Ahjamu Umi's: "The Truth Challenge"
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We Honor Fidel Castro Without the Slightest Hesitation

11/25/2016

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With great sadness, we learned today that Cuban revolutionary Fidel Castro has made his physical transition.  Although his body is not even cold yet, as can be expected, imperialism is celebrating his death by suggesting that the Cuban people will automatically abandon the Revolution, either after Raul Castro dies, or immediately.  Those of us who have studied the Cuban Revolution seriously (and all revolutionary Pan-Africanists do) know better than to accept anything imperialism has to say about any genuine revolutionaries.  We also know that many on the so-called left have questioned Fidel's legitimacy as a revolutionary leader for years.  We will take these few moments to express why it is that we honor Fidel Castro's life and why no matter what imperialism has to say about him, we know the masses of people in the world love and respect him.

Before you take the word of imperialism, either consciously or unconsciously, remember that this is the same imperialism that told you the people of Libya wanted Muammar Qaddafi dead.  When we told you in 2011 that imperialism killed Qaddafi by bombing Libya into submission (destroying their world renowned water project in the Sahara desert in the process), you didn't believe us.  In fact, it took the exposure of former U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's clandestine emails confirming the U.S.'s intention to murder Qaddafi to get many of you to finally accept the truth.  Well, despite the fact many of you won't listen now, we will suggest that you take it from those of us who have studied the Cuban Revolution, those of us who have maintained long and principled relationships directly with the Cuban Revolution, when we tell you don't listen to what imperialism has to tell you about the Cuban people.  Why are we so sure?  Because some of us don't rely on imperialist propaganda.  I was there in July of 1994 when the last large raft launch of disgruntled Cubans left Cuba to come to the U.S.   I realize you saw the three or four hundred people who fled on rafts and that imperialism told you that these people left Cuba because of the oppression and the evil empire, but what you didn't see were the approximately 20,000 people who were protesting the people leaving in rafts.  I saw those people and how angry they were with those who intended upon abandoning the Cuban Revolution.  I saw them yelling at the rafters to "Vete de aquí!" (get the hell out!).  Why?  Because I also know that approximately 70% of the Cuban people today were born after the Revolution.  So, that means 7 out of 10 people in Cuba today have never lived with mounting medical bills.  They have never lived with student debt.  They have never lived with skyrocketing rents and no hope of employment because all of these things have been guaranteed to them by the Socialist Revolution and when we say Cuban Revolution, we are automatically talking about Fidel Castro.  I talked to many of these folks when I was there and yes, I talked to them in their homes, with no government spies lurking around their windows.  These people told me directly that they have no desire to have a capitalist system.  They told me that contrary to what you believe, they are highly competitive, but not in the same ways you are in this capitalist system.  They helped me learn that competition is different in a socialist society.  Its collective, not individualistic.  They are competitive about wiping out racism.  Wiping out infant mortality, which they have practically done (their infant mortality rate is better than it is in the U.S.).  They are competitive about wiping out homophobia and patriarchy and their government is front and center in funding programs to educate around these issues.  When Mariela Castro, director of Cuba's Social Service Agency, says Cuba is embarking on a major campaign to educate the masses about the LGBTQ community there, Cuba's history confirms that you should believe her.  And, this is Fidel's Cuba.

Is the Cuban Revolution perfect?  That question isn't even worth answering, but we will say that Fidel's legacy must be gauged by comparing what has been accomplished in Cuba to all the neighboring countries that have the same history and conditions.  If you do that, Cuba stands head and shoulders above the rest because of the Cuban Revolution.  Because of socialism and Fidel.  So, don't hold your breath waiting for Cuban's to do what imperialism is asking them.  Cuba is different in ways most people in the U.S. cannot understand.  Their revolution has integrity.  Fidel had integrity.  Che had integrity.  Vilma Espin, Celia Sanchez, Juan Almeida, Frank Pais, and yes, Raul Castro, all have/had integrity.  That's why we never flinched when many of you were saying the Cuban government would return Assata Shakur to the U.S. earlier this year.  Fidel invited Assata to come to Cuba just like he invited Huey P. Newton before her, and Robert Williams before him to come there.  In 1967, Fidel invited Kwame Ture, who was Stokely Carmichael to Cuba when imperialism wanted Kwame's head.  Fidel announced in public that imperialism would pay if "it harmed one hair" on Kwame's head.  And, Fidel kept that promise.  Kwame sought and received medical attention for the prostate cancer that killed him in Cuba at no charge up until his death in November of 1998.  Fidel made all of this possible.  Just like he made it possible for Louis Farrakhan (leader of the Nation of Islam) to have the same life saving surgery in Cuba a few short years ago.  That's Fidel's Cuba.

Another trick of imperialism is to make dead revolutionaries bigger than life so as to pit them against living revolutionaries.  It did that with Fidel and Che Guevara.  Imperialism said that Fidel pushed Che away.  That he forced Che into the ill fated mission in Bolivia and that he abandoned Che there.  That Fidel was happy when Che was killed in 1967.  Imperialism said this and I have heard many people repeat this tired lie despite repeated refutations by Che's widow Aleida March and Che's own children, all who still live in Cuba and continue to strongly support the Cuban Revolution (not to mention all of Che's closest comrades, including Harry Villegas aka "Pombo" who I met in Cuba who was one of only three combatants to escape Bolivia alive after Che was killed there).  Those of us who have studied Cuba know this is a lie.  Fidel begged, pleaded, with Che to not go to Bolivia.  Che insisted on leaving Cuba.  His statements against the USSR made him persona non grata to the Cuban's efforts at the time to ingratiate itself with the Soviets.  Che knew his presence made that more difficult.  So, he insisted on the mission in the Congo first, then an extended stay in Tanzania, then the ill fated mission in Bolivia.  History confirms that Fidel did everything in his power to support the Bolivian mission and nothing that Che wrote in his diary contradicts that.  The only people saying otherwise are the imperialists.  Because they wanted people to distrust Fidel, but again they failed.


The masses of Africans will always respect Fidel.  Many of us may not know much about the Cuban Revolution in particular, or Cuba in general, but we know that our revolutionary African leaders in the U.S. who had to get out of here were always offered safety in Cuba.  Our people in Africa know much more.  They know that were it not for Cuba, the entire southern region of Africa would have been lost to apartheid in the 80s.  The USSR, the U.S., and China, did nothing to stop the racist effort to consolidate Zimbabwe, Mozambique, Namibia, and Zambia, into the racist clutches that controlled Azania (South Africa).  Only Cuba responded and they responded not in word, but deed, by sending 40,000 troops to beat back the racist onslaught.  Thousands of Cubans, many of them Africans, lost their lives defending mother Africa from racist apartheid.  The Cubans were so determined to fight, not only for that cause, but in support of the people of Guinea Bissau, Angola, and Mozambique, for their independence, that people in Africa today still love Fidel and the Cuban Revolution.  Of course, Cuba was wrong in supporting the Derge in Ethiopia in the 70s, but in totality, Cuba is a hero in Africa.  There is an African proverb that says "the only people who make no errors are those who do nothing."  So, we judge Cuba on the totality of their actions in Africa, not their isolated errors.  The imperialists even had to agree to release Nelson Mandela from prison as a condition of the Cuban troops leaving Southern Africa in 1990.  That's why the first thing Mandela did when he left Africa that year was visit Fidel Castro to say thank you, despite the outrage from the reactionary people in Southern Florida, but we will talk about them shortly.  Cuba continues to supply thousands of doctors to Africa today and to graduate African doctors from all over the African world in Cuban Medical schools.  Their model is to provide enough skilled technicians to wipe out disease which is a chronic problem in Africa.  And based on their success in doing so in Cuba - they have successfully eliminated mother to child HIV transmissions - this is unbelievable for Africa which has the highest percentage of people with HIV in the world.  In some countries like Zambia, almost five out of every 10 people are HIV positive so Cuba's medical expertise is going to be invaluable to stopping this problem and none of this could be happening without a major nod to Fidel and people in Africa know this even if those of you in the Western world do not.  While Fidel's Cuba has offered this hope, the only thing the U.S. and imperialism have offered Africa to combat HIV is the International Monetary Fund and structural adjustment programs that do nothing for the people of Africa while draining what little resources they have to finance projects that benefit imperialist interests in Africa.  People are not stupid.  They see the differences between Fidel's principled relationships to Africa and imperialism's systemic exploitative relationship.

Finally, to those haters in Florida and all of you who seek every opportunity to criticize Fidel and who are celebrating tonight, the people who matter wouldn't spend the time it takes to pass gas thinking about you.  There is a reason that 98% of the so-called Cuban exile community in Florida is European descent or White.  Revolutions are not fought for the people with privilege.  They are fought for those on the bottom of the society.  Since all those White people have left Cuba (good riddance), the country is now predominantly African.  And, thankfully, since Cuba has always been a Revolution that genuinely tries to acknowledge its errors, as it has spent the last 25 years moving away from its earlier Stalinist model into finding its own identity, it has graciously supported African cultural identity among African people in Cuba.  I'm talking about the government funding African cultural programs, something you cannot find on any systemic level in the U.S.  Fidel, who has always said "African blood runs through my veins" is a major reason for this support while no U.S. president would ever open their mouth to say that.  In fact, even the so-called African U.S. president cannot hardly acknowledge his obvious African ancestry.  The Florida community means nothing to us.  We refer them back to Malcolm X's words in 1964 when he said "Cuban exiles have no business coming up into Harlem telling us who we can support!"  Malcolm said that after he had established his own personal relationship with the Cuban Revolution four short years before, having a personal meeting with Fidel when the Cuban Revolutionary outsmarted the U.S. again (as he did repeatedly for half a century), by countering their illegal effort to prevent him from staying on United Nations grounds in New York (which is supposed to be international territory) by staying instead at the Hotel Theresa in Harlem where Malcolm X had his office.  Fidel returned to Harlem in 1995 to overwhelming love and support from thousands of the African masses there who always remember who our true friends are. 

