This week we are witnessing mass protests taking place all over the world.  The sight of seeing so many people expressing their outrage against the system of oppression is inspiring, but for those of us who want much more than an emotional lift, we have to ask the question; what's next?  Its a critical question for all who know history.  Mass demonstrations are nothing new, especially for the African masses.  Just looking at the United States, our existence here has always been about resistance and fighting for our very dignity as human beings.  We have been forced to shed blood here just to send our children to racist schools, live in decent housing, and sit down in a nasty department store to have a disgusting cup of coffee.  That's our history and such history explains why we have come to this place today where we have to hit the streets in mass just to bring attention to obvious and continuous acts of police terrorism against our people.  And the response to all of this is beautiful.  Young and old.  African.  Proud.  Determined.  And, many other non Africans are out in the streets as well.  This is clearly a very beautiful thing, but we mustn't make the error of underestimating the capitalist system.  This is a police state.  It always has been.  Since reconstruction in the late 1800s when police departments were formed out of slave catcher posses, the system was set up to corral and repress African people.  So, its important to understand that although we may be excited and emotionally overwhelmed by seeing people out shouting against the system, the system itself is prepared for this response. They have a political and military infrastructure that is trained to respond to these protests in every form imaginable.  They regularly sit down to discuss how to respond to these protests the way you discuss what you are doing this weekend.  They know that for most people in the streets, its mostly about letting off steam so a few hours, days, even weeks, they can tolerate that.  They can tolerate streets being shutdown for a few hours.  They can tolerate freeways being closed for a few hours.  They can tolerate losing millions of dollars from those who refused to spend money yesterday.  I would even be willing to bet that they factor in the losses in how they price their products.  What's important to understand about the capitalist system is it's built like that long distance runner from Ethiopia, Kenya, or Djibouti.  Their system is designed to weather uprisings and keep going.  That's why as we sit here on Saturday morning, the day after Black Friday, we saw possibly hundreds of thousands, maybe even millions of people, demonstrate some level of support for resistance yesterday (in many different forms), yet today, it's business as usual in the capitalist system.  And on Monday, most everyone will be back to their wage slave jobs, exploited for their labor, and police will continue shooting us down as if yesterday never happened.

So what's next?  How do we expand beyond this repeated scenario where the people get upset, show mass protest, sometimes even evolving into a full blown slave uprising, only to have the national guard come out and restore capitalist order in a few short days and weeks?  One thing is clear.  We certainly cannot expect to defeat an organized enemy in power with only raw emotion.  The street mobilizations are magnificent, but that is merely the initial phase of the struggle.  The next steps are we have to engage the people who come to these protests and create a culture where we encourage them to stay engaged.  I would boldly suggest that 75 to 80% of the people participating in the streets yesterday have no consistent method of expressing their energies towards this work, meaning they are not involved in organizational work.  They just respond to calls to show up somewhere and protest.  Its great they are there, but if we don't build bridges to plug those people in on a permanent basis, then once the street is cleared, then its to the bar/restaurant, and capitalism as usual.  We have to build our street protests into a broader movement.  An example is the Cuban revolution.  They had massive street protests.  In fact, they shut cities like Havana and Santiago down.  Students were in the streets, women, elderly people, workers.  Production stopped.  Garbage wasn't picked up.  Schools closed down.  And, eventually, police refused to confront the protesters and actually began joining sides with the revolutionary forces.  This didn't happen just organically though.  There was constant work done by the mass organizations to organize all of those sectors of society in this direction, but that was because they had a clear focus on their mission on all levels.  We have to develop that today.  Movements are always about broad issues.  So you have to understand that everyone isn't going to agree and this isn't a problem.  The strength of movements is when organizers are savvy enough to create a vision that all can agree on, despite their specific focuses.  A vision that reformists, socialists, nationalists, and anarchists all can agree on.  Shutting the system down permanently because it doesn't work for the majority of people within it is an example of an inclusive vision.  Then, having an organizational apparatus that can work with communities to supply for people's needs since the system won't be operational.  This is a smart approach because by supplying for people's needs, you win their support, even if they are not in the streets initially.

This type of work is by and large not taking place because that overall focus isn't there.  Far too much of this glorious movement is centered around personalities and not the mission.  This has to change if we are going to win.  And, the way it changes is we have to get more and more people involved and engaged and we have to develop an analysis of this system so that there is clear messaging to the masses.  These things all sound like overwhelming levels of unattainable work, but we can accomplish much of this with just a little bit of organizing.  Just making a commitment to get more people involved.  Have a component where European people are encouraged to organize among their people.  They are the most likely ones to stand in   our way since they are programmed to be the protectors of the capitalist system so it makes sense to have people engaging them, door to door, etc., to help them understand what's going on while directing them to the right side of history.  Promote that people need to be in organizations working to do this work.  There should be a call for people to join organizations at every rally, and it should be repeated often.  Organizations should be invited to come and participate and only organizations should be speaking to the masses to support the message of the mission not the individual.  This approach will help create a culture where its no longer acceptable and cool to yell for four hours and then go see a movie and suffer under capitalism until the next Face Book invitation.  We should have mass organizational summits where groups can get together and come up with collective agendas.  These are not difficult things to do.  Some of us are already doing them.  We have a Local Organizing Committee here in Portland, Oregon that consists of several organizations and we are doing the type of work I'm describing here.  Just last Saturday, we did work in the focus community we are doing our work in.  This type of approach is needed everywhere.

So, great job to everyone who was out in the streets yesterday.  Great job to everyone who didn't buy anything yesterday.  Great job to everyone who thought about resistance yesterday.  Our enemy doesn't oppress just some of the time though.  If we are going to win, we are going to have to step up our game.  Think about the issues raised here and if you cannot dispute the legitimacy of these ideas, figure out ways to include them in your communities.  The protests are just the first part.  The real work requires much more of a focus and commitment and we won't advance to the next level until we are ready to accept that and work towards that end.  

The terms police agent, provocateur, and snitch, are pretty well known throughout movement circles, but historical and analytical understandings of the methods used by police agencies to undermine and sabotage political movements are much less understood.  Proof of this is in the fact many activists today behave in ways that provide textbook support for police to undermine our work, and the activists doing these things aren't even savvy enough to at least get paid by the police for their work!  Or, as one of my Party comrade sisters in Southern California once put it; "if they ain't the police, they outta be, as hard as they are working for em!"

Let's link the past to the present.  History is full of examples where intelligence agencies have used "civilians" to sabotage political work.  Internationally, there are wide spread allegations that the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA - or criminals in action if you prefer our title for them) used anti-revolution Cubans in the Congo in the 1960s.  These people were purposely filmed engaging in acts of sabotage against the people such as poisoning water, beating women and children, committing rape, etc., and those acts were blamed on Congolese National Movement (MNC) fighters when in fact, these acts were scripted (as incredible as it seems) and carried out by people who were not native to the Congo nor living there.  MNC forces claimed to have captured some of these people just to find out that their prisoners didn't speak Lingala, French, or any other local language.  Only the style of Spanish spoken in the Caribbean countries.  Further interrogation brought forth the truth about the origins of these prisoners.  In one instance, one such prisoner captured in the Congo was actually an African from America who was arrested for stealing cars in Cleveland.  He was allegedly given the option of carrying out missions in the Congo, getting paid, and avoiding prison, or not carrying out the missions and getting a long prison sentence.  Today, we are aware that Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) informants inside of the Nation of Islam played a major role in widening the gap between Malcolm X and Elijah Muhammad to the extent that FBI documents congratulate someone and offer them a cash bonus for "work well done" the day Malcolm was assassinated.  Also, there was inside information provided to the FBI about the sexual exploits of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. by an informant firmly planted in the inner circles of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC).  The identity of this person was depicted in classified FBI documents as "Agent A."  There has been widespread speculation about who this "Agent A" was and the accusations have been so persistent that the daughter of Rev. Ralph Abernathy, a top aide to King, has come out in public, repudiating efforts to suggest "Agent A" was her father.

