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The Continuing Lie of an Improving U.S. Capitalist Economy

11/30/2018

I’m really sick and tired of hearing a bunch of old racist Europeans tell my people in the U.S. that the economy here is booming and there are more jobs available for our people now than ever before. I was equally as offended at hearing the same nonsense during the Obama years so don’t try and make this piece “partisan” between the two U.S. capitalist parties. We have repeatedly stated in clear terms that we align with Malcolm X 100% when he said “I’m not a democrat, nor republican, nor American, and got sense enough to know it!” My opposition to this improved jobs/economy rhetoric is based on the fact I have training in evaluating economic data. So, I know how to discern and determine true progress compared to just being able to react to what some idiot in chief is telling us.

And, the funny piece is you know how to evaluate economic data also. Even if you have no such training, this is still true. The problem is these people are working 24/7 to convince you that you don’t have the ability to evaluate what’s happening on your own because they don’t want you to think about what’s actually happening because the minute you do, it will be painfully obvious how full of you know what they are.

Clearly, the most logical factor in evaluating a consumer based economy like the one that functions within the U.S. is to look at what’s happening with consumers. When I say consumer economy, what I mean is this capitalist economy is partially driven by how money is spent. If people have disposable money, they buy things. When they purchase things, since industry here is based on private profit, the corporations who consumers shop with experience increased revenues so the corporations hire more workers. In turn, those workers have money to buy things and the cycle continues. As a side note, we have been trained to believe that this type of system is universal when in fact it’s actually quite primitive. A developed and planned economy, a socialist economy, isn’t primitive enough to be based on how much money people spend. A developed economy should be based on people’s ability to participate effectively within it. In other words, an economy where people are gainfully employed and able to provide a quality life for their families and communities, that’s the definition of a productive economy. No one can logically disagree with that assessment. That socialist assessment, but that’s a separate piece. For now, we are talking about this consumer driven capitalist economy. You have the tools to assess and evaluate it. You don’t need lying idiots to guide you. You don’t need them because they are going to attempt to confuse you by suggesting, over and over again, that the criteria to evaluate the economy is based on the performance of the stock market. This is a highly effective method of confusing people about how economy works because most people don’t have a clue how to evaluate the stock market. They don’t have a clue because evaluating the stock market really doesn’t tell you squat about the strength of the economy. This is true because the stock market is really just the experience of so-called experts projecting the ability of a company to perform under current market conditions. Based on this assessment, the value of the stock of said company is valuated. This may be a solid method of determining which companies to invest money into for the capitalists, but it has very little to do with how productive the economy is for everyday people. For us, the factors and variables we should be concerned with are how much disposable income do you have? That question is answered based on the quality of wage increases you are receiving? The degree in which the price of your housing expenses, utilities, food, etc., is costing? If you and most people you know are not experiencing any significant improvement in disposable income, and no one I know is experiencing that, then the economy is not performing at some great level as these people try so desperately to get us to believe. In fact, most people are finding it increasingly difficult to make ends meet. Even the fluctuating price of gasoline isn’t so much the indicator it used to be because they will tell you the price of gas impacts travel costs. At least that’s what they always say when travel costs increase. Yet, gas prices can be reduced, as they are right now, and airline tickets, train tickets, bus tickets, package deliveries, etc., don’t reflect decreases in price. The costs for those travel mechanisms don’t decrease because the capitalists don’t voluntarily give their profits away. We are talking about people who would charge you $5,000.00 USD for a pencil if they could get away with it. That’s what a “manufacturer’s suggested retail price (MSRP) is folks. It’s a price these people pull out of the sky to represent what they want you believe the product is worth. If you accept that, then that’s what you pay, but the MSRP never has anything to do with what the product is actually worth, or what you should realistically be looking at paying for it.

The other false measure of economy progress is this lie that more jobs are being created than the previous administration(s). What they fail to explain is that their system is designed to incent multi-national corporations with sweetheart tax breaks and other goodies. In return, the corporations invest a small portion of their mass revenues into projects of their choice (instead of having to pay taxes like the rest of us, where we have no say so in how our money is spent), like the Ad Council commercials e.g. McGruff the Crime Dog, or Smokey the Bear (which promote respect for bourgeoisie authority, institutions, and snitch culture). The corporations also serve their own interests, as well as the propaganda interests of the capitalist government, by “creating jobs.” These jobs that are created are low paying service industry jobs with no health benefits and no pension plans. In truth, most people today don’t even know what a pension plan is, how it works, etc. Still, these corporations, and their chief spokespersons – the elected officials – love to taut this nonsense as improving the economy by creating more McDonalds quality jobs. Show me one state within the U.S. that is increasing jobs with livable wages, quality health care, and pensions that pay until the retired employee dies (defined benefit). You can’t do it. Maybe try showing me these new low paying jobs that provide people with enough resources to pay their basic bills? You can’t do that either. What you could do is underscore the growing trend where multi-national corporations make record profits while the average family in this country cannot even pull $500.00 USD together in the event of an unexpected expense. Someone please explain to me how this sad reality could ever be confused with an improved economy?

The economy is booming if you are a huge corporation. Those capitalists are so slick that they have even figured out how get the masses of people in this country to subsidize them (because they pay their workers so little, there are millions of workers who rely on food stamps, which working people fund with tax revenues). This scam is public policy while no one seems to be that concerned at all about this travesty because so many people are instead focused on a single parent, usually a mother, who must depend upon public assistance for a period of time to support her family. People are outraged at mom for legitimately needing pennies while massive corporations steal billions from you and you don’t blink any eye.

One thing I do give capitalism credit for. They hoodwink everyone, all the time. They have taken crookedness to historical levels so much so that they have even figured out how to get people who have absolutely nothing parroting their theme that “the economy is doing just great!”

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Guinea and How it Helped Shape Modern Pan-Africanism

11/26/2018

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Today, the European left has embraced African revolutionaries like Amilcar Cabral from Guinea-Bissau. If you follow their writings on his contributions, you would believe he was a Marxist-Leninist who was seeking to build a Marxist-Leninist party in Guinea-Bissau. In Ghana, the truth and actual legacy of Kwame Nkrumah is finally being brought to the surface and as a result, those same white left forces are moving to position Nkrumah in their analysis as an African leader they endorse. Cabral and Nkrumah are being embraced by these forces as a result of their continuing popularity among the African masses. They have engaged in the same approach regarding Patrice Lumumba (who had Kwame Nkrumah as his mentor). These white left forces know that any true revolutionary force in the world has to have a strong focus on Africa and African people worldwide. So, by claiming these African giants, they hope to write the history on their contributions, pushing that work firmly into the camp that benefits the agenda and objectives of the white left.

Interestingly, the white left has consistently and continuously ignored Ahmed Sekou Ture in their efforts. Its important that we explore the reasons why. Its imperative for their objectives to leave out not only Ture, but the Democratic Party of Guinea (PDG) - the Pan-Africanist political party founded by Ture, because the PDG and Ture, with their clear focus on African self-determination, makes it much more difficult for these alien forces to re-shape what these Africans represented. The PDG unquestionably was and is a party dedicated to African freedom and independence. A party that resolutely believes in the Revolutionary African Personality and one unified socialist Africa. That's why most of what you will see written about Ture and the PDG will either superficially paint Ture as a Marxist or just dismiss him as a dictator.

