Blog Archives

Analysis Needed on Sudden White Militia Solidarity to Our Struggles

10/30/2016

If it wasn't so arrogant and sad it would be hilarious how European (White) movement experts are falling all over each other in order to validate White militia leader Ammon Bundy's call for solidarity with Standing Rock Water Protectors, anti-police terrorism activism, etc. If you don't know, Bundy was acquitted in federal court last week in the case against him and other White militia members for the invasion and occupation of the Malheur Bird Refuge in Southeast Oregon earlier this year. We want to make sure you White activists and experts understand that we really aren't trying to hear your broke down analysis about solidarity. The reason I say this is because we have been telling European working class people that we are not your enemies and that your enemy is the power structure for hundreds of years, literally. You can go and check speeches by people like Paul Cuffee, Edward Blyden, Ida B. Wells, and Frederick Douglass to see that. And, during the 1990s, people reacted with complete antagonism when Kwame Ture (Stokely Carmichael) said repeatedly that the "white right" had evolved from being the government's front-line troops against the African liberation movement into being the government's number one attacker. Despite the always dependable arrogance from far too many within the White community (whether left or right), Kwame was clearly on to something when he discussed how the feds and police either worked with, or turned a blind eye to the KKK's clear fusion with local police departments and its active terror against African people during the 50s and 60s. Kwame's analysis continued to assert that those same groups were no longer just terrorizing us. They were starting to direct their rage against the very government they previously worked hand in hand with against us. Today, his words are prophetic. That same right white movement that carried out terror against us and who formed the FBI supported Guardians of (against) the Oglala Nation (GOONS) at Pine Ridge reservation in the mid 70s, has spent that last 20 years waging war against the U.S. government. You know the examples because unlike the government's terror against our movements, these instances were widely covered. I'm talking about the shootout at Ruby Ridge in 93, the Waco standoff. Timothy McVeigh and the Oklahoma City Federal building bombing in 95. The standoff at Cliven Bundy's ranch in 2014, and of course the Malheur occupation this year. So, we saw and identified the commonalities between our communities long before you did so you can stop with the instant expert analysis on White solidarity.

And, since there is that issue of the White right's historical violence against our movements for justice and their continued white nationalist foundation today, we won't be smoothing over this troubled relationship just because they are sending out a tweet or two expressing solidarity. Plus, I have some personal experience here. Brave rural organizers within the Rural Organizing Project (ROP), want to bolster up the identity and value of rural Oregon by helping local communities create and maintain values based on justice and not white supremacy. By doing this, they have attracted the anger of groups affiliated to the national Patriot Militia movement. These brave ROP souls have been verbally harassed and threatened with death and sexual assault. Their homes have been violated. In response to this, some of us agreed to accompany and secure them on their tour to talk about all of this and so I experienced first hand the antagonism many of these people expressed towards these activists. I experienced the stares and disgust many of these people apparently felt towards me for being an African man who dared to come into their communities without flinching. I experienced attempts at intimidation (unsuccessful), being shot at, and all of the cowardly tactics these people direct at those brave folks who simply want to tell the truth. So, with that backdrop, we cannot just forget all of that just because somebody wake up with a free out of jail card and a sudden realization that it might be a good idea to try and connect with the rest of the reasonable world.

Of course, there's no question that working class people of all nationalities are under attack and that our best chance at defeating those who oppress us is to unite, but a lot has to happen before we can even seriously have that discussion. There can be no uniting with the militia community as long as their beliefs are tied to that racist concept of the U.S. as a free and sovereign state. The U.S. is a settler colony on stolen Indigenous land that was built and is maintained on exploiting Africa and other places around the world. The only thing great about this country is the lie of manifest destiny and white supremacy. Until White people, left or right, accept that and begin to do work to abolish this entire concept of American identity (because remember - American identity equals white supremacy), there won't be any unity. That's why we see Bundy's pledge of solidarity, but we also see that he's expressing support for Standing Rock after staging an extremely disrespectful occupation of Pauite Land. We also haven't forgotten that his father said that the best time for African people was during slavery. Please don't interpret any of this as any type of plea to White militias to change their minds. That happening is so far down on my priority list I would have to say honestly that it most likely isn't on my list. The point here is that genuine European activists should see all of this as a call to action to do the necessary work in their communities to change the conscious level in those communities. The sole reason why these Patriotic Militia folks are gaining so much ground in recruitment is because very few within the White activist circles is beating them to it (outside of a few brave groups like ROP). There are genuine feelings of oppression and isolation among White people. Donald Trump's campaign should be a clear indicator of that. So, you people need to stop talking to us (because we ain't listening anyway) and start talking to each other. Stop reducing the acquittal of Bundy and the others to simple "white privilege." Yes, it is that, but its much more than just that. The water protectors at Standing Rock are engaging in the sacred struggle of the Indigenous people against the empire that has been built on their backs since Columbus's drunk @ss crashed into this hemisphere 500+ years ago. The African movements against police terrorism, acknowledging that police departments evolved out of slave patrols, have been going on since the first Africans were stolen from Africa. This capitalist system is all about exploiting and oppressing brown peoples. So, when we stand up and organize, its a threat against everything this backward system represents so the system always has, and always will, come down hard on us because the power structure understands that when we win, they lose. They have never seriously sought to challenge the KKK and other white supremacists, militias, etc., because none of those groups are doing anything to challenge the U.S. capitalist system. Their ideologies are in concert with the empire. Up to this point, they're just mad that they have been locked out from getting their cut of the booty that is being stolen every day from Indigenous, African, Asian, and other brown peoples.

So, if you truly want that solidarity to mean something more than assuaging your White ego into being able to believe you are more than just a descendant of settlers and slave owners, than get to work organizing your people around the values indicated above. I observed many younger people in the militias when out with ROP who are not firmly entrenched in those backward ideologies yet. They are people who are misguided. You can still reach them if you hurry. Then, after you seriously do that work, then come back and engage us. Until then, we have much better things to do than listen to your tired voices.

2 Comments

Patriarchy, Rape Culture, and Past Time for Men to Force Changes

10/27/2016

0 Comments

A very good and dear friend of mine posted something despicable on Facebook. She works in a retail position so she posted that some man approached her workstation and began videoing her on his phone. While doing so, he continuously asked her to tell him where she lived while forcibly suggesting that all her earthly problems would be resolved the minute she submitted to his urges. I did reach out to this wonderful person and offer support, but this incident was on my mind as I left the gym I work out at daily. I asked the woman who works the counter there every morning if she encounters similar experiences with the many men who frequent the gym each day. Her response to my question was “oh yes! We’re keeping a tally of how many inappropriate comments we receive from men today!” She went on to explain her daily experiences with this. And, I of course referenced the regular stories I hear from the women in my life about their sad and consistent encounters with men in this society. Here are just some of those experiences. A person dear to me who is without a car, and very active, expressed how she has to take time each day to plan her schedule carefully on public transportation so that she doesn’t find herself isolated anywhere at night. She went on to say that when she has found herself in that type of situation, and a guy was present, more often than not, there is some strange experience that occurs. The guy stands there staring at her. He approaches her and tells her how much he’s attracted to her. He says nothing, but follows her as she tries to find a safe place. Or, he does all of these things. Then, there is my twenty-something daughter who lives on her own across country. I debrief with her daily about her regular encounters with strange men who apparently have no skills to process/handle her not immediately dropping everything and dedicating her undying love to them the minute they say something to her. And this one I’m still trying to digest. A good friend/work colleague told me recently that late one night when she entered the gate to the house she lives in, she soon became aware of a strange man, who she realized had followed her home, who was entering the gate behind her. She yelled at him “what are you doing?!” To which he nonchalantly responded that he was following her.

Now, I find it extremely difficult to understand how any man, if he stops and thinks for 15 seconds, wouldn’t understand how filming femmes (women) you don’t know while asking personal questions and making advances, wouldn’t be unsettling to anyone. Or, how any man can believe that engaging femme folk you don’t know in a strange manner at an isolated bus stop is going to result in overwhelming enthusiasm and an invitation for life long partnership. Or, that men can’t understand that there’s something dysfunctional about following someone you don’t know at night into their personal living space without invitation. And, before all the subject matter experts start saying that there are any number of ways in which men get mixed signals from women, etc., I’ll respond to that by saying my frame of reference is from being a 6 foot 3, 225 pound, athletically built African man living in the U.S. who, based on what everyone has always told me, projects a clear energy that it wouldn’t be the wisest move to mess with me. My point is my experience is these same men who carry out this bizarre behavior against women, etc., and then have no issues mansplaining it away as mixed signals, are the same men who routinely take those 15 seconds to think through their behavior before they interact with me. They give me all the space I need. They move out of my way on the sidewalk. They move their bodies and their stuff when I approach on public transportation and the only thing they ever say to me is hello and have a nice day in the calmest and most non-confrontational or appropriate way possible, every time.

