Ahjamu Umi's: "The Truth Challenge"
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Are Anti-White Feelings Rooted in Deep Anti-African Programming?

8/30/2018

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Please refrain from responding to the title here by reciting all of the trauma and terror that Europe and her children have deposited on the planet for the last 500+ years.  If you are paying attention, you should know this is one of the last places where that response is necessary.  The question here is based in analyzing the colonized mindset and conditions of African people.  That 500 year reign of terror has institutionalized within the African masses that we are inferior.  It has delivered the same message about us to all non-African peoples.  We are resilient people so our struggling masses are never going to lie down and accept being oppressed.  One of the many ways we unconsciously fight back against the inhumane treatment we receive from our oppressors is to challenge the legitimacy of those oppressors.  No one in the last 100 years was more articulate at voicing that challenge than El Hajj Malik El Shabazz (Malcolm X).  When Malcolm was a member of the Nation of Islam and giving those extended street corner rally speeches in Harlem, New York in the late 50s and early 60s, he became an expert at deconstructing the immortality of European people.  Malcolm would talk about how Europeans had noses like "dogs" and how they smelled "like canine creatures."  He would disparage the pale skin of European women.  He even crafted an analysis that Europeans, being less than human, do not possess the capacity to laugh like the rest of God's children.  

This language certainly served to dehumanize Europeans, but that has to be placed within its proper context.  In the 1950s, there had been no mass African independence movement.  No civil rights movement in the U.S. and Caribbean.  And certainly, no Black power and Pan-African institutionalization.  In those days, the narrative and image of Tarzan represented the dominant image of Africa, even to many people living inside the continent.  Of course, all of those issues are still very much alive today, but due to the relentless struggle our people are waging, there are also many healthy counter narratives at play today on all levels of our existence.  In the 1950s, this was much less so.  By doing what he did, Malcolm, and others, helped plant the seeds of deconstructing that colonial mindset by knocking the Europeans down several notches so that we could see them as they really are, fallible, highly confused human beings like the rest of us. 

Malcolm's methodology also had a purpose. He was working to recruit our people into a movement that was based on expressing the virtues of being African people.  Within this analysis, the work of Malcolm and others makes sense from an anti-colonial standpoint, but what we are seeing today is an aberration of what Malcolm was working to accomplish.  Today, Africans, particularly within the Western Hemisphere, have adopted some of the most strange and far out conspiracy concepts and theories.  We were never from Africa.  We have been in the Western Hemisphere for thousands of years.  We are not even biologically and/or culturally connected in any way to Africa.  These are some of the ideas that are floating around out here today.  At the base of much of this thinking is the unstated assumption that by creating this fictitious history for our people, we can create some new context for who we are that somehow rises us up to the level that we secretly see Europeans occupying.  Much of this philosophy is rooted in a core belief that Europeans are the basis from which human progress must be judged.  This is true of even the most "Black" and/or even African philosophies operating out here today.

These conclusions can be reached because these philosophies almost always come with some disclaimer against European culture and ways of life.  As if these pseudo cooked up philosophies offer us a pride that we need because we don't have it anywhere else.  And, the reason we can easily conclude that these beliefs are rooted in anti-African thinking is because none of these people, and I mean not one of them, possess even the slightest understanding of African history, tribal histories, cultural perspectives, and certainly not political developments and class struggles.  Nothing.  That's why their beliefs don't even match up with material reality.  For instance, if it was true that most or all of us were always in the Western Hemisphere, where are these people who can prove that their families have roots going back thousands of years here?  What were their names and what culture did they have?  I don't know about you, but I've never met a single person who can meet any of that criteria.  Ninety-five percent of everyone has a European name and some physical family history in states, regions, countries, in the Western Hemisphere that clearly practiced chattal slavery. 

We believe what's actually happening here is our people continue to harbor significant shame in being African.  We shouldn't blame our people for that.  We have been systemically told that Africa is a place where those who are losing the challenge of life live.  Its a place where all the disease and poverty exists.  This is dominant thinking in the world today and not only are our people not immune to it, we are the most susceptible to it.  Marcus Garvey told us that its impossible to hate the roots and love the tree so with such a lack of understanding about Africa, what our people do instead is make up a false identity to compensate for our feelings of alienation and desperation. And, since we correctly interpret that much of our suffering, at least to the level of being active accomplices in it, results from European people on all levels, we continue to harbor great anger towards Europeans for permitting and often contributing to our trauma.  As a result, we find it necessary to include within our fantasy identities a special rebuke for those White people who created the conditions that require us to live this false life in the first place.

I was arguing with someone once who was trying to tell me that my Pan-African organization, because we did not have an anti-European position and because we supported the Irish Republican Socialist movement, was actually not a pro-African organization.  Their position was that our positions compromised our commitment to our people.  Of course, this person belonged to no organization.  Also true, they had no passport and had never traveled anywhere outside of a few colonial states within the U.S.  I asked them why they hadn't saw the need to secure a passport and travel to Africa?  My point, which I'm quite certain they never understood, was if they were so anti-White, it would seem to me that their first priority would be going to a place where no Europeans existed.  I told them I was in the Gambia once and didn't see a European for weeks.  I had similar experiences in other countries so I would think they would be at the front of the line to get there, yet I couldn't even get this person to follow through on filling out paperwork to get a passport.  Even after I volunteered to pay for it for them.  After extensive back and forth struggle, I have to give this person credit for finally admitting that their apprehension was based on fear.  Beyond the one book I sat and read with them in which they struggled greatly to get through, I knew they had extremely limited understanding about anything about Africa so where was this fear coming from?  That 500+ years of conditioning is where it came from and its manifested through oral misinformation passed down, the backward information we "learned" in school, and through every institution in this society.  Even many of our family members born and raised in Africa, dedicated to using every ounce of their existence to get to Western capitalism, play a significant role in perpetuating confusion about Africa once they get here.

This system makes us hate ourselves and to compensate for that, we make up things because we lack knowledge of our true history.  Then, in addition to that dysfunction, we act out our anger towards Europeans by building superiority over Europeans into our new world views.  Although completely understandable, all of this is counter productive.  There is no need for us to create a false history.  We are without question African people.  The moment we embrace that and stop trying to be anything except that is the moment we can truly grasp who we are in this world so that we can begin to seriously do something about it.  We grasp the truth by challenging the backward narratives that have been forced upon us.  And to do that, its going to require us making a commitment to engage in serious study of our history.  There are no shortcuts.  Reading unsubstantiated debris on the internet cannot substitute for comprehensive study.  We have far too many giants of Pan-African literature for anyone to attempt to use ignorance as an excuse for argumentation.  Start with Marcus and Amy Garvey.  Walter Rodney, Franz Fanon, Kwame Nkrumah, Sekou Ture, Amilcar Cabral, Steve Biko, Mangaliso Sobukwe, Angela Davis, Assata Shakur, Malcolm X, W.E.B. DuBois, etc., etc., etc.  Scholars like Rodney and DuBois provided us with all the historical evidence needed to build up our respect for Africa, but if we don't read it, we will never know it.  Once we have that solid foundation where we understand Africa's enviable and proud history of humanism, collectivism, and egalitarian societies...Once we know of the courage, resilience, and civilization of our people, we will learn to stand on our own real life merits.  We will no longer compare ourselves with Europe and her children, whether done consciously or not.  We will scoff at anyone who makes an attempt to separate us from our Mother - Africa.  And most importantly, we will start to see the necessity to defend our mother as we will understand that our mother has the key to our future development in ways that dwarf any concept of these fake identities being able to compete with.  Plus, a Pan-African reality provides us the muscle to ensure our dignity is respected and protected.  With that in place, we will no longer have the need to be angry at Europeans because they will then be required to respect us in ways we have never imagined.  And, we will respect ourselves in ways we have never imagined.  Instead of believing in anti-human fantasies, its time for us to work to make our reality what its intended to be.


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Did Malcolm X Really Want back in the Nation of Islam?  Or...

8/28/2018

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Plenty of people know the basic story of El Hajj Malik El Shabazz's (Malcolm X) life.  He went to prison in 1946.  He became a believer in the teachings of Elijah Muhammad while in prison and once he got out in the mid 1950s, he became a tireless soldier in building Muhammad's Nation of Islam throughout the U.S.  People know this general framework not because there has been mass serious study of Malcolm's life.  The information out there is there because of the capitalist system's understanding of Malcolm's inspiration to the masses of African people.  The system saw the impact Malcolm had on the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) in mid 1960s before and after Malcolm was assassinated.  Malcolm's ideas challenged SNCC, an organization built in the image and philosophy of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr, to radically transform itself into the face of the Black Power movement.  The capitalist system, always thinking of ways to stay ahead of the masses, decided that if you can't beat em, join em.  Or, at least shape em.  In the 1970s, 80s, and 90s, Malcolm was a regular fixture as a character in mainstream motion pictures like the 1977 "King" where Malcolm was portrayed as a violent sociopath.  The masses of African people, forever distrustful of capitalism's efforts to program them about Malcolm, responded by making Malcolm the image of African resistance and rebelliousness in the late 1980s and early 90s.  Malcolm's voice became a permanent feature on rap records during this period.  Unfortunately, Spike Lee's sorry depiction of Malcolm in his Denzel Washington starring movie "Malcolm X" (1992) did a significant amount of damage in tarnishing the fiery light Malcolm has ignited in the hearts and minds of our people, but since people's progress always continues to move, the verdict was far from over.

