After spending the last week listening to people who just realized there is a struggle being waged telling us if we didn't vote, Trump is our fault, I'm thinking tonight about the fact November 15th commemorates 18 years since we lost Kwame Ture, formally Stokely Carmichael, in his physical form. Kwame's work and sacrifice for the vote is legendary and his commitment is the reason his life will forever be eternal. And, since he actually fought for the vote. Risked his life for the vote. And, lived long enough afterward to evolve and give us a scientific analysis of the vote, there's no question we owe it to ourselves to listen to what he had to say about it. I'm saying this because for most people reading this, Kwame is a man talking and/or being talked about on Youtube. Or, he's someone you've read about in books or seen in documentaries like the (tragic) "Black Power Mixtape." For me, Kwame was, and is, a leading cadre and comrade within the All African People's Revolutionary Party. A brother I had the privilege of working alongside, struggling with, learning from, and being heavily influenced by. And the respect you should have for Kwame isn't because of his activist resume because if you spent time with Kwame like I did, you already know that he never told you much about his personal history. In fact, most of what I know about what he did while he was in the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee and the Black Panther Party I've learned from my own scholarship. I read that Kwame was arrested 26 times between 1961 and 1966 for fighting for the vote. I read that Kwame was arrested over 40 times throughout his life for fighting for African liberation. That he was beaten and harassed often when he was locked up by racist Southern sheriffs. He never told me any of that. He never mentioned, nor did I ever see any indication that he was the least bit concerned or irritated by the fact the White left never made him the darling of the movement the way they adopted Angela Davis and others. All he ever said about Angela Davis was praiseworthy. It was me who raised with him often how I felt White people were mad at him for telling them to organize their own people while they ate up everything Sister Angela said. I still believe that after seeing them come out just to argue with Kwame and dispute his logic on what was best for the African liberation struggle. He never responded much when I raised that. We never had much of a positive reception from the White left when Kwame came to town, so we knew to expect whatever from them, but I believe he was more than a little disappointed that so many Africans engaged in similar behavior at his presence. I say that because it was only towards the Africans that I saw him get agitated. Again, most of this, I had to figure out on my own because he never had much to say about it. I was the one who researched his infamous joke about "a women's position in SNCC being prone." I seriously researched it because I wanted to understand why women, mostly White women, raised this everywhere we went. And, I wanted to understand why someone as adept at defending their positions as Kwame, never seemed to have a desire to engage people much around that accusation when they raised it against him. He never talked about much to us, so I researched it myself because I wanted to know so that I could either criticize him or defend him. What I learned about that incident is that the joke occurred at about 2am after a marathon SNCC meeting. Kwame was standing around with a group of SNCC women, African and European. They all knew him and he knew them. The comment was made as a joke between friends and comrades. All three women have clarified that repeatedly for the last 50 years, yet it still comes up as much as anything else Kwame did, and he did a lot for our movements. I admit it irritates me because we all know that you cannot judge a person just by one joke they make. You have to judge them by their actions. This is why balanced people know Donald Trump's comments about women isn't just locker room talk because he has a track record of disrespecting women. Kwame Ture does not. In fact, Kwame's track record is in encouraging and supporting women on the frontlines of our struggle and everyone with any experience within the All African People's Revolutionary Party, especially the members of the All African Women's Revolutionary Union, know it. But, no one seems interested in researching the truth. Only in staying with the drama.
