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A Critical Review of Netflix's "Blood Brothers - Malcolm X & Muhammad Ali

9/11/2021

As is the usual trend within capitalist dominated popular culture, the power structure takes every opportunity to shape the history and perspectives of the people its subjugating. Their effectiveness at achieving this objective cannot be disputed. Most people today have been socialized to strongly prefer entertainment forms of stimuli and interaction over intellectual study and critical analysis developing skills. In fact, many people today will speak openly against the need and/or desire to study much of anything.

The Netflix produced documentary “Blood Brothers – Malcolm X & Muhammad Ali” is the latest example of their efforts to exploit our unwillingness to critically study our own history in ways that would force us to learn to think outside of the paradigms that they provide for us. Following on the heels of their 2020 documentary “Who Killed Malcolm X”, Netflix’s “Blood Brothers” explores the development of the personal relationship between Malcolm X and Cassius Clay/Muhammad Ali and the ultimate destruction of that personal relationship. Starting with Malcolm’s daughter Ilyasah Shabazz and Muhammad Ali’s brother Rahman Ali, a stream of scholars, historians, petti-bourgeoisie activists (Reverend Al Sharpton), and former activists (Peter Bailey), are interviewed to provide insight on Malcolm and Ali’s personal histories and the relationship between the two of them.
For people who are familiar with Malcolm and Ali, there isn’t an awful lot happening in this documentary that you haven’t heard and seen before, but from Netflix and capitalism’s perspective, that’s essentially their point. They are never attempting to actually educate anyone with these documentaries. Instead, what they desire to do is paint a picture of our history which defangs it, removing the militancy, while luring us in with plenty of sentimentality and a subtle suggestion that all this militant talk gets in the way of our being able to “all just get along.”

Examples of the above paragraph are plenty in this documentary. The relationship between Malcolm and Ali is portrayed as a personal relationship. A friendship gone bad. This would make sense if it wasn’t for the undeniable fact that their relationship wouldn’t have ever happened if it wasn’t for our struggle for African dignity and forward progress. It was that reality that produced Malcolm, Ali, and the Nation of Islam where they met. So, despite the effort by Netflix to advance the capitalist individualistic line of interpreting everything we do, there is no material basis for defining their relationship as just consisting of their two personalities. The individualism is continued throughout the dialogue when the gentleman who was interviewed (multiple times) dressed in the Nation of Islam “Fruit of Islam” uniform says that Malcolm “chose himself” while Ali “chose the Honorable Elijah Muhammad” as his explanation for why their relationship went bad. The belief that Malcolm went his own individual path when he left the Nation of Islam has been repeated so often, covertly and overtly, that there is no way you will convince us it is an accident. Unfortunately, for people who are not active in organized struggle, their perspective of the world is through an individualistic vision because that’s all they have to work with so that trick resonates with them, but any serious examination of Malcolm’s life demonstrates how absurd that analysis is. Even in the documentary when it makes the point of highlighting how hurt Malcolm was when he ran into Ali in Ghana (shortly after Malcolm had left the Nation of Islam), and Ali had rebuked and dismissed him, the portrayal of Malcolm’s individual alienation is inaccurate. The film makes the point of repeating a statement Malcolm allegedly made after leaving the awkward face to face with Ali while Malcolm was in a car with Maya Angelou and others. According to the documentary, Malcolm said “I’ve lost so much!” And this was displayed during the film to paint the picture of a completely dejected Malcolm, yet the truth is Malcolm didn’t respond by doing what people tend to do when they feel alienated, isolated, and painted into an individualistic corner. Malcolm didn’t spiral into drug use, or drinking, or any other unfortunate direction. Instead, he ramped up his political work. He formalized the creation of the Organization of Afro-American Unity. He further built important relationships with revolutionary Pan-Africanist leaders on the continent of Africa like Kwame Nkrumah and Sekou Ture. In those 11 months after he was snubbed by Ali he did what we would argue was his most important work.

And, we recognize that many people would probably disagree with that last sentence because most of how their development of an organization has taken place is articulated through that same individualistic bourgeoisie vision. Rahman Ali, Muhammad Ali’s brother, said it during the documentary; the problem was the personal relationship between Malcolm and Elijah Muhammad and Eljah’s personal relationships with the women he had babies with that Malcolm exposed to the public. Personal/individual, blah, blah, blah. As Kwame Ture was often fond of saying, the contradictions of capitalism are obvious for all to see!” Even within this same documentary, scholar Todd Boyd contradicts this individualistic and tired portrayal of the split between Malcolm and Elijah, even if he wasn’t aware he was doing it, when he says the problem was really a divergence of ideas.” This is probably the most critical statement in the entire documentary because it is absolutely correct in stating that Malcolm’s evolution as a revolutionary Pan-Africanist exceeded what he had learned in the Nation of Islam and this is the primary reason for the split, not the babies born out of wedlock. We understand the confusion here and Malcolm himself made a terrible error that compounded this confusion when he made the accusation about the babies public. As we have stated often, we should never do police work for them and unwittingly, Malcolm did just that when he made that statement, but we will come back to that point about police shortly. For now, its important to also add that another example of the rampant individualism is the way history is projected in the documentary (and in everything capitalist). The Fruit of Islam uniform wearing African in the documentary makes the statement that Malcolm learned “everything he knew from Elijah Muhammad.” This statement has been repeated often during the period of 1964 when Malcolm was hunted and in the almost 60 years since his assassination. Its another subtle effort to make our interpretation of history individualistic instead of collective. No one person, no matter how great, is responsible for everything anyone knows. The Universal Negro Improvement Association, the African Blood Brotherhood, and other organizations had as much to do with the intellectual development of Elijah Muhammad and Malcolm’s father Earl Little (which obviously would have had a triggering effect of permitting Malcolm even to hear Elijah Muhammad’s teachings) so its insane to give Elijah Muhammad all of the credit for Malcolm’s awakening. Of course, this happens because for Netflix, and capitalism, they wish to make us believe that since we are not Elijah Muhammad, we cannot have the type of influence over anyone like he allegedly had over Malcolm, etc., and so therefore, there is no use for us to even try. The truth of course is that the masses make history, not individuals so we all play a role in everyone’s development, all the time. Malcolm’s evolution beyond the Nation of Islam was much more than just an individualistic venture on his part. It was part and parcel of his exposure to our international African liberation movement. That’s why its so symbolic that the statement that got him initially suspended by Elijah Muhammad was the statement he made about John F. Kennedy’s assassination where he used the analogy of U.S. imperialism in the Congo, Central Africa, to make the point about “chickens coming home to roost.” No where in what Elijah Muhammad was saying was there a connection to what was happening in the Congo. That was 100% Malcolm’s evolving consciousness which was fueled by his growing understanding and commitment to our revolutionary Pan-African movement.

The most disgraceful element of this documentary was its dismissal of the role of the U.S. government in sabotaging the relationship between Malcolm and Muhammad Ali, Malcolm and Elijah, and our entire movement. The documentary spends no more than 60 seconds talking about the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and its counter intelligence program and even during those few seconds, they talk about the FBI as if they were casual observers who was simply rooting for friction to develop within the Nation of Islam. The truth is the FBI orchestrated the dissension that took place surrounding Malcolm. The FBI’s own files illustrated that they had high level informants within the Nation of Islam who’s primary role was to disrupt communication between Malcolm and Elijah and to create distrust between them. The FBI memo from director J. Edgar Hoover just days after Malcolm was assassinated spoke of a financial reward for the work of these informants with a congratulatory theme for their efforts to completely sabotage the work Malcolm was doing (that they manipulated the Nation of Islam to do their work for them). And, to add insult to injury, the people who put this Netflix documentary together had the complete disrespect for the masses of African people to even place John Ali, the man who was pretty much without question the FBI’s highest ranking informant in the Nation of Islam, in the documentary. He was the guy who was the National Secretary who played goalie in preventing Malcolm’s effort to communicate directly with Elijah Muhammad while filling Muhammad’s head with lies about Malcolm’s intentions. He’s also the same guy who gave the press conference after Malcolm’s house was bombed on February 14, 1965, accusing Malcolm of placing his wife and daughters in danger by setting the fire to the house himself. All of this and much more and the directors didn’t ask Ali a single question during the documentary about his role in any of it. In fact, the only semi-journalistic question they asked him is why he thought Malcolm was assassinated to which a fourth grader could have provided a more articulate answer. Absolutely disgraceful.

Finally, the documentary makes the point towards the end, through Todd Boyd, of stating that Muhammad Ali’s legacy of resistance i.e. refusing to be inducted into the U.S. military to fight in Vietnam, had been whitewashed through his role in the 1996 Olympics, etc. What they don’t mention is that from the time of Elijah Muhammad’s death in 1975, when the Nation of Islam was dismantled by Elijah’s heir apparent son Warith Deen Mohammad and Muhammad Ali began practicing Sunni Islam (and not the Nation of Islam’s brand of Black nationalist Islam), until Ali’s death in 2016, Ali made no public pronouncements about our struggle for liberation. His physical challenges are noted, but even his actions during that period i.e. the 96 Olympics, meeting with U.S. presidents, etc., contrasted with any type of independent African liberation stances. The point there is the most potent weapon against the individualistic interpretation of our history is the advancement of our mass struggle for justice and the need for everyone to belong to organizations fighting for our liberation. If more of us had that focus, we would understand clearly that we cannot depend upon our enemies to properly teach our history. Its our enemy’s job to misrepresent our history as they did with Ali those last 41 years of his life post-Nation of Islam. Its also their job to present Malcolm as a sad lesson in isolation, something none of us would ever wish to emulate. And, because so few of us explore our history on our own, we don’t realize how rich Malcolm’s life was. None of us wish to exit the planet the way Malcolm was unfortunately forced to exit, but that day in February 1965 will never define his legacy. African people are shot down all day everyday so clearly, that’s not why so many people know who Malcolm X is. Its that rich legacy of his courage and struggle for our dignity that inspires us to respect him and its that which our enemies work overtime to dim in our consciousness.