A major factor in shaping Guinea's legacy is the bold method in which Guinea refused to continue as a part of the French Union in 1958. This mass action cemented Guinea as a country dedicated to African nationalism. And Guinea's continued refusal to bow down to the whims of the West during the 60s and 70s, further reaffirmed the inability to position them as darlings of the white left movement. Guinea made it clear since their 1958 independence that they would not side with the Western capitalist countries or the Soviet led Eastern block countries. That their allegiance was solely to African independence. They doubled down on this position with their refusal to accept Western aide and how they negotiated their relationships with capitalist countries. Repeatedly, Guinea rebuked U.S. and Soviet efforts to dictate their relationships, preferring instead to build relationships with genuine revolutionary movements like Cuba.

On November 22, 1970, the Portuguese military invaded Guinea in an effort to overthrow the PDG and the Ture government. The reason this invasion happened was because of Guinea's firm support for the African Party for the Independence of Guinea-Bissau (PAIGC), the Pan-Africanist party founded by Cabral to overthrow Portuguese colonialism. The PDG and Guinea offered the PAIGC a base in Guinea and full use of all of Guinea's military bases and resources. The PDG permitted the Cubans to come to Guinea to help train PAIGC fighters. Every thing the PAIGC needed to secure its ability to prepare its fight against colonialism, Guinea and the PDG provided to them. As a result, Portugal invaded Guinea and the people of Guinea responded by providing Portugal with a resounding defeat that they never actually recovered from.

Although the PAIGC was certainly a major reason for the invasion, they may not have been the only reason. Another imperialist concern was the presence of Kwame Nkrumah in Guinea. Four years before, the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency helped engineer an illegal coup fueled by misinformation to overthrow the democratically elected government of Kwame Nkrumah in Ghana. As soon as this unfortunate incident occurred, Ture and the PDG made arrangements for Nkrumah to seek refuge in Guinea. Ture immediately honored Nkrumah by naming him president of Guinea. In other words, Ture was willing to give up his position as president, hardly the actions of a dictator, to thumb his nose at imperialism. Nkrumah responded by indicating the people of Guinea elected Sekou Ture as president. Ture's response to that was to name Nkrumah as co-president and to implore Nkrumah to continue to develop the strategy for the African revolution. Nkrumah accepted this role and produced two of his most important works during his final years in Guinea e.g. the "Handbook of Revolutionary Warfare" and "Class Struggle in Africa." Why would it be inconceivable for Portugal, by wanting to eliminate the Ture government, would also provide a service for all of imperialism by eliminating Nkrumah as well? Its a fact that the Portuguese air-force immediately bombed Vila Syli, the Conakry-Guinea home of Kwame Nkrumah, upon their invasion. This couldn't have been an accident. The PDG's embrace of Nkrumah, and then Stokely Carmichael (later Kwame Ture) - who moved to Guinea in 1969 after being the poster child of militant resistance in the U.S., along with its support for the PAIGC, as well as the liberation movements in Angola and Mozambique, had to be a major concern for all of imperialism.

Final thoughts suggest more discussion about the role and contributions of the PDG need to be explored. What we know is we more than likely could not have Nkrumah's final revolutionary works were it not for Ture and the PDG. We more than likely wouldn't have Cabral's outstanding contributions as well as those of the PAIGC and the other liberation movements. And, certainly, we could not have had an environment to nurture the continued political maturation and sophistication of Stokely Carmichaalel, later Kwame Ture, who went on to make major contributions to the current shape of the revolutionary Pan-African movement today. It is impossible to talk about Africa, Cabral, Nkrumah, Lumumba, Kwame Ture, the Black power movement in the U.S., and anything related to Pan-Africanism today without acknowledging and honoring the contributions of the PDG and Sekou Ture.

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Capitalism; "Black" Friday & The Myth of Wealth Building

11/20/2018

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In a couple of days we will be subjected to the annual kickoff of naked consumerism that will dominate everyone's lives in the so-called industrial capitalist world for the next 30 days. This is the time of year where your ability, or inability, to demonstrate your love for the people in your life is measured by the quality of presents you can buy them. All of this happens while we all pretend as if this anti-humanism is being done to commemorate the birth of Jesus Christ.

Besides the fact there is absolutely no historical evidence that Jesus was born in December, this consistent societal pressure to spend money that most people not only don't have, but will never have, results in the majority of suicides occurring during this so called merry time of the year. The unavoidable alienation and feelings of inadequacy that are bound to result from such a materialistic indoctrination should provide all the evidence necessary to understand why so many people find it necessary to end their lives in the month of December each year.

I have had a couple of great opportunities to spend December 25th in Africa and each time was eye opening. People who have more Christianity in their pinky nails than most people in industrialized capitalism have combined, commemorate December 25th without the consumerism. Not a single gift is exchanged. Instead, the day is a reflection of spending time with those you love. Sharing food. Sharing life. There is no expectation of gifts, even among the children. Those experiences are extremely healthy ones, but we recognize that in the belly of this capitalist society, the chances of this approach becoming dominant are much less likely. The pressure to participate, and to do so in a very high and expensive level, are too intimately connected to our value as human beings because everything in these so-called industrial capitalist societies is based on a profit over people model.

Many people within the African (Black) consciousness communities, in a sincere attempt to address this soulless pursuit of materialism, have been making a push for a number of years to offer up what they believe to be an alternative to this madness. Their solution is to propose a Black Friday, or support for African owned business entities, instead of our people continuing to pour more and more money into the white hole of multi-national capitalist consumerism. On the surface, this approach seems logical. This is of course a racist system all the way to its core. As a result, we know discrimination in job hiring is the norm in this society. In other words, despite the common racist perception that African people don't want to work, we know there is unlimited data that confirms we apply for and attempt to work as often if not more often than anyone else in these industrialized countries. We just don't get hired because of racism. So, its understandable that our people, ever creative and determined, would develop our own alternatives to provide resources for us to find gainful employment to support our families. For this conscious crowd, this employment is small business opportunities. And, one of tools they use to publicize their efforts is this "Black Friday" campaign. Come shop with them on the Friday after the thankstaking "holiday." Don't spend your money with the multi-national capitalist corporations.

As a means of providing a limited number of our people with employment opportunities, this strategy is a fair solution, but beyond that, it has serious and ill-refutable shortcomings. The fundamental foundation of the capitalist system is in exploiting labor. As a result, the very structure of business in any capitalist society is in taking advantage of the people who perform the labor because that is how the owners of the business make their profits. Its the only way they make their profits. There is no way around this except abandoning this capitalist business model and moving to a socialist model, but that isn't what these people are proposing. They are operating under a scaled down version of capitalism e.g. selling products and services for an objective of profit.

