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5 Sure Signs You are Unwittingly Supporting white supremacy!

7/30/2014

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African (Black), Indigenous (Latino), and Asian "conscious communities" and activists swear to resist anything catering to white supremacy on every level that it could possibly manifest itself.  "Conscious" White activists work overtime trying to convince everyone (including themselves) that they can detect, and destroy, white supremacy at the very moment it reveals its ugly head.  Still, despite all these well intended efforts, the reality is we all function, everyday, in full cooperation with white supremacy.  In fact, we are it's chief conduits.  Examples?  If we study at any institution, at any level, we are perpetuating white supremacy.  If we work anywhere within the capitalist system, in whatever capacity, we are perpetuating white supremacy.  If we participate in any of this society's institutions we are promoting white supremacy.  All of this is true because this society was built on white supremacy.  All of its values, structures, laws, and cultural manifestations are designed to uphold white supremacy at the base level.  So, to be brutally honest, the only thing that we can do that doesn't perpetuate white supremacy is to struggle actively against it and that means (for example) struggling for Pan-Africanism as an objective e.g. one unified socialist Africa.  And, even many of the ways we choose to believe we are struggling against white supremacy actually end up promoting more than attacking it.  To provide another example, you can struggle for Pan-Africanism, or at least tell yourself that's what you are doing, but the way in which you deal with adversity in your work e.g. how you respond and act towards those you are working with and/or for, can easily represent approaches that are grounded in white supremacy.  So, these five subtle components of everyday life are examples designed to get you thinking how insidious white supremacy is.

1.  
You find it difficult to learn and/or remember names of people who don't have Anglo names.  We are programmed from day one to believe Anglo culture is the dominant culture and the only culture that matters.  So, our minds are trained to listen only in the context of Angloisms.  So that's why 50% of the time that I introduce myself to someone, regardless of what their ethnic background, when I say (Ahjamu) Ah-jaa-moo, their response is "Pleased to meet you John!" to which I gladly correct them.

2.
You cannot name more than one or two books (if that) which you have read written by and about African, Indigenous, Arab, or Asian people's histories, culture, and ideologies and philosophies (you can't count class assigned reading that you wouldn't have read on your own).  If this is true about you, no matter who you are, or what you think you know, you unwittingly believe that non-White people's existence is secondary because you have never even taken the time to study it on any level that can be mistaken for serious.

3.
You refer to non-White people's traditional/cultural dress as "garb."  This seems like a small insignificant thing, but African clothes are no more "garb" than your western capitalist clothes are "garb."  People from all walks of life wear clothes like you do.  By identifying African, Middle East, Native, etc., clothes as "garb" reduces their cultural expression as inferior and comical.

4.
You don't own a passport.  By this very act you are screaming that you have absolutely no intention of ever leaving the world bastion of white supremacy in search of cultures and lifestyles that reflect non-white philosophies and practices.

5.
You are not actively participating in an organization that opposes white supremacy.  You only escape this one if you are involved in an organization that requires you to study, on a regular basis, non-white practices and philosophies and provides a method for you to put those concepts into practice so that you are working them and sharing them with others on a consistent basis.

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zionism - An Enemy to African People!

7/24/2014

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In 1991, the Anti-Defamation League (ADL - we call them the African Death League) issued a "study" that labeled the All African People's Revolutionary Party (A-APRP), as "the most anti-zionist organization in the U.S.  We proudly claimed that title because we had earned it!  By that time we had already spent a number of years speaking out against the zionist movement, not just for it's oppression of the Palestinian people, although that is certainly the primary reason they must be stopped, but also because of zionism's exploitation of Africa to support it's illegal objectives.  You see, zionism has always been very good at using confusion to advance it's agenda.  Consequently, there are so many conflicting reports and opinions about the state of Israel floating around, and also - quite honestly, African (Black) people haven't enjoyed the best relationships with Arab people.  So, it's important to remind people of some basic truths that can hopefully set the record straight.  Those truths are that all reliable scholarship acknowledges that the Jewish religion originated on the African continent.  The original Jews, known as the Falasha, were identified in Ethiopia thousands of years ago.  These were unquestionably "Black" people who were the folks described in the "Book of Revelations" in the Bible who "had skin of bronze and hair of wool (dreadlocks)."  This is the reason that Ethiopia, or Kush (Cush), is the first place mentioned in the Bible in Genesis, Chapter II, verse 13.  It is also a fact that the translation of K/Cush is "land of the burnt faces."  So, Judaism developed in Africa, so Africans could never be anti-Judaic because we produced the religion in the first place.  We can also not be anti-Semitic because the definition of a Semite, even in the back Websters Dictionary, is that of a person of color.  So, why all this confusion?  And how have African people come to this place where we are disconnected from supporting the Palestinian struggle for just self-determiantion?