The problem here is this capitalist system, where money is always more important than people, has programmed everyone to reduce human beings into commodities. Women identified persons are the primary target of this conditioning. Everyone is aware on a conscious level to the degrees to which women’s bodies are reduced to commodities. This reality, coupled with the hyper-masculinity of patriarchal practices in this society, produces men who have no idea how to express their feelings. This produces an arrested development phenomenon as it relates to men’s intellectual and personal maturity. So, most of us don’t learn healthy ways to talk to femme folks because we never learned healthy ways to share the earth with them. And, since every institution within the capitalist system e.g. church, school, work, family, etc., even our so-called social justice organizations, are all designed to reinforce these patriarchal values (just as they are designed to reinforce white supremacist values), everything men do reaffirms to them that they have every right to say, do, and interact with femmes just as they would interact with their dog or cat because like their pets, femmes are here to service them. And, all the values of patriarchy are promoted everywhere to justify this backward thinking e.g. “stop acting like a girl.” Or “Man up.” Or, “grow some balls!” Clearly, the presidential election has revealed to all who are paying attention how much rape culture and the diminishing of femmes is a deeply embedded aspect within this backward culture we live in. Here, you have a man running for president who it appears has engaged in sexual assault and people are labeling this issue a distraction. Saying that to anyone who has survived sexual assault is like telling a starving child that their screams for food are a distraction away from the priority issue which is the irritation their noise is causing. Then, on the other side of the aisle you have the other candidate who has built a career being more patriarchal than the men she’s competed with. Most everyone who operates based on logic knows that neither side provides a healthy model for anyone, anywhere.

I think what we need is a call to action for men identified folks to get in the center of this fight. We should all be ashamed that femme/women identified people have to walk around dealing with such dysfunctional and disrespectful behavior directed at them every day. We need to force men to respect femmes as full human beings who have intellectual, and spiritual elements to go with their physical characteristics. We need to help men learn how to process our feelings in healthy productive ways that don’t rely on false hyper-masculinity. We need to help men learn how to acknowledge our fears, anxieties, and everything else that makes us resort to violence and intimidation because we don’t know how to acknowledge and work through our shortcomings.

One way forward is for us to start doing the work that revolutionary femme organizations are telling us to do. They are telling us that we should be helping to organize to build capacity to confront this on a systemic level. Patriarchy is an appendage of capitalism. Therefore, at some point people need to stop trying to bypass the capitalist system in this issue. We cannot eliminate patriarchal oppression against femmes while attempting to maintain the capitalist system that created and perpetuates that oppression. So, organizing is key. Men should be involved in organizations struggling to challenge capitalism and within those groups, there must be a strong anti-patriarchal organizing component where members are required to study patriarchy. There must also be strong femme voices within all organizing structures. We have to develop support mechanisms for us to hold ourselves accountable and we have to be willing to do the necessary work to confront this issue on a systemic level which includes providing strong support for femme voices in everything we do.

There’s quite a bit of work that must be done. Much of it goes far beyond what’s identified here. I obviously don’t propose to have all of the answers. What I do know is having experienced oppression from white supremacy my entire life, I know how difficult it is to have your movements restricted. Your ability to express yourself stunted. And, to be dehumanized and disrespected on a daily basis. I’m at least smart enough to understand clearly that I will never taste freedom as long as femmes and every and anyone else is oppressed. My hope is that all men who call themselves proponents of peace and justice will be inspired from this article to start putting the pieces in place to support femme voices against patriarchy and capitalism and for us to organize men accordingly.

0 Comments

50 Years Later: Nkrumah and Ture's Vision for Africa is Strong

10/26/2016

0 Comments

Kwame Nkrumah and Sekou Ture in Conakry-Guinea in the late 60s. Ture insisted Nkrumah become president of Guinea after Nkrumah's government was illegally overthrown in Ghana. Nkrumah balked since the people of Guinea had elected Ture to be their president so Ture declared Nkrumah to be co-president of Guinea. The first and only instance of a country having co-presidents and making Nkrumah the only person in history to be president of two different countries.

Surely, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), or Criminals in Action - their more appropriate title - and their masters, the U.S. capitalist/imperialist network, were convinced they had achieved something once they illegally overthrew Kwame Nkrumah's government in Ghana in 1966. Then, when Sekou Ture's Guinea became the new base for Pan-African organizing in Africa after Nkrumah was overthrown, certainly, the imperialists had huge smiles on their faces when Ture died in 1984 and they were able to help engineer an immediate coup to overthrow Ture's Democratic Party of Guinea with a brutal regime subservient to imperialist interests. And, yet again, when imperialism conspired (under the leadership of Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton) to illegally overthrow the Libyan Socialist Jamihiriya in 2011 - while killing Libyan leader Muammar Qaddafi - we have absolutely no doubt that imperialism's arrogance was at an all time high. In their warped and dysfunctional vision of world events, they had destroyed militant resistance to imperialism in Africa with violence, terror, and a rollback of the organizing gains we made towards Pan-Africanism - correctly defined as one unified socialist Africa.

On a surface level, we cannot even be mad at imperialism for celebrating. From their perspective, they have beat back every effort we've mounted against them. They seemingly have the masses of Africans focused on integrating into the micro imperialist states they live in, while manipulating us into identifying completely with imperialism while having no apparent vision or desire to see Africa united and free. The imperialists have great cause to revel in our lack of unity because they know that African unity is the single most dangerous element to their necessary and continued subjugation and control of Africa, a required component and key ingredient for them to maintain their economic stability and power over the entire planet.

The imperialists shouldn't pop their corks too early though. Despite the fact they have murdered and destabilized our leaders and Pan-African political parties and organizations, there are clear signs that the masses of African people are grasping, and demanding, that Nkrumah and Ture's Pan-African vision be fulfilled in 2016 and beyond. The people are demanding that these corrupt regimes in Africa give ground in the name of justice. And, they are doing that despite the absence of a clear leader figure such as Nkrumah, Lumumba, Ture, Sobokwe, or Qaddafi. For example, there is a growing movement throughout Africa to reject accepting European colonially imposed languages like English and French as "official" languages. Countries like Ghana, Zimbabwe, and Tanzania, have announced intentions to move forward with discontinuing the teaching of English as a primary language in schools. Instead, these countries are choosing to adopt the national African languages like Twi in Ghana, Shona in Zimbabwe, and Swahili in Tanzania. They are requiring that commerce be carried out in the national African languages. Since the world economy is based in the European colonial languages, or in other words, the money languages are English, French, German, etc., this development in Africa is astounding because these governments are choosing to risk further economic isolation in the interests of maintaining African dignity. And in many of these areas, like Tanzania and Ghana, the emphasis on English (both those countries are former British colonies) is becoming less and less to the point where you need to learn the national African languages to communicate effectively with people on the streets in those countries. Unlike days of the past, you cannot rely on your connection to the colonial languages to carry you. And, although the current neo-colonial governments are the entities proposing these changes right now, no one should be confused into thinking these imperialist supporting neo-colonial regimes in Africa are the architects behind these developments. They are pushing for these language measures because the masses of people are demanding that they do so. We do not count Zimbabwe as one of these neo-colonial regimes. There is plenty of analysis of Zimbabwe and Robert Mugabe throughout this blog and in other Pan-African sources. Our point here is that the neo-colonial system is built on the African leader having cart blanche to carry out imperialist policies in exchange for personal wealth. So, under this structure, there is no incentive for neo-colonialism to support this path of African self-determination. In other words, a neo-colonial African leader like John Mahama in Ghana would not on his own support language measures like this because these measures don't play into the hands of the primarily British and U.S. multi-national corporate interests in Ghana (his puppet masters) who have exploited that country hand over foot for hundreds of years. The reason these African leaders are supporting these language measures is so they can hope to maintain any level of credibility with the African masses who clearly want an end now to neo-colonialist control of Africa.