Today, Malcolm still serves strongly as an inspiration of liberation and uncompromising pride and determination within African people and all of humanity.  As a result, lots of attention is paid to Malcolm's personal development.  Since not even a full year elapsed between Malcolm's official break with the Nation of Islam (NOI) in March of 1964 and his assassination in February 1965, questions still resonate around Malcolm's actual direction.  Was he a revolutionary Pan-Africanist when he was killed?  Was a militant Black Nationalist?  DId he actually just secretly wish he could return to "the good old days" within the NOI?  Much has been written and said about this over the last 53 years.  And the most high profile literature e.g. Manning Marable's tragic volume book on Malcolm in 2014 and some of the other garbage produced by people like Bruce Perry, etc., have said a lot about Malcolm's intentions while not supplying enough evidence to win over Judge Judy's Court room.  Today, the questions about which direction Malcolm was headed in still loom large.  

One of the most common theories, promoted understandably and most consistently by members of NOI, is that Malcolm really wanted back in the Nation.  To support this claim, these folks point to the calls and at least one letter Malcolm wrote to Elijah Muhammad since his break asking for a conversation with "the Messenger."  The logic used here is that Malcolm wanted nothing more than an audience to beg forgiveness for forsaking the Nation and had Muhammad given him that audience, Malcolm could today still be alive and still in the Nation.  Although this argument has an emotional appeal for those who promote it, there isn't much concrete evidence to support this position.  There is clear documentation that Malcolm did write that letter to Muhammad.  And, he probably did make some calls, but none of this proves anything really.  Placing the situation in 1963/64 in context, Malcolm was under an overwhelming amount of pressure.  He was fighting with the Nation for the very house he and his family depended upon for shelter.  He was experiencing confirmed death threats and actual attempts against his life on a regular basis.  There was open hostility against him by followers of Muhammad who viewed his defection as treason.  And most of all of that was secretly being facilitated and manipulated by the U.S. government. Under these adverse circumstances, Malcolm had no protection.  Its seems reasonable that a logical thinker like Malcolm would surmise that a detente with the Nation would be the way to stave off this pressure.  So, like the person in any relationship who knows that relationship isn't healthy, but decides to continue to exist within that environment, something that happens all the time, Malcolm could have reached out in a desperate effort to generate some peace.  This certainly wouldn't mean that he was 100% ideologically in line with returning to the NOI.  And, nothing about everything Malcolm was doing suggests that.

Questions that have never really been seriously explored, especially by the slate of worthless literature produced by people like Marable, is what exactly was the foundation of Malcolm's work those last eleven months?  What we know is Malcolm traveled to several countries in Africa and the Middle East.  One trip in 1964 he was gone for five months total.  Malcolm had no job and no source of income.  Who was paying for his travels?  And why?  Certainly not the NOI?  What we know for sure is Malcolm certainly completed his religious journey during the Hajj he took to the Middle East.  It seems reasonable that Muslim leaders in those countries, anxious to have a high level Islamic voice in the U.S., would underwrite Malcolm's travels for this purpose. It doesn't add up that those same sources would underwrite Malcolm's extensive travels throughout Africa.  Particularly to countries like Ghana, Tanzania, and even Guinea - which although dominantly Islamic was as much Pan-Africanist and politicized in its representation to the world as anything else.  We know that Malcolm had multiple meetings with Kwame Nkrumah, the then president of Ghana.  Why has the content of those meetings never been seriously discussed?  Lee's movie didn't even bother to address those meetings.  Since his movie was based on Malcolm's autobiography this seems strange since Malcolm asserts in that book that his meetings with Nkrumah were the "highest honor of his life."  That's a significant statement from someone who became literate by reading the entire dictionary.  A strong compliment from someone who helped create the largest independent African organization in the U.S. at that time and since that time to the present.  A solid assessment from someone who was a center piece of starting the Nation's first newspaper.  From someone who debated racism at Oxford, on television, and in every corner of the world.  Although I wasn't in those meetings between Malcolm and Nkrumah, a close look at Malcolm during those last few months shed light on exactly how he was moving.  

When Malcolm returned to the U.S. from visiting Nkrumah, Sekou Ture, and other Pan-Africanists in Africa, the first thing he did was announce the formation of the Organization of Afro-American Unity (OAAU).  This was done exactly one year after Nkrumah helped found the Organization of African Unity (OAU).  At that time, Nkrumah believed the OAU was going to be the vehicle that facilitated Pan-Africanism and all evidence indicates Malcolm believed the OAAU would be the U.S. branch of that OAU.  Unfortunately, imperialism had different plans.  Today, the OAU, which is now called the African Union, is identified as a clear structure serving neo-colonialism, capitalism, and imperialism.  Nkrumah was beginning to recognize that in 1964 as his landmark book "Neo-Colonialism" illustrated that year, but like Malcolm, he was short on time.  Practically one year to the day after Malcolm was assassinated, Nkrumah's government in Ghana was overthrown in a wicked imperialist planned and supported coup.  

Still, the questions remain.  What did Malcolm and Nkrumah discuss?  Malcolm's daughter published his diary in 2016 and in there he discussed how Nkrumah warned him that Ghanaian intelligence forces had detected that the U.S. government would attempt to kill Malcolm.  Malcolm admitted in his diary and Nkrumah addresses in the book of his letters ("The Conakry Years"), that Nkrumah did warn Malcolm.  And, that Malcolm was invited to stay on in Ghana.  What was Malcolm being invited to stay on in Ghana and do?  History gives us a glimpse.  Three years after Malcolm's assassination another young African revolutionary in the U.S. met with Nkrumah, who after the coup in Ghana, was then living in Guinea-Conakry under the protection of the Democratic Party of Guinea and Sekou Ture.  That second African revolutionary from the U.S. was Kwame Ture (then Stokely Carmichael).  We know for sure that Nkrumah asked Carmichael to stay on in Guinea and help build the All African People's Revolutionary Party which was Nkrumah's response to neo-colonialsim and imperialism in Africa.  

We believe Nkrumah wanted Malcolm to stay in Ghana - at that time - and do the work that Kwame Ture ended up doing.  The conditions Malcolm faced in 1064 were drastically different than those facing Kwame Ture in 1969, but Malcolm clearly left Africa committed philosophically to the vision Nkrumah articulated.  The book "The Final Speeches of Malcolm X" (not to be confused with "The Last Speeches of Malcolm X") contains the last eleven speeches Malcolm gave in chronological order.  Each and every one of these speeches has a clear Pan-Africanist focus and this wasn't something that Malcolm was just focused on in those last eleven months of his life.  His response to the reporter about Kennedy's assassination in December 1963 - his famous "chickens coming home to roost" statement was as strong a Pan-Africanist statement as has ever been made and Malcolm made that statement while still on active duty in the NOI.  Meanwhile, the Nation was issuing a statement of condolences for "the loss of our president."  Its not a knock against the Nation.  Its just truth that there's no way Malcolm was philosophically aligned with this organization at that point in his life.  In fact, you can see this trend in Malcolm's words as early as 1960.  I would explain this as human progress doesn't stand still.  Although I understand the continued claim by NOI people that Muhammad produced Malcolm, that also isn't a very concrete argument.  We are all produced by someone. It could be said that Marcus Garvey produced Elijah Muhammad and that Booker T. Washington produced Marcus Garvey, etc.  Clearly, its not nearly as important where we came from as it is where we are going.  There is little doubt in my mind that Malcolm was headed towards a solid understanding of Nkrumah's prophetic statement that no African anywhere on Earth will ever be free until Africa is free.  Malcolm took this position with vigor and used his uncanny wit to make this message palatable to the masses e.g. "We are still Africans.  If a cat has kittens in the oven you don't call them biscuits!"  We don't believe Malcolm became even more outspoken on Pan-Africanism simply because he was more than likely receiving financial backing by Nkrumah, Ture, and others.  Actually, they supported him because he was a genuine Pan-Africanist who was doing concrete work to advance the cause internationally.  There is much to support this thinking and very little to refute it.  Had Malcolm had more time, there's little question that all real and imagined doubt would have been completely erased.