Of course, the Black Panther Party (BPP) was subjected to widespread FBI sabotage.  Between 1967 and 1971, the FBI coordinated  "Counter Intelligence Program" or "COINTELPRO", was responsible for 233 specific intelligence actions against the BPP.  These actions consisted of false letters being written and sent to key people with completely false allegations against individuals contained in the letters.  These actions were not carried out haphazardly.  Released FBI documents make it quite clear that the objective of the Bureau was to instigate distrust and stir up violence within the BPP by sending the letters.  The FBI even had a term for it; "badjacketing" - "the practice of slandering an individual in a way that forces other movement people to distrust this person (COINTELPRO documents - 1974)."  Examples of the FBI's most effective badjacketing campaigns were the letters sent to US Organization leader Dr. Maulana Karenga which led to the hostile environment that culminated in a shootout on the UCLA campus on January 17, 1969 in which Panthers Alprentice "Bunchy" Carter and John Huggins were killed.  Another fatal example was the letter mailed to Blackstone Ranger leader Jeff Fort in Chicago "warning" him of BPP leader Fred Hampton's desire to "take over the Rangers."  This attempt almost destroyed the brittle working relationship between the Panthers and the Rangers.  A letter to imprisoned BPP founder Huey P. Newton accusing Kwame Ture (Stokely Carmichael) of cooperating with police agencies is suspected of influencing Newton to have potentially ordered harm to come to Ture which influenced Ture to create space by traveling to Africa which led to his decision to move to Guinea in 1969.  Certainly not last, and most definitely not least, FBI efforts to send communications to Newton disparaging the character of Geronimo Ji Jaga (Pratt) while Newton was still incarcerated led Newton to distrust Ji Jaga immensely once the BPP leader was released from jail.  This distrust was so entrenched that Newton allegedly ordered everyone on the BPP Central Committee to stay silent on expressing that Ji Jaga was present at a BPP Central Committee meeting in Oakland at the time the murder of the Santa Monica woman took place that would eventually cause Ji Jaga to spend 27 years in prison.  

The point of the examples isn't to criticize the Africans used in the Congo, the one used in the Nation of Islam, or the SCLC.  Nor is it to question the decision making of Jeff Fort, Maulana Karenga or Huey P. Newton.  In most of these instances, most notably Fort, Karenga, and Newton, they were not paid by police agencies and there is absolutely no evidence (despite the constant chatter about Karenga for decades) that they were ever consciously working with police agencies at any time.  The important element here is whether they meant to or not, they were manipulated and exploited to serve the interests of our enemies, but none of them had any way of knowing that a coordinated police effort was being deployed to undermine their political work.  As far as they knew, they were ahead of the game with the intel they were receiving.  Of course, we would know none of this were it not for the folks who bravely broke into the FBI office and liberated the files that led to Congress passing the 1974 "Freedom of Information Act" which revealed COINTELPRO's illegal tactics to the world.  As a result of that, we know about badjacketing, frame ups, snitching to the police, and how all of those things hurt the movement in the 60s and before.  What's shocking is that unlike Fort, Karenga, and Newton, although most activists today have some knowledge of these occurrences in history, we still continue to act in the very same self-destructive ways that those brothers were manipulated into doing in the 1960s.  So, the question is if we know this history, why are people still playing right into the enemy's hands?  Does that mean there are active police informants still doing the same things in 2015?  Of course there are police agents doing these things, but that may not be the most important element worth looking at.  Some of the challenges today are more so related to social media and the mass influx of new activists.  There are literally thousands of activists who just came on the scene.  They have no sense of history and many of them don't believe they need one.  Although it's great that they are here, if this serge is going to sustain itself and prove to be a decisive force, there will have to be some context for everything going on.  Social media,  the communication going on within it, and the information portrayed through it do not represent a viable alternative to the dedicated study of the forces we are fighting against.  So, if these new activists are going to last in this struggle, and not be "brush fires" in the words of Kwame Ture, here's some simple advice from an OG:

1.  Stop using social media to attack other people in movement.  If you have a problem with someone, take that issue directly to that person, off camera, and have principled ideological struggle with them until you can come to a mutual point of respect.  If you are unable to do that, then at least resist the urge to "call them out" on social media.  When you do that you are not confronting them, in spite of how much you may think you are.  What you are actually doing is engaging in extremely destructive passive aggressive behavior that gives police free evidence and information on weak points in the movement from which to attack our forces.  If we can find ways to engage in that principled struggle, it will make our movements much stronger while stopping our enemies from being able to so easily manipulate us.  Principled struggle strengthens us and makes us less vulnerable to attack!

2.  Learn how to plan out our actions if you must carry them out.  Have strategy sessions to map out all exigencies and how you plan to address them when they come up.  This is the severe weakness of reaction mobilizing and everything is spur of the moment and nothing is planned.  This is a sugar laced invitation for sabotage to act out against us.  Plan your work and don't be afraid and too proud to reach out to other more experienced persons for help.

3.  Create study groups in your organization that are designed to guide your work by giving you an analysis of the problem as well as a comprehensive approach to the solution, whatever you deem the solution to be.  Include a serious component in your study process for criticism/self criticism where honest assessments of your work, and your individual ideas, activity, and participation, can and will be carried out on a consistent basis.

4.  Lastly, create a practice of being in an organization and working with organizations.  Working with individuals is risky because they are not accountable to anything or anyone other than themselves.  At least with organizations, the persons representing the organization are responsible to the line structure and position of that organization so that even if you don't know the person, if you know the organization, you have a blueprint for how the individual should behave.  If the organization has no line, structure, or position, it's probably not a real organization!

None of us are perfect, but if the three steps above are committed to and carried out by activists, we will see much of the unnecessary drama eliminated and we will also find that the police will have a much more difficult time attempting to sabotage our work.  They will have more difficulty because we will be building a foundation based  on integrity and principle that keeps us focused on our mission.  That increased focus on our mission, instead of on ourselves, will reduce the egoism that is so rampant in movement circles today while also making it much more difficult for the forces who mean us harm to steer us off course.  Let's learn from the mistakes of those before us and do better.  And, as always, when we make any type of critique it's because we are offering our services to help correct the errors.  If people want to know more, please let me know.  We have been studying, presenting, and organizing against cointelpro for decades!  We are interested only in advancing our collective struggle. 

When I was nine my heroes were Willie Mays, Spider Man, Adam 12, and the Brady Bunch.  You see, I lived in a world at that time that I wanted to escape from.  Nothing against my parents.  They were great people who did all that they could and now that they are ancestors, I love and appreciate all their sacrifices, but my childhood was one of insecurity, anxiety, and a constant lack of feeling safe.  So, I was always trying to escape.  I developed an active imagination and I had my heroes.  All of my heroes overcame obstacles, were the best at everything they did, and represented the winners and ""good guys."  To me, those were all the characteristics that I seldom saw in my day to day life, so I loved these people I didn't know, most who didn't even exist, with all my heart.  I went to San Francisco Giants games whenever I could and when they traded Willie Mays it felt as if I had been orphaned.  Every month, I marked off the days until the next Spider Man comic book came out and since they came in 30 day intervals, I had four weeks to figure out how to get the money to insure I was there the moment the new copy was available at Fred's Liquor Store.  I watched Adam 12 like clockwork every week.  They were clean cut, perfect, and the protectors of the universe.  And, I wanted to be a member of the Brady family.  They had a garage, an upstairs, a cool dog, and a family that seemed to work through problems collectively.  Then a strange thing started to happen.  I began to grow older and slightly wiser.  I think it started when I caught a home run ball at Candlestick Park during a game.  That accomplishment gave me the privilege of getting into the player's parking area to get autographs after the game.  I remember seeing Willie Mays in that parking lot that day.  He was playing for the New York Mets then, that would have been the only reason I was there, but I think he still lived in the Bay Area.  It was to be his last season, a shell of the legendary player I fell in love with, he was still Willie Mays.  So, when I saw him, I ambled over to him, ball and pen in hand, anxious and hopeful of getting his autograph.  It took me a few moments to speak to him because there were women around him, young attractive women and he was much more interested in them then he was in me.  Finally, he turned to me and I extended my ball and pen to him, but he only took my pen so that he could use it to write down the phone number of one of the young women he was enamored with.  Once he did that, he didn't even look my way again, not to mention sign my ball or at least return my pen. Then, he got into his pink Cadillac, and spun out of there, kicking up rocks in my face.  I was crushed, but that was probably the beginning of my wake up call because shortly after that, I remember having a moment of reckoning with Spider Man.  I don't remember what the comic story was about, but Spider Man had to rough up a group of people who were protesting some injustice. Up to that point, I never remembered having to question Spider Man's judgment on anything, but I remember in that story, a person he was about to beat up challenged him on being on the side of the ruling class, or something to that effect.  And, I have always remembered his comic book bubble response.  He said something to the effect of he shies away from social statements and instead just enforces the law or something like that.  Whatever he said, it jarred me because even in my young mind I understood that everyone has to take a stand, take a side, even Spider Man.  Then, I remember watching an episode of Adam 12 where a European (white) man was robbing banks disguised as an African.  When Adam 12 finally caught him, the robber told them that he knew they had been looking for some "n - - - r" who was robbing these banks!"  I remember being shocked by hearing the word, even on a fictional television show, because quite possibly that was the first time I had heard the word on T.V., although I heard it in real life consistently.  At any rate, I remember feeling strange about the fact Adam 12's clean cut hero cops had indeed harassed several innocent African men throughout the episode looking for the actual culprit.  I also remember resenting the fact that they didn't correct the guy or say anything in response to his racist statement.  That jarred me.  The great protectors weren't going to protect me.  Finally, I remember when the Brady Bunch aired an episode where one of their neighbors took in an African and Asian boy and some of the neighbors took offense to it.  I was forced to accept that even in the Brady neighborhood, my existence was going to be an issue.

