Ahjamu Umi's: "The Truth Challenge"
  • Home
  • Workshops
  • New Manifesto
  • Hit Me Up
  • Blog
  • Coming Events
  • Videos
  • Donations

We can Collectively Defeat the Police, and They Know It!

8/27/2014

0 Comments

 
Picture
Since the uprising in Ferguson, Missouri, against police terrorism, we have been overrun with examples of police bravado.  One story quoted a cop as saying "if you don't want to get shot, don't defy my orders!"  Another video showed a police terrorist in Ferguson pointing his automatic rifle at citizens and media, yelling profane threats.  Then, it was either that same jack-booted thug, or another one, who was quoted as telling a group of people that he enjoyed killing people, or something sick like that.  There are actually countless propaganda pieces floating around  like that.  Most of this is designed to illustrate just how barbaric these cops are, but whether intentional or not, all of this exposure ends up affirming the notion that police can do whatever they want to us, and there's really nothing we can do about it because they have the state (law), and the guns, on their side.  Coupled with the disgusting sight of sick people donating significant amounts of money to the cold blooded beast who killed young Mike Brown, and the track record of murderous cops getting away with killing our youth, its' easy to understand how the average person would look at police and their actions as invincible.  

You should understand that none of this is by accident.  The capitalist system was built on exploitation.  The entire banking industry, I'm talking about Wachovia, Barclays, Wells Fargo, J.P. Morgan Chase, Lehmen Brothers, etc., was initiated from the seed money "earned" by enslaving Africans.  If you don't believe that - just Google it.  All of those companies have had to admit their origins in recent years.  It's those banks along with many other accompanying industries like Aetna and New York Life insurance - which started by providing insurance premiums on enslaved Africans.  Even Brooks Brothers Suits, got it's start by making clothes for slaves, much like clothes companies make clothes for dogs and other animals today.  I know many of you reading this far didn't know that because the capitalist system - as Kwame Ture was fond of saying - "doesn't lie some of the time, it lies all of the time."  So, although you have spent your entire life believing on some level that corporate America was built based on hard work and industriousness, the truth is it was built on theft and murder.  Unfortunately, it doesn't stop there.  Most of the land we live on was inhabited and utilized by Indigenous people at some point in history.  Now today, the great grand children of the colonizers own most of the land and the Indigenous people have no land.  This "transfer" didn't happen through any legal process where those Red folks were properly compensated for the loss of their land.  It happened through the same theft and murder.  Or, as the Indian scholar Vine Deloria stated "when the white man came, we had the land and he had the Bible.  Once he got here, he got the land and we got the Bible."  So, the point to all this history is that capitalism lies about its existence because for it to tell the truth would be for it to admit it's an illegal system.  This logic rains true through all capitalist institutions, including it's police agencies.  Now, yesterday, I heard a white man on talk radio say that white people have invented all of the progress in this world over the last 200 years.  That's a great statement to placate and promote white supremacy for anyone who needs to believe that lie, but the truth is lies like that are predicated on capitalism protecting it's interests.  And, those interests are having everyone believe that the way things are now is the way they should be because capitalism is God and God is benevolent and all powerful.  

