and actors, hold much higher value than the average everyday person.  Under this type of class stratification, when celebrities express and/or experience something, that is typically how issues are elevated into their level of importance in this society.  In other words, when popular celebrities commit suicide, then suicide becomes a major focus for everyone.

I don’t watch television so I don’t have much familiarity with the two U.S. celebrities who apparently took their lives this past week.  What I can say is the irony of the situation is the focus and elevation of celebrity acts e.g. this stratified class system, is largely the cause for the conditions that lead to people like these celebrities, and everyone else, deciding to take their own lives in the first place.

Even if you cannot define what capitalism is, and the overwhelming majority of people in the world would be challenged to provide a comprehensive definition of the dominant economic system in existence today, all you really need to know is that capitalism is a system where money is more important than people.  Since this type of core value relegates people to the level of commodities, meaning people are viewed the same way any material item is viewed, people – like material possessions – take on similar characteristics.  People become interchangeable and replaceable.  The newer and younger the model of person, the more value they have.  The more someone fits the dominant image of beauty in a person, the more value they have, etc.  The value people hold under this type of inhumane system is reduced to that of what they represent on a surface, superficial level, instead of what substance they offer.  This type of approach that determines how people are viewed, treated, and valued, collides directly with who we are as human beings.  From a core value level, all cultures of human beings fundamentally see humans as more important than money and things.  Consequently, this contradiction creates significant conflict on all levels of society.  This conflict manifests itself in mobilized and organized resistance against the system on a collective level.  It also manifests itself on individual levels where people struggle mightily to find their place in a society that constantly tells them they don’t matter.  This is true for everyday people as well as celebrities, because famous people, who’s fleeting value is determined by day to day ratings which ensure the advertising dollars that keep them on the air, live in a constant state of instability.  For the most part, these people are only as good as the money they brought in five minutes ago.  This is the naked savagery of capitalism that people don’t understand.  Most working people believe the bourgeois fantasy that all celebrities have endless money and absolutely no stress when the truth is no one in capitalism has no stress because all of us are commodities to be replaced at the slightest sign of wear and ineffectiveness e.g. to the never ending money making processes that drive this backward country.  The truth is celebrities struggle to maintain their sanity within a life that commodifies them on a level most of us cannot even imagine.  Just think for a moment the number of household celebrities who have succumbed to suicide and/or drug, alcohol related death, etc.  Elvis Presley, Jimi Hendrix, Michael Jackson, Prince, David Ruffin (Temptations lead singer), Amy Winehouse, James Brown, etc., etc., etc.

So, with that level of life pressure, it shouldn’t be a surprise to any of us that celebrities would choose to end their lives.  And if celebrities are so easily driven to the breaking point, certainly, that explains why everyday people are so prone to succumb to the pitfalls of depression, drug use, alcohol abuse, etc.
Of course, at the core of this problem is back to this capitalist system.  Anyone serious about addressing issues like suicide who isn’t serious about addressing capitalism, isn’t serious about addressing issues like suicide.  This is true because the solutions to these social problems cannot be met with individual approaches.  Or, we should say individualistic solutions because using the word individualistic clarifies that what we are talking about is an ideological approach which promotes the predominance of individualism over collectivism.  It’s the belief that the individualistic approach is the only effective way to address anything and this approach is overwhelmingly dominant in this society.  We ignore the fact that this approach slams in the face our own cultural values that sustained us thousands of years before capitalism consolidated individualism into our conscious and unconscious minds.  We have before us endless proof that the individualistic approach is cancer to our efforts to resolve any problems, yet when the pressure mounts, most of us turn instinctively to individualized solutions because that’s all we know and its easier.  Its much easier to just work with yourself than to learn how to work with others.  That’s where backward sayings like “if you want something done right, do it yourself” come from.  This is clearly an extremely elitist saying which suggests no one can do something as well as you can do it as if it was never done correctly before you came onto the scene.  This is without question the height of bourgeois thought.  Things were done better than you could ever do them long before you got here and they will be done better than you can do them long after you are gone.  And, the key to this is being able to work with other people ala the collectivist (socialist) saying “two heads are better than one.”

We can go down our usual path of talking about individual conclusions to issues like suicide.  Depression and how it impacts people on an individual level.  Providing people bureaucratic phone number hotlines and leaving it at that as if solving the problem is the sole responsibility of the person suffering.  We can do that and after two weeks pass we have forgotten those who took their lives and we are on to the next capitalist adventure.  We can continue to approach problems in this proven ineffective way and for most people, that will continue.  This is because far too many of us who talk a great social justice game are truly only interested in venting our personal frustrations at viewing and/or experiencing oppression.  We want to react and express our anger at this, but we haven’t matured to the level of making a strong commitment to work tirelessly to end this oppression.  If we were at that latter level, we would be talking about these issues much differently than we are today.