You will never find us discouraging anyone from watching and reading anything. Watch the documentary, but what we will tell you is you are ill-responsible if all you know about Malcolm X, Muhammad Ali, the Nation of Islam, and our African liberation movement is what you learn from these documentaries and motion pictures. There is so much information out here at our fingertips that anyone who doesn’t pursue it to make that your foundation, not Netflix, is really just resigned to remaining in the slave mentality that they joyfully target to produce these projects in order to ensure we continue to stay in that mentality.

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Individualism, Idealism & The Savage Attack against African Identity

9/9/2021

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In 2021 its not difficult to find African (Black) people throughout the U.S. who will tell you with a straight face that they do not believe that they are descendants from Africa. Instead, these folks claim that their ancestry extends for thousands of years within the Western Hemisphere. The correct response to this perspective is bless the good souls of these people because the cause behind their position is a complete lack of knowledge about Africa beyond what the capitalist system has force fed us for 500+ years.

The diamond industry that produces the rings that people buy when getting engaged to be married, the gold people buy for their selected jewelry, etc., is propped up based on the exploitative industry of theft of those minerals from Africa. The aluminum that makes sporting rims for vehicles not to mention foil to wrap our food in, is based on the exploitative bauxite industry in Africa. The production of the most desired and admired vehicles like Tesla, Mercedes Benz, BMW, etc., is based on exploiting Africa’s steel, zinc, Lithium, and rubber mineral resources. Also, the oil that provides the fuel for those vehicles is largely exploited from Africa. Even the simple enjoyment of a chocolate bar cannot happen without the exploitative cocoa industry which is based in Africa. This entire systemic apparatus of exploitation of all African resources was built from the colonization of Africa which began approximately 530 years ago. Before these brutal industries were established, the blueprint for this process was created through one of the worst holocausts in human history, the transatlantic slave trade. Literally millions of Africans were violently uprooted from Africa and displaced to the entire Western Hemisphere. The forced labor of these Africans provided the initial seed money that fueled the industrialization period. And this period contributed to the development of the capitalist system that is represented by the multi-national corporations like Nestle, Tesla, Chevrolet, Toyota, Shell, etc., that dominate all the exploitative industries previously mentioned.

These multi-national corporations have built their fortunes on mass murder and domination of the entire continent of Africa, but they will never publicly admit any of this. Instead, they have spent the last 500 years concocting a mass narrative that they are on top because of their hard work, focus, and undeniable belief in their God. This tactic has obviously been overwhelmingly successful for multiple reasons. The first reason is that this approach elevates the individualistic perspective of history that capitalism depends upon into the dominate position. Once individualism is dominant, fantasy and the illusion of forward progress will always continue to be an effective tool because now objective reality has been replaced with subjective desire and the hope of progress. What people wish the world was has replaced what the world actually is as the dominant reality. And, on top of all of this dysfunction, the vision of Africa has been built based on this individualistic model that paints a lying portrait of Africa as a “dark continent” with primitive people, no technology, no civilization, and no hope. This backward vision of Africa contrasted with the vision of the capitalist Western world as the citadel of human progress and civilization has driven the masses of Africans in Africa, Europe, and the Western world to believe that they have to make a choice between the civilizations of the forces who have subjugated them and the poor suffering continent that, in their eyes, offers them nothing to be proud of. In this tainted scale, the capitalist world wins because it represents forward progress and all that is desired in the world. There is even a saying that “to this point, only capitalism has proven an ability to produce the products that advance the planet.”

All of the above is exactly why we are fond of asking Africans who claim not to be African to inform us about studies they have engaged in about our African history. Here there is always an oblivion. Not just a lack of knowledge, but the complete absence of any information about Africa whatsoever. Think about it. Even the most basic elements of history are denied to practically everyone who exists in the Western world. The average person, even those of African descent within the U.S. for example, could not provide you a reasonable answer to any one of the following questions; what is capitalism? Where did capitalism come from? What role did Africa play in the development of the Western world? What was the process for carrying out the slave trade? What did an average day for a captured African look like in the 1500s? 1600s? 1700s? 1800s? What did a typical day on the slave plantation look like? Where does your biological family exist in the world today? In what ways did we fight back? What examples of resistance do you know about? All of these questions will be met by 95% of the population with utter confusion and these are the basic questions required to have even a fundamental understanding of who we are. Without that foundation, any and everyone, no matter how intelligent, is forced to accept the narrative of our enemies and embrace a Western identity (even if they do so in any form of resistance i.e. “I’m Black only”) because this process has completely cut us off from who we actually are.

And, with no healthy foundation of who we are, we are not in the position to understand even the basic history of what great contributions Africa has contributed to human history. None of these non-African, Africans, can ever tell you a single thing about Africa’s unquestionable contributions to the development of Christianity, Islam, and Judaism. None of them can tell you about our contributions to science, debate, and even our creation of the world’s first documented university (Timbuktu in Mali, West Africa). They don’t know that the Greek philosophers they have been taught to believe laid the table for world philosophy got their training at Timbuktu (and they even wrote about it). They know nothing of our matriarchal histories throughout Africa where women identifying people were elevated without men being subjugated.

This complete cut off from Africa places us at the mercy of our colonial identities. As a result, we have come to view the world completely through the vision provided to us by these colonizers. We believe we are Black British, Afro-Cubans, Black Brazilians, Black-Canadians, African-Americans, Nigerians, Kenyans, etc. We see our interests as tied to the micro-states where we were born and where we live. Meanwhile, these micro-states have zero commitment to representing our interests, especially since they know that their continued prosperity is tied to the collective exploitation of Africa. So to them, we will forever be a threat to them, even if we don’t understand why (which we don’t) because they know that one day we will wake up and realize that the riches that they command come from the same place that we do.

African identity is much more than glamorizing our past. For proponents of Pan-Africanism its really a recognition that there are 2 billion Africans worldwide, living in 120 countries and in each of those countries we occupy the bottom of society. And, at the core of this is the continued subjugation of Africa.

The great thing about Pan-Africanism is an African can be Puerto Rican, Dominican, Brazilian, Canadian, etc., and still recognize that our core interest and progress as a people is intrinsically linked to the liberation of Africa. We would never wish to deny our experiences over the last 500+ years because our ability to survive despite the trauma we experienced is a badge of honor and a testament to the strength of our African culture which is without question the resource that has guided us through this hell we have experienced. What does that culture look like? When people say things like “what Black people do” really what they are saying is our refusal, conscious or unconscious, to change or compromise who we are is actually our African culture manifesting itself in ways that protect us. This has permitted us to survive as we have. Torn, beaten down sometimes. Confused, but still here and as a result, potentially ready to fight back.

That African culture has never left us, whether we know that or not is ill-relevant. Its always been here and we use it all day, every-day. And, our culture is a collective one and that’s why the individualist approach has never worked for us and it never will. All that approach will do is confuse us into accepting the logic of our enemies that our problems are our fault as individuals. Some individual failing that God is punishing us for because we are inferior. This is the basis of white supremacy which is the foundation of the capitalist system and we already told you where capitalism came from so clearly, none of this is healthy and productive for us to pursue.

Its time for us to raise the bar. No talk about identity that isn’t accompanied by study and analysis of our history. It’s tragically unfortunate that people are paying these corporations hundreds of dollars to tell them what we already know, that we are Africans. Its tragically unfortunate that so many of people, completely ignorant about who we are, feel the need to lie and make a history they cannot document instead of learning the true and glorious history of who we are. Its tragically unfortunate that capitalism has reduced truth down to nothing more than a subjective interpretation that varies from individual to individual “based upon your truth being your truth.” This is absolute nonsense designed strictly to justify the injustices that are normalized as the natural order of things. We are Africans, period. Even Mother Nature knows this and any African who straightens their hair is reminded of this as soon as the elements of Earth hit that hair.

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An Anti-Materialistic Person's Tribute to A Long Time Metal Comrade

8/17/2021

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In December of 2004, I bought this SUV. Since that time it has served as my primary vehicle and by primary I mean that thing has driven through Mexico and Canada. It has carried me across the country. But, more important than that is the actual reason why I see the need to celebrate a piece of metal. That vehicle I relied upon through some of the most scary and traumatic moments of my adult life.

In 2011 and 2012 I was engaged in helping lead some radical and dangerous housing justice work. I was getting peppered sprayed and getting in fist fights helping protect people’s houses when the big secret I held was that during that time, I myself didn’t have a place to stay. In the course of abandoning my long time work within the finance industry (trying to play the double role finally caught up with me), I was in between any real job and having never faced that reality before, I didn’t know how to deal with it. How to ask for help. So, for about 14 months, this piece of metal served as my living quarters. Southeast Portland, Oregon, U.S. will forever serve as a sentimental place for me because it was throughout that neighborhood that I slept in my vehicle all those nights. I’ll always remember the night before a huge action and the well intentioned European organizer/accomplices were concerned about the police trying to locate and pick me up to try and derail the event. I calmly and consistently reassured them. There was no way the police would know how to find me that night. I didn’t even know where I would be myself.