This contradiction is also true as it relates to Kwame's legacy around fighting for the vote. People today who are heavily influenced by bourgeois ideology are determined to make voting within the capitalist system a principle. They are convinced that if you refuse to do it, you are violating your oath to humanity to protect it. In taking this a-historical approach they are playing right into the hands of imperialism because this analysis accepts the notion that the only legitimate form of struggle is that which is done within the context of the capitalist system. This way, there can never be a legitimate form of struggle that seeks to overthrow this system and anyone who suggests so, is criminally insane. This logic ignores the basic fact that historically, most eligible people have never voted and this past election is no different. Almost 46% of eligible people didn't vote at all. 26% voted for Clinton. 25% voted for Trump, and the rest voted for Skippy and Donald Duck, etc. These people who are blaming people who didn't vote are completely missing the point. Those people are not expressing that the wrong candidate won. They are expressing that the system itself is invalid. The people who refused to participate are not all apathetic. They are telling you that they refuse to endorse a system that doesn't represent them. They are telling you that a vote for Clinton is a vote for heart disease. They are telling you that a vote for Trump is a vote for cancer. They are telling you that a vote for Stein, Johnson, and Mickey Mouse is a vote for diarrhea. They are saying the entire system of capitalism is rotten and that they reject your pressuring them that they have to choose between heart disease, cancer, and diarrhea. They don't want any of those things and people are telling them they are insane for feeling that way. This logic only benefits the capitalist system, not the people making the decision, because it continues to validate this system when it has demonstrated long ago that it has no credibility.
Meanwhile, someone who sacrificed so much so that Africans, Indigenous (Latinos), Asians, and women could vote, is ignored. He is not even known to those who benefit from his sacrifice. If Kwame, Ms. Fannie Lou Hamer, and others had not bravely and successfully organized the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party to boldly disrupt the Democratic Party's lock step, ironclad, positioning of European men only within the Party, there would never have been anything other than White men in the electoral process. So, all of these people owe people like Kwame Ture at least to know who he was and what he had to say about voting after he risked his life to get it so you can sit up today and perpetrate as the moral expert on voting rights. What Kwame said about the vote in the 90s is that it is not the principle some of you who are attempting to shame people who didn't vote into believing. What he said is that he and the others who fought for the vote never saw it the way you are trying to falsely present it today. What he said is the vote was always simply a tactic. He explained that when he helped launch the Lowndes County Freedom Organization in Lowndes County, Alabama, in 1965, the first Black Panther Party for Self Defense, they clearly saw the vote as a tactic. And if you know Kwame from Youtube, you should view it closely enough to follow how he clearly explains the difference between principles, which you never compromise on, and tactics, which you change depending upon their effectiveness. The vote is a tactic and since no one even bothers to assess what work the people not voting are doing, which is often much more substantive and consequential than a capitalist vote once every couple of years, then don't you think its time to listen closely to, and think ever so carefully about, what people like Kwame were trying to tell us? If we could discipline ourselves enough to quiet down our egos so that we could listen, could we possibly develop an understanding of what's actually going on in this society? Could it be that maybe SNCC was on to something with their organizing models? Since we all reading this have benefited from their work, isn't that at least worth a look or two?
This is all food for thought. You see, we are all going to die. The only question is what you are doing now so that you can build the type of legacy for yourself that Kwame Ture has. So that people are talking about you 18 years after you are gone. You can't do that with money. Nobody cares. As soon as you die they spend all the money and you are quickly forgotten because no one wants to give anyone else any credit for their material gains. You can only do it with integrity and principles. With consistency and selflessness. Kwame Ture had all of those things. He also had courage and heart. That's why I'm writing about him 18 years later. Because maybe if we start looking at people like him, instead of the blowhards that seem to be attracting all of our attention these days, we can develop models that can give us insight into how to stop all this madness. Since we have no control over when we are born and how you are born has nothing to do with how your life will go. That's why it makes sense to me to think of someone when they die because how you die defines what your life was about. No matter how scary things are today, there are always people who faced conditions much scarier. No matter how much anxiety we have today, there's always been more. No matter how much we get overwhelmed, there are always others who figured out how to manage that and keep moving. Kwame was one of those people. That's why we remember him, study him, and try to learn from his message. Its there for a reason. For you, during times like this.