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The NFL, Fake Patriotism; Its Time to Make These People Pay

6/6/2018

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If it wasn't so despicable, it would be outstanding comedy.  In today's world, Europeans who descend and benefit from those who violently and brutally stole lands in Southern Africa are lecturing our people about fairness.  In the U.S., the European flock is lecturing African people about patriotism.  The absolute truth on this question is that no logical person on earth could blame us if we decided to rise up and burn this country completely down.  Yet, most of us, for a variety of analyzed social reasons, still wish to express loyalty to this disgraceful and backward country.  Still, if there are any people in this society who have qualitatively demonstrated their commitment to this country, its the African masses.  Our tortured labor as slaves created unprecedented wealth for the entire capitalist industrialized world and all we got for that is a technologically underdeveloped Africa and our people on the bottom of all 100+ countries in which we reside in significant numbers.  We have since labored in the most difficult and treacherous circumstances, receiving perpetual disrespect and exploitation, and instead of rising up and overthrowing that oppression, we continue to this day to support this backward system.  We have fought in every imperialist war this country has initiated, dying in extremely large numbers, with nothing to show for it.  My point is to think about the absolute insanity of Europeans believing they have the moral ground to lecture us about anything.  Yet, in this capitalist society, where truth and justice have no concrete connection to reality, this is the experience we are faced with.

The time for excuses, justifications, cowardice, and the complete absence of integrity is over folks.  This latest issue of National Football League players and the hypocritical song they call a national anthem is a side issue.  This story doesn't even rate compared to much more important stories of neo-colonialism in Africa, mass incarceration, police terrorism, and the assault against our people in places like Flint, Michigan, but since this issue with football is here, we must use it for the greater good.

If you are reading this, and you make the decision to continue to watch football games.  You continue to refuse to do anymore for the movement for justice beyond just running your mouth.  You decide to just hunker down and focus only on your personal circumstances.  If you continue to advance individualistic analysis about our people's situation that isn't grounded in anything beyond the bourgeois ideas trapped in your unimpressive cerebral capacity, than you are without question a strong element of the problem.  And, if your children and/or grandchildren rise up and run straight over you, they would be making a quality contribution to all of humanity.  

I'm going to make a very general statement here that I challenge anyone to refute.  We have to stop talking about how appalled we are with this perpetual disrespect against our people.  We have to stop sharing these reactionary videos of our people being terrorized and terrorizing each other.  We have to stop engaging in fantasy conspiracy theories about who we are, what we are, where we came from, and what we should do.  Play time is over people.  Its time to get real.  If you aren't engaged in some organizational capacity (two or more people is an organization, period) start engaging in one today.  You cannot solve these problems by yourself by just talking endlessly about them.  If that was possible, many people who are saying much, much, more than you ever could say would have done that by now.  The only way we can turn this ship is by getting involved, learning to work together, and building capacity to move material circumstances in directions of justice.  If you refuse to join and/or start organizations, than that very act reaffirms that you truly have no desire to solve these problems.  You simply want to vent about them to make yourself feel better.  Or, you desire to find some way to coexist with the problems in ways that cause you no personal anxiety, stress, or discomfort.  That is a criminal act and those who take that cowardly path should hopefully receive the uncompromising struggle that their weak actions deserve.

Along with joining organizations its time we ensure those organizations have strong political education processes and equally strong praise/criticism processes that are developed and implemented.  Many organizations already have successful processes that include those elements so there is no need for anyone to reinvent the wheel.  These components are critically important because they are the tools that help us weather the constant obstacles that confront those of us who embark the path of resistance against our oppression.  

There's really nothing else to say. If you are reading this and you aren't doing these things, you are a major problem for those of us seeking justice.  Its time to pick a side and at this stage doing so is so much more than just opening and running your mouth.  Its time for us to step up our work by refusing to continue to pretend that those people not doing these things are not major obstacles to our freedom.