Along with the African language movement is the proliferation of emerging policies within several countries to grant easier African citizenship to Africans born outside of Africa. Right to abode programs are currently being developed in Ghana, Nigeria, Zimbabwe, and other countries are looking at developing the same. Yes, these programs are currently disorganized and not many people have been able to benefit from them yet, but the fact such proposals are even being discussed across Africa is proof to the millions of Africans at home in Africa and in the diaspora (outside of Africa) that we are one people. This is a way for us to acknowledge that the fact we are scattered in over 113 countries worldwide is not our doing, but the result of colonialism and slavery. It is a way for us to acknowledge our need and necessity to connect with our mother - Africa - and to reconstruct our cultural, and ultimately our political and economic connection to our national homeland. All of these things are true and this reality cannot be the least bit diminished by the fact the imperialists and neo-colonial regimes are only supporting the development of these measures as a means of enticing petti-bourgeois Africans to bring financial resources and investments to Africa to bolster the small, yet existent, privileged classes there. Their efforts to compromise (the recent xenophobic outbreak in Azania, South Africa for example) and re-frame the militant Pan-African spirit behind these citizen and language measures in bourgeois terms will only work temporarily. In time, the people will see right through their tricks and people everywhere will continue to organize effectively to build these symbolic elements into substantive Pan-African policies once we overthrow neo-colonialism and build one unified socialist Africa.

Nkrumah/Ture and all the other Pan-African leaders like Lumumba, Cabral, Sankara, Nasser, Qaddafi, Peirera, Sobukwe, etc., all understood that there is one African people, no matter where we are born or wherever we live. Sekou Ture wrote over 50 years ago about the fact that no matter how long Africans have been living in the U.S. (and other areas outside of Africa), we are still Africans and that we exhibit many more elements of being of Africa than we will ever produce from being in Europe and the Americas. This is true because the forces and conditions that ripped us from Africa created the reality where our African culture became the chief component that has sustained us for 500+ years of resistance while being in an oppressive state (and this is of course also true for those still living in Africa under neo-colonialism). Since imperialism is based on exploiting Africa, in order to justify its existence, it must systemically deny our humanity. By stressing our African identity, we spit in the face of these dehumanizing efforts, thus our African identity, our African culture, is our best weapon against our oppression. Ture understood that it is this cultural vibrancy that makes our African culture so attractive to non-Africans who break their necks to imitate us. What the imitators are looking for is the dignity we display (either consciously or unconsciously) in the face of our enemies who would deny us. Unlike the forced, a-historical, and fake pride expressed by white supremacists and nationalists - who have no historical basis for their claims of oppression based on being European - we correctly wear our genuine African identity as a badge of honor in spite of imperialism's greatest efforts to enforce white supremacy against us. This is the fuel that powers our cultural artists and entertainers. It is the energy that advances our struggle and it is the juice that pushes us past the forces who would have us falsely believe we are some type of burden on society. Ture understood this and the examples given in this article reflect the masses of people's understanding of the concepts Ture wrote about 50 years ago. That Nkrumah wrote about 50 years ago. And, that so many people have been working to implement.

One clear example of one of those people is the life and work of Kwame Ture. Forty-nine years ago, a young Stokely Carmichael, a leading Black Power organizer/activist in the U.S.,left the U.S. and went to Guinea, West Africa, to become a student of Kwame Nkrumah and Sekou Ture. As was previously stated, at that time, Guinea was the base of the African revolution. As a result, besides having daily interaction with Nkrumah and Ture, Carmichael regularly engaged with Amilcar Cabral, who was building the African Party for the Independence of Guinea-Bissau (PAIGC) in Guinea at the time to launch a liberation war against Portugal's colonial presence in neighboring Guinea-Bissau (Guinea and Guinea-Bissau are two separate countries). Carmichael was also able to engage people like Thomas Sankara and other Pan-Africanist leaders. After we lost Nkrumah and Ture, Carmichael - who changed his name to Kwame Ture (KT) in 1977 to honor both of those Pan-Africanist leaders, continued to advance their revolutionary Pan-African message in the form of organizing the All African People's Revolutionary Party (A-APRP) as requested by both of them. KT lived another fifteen years after the death of Sekou Ture in 1984. KT spent that time traveling to dozens of countries, establishing and developing Pan-African contacts. Using his notoriety from his courageous struggle during the 60s, KT laid the groundwork for advancing Nkrumah and Ture's vision. In the best conditions, he was able to develop A-APRP chapters and/or integrated A-APRP cadre into existing Pan-African formations throughout the African world. In the worse conditions, he helped spread the revolutionary ideas and message of Nkrumah/Ture and all the other Pan-African giants who came before us. Today, revolutionary Pan-African cadre - many still within the A-APRP, some who have gone on to other Pan-African organizations and projects - still promote Nkrumahims/Tureism as the ideology that will bring salvation to the African masses. This phenomenon, along with other factors, are major aspects of the reasons that we are seeing the people promoting these Pan-African concepts today. These developments are simply the tip of the iceberg. For the first time since the independence movements of the 50s and 60s, we are seeing the African masses awaken with Pan-African consciousness. They are demanding - in the cases of Senegal and Boukina Faso for example - that democracy and the will of the people be implemented. Although the capitalist and mainstream media, even media sources that are supposedly being presented from a left and/or progressive and socialist perspective, still routinely present the world through the lenses of the U.S. and Europe, we remind you of Sekou Ture's prophetic words: "imperialism will find its grave in Africa." Saying that, we believe all of the struggles against imperialism are equally valuable. The Palestinian struggle. The Irish struggle. The struggle in the Philippines, Puerto Rico, and certainly the struggle by the Indigenous people's of the Western hemisphere against U.S. imperialism, but imperialism will continue to have lungs and legs until Africa is free, united, and socialist. Despite the fact people inside imperialist countries continue to ignore Africa, the actions of the masses of African people today are clear examples that Nkrumah and Ture were correct, the people are listening to them, and this reality means that victory is near.

0 Comments

Voting Rights Without SNCC. Like Talking Food without Ingredients

10/21/2016

0 Comments

Standing with Mukassa (Willie) Ricks at the 2015 Million Man March commemoration in Washington D.C. Dada Mukassa risked his life in Mississippi in 1966 venturing out ahead of the march in progress to organize - often by himself - community members around the new slogan of "Black Power" as a part of the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee's strategy to change the focus from "Freedom now" to "Black Power!"

Being as we are currently struggling through another traumatic period known as a national election cycle within the U.S., just like the sun following the moon, we are again subjected to the same old tired references to people dying for our rights to vote. This is especially true of African people who, as always, receive the most pointed and criminally untrue propaganda. The reasons for this are easy to ascertain. The ruling capitalist class is being faced with serious challenges due to its undeniable decline and inability to promise prosperity to its most loyal supporters - the European (White) working classes within the capitalist countries. As these White workers are demonstrating, even the slightest discomfort - or even the threat of discomfort - is more than enough to drive this segment of the population into potential rebellion. The capitalist class, conscious of its vulnerabilities - even if you aren't - realizes that if the White working classes are this distraught, clearly the African masses and other brown peoples, must be immediately driven into submission in order to stop us from engaging in out and out revolutionary struggle against the empire. This is where their relentless propaganda comes into play. African people died for the vote. Therefore, if you don't vote, you are betraying the struggles of our ancestors. In fact, what you are doing is worse than treason. A greater crime than sabotaging our forward progress. Actually, by not voting, you are sabotaging our forward progress. The logic firmly based inside of this propaganda is the subtle - yet strong - suggestion that your only actual option is to express your outrage, disgust, anger, and determination, within the parameters of what the capitalist system provides to you e.g. the vote. And, any suggestion of anything outside of the capitalist paradigm is insanity, right?

This is the same limited and backward analysis which seeks to make you believe that the issue of protest against police terrorism - take footballer Colin Kaepernick's protest for example - can really only be seen within the context of whether the protest respects the U.S. and particularly the U.S. military. The clear contradiction with both of these lines of so-called reasoning is that the identity, actions, and analysis of those who really engaged in the sacrifices to secure our forward progress in the area of voting and against police terrorism, aren't even mentioned. There is absolutely no question that any "rights" I have as an African living in the U.S. are due to the courageous efforts of those people who put their lives on the line fighting for racial justice in this country. The U.S. military has nothing to do with these so-called rights. This is proven by the completely ignored U.S. history that from the U.S. fighting for its so-called independence from Britain (the reason you celebrate the Fourth of the lie every year) in the 1700s to the Vietnam war in the 1970s, Africans didn't possess the basic rights that we supposedly donned the U.S. military uniform to gain for somebody, somewhere. For that 200 year period, our rights to vote were met with state sabotage and supported violence. Our rights to go to school, live where we wanted and could afford, and even to sit down and eat a disgusting meal at a terrible store only eventually happened after we demonstrated our willingness to shed blood for this "right." The U.S. military had nothing to do with us gaining it and more often than not ala the National Guard, the U.S. military was a force in preventing us from gaining these so-called rights. So, besides the fact we as African people look like absolute fools thanking the U.S. military "for our rights", more importantly than how ignorant and manipulated we are, we continuously demonstrate an unacceptable level of disrespect for those people from the civil rights movement that we should be thanking.