And, those of you who have families who fled Cuba, spare me the emotionally charged responses.  I know that Cuba has one of the lowest prison percentages in the world.  Their police have one of the lowest kill rates in the world.  I know a great deal about how the Cuban legislative model works and I'd argue its much more democratic than the legislative processes in the U.S.  If you are arguing that your family suffered because of Fidel, I have to ask you what your family was doing in Cuba?  Clearly, just the fact your family may have suffered cannot be used as evidence about anything related to discrediting Fidel and the Cuban Revolution and you know this because if I told you my family has suffered in the U.S. - and my family has suffered e.g. growing up in racist segregated conditions - you would not accept that as evidence that the U.S. is an evil empire so don't expect me to accept your vision of the Cuban Revolution.  We all know people who have lived in a place their entire life, yet know nothing about the political conditions there so just physically being somewhere is never a qualification of expertise about that place.  Instead, we have to have a debate about why these things happen.  The U.S. has never been under threat from any country, yet this country abuses and oppresses people as policy.  It always has and it always will.  Standing Rock is just the latest example of this.  This system was built upon oppression and continues based on needing people to be oppressed.  Meanwhile, the Cuban Revolution is built on human needs yet it has been under assault by imperialism since its inception so even if the Revolution acted in error sometimes, this is in large part because of the siege the Revolution there has been under since it started.  Plus, name one young country (the Cuban Revolution is just a few years older than I am) that doesn't have the right to learn its way?  Especially if it had dysfunctional parents?  (e.g. the brutal Bautista regime which was propped up by U.S. imperialism and its proxies like the Mafia).

With just over 30 days before the 58th commemoration of the victory of the Cuban Revolution, I'll spend December thinking a lot about Fidel Castro.  He has influenced and shaped much of my ideas for what the world should look like.  He once said the only qualification for leadership is sincerity and I agree with that.  I've often recalled that statement when I doubted myself.  What I'm saying is I don't care who I offend by saying I love Fidel Castro and I honor his image.  A man like him can never die.  His spirit is eternal.  I thank our African ancestors for him and all that he has done for Cuba, Africa, African people, and all of humanity.  I thank him for standing up to U.S. imperialism for over 50 years and teaching us how to do that.  I thank him for his courage and bravery in introducing a socialist revolution just 90 miles from the strongest imperialist country on Earth and waging a relentless battle to protect that revolution for over half a century.  And we Africans know that his spirit will live with us forever.  Sekou Ture said "if the enemy isn't doing anything against you, you aren't doing anything!"  Fidel Catro, a good friend to Sekou Ture, always had the enemy working against him.  At last count imperialism waged almost 150 assassination attempts against him and they failed each time.  Since imperialism has a pretty solid record of killing off its opponents to date, and it hasn't had any opponents that ranked any higher than Fidel, I think that says all that really needs to be said about Fidel Castro's legacy and his true place among the Cuban people.  In truth, I'm thinking Fidel is having the last laugh tonight.  Despite all those years of outsmarting U.S. imperialism and all those efforts to sabotage Cuba and kill him particularly, he was able to outsmart imperialism one final time by being able to die peacefully on his own terms in his beloved Cuban Revolution.

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Standing Rock and Thanksgiving (Taking)

11/23/2016

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Over the last week or so, like every year, I've encountered well meaning folks who expressed "Happy Thanksgiving" to me.  As has been my custom for the last almost 40 years, I kindly smile and respond with "I don't celebrate the holiday, but you and your family be safe!"  Most of the time, people react to my response with confused looks.  I know people lack information, but since this is an information based society, I've never understood why people are so comfortable knowing so little.  This year I'm even more befuddled by it.  Here you have thousands of Indigenous people who have been waging a principled and sacred struggle against big businesses effort to implement an illegal and immoral oil pipeline.  This fight isn't just a fight for the Native folks in that area.  These oil companies would risk poisoning all water supplies if doing so supported their profit and loss statements.  So, this struggle of water protection is a struggle for all people.  Yet, the state, which as always is the enforcement arm for the multi-national corporations, is sending out its shock troop police to engage in shear acts of terrorism against the peaceful water protectors in North Dakota, U.S.  This struggle has been going on for several months now and international attention is now focused upon it.  People all over the world saw how police responded to peaceful protest by shooting dangerous water cannons that ripped people's limbs off.  We have seen these gestapo police come at peaceful people with tactical firearms and other lethal and supposedly non-lethal weapons.  Everyone, everywhere is seeing all of this.  And now, this week, we are faced tomorrow with the annual farce known as Thanksgiving.  This is the day, like all corrupt imperialist holidays, where they want to convince you that we should be thankful.  Just to be clear, what they are really doing is strongly suggesting that you should be thankful for the comfort and leisure you have access to, or least potential access to, in this society.  They do this because they know that once they convince you to do this, you are going to be morally obligated to them and their values and institutions.  And once you are that, you will not see them for the vicious pirates that they are.  You will not agree that they need to be overthrown and you will do nothing to support efforts to organize against them.  You may support some elements of resistance, but you will never be willing to go all the way and you will never support anyone who is willing to go all the way.  That is the actual role of Thanksgiving, Fourth of July, and all imperialist holidays, to claim your loyalty to the empire. 

So, if you are wishing someone Thanksgiving wishes.  If you are planning any type of Thanksgiving dinner, whether you mean to or not.  Whether you are a willing participant or not, you are perpetuating white supremacy by enforcing its institutions.  And, by doing so, there is really no actual way you can really support the people fighting at Standing Rock.  The fight in North Dakota is a fight for water and you cannot separate the water from the land, so really, its a fight for land.  I was moved by the video of the buffalo appearing at Standing Rock.  A young Indigenous warrior was being interviewed and the European reporter asked him what the land means to him.  He replied "the land means everything!"  As a displaced African, kidnapped away from my mother, who has spent my entire adult life fighting for mother Africa, I instinctively identified with what the Indigenous comrade was saying.  Reclaiming our land is power.  So, if you really support the people at Standing Rock you cannot dishonestly attempt to cast that entire struggle under the climate change umbrella.  Certainly it is a climate change issue and there is no question that climate change, or global warming, is a critical issue, but Standing Rock is about Indigenous self determination and that means reclaiming the land.  So, you cannot be for Indigenous self determination unless you concede that this land belongs to them.  So, there is no way you can celebrate Thanksgiving, in any way, because it is a holiday that celebrates the theft of land from the Native peoples, the very thing they are fighting against at Standing Rock.  Its really not that difficult.  The Americas belong to the Indigenous People's of the Western Hemisphere.  They have demonstrated themselves to the a people of respect and integrity so if you stand for justice, I'm sure they welcome you here if that is your concern.  Its not mine.  I'm fighting for Africa's liberation and once we achieve that, which we will, this issue of Africans here wanting to be connected to America will resolve itself overnight.  We get it.  People want to be connected to who and what they perceive as the winner.  We want to be connected to justice because we understand that if we connect with and fight for justice, we will ultimately see victory.

There are things you can do to avoid the Thanksgiving trap.  First, if you are getting together with people on Thursday, don't just let it dissolve into a pig fest of food and football.  Have structured discussion about the injustices perpetuated against the Indigenous people, even if you just do it in a prayer before eating.  Try to create space for people to reflect upon that.  in places  where there are un Thanksgiving ceremonies, participate.  Take your children.  My daughter was raised participating every year in the annual American Indian Movement's un Thanksgiving at Alcatraz in San Francisco.  She never celebrated Thanksgiving or any imperialist holidays and today she is much healthier mentally because of it.  We need to duplicate this approach with everyone.  Second, don't shop anywhere on Friday.  This capitalist system is all about exploiting the masses of humanity and it would be great if you could demonstrate your solidarity with all oppressed peoples by refusing to participate in the annual violence and dehumanization known as "Black Friday."  Since we are revolutionaries, excuse us if we refrain from telling Africans to "buy Black."  Since we are anti-capitalist, we will instead say buy with people you know invest in our people through deed, not just word.  And finally, please use this time to join an organization and join and work seriously with that organization.  You cannot understand Physics just by thinking you understand Physics.  You can only understand it by struggling to grasp the concepts and principles that drive physics.  By the same token, you cannot understand the struggle for justice just because you see what's on the news and you read a few things.  You can only understand it by participating in it.  The forces that oppress us don't just read a few things and watch television.  They actively organize against us so you better believe we won't beat them just by engaging in intellectual masturbation exercises.  We have to work with each other and build capacity to fight back and win.  Doing these things are the best way to have real and concrete solidarity with the Indigenous people who are bravely waging struggle at Standing Rock.  There is much to be learned from them.  There are reasons why their action has gone on for months and is still picking up steam while many of the urban anti-Trump protests have struggled to be consistent after only two weeks.  No criticism.  All protest is good.  Keep it up, but get some organization and analysis behind it.  Get some perspective behind it.  And stop manipulating the struggle in ways that line up with your liberal values.  Justice is justice, not what makes you comfortable.  Use Thursday to start a new path.  And stop wishing people happy imperialist holidays.