Thus we come back to the police.  The capitalist system wants you to believe that police agencies are all powerful.  They need you to believe that because the police and the military are the armed protectors of the capitalist system.  That's why they constantly propagate honoring those people who perform those "jobs" because that way, they hope to keep the gestapo's  focus off of the inhuman jobs they are forcing them to do.  This is why all of this propaganda you are seeing helps to perpetuate police invincibility.  The way to combat that is for the revolutionary forces to start to propagate the other side of the story.  Let's do that right now.  Police agencies are not invincible.  In fact, with just a slight bit of organization, police agencies can be easily defeated in spite of the cries of cowards that "they have all the guns!"  Study the urban rebellions that have taken place.  There are many you can study.  I like to talk about  the 1992 Los Angeles rebellion.  In this instance, thousands of people cornered the police downtown near Parker Station.  There was a massive response to protect the police headquarters building, but this response left other critical parts of the city wide open.  Word of this spread rapidly and in no time, thousands of people were hitting the streets in areas where no police response could take place.  And, when police did surface, they found dozens of local residents who were openly armed to protect the communities.  There was nothing the police could do except vacate.  There are numerous reports of dozens of citizens defying police orders to back away from buildings once the people realized the police had no capacity to stop them.  These examples are based on the basic principle used in "flash mob" actions.  As you probably know, those are spontaneous actions that are designed to catch authorities off guard so that they are unable to act.  These actions are overwhelmingly successful from the 50 youth storming stores together to remove items from the stores to the same number of people jumping on public transportation at the same time and refusing to pay.  The amazing thing about these acts from a scientific standpoint is they take place with very minimal planning.  Only a text message or five or so minutes of planning.  Imagine what could happen with a few days of planning?  A few weeks?  There are plenty of examples to underscore this point.  The housing justice work taking place across the world is another case in point.  Masses of people mobilized to take over buildings.  The only reason these efforts may not have generated long term results is because the police waited until the supporters thinned out and moved in.  This is the same as moving the Occupy campers out of the parks two years ago.  In Portland, anyone who was there saw what happened.  The night the police issued their vacate order, thousands of people showed up to resist the eviction.  The police came with everyone and everything they had, riot gear, equipment and all, but they could not remove thousands of people who were determined to not move.  So, the police waited until people got tired and left to go to their houses and get sleep.  Then, when there were only about 50 campers left, they moved in, but this shouldn't be mistaken for police strength.  The point is the people, properly organized, have the numbers to outlast the police, not the other way around.  The question is simply one of moving from mobilization to organization.  

For examples of revolutionary organization you can look at the work of the Viet Minh Front in Vietnam or the popular people's movement in Cuba.  In each instance, the people stood up against military units that were supposed to crush them.  In the case of the Vietnamese, the example is most clear because they were engaged in a war with U.S. military forces.  From their victory, we learned that small military units, with support from the local people, could operate uninterrupted for months, even years, consistently inflicting damage on the enemy.  They were able to do this with far inferior weaponry.  In Cuba, they were able to start with only 11 rebels, but because of their political education efforts in cities like Havana, Santiago, and Trinidad, they were able to win people over to support the guerrilla movement while winning peasants over one by one to the actual armed struggle.  In fact, they won many military troops over to their side.  Another example was Hezbollah's defeat of zionist Israel in 2006.  This defeat shocked the world because Israel, armed with U.S. weapons and training, is a force capable of inflicting serious damage as is witnessed by their terrorist assault against Gaza.  Still, no one took time to study the day to day work of Hezbollah.  In spite of what you may think of their Shia Islamic orientation, they spent years working to organize local people in Lebanon.  They built programs to  repair people's homes destroyed by Israeli bombs.  They protected people from the Israeli backed Phalange Militia.  Lebanese people were able to take in loans from Hezbollah.  Over time, Hezbollah earned the support of the people and this was the crucial element that permitted them to hold off the Israelis in spite of Israel's superior weaponry.  The  point is Israel, the U.S. and any imperialist power is mighty, but they can't defeat all of the people at the same time. 

Another method for the popular forces to use is political education against the enemy.  This is effective when the forces you are fighting are not committed to their mission.  Since the U.S. is always on the wrong side of history, this is a tactic that would always have some positive effect, although it has rarely been implemented.  For example, the Vietnamese exploited this by having a complete understanding of the U.S. race situation.  Nguyen Al Qouc, or Ho Chi Minh as he was popularly known, was a 20 something Columbia University student and restaurant dishwasher living in Harlem, New York, in the 1920s when he was known to frequent street corners to hear speakers like the Honorable Marcus Garvey speak about the conditions of African people.  Once he returned home and became a leader of the Vietnamese resistance movement against the U.S., he used that knowledge to create leaflets that were dropped on U.S. troops.  The leaflets read "Black man go home!  This isn't your war!"  Since the African troops knew that our own people were fighting for their lives for justice and freedom here in the U.S., it was an easy question to exploit:  Why are we over here fighting for something we don't even have in the country we live in?  This ideological dilemma began to have a psychological effect on morale that was articulated in works such as the book "Bloods."  The Viet Cong troops were instructed to drive the wedge further by releasing any African troops they captured with political education lectures when possible.