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People's Violence Versus State Sponsored/Supported Violence

8/24/2018

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Lil Bobby Hutton and Bobby Seale leading a group of 29 Black Panther Party members and supporters into the California State Capitol on May 2, , 1967, to protest the racist Mulford bill designed to prohibit Panthers from carrying guns in public. Had the Panthers organized and used those guns against the state, it would have been ill advised and premature, but it wouldn't be African people being violent because their decision to do so was prompted by 500 years of terrorist state supported and sponsored violence against us.
Yesterday, I had an intense conversation with a European man who approached my table to challenge me on the definition of socialism.  I'm going to reference that conversation to establish the framework for this article.  Some people will read that and say its not fair for me to have a conversation with someone and then write about that conversation to people who were not a part of the conversation.  To that I say many people know I write prolifically on this blog.  And, if you don't know that, you should know it before you pick a fight with me because if you are arrogant enough to approach me with a nonsense argument, then I'm going to be committed enough to expose your racism to the world.  As is usually the case, my conversation with this individual broached many different subjects, but I'm going to reference him asking me what I would do if a klansman showed up where he and I were talking.  I told him if the klansman approached me, I would end his misery.  From that, this individual attempted to go on a tirade accusing me of "being violent" because I didn't know the klansman and therefore, I had no understanding of his motives and consequently, I would be wrong to do anything to prevent him from "expressing his views."  This individual became mortally offended when I told him he didn't know anything about what he was talking about and he sounded as ignorant as "a barnyard animal."  Eventually, this person acknowledged, at least on a minimal level, the moral and historical correctness of my position, but that's not the point.  I didn't want or need his validation.

The point is it has become normalized in current times for far too many people to accept the individualistic and immaterial vision of history that each situation has its own truth.  As a result of this bourgeois logic, a klansman now has individual agency and his decision to represent an organization that has spent the last 150 years brutalizing, terrorizing, and murdering my people, suddenly has no basis of legitimacy in how we decide we must respond to this person to protect ourselves.

You see this distorted logic everywhere.  The land reform programs that were initiated in Zimbabwe in 1990 and Azania, South Africa, this year, are being characterized as an unfair and violent theft from the colonizers whose ancestors violently and illegally stole the land in the first place.  If those colonizers were so concerned about justice, why didn't they make effort some time ago to provide reparations for the injustices that placed them in the position of privilege at the expense of our people?  Apparently, justice is only a word they know when they perceive themselves as being deprived of it.  I'm clear across the world and I know the history of how they illegally got the land so I know they must know it.  Yet, our people correcting a 500+ year injustice is being discussed as if these latest reform acts (long overdue and tame compared to what we should be doing to get our lands back) are just as unjust as the violent colonial domination that institutionalized inequality in the first place.

So there's little question that the dominant narrative on violence is that when the state executes and supports it, that's ok, but when the people exercise it, then its criminal.  And, we are not saying that working class Europeans created this mindset.  They didn't.  We simply blame them for doing what they consistently continue to do, accept backward mindsets like that without even questioning or challenging it.  In fact, most of them overwhelmingly endorse it.  And, in doing so, they adopt this caviar attitude against our suffering, minimizing it, and acting as if their white vision is the only vision that has validity.  I even saw pictures floating around the internet of white people making jokes about the silly outfits white supremacists were wearing to rallies around the country in recent weeks.  I realize that if I was white, and therefore removed from the historical and systemic elements of white supremacist violence, I would probably think a good way to release my stress about the situation would be to dehumanize the imagery of these racists, but for us, our history of suffering from these people is far too great for us to dismiss any of them, regardless of how silly other white people think they look.  Many white people look silly to us in any number of situations and scenarios, but we still can never drop our guard and dismiss them as harmless because history easily tells us otherwise.  A klan robe all by itself looks silly, but compared to the horrifying stories I've heard my entire life from my Southern born and bred relatives along with the vast history I've studied, if the klan looked like donkeys I'd still need to take that as seriously as is humanly possible.

What all this tells us is we can never accept European definitions for our struggle on any level.  We cannot even give them the time to express their views.  In fact, there is nothing they need do around us except provide material support for our liberation work.  If that support must come with European analysis, keep your support.  We don't want or need it.  Clearly, with far too many Europeans carrying this continued dysfunctional love affair with capitalism, we just need to accept that they will never see any effort we make to assert our dignity as justified because in their worldview, our opposition against capitalism is an opposition against them.

​As for people's violence versus that supported and/or carried out by the state, we have to continue to boldly assert that are oppressed victims of the state, and those the state supports who would brutalize us e.g. vigilantes, white supremacist groups, etc., we have the right and responsibility to organize for the capacity to carry out revolutionary violence to overrun the forces of oppression.  And, to be clear, when we say revolutionary violence, we are talking about the ability to organize to engage in planned violence to overthrow the state.  We are not ducking behind the "safety" of claiming self defense.  We are claiming our right to protect our current and future generations, other oppressed peoples, and the planet by stopping the ability of those causing harm to all those entities to do so.  In other words, for those who are a little slower, if I stop someone from committing a rape, I'm not guilty of committing an act of violence.  If those who show up to stop racists from normalizing racism, which means normalizing racist violence since that is the legacy of such people, then even if the people showing up to stop racism do so by physically stopping the racists from being physically present, those people doing the stopping are not committing acts of violence.  And, to say so is being dishonest and inhumane.

Our issue is never with those who show up to stop racists from showing up.  Our issue is that most of those people who do that stop there.  They do not proceed to engage in the most important element of that work e.g. organizing European people so that they never join racist groups in the first place.  And, if when showing up to stop those racists, the anti-racists do so using any means necessary, they are right to do so.  If African people use whatever methods possible to stop ourselves from being brutalized by state terrorists and their surrogates, we are within our rights as human beings to do so.  We shouldn't spend five seconds debating, arguing, convincing, about the morality of our position on this question.  Anyone who doesn't get it at this point isn't interested in getting it.  Any Europeans who continue to center themselves when we are the ones being systemically brutalized are only concerned about validating themselves.  All we have to do is continue to engage in the work of organizing our people for revolutionary victory.  If we do that, the rest will take care of itself.


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Why I've been Done with Spike Lee since 1992

8/20/2018

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Rapper/actor/activist Boots Riley has offered scathing criticism of Spike Lee for Lee's choice to make his latest movie "Black Klansman."
I honestly didn't care much for Spike Lee's breakout movie "She's Gotta Have It" in 1986.  I thought it was terribly patriarchal.  I hated the vivid way in which he displayed physical and emotional violence against the primary woman character in that film.  I did absolutely enjoy Lee's 1988 "School Daze."  Being that my day to day work within the All African People's Revolutionary Party (A-APRP) in those days was primarily on the Cal State University, Sacramento, campus, Lee's depiction of African fraternities and sororities in that movie, resonated deeply with me.  Much of our work required us to work with, and often bump heads with, the African Greek letter organization members.  In fact, one of my most significant early organizing victories was the "School Daze" forum I helped organize on the campus soon after that movie came out.  That event had upwards of 300 people in attendance, all Africans, largely Greek letter organization members.  Each "Divine Nine" organization was represented on that panel and I can say, thirty years later, that the event had as much impact as any event in that campuses history.

Of course, Lee's 1989 "Do the Right Thing" was a classic.  And, Lee's contribution towards the development and/or advancement of key African talent like Denzel Washington, Wesley Snipes, Lawrence Fishbourne, Samuel L Jackson, Giancarlo Esposito, Roger Guenaver Smith, and others, cannot be denied.  I had a drop off with Lee's next few movies - "Mo Better Blues" and "Jungle Fever", but it was his effort to bring the life of Malcolm X to the big screen through his biopic film starring Denzel that changed from that point forward how I would look at Lee's work.

My contempt for Lee's "Malcolm X" movie stems from the fact I knew most of our people would rely on the movie, not any serious study of Malcolm's life and contributions, to form their perspective of Malcolm and his work.  As a result, I was completely shocked while viewing the movie on its opening night in November of 1992.  I was there with several A-APRP members.  Our assignment, as was the case for our organizers nationwide that night, was to leaflet movie goers with a brochure clarifying Malcolm's crystal clear anti-zionist position.  The movie was so terrible I could hardly stand it.  The story had been changed in some very strange ways and most of the people who would be absolutely necessary to explain Malcolm's conflict with the Nation of Islam were conveniently left out of the movie.  No John Ali, the suspected government informant.  No James Shabazz, Clarence X Gill, Elijah Muhammad Jr.  No Louis Farrakhan, but the most egregious offense was Lee's shoddy handling of Malcolm's work in Africa.  The work that defined Malcolm's Pan-Africanist legacy and caused him to be killed.  I was so upset that I couldn't even watch the end of that movie.  I abruptly left my seat to go outside to start handling out the anti-zionist leaflets.  I guess I have to give Lee some credit for developing my oratory skills because I was so mad that night, I played the role of a street corner preacher at that movie theater, preaching to people about the real Malcolm who wasn't portrayed in that movie as they exited.  My fire that night was fueled by a portrayal of Malcolm that seemed to depict him as anything except the revolutionary Pan-Africanist that we are convinced cost him his life.  Our ability to reach our people is challenged, compromised, and misdirected at every turn.  Something that may seem so simple to you, like what Lee missed in the Malcolm movie, serves to set us back for years.  This is the cause of our frustration with that movie.  Lee compromised portraying Malcolm with integrity for personal fame and fortune for Lee.