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Tactics Aren't Principles:  Deny all Access to White Supremacists

11/19/2016

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Since a lot of well meaning people, and others who desire to spread confusion, are so easily directed down the wrong ideological path, its important that we reiterate the difference between strategy, tactics, and principles.  Your principles are your values which define your existence.  These, you never compromise.  If you do compromise your principles, you send the message that you have abandoned them.  Strategy is the process you use to carry out your principles and tactics the specific actions you take to carry out your strategy.  An example is if you believe that revolutionary Pan-Africanism is the only solution to the problems facing Africans everywhere, as I do, then your principles are that Africa is primary.  All people of African descent are Africans.  And, that Africa must be liberated, united, and socialist.  These beliefs you can never compromise on because the minute you do, you no longer believe them.  Your strategy for achieving Pan-Africanism can be to unite all Pan-African formations all over the world by doing work to build and solidify relationships between the organizations (which we are doing).  Your tactics are to integrate your Pan-African cadre into various Pan-African formations, build work study circles in those formations advancing revolutionary Pan-African ideology, and build African united front formations everywhere with the objective of getting every African to join an organization.  Your strategies and tactics may change based on conditions and effectiveness., but their objective is to help you achieve your principles.

As it relates to the multitude of cowardly and dishonest white supremacists who are surfacing everywhere, its important that we don't cloud the difference between principles and strategy and tactics.  We/I have echoed the 50 year old call from the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee many times when we have said Europeans need to organize other Europeans into formations that are socialist, meaning 100% opposed to white supremacy and capitalism.  These are the principles.  The strategies and tactics we have proposed have been to organize European (White) communities.  We often say talk to your mothers and fathers.  Sisters and brothers.  We advocate that constantly.  We helped originate the Marilyn Buck Abolitionist Collective here in the PNW to encourage the development of European revolutionaries who will do that work.  Those are the principles and the strategies and tactics, but remember, the conditions dictate the strategy and tactics.  The current conditions call for a relentless and uncompromising denial of space and opportunity for white supremacists to organize.  This is not a contradiction to anything we have been preaching.  White supremacists are not going to be the low hanging fruit for genuine White revolutionaries to talk to, especially right now.  The conditions don't warrant it.  Instead, the conditions warrant White revolutionaries doing what is starting to happen.  Prohibit these people from having platforms and access to other White people.  And do that by any means necessary.  So, we commend the actions taking place to prevent these terrible people from speaking out.  What's missing is while you are stopping them from spreading their filth, you still need to be speaking to Europeans who aren't members of white supremacist organizations and explaining to them why it's important to prohibit these people from having spaces to organize.  Its important because by them having space, it legitimizes their ideas and you cannot permit this to happen on any level.  So, carry on and develop strategies to inform the public why this is important.  And, your messaging is going to be important.  Stop using these watered down terms like "white nationalist" and "Alt-right."  You cannot juxtapose white nationalism and Black nationalism.  Black nationalists exist only because African people have been colonized on the basis of us being Africans so the Black nationalist movement has been a response to that by calling for African people to unite to fight back against that oppression.  The basis here is Black nationalism is a prerequisite struggle to socialist development and an African contribution to the worldwide struggle to achieve this.  That's why we Pan-Africanists say that Pan-Africanism is the highest expression of Black power and that Pan-Africanism is our contribution to the world struggle for justice and human progress.  There is no historical way to frame white nationalism in this context because white people have never been systemically oppressed by non-Europeans because of their race/nationality so to permit them to use the term white nationalism suggests that they need a movement based on their race to organize themselves.  The correct term always has been and always will be white supremacists.  I've heard them try to explain away the difference.  White supremacists want to exterminate brown people whereas white nationalists simply want to separate.  This is nothing except nonsense to legitimize their ideologies.  If White people want to separate there are all types of ways they can do that.  There are plenty of places, for example, in Eastern Europe, where there are no brown people.  Those who want that can and should move to those places, but that's not what these slick white supremacists really want, separation.  What they want is to rid the Americas of all brown people.  And, clearly, the only way that happens is by removing us.  So, they advance ideas among White people that suggest they are better off without us.  That's what they have always done.  Whether they do it by ideological manipulation or organized violence to remove us, the objectives are the same.  White revolutionaries have to develop and advance the correct notion that the U.S. and the Americas, Israel, and Australia, don't belong to European people.  The Europeans invaded those territories and are settler colonial invaders.  The brown people are in those places because they were either there before the Europeans came there, the Europeans kidnapped them and brought them there, or the Europeans destroyed those people's national homelands so that they have been forced for political and economic reasons to go to those places.  So, Europeans don't get to request us to leave.  We have asked the Indigenous people many times and they have consistently told us we are welcome to stay here and their opinion is the only one that matters to us.  Besides, this is really not going to be an issue for African people once Africa is free, but I digress.

European/White comrades.  Organize, organize, organize!  Stop these white supremacists whenever and wherever they raise their ugly heads.  Develop counter narratives to disrupt and challenge their backward views and mount a massive unrelenting campaign to politically educate the masses of European people around the questions and connections between capitalism and white supremacy.  There will come a time again where your strategies will need to shift to having more conversations with the white supremacists so that you are attempting to move them ideologically, but that time is not now.  This is the time to interrupt backward ideas, every time, everywhere.  Its the time to do this in an organized fashion that wins the tide among your communities.  Meanwhile, we'll keep organizing our communities.  This is the best way we can work together.  Its really the only materialist way we can work together effectively. 

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Blaming Kaepernick and Others for Not Voting is Weak

11/16/2016

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Professional football player Colin Kaepernick expressed the fact that he didn't vote for either candidate in last week's U.S. election because he saw both choices as being poison for Africans and all oppressed peoples.  By expressing the same honesty and integrity that he has expressed throughout his protest against police terrorism, Kaepernick has received roaring criticism from people from all sectors of this backward society.  I saw one extremely ignorant rant by sports - whatever he is - Stephen A. Smith where he argued that Kaepernick's refusal to vote destroyed the credibility of his protest movement.  Since I'm a student of history, I'm contrasting this today to the video I watched last night of Kwame Ture (upholding my annual act of reading and studying his life each year since he made his physical transition in 1998), when he was Stokely Carmichael and chairperson of the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC).  In that video, which was filmed 50 years ago during SNCC's fight for voting power for African people through the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party and the Lowndes County Freedom Organization (the first Black Panther Party in Alabama), Kwame was berated by European reporters for SNCC's organizing strategy of empowering African people by any means necessary.  In that interview, Kwame repeatedly made the point that it was surreal how the European reporters were more interested in SNCC's refusal to denounce armed protection of African voting rights than they were in the reasons why Africans had to be armed in the first place e.g. the continued and systemic violence against African people for just attempting to exercise our rights to be free.  Now, 50 years later, we are no freer than we were in Mississippi and Alabama in 1966, yet these critics still wish to act as if African people and anyone else doesn't have the right to check out of this corrupt voting system.

Although Kaepernick is probably one of the most high profile people in this country to admit in public that he didn't vote, he's far from alone in not participating.  It has already been confirmed by the Secretary of State's office that 45% of eligible voters didn't vote.  We know that about 26% voted for Clinton and 25% voted for Trump.  We know that although he won the presidency, he didn't win the popular vote (Clinton received almost 1 million more actual votes than Trump).  We know that about 5% voted for Stein, Mickey Mouse, etc.  We also know that the reason the so-called battle ground states are that is because each of those states has a long documented history of voter intimidation and disenfranchisement.  So, essentially, we are facing the exact same problems in 2016 that we did in 1966 and the masses of people, all people, have nothing more to show for it.  That's why, instead of criticizing Kaepernick, we should be looking at the reasons most people don't vote and why they have never voted because if you take out the 2008 election, this is a true statement for the last 60 years. 

Clearly, people are making it plain that the capitalist electoral process is corrupt and they have no interest in validating it by participating in it as if it actually represents a democratic process.  And, the shaming of people with threats that they are responsible for Trump and his white supremacy are baseless.  The white supremacy didn't just rise up unannounced out of the ashes.  It's always been there and its more than a little dangerous for well meaning (and some not so well meaning) people to suggest that this is some form of new white supremacy we are facing today.  I listened very carefully to the horror stories my mother, father, and grandmother told me about growing up in Louisiana during the 20s, 30s, and 40s.  There is nothing happening today that didn't happen in much greater graphic and violent detail then.  In fact, its a little arrogant to suggest otherwise because to do so suggests that because its happening in your life, that it has more importance without backing that up with science.  Surely, social media has made the attacks, the police shootings, the threats, and all of that much more accessible to many more people, but that doesn't mean its anything new.  The truth is African and other oppressed people have endured much more than we could ever face today and the credit for that goes to their sacrifices.  And actually, the fact this is true is the reason people are not willing to be intimidated into voting for the lessor of white supremacists because people are tired of that entire charade and the fact even celebrities are articulating it should be an indication of just how tired people are.

What should be happening instead of this weak critique of Kaepernick and others is an assessment of what work is going on to build capacity to fight back and build a better world.  People can say whatever they want about who's fault Trump's victory belongs to, but whomever it is, I feel like we should acknowledge that this has galvanized people to see the necessity to stand up and organize better than anything I've ever seen.  That much has changed.  And, I know we won't organize for something better as long as some part of us believes what exists will work to solve our problems.  Kwame Ture and others in SNCC, etc., sacrificed more than most of us today will ever know to win us the vote.  Still, he always said it was a tactic and not a principle.  Even in the 50 year old interview I watched last night, he made it clear to the racists interrogating him that African people deserve the right to determine for ourselves what path towards freedom we decide to choose.  I believe that almost half of the eligible voters deciding not to vote for either candidate is a clear statement that we are in the initial stages of people starting to make that choice. 