I used my political work as cover. I could serve as security for the houseless vigil at city hall, parked in front, sitting in my vehicle. No one else needed to know that I would have had no where else to go anyway. I enjoy the thoughts of it because even if I had a place to live during those days, I know that I would have still been where I was. Where the danger was, because work needed to be done. I’ll always remember all those nights having no gas money and worried like hell that I’d run out of gas or worse, that SUV would break down. Somehow that I’ll never fully understand beyond crediting the ancestors, I never ran out of gas and that SUV never stopped working, even when by all rights it should have because of how much I was unable to maintenance it during that period.

Many dangerous missions were carried out in that vehicle. Shots were fired at it by intolerant elements. Lonely roads were traveled many times late at night. Sometimes with people of ill intent in pursuit. By my latest recollection, between California, Washington, and Oregon, I was pulled over in this vehicle at least 20 times.

Then there are the times I needed it to drive through intense snow. I lived for a time in a place in Oregon where heavy snow happens nine months a year.

I’m the least materialistic person you will ever know. I don’t care about houses, cars, etc. As long as the house is comfortable and I can maintain it. As long as the car looks decent and drives fine, I’m good. This SUV was special though because it was there for long trips. Organizing trips. It was there for every facet of political work I engaged in from 2004 through today, August 17, 2021 (the birthday of Marcus Mosiah Garvey). It served as a reliable resource in every way I needed, at times when I needed it the most.

If you can read between the lines here, then you should pick up that this really isn’t a tribute to a vehicle. Its an acknowledgement of the struggle that takes place everyday. The ancestors who always guide me through and a reminder of the struggles I myself have come through. The good times and the bad. The comrades, rolling from here to there. The loading of people and equipment for events. Dang, that was my vehicle when my daughter graduated from high school. The night I went to jail for defending myself against a domestic abuser who made the mistake of thinking they could abuse me, the police tried to impound my SUV until I challenged them. The number of events that vehicle played a crucial role in helping organize from sound equipment for African Liberation Days to carrying a vehicle full of folks to the American Indian Movement’s Un-thanksgiving at the crack of dawn. I can go on and on, but the point is not the black 2005 Tahoe vehicle. It’s the memories and people. I traded in the vehicle today, but writing this has helped me recognize that all of those memories are mine forever.

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Black August, COINTELPRO & Learning The Important Lessons

8/9/2021

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As 2021 moves along there are a number of things that, like the sun following the moon, remain constant. The international capitalist system continues to utilize its control over our brain waves to promote, institutionalize, and normalize lies, confusion, and misinformation. The masses of humanity continue to resist this oppression in any number of creative and evolving ways. And, the forces attempting to organize against the system continue to claim complete mastery over how the government manipulated our movements in the past while simultaneously and foolishly behaving in the same destructive ways, especially on social media, that sabotaged our work in decades past.

The theory here is that capitalism is relentless in promoting the individualistic vision of life as the one and only way that we can effectively carry out our existence. By individualistic we mean that we are taught that the dysfunctional and subjective ways that we view the world is all that we need to participate in and even lead movement work. As a result, many people who genuinely believe that they are exercising healthy approaches in the work that they do are actually acting in ways that result in lots of drama and unnecessary conflict. Conflict that our individualistic vision prevents us from recognizing is being used on a much broader scale against our movement work in ways that will adversely impact us for years to come.

This past Saturday, August 7, 2021, represents the 51th commemoration of the Marin County Courthouse incident involving Johnathan Jackson, William Christmas, James McClain, and Rutchel Magee. Most people know the general history of that incident (and if you don’t, information about it is everywhere), but far less people know of the confusion and distrust that influenced the events of that day. Confusion that was completely and ill-refutably orchestrated by federal police agencies. The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) had developed a nationally coordinated intelligence program called the Counter Intelligence Program (COINTELPRO). This program had a number of variations dating back to the 1920s when the Department of Justice (the pre-runner to the FBI) engaged in successful sabotage efforts against Marcus Garvey and the Universal Negro Improvement Association, but by 1967, a new and improved COINTELPRO was released. This program, under the seedy direction of FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover, and facilitated by soulless FBI officials like Cartha DeLoach and William Sullivan, had the specific objective of dismantling the African liberation movement. Back in those days there were very few African FBI agents, so the FBI relied primarily on undercover police informants. These informants represented African people who were facing criminal charges from the U.S. government. Once the FBI profiled these people and determined that they had the temperament to help them, they would offer these people paid work to join our movement organizations and gather information that the FBI could use to filter down to state and local police departments who were reporting to and cooperating with the FBI through this nationally coordinated program. Since these people were facing criminal charges if they refused, and most them had zero political education and/or commitment to our liberation struggle anyway, the FBI had little trouble finding plenty of these people to work for them. From information these people provided to the FBI, the bureau knew that gang antagonisms existed between the US Organization in Los Angeles and the L.A. Black Panther Party membership. They knew that Alprentice “Bunchy” Carter, the founder of the L.A. Black Panther Party Chapter, was the former head of the Slausens Street organization (what people call gangs) and that para-military elements within the US Organization who led that branch of that organization were recruited from gangs that saw Carter and other Panthers as rivals. Once the FBI had this information, they knew the weak points and where to push against our organizations. The results were a number of Black Panthers being killed, including Carter, a complete disruption of political unity in Los Angeles, and all of this happened without anyone at the time having a clear understanding of why this was taking place.

The events of August 7, 1970, were not immune to these contradictions. There were always struggles within the Black Panther Party over the concept of waging in an out and out war against the empire, and that meant armed struggle, and the focus on the Panther’s “survival programs.” The FBI knew this and they also knew that many of these contradictions were manifested through divisions in the above ground Panther organizing work and those operating within the underground movements. For example, there were elements who wanted to take militant action to free comrade and Soledad Brother George Jackson from prison. Work to create that plan was developed and centered around the 17 year old brother of George, Johnathan Jackson. Geronimo Ji Jaga (Pratt) had assumed leadership within the L.A. Panther Chapter after the assassinations of Bunchy Carter and John Huggins in January, 1969. Ji Jaga, working to try and solidify that Panther chapter that had obviously been under systematic attack (as was the case nationally with Black Panther Chapters and branches), made an attempt to challenge the feasibility of taking action to free comrade George. In fact, according to eye witness accounts, and FBI records (because remember, everything that was happening, they were aware of), Ji Jaga gave orders to abandon the jail break attempt, but due to COINTELPRO interference, that message apparently never reached young Johnathan on the day of August 7th. According to FBI file documents, this miscommunication was the objective of the FBI as they hoped the result would be an action that was so poorly carried out that it would have no consequences and would embarrass and discredit the Black Panther Party. Ji Jaga apparently thought the action was dead and the FBI probably thought nothing significant would come of it, but the feds underestimated the determination of young Johnathan Jackson. Evidently undeterred by conflicting information and misinformation, Johnathan soldiered his part and entered the Marin County Courthouse on August 7, 1970, armed and prepared to liberate James McClain, William Christmas, and Rutchel Magee, so that they could free George and do much more for our struggle. Its important that we never forget that the FBI is a soulless organization. Their sabotage work was designed to ensure that the incident on that day would not succeed in its objective to liberate George Jackson. Beyond that, they surely had no concern about who was killed, injured, etc., even if some of those people were courthouse employees. In fact, FBI documents summarizing the days events celebrated the moment Johnathan came into the courtroom, focusing on his moment of indecision due to the lack of people being in place that the plan had called for (when the plan was constructed and before it was blocked, all of which was apparently unknown by Johnathan Jackson). Able to recover from his momentarily and alleged surprise, Johnathan made his famous announcement “gentlemen! We are taking over now!” And, the incident continued with Jackson, McClain, and Christmas, being murdered that day along with a number of courtroom personnel including the judge. Rutchel Magee, 51 years later, remains incarcerated.

For anyone with a soul, the results of August 7, 1970, should disturb you. A 17 year old warrior and other comrades were lost and although we understand the moral victories we derive from that action 51 years later, the adverse impact the incident had in helping create the atmosphere that pretty much made it open season on attacking African liberation organizations are things we still struggle with today. Also, anyone who knows of the devastating internal antagonisms that resulted from the aftermath of the incident and the miscommunications and distrust within the Black Panther Party membership understands what’s meant when we say our enemies got their way. The same can be said for the internal dynamics that have haunted the American Indian Movement surrounding the circumstances of the murder of American Indian Movement leader Anna Mae Pictoh Aquash. Just like the Panthers, those wounds are still wide open in 2021. This is important because those wounds impacted the capacity of each organization.

What all of this should mean for us in 2021 and beyond is you are extremely naïve if you don’t believe that the same level of monitoring against all of our organizations is taking place in 2021 that was taking place in 1967. As was stated, COINTELPRO came through several manifestations so clearly, what we are facing today is not going to be the same as it was in 1967, but its still happening. And, just because you don’t see it means absolutely nothing. No one saw it in 1967 either and the level of technical capacities available today to prevent you from seeing far exceed what was in existence 50+ years ago. So, although we probably won’t have the clear evidence for some years now, you can bet your bottom that everything you say, do, talk about, think about, etc., is being monitored, filed, and strategized around for how it can be used against all of us. Some of us talk so much that you may say 1000 things and none of them are ever used, but don’t let that confuse you into thinking nothing is happening. Also, the level of participation you have or think you have is completely ill-relevant. Even a movement nonentity like William O’Neil could be molded to get close enough to a significant leader like Fred Hampton to cause ill-reversible damage. This is actually a constant strategy used by our enemies. Another thing they rely upon is our indoctrination in that individualism and the proliferation of the ego being centered in whatever capacities we have. The reliance of social media in today’s organizing work is a strong catering tool for that proliferation of ego and the ability of people to create whatever type of reality for themselves and others that they desire. All of this is being closely monitored, studied, and strategized around by the enemies of humanity. And, people today are probably as naïve as we were 50 years ago in thinking that nobody cares about what we are saying, etc. At least we hope that this is the case because if not, it would have to mean that people just don’t care how much what they are doing is harming real movement building.