The belief is that by exercising this model, we will be able to pull ourselves as a community out of poverty. Of course, the premise of this is we will do so by imitating the capitalist system. Or, doing capitalism with Black nationalism sprinkled on top of it. Our contention is that for those of us who study the capitalist system, there is no evidence that this model will help the collective masses of African people. No evidence at all beyond the visual incentive of seeing African people working for themselves. This isn't to discount that visual, but the severe limitations e.g. its inability to correct the core problem - the fact this system was built, and is maintained on our collective exploitation - has to be acknowledged and addressed. Capitalism 101: These small businesses can sell anything. You choose the product. Clothes, jewelry, food, etc. The product has to sell for a price. If the business owner sells clothes, they have to get the clothes from somewhere. They have to order them and have them delivered to them to sell. If they make the clothes they have to order the materials to sew. Either way, the cost of the products and/or materials will depend upon the volume of materials meaning if you are a sole business owner, its going to cost you much more to order what you need than Walmart because Walmart has the benefit of having what they need delivered to thousands of stores which means to distributor makes a pretty penny just by landing a contract with them. With the small business, there is no incentive to do business with them besides charging enough to make bringing them what they need worthwhile. This means that small business owner is forced to pass that increased cost onto you the consumer. And the myth that we create our own jobs is unfortunately not true as well. Look at any African business and show me where they can afford to hire workers in our communities and pay them more than minimum wage? Show me where Asian businesses, the model our people usually always bring up, show me where they are providing livable wage jobs for their people? The Asian nail salons, restaurants, massage parlors, etc., are well documented as functioning by depending upon using undocumented Asian labor. Just Google Asian businesses and undocumented labor and uncountable documentation will be provided of those businesses exploiting their own people to make a profit. The myth that they are sharing money through lending circles to build up their businesses is understandable. Its also not hard to see why we want to emulate this model as we wish to see it, but even if they or we could save $100,000.00 USD and walk in to buy a building, etc., the Internal Revenue Service would step right in and demand to know where that $100,000.00 came from. Since they are not structured to just accept our answer that we saved that money, they are automatically going to tax it so that the $100,000.00 will instantly become about $40,000.00, thus destroying the ability to accomplish the initial business objective. If you don't believe this, try conducting any type of financial transaction anywhere with over $10,000.00 cash and then count off the seconds before the Internal Revenue Service is breathing down your neck. The concept sounds good. It even makes us feel good, but it isn't based in reality.

Even the multi-national corporations don't work that way. Huge corporations like Amazon, Walmart, Koch Industries, etc., pay their workers peanuts when they rake in billions every year so why and how could it be possible for small businesses, with extremely thin margins of profit, to pay anyone more than minimum wage, if that. Most of these places are forced to employ their children and family members because of the inability to pay anyone else.

So, as you venture out to spend money on this Friday or any other day, please understand that we are not discouraging you from spending money with our people. I regularly do because as I previously stated, I recognize that this process is a way for us to provide at least some level of jobs at a subsistence level to our people. This is necessary. This is survival. We have to do this right now, but we cannot be confused into thinking this model is going to liberate our people. There is only one way we will have liberation and that won't be by operating on any level inside of this vicious capitalist system.

So, those of you who mean well and will promote this Black Friday/Black capitalism theme, take a minute to think critically about this. Its survival. Stop acting like its liberation. Stop telling people to just go shop with African people or give us business or money. You may think you are giving us support, but what you are actually doing is telling someone who has a fatal gunshot wound who is bleeding out to just hang on until they feel better. You are just comforting them until they die. If you really want to help us, start telling people to figure out how to organize to support efforts to create a new society free from capitalist exploitation where their business skills can be utilized to build up capacity to build a socialist economy. Help us understand how we can build such an economy because it is a thing. And make sure to add that while we do that, this capitalist black business model is survival. Nothing else, except momentary and temporary survival.

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Voting, Ms. Fannie Lou Hamer & the Importance of Organizing

11/12/2018

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Ms. Hamer singing a spiritual hymn before the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party (Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee - SNCC) went into the National Democratic Party convention in 1964. Ms. Ella Baker, the founder of SNCC) is to the right of Ms. Hamer. Kwame Ture is in the back with the hat.

Another election cycle has concluded in the United States. At least, for a year or so, we will be spared the circus acts which pass as legitimate political action in this country. And most of all, we will get a break from the constant browbeating and judgmental preaching from those committed to the electoral process against people who bravely choose to find other grassroots means to exact social change.

One criticism we wage against the "go vote" crowd is their shortsightedness and general lack of serious knowledge about the history of electoral politics in this country. Instead of presenting a science based analysis on how to use voting as a tactical tool in our struggle for justice and liberation, the proponents of voting rely strictly and exclusively on emotional coercion based on dishonest claims about our ancestors and their desires when they made their contributions to our our forward progress.

I say dishonest because none of these emotional claims bother to even provide a semblance of a historical perspective on this question. The civil rights movement was only 50 years ago. This means many of the people who made those sacrifices are still here with us. Many of these still with us people are talking about why they made the sacrifices they made and the solid analysis many of these people provide e.g. Mukassa Dada (Willie Ricks), Cleve Sellers, (Stokely Carmichael), Ms. Hamer, etc. needs to be elevated to the level of people like their political contemporary John Lewis. Congressman Lewis is used as the poster child of voting rights today exclusively because his views coincide with those promoting how voting is handled today.

Besides those who struggled who are still alive, many of the people who are actual ancestors had enough focus on them so that their experiences and views are documented for all to see. Its incredible that so many people who claim to be experts on this subject fail to even engage in a cursory view of this history. Take Ms. Fannie Lou Hamer for example. her life is a textbook poster of the proper approach for utilizing the vote. Something that is not even remotely considered today, not to mention implemented. Ms. Hamer was an extremely poor sharecropper in rural Mississippi. She was a proud woman who saw her deep belief in Jesus as a pillar of strength against oppression. In other words, Ms. Hamer didn't rely on her faith as a crutch or justification to exist in an alternate universe, as many so-called Christians, Muslims, etc., do on a regular and accepted basis today. Instead, she saw Christianity as the vehicle that would ultimately empower her to become a larger than life figure on the civil rights stage.

In 1962, Ms. Hamer made a decision that could be life threatening. She decided to attend a meeting with Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) members being held in rural Mississippi. In that meeting, SNCC organizers exulted the local people to come together to challenge Mississippi's racist tradition of disenfranchisement of African voters. The organizers were extremely practical in their inoculation practices. Years later, Kwame Ture a leading SNCC organizer in their Mississippi projects, recalled that a very sober discussion took place in those meetings where it was made clear to everyone there that standing up could and probably would come with crippling economic hardship and even death. Ms. Hamer, relying on her unquestionable belief in God, never hesitated in volunteering to become one of the local people to heed the SNCC call. Despite having a third grade education and no previous organizational experience, Ms. Hamer became fully engrossed in SNCC work. Her decision to do so was overwhelmingly costly for her. The European landowner where she and her husband sharecropped immediately evicted her once he became aware of her voter registration work. Ms. Hamer and her husband were forced to move in with other local people and the resulting financial hardships created tension in her marriage, but she was undeterred.