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Eighteen Years after Kwame Ture & The Vote He Fought For

11/14/2016

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After spending the last week listening to people who just realized there is a struggle being waged telling us if we didn't vote, Trump is our fault, I'm thinking tonight about the fact November 15th commemorates 18 years since we lost Kwame Ture, formally Stokely Carmichael, in his physical form.  Kwame's work and sacrifice for the vote is legendary and his commitment is the reason his life will forever be eternal.  And, since he actually fought for the vote.  Risked his life for the vote.  And, lived long enough afterward to evolve and give us a scientific analysis of the vote, there's no question we owe it to ourselves to listen to what he had to say about it.  I'm saying this because for most people reading this, Kwame is a man talking and/or being talked about on Youtube.  Or, he's someone you've read about in books or seen in documentaries like the (tragic) "Black Power Mixtape."  For me, Kwame was, and is, a leading cadre and comrade within the All African People's Revolutionary Party.  A brother I had the privilege of working alongside, struggling with, learning from, and being heavily influenced by.  And the respect you should have for Kwame isn't because of his activist resume because if you spent time with Kwame like I did, you already know that he never told you much about his personal history.  In fact, most of what I know about what he did while he was in the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee and the Black Panther Party I've learned from my own scholarship.  I read that Kwame was arrested 26 times between 1961 and 1966 for fighting for the vote.  I read that Kwame was arrested over 40 times throughout his life for fighting for African liberation.  That he was beaten and harassed often when he was locked up by racist Southern sheriffs.  He never told me any of that.  He never mentioned, nor did I ever see any indication that he was the least bit concerned or irritated by the fact the White left never made him the darling of the movement the way they adopted Angela Davis and others.  All he ever said about Angela Davis was praiseworthy.  It was me who raised with him often how I felt White people were mad at him for telling them to organize their own people while they ate up everything Sister Angela said.  I still believe that after seeing them come out just to argue with Kwame and dispute his logic on what was best for the African liberation struggle.  He never responded much when I raised that.  We never had much of a positive reception from the White left when Kwame came to town, so we knew to expect whatever from them, but I believe he was more than a little disappointed that so many Africans engaged in similar behavior at his presence.  I say that because it was only towards the Africans that I saw him get agitated.  Again, most of this, I had to figure out on my own because he never had much to say about it.  I was the one who researched his infamous joke about "a women's position in SNCC being prone."  I seriously researched it because I wanted to understand why women, mostly White women, raised this everywhere we went.  And, I wanted to understand why someone as adept at defending their positions as Kwame, never seemed to have a desire to engage people much around that accusation when they raised it against him.  He never talked about much to us, so I researched it myself because I wanted to know so that I could either criticize him or defend him.  What I learned about that incident is that the joke occurred at about 2am after a marathon SNCC meeting.  Kwame was standing around with a group of SNCC women, African and European.  They all knew him and he knew them.  The comment was made as a joke between friends and comrades.  All three women have clarified that repeatedly for the last 50 years, yet it still comes up as much as anything else Kwame did, and he did a lot for our movements.  I admit it irritates me because we all know that you cannot judge a person just by one joke they make.  You have to judge them by their actions.  This is why balanced people know Donald Trump's comments about women isn't just locker room talk because he has a track record of disrespecting women.  Kwame Ture does not.  In fact, Kwame's track record is in encouraging and supporting women on the frontlines of our struggle and everyone with any experience within the All African People's Revolutionary Party, especially the members of the All African Women's Revolutionary Union, know it.  But, no one seems interested in researching the truth.  Only in staying with the drama. 

This contradiction is also true as it relates to Kwame's legacy around fighting for the vote.  People today who are heavily influenced by bourgeois ideology are determined to make voting within the capitalist system a principle.  They are convinced that if you refuse to do it, you are violating your oath to humanity to protect it.  In taking this a-historical approach they are playing right into the hands of imperialism because this analysis accepts the notion that the only legitimate form of struggle is that which is done within the context of the capitalist system.  This way, there can never be a legitimate form of struggle that seeks to overthrow this system and anyone who suggests so, is criminally insane.  This logic ignores the basic fact that historically, most eligible people have never voted and this past election is no different.  Almost 46% of eligible people didn't vote at all.  26% voted for Clinton.  25% voted for Trump, and the rest voted for Skippy and Donald Duck, etc.  These people who are blaming people who didn't vote are completely missing the point.  Those people are not expressing that the wrong candidate won.  They are expressing that the system itself is invalid.  The people who refused to participate are not all apathetic.  They are telling you that they refuse to endorse a system that doesn't represent them.  They are telling you that a vote for Clinton is a vote for heart disease.  They are telling you that a vote for Trump is a vote for cancer.  They are telling you that a vote for Stein, Johnson, and Mickey Mouse is a vote for diarrhea.  They are saying the entire system of capitalism is rotten and that they reject your pressuring them that they have to choose between heart disease, cancer, and diarrhea.  They don't want any of those things and people are telling them they are insane for feeling that way.  This logic only benefits the capitalist system, not the people making the decision, because it continues to validate this system when it has demonstrated long ago that it has no credibility.

Meanwhile, someone who sacrificed so much so that Africans, Indigenous (Latinos), Asians, and women could vote, is ignored.  He is not even known to those who benefit from his sacrifice.  If Kwame, Ms. Fannie Lou Hamer, and others had not bravely and successfully organized the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party to boldly disrupt the Democratic Party's lock step, ironclad, positioning of European men only within the Party, there would never have been anything other than White men in the electoral process.  So, all of these people owe people like Kwame Ture at least to know who he was and what he had to say about voting after he risked his life to get it so you can sit up today and perpetrate as the moral expert on voting rights.  What Kwame said about the vote in the 90s is that it is not the principle some of you who are attempting to shame people who didn't vote into believing.  What he said is that he and the others who fought for the vote never saw it the way you are trying to falsely present it today.  What he said is the vote was always simply a tactic.  He explained that when he helped launch the Lowndes County Freedom Organization in Lowndes County, Alabama, in 1965, the first Black Panther Party for Self Defense, they clearly saw the vote as a tactic.  And if you know Kwame from Youtube, you should view it closely enough to follow how he clearly explains the difference between principles, which you never compromise on, and tactics, which you change depending upon their effectiveness.  The vote is a tactic and since no one even bothers to assess what work the people not voting are doing, which is often much more substantive and consequential than a capitalist vote once every couple of years, then don't you think its time to listen closely to, and think ever so carefully about, what people like Kwame were trying to tell us?  If we could discipline ourselves enough to quiet down our egos so that we could listen, could we possibly develop an understanding of what's actually going on in this society?  Could it be that maybe SNCC was on to something with their organizing models?  Since we all reading this have benefited from their work, isn't that at least worth a look or two?

This is all food for thought.  You see, we are all going to die.  The only question is what you are doing now so that you can build the type of legacy for yourself that Kwame Ture has.  So that people are talking about you 18 years after you are gone.  You can't do that with money.  Nobody cares.  As soon as you die they spend all the money and you are quickly forgotten because no one wants to give anyone else any credit for their material gains.  You can only do it with integrity and principles.  With consistency and selflessness.  Kwame Ture had all of those things.  He also had courage and heart.  That's why I'm writing about him 18 years later.  Because maybe if we start looking at people like him, instead of the blowhards that seem to be attracting all of our attention these days, we can develop models that can give us insight into how to stop all this madness.  Since we have no control over when we are born and how you are born has nothing to do with how your life will go.  That's why it makes sense to me to think of someone when they die because how you die defines what your life was about.  No matter how scary things are today, there are always people who faced conditions much scarier.  No matter how much anxiety we have today, there's always been more.  No matter how much we get overwhelmed, there are always others who figured out how to manage that and keep moving.  Kwame was one of those people.  That's why we remember him, study him, and try to learn from his message.  Its there for a reason.  For you, during times like this.

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Critically Assessing these anti-Trump Protests

11/11/2016

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Tuesday's election did much to effectively rip the facade away.  For many people, the U.S. capitalist system is being exposed for what it always has been since its inception; a racist, patriarchal, oppressive empire.  The realities of how the electoral college is a system built to insure pathways to victory that circumvent popular voting along with the shock some people are experiencing at coming face to face with the naked racism of their European (White) family members, has a lot of folks reeling right now.  As a result, many people are deciding to not take all of this sitting down.  Folks are hitting the streets in cities across the country, across the world.  Of course, it goes without saying that any protest against the capitalist system, whether a street protest, kneeling against the national anthem, or just calling in sick to work when you really aren't sick, is a good protest.  And (at least in the case of Portland, Oregon where I live), people breaking the property owned by capitalist entities, or even just businesses symbolic of the capitalist system - even if they are small businesses - isn't the deplorable thing some people are labeling it today.  Malcolm X spoke clearly about the property damage issue 52 years ago when he said the people attack the man's property because they cannot get to him.  Those businesses - all of them - will have insurance claims filed and checks cut to them to address whatever damage occurred before this probably even gets posted.  So, provided no people were hurt, you won't hear any concerns expressed here about the damaged property of anyone representing this backward system.