Best practices to combat this effort to bring us down is to practice time tested things that strengthen our movement instead of providing our enemies all of the fuel they need to attack us. Remember that disagreements are a natural part of the growth process and that there is no rule that we have to agree with everyone to have a positive relationship with them. It’s the strong who can work with and respect people they don’t agree with because those people understand that everyone has a contribution to make. Its only the egotistically fragile who believe that their way is the only way and anyone who doesn’t see the world the way they do is the enemy. The FBI loves those of you who believe that last sentence. Develop some intellectual maturity and discipline. When disagreements arise make it a practice to take them to the people they involve and absolutely no one else. Learn how to engage in principled ideological struggle over disagreements and practice keeping those disagreements ideological and not personal. If you cannot subvert your dislike for someone in the interest of not providing fuel for our real enemies, then you lack the maturity to be involved in this work on any meaningful level. Dislike them, but struggle principally with them. Doing so will make you feel better about yourself and will make the person you dislike respect you more which will help stall out negativity because you will recognize the courage you manifested in taking the struggle directly to the parties involved. In turn, they will also see that because they will feel the accountability you brought to them with your principled approach. All of this only makes us stronger while denying our enemies the fuel they are looking for to use against us. If we aren’t willing to implement these simple practices and if we continue to refuse to learn from the lessons of the past, then we are demonstrating that what we are doing now has little to do with mass liberation and more to do with personal advancement and ego gratification. Don’t be that person. Let’s make sure our elders and ancestors didn’t suffer for nothing.

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Simone Biles, African Athletes, U.S. Patriotism & White Supremacy

8/4/2021

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During the 2020 Olympic games, which due to the pandemic are being carried out in the summer of 2021, gymnast Simone Biles, suddenly withdrew from competition for the U.S. team. Biles, who has been so dominant in her performance over the last several years that she has earned the title of GOAT (greatest of all time), has been so outstanding that many judges have admitted being confused about how to properly evaluate other gymnasts in comparison to Bile’s incredible capabilities.
Biles, apparently feeling pressure to justify her decision to withdraw, took the painful step of revealing publicly that she has struggled with depression and needed time away from the sport to manage her mental health. She expressed that the depression results in large part from the abuse she experienced for an extended time from her gymnast coach. Neither her dominant performance in gymnastics or her admission about the reasons for her withdrawal have muted the incredible level of criticism that is being waged against her by a large swath of people who are calling her a coward and someone who has abandoned her teammates at the Olympics. And this harsh criticism hasn’t just originated from random people. It has been echoed by national media personalities, politicians, etc. These people are exhibiting zero empathy for her suffering whatsoever.

We have seen this same scenario many times as it relates to how African athletes are evaluated. Professional athletes like Barry Bonds and Kevin Durant are often criticized for their demeanor during press conferences and in interacting with the public. They are often called “ungrateful” and “spoiled” because of their unwillingness to be everything the general public wants them to be at any given moment. Meanwhile, follow professional athletes like Larry Bird and Aaron Rodgers, both European (white) will never win any magnanimous personality awards. Neither has a shining reputation for being patient and engaging with the public, yet neither has been subjected to the venom that comes for Bonds, Durant and other African athletes on a daily basis.

Another instance revolves around San Francisco Giants Baseball Pitcher Jay Jackson. An African relief pitcher, Jackson has performed well for the Giants this season up to last week of July when he had three consecutive rough outings. For those unfamiliar with baseball jargon, what that means is Jackson was batted around by the opposition in three games and for that he received such a barrage of racist hate mail that the Giants baseball organization felt the need to respond to repudiate the racism directed at Jackson.

What ties all of these incidents together is the underlining white supremacy that operates on a systemic level within every crevice of every function within this society. The foundation of rightwing pundit Laura Ingraham’s admonition to LeBron James last year to “shut up and dribble” is the belief on behalf of millions of people in this country that every breath we take as African people is somehow a privilege that we have not earned, but has been provided to us by the glorious United States of America – the citadel of freedom and democracy. This belief is firmly rooted in the myth of white supremacy that advances the notion that African/Indigenous, and other colonized people have never contributed anything to the “development” of this country. Instead, this myth argues that we been the benefactors of the hard-work, values, and ordained blessings of white Jesus on this great European nation. And, as a result of this lucky position we find ourselves in, we should consider ourselves fortunate to have the opportunity to earn money playing a sport for the entertainment of large, mostly European crowds and owners. We should be honored that Europeans, the only true “Americans”, even permit us to represent their great country because certainly, we have done absolutely nothing to earn such an honor.

This white supremacist thinking explains where the venomous response to Silver medal winning Shot-putter Ravin Saunders medal stand protest (against injustice against colonized and oppressed people) comes from. It also explains why fans at professional basketball games feel perfectly justified cursing at players, throwing popcorn and spitting on them (Atlanta’s Trae Young and Washington’s Russell Westbrook). It also explains why tennis player Naomi Osaka was met with the same disdain for pulling out of the Wimbledon and Olympics tournaments for similar reasons as the ones Biles provided. This marginalization of African athletes, whether anyone admits it or not, is rooted in the white supremacist notion that we are nothing beyond the tools of European capitalism, to be used completely to their satisfaction. Beyond that, we have no agency they need to respect and the idea of viewing us as complete human being is as absurd as suggesting during the enslavement of our ancestors that they were full human beings.

I love sports and baseball is one of them. I’ve been a fan of my San Francisco Giants (my city of personal origin) since being a little boy. As I listened to the Giants game earlier this week when pitcher Jay Jackson was having a difficult time getting opposing batters out, I was keenly aware of the rancor being directed at him by the announcers, who are allegedly supposed to always be objective. They were talking about how “horrible” the pitches he was throwing were and how poorly his approach was to trying to get hitters out. I have played, watched, and listened to thousands of basketball, football, baseball, etc., games over the years. Anyone else who has already knows that bad performance is a part of sports, but all one has to do is compare the sentiment expressed around it when African athletes struggle compared to their European counterparts to see the glaring contradictions.

The underlining issue is African people are not respected as human beings. Whether anyone wants to admit it or not, we are viewed as show animals. Pay attention to how African athletes, regardless of what country they “represent” are labeled and analyzed. Clearly, the values of chattel slavery are still very evident today. The dehumanization of African people is an essential part of maintaining the capitalist system. They have to separate us from our humanity because to see us as fully functioning human beings would bring into play the contradictions that exist within this society. Contradictions that if fully exposed, shine bright lights on the international capitalist system that depends upon those contradictions to continue to exploit and profit from our human and material resources, particularly in Africa, but everywhere African people exist.

The positive thing is these examples illustrate clearly how the manifestations of capitalism work. Nothing falls outside of the realm of white supremacy. Not a single thing. From a single gymnast in the Olympics to the performance of the garbage worker to even a Hollywood actor, white supremacy permeates every crevice of this society. And the only thing that will change this reality is when the African masses demand and achieve the respect we rightfully deserve and the only thing that will ever produce this result is the liberation and unification of Africa (under one continental socialist government) = Pan-Africanism. As we currently exist, even an African gymnast or shot-putter in the U.S. doesn’t fall outside of these parameters. A professional basketball player playing in the U.S. who was born and raised in Greece doesn’t fall outside of this. Nothing and no one does. And, for those who doubt Pan-Africanism is our solution to these problems, just stop and think for a moment why it is that you will never hear the same disrespect and dehumanization being leveled at athletes (or anyone) from any European country or even China (where they are engaged in a similar type of building up of China that we need for Africa). This is ill-refutably true whether athletes from those countries have failings in their performances (which they do) or not. As long as African people in general, and Africa in particular, are disunified, even being a famous millionaire athlete is never going to be enough to protect anyone from the ravages of this backward system. And, if Simone Biles and Naomi Osaka are subjected to this inhumane treatment, just imagine the experiences of the everyday masses of African people. What we are seeing with how our athletes are being treated is another very clear example that individualism, regardless of how much money it generates, is never going to be the solution for us to acquire the dignity that no amount of money on earth will ever be enough to purchase. As Kwame Nkrumah correctly articulated, our problem is political, not economic. Political in the sense that we need organization of our people. Even the silly Olympic games provide insight to how unity would show our power. Imagine a team representing a united Africa. Where Africans born in Brazil, Jamaica, the U.S., Britain, and every country of Africa are on the same united Africa team against the rest of the world. It would be a struggle for anyone else to win even a single bronze medal in anything except the few sports that African people don’t participate in like that silly horse jumping nonsense. And, that’s just the Olympics. The same dynamic would be in play for international politics and economics and every sphere of life that African people currently struggle to gain a seat at the table in. Its past time that we recognize this because even if we don’t, the people brutalizing us understand this clearly. This is the reason they come at us as hard as they do because they know that the moment we recognize that playing by their rules will never benefit us is the day they know their days are numbered.