So, we dig deeper into this question of voting rights. With the election just weeks away and the usual cast of characters, con people, and out and out criminals, staging their performances to fool us into believing in them, yet again, we are told we should be grateful for the opportunity to pick the "lessor" predator over the "worse" predator. Besides the point there is no such thing as lessor predator, we must address this misnomer that our people died for this ridiculous process that these people call a vote. This is important because the people saying our people died for the right to vote didn't for the most part participate in five minutes of risk based struggle to get to the positions they currently occupy. And, the problem is you have no idea about the people who did pay that price so we want to introduce you to some of them. You Africans should know that if you can vote for either of these scum running for office today, it is because of those brave and courageous organizers within the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC - along with other organizations like the Congress of Racial Equality and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, etc.). SNCC deserves special mention because they organized the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party (MFDP) which brought the country to its knees in 1964 when the MFDP successfully organized enough of a ground game to force the Democratic Party to seat its delegates at its National Convention in Atlantic City in 1964. Forced into a corner because of the bravery of people like the immortal Ms. Fannie Lou Hamer - who shocked the entire planet by testifying in front of an international media audience how the local McComb County Sheriffs forced African inmates (through coercion) to beat her so badly that the inmates had to be hospitalized. She won the international community over due to her boldness and sincerity and Hubert Humphrey, Lyndon Johnson, and the other criminals within the Democratic Party's national leadership were forced to make a compromise and seat the MFDP delegates, thus breaking the hold of White men on participation in the U.S. electoral process. So, without SNCC and the MFDP, there would and could be no Shirley Chisholm in 1972, Geraldine Ferraro in 1984, Barack Obama and Sarah Palin in 2008, and Hillary Clinton in 2016. Not that any of them, with the possible exception of Ms. Chisholm, are worth the space they physically occupy, but at least the concept of them resulted from that mass struggle because the fight forced the opportunity to vote that you currently possess further along so that you could have it today. And, SNCC wasn't finished. The very next year they organized the Lowndes County Freedom Organization in Lowndes County, Alabama. This was to be the very first Black Panther Party and it would push our right to vote farther along and past the specter of violence being imposed by those who thought they could intimidate us away from exercising our vote. Our willingness to take up arms in the deep South to protect our desire to vote sent a message to this entire hemisphere that signaled a new day that everyone reading this has benefited from.

What's especially important about all of this struggle is the perspectives of it that emerged from those who faced the most sacrifices. Kwame Ture (Stokely Carmichael), a leading organizer in both of the projects indicated above, went to jail approximately 40 times in six years in SNCC for doing voter registration work. He was often tortured and brutalized in other ways. He of course went on from SNCC and his brief participation within the Black Panther Party to do significant Pan-African work to build the All African People's Revolutionary Party - work that is still vastly unknown to people outside the African world of independent organization. His political position on voting in capitalist elections during the last 30 years of his organizing life was quite clear and after making the level of personal sacrifices that he made to win the vote, his opinion on the subject should hold much more weight than that of those who just stepped in after his sacrifices to reap the benefits while doing very little to use those positions to advance our people. Kwame's response to the statement that we died for the right to vote was always that voting is a tactic, not a principle. Principles are values that define who you are as a person. You can never compromise principles because once you do, you demonstrate yourself to be person who lacks integrity. Tactics, on the other hand, are methods used to achieve an objective. Tactics, unlike principles, can be changed as needed based on effectiveness. For example, a principle can be that when dating, you will never lie to the other person about how you feel about them. Tactics defined within this framework would be how you grow your relationship with this person e.g. going on dinner/movie dates, singing songs to them, helping them fix their car, etc. In order to maintain the integrity of your relationship with this person, you can never compromise your principle of never lying to them, but your tactics, e.g. the things you do to grow the relationship, will change all the time. Maybe every time. They will change based on the weather, how much money you have, how you both feel, etc. Kwame's point is voting isn't a principle, its a tactic. So, although he almost lost his life fighting for the vote (you didn't, he did), he has said for the record that we should use the vote based on how effective it is in helping us gain ground for our freedom and liberation. Since most of what we see today offers no opportunities to advance our struggles in electoral politics, especially on a national level, Kwame was quite clear that we shouldn't prioritize participating in electoral politics. Instead, we should organize to build capacity for change in our communities. This is the same type of position on voting that is being advanced by others who were on the ground in SNCC with Kwame like Mukassa (Willie) Ricks who was the first person who actually yelled "Black Power" on that dusty road in June of 1966 in Mississippi. In fact, Mukassa is still spreading that message today, couched in his passion for Pan-Africanism.

You may ask yourself why you have never heard of any of this and/or why no one ever talks about it. One of the major reasons is that we don't control our history. Much of our history is being dominated by the so-called White left today. They are the ones who are writing and producing many of the movies, books, articles, etc., about the Black Panther Party. I don't think you should hold your breath waiting for those people to ever pay homage to people like Ms. Hamer, Kwame Ture, or Mukassa Ricks. They won't even tell you about many of the other current and living Pan-Africanists who contributed mightily to SNCC's work like Bob Brown and Seku (Chico) Neblitt. This won't happen because many of these so-called White allies are still pretty angry at SNCC for telling them to get away from our struggle and organizations in 1967 and to go into White communities and organize European people. Clearly, based on the lack of White community organizing on the left today (most of any organizing work that takes place there is done by the extreme right like militia, skinhead, and KKK groups), this is obviously still a very touchy subject for the White left. So, because of that, they ignore Kwame, Mukassa, Bob, Seku, etc., and instead focus on spreading their affection towards people like Angela Davis although she has more or less abandoned any real revolutionary analysis and organizing (she just announced her intention to vote for Hillary Clinton). We are not concerned about any of this. These people belong to our movement and history and you can rest assured that we are doing all in our power to educate our youth about our true warriors for justice. Our hope is that no matter what community you belong too, it is possible for you to recognize these true hereos/sheros, and that you can not get caught up in the capitalist propaganda machine. Especially since without the Black Power movement these people launched, there is no LGBTQ, women's liberation, and Disability rights movements. Without their work there is no 1965 Immigration Reform Act which paved the way for brown people to emigrate to the U.S., something that never happened before that act. So, everyone owes these courageous souls. And, you can help by correcting and educating people the next time you hear somebody give credit for anybody's rights to the U.S. military and/or their disgusting flag. And, hopefully those who still garner so much faith in the capitalist electoral process you can take this information and get to work building something much stronger than just the disrespectful reaction to voting for the lessor predator every four years that you continue to attempt to ram down our throats.

0 Comments

Going to College, the Petit-Bourgeois, and Fighting for Justice

10/18/2016

0 Comments

Newly oriented students in the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee being trained on the dangers of entering and doing civil rights work in Mississippi in 1963

Let's start by saying education is a good thing, right? Gaining knowledge, developing an analysis, creating solutions to problems, these are all skills and abilities that we need. Things that will contribute towards moving us forward. So, I don't think anyone would argue that information and education isn't a good thing. Then why the overwhelming backlash against intellectualism that is painfully evident today? I'll start by making an ideological argument that is rooted in our African culture because this is the correct way to analyze any issue and problem.

The truth today is most African students who graduate with hard fought skills and abilities, end up using those skills to advance themselves individually instead of using those skills to advance the masses of African people. This is the reason intellectualism and education is somewhat discredited within our communities. People cannot see the benefits, especially since our educated youth grow up expressing contempt for the masses of our people. Scores of Africans born in Africa, Europe, or the Western world, use their degrees to get jobs with multi-national capitalist companies. They earn high salaries, buy homes, cars, and live the petti-bourgeois lifestyle, ignoring the dire plight of the masses of their people. Many of them will adopt the values of capitalism, repeating the discredited philosophies of this system that the reasons our people suffer as they do is because we don't work hard enough. They will ignore the systemic obstacles that intentionally discriminate against African people. They will also ignore clear proof that our ability to get college education isn't a reflection of our individual abilities as much as it is the result of the struggle of the masses of our people.