We can refer to many more examples, but the message is police and military are not invincible.  They can be defeated with the proper organization.  They flex their muscles every time people rise up against them because they know their greatest weapon isn't any of the equipment at their disposal, their nasty attitudes against the people, or certainly not the dishonest portrayal of the events.  Their best weapon is keeping you believing that any efforts to organize against them beyond what they term acceptable is always 100% off the table.  Realize that history provides many examples to demonstrate this is not true.  
0 Comments

Why So-Called "Black on Black" Crime is a Weak Attempt at Justifying Police Terrorism

8/22/2014

0 Comments

 
Picture
Bill O'Reilly, sitting "reared back" as the elders used to say, in his FOX News television studio, arrogantly, ignorantly, and without hesitation, articulated his idiotic view of the Ferguson, Missouri, protests.  O'Reilly attempted to negate the legitimacy of any outrage against Michael Brown's murder by pulling out his smoking gun - the "Black on Black" murder rate.  You've heard it several times already.  "Why are they complaining about a police killing when they kill themselves at a much higher rate!  No one's making an issue of that?"  O'Reilly's ill-logic (along with everyone else who share's this stupid perspective), and the arrogant way in which he articulates his ignorance, brought to mind the words of Malcolm X after his Hajj to the Middle East.  Malcolm, speaking to reporters, explained the difference between the "White man in America and the White man in Islamic countries."  He went on to express that when White men in the U.S. say hello they are "really saying, I'm a White man.  I hold higher value than you and I hold power over you."  O'Reilly's arrogance was exactly what Malcolm was referencing, but we actually couldn't care less about what O'Reilly and anyone of his mindless minions believe.  Our concern is for the African masses who are impacted by these poison anti-African theories and sentiments.  We know that we are influenced because you can hear any number of us repeating this tired analysis everywhere we exist.  So, our purpose for writing this piece is to provide African people, and anyone interested in justice around police terrorism and state repression, a scientifically based narrative and analysis to confront the racist and ill-informed analysis of O'Reilly, the people you work with, live near, and hear spewing ignorance in coffee shops, public transportation and events, and supermarkets.

In case people don't know it, the Department of Justice - the FEDS - produce statistics on murder every year and they have done so for decades.  We are no friends of the DOJ, but this fact further lends credibility to us using their statistics.  In their 2013 annual report on murder in the U.S., they report that 84% of White people murdered in 2013 were murdered by other White people.  The report indicates that 91% of Africans murdered in 2013 were killed by Africans.  This trend carries through all ethnic groups where the overwhelming majority of people killed of any socially constructed race are murdered by people who look like them.  Sociologists have long ago explained this phenomenon by pointing out that social groups tend to aggregate with people from their same background.  What this means is African people, like every other people, tend to live around other African people.  This is especially underlined if you throw in systematic housing discrimination, redlining, etc.  The trend follows for who people socialize with , and yes - have conflict that leads to a violent end with.  It's overwhelmingly people the same as you who will kill you.  So, for O'Reilly and others to point to African on African murder rates as an excuse designed to negate police terrorism against the African community is stupidity.  Especially as previously indicated, we factor in racism - the institutionalized system of discrimination against African people - that creates the poverty trap that Malcolm X spoke so eloquently about that more than explains the negligible difference between the percentages of Africans who kill each other compared to Whites who do the same.  The point is if eight out of ten white people are killed by other whites, it's insane to suggest and/or infer that because Africans kill each other nine out of ten times that something is culturally or biologically wrong with African people without applying the same ill-logic to White people.  On top of this, the suggestion that no one is concerned about African on African murder is a statement that only a person who is completely ignorant about African people can make.  In fact, there is far more evidence that there are many forces at work trying to channel African energies in positive directions in African communities around the world than there are in White communities.  There are a number of African organizations from the Universal Negro Improvement Association in the 1920s to the Nation of Islam today that regularly patrol African communities encouraging people to respect one another.  On the flip side, so-called progressive White people seem determined to consistently run down to places like Ferguson to participate in our struggles while staunchly refusing to organize in White communities.  Pick any African community from Los Angeles, California, U.S., to Accra, Ghana, to London, England, and you will see organizations like the All African People's Revolutionary Party, and others, organizing to change the reality of African people.  I myself remember being a youth in inner city San Francisco.  I always had older people prodding and encouraging me to stop being destructive and take responsibility for my people's plight.  So, if one understands this situation on the ground, the suggestion that there is a lack of attention on African self-destruction is very dishonest, ignorant, or both.