There is a desperate need for critical assessment of these protests.  Acting out and expressing anger cannot be enough.  People have to ask critical questions.  Why be in the streets?  What's the objective?  Is it to remove Trump as president?  If so, the only way you will have any semblance of a chance to make that happen is by getting millions of people organized to engage in sustained actions against this system that bring the system to a screeching halt, for an extended period of time.  I'm talking about protests that cause commerce to stop, not for a few hours or days, but for months.  That's the only thing that will push the power structure to the point where it becomes forced to make serious concessions.  And, if people were organized and committed enough to raise the stakes this way, this could and would happen.  The problem of course is we all know people don't have that level of commitment in these protests.  Not even close.  Most people involved in these protests don't even belong to organizations which means they are not engaged in any regular work to fight for justice.  If they aren't engaged in any consistent work, then at best, they are just reacting in anger.  History teaches us that this approach is never sustainable.  As time moves on, the majority of these people acting out on emotion will grow tired and will lose that anger.  Within a period of time, most of these folks will go back to business as usual.  I can assure you, the capitalist system is built and primed to wait those people out.  While many of these angry people just got angry one, two, or three years ago, the capitalist system has been doing what it does for hundreds of years. Its not the least bit impressed with you breaking some windows.  It has the previously mentioned insurance sham monopoly to address that.  It has its police troops to address you.  It has its prison system to filter you out of society.  It has its media arm to shape the narrative about you so tightly that your own family members will believe it if they don't already.  It has all of these things because it is organized and that's why it wins all the time and the people engaged in spontaneous protest and reaction never seem to make any progress beyond one or two nights of letting off steam.

The other part of the question that the protesters have to raise is if you are out there because you are upset that Trump was elected, are you saying that had Clinton won you wouldn't be out there?  Or, if Trump is "not your president" then who is?  Would Clinton have been your president?  Sanders?  Was Obama your president?  Bush?  Bill Clinton?  Because if its just a question for you of who won the capitalist election then we are really dealing with a problem of illusion.  Whoever wins the U.S. presidency will have to carry out the agenda of capitalism and imperialism.  The chief appendages of those oppressive systems are white supremacy and patriarchy.  Whoever wins, none of this changes.  In fact, there is a strong argument that its better to know where your enemy is coming from than to be lulled to sleep by a charmer like Obama.  Its the same capitalist system, yet in two days, Trump has gotten more of you in the streets than Obama ever did.  So, who is your president?  Who would it take to make you submit to this capitalist system?

Finally, there is a quite a bit of interest on the left to paying attention to security, learning self defense, firearms training, etc.  People are concerned about right wing supporters, white supremacists, etc., being emboldened and people want to be prepared.  This makes sense.  The concerns here are certainly legitimate.  You can never protect yourself against these threats on an individual level though.  So, the question here is are people really wanting to create community defense spaces or are people just looking for a way to make themselves feel better about a situation that is spiraling crazily out of control?  You cannot confuse your fears and desires to feel safe, on a personal level, to being ready to build capacity for communities to fight to overturn this backward system.

So, we don't condemn any protests, but we do say that spontaneous, disorganized protests, which these protests are, place many people in danger.  It may be a night of anger expression for you, but to the state, its a time for them to do what they are organized to do, repress you.  And, to continue this way means its only a matter of time before you get hurt or killed.  Or worse, you get someone else hurt or killed. Of course, we know that death is unfortunately a part of struggle, but if we are to die, shouldn't we die on the pathway to victory and not just because we were angry and out expressing that anger in disorganized and unprincipled ways?  In ways that disregard the safety of those around us?  In ways that don't build capacity because we are keeping people from getting to their families?  To the jobs they desperately need to feed those families?  In ways that are doing more to disrupt the lives of people we should be reaching out to than the system we are fighting against?  I can say with confidence that many of the white so-called anarchist people who are active in Portland here are just as racist and reactionary as the police.  Just watch them in action at these marches.  They behave with the same white arrogance against people that the police demonstrate.  That makes it a coin toss between them and the police as to who would be more brutal if in power.  No thanks.  What we propose instead is that you acknowledge your anger.  Acknowledge your fear and frustration.  Acknowledge your desire to learn how to defend yourselves.  Acknowledge your sense of powerlessness.  And then start to seriously recognize that none of those things are going to change until you are ready to step up your game.  The people you are going up against are ready for you.  So, if you are going to win, you will need to get ready for them.  That means getting prepared - yes - organized.  For starters, you have to be in an organization to be organized.  That's two or more people with the same objectives.  That's all.  Its not about the structure, its about the mission.  For those in organizations, its about getting focused.  Not just paying attention 50% of the time, but taking ownership of your organization to hold pieces of it to help build its capacity.  Taking pressure off of those in the organization that you expect to do all the critical work.  In other words, if you are already in an organization, but you have no specific responsibilities and/or assignments besides the basic aspect of showing up, you are not much different than the person who is not in an organization.  Do you give more to the cause than you receive?  Or, are you an energy suck?  These are the questions of organization that have to be resolved if we want to win.  If you aren't interested in resolving those questions, or our true objective is to just find a place where we can feel better about our suffering, than at least find a way to recognize that so you are not draining the energy of those who truly want to win.  Finally, everyone who is angry has to grapple with this question.  What do you want?  Where do you wish to see things go?  Your participation has to evolve beyond just what you are angry about.  You have to be thinking about how to build community because community building is the only way you are going to win.  You won't win as an individual and if you acting as an individual when you protest that is evidence for you that you are not doing anything to advance the struggle.  You are just doing things to satisfy your ego.  I'm not trying to make you change if you don't want to change.  I have better things to do.  I'm just trying to help people see through you so they can make their own decisions about how to contribute effectively to real forward progress.
  So, we will start to build momentum and gain speed towards victory.  I don't know about you, but that's much better than just letting off steam.








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Facing A Trump Reality and Why I'm not Shocked or Scared to Do It

11/9/2016

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I fully understand the implications, reformist as they may be, e.g. who selects the Supreme Court Justices who decide things I'm partial to such as the ability of labor unions to organize, women's rights to control their bodies, and what constitutes discrimination of any kind.  So, its not necessary for anyone to feel the need  to extol to me the importance of being able to select the U.S. President, even if we are just talking about incremental reforms.

I am also very sensitive to the pain I see people expressing the day after Donald Trump was elected President.  That pain is real and people are frightened and they have every logical reason to feel that way.  This man literally ran and won on a platform of dehumanizing African and Indigenous peoples after having a clear history of practicing discrimination in housing against those communities.  He has exposed himself as a patriarchal liar and abuser and if he can win millions of votes and become president after trumpeting those types of primitive values, I understand why people are feeling insecure today.

So, my problem isn't that I don't respect the value of reform or that I am insensitive to why people feel an intense sense of loss today.  My problem is I completely reject the entire model in the first place.  You see, its impossible for anyone to convince me that I should see Donald Trump any differently than Barack Obama, George Bush, or George Washington for that matter.  I say this because regardless of what the package looks or sounds like, it must act consistently in the interests of the capitalist and imperialist system that it represents.  That means Obama as well as Trump.  And, since my politics are revolutionary, and not reformist, we are trained to focus on the system and not just the issues the system creates.  In other words, from my perspective, African people (using us simply as an example) within in the U.S. had absolutely no elected officials in this country in 1960.  That means zero, nada, zip.  We also couldn't live where we wanted even if we could afford it, get hired for jobs we were qualified for, expect our children to receive a quality education, or feel secure that the police would protect us in 1960.  In 2016, we have the POTUS, dozens of members of Congress (and even a Congressional Black Caucus), and thousands of mayors, and other local elected officials across the country.  Yet, the argument can easily be made that we have less power and resource capacity today than we had in 1960.  The proof for that argument is we still regularly face housing discrimination, even from Trump, despite us being able to afford to live wherever we want. We still face regular and dependable discrimination when applying for and promoting on jobs.  And police continue to act in the same mentally towards us that they perfected in their early days serving as the violent slave posses who brutally forced us to continue working in the oppressive cotton fields of the South.  So, elected officials or not, the masses of African people lack power and since we lack power we lack the ability to transform our lives.  This is a systemic problem and because its systemic, it can't and won't be changed just by replacing the personalities that drive the system with new people.  Clearly, no matter who drives the car, its still the same car and therefore, it will perform the same way, regardless of the age, nationality, gender, or sensitivities of the driver. 

I know that it is the system that must be changed in order for us to progress towards a better world.  Although some people see the capitalist system as a system that can be improved, I see it as an empire that must be destroyed and I see our glorious work to create one unified socialist Africa as African people's outstanding contribution to the worldwide movement towards justice and forward human progress.  So, since that's my vision of the world, I cannot tell you that I was saddened or depressed by Trump's victory.  In fact, a part of me is optimistic because Trump's overt patriarchy and white supremacy has awakened a sleeping giant who had been lulled to sleep by eight years of Obama's implementation of imperialism's policies with a cool style that completely transfixed the African masses.  What Obama's symbolic presidency did was convince people that progress can be judged by token advancement.  The fact we have the image of an African family in the White House permitted millions of Africans to overlook Obama solidifying Afrocom's devastating effect on Africa where almost 100 U.S. military bases have been created in Africa.  These bases are maintained there to insure imperialism's dominance there by identifying and uprooting any efforts to organize a sincere resistance to neo-colonialism in Africa.  The imagery in the White House blinded us to Obama systemically murdering Muammar Qaddafi and destabilizing the most stable area in Africa.  The Obama led North Atlantic Treaty Organization bombs completely obliterated the Wasra Dam Project in the Sahara desert that was supplying potable drinking water to thousands of Africans after experts said it was not possible.  Now, that water is gone, but most of you missed that because while Obama was leading the charge to destroy Libya, you were distracted by his singing Al Green and starting a neo-colonial program to help our young men strive to become prosecutors, so that they can put more of our young people behind bars.  With Trump's open anti-African rhetoric, you probably won't be so easy to fool.  And, if last night was any indication, you are talking like you are finally ready to get to work.  We'll see if that's true.  Or, if after a few weeks/months, once you find a niche which gives you security that your personal reality won't change much, you will be back to giving only 20 - 30% effort towards organizing our people for liberation, if that. 