In June of 1963, Ms. Hamer and other SNCC activists were engaged in creating the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party (MFDP) which they saw as a political vehicle to challenge the hegemony of the racist democratic and republican parties on Mississippi politics. SNCC's idea with the MFDP was to create opportunities for African people to run for local political offices and to become nominated to represent the state of Mississippi in state and national political decision making. While traveling to an MFDP conference during that time, Ms. Hamer and other activists were stopped by police in Winoma, Mississippi. She was jailed and it was there that police coerced two Africans who were incarcerated there to hold Ms. Hamer down and beat her relentlessly for hours. She was beaten so badly that she needed over a month to recover and the two men who beat her suffered health issues themselves from the amounts of energy they expended in brutalizing her. Still, SNCC, and Ms. Hamer were not to be intimidated. As SNCC continued to push against racist representation practices within the electoral process, it became evident that all of SNCC's work had created the conditions where the MFDP had a chance to seat delegates at the 1964 Democratic Convention in Atlantic City, New Jersey. Ms. Hamer gave an internationally televised testimony about the beating and other illegal intimidation tactics utilized against the MFDP, and immeasurable support began to swell in favor of the MFDP's efforts.

Due to SNCC/MFDP's pressure against the national democratic party during that convention, the national party was forced to negotiate a compromise with the MFDP. Although the SNCC activists didn't get all that they wanted, they did succeed in seating African delegates at the convention which was a historical first. And, this act served to open up the national political process. What that means is people are celebrating the election of so many women to office during the just completed election, without recognizing that none of that could be happening without the sacrifices of SNCC and the MFDP.

When we say SNCC and the MFDP, the important piece to that is the organizational effort that pushed their political efforts forward. Its the difference of having a movement that elects candidates as opposed to what we have today; candidates who run independent of the communities they allegedly represent. This is our principle critique of electoral politics today. There is a complete disregard for the effective and grassroots based strategy that SNCC implemented in Mississippi, and Alabama as well with the Lowndes County Freedom Organization (LCFO - the first Black Panther Party) one year later. There was no electoral politics without a movement directing it. Today, we have completely dismissed that sound organizing strategy to embrace an approach that relies 100% on the racist democratic party since we have no other organizing mechanism (like SNCC, MFDP, LCFO, etc.) to ensure our interests are met. We continue to approach these elections the same way just described and at the end of those terms we have absolutely nothing to show for it. Some of us are so confused and so disconnected from our movement history that we actually believe having dark faced candidates is just as good as having an organizational mechanism that represents our mass interests.

The point is SNCC was the vehicle that held the MFDP accountable to the people. The MFDP was the vehicle that held the candidates like Ms. Hamer accountable to the people. There were no candidates for office through MFDP that did not go through their process. By the time that happened, those candidates were not confused about who's interests they were obligated to protect. Today? There is nothing even remotely similar to that in place. And none of the endorsers of capitalist electoral politics are even well versed enough to call for something like this to exist.

There is absolutely no reason why a mass coalition of activists from all sectors e.g. reform electoral activists to revolutionary organizers, could not be assembled to engage in strategy sessions around how to build political organizations today like the MFDP. The Poor People's Campaign could be that, but even that process is too heavily dominated by the democratic party. The MFDP was completely independent and that's what we need today. An organization that isn't beholden to the democratic or republican parties because both of those parties are in the hip pockets of multi-national capitalism. If a mass organization could be built with a mass political agenda of practical things (for working people) like national employment, universal free health care and education, etc., the people harassing people into voting wouldn't even have to coerce anymore because people would be highly motivated to participate. The reason you don't have these political platforms today is because the political parties are dominated by anti-working people's interests. White supremacy, patriarchy, homophobia, and all values connected to capitalism are the order of this day in electoral politics. People who aren't voting are not stupid. They are telling you they don't want to pretend that the system is viable. With a more genuine vehicle in place, many of those people would participate without your worthless pressure against them.

Finally, we must remind you that we are revolutionary organizers. Therefore, we do not believe electoral politics within the capitalist system can ever get us the freedom we seek, but we think mass political organization in electoral politics will do a lot to raise consciousness and more importantly, build a movement. Once that movement is active then the people can decide for themselves if they want to continue to reform capitalism, or go farther towards true justice and liberation. Either way, movement is the key and critical element that moves us beyond the current disgusting cycle of promises, loyalty on behalf of the working poor, particularly African people, towards the two party (one head) electoral scam, and continued suffering until the next "extremely important" election. If you truly want freedom and justice for all, you will stop trying to force people to compromise with capitalism and you will contemplate the history Ms. Hamer and the MFDP gave to us. To not do that is completely ill-responsible at best and criminal at worse.

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Why did Kwame Ture (Stokely Carmichael) Move to Africa?

11/9/2018

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Kwame Ture (Stokely Carmichael - right) with Seku Neblett. Two Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee, Black Panther, and All African People's Revolutionary Party members.

On November 15th, 1998, Kwame Ture (formally Stokely Carmichael) made his physical transition. I remember where I was when we received the news. We were at Sacramento State University, early on a Sunday morning, preparing to begin our work study meeting when one of the members came in and made the announcement. None of us were surprised. Kwame had been ill with the prostate cancer that eventually took his life for quite some time. I remember thinking things were about to change for all of us.

Twenty years later, we have gone through major growing pains as an organization without Kwame’s presence. Whether intentional or not, from the All African People’s Revolutionary Party’s (A-APRP) inception in 1968 to his death in 1998, Kwame was the face of the A-APRP. Since his disappearance, the A-APRP has had to walk the tightrope of developing an independent identity as an organization. In 2018, we continue to struggle around many elements of this, but we have certainly done quite a bit of work to advance ourselves in this area. Today, the A-APRP exists all over the African world and pretty much all of the youth who are joining, particularly in Africa, have very little to no understanding of who Kwame Ture was. This contrasts with when I joined the A-APRP decades ago when our most potent recruitment tool was what we called our “Kwame Ture Recruitment Drives” or for short, the KTRDs. A KTRD consisted of Kwame speaking at a campus, community event, etc. Hundreds would attend, and we would have an orientation, usually immediately after he spoke. Consequently, orientations in those days were always attended by dozens of people. The energy was always extremely high. This was true even late at night which is when these orientations typically occurred. Even then, the tactic was a little uncomfortable for me. I had observed repeatedly that most of the people attracted to Kwame’s “celebrity” from the civil rights and Black power movements tended to lose their enthusiasm once he left town. By comparison, people who join today do so not primarily because of his presence/influence, but because they are mostly inspired by the party’s vision. This is without question a strong step forward, but its still important that the legacy of Kwame’s work be known by everyone. He was a major contributor to Pan-Africanism and there is much misinformation about who he was and what he did. So, we take the opportunity of the 20th year since his physical disappearance to again set the record straight about the work this dynamic organizer did to advance our struggle.

Why did Kwame move to Africa? This is a question that has been debated much over the last 50 years and most of what’s being talked about is so far removed from the truth that its difficult to understand how such confusion could fester, but yet it exists. And, in some cases, its dominant in people’s thinking. Since much of this confusion is rooted in anti-Africanism and anti-communism, we use this 20th commemoration to challenge much that has been passing as legitimate dialogue around our brother’s political legacy.