Going forward, our close comrades from the Malcolm X Grassroots Movement gave us a sterling and meticulously researched report that illustrates that racist police kill Africans at such a consistent pace that they have done so every 28 seconds for the last seven years...THE LAST SEVEN YEARS!  This evidence is so clear and overwhelming that people like O'Reilly who keep repeating the lies have to know better.  He's stupid, but not that stupid.  This is a part of a carefully coordinated campaign to keep the African masses, and everyone else, confused so that no one will have sympathy on the actions of racist police and therefore won't engage in any action to stop them.  Or better yet, won't connect police terrorism to the real culprit - the capitalist system that police are sworn to protect.  If you understand that last statement, then you will know why it's important to refer to uprisings like Ferguson as slave rebellions and not riots.  

There is nothing inherently wrong with African people.  The only real problem we have is the international capitalist/imperialist network.  Our task is to organize our people wherever we are through constant, mass, political education that is designed to make us commit to relentless revolutionary organization.  This relentless organization will include - yes - organized revolutionary violence that will wipe out those who would think they can kill us in cold blood without justice.  And, before you respond by saying "the police have all the guns" we beg and implore you to gain a comprehensive understanding of revolutionary violence before you continue the ignorance marathon.  Most Africans know the police are put there to oppress us.  So, these ideas about "community policing, hiring more Black police, etc." are simply distractions designed to keep our focus away from the real and only solution - revolutionary organization.  So, the next time some idiot attempts to tell you our problem is us, please tell them to stop being parrots for the capitalist system.  Tell them that the largest  problem we have is our unwillingness to accept the necessity for us to take responsibility for our reality by organizing for a better one.
0 Comments

Don't Believe Anything They're Telling you About Ferguson!

8/19/2014

0 Comments

 
Picture
It was late Sunday, August 17, 2014.  I had just checked into my hotel room in Washington D.C.  Since I decided to get rid of my television three years ago, I decided I would turn on the T.V. in my room to catch up on the news.  CNN was broadcasting extended coverage of protests against the police murder of 18 year old Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri.  In an instant reminder of why I swore off my television, the CNN commentator was confidently and self-righteously expressing that “some people in the crowd fired gunshots at police.”  Then we were treated to the usual display of accommodation negroes like Jesse Jackson. Al Sharpton, Obama, and others, who were quick to make it clear that “any act of violence is unacceptable.”  Even the parents of Sean Bell, the young African man shot dozens of times by New York City police in 2006, were manipulated into coming on air to echo this stern admonishment to the African masses. 