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Dissecting What's Truly Happening in Cuba Right Now

7/13/2021

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The capitalist news outlets like CNN, MSNBC, FOX, etc., are running amok this week. According to them, the people of Cuba are “rising up to overthrow the brutal communist dictatorship that has ruled them with an iron fist for over 60 years.” The reasoning they are providing for this alleged mass uprising? The collapse of the Cuban economy due to the pandemic and the inability of the Cuban government to alleviate the people’s suffering.

To dissect this in a methodical and analytical way, let’s start with that last statement. Socialist Cuba is a technologically developing country. Like every other country around it in the Caribbean i.e. the Dominican Republic, Haiti, Puerto Rico, Jamaica, Trinidad, and every country in the Western Hemisphere, Cuba was built on an economy based on stealing Indigenous lands and exploiting kidnapped Africans as free slave labor. This reality built the country into a playground for privileged classes from the U.S. until the Cuban revolution overthrew the Batista regime in 1959. Embarking upon a socialist path, Cuba has spent six decades building a society where social justice for the collective is the priority, not protecting the so-called “rights” of the privileged minority to profit from exploiting the masses of Cubans.

The accomplishments of the Cuban revolution are numerous and have been widely documented for anyone who wishes to truly understand them. So, we won’t repeat their many accomplishments here. Instead, we introduce a simple analysis and question. If you live in the U.S. or the other industrialized capitalist countries that have worked relentlessly against Cuba’s socialist revolution for decades, you already know that the U.S. (for example) experienced severe economic challenges during the pandemic. Millions lost their jobs. Homelessness has increased to unprecedented levels. Poverty has grown. Crime has risen, etc. Yet, there is no sustained mass uprising against the capitalist empire within the U.S. or in any of these capitalist countries. There is no question that Cuba, being an infant country struggling to develop and stabilize (like any country capitalist, socialist, etc), while being ruthlessly sabotaged by the 60+ year U.S. led economic blockade against their socialist revolution, has been hit hard by the pandemic. Still, there is certainly no argument that conditions in Cuba are as bad or worse for the people there than in any of the surrounding countries i.e. the Dominican Republic, Jamaica, etc., yet no one is surprised that no mass uprisings are taking place in those countries where there is no tangible debate to suggest that their conditions are more stable than what exists in Cuba. In fact, Haiti has had a president assassinated within the last week and has had mass uprisings and protests for months there due to systemic capitalist exploitation of the people there, but now, out of the blue, despite all of those ill-refutable facts, we are supposed to believe that the “oppressed” people of Cuba “have had enough” and are going to overthrow their revolution? A revolution that has provided them quality healthcare that even millions of people in the money rich U.S. don’t have. A revolution that has nonexistent crime compared to capitalist countries. A revolution that even according to the World Health Organization has quality nutrition, a nonexistent infant mortality rate, and a strong education system that most countries on earth cannot compare to. A revolution that unlike the capitalist U.S., provides its people with subsidies of food and money to survive in crisis times instead of leaving them at the mercy of the most brutal conditions to fend on their own. Its this revolutionary country where these uprisings are taking place while nothing of the sort happens in all the countries that don’t provide a fraction of the support to its people that Cuba does?

The capitalist media is telling you that this hashtag “CUBASOS” is trending. That the masses of Cuba are demanding that their president Miguel Diaz-Canal step down. This is what they are telling you despite the fact this makes absolutely no sense. Cuba is a socialist society governed by Marxist/Leninist principles. Changing the president doesn’t change their system no more than changing presidents in this capitalist empire changes this system. Yet, this is what they are telling you and because so many people in the U.S. wouldn’t study the Cuban revolution if a gun was placed against your head. As a result, most of us here will believe some elements of what they are telling you (whether we want to or not. Whether we are conscious of it or not).

Undoubtedly, there are some people in Cuba who will never accept the principles of the revolution. South Florida is filled with them. People who abandoned the Cuban revolution. That so-called “Cuban exile community” in Miami, Florida, U.S. is 98% European (white). That’s predictable because revolutions are fought and sustained for the oppressed, not the beneficiaries of that oppression. So, those beneficiaries typically have a pretty strong history of opposing the revolutionary efforts and that 98% in Florida still have relatives and friends in Cuba. Its primarily those people who are the face of this so-called “uprising.” Backed by an established and elaborate network of reactionary capitalist minded thugs in Florida who receive unstop financial support from the U.S. government, these people want to convince you that the majority of people in Cuba oppose socialism and want to be capitalist like the U.S. The question you have to ask yourself is how is it that upwards of 70% of Cuba’s population are Africans (remember, 98% of the so-called exiles in the U.S. are white), yet its not Africans you see speaking for these so-called resisters in Cuba? Sure, they will find one or two sellouts just like they do here, but the masses of Africans, the majority of the people in Cuba, strongly support their socialist revolution. Over 70% of Cuba’s population alive today was born after the revolution of 1959. As a result, they have always had free healthcare so they don’t want healthcare premiums they can’t afford. They have always had living expenses that are no more than a small percentage of their income so they don’t want monthly rent that is 150% of their income. They have always had free education so they don’t want student loan debt. And yes, white supremacy is a system so its far from being eliminated, but the Cuban revolution has made strides against it in concrete ways that this country cannot even comprehend (like government funding of African history curriculum in schools instead of denying even a discussion about that history as is happening here).

In other words, this uprising is manufactured by the capitalist system, using and escalating those dissident voices in Cuba, to make it appear to you that this is a mass uprising. This is an old tactic from imperialism. A few years ago it was the so-called “Ladies in White” who were supposedly protesting the Cuban revolution and they carried this lie until it was revealed that this group was financed by the Cuban American National Foundation in Florida, a longtime rightwing anti-Cuban revolution lobbying and terrorist group.

And, since imperialism (Biden, Trump, Obama, Rockerfellers, Duponts, Kelloggs, etc.) knows it cannot refute any of the points being made in this article, they depend upon their go to move, using celebrities. For this week, they are pulling out the usual tired old retreads. Has been performers like Gloria Estaban and Andy Garcia. Longtime reactionaries, European of course, who have spent decades fabricating opposition to the Cuban revolution.

The concrete truth is what’s happening in Cuba is another concerted attempt by imperialism to undermine the Cuban revolution. The truth is Cuba has done more to protect people from covid and the economic impacts of the pandemic than most of the world, including the U.S., but they don’t want us to know that because to know that will force us to acknowledge the logical alternative of socialism to address social, economic, and other problems we face. So, these thugs do what they do best, they lie, sabotage, and depend upon you trusting them despite nothing they have told you in 500 years being true. Meanwhile, a tried and true and legitimate uprising against a government is happening very close to Cuba in nearby Haiti and due to them wanting you to ignore that genuine struggle for justice against capitalism, this manufactured “event” in Cuba is being highlighted, but they will not have their way. Instead, what the world is about to learn is despite the outstanding contributions of Fidel and Raul Castro. Vilma Espin. Che Guevara and Juan Almeida, and Camilo Cuengugos, etc., those outstanding revolutionaries have never been what the Cuban revolution has been about (despite imperialism’s efforts to make you think that). Its always been about the masses of Cubans. Those primarily African people, that working class mass. Those descendants of Carlota – the African woman from Nigeria, kidnapped and taken to Cuba to work on the Mantillas plantation, who led a massive uprising that led to the eradication of slavery in Cuba. Its those people who will again rise victorious for the Cuban revolution. And, its that optic that capitalism is so intent on ensuring we don’t see.

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Building Respect/Support for Independent African Analysis/Media

7/8/2021

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Very recently, the Hood Communist Collective (an independent revolutionary African blog source) came up against the demand for $600.00 USD to pay for our domain name. In our bi-weekly team meeting, we discussed chipping in to raise the money before the suggestion came up about fundraising within our communities to raise that money. We decided to embark upon that suggestion and literally within hours of launching an internet crowd source requesting donations, we had raised the entire amount needed. As for my book “A Guide for Organizing Defense against White Supremacist, Patriarchal, and Fascist Violence”, the book has sold in the thousands without a single cent being spent on advertising. Awareness about the book is being spread 100% through word of mouth. These are outstanding example of collective African self-determination and although these examples provide solid proof of our capacity and potential, I doubt anyone can disagree that this type of support for these mediums doesn’t occur nearly as often as it should.

Kwame Ture (formally Stokely Carmichael) was fond of saying often that “capitalism will make what should be absurd seem normal and what should seem normal absurd.” His statement makes absolute sense because the capitalist system was built and is maintained on the mass suffering of the majority of people on earth as well as the complete destruction of the planet itself. These are the natural consequences of a system (capitalism) where money is more important than people. So, Kwame’s logic explains why the reality exists where genuinely valuable independent revolutionary African ideas and analysis is virtually nonexistent to the majority of our people while completely insignificant and useless analysis coming from bourgeoisie and celebrity culture is held in the highest esteem in our communities.

Without a broad, independent, revolutionary, African analysis, our people are left with the dominantly petti-bourgeoisie narratives existing unchallenged. A dysfunctional example of this is the belief that the majority of our people’s problems result from our lack of discipline and effort and have nothing to do with this backward system. Another example is the belief that we can rise out of our oppression strictly through individualistic efforts when we know that only the masses of people make history, not individuals, but so is the logic of capitalism. A logic that is without question dominant and this is why our independent revolutionary African voices are so important because they provide our people with a healthy foundation that rejects the logic of capitalism. We tell our people that the only thing wrong with us is that we have not organized to eliminate this backward capitalist system that is maintained on exploiting us and our mother Africa. The latter analysis combats the attacks against us and provides us the inspiration that we can and will win which permits us to take responsibility for solving our problems ourselves.