Today I can still count out most of Willie May's career stats off the top of my head, but the truth is shortly before or after my encounter with him, I had the opportunity to catch another ball and meet Roberto Clemente.  Unlike Mays, Clemente took a real interest in me.  Asking me my name.  Giving me baseball socks that I still have today.  He even told me I was an African.  I believe to this day that he was the first person to call me that.  He was killed shortly after that in a plane crash while attempting to deliver supplies to victims of a devastating earthquake in Nicaragua.  A true hero Clemente was.  After meeting him and learning about him, I haven't thought much about Willie Mays since.  In fact, I still admire Clemente. Actually, I'm reading a book about him right now.  Clemente, unlike Mays, spoke out often against white supremacy in sports and society.  You would never have heard Mays make a peep about social issues, even after he was discriminated against from buying a home in the Peninsula, he never spoke about it.  As for Spider Man, I haven't thought about him since I was a child.  I haven't even seen the movies except one I know I watched while on a plane flying to Africa once.  Now, when I think of Adam 12, I think LAPD, the farthest thing from heroes that I can imagine.  And, the Brady Bunch is simply an old television series where Robert Reed/Mike Brady was acting a lie as the husband when in real life he was a gay man who didn't even have the space to be himself in a society that still struggles with accepting people for who they are.  

I realize now that all my childhood heroes were illusions and/or lies.  It makes sense because most of what I was taught was an illusion and/or a lie.  And, clearly, I'm not alone.  The real superheroes aren't on sports fields (with the exception of quality individuals like Mr. Clemente) or comic books.  The majority of heroes and sheroes are day to day people who work hard, live and make decisions based on integrity, and stand up against injustice in whatever way that they can.  And, since I understand that and have raised my daughter to understand that I don't need the Brady Bunch's neighborhood any longer.  I don't need any neighborhood.  I'm glad that my daughter grew up with real heroes and sheroes.  She admired Assata Shakur growing up.  I remember taking her into Marcus Books when she was three and when she saw Assata's picture, she yelled "Auntie Assata!"  I remember revealing that to Assata when I met her in 1994.  My daughter had real people to look up to and the point of all of this is I learned that my mission is to provide real heroes and sheroes for every young person to look up to.  Probably my most proud accomplishment in life is I look at my daughter today and I feel that she's a well adjusted young person who is selfless with a huge heart.  My goal was to do everything I could to spare her the traumas I had and I think that goal was met.  She doesn't need the fantasy crutches that I used to survive.  Now, I wonder if we can do the same for the next few generations to come because if we can, we can create something far better than the lie we are living today.

This coming Thursday, November 26th, is the annual commemoration of the holiday known as Thanksgiving.  For centuries, there have been various presentations of this so-called holiday practiced from Canada, down through South America.  In this day and time, most people probably have heard some version of a more realistic historical interpretation of this day.  Meaning, most people know that Europeans didn't come to the Western Hemisphere primarily as friends to sit down and celebrate culture with the Indigenous people's who were already here.  It would seem logical that a general awareness of this history is at least part of the reason why more and more people are turning away from the "traditional" approach of sitting down, having a turkey dinner, and even calling the day "Thanksgiving."  In fact, if you inquire with your friends, family, co-workers, etc., most people will probably say that they will have some sort of get together Thursday, but they won't even necessarily call it Thanksgiving. instead, they just consider the day an opportunity to bring family together, eat good food, have good times, and maybe watch some good football.

On the surface, that alternative approach to the holiday seems innocent and it certainly generates enough distance from the standard approach to appease the consciousness of most liberal folks, but an honest look at what will happen for the overwhelming majority of people this Thursday has to lead us to conclude that much of what is taking place is still making that firm contribution to upholding white supremacy.  We can state this confidently because we are aware that everything this system does it does to propagate it's interests.  In other words, since the Western world was founded on colonial conquest, death, and destruction, the narrative of this society has always been about laying out a historical perspective that justifies these crimes.  So, every institution, meaning school, church, social organization, work, and the so-called "culture" of this society has been carefully crafted in a way that protects the values of this society.  Yes, we are saying the holidays are nothing except propaganda tools to justify capitalist exploitation.  And, there is none better than the one practiced this week that we prefer to call thankstaking.  From a factual context, there is no doubting that the Puritans practiced systematic death against the Pequot people of the Eastern seaboard in 1637 and that the first documented "Thanksgiving" dinner was nothing more than a celebratory feast to commemorate that massacre.  So, if more and more people are realizing that actual history, what's the purpose of the holiday?  The purpose of the holiday is to instill the values of the massacre in a subtle and systematic method that convinces you that you can disagree with the cause of the holiday while continuing to accept the values that the Puritans established with their violence.  Those values are the belief that you can create the world whatever way you desire, regardless of how wrong that is to others, provided the vision of your world is the dominant vision being presented.  Let me give you an example.  While you are sitting around with your relatives, friends, etc., on Thursday, regardless of what you call this get together, after the turkey, cranberry sauce, and dressing have been consumed, if there are children present who don't live in the house you are in, I challenge you to carry out an easy experiment.  As the children are playing, place some monetary coins on the floor in  plain sight, insuring the children will see the money.  Then sit back and observe.  When the children come upon your change, most of them are not going to say "someone lost some money!"  There may be some children who say that - as my daughter would have done when she was little - but most of them won't respond that way.  Most of them will respond by exclaiming "I found some money!"  When this happens, you will be realizing the true reasons behind these so-called holidays.  What the children will be demonstrating is the values of the day which are designed to promote the concept that the only reality that matters is the one your create, regardless of whether your reality is connected to history, the rest of humanity, or anything else material.  Of course, it is not possible to "find" money in someone else's house, but in the subjective reality of capitalist truth, this impossibility becomes very possible.  Therefore, if the capitalists want to say they discovered America, they can say that.  If they want to say that Indigenous  people, Africans, other people of color, working class white people, have it best in America, they can say that.  If they want to say the most dangerous terrorist threats come from people of color around the world (despite clear evidence that it comes from white males), they can say that.  If they want to convince you that the upcoming presidential election is really an exercise in democracy, they can do that.  It doesn't matter that one plus one equals two.  If you can convince people that one plus one equals five, than it equals five.  That's the propaganda objective behind thankstaking, every imperialist holiday, and everything else this system does.  Its to promote the concept that truth is what you make it which means their truth is really the truth, no matter how far from the truth it is.  That's why it doesn't matter whether you call it Thanksgiving or not, you are still promoting exactly what they want you to promote because nothing is happening at your get together to challenge and address the injustices that the day represents.  Nothing is happening to challenge the subtle propaganda the day is promoting.  

So, if you seriously don't want to promote the reactionary concepts contained in "Thanksgiving" you will have to do much more than just not call it that, and there is a whole lot you can do that doesn't even require that much on your part.  First, stop wishing people a "Happy Thanksgiving."  By doing that, even if you just do it because you don't know what else to say, you are perpetuating violence, theft, and the destruction of an entire people.  Instead, just wish them a nice break.  Second, if you are having a get together, make a place to have an honest conversation about what the day means and how it contributes to the subjugation of a people.  Do a little research and provide people information about the Pequot people, Lakota, etc.  Educate about the American Indian Movement and their un-thanksgiving sunrise ceremonies they have been conducting at Alcatraz since the 1970s.  This can all be done in a three to five minute stretch right before people eat.  It may seem overwhelming, but it will make you feel much better because once you infuse this truth, your gathering will have character.  Getting back to the sunrise ceremonies, these ceremonies are now happening all over the Western world.  Find out if there is one in your area and respectfully attend and take your children.  These ceremonies are generally over by 8am, leaving you plenty of time for your afternoon social get togethers.  Third, educate your children year round about these critical issues.  If you don't have children, find some to educate.  We are certainly educating the children who come to our breakfast program about thankstaking so the children don't have to be yours in the biological sense.  We need to promote the development of a generation of children who are raised without those reactionary "holidays."  My daughter is 28 years old and she has never celebrated "Thanksgiving."  She was raised listening to the American Indian Movement at 5am on that day every year.  Today, she's an educator and she educates her students around these truths.  Finally, like a broken record we ask people to join organizations fighting for justice because the injustices against the Indigenous people's, along with the rest of us, will only be addressed by the organized masses coming together to make things change.  Then we can promote real holidays like May Day and African Liberation Day that rise up the quest for justice for all people.  

​Then, there is the so-called "Black Friday."  That's another article all together, but for now, just don't spend your money with capitalism that day.  Don't support the big money machine.