Yes, Europeans voted for Trump in historical numbers and that scares you because the message is they don't need you and they don't care what you think.  You have a right to be concerned, but if we couldn't see this coming then we have no one else to blame besides ourselves.  There have been plenty of us telling you that capitalism in crumbling and since that's happening, White folks ain't protected no more.  They are feeling some of the same sting from this system that you have grown used to functioning with, but they aren't used to it.  And, they have proven repeatedly that they are never going to be willing to suffer the way we do.  So since we know their incomes have shrunk (because we know ours have shrunk much more) we should have known that they were going to react the same way they have historically reacted - by blaming us - not the superrich who are really responsible, for their suffering.

Yeah, I really don't intend to dismiss your shock today, but I have to be honest when I tell you I don't share that sentiment for the reasons expressed above.  And, there's one more thing.  And, I don't mean to rub anything in, but if I don't say this, I'm being entirely dishonest.  I have never seen myself as an American.  I have always subscribed to Malcolm X's sane logic that "when a cat has kittens in an oven, you don't call them biscuit."  Our ancestors were kidnapped and brought here to work as slaves to build up industrialization and the Western empire.  At the time of that kidnapping, we were Africans.  When we started our first church here, we called it - correctly - the African Methodist Episcopalian Church.  When we started our first organization here it was called the Free Africa Society.  America has tried to kill us for 500+ years so you will never be able to convince me that we could ever be Americans.  That to me is like Jewish people calling themselves (in the words of KRS - 1) "Jewish Hitlers."  Since I know I'm an African, and not an American, and I know American identity equals white supremacy.  And, I know the masses of European White working class people are the most confused, coddled, and reactionary people on the face of the Earth.  Nothing against them.  I love them as the human family they are, but my love doesn't blind me.  They have failed in the quest for justice for the last 250 years so there is no reason I would be surprised that they did yesterday what they have done consistently - align themselves based on white supremacy and white identity over human justice and working class people against the superrich.  

This is one of the elements required for being a conscious African living in the U.S.  You develop a strong capacity to face truth head on.  No matter how painful or dysfunctional.  That doesn't mean I'm heartless.  I recognize that many people find it too painful to face the realities many of us have always known.  So, I suggest that those of you who are hurting, take a couple of days to recover.  You are the person who has found out the one you thought was worthy of your love is nothing except a low down dirty cheat and killer.  You gave them your best so we'll give you the right to mourn for a minute, but you must also accept that I am one of those friends you had that has been telling you all along how rotten this person you love has always been.  So, while you wipe your eyes, I'm going to be handing you a tissue and telling you to move on with your life.  For us, that should mean getting involved in organizing work and building consciousness and capacity to make this world a better place.  One thing you mourning folk have going for us is those same white working class folks who exercised such insulting racism against Obama over the last eight years?  You already know we ain't trying to hear no validation of your guy Trump.  This is especially true for someone like me who already wasn't validating Trump, Clinton, Obama, Bush, and any of the mouthpieces for capitalism and imperialism.  Now, there's a thought.  Maybe another reason why I'm not so distressed today is because I have an ideological home, and ideological family, an ideological mission, and practical work to do to define who I am and what I want to be.  I had that before this and any other capitalist election and I'll have it afterwards because I knew that no matter who won this election, the masses of humanity would lose and that whatever it ended up being, my work would be the same as it was before yesterday.
  Maybe, that work is about to get that much more interesting.
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Now, I Contemplate Whether the State Tried to Kill Me

11/7/2016

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This is no conspiracy theory.  I have no absolute proof.  I've been moved today to just tell you what happened to me approximately 15 years ago and you can come to your own conclusions.  This is the first time I've wrote extensively about this because I haven't really been that concerned before, nor am I that concerned now.  That's because I see my function as doing the work for liberation and I know that if you seriously do this work, things - all types of things - are going to happen to you.  The other reason I've never really focused publicly on this incident is that I am usually not very good at talking about my personal self/life and that's simply because when I was young, the message I always got was whatever was happening with me wasn't important.  So, this is a day of reflection.  The reason today is that day is because I just received a call from my daughter earlier informing me that my older brother, the brother I didn't even know I had until I was 17, had died.  As long as I can remember, he had been involved in our family, although his relationship was never made clear to me.  As I entered my teens, I began to try and figure out his connection and in doing so, I resolved that he was also my mother's son.  When I confronted her with this information as a 17 year old would, she and the entire family acted as if I had fired a cannon in the house.  So, I dropped it and I never discussed this with my mother and father again.  After they died, I tried to reach out to my brother, but I felt he responded to me like someone would respond to a person who was just released from a long prison stint for killing a mutually loved relative.  Eventually, he and I would talk and he would tell me he always knew.  I wondered why he hadn't said anything, but because the atmosphere was so tense between us, I didn't ask him.  We didn't talk much after that.  Maybe because he felt I should have reached out sooner while I wondered why he hadn't.  Especially since he was the one who knew.  Also, I've always been conscious of the impact the changes I've manifested in my life have had on all members of my living biological family who are not my daughter and next oldest sister.  I'm talking about my dedication into revolutionary Pan-African politics.  My "legally" changing my name in 1984.  The decision of my ex-wife and I to raise our daughter with revolutionary African values that didn't include celebrating imperialist holidays, any of them.  None of this may sound like much to you now, but back in the mid eighties, all these things were the equivalent of national treason.  It was always an issue.  During job interviews.  In social circles, and certainly among family members.  The changes scared people.  They thought I was a terrorist.  That I hated White people.  That I had joined a cult.  All of this made me an outcast in my own family beyond my parents and two sisters who grew to accept, and respect, my way of life.  Unfortunately, all of them are gone now except that one sister.  So, now that my brother is gone, I'm thinking today about him and this feeling of being an outcast which has defined my relationship to my biological family today.  And, please don't feel sorry for me.  I feel overwhelmingly fortunate to have developed an outstanding extended and ideological family over the years.  People I have been able to depend upon and people who can depend upon me.  My daughter has grown up surrounded by revolutionary love and the shortcomings I experienced growing up I was able to translate into healthy behavior in raising my daughter.  I am thinking of this isolation outcast thing today though because I realize this extended far beyond my biological family.  I hope I don't come off as dismissive or insensitive about my brother's death. I do feel the loss, but I'm no hypocrite.  The inner city taught me how to manage pain and honestly, its a skill that has come in handy over the years.  I am thinking today about how this isolation I've always experienced in my family actually has always extended beyond biology.  Its defined my existence to this entire society I live in.  My life and actions are, have always been, and will always be, in direct contradiction with this society.  That has always made me the oddball to most everyone.  And, as I thought about the question of my brother and his death today, I naturally thought about my own mortality and whether there is more I should be contemplating about the incident 15 years ago that I'm about to tell you about.  Was that incident just an isolated health issue or could it have been something designed to take my life because of my political work, or who knows why?

On July 29th, 2002, in Sacramento, California, I developed the most intense headache I've ever experienced.  This is especially true because I'm not a person who typically even gets headaches.  I've exercised routinely on a daily basis since the 1980s.  I haven't eaten red meat since 1983 and I've never smoked - anything - or drank (except for a period between 1981 and 1982 when I briefly took up an affinity for beer).  So, I'd lived a very pain free life in all spheres, and this is still basically true.  That's why I was concerned when I got this devastating headache that day.  My concern amplified when I tried to massage my head as people typically do when they get a headache.  My thinking was doing so would provide some relief against the pressure.  Imagine my shock when not only was there no relief, but once I applied the pressure to the lower right portion of my skull, the pain began to immediately spread to other parts of my head in a shooting fashion.  This panicked me and the panic intensified when I suddenly began to get extremely dizzy.  As I was attempting to check into a hospital Emergency Room and they questioned me about what meds, etc., I'd taken in the last couple of months, I recalled that I had recently had an inoculation shot.  I was headed to Senegal and Gambia that next month and the shots were needed to secure visas to those countries.  I had fallen sick after receiving the yellow fever shot, but had recovered and felt fine until this occurrence this July day. 

The short version of this story is a few days later, after going through several traumatic instances that reflect the racist and inhumane nature of this capitalist health care system, I had a major seizure, something I'd never experienced before in my life, and I ended up in a coma for five days.  I was placed on a respirator.  The neurologists were so convinced I was going to die that they even had a Catholic Priest come in to perform last rites over me while I was out (I was not conscious when this happened, but I did distinctly remember this priest's voice when I heard it in the hallway some three weeks after I awoke.  Once she and I talked, and I told her that I knew her voice in a serious way, not just from overhearing it, she admitted to me that she prayed over me when I was in that coma).  Once I awoke, I was subjected to four different neurologists.  In fact, they were so interested in what had stricken me, and how I had survived it, that they paraded a number of doctors and medical students in front of me for about a week.  I was even told that my case was the topic at several training conferences in California.  I can also tell you that the doctors were so confused that they sequestered me several times to interrogate me about whether I had been in prison or not.  Although they didn't tell me at the time, they were operating under the incorrect guess that I had some sort of STD of the brain, whatever that is.  Once they finally abandoned this very amateurish and racist theory, one neurologist, who had the social skills of a racoon, actually went to work and determined that I had experienced a brain clot, or a "leaky" brain stem.  He told me that I came within a hair of experiencing a major stroke and major brain damage.  And, even after he told me that, they spent the next two or three days testing me repeatedly to make sure this damage didn't occur (some people may still dispute that it didn't).  I ended up staying in the hospital for over a month.  I lost 40 pounds, and I left the hospital with a friend - diabetes, which I still have in my life today.  Since that time, I'd had 0 issues related to this incident and today, while properly managing the diabetes, I'm in great health, probably the best of my life.  In other words, there are absolutely no traces of this strange incident that afflicted me 15 years ago.