While watching this circus that I’ve come to expect whenever Africans react to police terrorism, all I could do is shake my head.  I reacted this way because as I listened I knew that many well-meaning African people, and other sincere allies against racism and police terrorism, would be unwittingly influenced by this state-friendly message on how to resist oppression.  I prepared myself for the continuous people who would approach me and ask my thoughts on this proposed turn of events in the protests against the police murder of young Michael Brown.  As I thought about these conversations, I started to look forward to them because I realized the value of providing a different perspective to many people who really have no perception of the world outside of the one provided to them by the very forces that benefit from and perpetuate their oppression.  I thought of how I would communicate how these reports of African initiated violence that are so easily and widely accepted by far too many people, are repeated over and over without the slightest shred of proof provided.  In other words, if shots were fired in general, and at the police in particular, how do you know where they came from?  How do you know who fired them?  And how do you know the motivations of those who fired shots, if indeed it happened?

I can tell you two things you need to think about before you accept the “official” version of what happened Sunday, August 17th, in Ferguson.  First, as a revolutionary organizer who believes the only way African people will ever receive justice is when we organize and create it ourselves, let me state clearly that I believe firmly that the police are occupying armies in our communities.  I believe that their history and mission bears out that they exist to repress and oppress African people, no matter what color the cop is.  Consequently, I believe we have the right and responsibility to drive them out of our existence when they threaten us.  I completely dismiss the sentimental notion that “all police are not bad.”  I can do this because of the “blue wall of silence” which prohibits any police officer from “snitching” on a colleague.  They criticize us for not snitching, but when have you ever seen anyone affiliated with the police come out publically and criticize how they handle their interactions with African people?  These shootings rarely occur with only one officer present.  When have the other officers ever come forward to contradict the “official” version of events?  When have your hand picked African police officials done this?  When have the so-called liberal White police officials done this?  NEVER! So spare us those sentiments.  Police agencies are the enemy of African people.  Period.  Now, I want to say that I have spent the last 30 years longing for the day when African people are organized and prepared to defend our communities against police terrorism.  I have spent that time working with all segments of the African population including militant political/community organizations and so-called gang formations like Bloods and Crip sets in California.  I would have loved the day when I came across any group of Africans who were organized to defend our people, but I never have.  If you search, you will find you are hard pressed to find examples of anything like this happening in our history.  The Universal Negro Improvement Association of the 1920s, with all its military regalia and its millions of members, never engaged in military action against police terrorists.  The African Blood Brotherhood from the 20s, and the Revolutionary Action Movement from the 60s, both committed to clandestine military operations, never waged a campaign to attack police terrorists.  It didn’t happen from the US Organization in the 60s or the New Black Panther Party in this decade.  Even all of the prolific street organizations or “gangs” that have existed in African communities – from the Vice Lords and P Stone Black Nation in Chicago, to the previously mentioned Los Angeles organizations – have any notable histories of engaging in organized attacks against police terrorists.  Even the Black Panther Party, despite their early display of weapons against the police, never had a plan or program around attacking police terrorists.  In fact, their closet effort at doing anything like that was Eldridge Cleaver’s ill-advised and dis-organized April 6, 1968 ambush of Oakland police which led to the death of Lil Bobby Hutton. Even if you tally up the death tolls of the hundreds of people who were killed by gunfire during the hundreds of urban rebellions over the last 40 years – internationally – you will find that 95% of the people killed were Africans.  And the overwhelming majority of those killings, along with the few Whites killed, were murdered by police and/or military/National Guard members.  So with that understanding of our history as a people, why would I believe for one second that there is some group of organized Africans in little Ferguson, Missouri, that mobilized to attack the police on August 17t, 2014?  From all reports, the community there is struggling to produce an indigenous leadership to simply speak to the events taking place.  So, I’m sorry, but I can’t just accept the capitalist media’s version that trained African militia people are lurking out there in Ferguson using peaceful protests to wage guerrilla warfare against police. 