All over "Murica" the good white sons of the statue of liberty are lining up behind each other to threaten and intimidate peaceful Muslim communities who desire nothing other than to live without trauma.  When they aren't threatening our Muslim communities, they are continuing their 500+ year quest of raging cowardly terror against Africans, other people of color, our LGBTQ communities, and Jewish communities.  We already know that white supremacist terrorists have killed 48 people in the U.S. since 9/11 while so-called "Muslim attackers" haven't killed half that many in that same time span.  So we are not doubting the capacity of these cowards for violence, but we are labeling them for the gutless cowards that they are.  We call them gutless because they continue to prey openly on people who are not physically prepared to defend themselves or on people who are trying so hard to prove they are not what the racist capitalist media paints them to be, that they are spending all their time and energy trying to do everything in their power to convince these deranged fools that they pose no threat to them.

By not being physically prepared, I use examples like the young Hitler follower who shot and killed nine (9) people in the South Carolina church.  That coward went to the church, pretended to be coming to worship, was treated respectfully by everyone there, and then proceeded to suddenly blow their brains out.  There is probably no better example of barbarism and cowardice.  Equally lacking of any signs of courage are the actions of those "macho macho man" types who are apt to surround Masjids and Mosques around the country and yell at the inhabitants about being Muslims, terrifying everyone in sight.  People who are there to peacefully worship God.  Then, there are the multitude of politicians - yes they are white supremacists also - who can't wait to jump on a microphone and proclaim their desire to keep out people seeking safety from war torn lands whose instability results from criminal capitalist policies, both economic and military.  Last, but not least, there are the millions of mindless minions who follow these deranged fools and by your silence fuel their gangster pursuits.  

You are all cowards because if you are really feeling unsafe you would direct your attention towards talking to your sick fathers, sons, brothers, cousins, nephews, wives, sisters, daughters, nieces, who - so filled with white entitlement - are unable to grasp the reality of a crumbling capitalist system where they're prized vision of a superior standard of life is beaten back to Earth, forcing them to (gasp) face the same uncertain future as the rest of us.  These are the people who represent the highest terrorist threat.  Your cowardice won't fact that though.  Instead you will remain a worthless cowards because if you really wanted the race war you claim you want, you wouldn't go to a church, pretend you are there in peace, and then kill everyone in sight.  You would go into any inner city ghetto community and unleash your drunken tirade to the masses of suffering people there.  Many who are waiting and wishing for some fool like you to come by and give them an outlet for the frustration that capitalism has institutionalized in their daily lives.  You wouldn't be targeting immigrant Muslim communities, people who are fleeing violence and/or still in a place where they respect "Murica" as a place where they think they want to fit in.  You would have brought your message to the Million Man March, which by the way was organized by probably the most militant Muslim group in "Murican" history.  Yet you didn't show up in D.C. for the march and you won't take your sickness to people who are prepared to provide you with the cure you need.  You will continue to pry upon the people who are unable to defend themselves.  You will be prying upon people who have no idea you are coming.  You will probably even issue threats to this post because that's what you do and that's who you are.  Either way it doesn't matter though.  It doesn't matter if you kill more people, including myself.  No matter how many cowardly acts you complete we are going to win and I'm not telling you anything about it that you already don't know.  You have been foolishly living on the promise of a stolen system for years and now the people who have been victimized are coming back for what rightfully belongs to them.  You have the opportunity to jump from the sinking capitalist ship and proclaim your solidarity to the masses of people on the planet.  Some of you will wake up and do the right thing and for those of you that do, we welcome you with open arms.  For those of you who continue to be hoes for the capitalist system, just realize, your time of catching us by surprise is withering away.  That door is closing fast.  Your terrorism over the last 500 years has effectively eliminated the "we shall overcome crowd" to a much smaller segment of our people. Plus, there are many more European people who are growing tired of your cowardly ways.  These people are prepared to do whatever it takes to undermine your cowardly acts up to and including infiltrating your work so that you can be exposed for the coward you are.   I recently released a 542 page novel "The Courage Equation" which demonstrates how a white woman can go undercover and undermine the work of a white supremacist organization.  Your wives, daughters, sisters, etc., are loving this story.  Activists are talking about new strategies to take you down.  Soon, we will start to see art imitate life.  Your sheets, which used to promote fear, now promote anger.  You can hide behind all the flags you want, soon, none of that is going to save you.  There is a chance for you though if you can stop being a coward and face some truths.  This is not your country now, nor has it ever been your country and everything the country has is stolen from the rape of Africa and other parts of the world.  Stop listening to ignorant @ssholes on television and the radio.  Start picking up books and doing that dirty four letter word - READ.  In essence, stop being a loser.  There is an old African proverb that says "even a dead fish can go with the current."  Wake up and start aiming your attack at the only entity that deserves it, the capitalist system and all it's appendages of injustice.  Start entering into sincere solidarity with legitimate causes for justice and forward human progress.  Start being real people and stop blaming innocent people for what's not going right in your lives.  I have faith in you  because I have no reason to fear you, but are you willing to face truth and stop living a lie?  Do you have faith in yourself?  Time will tell, but either way, your ability to shape the narrative, whatever way it goes, is fast running out. 

When we speak of revolutionary ideas and practice, we are talking about ideas that explore the methods needed to completely overthrow and transform the dominant capitalist system into a socialist system.  We are also talking about the practice of making that transformation happen.  There are many people who get turned off just from reading those definitions, but it's important for those people to realize that their ability to achieve reform measures is greatly enhanced by the fact revolutionary ideas and practice exist.  Examples.  The Kenyan independence movement was unquestionably moved along by the existence of the Land and Freedom Movement (the so-called Mau Mau) who engaged in war acts against the colonizing Europeans.  The Azanian South African dismantling of the racist apartheid state was assisted by the willingness of elements within that territory - like the Pan-Africanist Congress, the Azanian People's Organization, and even large elements within the African National Congress, to maintain armed uprising to bring about liberation.  Within the U.S., when the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) was founded in 1909, they were considered an extremely militant organization with their completely radical approach of using the court systems to wage struggle against racist laws.  By the 1920s, with the development of the Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA - Marcus and Amy/Amy Garvey), the NAACP began to be seen in a different light.  By the early 1960s, with the rise of Malcolm X as the spokesperson for the Nation of Islam, the NAACP and other similar civil rights groups suddenly appeared to represent a voice of "reason" for African rights when placed in comparison to Malcolm's words.  In fact, its documented that by the time the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee and later, the Black Panther Party for Self Defense, came to prevalence, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was actively using those organizations as leverage against the White House.  In 1967, an exasperated, but clever, Dr. King told Lyndon Johnson and other White House officials that "I need some victories" if the tide of militant and revolutionary ideas and practice were to be overcome.  So, although some reformist activists like to turn their noses up at revolutionary ideas and practices, reform benefits without question from the existence of more militant and revolutionary approaches.

The above is so true that it sort of defines the issue many revolutionaries face in working to build revolutionary parties and formations.  The primary problem is propaganda.  The capitalist system has created a strong analysis that suggests 24/7 that any idea and/or attempt to conceive of a society where capitalism doesn't exist is a sign of insanity in the person proposing that idea.  People are trained to react to stimuli around this question so that you can simply utter the word "socialism" or "communism" and you get knee jerk reactions from people who have absolutely no idea what those systems are.  Also, a person who advances those systems as solutions is again subject to be placed in the insane category at worse.  At best, that person is considered idealist because with this dominant "capitalism or death" philosophical framework, any concept outside of the capitalist system is considered fantasy, un-achievable, and a complete waste of time.

The core behind all of this is the capitalist system's ability to make intellectualism seem ill-relevant.  Ideas are often seen as fruitless and the debate over ideas is considered wasteful by many.  This is indeed strange in a world where videos of women shaking their booties, cats, dogs, people dancing, or folks getting injured, go viral in hours.  The contradictions are almost un-explainable, but we do know that reading books is becoming a lost art around the world and asking someone to consistently read and study around concepts is almost like asking people to kill their mamas.  This parallel is possible because in the capitalist system, the individual is all that matters.  Actually, it can be said that individualism is the driving principle within the capitalist system.  This is the most significant ideological tool the capitalist system has created to protect it's existence because once individualism is consolidated, it becomes very difficult to push people beyond its tentacles.  Once you believe yourself to be the center of the universe, your ability to view the world in more objective terms becomes almost impossible.  We see this manifest itself on all levels because people learn to see people simply as a means to an end, a way to suck up resources for you.  So relationships are conceived and practiced much the way employer/employee relationships are practiced in the capitalist system.  How many times have you worked at a place where there were specific requirements you had to fulfill that management would not honor?  Things like being at work, talking about personnel and other non-public processes.  The level of work produced.  These are examples of a subordinated relationship and this is how many people approach personal relationships in the capitalist system.  This is even how activists and so-called progressive people carry out activist work.  Movements become more about the personalities - read egos - in those movements than the mission and objectives of the movement.  These are all manifestations of the individualistic tenet of the capitalist system and when you see these things in action, that's how capitalism maintains control over us, even for people who swear to you that they are not advancing capitalism.  