The enemies of African people have suggested, repeatedly, that Kwame moved to Guinea, West Africa, in 1969 because he was on the run because of his testimony to the U.S. House of un-American Activities (HUAC) and because he had engaged in questionable actions within the Black Panther Party (BPP). Neither is true. The HUAC hearing in question didn’t even happen until 1970, the year after Kwame had already moved to Africa. The rumors around this hearing are that the committee, which was a government sanctioned hunt against anyone who dared stand up to U.S. imperialism, received testimony from Kwame that was used against other participants in the African liberation struggle. This is still a commonly held perception today. Its common because the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), based on their own documents released from the 1974 Freedom of Information Act, worked very hard to plant this belief in the minds of activists/organizers around the world. Their objective was the discredit Kwame and they went to great lengths to attempt to accomplish this. They sent letters to activists/organizers detailing Kwame’s alleged testimony “snitching” on activist/organizers during the HUAC hearing. Some of those activist/organizers went public declaring their disdain for the then Stokely Carmichael for what they believed was his betrayal of our movement. One of those people was Huey P. Newton – co-founder of the Oakland Black Panther Party. Newton declared from jail in early 1970 that “Stokely Carmichael is a CIA agent…” We know now that Newton made those statements based on letters he received from the FBI accusing Kwame of selling out the movement during the hearings. What serious students have learned to be true is that Kwame did indeed respond to the subpoena demanding he testify to the committee. He did so on the recommendation of people he trusted in the movement. Had he not testified, he would have certainly been served with a warrant for his arrest as not responding to the subpoena came with an almost assured felony conviction which would have led to many serious problems e.g. having his passport seized. This is not to mention having to serve time in prison during a period where the barely existing A-APRP possibly could not have survived without him. So he responded, but the court records, all witnesses present, including his lawyers, and even the government officials who questioned him, all concur that Kwame didn’t utter a single word against anyone, or even about anything, during that hearing. He used the 5th Amendment repeatedly and the conveners left extremely frustrated at his crafty ability to sidestep their process. The FBI was of course relying on the inability or unwillingness of people like Huey Newton to check the record and actual confirmation was much harder to get in those days then it is today. So the lie grew teeth and still remains in the minds of many uneducated people about the subject. And for each person who still believes that lie, there is mistrust for anything associated with Kwame Ture. Since unlike so many other figures in the Black power movement, his work not only continued, but proliferated after the 1960s, discrediting him served to prevent his work from catching on with so many more people as was the potential at that time. One example of this is what is mostly overlooked today is one of the reasons for Kwame Ture’s uncompromising position in favor of mass political education was that he understood that had that level of political education existed in the late 60s, it wouldn’t have been nearly as easy to hoodwink cadre activists with simple lies about him or anyone else.

As for allegations against his work within the Black Panther Party, much has been written about that period. And in order to understand it properly, one must study closely the efforts initiated in 1967 to unite the BPP and the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). There was much confusion around these efforts and much of that resulted from the role played by people like Eldridge Cleaver, BPP Minister of Information, who announced the “merger” of SNCC and the BPP (at the February 1968 Birthday party for Huey P. Newton in Oakland) before the relationship was officially agreed upon between the two organizations. Its still not clear what Cleaver’s intentions were for doing that, but what we do know is serious discussions on all levels between the two organizations never really took place. We also know that the FBI’s efforts to do whatever they could to sabotage this unification effort manifested itself in several discredit schemes, most notably the murder of Alex Rackley, a brother brought to the BPP through his association with Kwame Ture. George Sams, later to be confirmed as a paid FBI informant, accused Rackley of being a police agent. Sams mobilized Panthers to kidnap, torture, and kill Rackley. And, since at that time, the common belief was Rackley was a police informant (although its clear today that he wasn’t), the same suspicion against Kwame grew within the BPP as well. There were Panthers calling for harm to come to Kwame Ture, but this is still not the reason he decided to move to Africa.

Kwame’s reasons for moving to Africa were motivated by the same thing that pushes any of us to make major life changes and decisions. At a mere 25, 26 years old, Kwame’s experiences with SNCC and the BPP had helped him come to the point where he recognized that no progress for African people could be achieved until we had the power to determine our own destiny. Or, as he put it himself “in the 60s, we thought our struggle was one against racism. So, in our minds, we saw our struggle as that of fighting to assert our blackness, but our consciousness continued to grow. Soon, we realized that our struggle wasn’t just a struggle against racism. It is a struggle for power as a people and power means having land and resources and our land is Africa!” As this question began to challenge Kwame in all the moves he was making, if you study his trajectory during that time, you can see him clearly struggling over these contradictions. His speech at Newton’s birthday party in 68 was wrought with the ideas going through his head. What was the role of Africa in our struggle? Can our solution be capitalist or socialist? He was battling out those ideas in his head and sharing his struggle with all of us. In 1967, he went to Vietnam and visited with Nguyen Al Thoc, better known as Ho Chi Minh, the leader of the Viet Minh Front and the Vietnamese Communist Party. When Kwame asked the Vietnamese leader what he thought he should do, Ho answered with “you are African, why don’t you go to Africa?”

The following year, Kwame, influenced by Ho Chi Minh, the SNCC delegation to Africa four years before, and many other things that were clearly pointing him home to Africa, went to Guinea-Conakry, hoping to meet Kwame Nkrumah and Sekou Ture. Nkrumah was co-president of Guinea in 1968. Forcibly and illegally removed as president of Ghana in 1966, Nkrumah was welcomed by the Democratic Party of Guinea and Sekou Ture to Guinea and granted co-presidency. Nkrumah’s role in Guinea was to continue to advance the ideas of the African revolution. With the help of Shirley Graham DuBois, the young Stokely Carmichael was given an audience with Nkrumah. What we know from their discussions is that Nkrumah asked young Stokely, as he did Malcolm X three years before, if he would stay in Guinea and serve as Nkrumah’s secretary to help him carry out the work to build Pan-Africanism on the ground. Young Stokely accepted Nkrumah’s offer after Nkrumah had shared with him the then unpublished, but finished, manuscript of the “Handbook of Revolutionary Warfare” that Nkrumah was writing as the guidebook for how to carry out the African revolution. In that book, Nkrumah articulated the strategy of uniting African revolutionaries in Africa into one Pan-African political party called the All African People’s Revolutionary Party (A-APRP). The vehicle to do this was the creation of the All African Committee for Political Coordination (A-ACPC), leading to the All African People’s Revolutionary Army (A-APRA) which would lead the armed phase of the African revolution. Young Stokely read the entire book in one night and Nkrumah then asked him to work to build this process within the African diaspora. Nkrumah had other assignments for Amilcar Cabral who Sekou Ture had provided a base in Guinea to build the African Party for the Independence of Guinea-Bissau (PAIGC), one of the Pan-African parties Nkrumah envisioned joining the A-ACPC and the A-APRP. There were other assignments and young Stokely, Amilcar Cabral, Nkrumah, and others formed the first work study circle for the newly called for A-APRP. This history also underscores the absurdity of white leftists attempting to “steal” the legacy of Cabral by labeling him a Marxist/Leninist.