The second reason to question these reports is related to the first.  This isn’t the 1960s.  Although most people don’t study history, some of us do.  We know full well the tactics of the FBI’s Counter Intelligence Program (COINTELPRO).  There’s plenty of clear evidence illustrating the government’s willingness to use informants to foment violence among African activists.  If you don’t know names like Melvin Cotton Smith, William O’Neal, or Gene Roberts, then you should do your homework before you start parroting the enemy’s analysis about our people.  The Central Intelligence Agency has had to admit that they used African inmates from the U.S., and African anti-Castro Cuban exiles to engage in military operations in the Congo, Central Africa, in the 1960s.  It was only after one of these men were captured, that it was discovered he was not Congolese.  He wasn’t even born or living on the continent of Africa! 

So, obviously, there’s plenty of reason to question the state’s version of events for August 17th.  The plausible explanation is that if shots were indeed fired, they came from people who were planted in the crowd to cause a violent police response, something not very difficult to achieve.  Again, all of this comes with a big if.  I wasn’t there, but I have lived long enough to know better when these things happen.  What some people swear are gunshots could be fireworks.  The two are often very difficult to tell apart.  Especially in the emotionally charged atmosphere of late night Ferguson streets during these protests.  Reserve your judgments.  Do legitimate research – and what is meant by that is don’t rely on imperialist/capitalist corporate sources for your information.  These sources always promote the law and order platform because the capitalists know these protests are really directed at the capitalist system.  Go to independent African organizations to get your perspective.  These are good sources because these organizations have no financial incentive in influencing you.  Instead, they have only their interest in our people so by reading what these organizations produce, you are risking nothing beyond opening up your mind.  The All African People’s Revolutionary Party, Malcolm X Grassroots Movement, Nation of Islam, African People’s Socialist Party, etc., all regularly produce analysis on these issues that can be easily accessed online.  Let’s support the people of Ferguson.  The first and best way we can do that is by not accepting any version of the story from our enemies.  The next thing we must do to support the people of Ferguson, and every other place from France, to Britain, to Australia, where police terrorism has recently taken place and the African masses have exploded, is to join an organization working to organize our people for liberation.  Clearly, the problems in Ferguson are not new.  If you don’t believe that, just talk to the families of Arthur McDuffie, Kendra James, Amadou Diallo, Oscar Grant, Eleanor Bumpers, Aaron Campbell, Keaton Otis, Ezell Ford, Trayvon Martin, etc., etc., etc.  If we truly want to stop this devastation against our people, we have to recognize the source of the problem which is the capitalist system.  This system was built upon our backs and can only continue to rule with us in check.  Thus, the role of the police.  Intense and committed organization is the only tool that will provide us the ability to defeat these enemies.  That will require every woman, every man, and every child, to be involved in working to organize and liberate our people.  Emotion is good, but it alone won’t free us.  Are you in an organization?  Will you commit to one?  If you don’t, you can’t complain when the next African is killed.  Let’s start working toward true justice so that we don’t find ourselves forced to protest and comfort your family or someone you know.