The reality is 60 years ago, virtually no Africans were able to go to college anywhere on Earth! The fact that we are graduating people at unprecedented levels today isn't happening because we are smarter and better qualified to gain entrance to the university today than we were 60 years ago. The difference is we were previously prevented from having those opportunities and the fact we have them today is only because of the mass struggle we have gained to have that opportunity. Hard science and technical skills have been effectively removed from university access in Africa. The only way to gain those skills in Africa today is for students to travel to Europe and America. The fact they can do this is only because of the mass struggle to fight back against the colonizing countries of Europe and the imperial presence of the U.S. in the 50s and 60s. By pushing back against the system of oppression that subjugated the African continent and the constant theft of African resources that the colonial system systematically put in place, the fight against colonialism demanded that Africans be provided the opportunity to create self-determination for Africa, thus the opening up of Europe and American educational institutions to our youth. In the U.S., everyone knows Africans who attempted to go to college faced violent responses from racist Europeans. James Meredith was shot for integrating the University of Mississippi in 1962 and George Wallace - the then governor of Alabama - stood in front of the Admissions office door at the University of Alabama in 1963 while declaring that no African will be admitted to that university unless it was done over his dead body. African students who attempted to attend Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas in 1957 were met with intense threats and terrorism by the local community. The key element in all of these examples is it never mattered how smart or talented you were, institutional discrimination prevented thousands upon thousands of Africans from having the opportunity to gain a college education. The fact these Africans can do this now is only because of that mass struggle we engaged in to force the system to bend to our demands for justice. So, because it was this struggle and not anyone's individual talents that opened the door to these opportunities, these educations must belong to the masses of the people, not the individuals. Therefore, these individuals have an obligation to use their education to advance the masses of the people, not just themselves.

Now, there is no question that the majority of Africans achieving college degrees today are not honoring the legacy of the struggle that gave them their degrees in the first place. No one can argue that point. Still, there are far too many well meaning activists and community members who are missing the boat by criticizing education and/or being anti-intellectual because of the betrayal of these Africans who sell out our people's struggle for their personal advancement. The message to those well meaning miss the boat folks, is that they must have faith in our ancestors. I am convinced that those Africans who faced tanks, tear gas, bullets, prison, and all forms of oppression knew exactly what they were doing when they demanded we have access to education. Those brave people were not engaging in that fight so that they could gain personal advancement. They knew they were not ever going to even set foot on a college campus and most of them never did. They were janitors, maids, bus drivers, food servers, etc. They faced raw terror because they knew we needed the science, art, technical, and liberal arts skills from college to advance our people. They faced that terror, not you. So, they didn't need you to tell them about the betrayals of today. For every traitor to the struggle today, they sell out themselves, not our glorious struggle. The premise of those brave persons was correct. We need education to advance our struggle. The first phase of that fight is to create the opportunity, which they did. The next phase is for us to win the ideological struggle that must be waged against bourgeois ideas. This is the struggle Franz Fanon talked about when he said "each generation will inherit a mission. That generation will either fulfill that mission or betray it." We have to convince our youth that when they graduate from college with the degree that was afforded to them not just by their parents, but by the masses of our people, they must use that degree in the tradition of our best intellectuals. Those intellectuals who used their degrees to advance our people. We must tell them about W.E.B. and Shirley Graham DuBois. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Kwame Nkrumah, Patrice Lumumba, Assata Shakur, and Kwame Ture (Stokely Carmichael). We must tell them that the Black Panther Party was founded on the Merritt College campus. We must tell them that the right the vote and the Black Power movement was led by the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee which was founded on a college campus in 1960. We must tell them that the first president in Africa and the father of Pan-Africanism - Kwame Nkrumah - was a college student in Philadelphia. That he pledged a fraternity, Phi Beta Sigma, and that he used his education to lead the African independence struggle in Africa and to advance the worldwide Pan-African struggle for justice and liberation for African people everywhere. These are proper examples of how we should be using our educational skills and we need to work to create a cultural climate among our people where it is considered unacceptable to talk of using education any differently than described above. We must make sure they understand that this, and only this, is what our ancestors died for.

There's no question that we have plenty of intellectuals who contribute mightily to our struggle who never went to college. Malcolm X, Sekou Ture, and Ms. Fannie Lou Hamer, are all outstanding examples. Still, in this ever advancing technological and information based world we live in, we need people who know how to negotiate through these systems. Of course there will always be people who know how to do that who didn't go to college, but most of the people who will know will get their knowledge from college. So, it makes sense that we go to work reversing this anti-intellectualism environment that exists. It makes sense that we go to work convincing our people that the process of committing class suicide and refusing to enter the petti-bourgeois class in order to our your skills to advance the African revolution should be the foremost objective of all African college students, everywhere. If we don't do that, those college students will continue to be recruited by the capitalist system to work in its interests, and against the interests of the African masses. We have to have faith in our people and humanity. We cannot adopt the elitist position that because people aren't doing what they should be doing now that they do not possess the capacity to change (as if we always had the correct consciousness and course of action in our lives).

The proper message is that education is good. Intellectualism is good. And, that education belongs to the masses of people, not the individual. The education was fought for and must be used to advance our collective struggle. The discussion mustn't just be repudiating our bourgeois minded college students, but in figuring out how to steer them towards the models provided to us by Nkrumah, Kwame Ture, Ella Baker, and Huey P. Newton. How do we get them to see the relevance of Cuba today, where they have announced they have effectively eliminated mother to child HIV transmissions while also informing us they are wiping out colon cancer. One of Cuba's first and leading doctors was Ernesto "Che" Guevara. Today, his daughter Aleida Guevara - a leading Pediatrician in Cuba - is a powerful voice in support of healthcare being a resource for the people of the world and not a commodity to be bought and sold. The Guevara's provide us yet another historical and present day example of the proper use of education. Let's start building conditions for this model of class suicide to flourish all over the world.

0 Comments

The Black Panthers: A Critical Assessment Beyond Romanticism

10/16/2016

1 Comment

October 2016 of course commemorates 50 years since the founding of the Black Panther Party for Self Defense in Oakland, California. There has been much written about the Black Panther Party (BPP). Many of the best historical perspectives have been written by Panther leaders/members like Elaine Brown, Assata Shakur, David Hilliard, Geronimo Ji Jaga (Pratt), Kwame Ture (Stokely Carmichael), Flores Forbes, Aaron Dixon, and even co-founders Bobby Seale and Huey P. Newton. Much of the legacy of the BPP has also been kept alive through the work of former Panthers like Erika Huggins, Kathleen Cleaver, Brown, Billy X Jennings, Emory Douglass, Fredricka Newton, the widow of Huey P, and Fred Hampton Jr. the son of Fred Hampton. There is also much written about iconic and murdered Panther leaders like Hampton and Alprentice Bunchy Carter. You should study all of these books, articles, documentaries, videos, etc., to bolster your understanding of who the BPP was, and what its legacy actually is. What we intend to accomplish here is a precise assessment of the BPP's history and its strengths and weaknesses so that we can learn from this to empower our organizations and movements today.

So how can we learn from the BPP in a way that goes beyond the subjective romanticism many on the left sustain for them, as well as the racist misinformation that many on the right are advancing about them? We can start by celebrating the fact the BPP actually started a year before 1966, not in Oakland, but in Lowndes County Alabama. The Lowndes County Freedom Organization (LCFO - a project of the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee - SNCC) emerged in 1965 to give the African population there an alternative to the racist Democratic and Republican parties. Since 80% of the African people in Lowndes county were unable to read and write, that party became known more by its symbol - the Black Panther - instead of its actual name. And, since the violence from police, the Ku Klux Klan, and the general European (White) community in Lowndes was so pervasive against the African community, the county was known by African people as "bloody Lowndes" thus prompting the LCFO to activate an armed self defense network to protect LCFO/SNCC activists while they conducted their organizing work. As SNCC mobilized people from all over the country to come into Lowndes County and help, a young African from Oakland named Mark Comfort responded to that call. After his stint in Alabama, Comfort went back to Oakland and informed his friend Huey P. Newton of "these Black folks in Alabama named the Black Panther Party with guns!" Newton acknowledges this in his autobiography "Revolutionary Suicide" and Kwame Ture writes in his autobiograpahy "Ready for Revolution" that Newton wrote to SNCC and asked permission to use the BPP name and symbol for the party he would co-found with Seale the following year. Newton was the primary ideologue for the BPP in its early period and the left leaning Marxist/Leninist perspective the BPP flirted with was apparent in the Ten Point Program the BPP adopted upon its inception. This influence is evident in all ten points, but point number three - "We Demand an End to Capitalism's Robbery of the Black Community" - makes the position of the young organization clear. The BPP was still far different from the multitude of European left organizations that existed within the U.S. at that time. Understanding the particular reality of African people within the U.S. as a stolen and exploited people, the Panthers considered themselves "revolutionary nationalists" meaning that on different, and very uneven levels, the BPP saw itself as having a class and nation (anti-white supremacy) analysis, something the White left didn't have then, and still lacks for the most part today. In fact, this nation/class (and now gender) analysis is something the White left still finds very difficult to grapple with. In their never ending quest to dismiss white supremacy, they continue to insist that the problem is simply one of eliminating capitalism. They are not fooling any Brown people with this perspective. We have studied history and we know that white supremacy is the by product of capitalism. We don't need White people to tell us that. Capitalism was built and is maintained primarily on the exploitation of our national homelands e.g. Africa, the Americas, Asia, etc., so we know this better than they do. That's why we completely reject their racist analysis that any form of nationalism is reactionary. Clearly, this is not a dialectic view of history because dialectical materialism demonstrates to us that everything has positives and negatives. Meaning, nothing is 100% positive or negative. So, everything, including something as vile as the transatlantic slave trade, has something within it that has advanced humanity. For example, this system of slavery brought industrialization to the world. So, we know that nationalism, when adopted by colonized people, is a necessary weapon from which to overthrow the psychological shackles of white supremacy. We know that nationalism within this context is not an anti-White philosophy, but as even V.I. Lenin states (correctly) in his landmark book "Imperialism", - "nationalism is the prerequisite for socialism." In other words, our national liberation struggles, whether they be to unite Africa, Palestinian, Filipino, or Indigenous people of the Western Hemisphere who are fighting for self-determination, or even the Irish struggle against the British, are necessary fights that properly organized will lead to creating the conditions for socialist construction. So, the BPP had some element of this, although slightly underdeveloped, and the White left gave them hell for it, but the BPP clearly had this position right.