The answers are based in the proper understanding that Judaism and zionism are not the same thing.  Judaism is a religion that, as was mentioned, originates in Africa.  It's a religion that is practiced by millions around the world today of all nationalities.  There are still African Jews.  There are white Jews, etc.  Then, there is zionism which is a political movement that has absolutely no connection to Judaism, although zionism attempts to shield it's ugliness by hiding behind Judaism.  Since most people don't know the difference between zionism and Judaism, the zionists have created a reality where a critique against the political movement of zionism is considered an attack against Judaism and/or being anti-Semitic.  Confused?  Let's examine some critical history to clarify all of this.  Recently, NBA Basketball player Dwight Howard got in hot water for tweeting out "FREEPALESTINE."  The very same ADL that called us the most anti-zionist organization 23 years ago criticized Howard of being anti-Semitic.  No Africans came to Howard's defense.  Maybe we can correct this by providing the history of zionism.

The political zionist movement has it's roots in the first zionist conference held in Balse, Switzerland, in 1897.  This conference was convened by Theodore Herzl, the "father of zionism" who, according to his own memoirs, was not much of a religious man.  In this conference, the founding zionists planned for the creation of a zionist state.  Their stated desires for this state were clearly to achieve state power and all of the privileges and benefits of such.  They initially identified Argentina and then Uganda as the zionist destination, but after much debate, they decided neither was acceptable due to both countries being somewhat landlocked.  The zionists had vision.  They wanted a land that had major shipping routes attached to it.  So, they eventually chose Palestine.  But, they knew they would not generate support to steal a sovereign country from it's inhabitants by just marching in and taking it by force.  So, they made the decision to tie zionism to the Judaic religion in an effort to use the historical oppression of the Jewish people to justify the need for a Jewish state.  The zionists went to work building support for this zionist state.  They established political and economic relationships that would benefit their movement.  One of the first such relationships was the establishment of ties with South African (Azania) Prime Minister Jan Smuts around the turn of the twentieth century.  Chaim Weizman, the heir to Herzl's throne as the father of the zionist movement, helped put the wheels in motion to establish an economic relationship that made diamonds, highjacked from Azania-South African mines, as one of the primary export products produced from the state of Israel.  From Israel's illegal inception in 1948, through present day, diamonds stolen from Southern Africa continue to be refined in Israel, serving as one of their primary financial exports.   These diamonds are stolen systematically from Southern Africa by the De Beers Corporation, owned by the Oppenheimer family.  These European criminals pay Africans pennies to dig the rough diamonds out and those minerals are shipped to Israel to be refined and sold to you.  The Oppenheimers "earn" annual revenues of almost 10 billion USD dollars utilizing this illegal zionist pipeline and Nicky Oppenheimer remains the richest man in Africa today as a result of this criminal espionage.  But, the zionists didn't stop there.  Weizman built relationships with African organizations also.  Understanding that Africans were legitimately seeking a homeland after being oppressed in the Western Hemisphere, Weizman manipulated Marcus Garvey into accepting zionism as a legitimate movement (Zion means to "go home") and this is why you can often see Garvey comparing the legitimate African movement for self determination with the illegal zionist movement.  Weizman was just getting started with Garvey and the Universal Negro Improvement Association.  He established strong ties with the NAACP and convinced the leaders there to sponsor him on paid speaking tours.  This relationship flourished through the 30s into the 80s with the establishment in the 60s of "Black Americans in Support of Israel Committee" or BASIC, which was an African advocacy group in support of Israel.  These dastardly efforts also helped facilitate the illegal gun trade from Israeli gun manufacturers.  And this is the reason why you know all about the Uzi sub-machine gun, which can be found in any inner city African community from Nairobi to New York, but you hadn't made the connection that Uzi's are Israeli made weapons and that Israel/zionism again manipulated and supported these ties to use African exploitation as a means to finance and support zionism on the backs of African people.