Again, I have no proof of anything.  What I've described above are simply the facts of what happened to me.  What I can tell you is just two months before this incident, I helped lead probably the most militant march in Sacramento City's history.  We had been working for months to make our annual African Liberation Day march a splash.  We were tired of the city's racist rules and regulations so we had collectively decided we wouldn't be getting any permits.  Instead, we enlisted the support of the 40+ member strong Aztez Dance troop to lead the march (in accordance with our position that this is the land of the Indigenous people).  We were supported by the local Soul Brothers, an all African motorcycle club who happily agreed to block all streets for our march.  And believe me, no motorist dared challenge them, green lights or not.  I remember during that march how there were a number of professional looking European camera crews, not media, they were there to - although we never called them.  These other camera crews were set up taking lots of pictures along the march route.  There was universal agreement among us that these strange camera crews were police agencies, but they didn't try to impede us so we didn't engage them either.  We also had a large contingent from the Nation of Islam and their para-military Fruit of Islam (FOI) soldiers.  This last part is important because when we arrived back at McClatchy Park to have our rally, as I began to start the rally as the M/C, several police cars dramatically drove up to the stage with sirens blaring and lights flashing.  As they exited their cars and began to make their way to the stage, dozens of members of the Nation's FOI began engaging in their para-military drills, running circles around the police officers.  There was no mistaking how much this frightened the police as hundreds of Africans openly laughed at them.  By the time they were able to talk to me, all the women officer could say is that they found some car keys in the parking lot.  So, they did all of that to give the M/C of this militant march and rally some car keys.  All while we had amplified sound with no sound permit.  A march of hundreds of African, Indigenous, Palestinian, (and a few Irish comrades - the only Europeans in the march), with no march permit.  While we occupied the stage with no park permit.  The march caused major issues with traffic on that Memorial Day weekend, yet they said nothing about any of that.  They just gave us those keys.  And, there was much more they could have said.  We were engaging in intensive organizing all over Sacramento during that time and I can remember being pulled over by police several times for strange and unusual circumstances during that period.  A year before, the City had actually sued me, and the All African People's People's Revolutionary Party, for our propaganda that was mysteriously wheat pasted all over town.  Our ACLU lawyers told me the good rich Europeans living around William Land Park took great exception to the posters with Muammar Qaddafi's picture on them so close to their pristine homes.  The City lost that case and they made it clear they weren't happy about it.  But, again, I don't have any proof of anything else. I'm just telling you what happened.  Maybe the blood clot resulted from the shot as a simple bad side effect.  Maybe the shot had nothing to do with it.  maybe the intensive political organizing that was taking place around that period of time and the subsequent trip to Africa to engage in more organizing work, was all a coincidence.  Maybe the fact the neurologists had me endure several grueling appointments with the Hemotologist, who tried to tell me there was a glitch with my dad's DNA which probably caused the brain clot (I told him the only glitch was between the brain signals between his brain and his mouth).  Maybe I'm just thinking of all of this now because I just heard today that my brother died.  I can't say for sure.  What I can say is the "official" story when Malcolm X was assassinated was that the Nation of Islam did it.  What we know now is at least two of the actual NOI members who spent years in prison for Malcolm's death couldn't have been there and that the four other people who were there, were never arrested.  We know that along with the fact the FBI has been forced to acknowledge that they had spies at the top level of the Nation of Islam and that they rewarded someone, unnamed, when Malcolm was killed.  What we do know is that when Kwame Nkrumah's government in Ghana was overthrown in 1966, the "official" story was that this happened because Nkrumah was corrupt and stealing the money from the people of Ghana.  What we know now is that the U.S. has admitted undermining the Nkrumah government through the Central Intelligence Agency and that Nkrumah had no money or assets of any kind when he fled to Guinea to live out the rest of his life.  What we know is that the Western capitalist world wanted Nkrumah gone and that's what happened there.  What we know now is despite the "official" story that Muammar Qaddafi and the Libyan Jamihiriya was overthrown in 2011 because the people of Libya wanted "democracy", the real story is that the Obama regime worked day and night to sabotage Qaddafi's government, spreading misinformation and importing mercenaries who posed as dissidents.  As well as instigating the North Atlantic Treaty Organization to bomb Libya into submission as a tactic to force the Libyan people, out of desperation, to want Qaddafi gone.  All of this, we know now, to stop Qaddafi from actualizing Nkrumah's dream for a united Africa through one African currency on the world economic market.

We still have those "official" stories posing as the truth as it relates to other issues like who killed Huey P. Newton?  How did Sekou Ture, Kwame Ture (Stokely Carmichael), and Mawina Kouyate contact and die of cancer in such a close proximity to one another?  How about Hugo Chavez?  How did Khalid Abdul Muhammad die of a brain aneurysm?  Why does all of this happen to our warriors, all the time, while archaic savages like David Rockafeller, Rothchilds, Rudy Guiliani, etc., live and live forever.  Just the type of questions you think about before going to work on a blurry day after you receive the news I received about my brother's death.  I wish him rest in power and I wish you peace and safety, although I have to add that there really is no safety as long as this decadent system is in place and we can never ever have real peace, without justice.


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Consent:  Adults are Confused, but the Youth Know Boundaries

11/6/2016

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The All African People's Revolutionary Party (A-APRP) chapter in Portland, Oregon runs a weekend freedom school called the School of African Roots (SOAR).  Honestly, we are still in the process of getting better organized so consequently, we are just getting to the point where we can really do community outreach for the freedom school.  Still, the African community here recognizes the need for this school so much that just based on word of mouth, we are getting youth and parents every session.  We are taking great pains to insure the youth receive a quality educational experience because we want them to view education as positive.  And, we believe the pathway to making this happen is in the youth being respected, listened to, and given the positive attention that they deserve contrary to the criminalizing that they often receive in the public schools.  Now, as we've said many times, we are not against the hard working teachers of the public school system.  Most of them are sincere, hardworking, and extremely overworked.  Our issue with starting the freedom school isn't against them.  Its against the system they are forced to work for that has a mission of miss-educating children as a strategy of making them grow into the same mindless robots for the capitalist system that most of their parents are.  Go to work - everyday- work, work, work, don't complain.  Just be happy you have a job.  Accept and appreciate massive exploitation.  Say nothing about people being mistreated and disrespected, including yourself.  And, if you do it right, you can have a house, a couple of cars, and maybe even take a vacation every year.  You will need to drink, get high, be abusive, and suffer other forms of anxiety and depression to handle the assault against your humanity, but hey, at least you have things.  More things than the people exploited in other countries.  And, that's what makes this place great, or maybe potentially great again right?

This is all the dysfunctional nonsense that SOAR seeks to inspire our youth to move beyond so that they can become better people than we are.  So, the most recent session had a focus on consent.  We don't believe that any age is too young to talk about this intense subject.  We believe that any age child can understand the concept that their body is where they live and consequently, their body belongs to them and no one has a say in how their body should be touched, treated, and interacted with except them.  The interesting thing in having the discussion with the youth is they had no problem understanding this concept and they often expressed initiative in agreeing wholeheartedly with the principles based within it.  As I left that session, I was inspired by their clarity, but then I had to think about why it is that grown @ss people seemingly have a much harder time than these youth understanding basic issues like boundaries, respect, and not violating other people's living spaces, their bodies. 

So, since many of you so-called adults, especially menfolk, seem to have a much harder time understanding basic healthy behavior than young children, I'm hoping I can help by laying out some basic rules of everyday conduct that even your small brains should be able to understand:

First, NEVER engage in unsolicited sexual advances towards anyone without their consent.  That means, if they haven't told you that they want to hear your views of what you wish could happen between the two of you, then don't offer your opinion on this issue.  By consent, I mean use your basic social skills that you learned when you were 10 years old like our students.  "Hi!  I would love the opportunity to talk to you more and get to know you better!"  If the person doesn't respond positively to that introduction, that means they aren't interested!  Move on!  Any further efforts you make after that to interact with that person is abuse.

Second, if you do make an offer towards someone, any type of personal offer, and they decline, that means NO and the same principle as above applies e.g. STOP engaging with them that way.

Third, NEVER touch anyone without their consent.  Even when you extend your hand for a shake, that's an attempt to gain their consent.  If they don't extend their hand to you, that's their right.  Respect it!  STOP! 

In other words dudes, any physical interaction that isn't provided consent is abuse and could easily be sexual assault.  Now, I think some of you can benefit from some education and clarification.  I think others of you have some very sick and dysfunctional elements of your emotional state that need immediate attention, but you are not my primary concern.  My concern is creating and implementing a vision of community defense and education that prepares our community to make a demand against your behaviors e.g. either change and/or get help, or be dealt with.  Your behaviors against the community cannot and will not be tolerated.  We cannot live in a world where children exhibit better morality than adult men.  So, if you are still even a little confused, let me make it clear that abusive behavior is always unacceptable.  And for those of you who call yourselves activists for justice who perpetuate abusive behaviors in our communities, don't think we don't and/or won't be able to see through your front of being a principled activist while you try to secretly abuse people when you think no one is looking.  We are doing our work.  As we grow stronger with that work, you will be exposed.  And, you will be held accountable. 