Its important to highlight the contrast of independent, revolutionary African voices from African voices that sprinkle in some elements of African nationhood (petti-bourgeoisie nationalism). The latter are provided vast platforms because their analysis in no way attempts to challenge the hegemony of the capitalist system. Examples of this are people like Umar Johnson in the U.S. or Julius Malema in Azania (South Africa) who rail incessantly against Europeans while saying some things that make sense, but never saying anything to confront capitalism as a system of oppression. This is what is meant by independent and revolutionary analysis and media i.e. the intellectual thrust that seeks to get us to think and act beyond the parameters of the capitalist system that is oppressing us. For people with more sophisticated understandings of class struggle within the capitalist system, you can recognize that this backward system will embrace the rhetoric of people like Johnson and Malema, despite anything they say that can be perceived as anti-European (white), before this system will ever provide a platform to African revolutionaries advocating the overthrow of the capitalist system.

This is the reason that its so imperative for the African masses to support independent revolutionary African analysis and media. Since the success of the worldwide African revolution depends 100% on the consciousness and participation of the African masses, without that support, those voices will die. Every revolutionary and independent African writer, activist, organizer, artist, knows this is true. At no point in history have we been able to trust the whims of the European left for anything besides additional emotional labor so we know that our ability to sustain ourselves certainly cannot rest with them, even if they are providing significant support (which has never happened and most likely never will). So, the onus is on the African masses to claim what rightfully belongs to us and for us to decide that our voices are our responsibility. That means that it is imperative that the masses of African people take it as their responsibility to spread the word about independent revolutionary African analysis/media on an ongoing and consistent basis. That our people support these mediums in whatever way is needed.
African people should willingly do all of those things because it is these independent revolutionary African voices that provide the perspective of things happening in the world from a healthy revolutionary African perspective that isn’t tainted or coopted by capitalist dollars. Therefore, these voices provide the serum to our people that helps us determine the best route for us to do what’s always best for our people and humanity. Without these independent revolutionary African voices to provide that much needed resource, our people are left to the capitalist media, schools, and other institutions which have but one objective as it relates to our people – enslavement and/or death.

From W.E.B. DuBois with “the Crisis” and Marcus Garvey and “The Negro World” etc., in the 1920s to the All African People’s Revolutionary Party (A-APRP), Black Alliance for Peace (BAP), and Hood Communist, etc., in 2021, our people have never stopped pushing back against the reactionary and racist narratives coming from the capitalist system about us and we never will. There are numerous independent revolutionary African voices out here today from the ones just mentioned to the Pan-African Congress of Azania (PAC), the Azanian People’s Organization (AZAPO), African Party for the Independence of Guinea-Bissau (PAIGC), Amilcar Cabral Ideological School (ACIS), Democratic Party of Guinea (PDG), Haiti Action Committee, Black Power Media, and others. What’s absolutely essential is that African people grab ahold of whichever source best represents your political outlook and then make it your responsibility to make sure as many people as possible know about that source. Of course, the best way to do this is to join those organizations and become a part of their propaganda work, but either way, we must develop the level of enthusiasm about these resources that our people generate about Jay Z, Beyonce, Nick Cannon, and other people who contribute absolutely nothing to the forward progress of our people.

Especially with the internet, there is certainly no excuse for anyone to say in 2021 that they do not know how to find these independent revolutionary African voices. These voices can be found just by simply typing in topics like Pan-Africanism, white supremacy, zionism, or patriarchy, Cuba, Haiti, etc. The A-APRP alone has about a half dozen weekly and monthly broadcasts on a number of issues impacting the African masses that can be found easily on Youtube and Facebook. The A-APRP, BAP, Black Power Media, PAC, AZAPO, and Hood Communist can all easily be found with just Googling those names in English so unless someone just has no internet skills whatsoever, all of these sources are easy to find. Please find them and tell a friend about them. Tell two friends. Tell ten friends. And donate to them and support them in every way possible. Also, don’t continue to ignore the best way to provide support is by joining these entities in order to dedicate yourselves towards making them stronger on a systemic level. For anyone who claims to love African people and want us to be free, for now, this is probably the most essential and necessary work needed.

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Kwame Ture; Exposing Police Lies to Damage his Legacy

6/27/2021

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This last June weekend of 2021 (June 29th to be exact) represents the 80th born day of Kwame Ture (formally Stokely Carmichael). As a result, numerous tributes are taking this week to honor the legacy of Kwame and his outstanding work to contribute towards the freedom of African people everywhere and justice for the entire planet.

That legacy of work by Kwame is well documented so if you are not aware of it, you should make it a priority to engage in study around his work and contributions. His work touched the civil rights, Black Power, and Pan-African movements and his selflessness and strong organizing skills helped create revolutionary cadre who continue to carry out the work he engaged in today.

Its been 23 years since Kwame’s physical existence ended, but the number tributes to him this weekend illustrate the degree to which he is still held in very high esteem by the masses of African people everywhere. The reasons he is respected so highly are being repeated during the tributes. People admire and respect his selflessness, dedication, and commitment to building a collective movement for African emancipation (Pan-Africanism), or as Kwame himself was fond of putting it the achievement of “the power of the organized masses!”

The intent of this piece isn’t to restate Kwame’s overwhelming contributions, but instead, to discuss several police inspired lies against Kwame’s legacy designed to disrupt his influence on new and developing generations of revolutionary African youth who are not old enough to have worked and/or been directly influenced by him. Its important that we never forget the work of the international capitalist/imperialist network. That work is to ensure that the masses of people are always kept in confusion about what best represents their interests as opposed to what represents the interests of the thugs who rule the world today. Their tactic in this regard is to use their mass resources (mass media, organized education, faith organizations, and all elements of society) to attempt to convince us that the interests of the masses are the same as those of the ruling capitalist classes. This week is their annual Fourth of July disgrace where they want to convince the African, Indigenous, and other working class masses that we should honor and celebrate the “independence of the U.S.” Anyone who studies even a surface level of history understands how absurd this is, yet this is the power structure’s tactic and no one can argue that despite how absurd it may be, it has been overwhelming successful for centuries. As a consequence, these thugs understand that they must pull out all stops to attempt to tarnish the image of anyone as principled and committed as Kwame Ture.

The first example of this attempted sabotage is their effort to paint Kwame as a police informant. The House of Un-American Activities (HUAC) was a committee within the U.S. House of Representatives in Washington D.C. It was formed in 1938 with the specific purpose of exposing and creating the conditions where individuals and organizations deemed by the committee to be un-American would be exposed and punished. Many African activists and revolutionaries from W.E.B. DuBois and Shirley Graham DuBois to Paul Robison were targeted by HUAC. In 1970, in response to U.S. government’s efforts to attack the Black Power movement and the resulting urban rebellions (and their potential to be transformed into revolutionary struggle), HUAC subpoenaed Kwame Ture, then Stokely Carmichael, to testify about organizations HUAC considered leaders of the urban rebellions like the Black Panther Party (BPP), Republic of New Afrika, Nation of Islam, etc. Just as is the case today, House of Representative and senate committee sessions are attended by congressional people, their staff, and media representatives. And, all of those entities, as well as Kwame’s legal representatives, reported that during the HUAC session Kwame was forced to testify in, Kwame never answered a single question asked of him, invoking the 5th amendment of the constitution which permits you to refuse to answer questions on grounds that you don’t want to potentially incriminate yourself or anyone else. The number of actual witnesses to this meeting still alive today are numerous. As are the number of people who confirm that the only reason why Kwame answered the subpoena (the potential for arrest at that time was the penalty for refusing to cooperate) was on the advice of movement elders who instead instructed him to show up and consistently invoke the 5th amendment instead of not showing up and risking losing his passport and other repression. Despite the high degree of evidence about what actually happened at that meeting, which was clearly nothing, that didn’t discourage the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) from maliciously leaking that Kwame snitched on several other movement leaders and organizations, most notably Huey P. Newton and the Black Panther Party (BPP). The FBI’s typical tactical approach to spreading this type of slander is to utilize its mass network of police informants nationwide and force those people to spread harmful rumors about people on the streets. The FBI did this understanding fully our lack of political consciousness and sophistication as a people and as a result, the slander against Kwame as a police informant spread and still exists to this day. This was true even among high profile people within the movement. This is illustrated by the fact Huey P. Newton, upon his release from jail in August of 1970, stated that “Stokely Carmichael is a police agent” as a result of this rumor circulating throughout Black Panther circles. Many people still active as revolutionary Pan-Africanists, particularly those within the All African People’s Revolutionary Party (A-APRP) still come across people who believe this slander. People who are often too young to have even been alive in 1970 which demonstrates the effectiveness of the FBI’s smear campaigns against activists that have ruined many people’s credibility and gotten people killed (Alex Rackley, Samual Napier, among others).