Another area of discussion for the BPP was the early focus on guns and then the so-called survival programs. We support the BPPs adoption of both aspects of their program. Our issue with each was the BPPs lack of emphasis on political education. Yes, we know about the often spoken political education classes within the BPP, but we also know that many of the previously mentioned assessments of the BPP by former BPP members themselves, reveals that this process was uneven and underdeveloped and this reality led to much of the dysfunction that helped open the BPP up to devastation inflicted against it by the U.S. government. For example, the Party repeatedly played right into the hands of J. Edgar Hoover and the Federal Bureau of Investigation's (FBI) counter intelligence program (COINTELPRO) which caused complete chaos within that organization in particular and the entire Black Power movement as a whole. The BPP focus on exposing police informants was ill-advised because there is really no way to know for sure who is a police informant and it really isn't necessary that you know this. What's important is that our organizations have a clear focus and that we have a strong political education program that each member is dedicated to. If you have this, and your members are steeled in the ideology with an accompanying (and equally as strong) criticism/self assessment process, who is working for the police becomes much less important because you will actually be in a position where everyone will be working to advance your political line so the informants are then forced to do so also. Or, as Kwame Ture often said "our role is to get the police to work for the revolution." Where this failed in the BPP is since there wasn't a clear focus on the BPP's political line and objectives, and consequently, the atmosphere where principled criticism was non-existent for the most part within the BPP, it was easy for police informants, and even people who weren't working for the police, but were just confused politically, to create confusion and derail members. All you have to do is study the Panthers ill-advised attack against the police on April 6th, 1968 - in which Lil Bobby Hutton was murdered by Oakland police, as proof of this problem. Along with that, the Panthers emphasis on the lumpen-proletariat - or the criminal class - was based in romanticism this way. Even Karl Marx spoke of how difficult it is to depend upon the lumpen and certainly basing your organization around them without a strong political education focus is not wise. This is why so many honest Panthers were so easily manipulated into supporting lumpen activities (ala the 1968 attack against the police) which helped discredit the Panther Party as a whole. Another unfortunate example is the Panthers shaking down local African businesses to get them to kick down money to support the breakfast and health programs (known as the survival programs). With a proper political education process, the people who owned these businesses could not be seen as the enemy and an effort to properly politicize them would have been instituted so that they would see the necessity to support the programs themselves instead of being forced into doing so. Revolutions are only successful with mass political education so that the people understand and support the revolutionary objectives. Without this work taking place in communities, no matter how good your work is, the system we are fighting against will find ways to organize against you because your only insulation against this happening is the consciousness of the people. This is the problem with the shakedown approach because the community, influenced by the capitalist media, began to see the Panthers as thugs to the point where when COINTELPRO kicked into high gear between 1969 and 1971, and Panthers were being systematically killed and arrested by the police state, the African community did nothing to protect the Panthers because in many ways at that point, the Panthers had been effectively isolated from the community. No revolutionary party can survive once isolated from the community it serves.

The other example of this lack of political education is reflected in how the state was able to position the Party from focusing on its work in the communities to becoming an organization focused on getting individual leaders out of prison. Once the power structure realized this, of course their work became that of simply arresting as many BPP leaders as it could. The BPP's focus on "Free Huey" after Newton was imprisoned was understandable, but not a practical way to build revolutionary consciousness. The emphasis of the revolutionary party has to be on organizing the community and the basis of this, again, has to be politically educating the community. There has to be a clear understanding and acceptance that people will be arrested, imprisoned, and killed, but the work has to continue. This was not clear within the BPP and once the state starting locking up everyone, the party's loyalties became divided and the work within the communities suffered. These examples all illustrate that the problem wasn't the Panther's use of guns, or even imprisoned leaders, but the focus on these things without a strong political education process that gave the proper political perspective to those issues so that the people understood them and supported them as a part of a broader program to empower the communities towards revolutionary change. Again, since none of these things happened, instead of the Party being empowered by these elements, they were politically isolated by them and set up for destruction by the government. There is obviously much more around this political education question. The treatment of women. The analysis the Panthers had on the broader movements for justice around the world, etc.

So, fifty years later, the BPP must be seen as an organization of primarily young and determined African people who possessed overwhelming courage and commitment to stand up against oppression. Their willingness to confront the police with arms created a psychology of resistance that broke the power structures oppressive mental hold against us. Although the state's violent response towards us obviously hasn't changed (and it never will), our response to their violent response has evolved a great deal. It can be said that there would be no Black Lives Movement were it not for the BPP and the Black Power movement. Colin Kaepernick's afro, braids, pig socks, and militant shirts pay clear homage to the BPP and that militant era. The same can be said of Beyonce's Super Bowl performance. These acts clearly demonstrate the pride and inspiration we gained from the sacrifices of the BPP. Also, the BPP taught us that there are other forms of struggle beyond making a demand against the power structure. We can create institutions within our communities that help us develop capacity to fight back against the system to create the type of new society that we want and need and we can do that without the consent of a system that many of us believe cannot be reformed, but must be destroyed (and changed). You are strongly encouraged to read and/or view what Panther leaders have said and are saying about their work. Most of them openly acknowledge the shortcomings expressed here and some of them give clear direction on how to correct the errors they made. Particularly instructive are works of former Panthers like Kwame Ture, Bob Brown, Assata Shakur, and Elaine Brown who continued on with radical and even revolutionary politics long after the BPP ceased to exist. Those people serious about carrying the struggle forward will take all of this information and use it to figure out how to improve our organizations today. We love the BPP. I have had the opportunity to work with many of the people named here and the few I haven't met, I've certainly studied intensely. I am without question a product of their work, but I also know the only way to demonstrate appreciation for anyone is to carry on their work. To advance their work. That means taking the best that they offered e.g. working in the communities along with building on their errors, such as the lack of a strong political education program. If this 50 years since their founding is to mean anything, it must encompass that type of serious approach by all of us.

1 Comment

U.S. Electoral Politics and It's Systemic Tragedy for Working People

10/14/2016

0 Comments

For the last 35 years I have started many more of my days in locker rooms than not. So, I have spent as much time with as many men as any other man and the men I've known over the years are as macho as they come. Throughout my male bonding periods, I've always avoided speaking of women as body parts, partly because it never sat right with me and partly because I was always to shy to say much of anything about women. I won't deny that there was discussion about women taking place all the time, but I can say truthfully that it never evaporated into statements about what people were going to do to women's bodies because doing so is without question sexual assault In other words, even if some of the guys I knew were sexual predators, they knew better than to voice it as it would have been shot down immediately, even in my early dysfunctional, macho, social circles. So, there's absolutely no question in my mind that Donald Trump is clearly the piece of trash I'd always assumed him to be. And everything else he's said he would do - from walling off Mexico to saving my African people - has done nothing except confirm my opinion of him. In fact, he's no different than any of the other people who have emerged in election cycles from the Republican party. They are consistently elite, out of touch, racist, patriarchal, and unashamedly in support of everything imperialism does to maintain its power grip on the world.