Many of us are tired of having to spend 60% of our time dealing with inappropriate behavior instead of being able to devote our energies towards building capacity to fight the enemies of humanity - capitalism, imperialism and its tools of oppression the prison industrial complex, the military industrial complex, class, race, gender oppression and homophobia, along with the continued exploitation of most of the world's people and resources.  So, our ask for you who are engaging in this behavior is if you need help with issues, have some courage and be honest enough to step forward.  We won't judge you for that.  In fact, we will help you, but if you continue to act revolutionary and progressive in the daytime while engaging in oppressive abuse at night, we will expose you and hold you accountable.  The youth are shedding the light.  Its time.



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 White Nationalists - Stay Away from our Living Areas

11/2/2016

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There's been plenty of talk recently all over capitalist media (including of the social variety) about the angry European (White) man.  The emphasis, whether intentional or not, is on how these European men feel abandoned by the political process.  There is much talk about how suicide rates for White men are rising.  Although the objective of all of this appears to be to paint a sympathetic picture of all the trauma that White men are experiencing, what this talk really highlights is how fragile the White male ego (and this is true internationally) is.  And what is being suggested by all this propaganda is that no one should expect these men to tolerate five minutes of discomfort without there being real consequences for the rest of us.  Unfortunately, there are mountains of evidence that these concerns carry plenty of weight.  There's no question that white supremacy and white nationalism is on the rise in terms of actual numbers of participants and the general uptick in rhetoric (diversity equals white genocide).  Pundits are blaming the Trump presidential campaign for all of this as if there was no basis for white supremacy before this latest presidential campaign.  All Trump's insane rhetoric has done is expose the racist underbelly that has existed here for over 500 years.  Trump has simply validated the desires of every cowardly racist from Portland to Pensacola to openly express their ignorance and confusion about who and what this country really is, and always has been.  Trump cannot receive all of the blame though.  Especially since Hillary Clinton is just white supremacy with diplomacy.  Both Trump and Clinton are saying that at least a large measure of the problems impacting brown peoples are caused by the people themselves.  And, no one has even bothered to challenge them on this nonsense.  Clearly, the election of Obama was apparently the last straw for many of these cowards and the so-called birther movement is just the new code way of expressing white nationalism/supremacy (as if these people are so stupid they think we can't see what's happening).  Yet, no one seems to be talking about placing any context around these issues this way.  In fact, so many people are acting as if these poor white men are facing so many hardships that people ignore the reality that African, Indigenous peoples have been enduring more hardship in one pinky for over 500 years than the overwhelming majority of European men could ever even have their worst nightmare about.  Yet, although we are expected to have some empathy for these poor suffering white men, no matter how vile their behavior, there is no acceptable method for African people to express our legitimate frustrations at the daily discrimination we experience in this society.  If we protest outside the lines, which we have every right to do, then we are savages and thugs.  If we protest quietly, then we are disrespecting the sensitivities of White America.  And, everyone knows the only thing that's important is white people's sensitivities.  If we are killed for no reason by the state commissioned agents, that isn't anywhere near as important as the method we choose to express our disagreement with this treatment.  So, what's being enforced is a culture where our experiences, feelings, and expressions are only as valid as white society deems them.  Or, as one European joked: "I love people of color, as long as they act white!"

Then, on top if these obvious and insulting contradictions, these poor suffering white men are making threats and projections for what "may" happen should they not get their way e.g. Trump for president, or whatever demands they identify are necessary to address their dysfunctional expectations.  And, since the almighty white man is upset and making threats, I guess the assumption is we should start shaking in our boots.  There are even youtube videos of Europeans holding guns, talking about what they intend to do, presumably to us, if they are not happy on election night.  Since these very European men come from a strong legacy of expressing frustration through devastating violence, there is strong cause for people to be concerned.  One clear example is the fact the idiots running for president and the capitalist media machine that works overtime to validate them, keep talking about the Islamic bogeyman that means harm to people in this country while all statistical and scientific evidence tells us that two thirds of all terrorist attacks in this country are carried out by these angry white men.  Due to this indisputable history, I know many folks - brown people, white activists who these angry white men don't like - are understandably concerned about what's going to happen after next Tuesday. 

So, its important to acknowledge that the concern is a real one.  And, we must state clearly that all working class people are oppressed, including white working class men, but of all the people we are talking about, white men have historically been in the most positive position.  In other words, theres unquestionable evidence to demonstrate that almost exclusively, if there are candidates vying for a job with the same qualifications, the white man gets hired practically every time.  If there are people up for conviction of the same crime under the same general conditions, the white man will get the lessor sentence every time.  And, everyone sees how often mentally ill and/or agitated white men get talked down by the police while African children (Tamir Rice for example) get gunned by the slave catchers immediately upon contact.  I guess another way of placing this is the anger white men feel, we have been tasting everyday for centuries.  I've certainly had these experiences as policy throughout my life.  As a result, I have had to learn strong social skills to navigate effectively through this racist society.  Skills most white men never had reason to bother to learn.  And now that they are faced with the necessity of dealing with what we have always had to deal with, instead of them sucking it up and learning how to deal with adversity with dignity and maturity as we always have, they are spouting off, making threats, and mobilizing to inflict harm on everyone because they aren't getting their way.  And, no one is telling them to shut up and stop complaining.  No one is telling them to grow up and learn some humility as we have historically had to do.  These obvious contradictions have made many of us lose all respect for them as members of the human family.  Well, one bit of advice I have for them is they definitely need to realize that just like times have changed for them, they are also changing for us.  The patience well is drained all the way to the bottom.  Whereas there are many people who are rightfully frightened by videos of white men threatening violence, there are probably many more of us who are laughing at those white men.  We laugh because its hard for us to believe these people could be so naive.  They talk about our "ghettos", but they clearly know nothing about them.  We have spent the last 75 years being systemically oppressed in these inner cities.  And those of us who have filtered into more privileged positions have endured the naked racism of this capitalist system without mercy.  So, just as "Playboy" magazine reported in 1974 with an article entitled "Why Blacks Aren't Scary Anymore (with the iconic picture of Black Panther Party co-founder Huey P. Newton sitting in the ratan chair with the spear and shotgun as the lead in for the article), we are clearly not the people these insecure white men can expect to just accept their barbaric behavior without agency on our part and consequences for them.  To the white idiots in those threatening videos, you should know plenty of us have guns also.  And, today, more than ever, we are much more conscious that the state is never going to protect us.  I'm just making an observation.  This country is flooded with history of white men coming into our living areas with guns and inflicting suffering on us.  There is no comparable history of us doing that to them.  So, for anyone of these cowards who think they are just going to come into the plantation areas where we live with guns without some sort of action being triggered against them, you are living in a time warp.

Another critical point are the much publicized, but isolated instances of Africans targeting police officers for murder.   We certainly don't advocate these types of actions.  Not because we are influenced by the reactionary and dishonest rhetoric that upholds police departments.  We oppose those actions because they do nothing to advance our struggle.  Since capitalism programs everyone's thinking, when these police are shot, the media machine goes to work and the police end up being seen as heroes when these shooting happen.  Since the masses of people lack political education, there is no comprehensive assessment and analysis of police, only subjective analysis, so this isn't good for us.  What we are working for is that mass political education.  At least that is what we are working for in the African world.  We ask our friends to build the same political education apparatus in their communities because once we have this, we can begin to help people understand in clear terms that police grew from slave patrols and that they have never evolved from that basic function.  Police today still see African and Indigenous people as enemy combatants.  This makes police agencies terrorist organizations.  Our objective is to engage in this political education so that we grow to the point where the masses of Africans refuse to allow these terrorists to function among us.  When we reach this level of consciousness, there will be nothing the police, the national guard, or any state military organization will be able to do to overpower us (that's what revolution looks like).  This objective will obviously take time to develop and build, but we are working on building this mass political education.  In the meantime, we intend upon defending our people and all justice loving people.  So, white men, you have the opportunity to get over yourselves (like we have been doing for centuries) and open your eyes to the sources that are really oppressing you, instead of the ones your enemies are training you to see as your oppressors.  If you can do this, we will welcome the opportunity to work with you for justice and change.  If you don't do this, and continue to retain your irrational and cowardly quest to define justice as you consolidating this oppressive system against us, realize that you can anticipate a very different reaction than what you think you will get from us.

To those sincere and dedicated white activists, you have to recognize that your more confused and dysfunctional white family members are going to need your help.  We again beg and plead with you to start developing serious strategies to challenge and agitate within your communities of European people.  There is an unquestionable need for mass political education to be taking place in White communities.  You are needed to inform your people to the reality that they are being left out of the American dream because that dream has always been built on the nightmare of the masses of brown people the world over.  You must be doing work to help them understand that American identity equals white supremacy.  You cannot subtract one from the other.  They are inseparable.  There must be an emerging movement to claim white people as working class Europeans fighting against capitalism and imperialism.  And, you must say Europeans because the Americas will never stop belonging to the Indigenous people's of the Western Hemisphere.  If you steal something from someone and keep it a thousand years, that just means you are a thousand year old thief.  All of this has to happen and you are the only people who can make sure it does.  That is a long term task.  In the meantime, you must work closely to help us protect our communities.  You can do that by helping to expose the violent plans by infiltrating groups and engaging in plans to sabotage their efforts.  You can determine the best ways to do that.  You have your work cut out for you, but many of your confused family members are salvageable if you act fast and decisively.  I say this because I hear talk on the streets of no prisoners being taken if these white mercenaries attempt to wreck havoc against us in our living areas.  Just sayin...



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    I don't see disagreement as a negative because I understand that Frederick Douglass was correct when he said "there is no progress without struggle."  Our brains are muscles.  Just like any other muscle in our body if we don't stress it and push it, the brain will not improve.  Or, as a bumper sticker I saw once put it, "If you can't change your mind, how do you know it's there?"

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