From that first A-APRP work study circle in Conakry, Guinea, from 1968 to 2018 – the A-APRP’s reach has extended all over the African world. Today, there are A-APRP chapters and organizing efforts happening everywhere. And, the A-ACPC is no longer just a vision. It is now a reality. The 50 Year Commemoration of the “Handbook of Revolutionary Warfare” in September 2018 demonstrated this as representatives of several chapters of the A-APRP in Africa and the diaspora, as well as a delegation from the PAIGC in Guinea-Bissau (including the director of the Union of Guinea-Bissau Women, or UDEMU and directors for the Amilcar Cabral African Youth organization), a delegation from the Amilcar Cabral Ideological Institute in Nigeria, and another delegation from the Pan-African Congress of Azania (South Africa), and the Azanian People’s Organization, came together to do work to further cement the concept that the A-ACPC is here in 2018 and forward!

In 1977, Stokely Carmichael changed his name to Kwame Ture to honor Kwame Nkrumah and Sekou Ture. And, as we know, in 1998, he left this physical world, but it is impossible to commemorate Pan-African work, as we did in Ghana in September, without remembering the contribution of Kwame Ture. And, it is equally impossible to commemorate his contribution without acknowledging he did outstanding work in SNCC and the BPP, but his best work was the 30 years he spent living in Guinea while building the A-APRP. He went there to do that work because he recognized that Pan-Africanism was the higher expression of the work he was doing in SNCC and the BPP. Unlike some of his conscious and unconscious detractors, Kwame Ture never abandoned Black power. He realized that revolutionary Pan-Africanism is the logical extension and growth of Black power because Pan-Africanism gives Black power class character and revolutionary identity. It expands to represent Africans everywhere and this is important because our problems as African people didn’t start in the U.S. or Puerto Rico, Brazil, or just Nigeria, Somalia, etc. The problems started when Africa was invaded and the problem will never be solved until Africa is redeemed. Finally, Pan-Africanism steers Black power to acknowledge, as Nkrumah said, that “the core of the Black revolution is in Africa and until Africa is free, no African anywhere on Earth will be free!” These are the reasons Kwame Ture moved to Africa and our people and our struggle are better because of his selfless decision to do so.
There are many reasons why people in 2018 choose to continue to believe misinformation about Kwame Ture. A lot of that is rooted in class struggle and anti-communism as was previously mentioned. Revolutionary Pan-Africanism isn’t nearly as sparkling and attractive as the much more generic title of “Black power.” Revolutionary Pan-Africanism requires a clear anti-capitalist stance and a commitment to one unified socialist Africa. This clear objective doesn’t jibe with the vision of black power pimps who desire to advance a rhetoric of African empowerment while prioritizing enriching themselves on the backs of our struggling people. Those types of opportunists can hide behind the ambiguous term of “black power”, but they cannot hide behind one unified socialist Africa as created from the work of the 5th Pan-African Congress in 1945, carried forward by the writings of Kwame Nkrumah, Sekou Ture, etc., in the 1960s, and popularized by the work of Kwame Ture until his death in 1998. This man had more integrity in his pinky than many of the people passing themselves off as soldiers for our people’s liberation have in their entire bodies. That’s much of the reason many of these “people” continue to perpetuate lies about the legacy of Kwame Ture because by discrediting him, they create space for their sellout behavior. We strongly encourage you to study more about this important history and as we commemorate 20 years since Kwame Ture’s passing, we further prod you to give him the honor he rightfully deserves by deciding to participate in organizing for the true liberation for African people and humanity that he worked so hard to demonstrate for us.

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Share: Concrete Steps to Make You a Better, Stronger Person

11/5/2018

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Its quite popular today for people to claim to be engaged in some type of process of internalized work to eliminate the individual contradictions that prevent us from being our best person. You don't have to go far to hear it said that "I'm working on myself" or "I'm a work in progress", but most of those people cannot explain to anyone what those steps of working on themselves actually look like. And, even if they can explain it, most people don't have the type of personal discipline and follow through to engage those tactics on a consistent enough basis for their tactics to have any real life impact.

The point of this piece is to provide you with some concrete steps I've used, and continue to use, to better myself as a person. Of course, nothing is ever a one size fits all, but for the overwhelming majority of you reading this (and those not reading it), if you apply these steps consistently in your lives, you will see immediate results. And, I'm providing you these steps without charging you for it which proves again that our objective is the advancement of the collective population, not our individual enrichment and/or advancement. If you have been paying attention, you know we have been doing things this way for a very long time now.

First, I'll start with why I feel I am qualified to speak on this subject. I am because I have done, and continue to do regular and consistent work on myself. I have as many issues as anyone, but the initial thing to understand is despite conventional capitalist logic, our shortcomings are not our fault. It becomes our blame if we know the issue, but refuse to do anything about it. And, when I say my faults, I'm talking about my issues of personal anxiety and turmoil which have plagued me my entire life. These issues are connected to my upbringing. My parents had so many social issues, brought on by this vicious capitalist system, that they had no time and patience to focus on me. The fact I grew up in a very unforgiving environment only contributed to the difficulty. Massive amounts of trauma resulted, but thank goodness I am a dialectical and historical materialist. What I mean is I'm thankful that I understand that every element in functional capacity in this world is in state of struggle over positive and negative variables. Nothing is 100% positive and nothing is 100% negative. Consequently, I recognize that my early trauma created a reality where I had to decide early on in my life that if I wanted to rise above the foolishness that described my life, I had to be the primary agent responsible for making that happen. I also had to study this backward system. The importance of this cannot be overstated in this analysis because this capitalist system trains us to believe that the problems in our lives happen because something is wrong with us, individually and collectively. My studies informed my consciousness that there was nothing wrong with me. The problem was and is this backward system. So, I decided early that I was going to believe in myself, no matter what. That I wasn't going to doubt my abilities to forge forward. Learning how to do this has been a decades long process. Its something that I struggle mightily with every second of every day, but what I have been able to accomplish, which helps me immensely, is that the moment doubt creeps in, I've trained myself to instantly and automatically challenge that doubt. Sometimes I don't feel like challenging it, but the process is so ingrained at this point that I can't avoid it. And, this has permitted me to become used to positive self talk. That positive self talk serves as a primary motivator whenever I feel down. Its not perfect, but it is the major reason I spend very little time depressed e.g. when I feel that way, it generally doesn't take me long to struggle through it. Of course, that's not said to dismiss those who have legitimate chronic depression. You need help to resolve your issue. What I'm saying is for me, my process has really helped me manage depression to the point where its not really an issue in my life.