Another example is the still often stated (particularly in bourgeoisie feminist circles) joke Kwame made to Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) members after a meeting. In response to a question about the role of women in SNCC, Kwame was reported to have said “the role of women in SNCC is prone.” Although made in the mid 1960s, this statement by Kwame was being brought up regularly at his speaking events during question and answer periods up to his death in 1998. The reason this is so is because of the coordinated misinformation campaign by police agencies to ensure the statement continued to carry life and spread among activist circles. This was done through utilizing the same coordinated communication network used through police informants in the streets by instead utilizing rightwing college professors, faculty and staff. It was in fact a university student activities director who first informed me of the comment in 1982 when a group of us students in the Pan-African Student Union at the school I intended approached the director with a proposal to bring Kwame to campus to speak. The statement has been repeated nonstop for 50 years, but the context is of course never provided. The comment was made by Kwame to a group of three SNCC women, African and European women. It was made in the early hours of the morning after a long and tension filled SNCC meeting. It was a comment made between four friends who had mutual respect and admiration for each other based on the contributions and sacrifices they had observed each other make consistently to the cause. It was a joke between friends and nothing about Kwame’s consistent work to uplift the role of women (actual behavior superseding a simple comment), including his major contribution towards helping create the All African Women’s Revolutionary Union (A-AWRU) within the A-APRP in 1980, has been able to diminish the spreading of this comment, misstated, misquoted, and misinterpreted by people up to this day.

Finally, we revisit the false narrative around Kwame’s reason for moving to Guinea-Conakry, West Africa, in 1969. Of course, the FBI’s version for the reasons for Kwame’s physical relocation (which has often been repeated by many Africans as well) was that he was indeed a police informant and his move to Africa was to flee accountability for this. Obviously, nothing could be farther from the truth. Anyone who understands Pan-Africanism and Kwame Ture’s strong contributions to it, recognizes this lie for not only its absurdity, but its impracticality as well. To follow this logic, Kwame Ture gave up the opportunity to advance himself within the capitalist system as political contemporaries of his did like Jesse Jackson, Julian Bond, Marian Berry, etc., to live simply in Guinea, one of the most impoverished countries in the world. Even if he had wanted to “flee” the U.S., he could have gone any number of places that would have offered him much more in terms of material wealth and comforts than Guinea-Conakry. There is only one reason Kwame Ture moved to Guinea. That reason was because he wanted to work directly with Pan-African revolutionaries Kwame Nkrumah and Sekou Ture as well as Amilcar Cabral who was living and training in Guinea at the time and the other militants of the revolutionary Democratic Party of Guinea (PDG). He wanted this because he understood, before most everyone else at the time, that the work coming out of Guinea from Nkrumah, Sekou Ture, and the PDG, would form the foundation for the strategy to achieve revolutionary Pan-Africanism. Even in 1969, Kwame Ture understood (as a result of his being influenced by Kwame Nkrumah) clearly that revolutionary Pan-Africanism was the highest expression of Black Power. His moving to Guinea and continuing his work as an organizer for the A-APRP and PDG was logical and consistent and to suggest otherwise would be like saying a college basketball player who wants to advance their playing career is inconsistent by signing a contract to play in the National Basketball Association (NBA).

The police are organized and they are always working overtime. As a result, they continue to perpetuate these slanders against the principled work of Kwame Ture and many other genuine revolutionaries. They have similar misinformation campaigns being waged against Assata Shakur, Che Guevara, Fidel Castro, Malcolm X, Sekou Ture, Kwame Nkrumah, etc. That’s their job. We will never be upset because a dog chases a bone. Instead, we encourage every serious and sincere student of history to study the actual legacy of Kwame Ture. We suggest you investigate not only his work from 1961 to 1968 in SNCC and the BPP, but the last 30 years of his life as an organizer in the A-APRP and PDG. As great as his contributions to SNCC and the BPP were, it was this work in Africa that solidifies Kwame’s legacy. The question you have to raise for yourselves is why it is that his last 30 years are shrouded in mystery and misinformation? Why is it that you can know more about misinformation from the 60s and 70s about Kwame and nothing about the work of the A-APRP in Africa or the PDG, African Party for the Independence of Guinea-Bissau (PAGIC), etc. that is still taking place today? The answer is again, the role of our enemies is to keep us confused. The capitalist system is not going to educate you about the true legacy of Kwame Ture because once you know it, you will become energized to carry out that legacy. The capitalist ruling classes understand clearly, even if we do not, that the day that consciousness takes hold is the day their time is numbered.

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Witnessing the Selling Out of Juneteenth Right Before Our Eyes

6/21/2021

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For those active and aware of the African (Black) experience of struggle over the last 500+ years, Juneteenth, along with African Liberation Day and all commemorations of our glorious fight for dignity, are institutions to keep us focused on the work at hand. When I was growing up in San Francisco, California, U.S., in the 70s, events like Juneteenth had a decided political temperature. This was certainly the case in the historically strong and political African existence within the Bay Area. Juneteenth commemorations within the Fillmore and Hunters Points areas of San Francisco, areas African people dominated in the 70s, were independent, bold, and full of a clear focus on our continuing fight for liberation against this empire that continues to oppress us. I recall greatly enjoying the blaring music of James Brown, Aretha Franklin, Stevie Wonder, etc. The resulting dancing in the streets by thousands of Africans and others interested and supportive of our struggle and history. I was also influenced by the always present existence of speakers from the independent community based African nationalist organizations who organized those events. It was from those events and others that I learned that our people have always struggled against oppression from the eastern shores of Africa all the way to the western shores of this hemisphere. I learned about the Maroon resistance against the slave raids. The Quilombo societies that formed to protect our people. Societies that still exist today in Brazil and other places. The strong resistance of our people in Africa against colonialism and slavery. The message at those events was consistent and it had a strong impact on me. We, and only we will bring about the freedom of our people and that will only happen from all of us making commitments to get involved and participate in our liberation struggle on a collective basis. Those events were sponsored by independent and radical organizations like the Pan-African People’s Organization and other similar formations.

Fast forward to today and although independent and radical African organizations definitely still exist, I belong to one, our capacity to be the organizers of events like Juneteenth has been overrun by the non-profit industrial complex and for profit corporations. Today, organizations like the Pan-African People’s Organization and the National Committee for Reparations have been replaced in sponsorship by Wells Fargo and other multi-national corporations who can easily spend thousands of dollars for a show. As a result, the militant and uncompromising spirit of the Juneteenths I grew up with has been replaced by a dominant “can we all get along” party atmosphere that uplifts symbolic progress while hammering the message that the absolute only legitimate form of struggle that is morally acceptable is that waged through the capitalist electoral process on an individual basis.

I was talking to a longtime friend this past weekend. This African has been one of the most, if not the most, visible African drummers in this city for decades. He was lamenting how back in the day, he and other drummers and dancing groups customarily opened all cultural events like Juneteenth and how the atmosphere has changed so that such a cultural infusion today is extremely difficult. Its difficult because what that brother and others like him represent is the African cultural and independent spirit of our historical resistance. The organizers of today’s pro-capitalist join party events have absolutely no interests in keeping that spirit alive.

When you understand the contradictions of capitalism, class struggle, and neo-colonialism, none of this should surprise you. What’s challenging is that the majority of African people seem to see no issue with any of this. In fact, many of them have wholeheartedly accepted this move along individually to find your seat at the master’s table approach and theme to Juneteenth that was dominant at commemorations that happened this past weekend. I see it constantly. Instead of Juneteenth being a vehicle to encourage us to organize collectively for mass liberation against the system (as it was designed), it has become a “venmo Black people some money” day. I’m not saying we don’t need to support people who need financial support. I do this often, but we cannot permit our mass institutions for struggle for justice to be reduced to an individualistic focus on any random African who is struggling to pay their bills. Especially when that message loses the focus on the need for us to take collective responsibility for our liberation.
In most of these Juneteenth events there was little to no mention of police terrorism, systemic white supremacy and the thought that there would be any type of Pan-African message or – gasp – a comment about the need for revolution would be blasphemous. Instead, those necessary messages are now completely replaced with “get a job – preferably with the police department or sign up to join one of the military branches. Or, sign up for a new cell phone service or buy shirts with pictures of Kamala Harris and/or meaningless and absurd messages like “I’m rooting for everyone Black! (even if they work to advance the very system that oppresses our people)”

And, on social media, some Africans decry any effort by people like me to point up these contradictions because it ruins their party atmosphere. Regardless, these contradictions will continue to be exposed because African people must come to understand what’s actually happening here underneath the party atmospheres with Drake playing to red, black, and green balloons. The capitalist system is doing what it always does. Its job is to eradicate the militancy from our people. To perpetuate the long ago disproven myth that if we just continue to hold our breath, the oppression that holds us back will quietly disappear and these events are just “celebrations” about the waiting process and/or the celebration of the few individuals who have achieved some measure of advancement within the capitalist system (while the masses continue to suffer). And, the kicker is that these capitalists are so arrogant that their message will continue to hold our people that they do not even feel the need to address the obvious contradiction of their government approving a Juneteenth holiday (symbolic progress) while continuing to deny the importance of even teaching about the history of the chattel slavery system (institutional misinformation against us).

And, the capitalist system – always the source for all of our contradictions – isn’t solely to blame for all of this dysfunction. The African petti-bourgeoisie plays a significant role by continuing to flex their muscles by supporting all efforts to win our people over to the capitalist system. They do this because that is the very reason for their existence – to serve as a buffer class to control the masses of African people.