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African Men/Women; Let's Close Ranks for Our Collective Freedom

6/2/2018

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There are so many variables to process around this question that it can be overwhelming to figure out where to start.  I believe the appropriate place is around the question of culture.  African culture.  Whether we know it or not.  Whether we understand it or not.  Whether we want to believe and/or accept it or not.  From a political, social, and cultural standpoint, no matter where we live, our culture is dominantly African culture.  If we study African history, we know that thousands of years ago, Africa was dominated by matriarchal societies everywhere.  What this means is our civilizations were often led by women.  Without question, patriarchy e.g. male dominance and power in society, was foreign to Africa until slavery and feudalism developed as dominant economic systems some 10,000 to 15,000 years ago.  The differences between matriarchal and patriarchal societies were vast.  Matriarchal societies had women decision makers, but there is absolutely no evidence that they were oppressive in any way towards men.  In fact, men participated on all levels of matriarchal societies with the ability to reach and achieve their full potential.  On the other hand, from the jump, patriarchal societies have been based on the subjugation of women.  Religious texts have been altered to justify this subjugation and the values of patriarchal societies, including the ones we exist within today, suggest that any question of women leading our communities is insane.  

Along with the existing dominance of patriarchy, 500+ years ago the devastating systems of colonialism and slavery were introduced into Africa.  These systems have changed the balance of relations in a way that we not only have not even figured out how to understand yet, but we have made only token progress in addressing.  With all of this trauma, not only has the systemic oppression of women been institutionalized, but along with that, Africans have been dehumanized and the African family attacked and discredited.  The focus of these attacks against the African family are not coming from the LGBTQ movement, as many of our confused people would have us believe, but from the same sources that have caused our problems for hundreds of years - the ruling classes within the capitalist/imperialist system.

Its important to restate that patriarchy didn't start with colonialism and the transatlantic slave trade in Africa, it was certainly already there, but it was further strengthened and institutionalized by colonialism and slavery.  Today, those two elements are responsible for shaping the entire worldwide capitalist system.  And, the fuel for that process is the continued theft of resources from Africa.  The people who are benefiting from this system today - the capitalist classes - will never admit to all their death, destruction, and terror against us.  So, to justify their savagery, they grafted the myth of white supremacy, and male supremacy.  And, they have used all of the so-called educational, religious, and social institutions throughout the world to program those messages into the consciousness of the masses of humanity.  

The results of their work today is that rich European capitalist men are on top of the world and African women all over the world are on the bottom.  This is born out when you analyze data on physical health, mental health, stress, and quality of life.  And, looking specifically at African people, the damage between men, women, and those within our people who don't identify with either gender, is absolutely devastating today.  Most of our people don't have much understanding about any of the above.  We don't understand how capitalism started, what it is, and how it has impacted us as a people.  We don't know what matriarchy or patriarchy is.  We don't even really understand white supremacy as a system and how it operates.  We are unclear about how systemic oppression works.  We, like most people trained by bourgeois institutions today, view oppression through individual lenses where actions are gauged subjectively and not systemically.  That all brings us to today where African men are lost for the most part and our non-men partners in society are left struggling to survive under capitalism, white supremacy, and patriarchy (the triple oppression), mostly without our support and help.  This has created some understandable frustration on the part of non-men Africans towards African men.  And, since we as men are unable and/or unwilling to understand and accept the hierarchy of oppression against us as a people, we primarily react to the frustration of our women and non-men community with defensiveness and a doubling down of the savage behavior against them that this backward system has ingrained within us.  

Just so its clear what I'm talking about here, I'll use myself as an example.  I started out in this work in my teens and at that time, along with my commitment to African liberation came an equally strong commitment to African women e.g. being with them, supporting them, and sharing my life with them.  Over the years, like most people, I've struggled to find my place at times within this system.  I've gone through lots of things trying to figure out my place and my path.  In the course of that journey, I survived two subsequent 10 year relationships with two African women over a 25 year period.  Those relationships ended.  Each of those women, like me, had a consciousness of our struggle as African people to regain our dignity against this system.  So, we resolved our divorces without having to go to court each time while maintaining civility.  In the case of my first wife, my daughter's mother, we were able to co-parent our daughter for all of her life and we continue to do that collectively in a socialist fashion today.  I have always maintained a healthy and consistent relationship in my daughter's life and we continue to maintain a very close and positive relationship today.