The way in which this dismisses revolutionary ideas and practices is due to people's approach to relationships described above.  Since relationships are defined based on what people get out of them, as opposed to revolutionary ideas and practice which are defined based on what's best for the movement and society, revolutionaries operating in capitalist societies are immediately at a disadvantage.  Revolutionaries possess resources, skills, and abilities to contribute to society.  We are not interested in doing things to make money.  We are interested in doing things because its the right thing to do.  That's what motivates us.  We are driven by moral incentives, not material.  In fact, try as we might, we find it extremely difficult to practice self sustaining policies.  This is the reason you will usually find that revolutionaries are without much in terms of material capacity.  And, this isn't often because these folks haven't worked hard or taken care of business. Its usually because they are giving so much all of the time and much of what they give is done well below the radar.  For example, I'll use our revolutionary free breakfast program.  We are constantly buying food to serve the children.  We are constantly buying educational materials for them.  We are consistently taking them on field trips.  All of these things cost money, lots of money.  Most of the time, you will not see these types of revolutionary activities because they aren't top quality FB or Twitter news and are not the types of things people talk about for any extended period of time.  Since much of what we have learned to value is based on what the capitalist system views as relevant, we base our benchmarks on things that capture the attention of the system that oppresses us.  So, the only important forms of struggle against the system are the forms that take place inside the system that are recognized by the system.  We view the people who hold prestige and status inside the capitalist system as more important than us so anything in which a mayor, councilperson, or celebrity shows up at is automatically viewed as being important in spite of the fact the actual results of that event/activity may produce absolutely nothing of tangible value to our struggle.  By the same token, since revolutionaries are not looking to promote and/or participate in events with celebrities, politicians, or people with clout within the capitalist system, revolutionary work is going to be systematically left out of portals where it can be discussed on a wide scale and where people can know about it outside of the limits of who the revolutionaries can concretely touch with their work.  Revolutionary work is focused on the masses of people and since an inner city or village young lady is not given anything close to the respect that a Kanye West visit to town will generate, the revolutionaries working with the young lady have no chance of matching Kanye's exposure, even among the people they are working to support.  

Finally, capitalism's individualistic culture prevents people from being able to learn how to build healthy interactive relationships with people.  As a result, since people are a means to an end, part of the appeal of interactions becomes the question of who will come out on top.  How many relationship movies are there pitting men against women?  Men against men?  Women against women?  How much of popular culture, whether music, movies, television, etc., is based on seeing who will get the best of someone else?  In capitalism, people are primed to actually think they know someone based on how they perceive one or two things that person allegedly says.  So, in this superficial environment, whatever work revolutionaries are able to do, it is always going to pale in comparison to reform work which is going to always be given more attention by the media, and by organizations who's resources far outreach those available to revolutionary forces.  So the town hall meetings, the hold the system accountable rallies, the council chamber meetings, the protests, are always going to generate much more excitement than the study groups, the seminars, the educational approaches, the capacity building events and activities.  In other words, on a scale of 1 to 10, reform activities are always 8 or more and revolutionary activities are 1 or two at best.  Haven't you ever been at an event where revolutionary views are being advanced?  The person doing so, assuming they are well versed, can put forward an extremely comprehensive analysis of why revolution is necessary and what very good work is taking place to build that capacity.  Without question, other people participating will always lead that discussion back to a reform centered conclusion without ever even addressing the revolutionary components presented.  This happens because again, there is no real solution outside of the capitalist system and whomever suggests that there is, regardless of how concretely they present it, is crazy.  And, since everyone knows the best way to counteract a crazy person at an event is to talk about things that are "reasonable", then the discussion will always revert back to something, anything, that fits comfortably inside the capitalist system.  This is the case even for people who claim to support revolutionary politics.  If these folks examine their activities, I guarantee you that you will find that you end up talking reform, time after time, regardless of how you start out or what you want to talk about.  Understanding all of this is essential because it effectively negates the erroneous concept that capitalist societies are democratic.  Capitalist societies control through propaganda and when that doesn't work, violence.  As long as most people view revolution as a crazy concept, the capitalist has no need to worry about physically repressing the revolutionaries.  Consequently, the individualistic perspective that observes this comes to the conclusion that there is no repression because you don't see it.  Right now, most people in capitalist societies perform as expected.  So much so that people do the bidding of capitalism and think they are doing it on their own free will.  This is the height of an anti-democratic society, but how else can you explain why people keep trying to seek justice from institutions that have been oppressing them for centuries?  Its like the battered person in a relationship who keeps trying to transform the batterer when all the people providing support for the battered person are trying to convince that person to leave.

None of this is stated to disrespect reformist work on any level.  We should be attacking this system on all levels, but with the field so firmly slanted in favor of reform work inside the capitalist system, it's revolutionary work that gets left out all the time.  Revolutionary organizers are fully aware of reformist work, the organizations doing it, the results, and the strategies they use for success.  This is true because no one is born a revolutionary.  Becoming one is a process so revolutionaries always start out doing reform work.  On the other hand, reformist activists most often have absolutely no understanding of revolution, what it is, what revolutionary groups are out here, what they are doing, and how to build healthy relationships with them.  So, because of these inequities, it's important to point out the contradictions, but for those engaged in reformist work, please continue doing that work.  Just understand that revolutionary organizers are not your enemy.  In fact, the stronger the revolutionary message and work, the better your chances for success - at least for now - with your reformist agenda.  So, don't dismiss revolutionary work.  Support it.  Recognize it. and help it build sustainability.  And for revolutionaries, stop responding to these contradictions in a dysfunctional manner.  Reform activists aren't the enemy either.  The enemy is the capitalist system.  For every person you wish would "wake up" and see what's going on, you have to direct your frustration and anger at the capitalist system because that is the culprit that has made the person unable to perceive your message.  You have to be steeled and disciplined enough to understand that and not take it as a personal affront because someone isn't hearing you.  Revolutionary work is about love or as Malcolm X said "we have to love the people more than they hate themselves."  We needn't argue about who is right.  The masses of people make history.  They will decide for themselves.  Our job is to make all of our work for justice stronger and if we do that, as the masses gain momentum, we will need to demonstrate our faith in them to take the struggle in its right direction.

 In Portland, Oregon this past week it was confirmed that the ku klux klan went door knocking to hundreds of houses in white working class Gresham.  The klan is recruiting and it isn't just happening in Portland.  Far right (read white supremacist) groups in Paris immediately responded to the bombing there with racist anti-immigrant rallies and propaganda.  The same is happening in Melbourne, Australia, Russia, the Southern U.S. and in many spots around the world.  European nationalists are organizing and their numbers are rapidly growing.  And, they are doing it with a fresh approach.  For example, the klan flyers distributed in the Portland area this past week very skillfully attempted to separate the violent terrorist history of the kkk from the present day organization by discarding the klan's age old practice of using the n word and other hate speech for a much more reasoned appeal to white economic insecurities.  This approach will prove to have traction because there is no doubt that the capitalist system is in a severe state of decline.  As a result, white people are finding themselves in poverty in record numbers.  And due to the extreme low level of working class consciousness, the dominant narrative for why there is white suffering is still the age old discredited scapegoating of people of color.  This hole filled analysis retains so much life because there is a lack of work taking place within European (white) communities designed to address the political education shortcomings.

At the anti-white supremacy workshop my comrades and I gave last night, a white activist woman approached me afterward and said its hard to talk to white people about their racism because they don't want to hear about it.  She was responding to the part of our presentation where we admonished the largely white audience to stop trying to rush to wherever the klan is to beat them down and instead place more focus on out-organizing the klan at the doors.  Or, as my comrade put it "talk to your father because the klan is talking to him and the klan is killing us!"  Although I know the position we presented is correct, I'm also aware that the majority of sincere European activists just don't have a clue how to talk to their people.  As a result, they instead take a position of attempting to separate themselves from their people.  We explained that this is an elitist approach and very dangerous because it leaves their folks open for white supremacist penetration.  