The A-APRP has spent the last 40 years exposing the efforts of zionism to pimp Africans into supporting it's objective of dominating the Palestinian people, using our resources to do it.  Since the establishment of the zionist state of Israel in 1948, the U.S. has served as it's primary welfare supplier because Israel serves U.S. capitalist interests by providing a reliable ally in a politically unstable region.  The all important shipping routes through the Red Sea and surrounding oceans in the North and the Cape in the South, have to be protected for the shipment of products to be bought and sold.  So, the U.S. has always been heavily invested in zionist Israel, regardless of whatever terror they inflict upon the Palestinian people.  On the other hand, the A-APRP has supported the Palestinian cause uncompromisingly because we know that a victorious Palestinian people means a weakened zionist state of Israel.  A weakened state of Israel means one less neo-colonialist grip on Africa and the African masses.  It means less zionist merchants exploiting African communities with weapons and stores that exploit our people to make a profit to support the zionist state.  This is reason the A-APRP built the Worldwide African Anti-zionist Front in the 80s/90s, which was comprised of some 40 African organizations, along with the African Anti-Zionist Front here in the U.S., which included groups like the New African People's Organization (the late Chowkwe Lumumba's organization)  These organizations were organized by the A-APRP to do anti-zionist work on a worldwide basis.  There is much more work that should be investigated such as the International Mathiba in Libya and it's anti-zionist propaganda and financial assistance for anti-zionism.  The distribution of literally millions of Malcolm X's speech "Zionism and Dollarism" at the premiere showings of the Spike Lee's "Malcolm X" movie in November of 1992.  I am honored to have participated in much of this work over the overs and we humbly suggest that this work set the stage for much of the current outrage about zionist terror today.  That's why we uncompromisingly oppose the current wave of terror being inflicted on the Palestinian people in Gaza by the zionist state.  The zionists are the invaders and occupiers.  There is no way they can be defending themselves anymore than a robber who enters your house can defend themselves against your efforts to evict them.  So, any smart African would have to support the Palestinian people because their fight weakens a primary enemy of African people.  We know this because we are not anti-Judaic, but anti-zionist.

When the A-APRP was speaking out against zionism in the 1970s and 80s, there were very few voices speaking out in support of the Palestinian people.  I have myself witnessed zionists coming out in the dozens to protest speeches by the late Kwame Ture (Stokely Carmichael) and as Kwame's security, I've tangled with some of those zionists.  That was 20 years ago.  I've had zionists come out against me speaking on the subject in California and some of these instances ended in physical violence.  So I know firsthand the cowardly method in which these people hide the truth of their terrorism behind the religion that originates from my national home.  

We stand 100% opposed to Holocaust deniers.  We believe that the survivors and descendants of the Holocaust have a legitimate case against European countries like Germany, Austria, Russia, etc., not Palestine and the Palestinian people who had and have nothing to do with Jewish suffering or the Holocaust.  Reparations and land owed to these righteous survivors should come from those European entities.  And, it should also be understood that there are millions of anti-zionist Jews alive today.  People who are Jews who do not support the state of Israel.  We are not confused.  We cannot be.  We understand the issues clearly because we have a legitimate claim to the liberation and unification of Africa.  We know what justice looks like and we know that we cannot expect justice for ourselves if we are unwilling to demand it for others who also deserve it.  So, Dwight Howard, retweet the truth Brother!  FREEPALESTINE!  Africans. Stand up for Palestinian self determination and an end to zionist pimping of African human and material resources!!


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READ!  That Dirty Four Letter Word!