On the other side of the so-called aisle, one of the main reasons Trump is still able to grasp some stability is because Hillary Clinton is just as slimy and disgusting as he is. Her role in supporting her vile husband's mission to imprison the entire African population in order to bolster the prison industrial complex in the 90s is well documented. And her leadership in destabilizing and destroying the Libyan Jamihiriya has eliminated on of the brightest beacon of hope on the African continent. And, that's not to mention her policies of terror against the people of Honduras, Syria, and a number of other geographical areas. So, as an African observing this political circus, I'm supposed to accept that my choices are someone who has dehumanized African youth or someone who has discriminated against us in housing. Someone who destroyed self-determination in Africa or someone who supports destroying self-determination in Central America. Someone who pimps Africans for a party who has lied to us for the last 60 years or someone who pimps us for a party that doesn't even hide its disdain for us.

As election day draws closer, the same old rhetoric in the African community and so-called progressive circles is that the Democrats ala Clinton is the lessor of two evils in order to avoid a Trump presidency. These people rail continuously that a Trump presidency will spell disaster for all peace and justice loving people and all of humanity. The problem with their argument is history doesn't confirm their position. It confirms that regardless of whether its a Democrat or Republican, the masses of working people are in trouble. This is substantiated by spanning the last several decades going back from Obama to Kennedy with several Republicans holding office in between. During this 56 year period, Africa has gone from the continent of newly found independence, promise, and potential, to the place of destabilization, suffering, and continued poverty and desperation. There are now over 60 U.S. military installations in Africa - consolidated under Republican Bush and stabilized under Democrat Obama. These bases, funded by U.S. tax dollars, lauded as being put in place to combat the so-called Islamic state, have actually done nothing to curb extremist violence. They have created U.S. intelligence outposts in every area of Africa and they have served as viable weapons against any form of active self-determination and organization on the African continent. The International Monetary Fund (IMF) and its structural adjustment programs were forced into Africa under Democrat Clinton and maintained and nourished under Republican Bush and Democrat Obama. These programs have eliminated any potential for self-determination in Africa on an economic basis and they have served to become the latest form of neo-colonialism to devastate Africa's potential. Within Europe, African people have become public enemy number one over this same time period. Anti-African sentiment is at an all time high. Neo-nazis are being elected to office across Europe in wide margin and the recent decision by Britain to leave the European Union, although clearly a manifestation of the Union's imperialist objectives, was also influenced widely by racist sentiments and a desire by Britain to have greater control over its borders. Within the U.S. African incomes rose for the first few years of this time period, but have declined at a steady pace over the last 30+ years while we continue to set record pace at being incarcerated. State sponsored violence against us maintains levels consistent with any time since reconstruction and U.S. politicians don't even see the need to maintain appearances any longer as it relates to attempting to at least appear not to be racist. The lessor of two evils argument holds no water and for people to continue to argue that as if it has legitimacy is like arguing that a fox is a safer security guard for the chicken coop than a wolf because his personality seems to be better. This argument suggests that since there is no question we will be devastated, the only part we get to choose is whether that terror is brutal and vicious, or whether it is less painful and more palatable. I don't know about you, but neither way is acceptable to me.

There's no reason for us to continue to act as if there are no other alternatives. Of course there are alternatives. We can stop acting like the Democrats and Republicans really represent us. We can stop pretending that police agencies are here to serve us (as if when they shoot us or act in a primitive manner against us that is some sort of deviation from the norm). We can stop acting like the capitalist system with just a few tweaks and adjustments will become what we need to eliminate class oppression, white supremacy, patriarchy, homophobia, and all forms of human suffering. I say to all those who are protesting, good work, but we cannot see the direct action as the objective. Direct action has to be a tactic to achieve the objective. Since the act of protesting is by definition reform, meaning it is rooted in the concept that the system can be changed through a demand, that means you who are protesting do not believe in revolutionary change. There is no problem there, but you do need to define what your objective is. It cannot just be showing up over and over with no plan and no recourse. Consider taking some time to create that plan. Have enough vision to see how you can shut the system down for more than an afternoon. How about shutting it down for months? How about organizing your people so that you can have shifts of people to hold down disruptions for as long as we need them to bring the system to its knees? How about supporting your actions with mass political education so that the persons who can't get to work because of our actions cannot be used against us by the imperialist system because we are providing them an analysis so that they can understand why we are doing what we are doing? Those of us who are revolutionaries would help you with that political education piece and that could serve as a vantage point where we could consolidate our work. I've written countless times about necessary approaches for revolutionary work so I won't rehash that here. I will say to those who claim to support revolutionary organizing, stop getting drawn into reformist politics and start focusing on that revolutionary analysis that is so needed at times like this. Stop being lured into having to defend the Democrats because you have to denounce Trump and the Republicans. Stay true to your anti-capitalist politics or abandon them all together so that we don't have to keep cleaning up your confusion. I won't defend Obama over Bush or Trump. Not Barack, Michelle, or any of them. They are all proponents of imperialism. Or, as Kwame Ture so correctly put it "only the Democratic Party has millionaires and houseless people within the same party by convincing the houseless people that their interests and those of the millionaires are one and the same." That's what you have in U.S. electoral politics. A millionaire running against a billionaire. That is what's happening next month and that's what has been happening for centuries. And all the vote really represents is your rubber stamping the political and economic agenda for the super rich. When are we going to stop permitting ourselves to be prostituted so easily?

You may think some change will be happening next month, but I know the only change that's ever going to happen is the change we make happen. So, no matter who wins, my work will remain the same. Organizing revolutionary consciousness and capacity to fight against this system for uncompromising change. Organizing Africans towards one unified socialist Africa. Organizing and supporting the struggles of the Indigenous people's Palestinian peoples, Filipino people's, and working class Europeans who are tired of the fox versus wolf magical trick. I'll see you on November 9th and I'll say the same thing I've been saying for 30+ years. Let me know when you have had enough of this circus show and maybe we can get coffee/tea. Maybe people like us can get coffee/tea everywhere. And, then we can sit down and start planning the real work we need to be doing.

0 Comments

Malheur, Militias, and How The White Left Still Misses the Point

10/10/2016

1 Comment

On January 30th, 2016, I wrote a piece on this blog entitled "White Militias, As Usual, the White Left is Missing the Point." Interestingly enough, on this blog, which is widely read, to date, that has been the most widely read piece, attracting over 16,000 readers in one day. There are dozens of comments, mostly from so-called White radicals/revolutionaries, criticizing the piece. They responded to the piece by telling me how much I don't understand about organizing for revolution and how these militias are not made up of working class people, but rich land owners. In other words, they made long, elaborate, and consistently arrogant dismissals of the points I was making. None of this was a surprise. The White left has been doing that to Pan-Africanists and Black nationalists for over 100 years. Their premise is that they, and only they, understand what is necessary to organize revolution. Our response continues to be that if they are so knowledgeable about what needs to be done, what in the world are they waiting for to implement their superior vision? Our question of course is a hypothetical one. We know they don't have the answers. This is universally true as it relates to what's necessary for African liberation. We are waiting on their opinions about what's needed for African liberation as much as they are stuck on our opinions about what's necessary within the capitalist world. One major difference though is we have strong and scientific experience from which to draw from to promote a concrete analysis on organizing European (White) people within the belly of capitalism whereas they know as much about organizing African people and Africa as I know about country music - which is 0. And here, yet again, despite the arrogant comments from so many White people earlier this year, we have further proof to validate our position that White people need to lower your arrogance by 1000 rounds and start seriously considering organizing White people.