After the Malcolm movie I played little attention to anything Lee produced, missing most of his movies since then.  And, I mean not even knowing they were produced.  Now, we are hearing about Lee in the spotlight again because of his just released "Black Klansman."  The movie is connected to the real life work of police officer Ron Stallworth who infiltrated the klan.  He did that after infiltrating African liberation organizations, including the A-APRP.  We have several older cadre who knew Stallworth from his work in this regard who can vouch for that.  This is primarily the reason why I chose to write something about Spike Lee.  I was really determined to do so after reading some white left people critique Boots Riley's criticism of Lee's movie.  These Europeans, always the unquestionable experts of everything Africans represent, had issue with Riley critiquing Lee's movie.  These people had seen the movie and they didn't sniff out anything in it that justified Riley's strong critique.  Of course, and as is always the case, these white left people have absolutely no understanding of the history of the African liberation movement.  They, as much as any Europeans, view African people through the dominant white supremacist lenses.  That means they think, at least on some level, that Lee, being African, and a fixture in African popular culture in the U.S., must have some credibility to articulate the virtues of our history.  If they believe this, we deeply disagree with them.  To us, Lee lost whatever credibility he had when he made such an ill-responsible movie about Malcolm X.  Now, he is messaging that the police who infiltrated the A-APRP was motivated by a speech by Kwame Ture (then Stokely Carmichael) to infiltrate the Klan?  What about the damage created by infiltrating the African liberation movement?  How and when is that addressed?  What was done and how much did that work set us back in our development?  You see, our point is why aren't people like Lee, if they really want to portray our history, doing movies about all of the work to discredit our sincere liberation efforts?  History cannot be seen in a vacuum as these white left critiques continue to do as it relates to our movements.  Spike Lee is a bourgeois artist who cashes checks from police departments.  Any effort he or whomever makes, no matter how subtle, to legitimize police who have played even a minor role in sabotaging our movement contributes towards normalizing the dismantling of revolutionary organizations.  The fact Lee has repeatedly done this makes him complicit in this process.  The fact he profits from it makes him criminal in this process.  Ironically, it was Malcolm himself who pointed out that a serious people for liberation can never let their story be told by the artist community because that community, at least within the capitalist context, is consumed with profiting off their art.  There are of course many who defy that statement, myself included, but far too many of them, particularly all of those with Spike Lee's level of visibility, are completely bought and paid for.  

For anyone serious about African liberation, Spike Lee's star burned out almost 30 years ago.



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Are U ReadyTo Organize Against Racism, Not Just Punch Racists?

8/20/2018

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​Its like a circus puppet.  Every single time these don’t have a pot to piss in white supremacists announce they are going to be somewhere, thousands of people make it their life’s mission to ensure those 10 or so idiots can’t have 20 seconds of peace.  I’m not the person who needs a lecture on the value of stopping white supremacists from feeling they have safe haven to gather and promote their views.  I was fighting them when many of today’s experts were at best suckling on Similac, or at worst, not even thought of yet.  So, save that sorry lecture.  The point here is to illustrate that reactionary politics e.g. reacting to the existence of white supremacy is not a bad thing, but that alone will never be sufficient. 
 
Here are the concrete issues against this adventuristic “punch a Nazi” theme.  How many of you have actually studied what happens to these people after you physically attack them on an individual level?  I already know most of you, no – the overwhelming majority of you – haven’t studied this at all.  If you had, than you would know that your punch them transition rate is extremely low e.g. slim to none.  Instead, your efforts at physically attacking them as individuals serves to further deepen their ideas of persecution and alienation, the reasons why that lifestyle attracted them in the first place.  Virtually none of them are so frightened by your punch that they renounce their racist views.  This would have to mean that your efforts to punch and attack them are designed primarily to make you feel better.  Not to do anything to eradicate white supremacy.  And, that people is the issue.  Too many folks are more concerned with centering their anxiety around one minimal level of white supremacy.  Far too few of us are seriously concerned about eradicating the entire white supremacist system.
 
Since your objective is to have yourselves feel better that means you feel great that this neo-nazi, etc., that you attack goes back, regroups, finds other colleagues, and goes back out to enact revenge for being attacked.  They aren’t hunting the Europeans who attacked them, they are looking for brown people, African people, etc., to attack.  So, by you engaging in this selfish and ill-responsible behavior of physically attacking these people on an individual level, you actually make conditions more dangerous for us.  Not that you care about that.  We already know your concerns were addressed once your adrenaline rush was satisfied.
 
The proper analysis here is that ground level white supremacists e.g. neo-nazis, KKK, etc., are the rudimentary level of white supremacy.  They are actually the manifestation of it.  This entire system, from your 4th of July, to your constitution, to your Supreme Court, Presidency, Congress, police agencies, schools, churches, etc., are ALL white supremacist.  Arguing that punching one idiot is doing something to address white supremacy, even showing up to stop them from showing up, is about as insane as arguing that killing one mouse eliminates mice and rat infestations on the entire planet.
 
No one is saying we should let them show up.  What we’re saying is that cannot ever be the extent of our work against white supremacy.  That should be considered the very minimal work that we do.  The real work, the consistent work, the capacity building work, is engaging the problem on a much deeper level than showing up at a rally.  We recognize that many of you can probably stop reading here because you have demonstrated clearly that you have no interest in solving the problem, but for those who do want to solve the problem, here are some things to think about.  First, we have to get people to join organizations committed to eradicating white supremacy.  Organizations are important because they are the vehicle available to us to initiate mass change.  Individuals don’t make history, the masses of people do, so organizations are the method in which we can do that.  Second, we have to engage work to make our organizations have institutionalized political education processes so that we can clearly understand that the neo-nazi is the basic manifestation of the capitalist/white supremacist/patriarchal/homophobic system e.g. one and the same system with the same objectives.  Once this understanding is consolidated, it becomes impossible to see the problem as one idiot neo-nazi.  And, once this is clear, it is no longer possible for people to think they are accomplishing anything by punching and/or attacking this person.  Third, institute community defense processes within these organizations.  This means implementing ongoing and sustainable training on how to strengthen your political education process and how to tie that process to self defense training e.g. hand to hand combat and much more.  Then, how to develop a plan to ensure that your organization, individual by individual, has your plan in place, that everyone understands, on how to protect each other.  Practice implementing your plan.  Understand who will play which role, phone trees, etc.  Then, expand your plan to include how to roll out a community defense plan for your communities.  Recruit people in the communities to join your organization and become a part of implementing your plan on a mass level. 
 
Don’t you understand that once you are able to put all of these pieces in place, these people will definitely not come to your community because they will understand its not safe for them to do so, but this is still the surface level of work that needs to be done.  We have to begin to prepare our organizations in developing and implementing action plans to organize our communities on a block by block basis to build capacity to challenge this very white supremacist, capitalist system.  When we have that level of capacity what we are talking about now is mass revolutionary struggle.
 
After years of politically educating and recruiting countless people into this struggle and battling white supremacists in every form possible, the work I’m describing here is the type of work I want to do now.  We recognize that everyone doesn’t have the same level of experience and everyone has to start somewhere, but we also have a responsibility to do everything we can to make sure people start off at the right points.  And, just showing up somewhere with no plan, totally at the mercy of police agencies, is not the right point.  For me, my primary interest is in building this capacity in African organizations, but as always, I’m eternally open to assist anyone who wishes to engage in this important work.  Of course, like most revolutionary organizers within the belly of capitalism, I’m under-utilized.  Most people are stuck at that adrenaline stage, dedicated to giving the street racists the attention they desire by baiting you out there each time.  That is an ill-refutable truth.  The question we should be asking today is how many people are ready to engage in some community self-care by preparing ourselves to be proactive in protecting ourselves.  Being proactive in organizing ourselves, instead of just  continuing to react to the lowest common denominator of our enemy’s system?
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Examples of Concrete Victories for Pan-Africanism in 2018

8/18/2018

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Kwame Ture was quite fond of saying that our enemies will never highlight our victories for us.  Although his statement should be as obvious as the air we breathe and the water we drink, there are still far too many of us who consciously or unconsciously base our assessment of current movements on analysis and evidence that is provided by the very people who are doing everything they can to prevent our movements from being successful.  Having been a revolutionary Pan-Africanist my entire adult life, I can say modestly that I've learned quite a bit about the movement that occupies my life.  As a result, I love having the opportunity to talk about the quality of our movement.  Our strengths.  Our weaknesses.  And, the current assessment of the work we are doing.  Despite the obvious need for African people to have successful movements.  Despite the clear necessity for us to develop clear understandings of what those movements are or aren't.  I find that I am continually dismayed by how difficult it is to find someone, anyone, outside of a few trusted comrades, who can provide even a modicum of understanding of what is actually happening within our movement.  And, this is true regardless of the fact there is never any shortage of people, African people, who have plenty of opinions about the state of Pan-Africanism today.  I say African people because Europeans have always had their share of racist opinions about the work our people do to advance our struggle.  So, forgive us if we give absolutely no credibility to anything the so-called European left has to say about anything.  They have a great deal of work to do in making a sincere effort to properly understand Pan-Africanism before we would even consider wasting our valuable time talking to them.