7/18/2014

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Recently, I was made aware of an idiotic campaign by the local Tea Party Chapter to create a "scandal" regarding a student group at the university hosting a conference and paying people like myself to give presentations.  Besides these people suggesting in their campaign that the conference presenters were motivated solely by the money we received, and not the ideals we promote in our work (I used the "measly" $300.00 I earned to help finance taking 11 new All African People's Revolutionary Party organizers and supporters to Oakland for African Liberation Day), the thing that most amused me about this strangely amateurish and unsophisticated attack is that the Tea Party framers of this "campaign" labeled myself, and the other participants in the conference, as "domestic terrorists."  Although these people are so stupid and uninformed, it is worth noting their strategic usage of code language and the reasons why they chose to frame us that way.  The word "terrorist" like "socialist, socialism, communist, communism, revolution, revolutionary, militant, radical, Muslim, anarchism, anarchist" etc., are all buzz words in the united snakes today.  What that means is those words, and many others, have been used consistently - 24/7 - by the capitalist media for decades without clear definitions and/or contextual understanding of what any of those words mean.  Consequently, people have been programmed to react negatively to those words in spite of the fact the negative reaction isn't tied to any rational understanding of where that reaction is actually coming from.  I'll give an example.  Take the word socialism.  You can go out and conduct a survey around that word (and you could do the same with all the other words mentioned as well).  Ask people to define what the word means.  Misinformation about the word "socialism" is so wide spread in this society that I can already tell how most people will respond to the question.  The best case responses, I'm talking about responses from people who consider themselves open minded, studied, and progressive thinkers, will be something to the effect of "it's where wealth is evenly distributed."  Or, they will say "its a system where profit is outlawed."  Those you ask who consider themselves opposed to any type of "leftist" thought will respond with comments along the lines of "it's a failed system where dictators oppress the people" or "it's a system where there is a lack of freedom and liberty."  What's interesting about all of these responses, in spite of the fact you will hear them repeatedly, is none of them are correct (and no, I'm not going to give you my definition of socialism, that's the point of this post).  What's even more interesting is if you ask a follow up question of where people formed the basis of their position on socialism, what you will hear is "I took a class" or "I, or my family is from some country like Romania, Finland, The former USSR, etc."  Finally, the most interesting point is I can pretty much guarantee you that less than 1% of the respondents will be able to name one book on socialist theory and practice that they have read.  And, on top of that, if you do come across someone who has read critical works along those lines, those persons will be able to provide you with much more comprehensive answers than the others.  

Isn't all of this fascinating?  I mean, in 2014, with an information based society e.g. you have information at your finger tips 24/7 - people still walk around believing that because they are from a place, or even that they know someone who was from a place even if they themselves haven't been there, that this is a qualification to understand and articulate the history and practices of that place.  Clearly, we all know there are plenty of people who live in whatever place we currently live in who have no clue what is taking place there politically, culturally, socially, and certainly economically.  So, we all know being from somewhere, and certainly just talking to someone from that place, is no qualification of anything.  Then, with the internet age, there are people who think because they can watch videos of practically anything on youtube and/or read articles about anything online, that they are engaging in a scholarly approach to acquiring information.  I believe it was the University of Chicago, Wisconsin, one of those Mid West schools, that came out with a study that said people who regularly watch FOX News know less about what's taking place in this society, and around the world, then people who watch no news on a regular basis.  So, just because you are watching videos and reading articles doesn't mean you are learning anything useful.  In fact, you are probably losing ground in the pursuit of intellectual capability.  

Sorry folks, the only proven and effective way to increase your brain capacity, your ability to reason, your understanding of how to breakdown complex social, political, and economic phenomenon, is to do that dirty four letter word most of you avoid like the plague - READ!  Now wait a minute sir.  You are telling people the solution is to read, but just previously, you stated that reading anything on line is not sufficient to increase your knowledge!  You are contradicting yourself!  No, I'm not.  By READ, what we mean is training yourself to participate in an arduous process of sitting down with books of a complex nature on a regular basis and training your brain to interpret, dissect, and analyze the information you are putting in front of yourself.  Now, I've been a member of the All African People's Revolutionary Party for 30 years this year.  Within this organization we have a process called work study.  In this process, we meet every two weeks and study.  We read everything from "The Philosophy and Opinions of Marcus Garvey" to "How Europe Underdeveloped Africa" to "Class Struggle in Africa, Revolution, Culture, and Pan-Africanism, The Communist Manifesto, Dialectical and Historical Materialism, Africa on the Move, Unity and Struggle, Crisis in Capitalism, etc."  Then we have a world geo-political section where we read history and current happenings in hot spots like Zimbabwe, Palestine, Ireland, Sudan, Congo, Brazil, Haiti, etc.  And, we not only read these materials, but we come together every two weeks and discuss these materials collectively in an effort to encourage, enhance, and cultivate collective ideological development.  Then, we take that collective experience and we go out and organize events designed to educate our communities about what we have learned in an effort to contribute towards increasing the consciousness of society.  We do this work because we understand that only when there is this type collective consciousness will we have the conditions for revolutionary change to take place.