0 Comments

How Malcolm X Predicted Ferguson, Missouri, 2014 in 1965

8/13/2014

0 Comments

 
Picture
In the All African People's Revolutionary Party (A-APRP), we believe that every people's ideology, philosophy, and value system evolves from that people's culture.  As a result, we trumpet Nkrumahism/Tureism as the ideology for Pan-African revolution, which we believe to be the ultimate solution to the problems African people face everywhere on the planet (all people of African descent are Africans and belong to the African nation - Kwame Nkrumah - "Class Struggle in Africa").  Nkrumahism/Tureism is steeped in categorial conversion and the other tenets of the Revolutionary African Personality that drives the new socialist woman and man that we seek to create for Africa's contribution to a better world for the future.  Consequently, although we study and respect the ideas of Marx, Lenin, Mao, Le Duan, Engels, Luxemburg, etc., we believe those ideas are best suited for the people and culture which produced them.  This is understandable if one has a clear definition of culture.  We accept the definition provided by Sekou Ture - that culture is the sum total of a people's experiences.  That said people take those experiences and shape their world with them.  They use them to develop their legacy.  It's important to understand this because many people have made the mistake of using other people's cultural analysis to attempt to understand their unrelated political reality.  This is the reason Amilcar Cabral - a student of Nkrumahism/Tureism - correctly stated that "ideology cannot be exported."  It is also the reason that a man like El Hajj Malik El Shabazz, better known as Malcolm X, could accurately predict that African urban rebellions, or slave revolts, would proliferate and continue all over the African world, long before this actually happened.  This isn't to say that slave revolts didn't happen before Malcolm's time.  Africans and all oppressed people have always resisted their oppressors.  In fact, slave revolts such as the Maroon rebellions, Haitian revolution, Sam Sharpe rebellion in Jamaica, Nat Turner led revolt in the U.S., etc., had as much to do with the eventual eradication of institutionalized slavery as anything else.  But, what we have seen since the 1960s has been a rise in spontaneous mass rebellions that result from the African masses reacting to state repression.  This is the phenomenon that Brother Malcolm spoke specifically and precisely to.  It was in a presentation he gave less than two weeks before his state initiated assassination.  He was speaking at the invitation of the Africa Society of the London School of Economics on February 11, 1965, in London, England.  When asked about the urban rebellion in Harlem, New York, the previous summer, Malcolm responded by explaining that the reason Africans are spontaneously reacting to police terrorism by tearing up the neighborhoods they live in is because "the entire economy of the communities we live in are not owned by us...The landlord is white.  The merchant is white.  The police are white.  And the media paints the resisters as hoodlums when in fact their efforts are easily understandable."  He continued to explain that until the power system that oppresses Africans is changed through a revolutionary process, rebellions would continue.  There is a clear class/race analysis contained in Malcolm's assessment that serious activists would do well to study.

Fast forward to 2014.  Many of you, confused by the rhetoric of the capitalist narrative, and without an African culturally based ideological understanding of this phenomenon, continue to parrot the same reactionary position that was addressed to Malcolm (which he appropriately answered) 50 years ago.  The fact is since Malcolm's speech in 1965, we have seen literary hundreds of urban rebellions.  Although these are all African rebellions, they can't be tied to any particular geography or language.  Rebellions have taken place in Los Angeles (1965, 1992), Brixton, London (1981, 1995), Sydney, Australia (2004), Paris, France (2011), and most recently, Ferguson, Missouri (2014).  What is consistent with all of these rebellions, and many others, is that they resulted from the African community's anger at police terrorism in the form of dehumanizing murders of African youth.  For those of you who insist on maintaining a completely irrational and unscientific America-centric perspective of the African struggle and the world arena, what these rebellions are telling you is regardless of whether the African speaks British English, French, U.S. English, Southern U.S. English, West Coast English, etc., Africans are being systematically oppressed.  More importantly, the African masses are sick of it, not just in the U.S., but all over the world.  

This was Malcolm's message 50 years ago.  Of course, 10 days after he gave that speech, his ability to contribute to solving this problem was permanently ended.  Still, we have his cultural perspective to work with.  We have his clear understanding of the mindset of his people, all over the world.  We have the work of those who built on his cultural analysis, such as the late Kwame Ture (Stokely Carmichael) who said the greatest problem African people have is our dis-organization.  As Kwame was fond of putting it "we are the only people in the world who rise up, burn a city down in three days, and then sit down for 30 years!"  Kwame went on to explain that this occurs because we are not organized.  That we must transform this spontaneous eruption into a planned, protracted, outright revolt against the capitalist power structure.