The source of information being used here to present our argument is the work we have done recently to support the work of the Rural Organizing Project (ROP) in its work. ROP is one of the very few White organizations that is attempting to organize White people to create capacity for systematic change instead of just mobilizing White people to march through streets in reaction to capitalism's oppression. ROP's anti-racist work has attracted the attention of Oregon's growing militia movement, which is heavily influenced and shaped by white nationalist doctrine and ideologies. Recognizing the clear danger of this trend, ROP developed a toolkit on who the militias are, what their mission is, and what all that means. They have then gone to work organizing within their rural networks to galvanize local Whites around doing something about this. Their work has generated the ire of these militia groups who have threatened their staff and volunteers, attempted to physically intimidate them, and, even continually invaded their personal spaces in threatening ways by visiting their homes and committing acts of vandalism against them. ROP's response has been to go out on tour to discuss this growing phenomenon and because of the impending threats against them, I volunteered, along with a handful of trusted comrades, to travel with them on their militia speaking tours around rural Oregon, including areas within the Malheur region, providing physical protection to the ROP folks while they engaged in their work. Most recently, this consisted of me traveling to eight of the 11 rural destinations and providing that security presence. What I observed in each of those eight locations are a large number of local folks who desperately and passionately want to foster communities that don't promote values of white supremacy, violence, and fear. What I also observed, at each stop, are militia members, or more correctly, members of the Patriotic Movement, who attended these events and on several occasions, engaged in dialogue with local residents about ways to develop greater understanding. I'm not saying it was easy or that its going to be easy. There were some of these folks in each location who clearly had no interest in engaging. Some of them even made unsuccessful attempts to intimidate people in the parking lot at a Southern Oregon event before they were prevented from doing so. On a couple of occasions, there were probably so many people packing concealed weapons inside the events that had there been metal detectors, they would have overloaded. And in one community, a shot from a 22 rang out just a few feet in front of our paused vehicle. I'm not saying the shot was intentional or anything else about it, except that it happened. Plus, to be honest, my assessment is that at least some of the militia people who participated in the discussions may not have had sincere intentions beyond just engaging in public relations to bolster the image of their organizations.

Still, there's no denying that within events that were focused on exposing these groups, despite the fact the people identified in the presentations were present, not once did any of them attempt to disrupt the events. You could say that was because we were there, but regardless, the fact they didn't cause an issue has to go to their credit. Also, to the point of what people criticized earlier in the year, the participants we engaged in each town who are clearly not for militias roaming their communities made it clear in each case that they knew the militia people who lived side by side with them in these small towns. Many of them had been friends with these people for years. They just vehemently disagree with them on this critical question. They demonstrated their familiarity with these folks by standing by us as people entered each event, identifying for us the ones who were militia members. The ones who were known to carry firearms and/or cause disruptions. This reality blows out of the water the arrogant analysis made by so many after my first article that most of these militia folks are millionaire ranchers. For me, the tour confirmed what I already knew. Many of the folks in those militias are either under or unemployed. Many are afraid because they have no healthcare. They have no access to services in their consistently resource-less communities, and in the case of one young man who was identified as a militia member, he was there because he had no family and the militia folks took him in and gave him the support we all crave and need. When you look at things from this complete analysis and perspective, instead of the hole filled trolling directed at my article earlier this year, its not hard to understand why these clearly angry young white men, who arrived at one event in trucks with huge confederate flags flying from them, refused to even make eye contact with me. It probably explains why one man who was identified as a leading white supremacist in one community desperately wanted to acknowledge me at the door and shake my hand before he left after he had contributed in some of the discussions. The man approached me with a smile and wished me a good and safe night. Why? Because much of what is driving these folks right now is fear. Fear that they won't make it. And despite whatever rhetoric they operate from, no African is really responsible for their suffering. And deep down, they must know that just like deep down I know White people are not devils, although more than enough of you'll deserve Oscar consideration for your skill in impersonating satan.

What all this should tell us is capitalism continues to fail. It has always failed African and other brown folks. Now, on unprecedented levels, it is failing White people and the emergence of these militia groups is in large part the result of this reality. White activists who have sincere concerns about this should be following and exceeding the work of ROP in reaching these communities, establishing and maintaining organizations and/or networks, and working to organize White people against the system and for better systematic change instead of against those of us who capitalism has historically demonized and blamed for everything. And, before you respond to this, either in writing or mentally, remember that our analysis comes from engaging in the revolutionary work many of you only talk about. We engage African people in our communities and we make efforts to build the institutions that we need to foster our liberation. That's why we are building the School of African Roots (SOAR) in our organizing work here in the Pacific Northwest. That's why parents caught public transportation and/or walked in the rain yesterday to bring their children to us so they can receive what we are offering. The parents do this because they know their children need what we are offering and we do it because we know our people and society need it. The White people in rural Oregon brave the current conditions because they know they need it. The organizers in ROP and the comrades I worked with to do security do what we do because we know we need it. The only people seemingly confused are the multitudes of keyboard revolutionaries who apparently know absolutely everything, except how to get anything done.

1 Comment

Political Education: Always the Best Tool Against All Oppression

10/5/2016

0 Comments

As Bob Marley said, there's "so much trouble in the world." Times are so insane that if you aren't having a hard time maintaining your balance, I suggest you check your pulse for activity. Things have to be especially difficult if you are balancing work to combat oppression in an organized fashion. If true, you are handling lots of responsibility, while having most, if not all, efforts to engage you based on asks/demands for you to take on more and more. And the more you do, the more work is created and usually, the more criticism you are subjected to. Its enough to drive anyone over the edge, but there is something that will not only help you maintain that healthy balance, but also do so in productive and capacity building ways. That thing is political education, or PE. By PE I mean the process of dedicating your life to an ideology that is committed to provided you with values to live by that nourish you and provide you with inspiration and direction to continue fighting against this backward system. This process of acquiring PE cannot be done on an individual basis. Since ideological development is a conscious raising process, it cannot be done on an individual basis because no one human will live long enough to develop the capacity to make the proper assessments needed to understand the phenomenon to shape the world we live in. That's why you need other people because by working collectively with them through an ideological development process, you can close the gap and answer the questions facing humanity. This concept is as simple as the old adage that "two minds are better than one." So, collective struggle, intensive study, and an ongoing process to develop and maintain an understanding of what's happening in the world, how those forces impact you, and what you can do to influence those forces. Here is a visual of how this process looks. You engage in collective study with others. You dedicate yourselves to engaging in this process on a consistent basis. You take the information you discuss and you apply it to the circumstances you exist in so as to work to make change in the communities you function in. You use the process to assess your work. Make changes, and improve in the areas that need it. You continue this process and by doing so your confidence grows and from that, your abilities increase. From that, your capacity becomes limitless. These are the reasons this process is so very important if you are going to dedicate your life to fighting against injustice. A strong PE foundation will insulate you from long periods of depression, frustration, and demoralization, because you will have the tools needed to properly dissect all of the circumstances that would overwhelm you so that you can place them within their proper historical perspective. By learning how to do that, you will learn to work through adversity so well that you will lose your fear of it.

I'm a very strong advocate of basing your work in PE because I've seen it work very well in my own life. The PE process I've participated in within the All African People's Revolutionary Party is called work study. For decades now, I've participated in it. The process has permitted me to become firmly rooted in knowledge about Africa, the Pan-African movement, nationalist movements, socialism, communism, the differences between socialism and communism, organizing, history, and the struggles of other peoples like the Indigenous peoples, Irish, Palestinians, Filipino people, etc. And, I'm talking about growing in knowledge about all of these topics to be able to defend them, against pretty much anyone. This has evolved confidence that has helped me train and develop other organizers. Many others. Strong organizers. More confidence. More belief that we can win. This is why I can tell you without blinking that in the last few months I've been able to be in the lead of developing a new African freedom school - despite great adversity in doing so - while engaging many other labor intense and stressful organizing projects. I mentor many people, often at the same time. And, I've helped coordinate security for activists against violent white supremacists while writing on a regular basis and maintaining my sanity. Now, if you take what I've just laid out as simply an effort to brag, then you miss the entire point. There is no way I could accomplish anything without the masses of the people. I don't get the credit. The masses get the credit. I'm simply a conduit for struggle because whatever I have to deal with, its nothing compared to the trauma and pressure those who came before me had to endure. So, nothing I'm doing is going to be that ego driven. My drive comes from that PE that informs me every minute of every day that I have a responsibility to get better and continue fighting. That's the point.

So, the next time you're feeling overwhelmed. Demoralized, ready to give up. Hopefully it helps you to think about the need for political education. It will strengthen you. It will empower you. And, if you do it right e.g. collectively as a part of an organizational effort, you will find that a lot of the problems that are getting the best of you now, can, and will be overcome. They have to be because history is counting on you.

0 Comments

Analysis Needed on Sudden White Militia Solidarity to Our Struggles

Patriarchy, Rape Culture, and Past Time for Men to Force Changes

50 Years Later: Nkrumah and Ture's Vision for Africa is Strong

Voting Rights Without SNCC. Like Talking Food without Ingredients

Going to College, the Petit-Bourgeois, and Fighting for Justice

The Black Panthers: A Critical Assessment Beyond Romanticism

U.S. Electoral Politics and It's Systemic Tragedy for Working People

Malheur, Militias, and How The White Left Still Misses the Point

Political Education: Always the Best Tool Against All Oppression

Author

Archives

Categories