Back to African people.  There are Africans everywhere who have suddenly, like a bolt of lightening falling from the sky, become absolute experts on the failings of Pan-Africanism.  The unfortunate element to this is that we live in a space and time where truth and justice are completely and uncompromisingly divorced from material reality.  That means that these people can basically make up whatever they want to suit their bias against Pan-Africanism.  They use the same tired and discredited arguments over and over again.  Kwame Nkrumah and Sekou Ture's governments were authoritarian.  Democratic Centralism is an authoritarian tool from the Bolshevik uprising of 1917, Russia.  Pan-Africanism is petti-bourgeois.  Even that we as African people have no connection to Africa?  The fact we are the people who have studied and have direct links to the Convention People's Party (Ghana - Nkrumah), Democratic Party of Guinea (Guinea - Ture), etc, and we have authored and practiced Democratic Centralism for decades is of no consequence to these people.  This is true despite the fact they have read nothing on Ghana, Guinea, or Democratic Centralism and they certainly have not practiced it in their organizational structures, if they even have any (often they don't).  These are indeed frustrating times.  Clear logic and historical facts mean nothing today.  The only thing that seems to matter to so many people is their own strangely developed individualistic perspective of what is taking place in the world.  And, anything that doesn't fit their individualistic narrative is not to be trusted and is to be discredited.  Whatever happened to having an open mind and being willing to change it?  Or, as a bumper sticker I saw once said; "if you can't change your mind, how do you know you have one?"

We are of course dialectical materialists so we are not dismayed by these unfortunate attacks against our movement.  We know that Ture was correct when he said "truth crushed to Earth will rise a 1000 times!"  So, as revolutionary propagandists, we do what must be done.  We continue to propagate the truth.  And, as it relates to our revolutionary Pan-Africanism, the victories are impressive and overwhelming.  Since 2018 is the 50th year since Kwame Nkrumah released the "Handbook of Revolutionary Warfare" we start there.  The handbook (HB) was written as Nkrumah's strategic response to the previous decade of imperialist sabotage of sincere efforts at Pan-Africanism.  Nkrumah did his best to rally the genuine Pan-Africanist forces together to support the democratically elected government of Patrice Lumumba in the Congo in 1960.  He saw with great anguish the evil methods imperialism employed to destroy Lumumba's government.  Six years later he was able to observe the equally sinister efforts our enemies made to lie on and then topple his democratic government in Ghana.  He was able to see on a daily basis the wickedness of imperialism in attacking Sekou Ture's government in Guinea.  The illegal sabotage against Indonesia, Cuba, Mali, and every progressive and revolutionary movement and government in the world.  It was within this context that Nkrumah penned the HB in 1968.  His conclusion?  Revolutionary Pan-Africanism would require a grassroots movement of revolutionary Pan-Africanist forces.  For Nkrumah, this meant a concerted and consistent effort to unite the struggling Pan-African forces around the African continent and the world.  He asked Amilcar Cabral to build his African Party for the Independence of Guinea-Bissau and Cape Verde (PAIGC) as a revolutionary Pan-Africanist party with a political education foundation.  He asked Kwame Ture (Stokely Carmichael) to lay the groundwork for the All African People's Revolutionary Party (A-APRP) Nkrumah called for in the HB in the African disapora (outside of Africa).  Today these efforts are manifested in the reality that there is barely any area of the African world e.g. 120 countries, that the A-APRP hasn't at least touched.  And, Nkrumah's thesis in the HB is that those grassroots efforts at unity culminate in the creation of the All African Committee for Political Coordination (A-ACPC) which would be the consolidation of all revolutionary Pan-African parties and formations into one political party.

Today, a significant portion of Nkrumah's call is reality.  The A-APRP that was initiated primarily through the efforts of Kwame Ture and others has managed to create strong on the ground relationships between the A-APRP and on the ground revolutionary Pan-African forces like the PAIGC and Pan-Africanist Congress of Azania-South Africa.  Our work continues to be that of struggling with those political formations to advance their revolutionary Pan-Africanist ideologies e..g Cabralism, Sobukweism, etc., with the tenets expressed in Nkrumahism/Tureism.  Our work continues to be to further unite our efforts on the ground to build the A-ACPC and the A-APRP throughout the African world.  

Further evidence of our success is in the fact that in 1991 when I went to Ghana for the first time, the only presence of the A-APRP there then were some developing contacts and sporadic work.  Today?  There is a growing and active A-APRP chapter there.  And, in a couple of weeks. that chapter will host a revolutionary Pan-African student conference that revolutionary Pan-Africanists inside and outside of the A-APRP will participate in from throughout North America, Europe, and all over of Africa.  This is a gigantic achievement all by itself.  Its something many of the critics of Pan-Africanism claimed was not possible just a few short years ago.  That a poor party with no financial support could bring Africans together from several different countries in Africa to be on the same page planning how we make what Nkrumah talked about in the HB further reality.  Something like this was not even something we could fantasize about when I first joined the A-APRP yet here we are, here I am, about to participate in this historic event 50 years after Nkrumah asked his people to bring this to fruition.  And, flying directly in the face of those insane critiques that our party isn't democratic, we will sit at this conference and operate with complete openness, honesty, and humility, to hear any and all voices, in any and all languages, to ensure we continue to build sturdy girders to support the political work we are doing.  And, finally, blasting open the absurd accusations that Pan-Africansim is petti-bourgeois, we will sit at home in Africa with students, peasants, and workers, the three elements that make revolution, to advance our struggle.  

Sekou Ture said that if the enemy isn't doing anything against you, its because you aren't doing anything.  We make no critiques of those critiquing us.  Honestly?  I would  be hard pressed to tell you what they are doing besides whispering about our work.  I guess that under that basis, they should continue doing what they are doing.  We are a propaganda party and it is true that bad attention is better than none.  Meanwhile, they can continue doing whatever they are doing while we continue racking up victories for our glorious fight!

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The Niger Delta of Nigeria;  Further Proof that Africa is on Fire

8/14/2018

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 The Niger Delta is a region in the West African country of Nigeria that is known mostly for its vast oil reserves.  Like most of Africa, not much more is known about the Niger Delta by most people in the world, particularly those in the West.  Equally obscured is the reality that also like much of Africa, the  Niger Delta is on fire.  You won’t see it on BBC, CNN, CIA, or any of the imperialist news networks, but the people of the Niger Delta have never stopped fighting back against the exploitative practices of Royal Dutch Shell (Shell Oil Company) since Shell started drilling for oil in Nigeria in 1958. 
Today, fifteen percent of Shell’s overall oil revenues result from oil extracted from Niger Delta.  Oil from Niger Delta has been providing for oil needs in the U.S. since the late 50s.  Today, Niger Delta supplies up to 30% of oil consumed in the U.S. annually, oftentimes exceeding that percentage in peak usage months.  Shell produces 2 million barrels of oil from Niger Delta on a daily basis.  This extensive production translates into over 30 billion USD in oil revenue being pocketed by Shell for the time they have been operating within the Niger Delta.  This relationship has worked out perfectly for Shell.  Niger Delta remains a priority oil producing region for them because unlike the other countries in their five or so priority drilling locations, the lack of oversight and necessity to share profits makes the Niger Delta one of the most profitable regions in the world for Shell. 
The only entity Shell needs encounter in its Niger Delta operations is the neo-colonial government of Nigeria.  The way this relationship works in Africa is the sellout leaders of African countries, there specifically to protect the interests of multi-national capitalist corporations in their quest to rob Africa blind, is the corporation pays off the leaders and business operates as usual.  This neo-colonial process explains why international oil analyst entities like the United States Energy Information Administration are reporting that 83% of Nigeria’s annual revenues result from oil production and oil accounts for 98% of that country’s entire export portfolio, yet the masses of people in Nigeria have absolutely nothing to show for the massive oil wealth produced in their country.  The Niger Delta is a region of 31 million people so its basically the same size population as that existing in the U.S. state of California.  Yet, while California alone is the fifth largest economy in the world, the Niger Delta is one of the poorest regions on earth.  There is a severe lack of schools in the region and nutrition and health are among the poorest in the world.  Also, on several occasions, poor working conditions on oil rigs and refineries in the area have resulted in multiple explosions that have killed literally thousands of workers with no compensation or reparations for those harmed in the tragedies.  On top of all of those critical issues, the Niger Delta is one of the most environmentally productive wetlands and marine areas on Earth, yet in recent years its been confirmed that leakage from oil pipelines have contaminated the food sources in the water ways in the region that provide the primary food source for those millions of people.
It must be clear that the African masses have never sat still for this continued exploitation.  Starting as early as the late 1980s, organized resistance to Shell’s massive looting of the people’s resources have resulted.  Movements led during that time by the women of the region resulted in militant strikes against Shell’s oil operations.  These acts of civil disobedience brought to the world’s attention the stark contradiction of Shell’s extreme oil wealth compared to the rank poverty of the region.  Since that time, the people’s protests have developed even more militancy.  In 2006, the Ogoni region where most of the oil production occurs began to experience repeated kidnappings of European Shell oil workers.  The local Ijaw people started engaging in regular peaceful protests against Shell that continue to this day.  There have been organized efforts to blow up Shell facilities as well as those operated by Chinese businesses in the area.  Meanwhile, the messaging coming from the Ijaw and other people in the region have focused clearly on the shocking disparity between Shell’s extraction of wealth compared to the lack of basic needs of the people in the region.  Since Shell and the capitalist countries it operates out of like Britain and the U.S., depend upon the cheap oil production offered by the Niger Delta to retain those high profit margins, the struggle against this exploitation promises to bring contradictions to a heightened sense.  Shell has been accused by activists repeatedly of sabotaging conditions for the people in the region to maintain its profitability, including pressuring the Nigerian government on multiple occasions to send troops in the region to violently squash peaceful protests.  Clearly, the primary objective of the U.S. developed African Command, or Afrocom – the development of dozens of U.S. military installations in Africa – is to train reactionary armies like that operating in Nigeria to repress popular resistance like that shown by the people of Niger Delta.
The story of what’s happening in Niger Delta is the same story happening in the Congo with coltan or cobalt, produced for cell phones, flat screens, etc.  It’s the same story in Ghana around cocoa production.  It’s the same story in Guinea for bauxite to produce aluminum products.  It’s the same story for all of Africa.  And, also like Niger Delta, although you probably won’t hear a peep about it in the capitalist media, we can assure you that the masses of African people in all those areas are rising up in righteous indignation and resistance to this exploitation.  All of this is also further evidence that the work of the All African  People’s Revolutionary Party (A-APRP) is even more relevant today than it was when Kwame Nkrumah called for the creation of the party in his landmark “Handbook of Revolutionary Warfare” written 50 years ago.  We are inspired by the struggle of women in Niger Delta, the Ijaw people in the Ogoni region there, and all of the courageous struggles against neo-colonialist and imperialist exploitation all over Africa.  The A-APRP continues its work to help organize our people to develop capacity to mold those protests into institutionalized resistance that can take our struggle to the next level; moving those imperialist and neo-colonial interests completely out of Africa so that we can regain our rightful place as the caretakers of our own resources.  So, we can use those resources for their actual intended purpose, the betterment of life for the masses of our struggling people.