For the apologists and cowards, this isn't to say we are anywhere near being ready to develop that sustained attack against imperialism today.  What it is saying is when yet another urban rebellion happens, for those who are always quick to point out that "the police have all the guns", your analysis indicates your lack of faith in people in general and your complete ignorance about revolution in particular.  There are many more people who crave justice than there are police or military.  The Vietnamese taught us that with mass organization, having the best weapons is never enough to win.  With this understanding, they handed the U.S. a clear military defeat.  Yet, people who claim to be revolutionary do absolutely no study of the Viet Minh Front which was the key to Vietnam's military victory over U.S. military forces.  Huey P. Newton summed up the reasons for their victory by stating "the man's technology is never enough to defeat the will of the people" (yet another culturally based analysis).  So, we know that our job is to harness the people's will with concrete information and to agitate the people to organize.  This is clearly what happened in Vietnam and similar examples point to the same level of organization in the Cuban revolution, particularly their ability to repel the U.S. Navy Seal attack against Playa Del Giron (Bay of Pigs) in 1961.  To have this success, we need soldiers who are willing to work with our people on a consistent basis and institutionalize this revolutionary political education process.  Political education is necessary in order to even consider planning any type of confrontation against imperialism. We must be scientific in order to win.  We need a disciplined approach where people are focused, strong minded, and committed.  To get to this point requires one to engage in a political education process of your own.  We have that available for you in the form of an Revolutionary Pan-African ideologically based work study program.  If you are interested, please go to aaprporegon.org.  If you don't live in Oregon, go to the site and click on the international website tab to find the A-APRP chapter near you.  If there isn't one, let's talk about how you can start one.  Science.  Organization.  Commitment.  These are the tools that will move us to the place where we can stop waiting for the next African to be murdered either by other confused Africans on the streets, in state sponsored executions, or in any of the other inhuman ways that contribute to capitalism's continued dominance of our people.

Finally, if you don't want to join the A-APRP no problem.  Join or start some organization working for justice for our people and for humanity.  The point Malcolm, Kwame, Assata, Huey, Nkrumah, Ture, Cabral, the Vietnamese, the Cubans, and everyone else made and makes is that organization decides everything.  It's time for us to move beyond being shocked or upset about the problem.  It's time to start work to solve it.  What's your response going to be?
0 Comments

    Picture

    Author

    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?"

    Archives

    March 2023
    February 2023
    January 2023
    June 2022
    March 2022
    January 2022
    December 2021
    November 2021
    October 2021
    September 2021
    August 2021
    July 2021
    June 2021
    May 2021
    April 2021
    March 2021
    February 2021
    January 2021
    December 2020
    November 2020
    October 2020
    September 2020
    August 2020
    July 2020
    June 2020
    May 2020
    April 2020
    March 2020
    February 2020
    January 2020
    December 2019
    November 2019
    October 2019
    September 2019
    August 2019
    July 2019
    June 2019
    May 2019
    April 2019
    March 2019
    February 2019
    January 2019
    December 2018
    November 2018
    October 2018
    September 2018
    August 2018
    July 2018
    June 2018
    May 2018
    April 2018
    March 2018
    February 2018
    January 2018
    December 2017
    November 2017
    October 2017
    September 2017
    August 2017
    July 2017
    June 2017
    May 2017
    April 2017
    March 2017
    February 2017
    January 2017
    December 2016
    November 2016
    October 2016
    September 2016
    August 2016
    July 2016
    June 2016
    May 2016
    April 2016
    March 2016
    February 2016
    January 2016
    December 2015
    November 2015
    October 2015
    September 2015
    August 2015
    July 2015
    June 2015
    May 2015
    April 2015
    March 2015
    February 2015
    January 2015
    December 2014
    November 2014
    October 2014
    September 2014
    August 2014
    July 2014
    June 2014
    May 2014
    April 2014
    March 2014
    February 2014
    December 2013
    November 2013
    October 2013
    September 2013
    August 2013
    July 2013
    June 2013
    May 2013
    April 2013
    March 2013
    February 2013
    January 2013
    December 2012
    November 2012
    October 2012
    September 2012
    August 2012
    July 2012
    June 2012
    May 2012
    March 2012
    February 2012
    January 2012
    December 2011
    November 2011
    October 2011
    September 2011
    August 2011
    July 2011
    June 2011
    May 2011
    April 2011

    Categories

    All

    RSS Feed

Proudly powered by Weebly