Where I somewhat lost my way was in my personal and romantic relationships with African women.  Somewhere along the way, in my own personal struggles, I developed the unhealthy mindset that I was deficient in ways that would make it impossible for me to have a successful relationship with an African woman.  I lost my confidence in that area and I succumbed to the easy route of responding to those who made an effort to reach out to me.  Often, those were not African women.  I've met and shared life experiences with wonderful women during this period who were not African, but I always struggled.  I had tremendous guilt, especially in the presence of African women.  I told myself to move past it, and I still basically believe that people can fall in love with whomever they fall in love with, but every article, every statement, every element of frustration that African women expressed around this question, I paid extra close attention to.  I heard them express their desire to support African men, despite our lack of support for them, and I'd seen them do that countless times, but I still struggled.  During this period, I never saw myself as someone who didn't want to be with African women. I have always loved African women.  Dark, light, long hair, short hair, natural hair, "permed" hair.  I've always loved them, but I was lost.  I heard my sisters when they said they didn't care if African men loved other women, but they wanted us to stop contributing to patriarchy's characterization of them as problem children.  I write often and even in my novel series, where my primary characters are all women, including the European woman in my stories, I believe I took great pains to depict African women as her leaders.  Still, I knew I was falling far short of where I needed to be.  I saw myself as a part of the problem and that damaged my confidence even more.  When it was clear that my last relationship with a non-African woman would not grow beyond the level it was at, which wasn't what either of us needed it to be (the conditions of this system made it impossible for it to be anything more), I told myself I wanted a sister next.  I knew I needed to work to regain that confidence.  A year ago, when I listened to a speech I gave in 1990, I was shocked at how much more confident I sounded then.  Don't get me wrong. I have plenty of confidence today, but when I heard that speech I realized that what I didn't have today is the fusion of confidence and wisdom that all my years in this struggle should present.  I knew the difference was I had a strong African wife then and I heard that in my voice in that speech.  I've spent several years struggling and I found myself having done that for so long that I didn't know how I would find this African women.  I rarely go to clubs and I had no desire to go.  My weekends consisted of writing,  biking, traveling.  I'm focused on going to Africa as much as I can.  I hadn't met any African women who seemed to have much interest in any of those things.  I wasn't meeting anyone who generated any buzz within me.  I told myself that my commitment to activism and Pan-Africanism, as opposed to focusing on buying a house, etc., made my chances slim at best.  I remember telling myself that if I was going to ever meet her, I would need some help, but I had no idea how or if that would ever happen.  Recently, that help did happen.  An African woman who meets every category I could ever think of approached me!  We already had a strong relationship on a political level, but never romantic.  Now, we do, and it will get much, much, stronger and it will inspire many, many Africans.  I feel so incredibly fortunate to have found exactly what I was looking for and what I needed.

The reason for going through my personal story is as African men, women, and non-men, I know I wasn't the beacon of determination I wanted to be, but what I've learned is we cannot give up on each other.  A wonderful African woman, who like so many of them, has been repeatedly forsaken by African men, saw qualities in me that she felt deserved attention. She certainly had experienced much more trauma than I had, yet unlike me, she overcame it to approach me.  I have to learn something from that in appreciating African women.  We must maintain hope that we can find ways to be there for each other.  Believe me, I may have needed that initial help, but I've got it from here forward.  She will always know how appreciated and respected she is.  She will receive boatloads of support.  As men, we have to face our role in this trauma.  I should have reached out to African women I knew when I veered sideways.  I should have done a better job.  I didn't, and I as a result, I permitted all that dysfunction to institutionalize itself within me.  That wasn't fair to African women, or the other women I encountered, or to me.  We as men have to own all of that and those of you who are engaging in abusive behavior against African women must cease and desist that behavior immediately.  As men, we have an awful lot of work to do and now that I'm back on my personal horse, I plan to play my role in helping us grow and develop in that capacity.  African women and non-men only need to do one thing in my humble opinion.  Continue to do what you have always done.  Despite all the evidence to the contrary, don't give up on us.  Some of us are just lost right now, but we can be steered back home.  Others of us need other types of help, but as difficult as it may be, try your best to avoid painting all of us with a broad stroke.  That African man you see with a non-African woman doesn't have to be a committed traitor to our people.  Certainly, us calling each other out is not an effective way to communicate over these issues.  To the African women who are writing about this in balanced and truthful ways, we are out here and listening to you.  I thank you for touching my soul.  Since I'm not elitist, I know that if I can be touched, so can many of my brothers out here.  Let's go and get them.  I want to wage a cultural revolution for the hearts and minds of our people, and that process has to include a special focus on our African men.  We are fighting against a worldwide system that controls every aspect of our lives.  We cannot win this fight divided and fractured as a people.  This work to bring us together is essential.  If you are disparaging African women, LGBTQ Africans, poor Africans...If we are not creating space for African men and women to heal and reclaim ourselves.  We cannot win this fight.  There's a lot of confusion and silliness at work out here.  My question is who can refute that there is very likely nothing else that requires more of our attention than this question.

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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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