Now, my point for telling about our work study process is because after 30 years of sitting down on a regular basis, reading complex materials, having a dictionary there to help me define and breakdown words and concepts, bringing my understanding of those concepts to other people and having them challenge my premises, having to defend my premises, having to develop my thoughts further, I can tell you a few things about this experience today.  I can tell you that I have learned much more in The A-APRP's process then I learned achieving a Master's degree in the university.  There is no question about that.  I can tell you that I can easily step into practically any conversation, discussion, and/or event and dominate it if I choose to, and I'm not bragging when I say that.  It's true because my brain is trained to be active, to analyze, to assess, to question, and it has developed a sharpness that most people frankly lack.  Where people get it wrong is in assessing this ability to me and/or my A-APRP cadre comrades as individuals.  No.  These skills have been acquired through the collective process laid out in this post and you can achieve it also if you engage in the same process.  You see, the brain is a muscle.  This means it works like any other muscle.  The more you exercise it, the stronger it gets.  Also, just like other muscles, we fool ourselves into thinking we are exercising this muscle when in reality, we aren't really.  When you are watching those videos you think because you are hearing something that resonates and/or inspires you that you are engaging in the process I'm describing here, but it's not the same.  It's different because by watching videos you are training your brain to receive the signals coming from the video and process them.  You are using the tone, body language, and when applicable, even audience reactions to influence your brain.  Therefore, you aren't doing the actual work to understand the concepts.  Your brain is using all that criteria to shape your perception.  In comparison, when you are reading you have none of those qualifying characteristics to "help" your brain.  It's only you and the words.  So, your brain has to work so much harder to comprehend what you are reading.  That's what makes reading much more difficult and that's why most of you don't do it, but this is the only way you properly train your brain to become critical.  And it's critical training that permits you to be able to read and breakdown the differences between critical works like Fidel Castro's "In Defense of Socialism" compared to any idiotic critique of socialism that one may find on the internet.  If you don't have that training, you will be fooled into thinking there is no difference, and this is the fundamental break between just reading anything on the internet and learning how to READ.

So, if you are African and you desire to truly develop your brain to its full potential, then we strongly encourage you to look up your local A-APRP chapter and join it.  If you don't want to do that, than join some other organization working for justice that has a study process.  If they don't have one, start one.  If you aren't African, do the same. If you want ideas, please go to the aaprp.intl.org where you can investigate our book list(s) and get ideas.  Intellectualism isn't bad.  Intellectualism motivated and dominated by capitalism is bad.  Intellectualism as a tool for class suicide to bring information to the masses of the people is correct!  That's why we appreciate and honor the contributions of people like Kwame Nkrumah, Sekou Ture, Amilcar Cabral, Malcolm X, Assata Shakur, Rosa Luxumberg, Fidel Castro, Che Guevara, Shirley Graham DuBois, Huey P. Newton, Marcus Garvey, W.E.B. DuBois, Thomas Sankara, Imbalia Camara, Kwame Ture, etc.   All intellectuals of the highest order, whether they went to college or not.  Let's work to foster and create an atmosphere where revolutionary intelligentsia is a great thing that all our youth aspire to obtain, but we have to model it first ourselves.  Stop talking so much and start putting your head in more books!  Maybe, when youth see you reading more, instead of running your mouth all the time, they will begin to want to do the same!  Did your critical mind ever think of that?


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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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