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Dissecting African Antagonisms against Asian Businesses

8/7/2018

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For the record, let us remind you that we are revolutionary Pan-Africanists.  That means that by default, we employ revolutionary solidarity with all oppressed people on Earth (and on any other planet).  Consequently, we don't see North Korea as the evil empire that capitalism wants you to believe that it is.  We supported Vietnam during its war against U.S. imperialism.  And, we continue to support Vietnam as it struggles to define its socialist path.  Without question, we stand with the Filipino people in their struggle for self-determination to the Philippines.  We even discuss, debate, and critique China's direction, particularly as it relates to that country's involvements in Africa.  What I'm saying is we, as African revolutionaries, see the masses of Asian people as our internationalist family.  As a result, we don't see Asians who own restaurants, massage parlors, and nail salons in our neighborhoods in the U.S. and other countries as automatic enemies of African people.  At least, not simply because they are Asian.  

Like everything else, we have a political analysis around this issue.  As we never tire of telling you, the capitalist system was financed and continues to be bankrolled on Africa and African people's backs.  White supremacy is the propaganda system designed to justify this terrorism against our people (and other oppressed communities).  It teaches everyone in the world to view Africans as inferior and needing paternalistic direction to guide our lives.  This is true even of the African masses who, whether we wish to admit it or not, uphold this backward and tragic behavior with the best of them.  What I'm saying is everyone in the U.S., including brown and other people of color, learn that to make it in this country, you have to adopt the values of the people on top.  And, that means spitting on the African masses.  So, there's no question that these Asians that own these businesses in African communities often criminalize us and treat us with contempt. There are stories like the tragic shooting of Lil Latasha Harlins in Los Angeles in 1991 everywhere. This is of course unacceptable because we provide the profits to those businesses so their disrespect for us is salt in the wound.  And, the wound itself reflects the institutional racism that locks us into the bottom of this society.  We don't get the same types of opportunities for business loans to start businesses and the never ending list of predatory lending class action lawsuits (racist lending practices) give clear credibility to this perspective.  So, you can certainly understand our anger and frustration when we are disrespected in businesses in our neighborhoods that take our money, but don't treat us as full human beings, especially when we don't have the opportunity to own those businesses.  Nor, would we ever be welcomed to own businesses in Asian communities.

Where we drop our analytical point of view into this discussion is in honestly acknowledging that there is no great respect for African people exhibited by Africans who do own businesses in African communities.  Often, their treatment of us isn't much better than that meted out by non-Africans.  I remember growing up in the inner city in San Francisco and having an African owned grocery store on the corner.  The owner, an African man, called my sister and I the n word every time we came in that store.  Capitalism is capitalism and anyone who opens a business in a poor neighborhood is deciding to consciously participate in the exploitation of that neighborhood.  The only way someone could do that, regardless of who they are, is by buying into the white supremacist narrative by dehumanizing the inhabitants of that community.  This is all par the course for the capitalist system.  And, our people are not blameless simply because we continue to display illogical faith in this system despite its continued exploitation of us.  After a while, we have to bear some of the brunt for the suffering we experience when we refuse to come together and organize to stop it.

Capitalism is an anti-African system and everyone participates in the subjugation of African people.  This is true, but saying that in no way suggests that we support in any way situations like the hundreds of Africans storming into Asian owned nail salons in New York City over the last couple of days, demanding the Asians treat us better.  We definitely reject those of our people who are chanting for the terrorist Immigration, Customs, and Enforcement (ICE) agency to come in and harass employees of those Asian shops.  Most Africans lack any class analysis so we have no tools to properly decipher what's really going on in any business.  On the surface, it looks to us like Asians are taking care of their people by hiring them in these shops.  This isn't the reality.  What's really happening is many of the employees in those nail salons, massage parlors, restaurants, cleaners, etc., are undocumented immigrants that are ruthlessly exploited by the owners of those businesses.  Whether people wish to believe it or not, this is the common exploitative model in the capitalist system.  in other words, this is how you make money in this type of system, by being ruthless and anti human in your treatment of the people who work for you.  So, understanding that level of ill refutable class analysis, its shameful that any of our people would side with the capitalist system and its oppression enforcement agencies against any people for any reason.  

Instead, if those salons are disrespecting us, the actual solution is pretty simple.  Its not like well to do Europeans are going to come into African communities to get the services they need.  So, if we are being disrespected on the block, maybe its time for us to refuse to do business at places that disrespect us?  Is getting your nails done that important to you to sacrifice your dignity?  Frederick Douglas was absolutely correct in saying power concedes nothing without a demand.  If you continue to frequent those businesses despite being treated poorly, you don't have any reason to wonder why they treat you that way.  You are telling them that they can take your money and treat you anyway that they please.  Boycott, picket, demand respect, but understand the true degree of respect we are looking for isn't going to ever happen until Africa is free.  We cannot be confused that seeing our mother as a losing place means we can never see ourselves as winners no matter where we live, but for now, boycotting, etc., is an effective way to stop the disrespect.  And, we can do that while maintaining our dignity and not assisting the capitalist system in repressing other communities. Particularly segments of those communities who are exploited and often worse off than we are.

Finally, we have to properly understand our relationship to this so-called country.  We are not citizens here.  We are the children of former slaves and they don't need us to pick their cotton anymore.  That makes up completely expendable.  As long as we act like we don't have the sense God gave a mule and that someone is going to respect us just because we have a pulse, we can get comfortable with generations of disrespect.  Instead, let's get serious about acknowledging and understanding who we are here and that we must be on a mission to get free.  And, in doing so, we must have a clear analysis of the forces in our way and the forces who in many ways are with us in the overall struggle for justice on the planet Earth.  We have to channel that anger that leads us into the streets in NYC to organize long range plans that bring our people together with a clear analysis of who our enemies are and why.  That plan has to keep us focused on achieving dignity and victory.  Until we become ready to do this, we will forever be upset, frustrated, and on the losing end of our existence here.




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The Untold Story about Martin Luther King and Charles Sims

8/6/2018

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Deacons for Defense leader and MLK Jr. bodyguard Charles Sims mocking white supremacists by tearing a KKK sign and outfit in front of them while other Deacons look on.
If you listen to the capitalist system's analysis, and far too many people do, about Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., you probably believe he was a man committed to non-violence as a principle.  This means that even if someone came up and knocked the you know what out of Dr. King, many people believe he would have "turned the other cheek" and refused to defend himself.  Their narrative of our Christian freedom fighter is that all he was ever concerned about was "white girls and black boys holding hands and singing in the old negro spiritual..."  That narrative serves the capitalist system because its that system that killed Dr. King.  And, they killed him because they understood that he provided a shining light to the masses of Africans and all of humanity.  They knew that King was an uncompromising man who was not afraid of death.  They couldn't intimidate him so they killed him.  That way, they could make him say whatever they wanted him to say.  And, today, that's the pacifist who just wanted people to get along.