I see this problem as a major issue and this has inspired me to write about it in ways that I feel will greatly help white activists who are serious about making a difference in this critical area.  "The Courage Equation" is my latest 542 page novel.  This book has been very critically praised and the reasons are that it genuinely addresses this issue of European/white people organizing other whites away from white supremacist ideology and actions.  The story is seen through the eyes of a white woman named Boahinmaa Omawale.  Boahinmaa was formally known as Ashley Summers, but after moving to Ghana and dedicating her life to working as a partner to African liberation, the children of Ghana gave her the Twi name Boahinmaa which means "one who has left her community."  Part of the story is that Boahinmaa goes undercover into the white supremacist community and attempts to recruit young white women out of a life of white supremacy and into a life of genuine revolutionary commitment and struggle.  To illustrate this work, there are a number of conversations that take place between Boahinmaa and the young women she's talking to that are designed to take the reader through the journey of how to talk to a person about these issues.  How to take the decline of capitalism, and the impact that is having on white people, and show them how this places them in direct solidarity with African people and other people of color against the capitalist power structure.  Boahinmaa and her comrades have very meaningful conversations with the young white supremacists about class struggle, white supremacy, patriarchy, and the reasons white people really suffer and how that all juxtaposes with the African reality in the world today.  These are the types of conversations that need to be taking place and the book is designed to demonstrate how to effectively have those conversations.

Although I started writing the book in 2010, its a perfect complement to the dialogue taking place about how to be an effective white ally/partner today.  In other words, if you want to see what a good white partner should look like, Boahinmaa is a great example.  Humble, willing to step back, sincere, and honest, these are the qualities we are looking for while Boahinmaa also maintains her own integrity and dignity (meaning a good white partner isn't someone who does whatever somebody African says to do).  This book serves as a healthy model for how white partners should look, act, and actually contribute to the struggle.  There has been criticism of the book, exclusively by people who haven't even bothered to read it, about why I choose to center the story around a white woman.  Those people, who should at least read the book first before they comment on it, miss the fact that I've written volumes about the African liberation struggle and I will continue to do so.  "The Courage Equation" is my creative contribution to this dialogue about white partnership.  I see it as a concrete contribution to that dialogue and the many responses and written reviews I've gotten on the book tell me people who are reading it agree with me.  There are other people writing similar literary fiction.  I encourage you to read the recently released novel from my friend and comrade Michelle Matisons entitled "Left to Our Own Devices" (click the link to her novel on my coming events tab).  This is the unique story of the voice of a disabled white woman who speaks about and through the experiences of her activist daughter.  Michelle's book, as well as mine, are all about the struggles taking place with white people.  Class struggles focused around loyalty and interests and how to navigate effectively through this backward strategy this system has of convincing white people that their interests and the interests of the international capitalist system are one and the same.  That your identities are one and the same.  "The Courage Equation", "Left to Our Own Devices"  and what we hope will be a growing genre of these types of anti-capitalist literary fiction works, are written to challenge the idea that white people and capitalism are the same.  I think this is a very healthy dose to add to the discussion of what "whiteness" actually means.  

So, get these books.  Support these books.  Have book clubs and groups to discuss the concepts in these books.  Invite us to come talk to you about the ideas addressed in our books.  These are all things that will help advance this dialogue.  "The Courage Equation" is inexpensive and available everywhere online.  And don't think my objective is simply to get you to spend money on my book.  I won't go into to details, but all I'll say right now is the only money I've seen to date from my book is what I've gotten in sales for copies I've bought retail.  In other words, I have no way to purchase my book right now except to buy it the same way you do.  So, making money is a non issue.  My motivation is getting the ideas my book promotes out there as far and wide as I possibly can and the only way that happens is if people support independent writers like myself and Michelle.  I want people to be inspired by Boahinmaa and the work she does in the hopes that it will help people believe they can do the work themselves.  I spent five years of my life developing Boahinmaa because I believe a little of her exists in all of you.  Let's encourage that portion of you to come out so we can effectively beat back this reactionary wave of anti-African hysteria that the capitalist system so much depends upon to keep its engines running.

In this present era of social media education, Face Book revolutionaries, and the normalized acceptance of sound bite consciousness, the concept of knowledge based, experienced, skilled, on the ground political organizers is somewhat of an anomaly today.  Presently, many people take their organizing lead from the industrialized non-profit complex and not the revolutionary independent organizational voices that the non-profit model was created (by the ruling capitalist class) to replace.  As a result, most activists today, many who just entered the world of organized resistance in very recent times, have no understanding or concept of people like Kwame Ture and the outstanding contributions he made to the struggle for justice and liberation.  Since today represents the 17th commemoration since Kwame made his physical transition, I think it appropriate to explain to the new generation why they should stop and take notice of who he is, what he did, and why and how they can learn from him.  

Kwame was born as Stokely Carmichael on the Caribbean island of Trinadad.  After his family moved to the Bronx in New York, Kwame pursued his college education at the historically African Howard University in Washington D.C.  While at Howard, after dabbling in political ideology, discussions, and activities, Kwame joined the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (pronounced SNICK) in 1961.  After joining SNCC, Kwame participated in freedom rides to the Southern U.S.  He then participated in voter registration work in the South.  He was one of the many SNCC activists who physically participated in the swamp search for the bodies of murdered SNCC and Congress of Racial Equality activists James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, and Michael Schwerner in Philadelphia, Mississippi.  To get a sense of Kwame's experience during those dangerous years, between 1961 and 1966, he was arrested 26 times for engaging in political organizing work in the South.  He was interned at the notorious Parchmen prison in Mississippi for several months.  He was beaten, starved, and tortured during his many incarcerations.  Along with those personal sacrifices, Kwame's most important contributions to SNCC and the struggle were his leadership on many of SNCC's most important political projects.  He was involved in helping organize the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party (MFDP)- a project of SNCC.  MFDP mounted a serious challenge to the national Democratic Party in 1964.  It's push to get African delegates seated at the 64 Democratic Convention forced the Democratic Party to compromise and open up to people of color and women.  In fact, MFDP is the reason you have women and people of color in leadership positions in the Democratic Party today.  Without MFDP, there would be no Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton (not suggesting that having them means anything positive.  Just confirming the work that produced their ability to exist).  The following year, Kwame was one of the chief organizers for the Lowndes County Freedom Organization (LCFO), better known as the Black Panther Party.  This armed party, which used the symbol of the Black Panther to appeal to an African population that was 80% illiterate, captured the imagination of youth activists all over the world.  This included a young man from Oakland named Mark Comfort, who traveled to Alabama to work with Kwame with the LCFO.  Comfort was a friend of Huey P. Newtons in Oakland.  Newton writes in his autobiography - "Revolutionary Suicide" - how Comfort returned to Oakland from Alabama telling everyone about "some Black folks in Alabama with guns talking about they was the Black Panther Party!"  Newton acknowledges being inspired from Comfort's report to start the Black Panther Party for Self Defense.  Huey even reached out to Kwame at that time to ask permission to use the name.

With all of that growing experience, Kwame's contribution and presence rose to another level in 1966 when he defeated (now Congressman) John Lewis as chairperson of SNCC.  Kwame's defeat of Lewis represented a clear push towards a much more radical political direction for SNCC which included a stronger focus on African self-determination.  By the end of 1966, SNCC had begun to establish it's position as an independent African organization.  This period represented SNCC's most significant legacy building work.  Examples are the development of the Black Power movement which grew out of the March against fear in Mississippi in 66 where Kwame yelled "Black Power" to a thunderous enthusiastic response from the assembled African masses.  Another was SNCC's  national leadership as the first organization to come out against the Vietnam war symbolized by Kwame's historic chant of "hell no, we won't go!"  And, SNCC's courageous stance against zionism and it's principled support for the Palestinian struggle.  In 1969, Kwame moved to Guinea-Conakry to become the political secretary for Kwame Nkrumah, the CIA overthrown ex-president of Ghana and the newly invited co-president of Guinea.  There, Nkrumah shared his manuscript for the "Handbook of Revolutionary Warfare" with Kwame Ture and Amilcar Cabral (founder of the African Party for the Independence of Guinea Bissau).  After taking one day to read the entire book, Kwame Ture decided then and there to dedicate his life to responding to Nkrumah's call to build the All African Committee for Political Coordination (A-ACPC) which once built will represent the All African People's Revolutionary Party (and All African People's Revolutionary Army - A-APRP and A-APRA).  In 1969, the A-APRP's first political education work study circle was formed in Guinea-Conakry.  From there, Kwame utilized the same political organizing skills he demonstrated in Mississippi and Alabama in SNCC to build the A-ACPC and A-APRP throughout the African world. In 1977, Kwame changed his name from Stokely Carmichael to Kwame Ture to honor and respect his teachers - Kwame Nkrumah and Sekou Ture.  From 1969 to his transition in 1998, Kwame dedicated his life to organizing for Nkrumah and Ture's Pan-African vision of one, unified, socialist Africa.  The results of that work are that today, revolutionary Pan-African cadre who are dedicated to the Nkrumahist/Tureist vision are alive and fighting to organize around those ideas all over the African world.  The All African People's Revolutionary Party - the organization Kwame Ture spent his last 30 years organizing for - has touched down and engaged in organizing work everywhere from Libya to the entire West, East, and Southern coasts of Africa.  All throughout Europe and from Canada down through South America.  Obviously, Kwame's contributions are cemented in history, but 17 years after his death, why should you study the life and work of Kwame Ture today?  Here are some concrete reasons:

The importance of collective study.  Kwame Ture helped institutionalize work study in the A-APRP.  Everyone affiliated with the A-APRP from Europe to Africa to the Americas has to participate in a work study circle.  That means reading 70 pages every two weeks, five pages per day, and coming prepared to discuss those readings.  If taken seriously this process will generate a consciousness that far exceeds anything you would learn from any advanced degree program from the bourgeois universities.  Plus, the implementation of praise, criticism/self criticism (not to be confused with a check in) is a revolutionary tool based in the principles of the social revolution designed to push you to reach your highest level of consciousness and revolutionary practice.  Engaging in these revolutionary practices helps mold true revolutionaries who are guided by principle, love, and disciplinary practice instead of self gain and ego.  This is the definition of cadre and Kwame was conscious enough to realize he would not live together.  Thanks to his selfless work to build revolutionary cadre, he may be gone, but he has left thousands of soldiers to carry on his work.