My positive self talk has also built up a very strong element of confidence internally. In fact, I'll just say its going to be extremely difficult to find anyone who can match my sense of determination to achieve whatever I decide I need to achieve. And, much of that I credit to the process I'm describing to you right now. I should go back to before I started talking about the positive self talk to insert that the key ingredient to starting this process is you have to be willing to challenge yourself to get better. If you aren't willing to be uncomfortable. To question what and how you do things. None of what I'm talking to you about right now, or anything else for that matter, is ever going to make any difference. This is another reason I'm acknowledging the importance of dialectics in my life development. The fact no one really believed in me when I was young taught me that this life isn't just about me. I was forced, very brutally at times, to learn humility. Although the experience was extremely painful, I'm thankful for it today because my ability to understand that the world isn't an extension of my nose has permitted me to get comfortable being uncomfortable. To learn how to push myself on a regular basis. I do these things because I know I don't have all the answers. I know this because I've been told I don't my entire life, especially when I was young. So, there was never any sense of entitlement. I'm thankful for that because at the drop of a hat, I can change directions and push myself to move in whatever direction I need to move in. That's another crucial element to working on yourself. Once you are comfortable being ready to push yourself, and you make a personal contract with yourself that you will believe in you, the next steps are just all about practice.

Since most of our inability to handle life is due to our unresolved trauma, this is the part where you need to think about getting help e.g. counseling, support groups, etc. These resources are critical because trauma dominates us the way it does because we have no tools to identify, expose, and process it in healthy ways so that it will become manageable in healthy ways. We don't know how to do that because most of the reasons for our trauma are trapped deep inside of us. Our emotional coping skills pushed it down because a part of us unconsciously believes doing that is the best way to protect us from the trauma, but trauma never goes away. It just surfaces in other ways. Counseling, support groups, etc., help because those processes can help us learn how to bring that trauma to the surface so that we can deal with it. Its like hunting and the trauma is the prey. We have to bring it out in the open and attack it. It is important to stress that counseling is only going to be as good as your preparation process around it. In other words, you cannot go to a complete stranger, tell them your problems, which you probably are still attempting to understand yourself, and expect them to perform miracles for you. What's required is for you to spend painful and grinding minutes thinking about your trauma, where it came from, how you feel about it, and what you want to do about it, so you can develop a treatment plan that you are then responsible to facilitate your counselor/therapist through. The importance of this cannot be overstated.

Once you have your confidence tools in place and you have engaged the support mechanisms to help you address the trauma, you should have been able to develop some tools that are designed to help you. The tools are important because the trauma forces you to develop bad emotional habits. Like any bad habit, you have to practice doing things differently because your mind is trained to go directly to the bad habit because that's what you know how to do. I'll give you a brutally honest example of myself. Although I have used this process I'm describing to you for years now, I still struggle with several issues. Regardless of whatever I've accomplished in life, and I've accomplished a hellava lot, despite being what I know is a very decent and compassionate soul, no matter that I feel comfortable with how I look physically...I still struggle to believe I'm good enough when it comes to relationships. Its been a challenge my entire life and it will be a challenge for the rest of my life. That doesn't upset me because I'm committed to struggling to bring more and more health into how I manage that issue and over the years, I have done exactly that. Here's my process. I fret, worry, and stress about what I do in my relationship. I worry that she won't like me. Won't want me. Years ago, this anxiety would drive me to do really insane things. Today, those dysfunctional thoughts don't come nearly as much, or to the degree of intensity that they used to, but I still get them sometimes. The difference is due to how I've used the things I'm talking about here, I've put a process in place to disrupt the dysfunction's ability to dominate me. That doesn't mean its completely gone. Its not. Clearly its still there and the fact I have a woman in my life who is absolutely the woman of my dreams causes more dysfunction to surface inside of me, but I manage it. I have four or five conversations with myself every week. And, by conversations, I mean sitting down and working through all of the issues until they are resolved. She said this. Did she mean to dismiss me or is this my issue? Now, if you doing all of these steps correctly, you should have developed the capacity to be honest with yourself. This is a must. Once you have that, when you ask yourself if the issue is you, that honestly will come to play its role. Yes, its me. Its my fragile ego. Since these steps have taught me how to nurture myself (which no one else has done), instead of attacking myself for having a shortcoming, my process is to ask myself what it is that's causing me to feel fragile? Once I identify the issue, I find that there is always a logical reason for the issue to exist e.g. something similar happened, maybe even years ago, that justifies it. This is important because I've learned that by acknowledging the reasons for my dysfunctional feelings it becomes much easier for me to accept those reasons and doing that makes if automatic for me to give myself permission to forgive myself for not being perfect. This always serves to make me feel better. Now I am in a place where I can see much more clearly. She said this for this reason which was designed to do this, not attack me. Now, if there is substantial evidence that an attack is being made against you, this process will also help you learn how to not only identify that, but how to take healthy steps to address it with the person(s) in productive ways. Either way, its a win win.

Like anything in life, these practices require you taking time to use them. The more you use them, the better you will get at them. The better you get, the more they will help you. Its never going to be a perfect science, but you will get better. This is a traumatic society so the dysfunctions will always keep coming. None of what I'm saying here is designed to be an end all be all. Everyone is different. What I hope to do here is provide you with some inspiration that you can defeat the forces working to make your life miserable, but there are some final and most important steps that have to be in place along with everything I've mentioned here.

As I started out saying, the problems we have are initiated by this backward capitalist system. If you believe the capitalist logic that life is all about individual decisions, then you are wasting your time reading this because we don't believe any part of that backward logic. We believe your ability to make healthy decisions is shaped by many factors in your life. Trauma certainly prohibits all or our abilities to make healthy decisions and other factors like white supremacy, patriarchy, homophobia, whichever applies serve to institutionalize our oppression. So, since the forces that cause the dysfunction are institutional, its impossible to resolve this on a strictly individual basis. These problems have to be addressed on a collective basis. They cannot be resolved one at a time because the dysfunction just keeps being poured on us all the time. So, along with everything I've mentioned here, make sure to be a part of some social justice organization that recognizes this system's role in keeping us downtrodden. Make sure that organization has a political education process because as I mentioned in the beginning, understanding the role this system plays in our misfortune is critically important. Finally, make sure your organization has a praise/criticism process. This can actually be one of those things like the support groups because this process trains you to think critically about your thoughts and behaviors. A very important component in helping you learn to check yourself without perpetuating that something's wrong with you.

All of this is a lot to take in. This society has no interest in any of us being healthy human beings because capitalism is a profit over people system. So, as long as they can make money putting us on anti-depressant medications, sleep medications, etc., that's what they will keep doing. Me? I prefer to let them keep all of that. I'll keep working to make myself a strong soldier against everything they throw at me. Many of us need help. If you need counseling, seek it out if you have the resources. If you don't connect with people who can help you find it. There are plenty of qualified healthcare professionals who are willing to work with you, even if you cannot pay them, but you are going to have to do the work to find them. As always, I do what I do because I'm on a mission (that determination) to do whatever I humanly can with my life to attack this backward system so along with that means I always will offer my services, outside of this article, to help people understand how to put these practices in place to the best of my abilities. I won't do your work for you though. You have to do that. I will tell you that for many of you, doing that work will pay off in ways you can never imagine. Don't give up on yourselves and don't let this system win. Let's learn to support each other and keep fighting back.