No one is saying you cannot enjoy the music, food, etc. None of you enjoy those things more than I do. What is being said here is when you have walked through the slave dungeons in Senegal and Ghana as I have. When you have visited the slave plantations in Mississippi, Louisiana, Alabama, Tennessee, Jamaica, and Cuba, as I have. When you have studied extensively and participated in our liberation struggle for quite some time as I have. You develop strong skills in being able to properly assess what’s happening with our people. Juneteenth, African Liberation Day, Kwanzaa, etc., all of it was created to serve one specific purpose. To remind us of the struggle and sacrifice required for us to be free as a people. The reminder is critical because the fight is obviously still taking place. That important last point gets completely erased by the corporate sponsored parties. Those are designed to make you think the struggle part is in the past so all that’s needed now is a few tweaks here and there and a party. The corporate structure of current day capitalism owes its origination and maintenance to the oppression of the African masses and that’s true specifically, not just theoretically. As a result, they will always see their role as that of using their massive resources (that result from their exploitation of Africa, the African masses, and all of humanity) to propagate us to have nothing except complete allegiance to their vision. Based on events this past weekend, the worrisome part is that many of our people, seem to be ok with accepting that dangerous message.

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Listen! Umar Johnson isn't Pan-Africanism. The African Masses Are

6/3/2021

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I have belonged to the All African People’s Revolutionary Party (A-APRP) for 37 years. Before that, I spent four undergraduate years and one graduate college year as a leader in campus Pan-African Student Unions. That means I’ve spent 42 of my 59 years on earth involved in Pan-African thinking and work. I certainly don’t know everything. I learn new things about our movement every-day, but that doesn’t mean I’m going to act like I don’t know any more about this movement than every random person out here. I’ve been fortunate enough to do concrete on the ground organizational Pan-African work in more cities than I can count in the U.S. I’ve done this work in Canada, Britain, Ghana, Gambia, Tanzania, Senegal, Jamaica, Cuba, and other places I can’t remember right now.

When I was a student Pan-Africanist I thought Pan-Africanism meant a nebulous global unity of all African (Black) people. There was no class or gender analysis for me in those early days. If you were “Black” that was the only requirement. The A-APRP taught me immediately that Pan-Africanism properly defined has a very concrete and specific definition and that definition is one unified socialist Africa. And, I’ve also come to understand clearly that our revolutionary Pan-African objective comes with uncompromisable principles i.e. a commitment to support struggles against injustice everywhere, including those carried out by non-African people. And, that the destruction of capitalism is a core element to our ability to achieve and sustain our objective while patriarchy and other forms of human oppression are just as evil as white supremacy.

Beyond the years of physical work I’ve done for the party, the element that has concretized my developing understanding is the A-APRP’s work study process. For 37 years I’ve participated in this process, studying everything from the ideas and practices of Kwame Nkrumah, Sekou Ture, Walter Rodney, Assata Shakur, Malcolm X, etc., to the concepts of zionism, patriarchy, and more. Then taking that developed analysis to do work among our people. I’ve seen a lot in 37 years. I’ve seen people come to work study a few times, participate in little to no work, disappear, then later present themselves to others as experts on the ideology and practices of the A-APRP. I’ve seen people deliberately and/or unwittingly attempt to misrepresent the A-APRP. I’ve seen abusive people. I’ve never understood any of it. Since day one in 1984, I’ve taken this entire process as seriously as I could at all times. I did so because I’ve always seen it as my life mission. One that has been provided to me by our glorious ancestors. I’ve always believed that this reality required me to always approach my work with the highest level of integrity, selflessness, and consistency that I could muster.

All of this study and work has taught me several things, but one of my earliest lessons was to distrust anyone talking about liberating our people without any level of organization backing them. In other words, I freely admit, I’m always suspicious of non-organization individuals claiming to have ideas about how to liberate our people because I know individuals can never free our people so whenever I see that, I know there’s really some other agenda taking place. And, if these comments offend the anti-organization crowd, I care about that about as much as you seem to not care about us demonstrating consistently that liberation without organization is idealism.

All of the above is why someone like me, with the Pan-Africanist exposure I’ve had, can never take someone like Umar Johnson seriously. I came to be aware of him several years ago and I’ve been forced to address him nonstop, ever since. The reason for this is because regardless of what you say about Johnson, he has developed a widespread online presence that he has been able to convert into book sales, etc. He has also spent the last several years promising people an independent school that people have reportedly donated hundreds of thousands of dollars too. Johnson has done this by presenting himself as the “Prince of Pan-Africanism.” Although I curse the repeated number of times I’ve had to spend talking to people whose only interpretation of the word “Pan-Africanism” came from their exposure to Johnson on youtube, etc., his existence has helped provide us with plenty of opportunities to help people actually understand what revolutionary Pan-Africanism is really about.

And, this point is the main premise of this piece because my first strong clue that Johnson was not serious about Pan-Africanism was when I realized he didn’t even have an organization. The majority of African people (and everyone else) are not involved in organizing work among our people. As a result, many of us wouldn’t know what this work looked like if it walked right up to us and slapped us silly, but you can’t tell most of us that. That’s why lots of people who have followed Johnson probably didn’t think much about him lacking any type of organizational structure, but those of us serious about this work could never ignore that. We highlight that because we know from our work that revolutionary Pan-Africanism is only achievable through the power of the organized masses. The forces who built a system of institutionalized oppression of Africa and humanity are extensively organized. The capitalist system – built exclusively by seed money provided from the transatlantic slave trade (the enslavement of our ancestors financed the industrial period), is organized on every single level in a way to ensure the interests of capitalist multi-national corporations are always dominantly represented. They control the education you receive. They control the job you work at. They control the messages transmitted in the house of worship you attend. They even control how you view sports (by making you believe the imperialist national anthem, designed to promote support for their mercenary military, is supposed to have something to do with basketball, football, etc.). And, if you resist any of that they control the judicial system to send you to prison and/or force you to serve their violent interests in their military. All of that obviously requires intense organization on a mass level. And, since the system we are fighting is organized, we know we have to exceed their level of organization. That is the reason we understand clearly that anyone talking about our people uniting who doesn’t even prioritize or discuss the need for us to be organized on a mass level cannot be serious about our liberation.
Plus, anyone as intelligent as I’m sure Johnson must be, has to understand this question of the necessity of organization. The fact he ignores it anyway, tells us that there is probably a desire to avoid accountability, which serious participation in serious organizations demands. And, that brings us to Johnson’s alleged school project. Our poor people. So oppressed and desperate to alleviate that oppression that we are easy fodder for opportunists. Plus, capitalism trains us to look for the easy way to prosperity (who wants to marry a millionaire), so when someone like Johnson comes along with a shiny message, there are always plenty of us willing to listen. There are plenty of us who will give money or whatever. Chicken wing church preachers have been exploiting this weakness in our communities for centuries. So, Johnson tells you he’s starting a school and people donate money. Lots of money. A year passes. Then two. Then several years, right? No school. No accounting of the money. Nothing, but more solicitations. Those of us who do revolutionary Pan-Africanist work in as sincere a fashion as we can just shake our heads at this. Within the A-APRP I’ve worked in numerous schools in four different countries in Africa and two states within the U.S. to provide our youth a revolutionary education. A couple of those schools I’ve helped initiate. We have been able to run these institutions based on contributions from the community, book royalties I’ve received from my books, and other creative revenue streams. We’ve actually never had a money problem. When we ask the community for things, since we have a proven track record of integrity, people have no problem contributing money for a projector, transport, passports, school materials, food, etc. I will never forget when we made a community call for school supplies for our youth in Portland, Oregon, U.S., in 2016, we received so many contributions we had no where to house them. Quality stuff too. One young person donated several Skull Kandy backpacks that were extremely popular with the youth. Those backpacks had speakers built within them so that when the youth plugged their phones into them, they could listen to music, etc. I didn’t even realize that until one of the youth showed me from the backpack they chose. The point, if you are working with the people and earn their trust, regardless of how low-income people are, the money will always come for the work you are doing for the people. Kwame Nkrumah addressed this when he was asked about Ghana prioritizing economic development in the 50s. His response was that we must “seek ye political kingdom first” meaning the consciousness of the people is the priority, not money. When you have a conscious people, they will give their last nickel to support the work. On the flip side, when you have an unconscious and disorganized people, like we do today, every two-bit hustler with command of good talking points can swindle us with ease.

As I’ve said, I’ve had countless discussions with people, cleaning up the confusion related to Johnson and others. That’s a part of our mission i.e. helping our people understand what revolutionary Pan-Africanism actually is. That it always has to be centered around the liberation of Mother Africa and that all of us are a part of the African nation. And, that this liberation can only happen through an organized revolutionary struggle that is protracted and designed to eliminate neo-colonialism and its puppeteer – capitalism/imperialism – and replace them with the total liberation and unification of Africa under one continental socialist government.

Johnson advances ideas committed to capitalism, individualism, patriarchy, and homophobia. None of those backward anti-people qualities match revolutionary Pan-Africanism which is always a universal humanist ideology and objective centered on the masses of Africa and all of humanity. The challenges for us are the strengths we have are the organizing work we are doing worldwide and the hard-work, focus, and commitment it takes to sustain that work. As a result, we don’t know, nor do we desire to learn, how to craft the type of sexy soundbite message, with no substance, that people like Johnson have perfected. Such an approach would never work for what we are doing anyway, because that would be like someone using the same superficial tactics in a relationship with another human being. It’s a superficial approach which means it will fool people for a while, but eventually, people start to wise up to it. Kwame Ture labeled that the case of “when you boil dirty water, the scum always rises to the top!”

Meanwhile, we will continue doing what we have always been doing, serving our people to develop capacity to forge the type of strong fighting force that will bring us the freedom we desperately deserve. We will continue to straighten out the confusion. And, when our people are ready, we will be here ready to work with us for the real work required to bring justice for our people.

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