The relevance of building principled relationships with alliances.  Kwame's work with the Palestine Liberation Organization, the American Indian Movement, and the Irish Republican Socialist Party is legendary.  If you don't believe it, ask anyone who was present at the American Indian Movement's 1998 un-thanksgiving ceremony at Alcatraz island.  Held just two weeks after Kwame's passing, these Indian activists used the entire sunrise program, in front of thousands of people, to honor the work of Kwame Ture, choosing to put aside the focus on Indigenous rights that those thousands of people woke up and came out there to commemorate.  I observed similar measures of respect for his work from the Palestinian and Irish communities.  This was warranted because these people understood that Kwame, through great personal risk to himself, picked up the mantle of their struggles long before it was popular to do so.  He also implored us within the A-APRP to build relationships with those communities and he insured that our work study process would help us understand the mutual benefits of doing so.  As a result, today, we continue to build and maintain principled relationships with those communities that will only help us solidify the solidarity of our work for future victories.  

His commitment to rise up the emancipation of women.  Although Kwame's days in SNCC are unfortunately too often remembered for a joke he shared with other SNCC women about the position of women in SNCC being prone, we know that a person's commitment to a cause cannot be measured by a statement.  It must be measured by their consistent practice.  Everyone knows this or else everything every politician says you would have to accept as gold.  Kwame's life work clearly indicates his commitment to the emancipation of all women, especially African women.  He was committed to helping build and supporting the growth of the All African Women's Revolutionary Union within the A-APRP and his example around this was very inspirational to young African men such as myself who were joining the A-APRP.  His work around this issue is highlighted by examples such as his decision (and the decision he promoted among the A-APRP Central Committee) to respond to Minister Louis Farrakhan's personal invitation for him to be a part of the original Million Man March Planning Committee in 1995 by instead sending our Women's coordinator - Mawina Kouyate - to participate in his place.  Her participation helped pave the way for the historic participation of so many respected women in the original program as well as helping create the consciousness that our people, not just our men, are under attack by the capitalist system.

The need for organization.  Kwame never tired of saying it.  "Join some organization working for our people."  Everyone hears me say those words all the time. I write about them all the time.  Kwame was my inspiration in expressing that message because he was correct.  We cannot talk about changing oppression unless we are willing to commit to the day to day to work to dismantle the oppression.  Do you think the enemies of humanity just go to speeches and events to express their desire for domination?  No, the Rockefellers organize institutions to express their political will.  And you think you can confront their model by just showing up somewhere whenever you choose?  Organized resistance is our only solution and anyone who doesn't accept that isn't serious about fighting the enemy.  That's the lesson of Kwame Ture and 117 years from now it will still be no less true.

Last, but not least, his personal sacrifice for the struggle of his people.  Kwame Ture had as large a presence in the media during the 60s as anyone else you may know of today.  His presence was as big, if not bigger, than Jesse Jackson, Julian Bond, Marion Berry, Louis Farrakhan, John Lewis, and even Martin Luther King Jr.  But, Kwame wasn't interested in prestige and recognition within the capitalist system.  He was only interested in making a contribution to liberate our people from capitalist exploitation.  So, at the height of his public presence, he moved to the small, poor, country of Guinea.  His place in the media spotlight ended, but we believe it was there that his most meaningful contributions took shape.  We also believe that his example of placing the work of his people above that of his material comfort, was a strong model that revolutionaries everywhere must duplicate.  Unlike others, Kwame didn't stay in four star hotels when he came to your town.  He didn't eat at premium restaurants.  He lived and ate with the people in this country and very other country he visited.  He kept up an extremely rigorous pace and schedule and he never complained. Never!  No matter how tired he was, and I observed him exhausted on many occasions, he was always gracious, patient, and humble with whomever wanted his attention.  Ironically, it was Jesse Jackson who very accurately spoke at Kwame's funeral in Conakry in 1998.  Jackson said that Kwame "never compromised with capitalism."  Very powerful words.  Its too bad that not more of us are really comprehending their meaning.

Kwame Ture deserves the respect of anyone who is genuinely interested in understanding the fight for liberation and justice.  His life and work should be studied by all young and old interested in serious struggle to emancipate the African masses.  You know, its funny.  Whenever November 15th comes around my first thought is always what more can I do to make a contribution. I think Kwame would appreciate that.

People use the term "terrorist" so loosely and consistently, there is almost an assumption that there is a definition for who and what qualifies.  We humbly submit that the most logical definition of the word is someone or a group that engages in senseless violence that is designed to strike fear into the victims in a way that influences them to adopt the political position of the person(s) carrying out the senseless violence.  Most thinking people would probably have no issue with that definition.  The problem comes in when you attempt to further define the critical phrase "senseless violence."  Since we are dialectical and revolutionary, we know all violence has a purpose.  Indeed, all crime has a purpose.  So what is the purpose behind attacks carried out in France yesterday?  Well, first, it's important to point out that we actually have no idea who is responsible for those attacks, no matter what the capitalist media says about it, because capitalism doesn't lie some of the time, it lies all of the time. But, leave that aside for a moment.  Take it for granted that the attacks came from someone who can be credibly connected to anything resembling the ISIS State or anything remotely similar to them, does that qualify the attacks as terrorist?  Who is ISIS?  Where did they come from?  If they are responsible for these types of attacks, why are carrying them out?  Legitimate questions. Ones that you should be able to answer before you condemn an entire religion and/or people.  

What we know for sure is the imperialist countries have been robbing and oppressing Africa and the Middle East for centuries.  And when we say imperialism, we are defining that as a system where the industrialized countries steal the human and material resources from the technologically underdeveloped countries in a way that prevents the poor countries from ever being able to climb out from the subservient position.  For example, cocoa is the natural resources that produces chocolate.  In Ghana, the cocoa industry is controlled by foreign multi-national corporations based in the U.S., Britain, France, etc.  The cocoa is extracted through an extremely exploitative process where the people are paid next to nothing to extract it and are provided conditions to work in that breed disease and death.  The cocoa is developed by the capitalist countries into chocolate products which are then sold back to Ghana (and the rest of the world) at high prices.  This is how the imbalanced system of imperialism works, not just for cocoa, but for every product you will encounter, enjoy, and benefit from this weekend.  Then, on top of that, when that system isn't good enough for those pirates, the imperialists have a history of just outright stealing the lands where either the resources are housed, or where they believe they can achieve a political, economic, or militarily strategic advantage. In the Middle East this occurred when the European powers seized lands within the Ottoman Empire after World War I and divided those lands as they saw fit, much the same way they divided Africa during the 1884 Berlin Conference.  This has been the norm for the last 100 years.  Imperialism manipulating lands and people for it's own ends regardless of the devastating impact their actions have on the peoples who inhabit those lands.  So, in 1990, Saddam Hussein uses the weaponry supplied to him by the imperialists (to use against Iran in the 1980s) to attempt to reclaim Kuwait which was separated from Iraq in the Ottoman Empire land grab.   Since Saddam had then outlived his usefulness to imperialism, they turned their rage onto him and the imperialist war against Iraq began.  Meanwhile, Afghanistan was being governed by the Taliban which was a group of hardcore folks who emerged to leadership in that country with the full support of imperialism which supported them in defeating the Soviet-backed socialist leaning regime in Kabul.  Twenty years later, Saddam is dead and gone and Iraq and Afghanistan have been devastated by two decades of imperialist bombings and war.  Hundreds of thousands of people have been killed and millions displaced.  Lawlessness in both countries is the order of the day and upwards of 60% of all heroin currently in the U.S. comes from Afghanistan (even your lying FBI confirms that).  