There are many people who possess cowardly ways that the definition ending the last paragraph adequately describes, but Dr. King isn't one of them.  He was a fearless man who was no fool.  He certainly did his absolute best to maintain non-violent civil disobedience as a principle in the civil rights movement, but as the struggle advanced, he was forced to accept the reality that non-violence, as a principle, was not a philosophy based in the material conditions in this country.

Kwame Ture, formally Stokely Carmichael was one of Dr. King's friends and political contemporaries.  Ture was the chairperson of the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC).  SNCC, particularly after Ture became its leader, played a crucial role in providing extensive political pressure towards King to force him towards taking more militant positions.  SNCC understood that King was a principled man and that meant he would challenge himself over the ideas SNCC was pushing him to consider.  There's no question that Kwame and SNCC played a role in helping King develop and articulate his clear and principled position against the Vietnam war.  It was SNCC that helped King continue, up to his death, to refuse to denounce the emerging Black Power movement that his young friend Kwame Ture was the poster child for.  But, it would be a historical error to credit SNCC with all of King's advancing militancy.  As was stated, King was no fool.  He interpreted and understood the conditions that were prevalent all around him.  And, there is ample evidence that on his own, King began to question the sanity of accepting non-violence as a principle.

By saying something is a principle what you are saying is no matter what, you will continue that value.  You will never question it.  Examples are people who are principally committed to Christian or Muslim doctrines.  People who are committed to revolutionary principles like anti-capitalism.  For those people, nothing can ever sway them to betray their beliefs.  That's what's meant by principles.  For years, King did proudly reiterate that non-violence was a principle for him and that it had to be a principle in the civil rights movement, but this was a King that was forced by this backward system to question those beliefs.

During his tenure as a prominent civil rights leader, King was faced with thousands of death threats against him and his family.  He was victimized by repeated physical attacks against him, his home, and his family.  He was forced to witness the brutal murder of dozens of civil rights workers and he and many, many others were forced to endure savage treatment by those who were supposed to uphold the law.  And this treatment was meted out simply because King and others were trying to perform acts of justice.  King knew that the multitudes of Southern police were either white supremacists, sympathetic to them, or unwilling to stand up against them.  He knew that the masses of whites felt that they could enact any measure of violence against African people and King understood that once they did, it was almost certain that no consequences would result against the racist acts.  All of this constant terror made it increasingly difficult for him to continue to frame non-violence as a moral issue.  SNCC, in the words of Kwame Ture, answered that when Ture said morality is a strong tool, but its only effective when your enemy has a conscience and in the case of the U.S., it has none.  These were realities King came to a place he could not ignore and this forced him to quietly change some of his practices within the movement.

During the turn to militancy by SNCC, they began to articulate non-violence more and more as a tactic and not a principle, separating them from the philosophies of Dr. King.  SNCC members were more often armed than not.  And, in many instances, SNCC organized campaigns, like the Loundes County Freedom Organization (the original Black Panther Party), in Alabama in 1965, that served as examples that Africans would continue to uphold the age old tradition we had in the Southern U.S. of defending ourselves and self reliance.  These were principles that existed much deeper than non-violence.  And, despite the efforts of King and the power structure to portray (and continue to portray) the movement as 100% non-violence, the period around the Loundes County organization changed the landscape around this question.  The cry for Black Power if anything, was a statement that we as African people will define our own destiny and in many ways our ability to defend ourselves was a significant element of that phenomenon.

The Deacons for Defense was a group of primarily former military veterans.  People who served in Wold War II and the Korean war.  That meant they were people who were trained in firearms usage and they were disciplined.  Sick and tired of seeing African people brutalized for simply standing up for our humanity, this group was formed in Louisiana in 1964 to protect civil rights workers and the African community.   For the March against Fear through Mississippi in June of 1966 (the Black Power march), the Deacons were prevalent on the march.  Several times they prevented white terrorists from committing acts of violence.  And, their method of doing so wasn't singing "We shall Overcome."  Ernest Thomas, one of the founders of the Deacons captured international attention during the march.  The marchers were having one of many rallies that happened along the march route.  As was typical, the rally was taunted by scores of Southern white supremacists who saw their role as that of threatening the marchers with vulgarities, spitting on people, and doing their best to provoke violence.  Thomas, after being permitted to speak by SNCC who invited the Deacons to participate on the march, spoke directly to the rednecks gathered outside the rally.  He told them if any European shot towards the march they would receive return fire and that violence against our people would not be tolerated without retaliation.  Those white people present showed respect for a language being spoken to them that they could understand.  There were no acts of violence against the marchers that night.  The Deacons and their presence made Kwame Ture's cry for "Black Power" seem like a sign of the future for whites nervous about what would happen in this country.  King was not unaware of all of these developments.

Despite repeatedly pressure from the other civil rights leaders like Roy Wilkins (NAACP) and Whitney Young (Urban League) to denounce the Deacons and insist they no longer participate in the march, King refused to do so.  At some point during this time King had actually succumbed to pressure from close associates in his organization, as well as his wife Coretta, and SNCC organizers, to accept personal protection from the Deacons.  Having survived many attempts against his life and understanding the terror facing the movement, King eventually submitted to the demands and that represented him accepting Charles Sims as his personal bodyguard.  Sims was an original Deacon and he was everything King's original principle of non-violence did not represent.  Sims had a long criminal record.  He had been arrested several times for barroom brawling.  He carried a 45 pistol with him long before he became a Deacon and he was known to be willing to pull that pistol without the slightest hesitation.  Becoming a Deacon was a baptism into the struggle for Sims and it gave him a mission in life that he had spent all his previous years floundering to find.  He approached his role as Dr. King's bodyguard with great dedication and enthusiasm.  Despite the utter contempt the established civil rights leaders like Wilkins and Young had for the Deacons in general, and Sims in particular, King was defiant in his commitment to having Sim's protection at all times.  In fact, Kwame Ture and other SNCC cadre recalled fondly how King came to a point where if he was going to go somewhere, he instinctively began to make sure Sims was there to accompany him.  This became such predictable behavior from King that SNCC members joked with him constantly about it.  

That is an important and truthful frame from which to view Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. not from the point from which he started with the Montgomery Improvement Association in 1955, but where he was when he was killed on that balcony on April 4th, 1968.  That King of 1968 was a clear anti-imperialist who was the most prominent leader of the anti-war protest within the U.S.  That King was critical of the emerging urban rebellions, but refused to denounce the emerging militancy in the movement itself.  That King was often seen wearing a Black Power button during that latter period of his life.  That King did have a permit to carry a pistol during that latter period of his life.  And, that King did welcome and appreciate the presence of the brawling Charles Sims in everything and everywhere that he went.  It should be noted that the fatal trip King took to Memphis had him shielded from those militant elements like Sims.  And, although no harm to ever came to King whenever Sims was with him, no one like Sims was present with King when he was killed.  What we do know is one of those persons who was present was more than likely a paid FBI informant against King.  The now public FBI files reveal that the informant's name was "Agent A" and that this person received financial compensation after King's death.  

What is almost impossible to refute is King came to his demise not because he wanted integration.  He was killed because he was an uncompromising and committed soldier for justice.  He was unafraid of the capitalist white power structure and he was willing to risk his life to engage in that work.  And, yes, in that journey that he was engaged in, Dr. King came to a point where his actions confirmed that he saw non-violence as a tactic, not a principle.  Despite his unwillingness to say this in public, it was clear that was where he had landed.  Even if people reading this don't accept that, I'd argue that the fact the power structure killed him was proof that they were worried about it, even if you don't believe it.

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Trump; A Sacramento Pastor who Met Him & Our Churches & Truth

8/5/2018

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Last week a couple of dozen African (Black, negro, you tell me) so-called "pastors" met with Trump at the so-called "white house."  If there was a stated objective for this "meeting" it wasn't revealed.  What we did learn is that the meeting seemed to consist mostly of all those so-called "men of God" sitting around the table praising this European terrorist as the best thing to happen to African people since banku and bean pie.  Among the group was a Sacramento, California, U.S., pastor named Philip Goudeaux.  This man heads the North Sacramento Calvary Christian Center church, known locally as CCC.  Honestly, I've never set foot inside the place.  I have attended many churches and believe it or not, I even grew up in one Third Baptist Church in San Francisco, California, U.S., but as my understanding of the world has evolved, I've developed an aversion to going in places that seem to celebrate a God far different than any being that is going to uplift humanity.  In the case of CCC, I have known countless people over the years who have been faithful members of that church.  Many of them continue to do so.  I've had ideological struggles with these people over this since the 1980s.  I've wondered aloud to them why it is that Goudeaux would need a private jet?  Why he would need to own 18 houses?  I'm especially inquisitive about these issues because most of the people I know who go to CCC, as well as a significant percentage of the congregation of that church, hail from the highly impoverished Del Paso Heights area of Sacramento where the church is located.  Yes, that means many of the people who attend are African and poor.  Now, to be fair, if you drive by the church, as I've done many times, you have to notice the housing units attached to the church that I understand are utilized for low income families.  The defenders of the church are quick to point to that, as well as other social welfare type programs the church runs, to justify their support for the jets and homes.  I guess in the dysfunctional element that defines capitalist politics and policy, that may make sense to some people, but what is certainly strange is how these people, who would swear on a Bible that they don't get involved in politics, would see absolutely no problem with their pastor having a clearly political meeting with Trump (or Obama, or any obvious political leader of this clearly political country).  Especially when its being reported that Goudeaux stated in the meeting that he saw Trump as offering more hope to African people than any previous president of the U.S.