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Malcolm X & Voting. We Glorify His Image, But Refuse to Hear Him

11/4/2018

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Malcolm X occupies iconic status with African people. Not just within the U.S., but all over the world. He receives that status from us because people respect his courage, discipline, dedication, and uncanny ability to take the most difficult problems of the world and break them down into clear terms that everyone on the street can understand. As a result, Malcolm's picture is hung up in many people's houses and in their work stations. People wear his image on clothes regularly and its not unusual to find folks who have his likeness inked on various parts of their bodies. People watch his speeches and debates on youtube. Snippets of his speeches and references to him can be heard on countless songs and his life has been the subject of multiple documentaries and a full length motion picture. The U.S. government, the entity that killed him, even has his image on a postage stamp. All of this happens because modifying Ossie Davis's eulogy of Malcolm from 1965, Malcolm was our living dignity as a people.

With an election looming in the capitalist U.S., its very fitting to evoke Malcolm X because he didn't vote. He talked about voting in capitalist elections often though. His 1864 speech "The Ballot or the Bullet" is one of the most clear and definitive critiques of the capitalist system that exists, a full 50+ years after its recording, yet as he concisely articulated during that speech he wasn't "a student of politics, a politician, a democrat, nor republican, nor american, and had sense enough to know it!" Yes, Malcolm, despite his iconic status and his image of being one of the most respected and revered leaders of the African liberation struggle, he didn't vote folks. That's important to say in this current bourgeoisie dominated environment where the narrative is being pushed more than ever that people died for the vote. So, if people don't vote, they are somehow betraying the legacy of those who struggled before us.

As has been restated countless times, no one died for the right to vote and even the actual people who faced death to get the vote will tell you that. People were beat and died for justice and liberation. And while they were suffering, they understood clearly that the vote was just one tactic to achieve that liberation. They never declared that it was the by all end all solution to every social problem that has ever existed as the framers of voting want you to believe today. And, this isn't a piece that's designed to tell people whether to vote or not. That's a personal decision. The point here is we say we love Malcolm, but we refuse to listen to him. He told us in no uncertain terms that voting, without organizing ourselves into an African power base is like planting seeds in the ground and never watering them. He explained to us that voting is only as strong as our ability to build a powerful movement to hold the people we vote in accountable. He said all of this over 50 years ago and the books with his words and the videos of him are all available to confirm his very concrete analysis of voting for all who desire to understand it. Yet, you will look at his picture everyday, but you refuse to listen to what he had to say about it.

Instead, people apparently prefer to continue to play silly bourgeoisie games. I saw a ridiculous meme the other day that said if voting didn't matter, "why are the republicans trying so hard to keep us from doing it?" Great logic for a 5th grader, but think people. And study history. This capitalist system employs agents who shoot down African people for parking in disabled spots, walking through neighborhoods, pulling out our I.D.s, shopping at Walmart, playing with toys, etc. This system prevents us from being able to live as human beings so why wouldn't they sabotage us from voting? Doing so is all a part of their systemic effort to keep us corralled. Its not because if we voted that would give us the power that we need no more than those racist cops believe they had to kill 12 year old Tamir Rice because they really believed he posed an imminent threat to them. Its just how the system of oppression operates. We confuse the methods this system uses to oppress us with the actual tools we should be using to liberate ourselves.

All we have to do is actually listen to what Malcolm said. Its documented for all to see in the books of his speeches like "Malcolm X Speaks, the Last Speeches of Malcolm X, The Final Speeches of Malcolm X", etc. He explained to us repeatedly that we have a responsibility to maintain the dignity of our people. He told us that the democrats and the republicans "are like foxes and wolves." They have different approaches, but "both are dogs. Both members "of the canine family!" His point was we don't preserve our dignity by placing all our eggs in the baskets of the two capitalist political parties. Malcolm advocated us creating our own political party if we want to participate in bourgeoisie politics. And he was clear that the independent party was based on a movement being built that would organize African people to create a vehicle that would provide consistent pressure on this system to represent the interests of our people. And, he of course never stopped there. He went on to explain that we must organize as African people on a worldwide basis. On a Pan-African basis. On a revolutionary basis. And his work and activities that last eleven months of his life provided clear and ill refutable evidence that he believed in revolutionary Pan-Africanism and his speeches over those last few months eliminate any semblance of doubt that could exist regarding that question.

So, if we love Malcolm so much, why aren't we listening to what he had to say about voting? We don't listen because like the Last Poets rapped, we love "everything about Malcolm, but we didn't love him." Or, more aptly put, we love the image of Malcolm, but we aren't politically mature enough to apply his principles to our daily lives. We love to call ourselves the Malcolm X of our office, but like Malcolm said, we would never do the things he would do to bring us our freedom. I remember once when an African police officer actually told me that he was the Malcolm X of his police department! That's an oxymoron folks. If you work for the police you aren't anything about Malcolm, period. You are the antithesis of Malcolm. Sorry, but you don't get to work for the armed security guard agencies of our enemies while at the same time trying to claim one of our honored soldiers as one of your own.

Although we couch this statement in somewhat rhetorical terms, we understand the contradiction fully. The capitalist system has achieved God status at separating truth and justice from material reality. As the current so-called president of this empire makes clear every morning, in this backward society, you can say whatever you want, whenever you want. As long as people believe it, regardless of how insane it actually is, you have validity. So, in this mythical confusion that poses as respected reality, a person can claim the image of Malcolm X while doing everything to go against all that he stood for. In this insanity, a person can claim and believe that simply casting a bourgeoisie vote in a system where the capitalist classes make all the rules and control the entire process is an expression of democracy. In this insane and alternate universe, someone can actually believe that by participating in a rubber stamp exercise (voting) for someone else's superrich agenda once every couple of years, you are actually doing more for justice than people who fight to build revolutionary capacity with our people everyday of their lives. In this system you are actually capable of leading yourself to believe that just by doing what you are told every couple of years (with no results and nothing to back it up), you are in the position to cast judgment on the movements and people who work their fingers off daily to represent the dignity of our people outside of the bourgeoisie political process.

All of that is true in this backward system, but we all know this system can never be the gauge for how we live out any true and worthwhile principles in our lives. Malcolm X told you to get organized as African people and to use the vote as a tool to help you organize our people. He didn't tell you to just participate in the master's system without even the slightest check and balances in place to ensure you could get out of it what you deserve. Again, no one is telling anyone what to do. What we are saying is you don't get to claim Malcolm as if his legacy belongs to you as much as it does us who sincerely work to forward his contribution. You don't even get to claim Martin Luther King who like Malcolm never advocated the type of wholesale prostitution of our ability to vote that is taking place today. So, what we are saying here is we come to bring this ideological struggle to you. If you continue to perpetuate this fraud that is posing as some sort of legitimate push for political power for African people, then we demand that you take those images of Malcolm X down. Replace them with Obama or the bourgeoisie politician of your choice, but you don't get Malcolm. He was no bourgeoisie politician and the more you try to act like he was, the more you disgrace our legacy and make it harder for those of us who are on the ground trying to actually do more than soundbite work.

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