The same sad story of destruction is true when you look at Libya.  Formally the most developing country in Africa, Libya was the place most people in Africa wanted to get to and believe it or not, Khadafy was the most popular man in Africa.  Why?  Because his government built the Waswa Dam project which was supplying potable water to people in the Sahara desert, a feat the imperialists said would never happen.  On top of that, Libya was making advances in medicine, health care, and education that no one anywhere else in Africa needed to envy because the Libyans were more than happy to share their advances with the rest of the continent.  Then, on top of that, Khadafy had the audacity to propose the creation of an African currency backed by Libyan gold as a method of pursuing Kwame Nkrumah and Sekou Ture's dream of Pan-African independence in Africa.  Of course, imperialism's answer to this was to unite under NATO and bomb Libya into submission, killing Khadafy and anyone who supported the Jamihiriya.  Today, Libya is in the same chaotic situation as Iraq and Afghanistan.  You can add Sudan, Somalia, Syria, and other places to this list.  And the imperialist culprits are not just the U.S. and zionist israel, although they are certainly ring leaders, but Britain, and yes - France - have been willing players in this wanton destruction as joyful partners in the imperialist North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO).  

So with so much of the world blasted into chaos and disarray even a middle school student would have little difficulty concluding that the conditions of despair and desperation would produce groups like al-Queade and ISIS.  For decades, the imperialists have given them nothing except weapons and destruction while stealing everything they have.  So, these people don't have the capacity to strike back at imperialism in the systematic and major way imperialism attacks them, so the only way they can strike back is a bomb here, a shooting attack there.  You don't have to like it, but you do have to recognize why it's happening.  You do have to acknowledge how it started and why it continues.  Look at it the way Malcolm X articulated it back in 1963 when he was discussing the reasons behind John F. Kennedy's assassination.  Malcolm talked about how Kennedy's administration had sanctioned violence against Cuba and the assassination of Patrice Lumumba, and the Congo's democratically elected Prime Minister two years before.  Malcolm characterized Kennedy's death as a case of "the chickens coming home to roost."  While so it is in Paris yesterday.  France is an imperialist country that to this day forces (through economic cohersion) former African colonies like Senegal, Mali, and Bourkina Faso to pay taxes for France's colonial subjugation of those countries.  France's brutal exploitation of African countries like Guinea and Algeria is well documented and the corrupt practice of requiring those poor countries to pay taxes to France who was enriched by exploiting them, is a war crime.  

So, you won't see any tears coming from too many people about what happened in France yesterday from anyone who knows this gruesome history.  The capitalist media will continue to trumpet that "terrorism was inflicted on the innocent French people", but he truth is the people of France are accomplices to the suffering of people in Africa and the Middle East and their unwillingness to recognize that, and do something about it, unfortunately places them in a situation where they may be targeted by folks who feel they have no other recourse - if they are indeed responsible for the carnage.  The same is true for people in the U.S.  Your selfishness and cowardice is not something that the bulk of people in the world are not aware of.  Immgrants and religions can continue to be blamed, but it is really you who is guilty.  What hypocrisy.  You want to cry out against "terrorism" when you feel you, or people you identify with, are targeted, yet you say nothing about actual terrorists living on your dime in Florida (Luis Posada Carilles, Orlando Bosch, etc.) because those terrorists committed terrorism against the (ill-rationally) hated Cuban Revolution.  You say and do nothing against your own sons, brothers, fathers, uncles, aunts, sisters, mothers, neighbors, co-workers, and friends who promote the ideas and actions of terrorist groups like the ku klux klan and neo-nazis. And these groups have a record of terrorist attacks that make ISIS seem like Saturday cartoons. ISIS would have to decapitate thousands of more people to be in the kkk's ballpark since decapitations and castrations are the klan's trademark.

The senseless violence is the violence carried out by imperialism.  The violence against the Cubans.  The creation of AFROCOM e.g 100 military bases throughout Africa, especially around Somalia and East Africa.  The violence in Iraq, Syra, Libya, Afghanistan.  This is all senseless violence.  The violence you saw yesterday is either someone's desperate attempt to strike back or something else that we don't yet know about.  Whatever it is, its time for people living in the imperialist countries to get your heads out of your asses and start paying attention to what's happening around the world in your name.  The you is all of the imperialist countries - the U.S., France, Britain, Germany, so-called israel, Canada, etc.  There are very few pieces of ammo floating around that you didn't pay for.  There are no chemical weapons that you didn't finance.  Most of the weapons of violence and destruction operational around the world you supported being produced and placed into circulation.  The instability in Somalia, Sudan, Chad, Congo, Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria, and the millions of people displaced from all those places, you had a hand in supporting all of that.  In other words, if you really want to see what a terrorist looks like, look in the mirror.

The headlines are sprouting up every five minutes.  European (White) students are riding around in pick up trucks at the University of Missouri, shouting racial slurs at our youth, making every effort to intimidate us.  Threats on social media are being recycled.  The stories all go on to immediately report that African students are leaving the campus in droves, completely terrorized.  While the behavior of racist bullies is justifiably traumatizing, I know enough about African history to know we are just like every other people.  We are diverse and as humanistic as anyone else in the face of adversity.  Self defense is often said to be the first law of human nature, but if you read these stories, you would think that's true except when it applies to Africans.  For us, the suggestion is that we do everything we can to avoid conflict.  That we refuse to stand up when insulted.  That we will let you trample all over us without lifting a finger to defend ourselves.  This analysis isn't reality.  It's the sick and twisted logic of an oppressive system that wants to convince Africans that the only respectable and permitted response for us at any time is one of deference and respect for the system.  Even if its protecting the people oppressing us.  This dysfunctional analysis isn't anything new.

The recent movie "Selma" is a great example of how the capitalist media distorts history to drive home the message that we are always docile masochists in the face of terrorist attacks against us.  Whether the movie was made with African influence or not is 100% ill relevant.  The point is whomever made the movie, it, like everything else in this society, is made to promote values that are against the interests of the masses of African people.  How else can you explain why the entire scene of that movie involving a heated display carried out by the character portraying Dr. King's wife, Coretta Scott, against the character portraying Malcolm X, was fabricated?  The scene was done in a way which suggests that Malcolm was intruding.  The truth is no such conversation took place between Coretta Scott and Malcolm because was invited by the youth to come to Selma and speak.  I realize Hollywood is about fantasy.  I'm a literary fiction writer who's work is much better than much coming out of Hollywood if I do say so myself, so I get that.  What I don't get is why it's necessary to completely rewrite history for a movie in a way that completely writes out all militancy by movement activists.  The Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) is portrayed as a lesser organizing element to Dr. King's Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) when the truth is SNCC engaged in the most important work in the Southern Civil Rights Movement.  Examples are the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party in 1964 and the Lowndes County Freedom Organization (LCFO - the first Black Panther Party) in 1965 in Alabama.  LCFO was taking place during the same time the confrontation in Selma took place, yet it was only slightly mentioned in the movie.  The point is there was clearly a coordinated effort to write the militancy out of the movie.  Malcolm was put in his place and SNCC was diminished to supplemental roles displaying John Lewis and what was apparently supposed to be James Foreman.  LCFO, clearly a much more significant voting rights work than Selma, was left out of the movie completely because Lowndes County, just down the road from Selma, had armed Africans protecting our right to vote.  These Africans along with the courageous Deacons for Defense, played a vital role in every aspect of the Southern movement.  Guns, fearlessness, and a willingness and ability to strike back.  These values characterized our movements and our people as much as anything else.  We had the "one man, one vote movement in Azania, South Africa and we had the Spear of the Nation, the armed wing of the African National Congress as well as armed efforts from the Pan-Africanist Congress of Azania, the Azanian People's Organization, and Black Consciousness Movement.  We had the negotiating efforts of Jomo Kenyatta and we had the militancy of the Land and Freedom Movement (Mau Mau) in Kenya.  We had Frederick Douglass and Sojourner Truth and we had Harriet Tubman and Nat Turner.  We had the SCLC, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, and the Urban League, but we also had the Black Panther Party, the Republic of New Afrika, and the Revolutionary Action Movement.  

We are a diverse people.  We, like everyone else, are subject to the laws of dialetics.  We aren't one dimensional.  It's for that reason that I know, in spite of how the media paints the picture, that somewhere, somehow, some of our people aren't running.  Some are planning on how to strike back at those crackers.  And for the conspiracy theorists who will read that as alerting the enemy of our intentions, believe me, they already know.  None of what I've talked about here; the Deacons, LCFO, Mau Mau, was a surprise to our enemies.  The difference between victory and defeat is the extent to which we organize our people to support our work, whatever that work is.  So whatever victories occur in Missouri or anywhere else as a result of our work, our willingness to organize against the enemy by any means necessary will always be as much a part of the victory as anything else we are doing.  But, our enemies won't ever talk about it because maybe their ultimate fear is that those misguided youth of ours in the ghettos who turn their weapons on each other every day - one day they may get straight on where those guns should be pointed.