This contradiction is also true as it relates to Kwame's legacy around fighting for the vote. People today who are heavily influenced by bourgeois ideology are determined to make voting within the capitalist system a principle. They are convinced that if you refuse to do it, you are violating your oath to humanity to protect it. In taking this a-historical approach they are playing right into the hands of imperialism because this analysis accepts the notion that the only legitimate form of struggle is that which is done within the context of the capitalist system. This way, there can never be a legitimate form of struggle that seeks to overthrow this system and anyone who suggests so, is criminally insane. This logic ignores the basic fact that historically, most eligible people have never voted and this past election is no different. Almost 46% of eligible people didn't vote at all. 26% voted for Clinton. 25% voted for Trump, and the rest voted for Skippy and Donald Duck, etc. These people who are blaming people who didn't vote are completely missing the point. Those people are not expressing that the wrong candidate won. They are expressing that the system itself is invalid. The people who refused to participate are not all apathetic. They are telling you that they refuse to endorse a system that doesn't represent them. They are telling you that a vote for Clinton is a vote for heart disease. They are telling you that a vote for Trump is a vote for cancer. They are telling you that a vote for Stein, Johnson, and Mickey Mouse is a vote for diarrhea. They are saying the entire system of capitalism is rotten and that they reject your pressuring them that they have to choose between heart disease, cancer, and diarrhea. They don't want any of those things and people are telling them they are insane for feeling that way. This logic only benefits the capitalist system, not the people making the decision, because it continues to validate this system when it has demonstrated long ago that it has no credibility.
Meanwhile, someone who sacrificed so much so that Africans, Indigenous (Latinos), Asians, and women could vote, is ignored. He is not even known to those who benefit from his sacrifice. If Kwame, Ms. Fannie Lou Hamer, and others had not bravely and successfully organized the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party to boldly disrupt the Democratic Party's lock step, ironclad, positioning of European men only within the Party, there would never have been anything other than White men in the electoral process. So, all of these people owe people like Kwame Ture at least to know who he was and what he had to say about voting after he risked his life to get it so you can sit up today and perpetrate as the moral expert on voting rights. What Kwame said about the vote in the 90s is that it is not the principle some of you who are attempting to shame people who didn't vote into believing. What he said is that he and the others who fought for the vote never saw it the way you are trying to falsely present it today. What he said is the vote was always simply a tactic. He explained that when he helped launch the Lowndes County Freedom Organization in Lowndes County, Alabama, in 1965, the first Black Panther Party for Self Defense, they clearly saw the vote as a tactic. And if you know Kwame from Youtube, you should view it closely enough to follow how he clearly explains the difference between principles, which you never compromise on, and tactics, which you change depending upon their effectiveness. The vote is a tactic and since no one even bothers to assess what work the people not voting are doing, which is often much more substantive and consequential than a capitalist vote once every couple of years, then don't you think its time to listen closely to, and think ever so carefully about, what people like Kwame were trying to tell us? If we could discipline ourselves enough to quiet down our egos so that we could listen, could we possibly develop an understanding of what's actually going on in this society? Could it be that maybe SNCC was on to something with their organizing models? Since we all reading this have benefited from their work, isn't that at least worth a look or two?
This is all food for thought. You see, we are all going to die. The only question is what you are doing now so that you can build the type of legacy for yourself that Kwame Ture has. So that people are talking about you 18 years after you are gone. You can't do that with money. Nobody cares. As soon as you die they spend all the money and you are quickly forgotten because no one wants to give anyone else any credit for their material gains. You can only do it with integrity and principles. With consistency and selflessness. Kwame Ture had all of those things. He also had courage and heart. That's why I'm writing about him 18 years later. Because maybe if we start looking at people like him, instead of the blowhards that seem to be attracting all of our attention these days, we can develop models that can give us insight into how to stop all this madness. Since we have no control over when we are born and how you are born has nothing to do with how your life will go. That's why it makes sense to me to think of someone when they die because how you die defines what your life was about. No matter how scary things are today, there are always people who faced conditions much scarier. No matter how much anxiety we have today, there's always been more. No matter how much we get overwhelmed, there are always others who figured out how to manage that and keep moving. Kwame was one of those people. That's why we remember him, study him, and try to learn from his message. Its there for a reason. For you, during times like this.
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