As you should already suspect if you follow these writings, there is a much more insidious focus underneath all of this.  Besides the point that there is no way under the sun that any of those pastors could indicate anything Trump has done to provide any hope to any poor and working people, its far past time that we stop pretending that these churches are "non-political" and acknowledge that many of these so-called "mega-churches" as just propaganda centers for right wing capitalist politics.  Virtually all of them advance policies that uphold patriarchal anti-women policies, anti LGBTQ policies, including the active poisoning of our people's humanity around this issue, and anti-Africa and African people policies, like support for police terrorists, mass incarceration, etc.  This is an undeniable fact and its not only time to acknowledge this, but its also time that we understood the exact reasons why this phenomenon has developed.

If we rewind back to the U.S. civil rights movement of the 1950s and 60s, that movement was initiated in many ways by the African church within the U.S.  Church leaders were the people who helped establish the Montgomery Improvement Association which was the organization that carried the bus boycott in that city that propelled the movement into a national focus.  So, the obvious question is how we got from that type of community leadership to where "our" churches are tools for the support and creation of policies that do significant damage to our people and all of humanity? 

First, we should make it plain that unlike the European left and Marxist/Leninist ideology, we do not believe that "religion is the opium of the people."  We understand and respect how that type of thinking would evolve from a European ideology as manifested by Marx, Lenin, etc.  None of the major world religions originated in Europe and in fact, Europe was known for its religious intolerance.  That is at least some of the reason you were taught in school that the masses of Europeans came to the Western Hemisphere right?  This history also explains why atheism is common and usually dominant in European (White) activist/organizing circles.  Of course, although many people are extremely confused about this, European history is not the history of the world.  We as African people have our own revolutionary ideology.  And, within that ideology we have our approach to how we handle spirituality.  We accept and respect atheism, but our people are not dominantly atheist.  In fact, spirituality is common within our activist/organizing circles.  Many of our best and most revolutionary leaders were highly spiritual people e.g. Malcolm X, Sekou Ture, Ms. Fannie Lou Hamer, Marcus Garvey, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., etc.  So, unlike most Europeans, we have a secure place in our struggle for spirituality provided that spirituality is grounded in the material reality of our people and humanity.  In other words, our spirituality, properly utilized, is a tool to inspire us to rise up and overcome our oppression.  And this proper usage of spirituality has served us quite well when we have been careful to let our history and culture define our interpretation of our spirituality and not the capitalist system that causes our oppression the first place.  An example of where this has gone wrong is seen in how our church structure in the U.S. operated previously.  Up through the 1980s, our churches were primarily independent meaning the only accountability the church had was to its members who placed money in the collection plate.  It was this structure that permitted us to build strong and independent churches that served our communities.  Dr. King's church in Atlanta, Georgia, U.S. is an example.  The Ebenezer Baptist Church that spawned and propelled a young Martin Luther King into leadership of the Montgomery Bus Boycott in 1955 was a completely independent church.  The majority of the membership was tired of institutional racism and wanted to see their pastor play a positive role in bringing that backward system to an end.  This level of independence prevented the white power structure from having much financial leverage over our churches which was another reason why the churches were in the forefront of our struggle.

Of course, our enemies are always plotting to undermine our struggle.  And, one of the first signs of the coming changes within our church structure was the National Baptist Convention in 1961.  Its important to understand this wasn't just a convention that anybody could come to as individuals.  This was a national church organization.  It was actually then, and today, the largest national African church organization within the U.S.  Today, the National Baptist Convention boasts a membership of almost 8 million members and it has been in existence since 1886, so church organizations are certainly not a new thing.  What's new is during the time of that 1961 convention, the majority of our churches still remained some level of autonomy in the sense that their spiritual direction came primarily from the leaders and members of that given church, not some national organization.  A sign of changing times happened during that 61 convention when Martin Luther King made a bid to become president of the convention.  King's idea was that by becoming president, he could play a role in steering the organization to support the civil rights movement on a national level.  This is important because contrary to how many people view history today, back in that time, King and his work were viewed primarily with suspicion and contempt, even by many so-called leaders within the African community.

Despite King's moral presence and integrity, his bid to become president of the National Baptist Convention at that 61 convention was wildly unsuccessful.  The backlash against King's challenge to Reverend Henry Jackson's leadership within the convention was so fierce that a man was thrown off the stage and died as a result of the intensity of the struggle involved.  King was roundly defeated in the vote and that happened largely because of the lack of organization among the preachers there who favored civil rights organization.  This was a vision into the future for those who desired to see the independent voice of the African church stunted.

Today, African churches are dominated by these massive church corporations.  Instead of independent African churches who act based on their interpretation of the morality of the Lord, these churches today operate based on a corporate model.  They sign mutual action agreements with the church organizations that they join.  And, although most of these churches today give the excuse that their reason for joining these organizations is to provide them legal protection, the reality is church organizations like the National Baptist Convention, Four Square Ministries, and the Church of God in Christ, have contractual relationships with their member churches that in essence, prevent those churches from making independent decisions that go against the policies of the national/international organizations.  There are attorneys on legal retainer with these church organizations.  And, instead of policies being decided strictly by the church membership, these church organizations provide a national and international network of people who regularly visit these churches to provide philosophical direction.  This organizational approach is responsible for certain shifts in church philosophy.  For example, African churches have always had LGBTQ members, often in high profile roles.  The highly flamboyant and gay African choir director is a long running source of humor within the African community for a reason.  How did we go from this common practice of respect and acceptance to open hostility towards the LGBTQ community?  Open rhetoric in church of hell and damnation falling on those who are "lost to that lifestyle?"  The answer is the systemic and coordinated propaganda effort facilitated by ideologues of these church organizations like Franklin Graham's "Samaritan Power" organization.  Even cursory study of these church organizations reveals long winded statements of preaching the gospel with absolutely no mention of any concrete material struggle against the injustices of this earth.  These are the conditions that have bred pastors like Mr. Goudeaux and these are the conditions that have led ministers to betray the clear position of the masses of African people by meeting with scum like Trump and groveling at his feet.

To make no mistake about it, our position is not in favor of one capitalist political party over another.  Not in favor of one spokesperson for imperialism (Trump) over another one (Obama).  We don't choose foxes or wolves or vice versa.  We know that both are dangerous in different ways.  With different approaches.  What we are saying is those pastors meetings with Trump has nothing to do with the interests of the masses of African people and everything to do with the misdirection of our churches today and the opportunism of those pastors.  Whether they believe in the misguided mission of bourgeois churches today, or they are just simply hoping that fanning to Trump may open the door to more high dollar members for their collection plates, those pastors demonstrate the complete lack of dignity in what they are doing.  And, when they make statements like Goudeaux and others made during that silly meeting, they are showing just how out of touch they are with the conditions our people face and how much Trump and everything he represents is designed to do lots of things, but not improve the lot for the types of people who place money in Goudeaux's plate each week.  

The solution to all of this is not complex.  We get exactly what we deserve.  The masses of African people, suffering unbelievable indignities, have historically been prime fodder for easy exploitation. We will believe anything if there is even the slightest chance we can ease this suffering.  We have always been suckers for the pie in the sky sermon.  It will be like pulling teeth to tell our people to abandon that sermon for the hard work of winning our true liberation, but until we can figure out a way to effectively convey that message, our people will continue to be bamboozled by these religious fakers and opportunists.  Its the responsibility of spiritual people who maintain strong moral foundation to call out this hypocrisy.  It can no longer be enough to permit these double standards to exist where we claim spiritual health while allowing this type of thuggish high-jacking of our spiritual foundation to happen without challenging it.  True people of God, those who live and work in the tradition of Dr. King and Ms. Hamer, must stand up and challenge this hypocrisy today.  And, those of us who are not centered in the church must play our role in supporting those within the church who are to fight back.  Our role as organizers/activists is to trumpet the undeniable truth that African people have always been the conscience of this backward society.  In fact, we have played a major role in civilizing this society and historically, our churches have played a front line role in this effort.  We must be vigilant about pointing out that our churches have gone from that historic role to one of being the conduit for reactionary garbage that is harming the vitality of our people and all of humanity.  We have to be determined to help our church members learn strategies to counteract the successful strategies of the capitalist right.  This is important work.  From the beginning of the existence of this racist country, our churches have been burned down by racists to symbolize their opposition to any semblance of independence within our communities.  Today, I can't help, but think some of these churches need to be destroyed in order to revive independence within our communities.



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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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