Ahjamu Umi's: "The Truth Challenge"
  • Home
  • Workshops
  • New Manifesto
  • Hit Me Up
  • Blog
  • Coming Events
  • Videos
  • Donations

Trayvon Martin - A Call to Action

3/23/2012

0 Comments

 
The Trayvon Martin Case – A
Call to Action!



A seventeen year old youth has been gunned down.  It’s a tragedy that’s all  too familiar to African people around the world.  Whether it’s in Sierra Leone, Somalia,  Haiti, or Sanford, Florida, African life has no value, regardless of who’s
pulling the trigger. This is the  reason you won’t see me engaging in an emotional download from Trayvon’s
murder.  I’m way past that type of  reaction.  You see, it was way back  in the 70s that I first had my taste of the Trayvon treatment.   I was an eleven year old youth on a city bus in San Francisco.  The bus came to a stop and four young
Black men got on with face masks and guns and robbed everyone on the bus.  I knew immediately who the four men
were because they were well known in the inner city community I grew up in.  Their vicious criminal activities were
also very well known.  So much so that I knew taking any step to interfere with their activities could easily mean death for me and my family.  So, I took the blow to the jaw from one of their shotgun butts and sat  there while they brutally robbed all of the business oriented White people on that bus.  When they concluded  their crime spree, one of them looked at me as they exited the bus and said “don’t say s - - t!”  Since I hadn’t done anything wrong, I sat there on that bus and waited for the police,
believing myself to be as traumatized as anyone else on that bus.   Sure I had no material possessions for them to take, but I had my fragile  emotional security.  Unfortunately,   it wasn’t the neighborhood bus jackers that shattered that security.  There was a part of my young spirit  that truly felt the police would arrive to bring justice that day so I remember  a part of me being glad to see them when they arrived.  My naïve sense of security was quickly destroyed when the White bus victims immediately started telling the police I was a part of the group who had robbed the bus. Despite my pleas of innocence, the police threw me down on that bus, handcuffed me, and took me downtown for processing until my parents came down and raised holy hell and
demanded my release. No apology, no acknowledgment of my pain, just carry on.  In spite of that experience, I still remained loyal to the system, viewing that incident as just that, an aberration of justice.  Holding no grudges I moved forward, believing that my life had as much value as anyone else’s.  Then an incident took place when I was 14 that shook me to my very
foundation.  I was bussed to an all-White school in the then all-White Sunset district in San Francisco.  After leaving a store to catch the bus home after a baseball team practice, my 125 lb. self was jumped and beaten unconscious by three White men in their 30s who simply didn’t want anyone Black in their neighborhood.  The beating hospitalized me for days, but there are two aspects of that experience that stand out for me, even to this day.  First, that I was called the n word so many times while they beat me, and with so viciousness, that it is impossible for me to see the word as any type of term of endearment as many confused people would argue today.  In fact, I’m convinced that those three guys set some sort of Guinness Book of records with the number of times they yelled the word in the short period in which the beating took place.  Second, since the beating took place directly in front of the street car tracks, and it was around the 5pm rush hour, there were literally thousands of
White people waiting.  Men, women, and children, and not one person lifted a finger to help me.  Someone did call the police and the ambulance, but I remember being on the gurney and having the police ask me if I had a record as they wheeled me
into the ambulance.  So what’s the relevance of my personal stories to the case of young Trayvon?  Well, if you missed it, my point is what happened to Trayvon isn’t just one unfortunate incident.  It isn’t just a sad and misguided occurrence in Florida.  It isn’t just a case of a racist interaction in the South.  Trayvon’s murder is an example of the systematic devaluing of African
life that is a part of the institutional racist status quo that has been in place for 500+ years.  My occurrences are not just similar to Travyon’s case.  They are part and parcel of how this system works.  In fact, there are very few Black and Brown males who haven’t had experiences similar to Trayvon’s case.  The question is simply whether they were fortunate enough to survive
those incidents as I was, or whether they ended up like Trayvon, Sean Bell, Amado Diallo, Oscar Grant, James Byrd, or the large number of Black men killed in inner city violence, which is unquestionably a part of the same life devaluation process.  So, since I understand that, I’m way past an emotional response, although to be honest, a part of me does wonder where Black people find the patience to wait for a so-called system of justice that has never come through for us.  Why doesn’t someone just drive by Zimmerman’s house and take care of him the way he took care of little Trayvon?  Although part of me wonders that, I know that alone won’t solve the problem.  The issue is systematic and therefore only a systematic solution can address the issue.  We have to get organized.  As the late Kwame Ture (Stokely Carmichael) said at his famous Black Power speech at the Jackson, Mississippi state capitol in 1966 at the conclusion of the march against fear; “we have to build a power base that is so strong – it will bring them to their knees every time they mess with us!”  When he made that speech he didn’t know it, but two short years later, when he moved to Guinea and became the student of Kwame Nkrumah, Kwame Ture himself would learn what that power base is.  I realize this type of conversation about African self-determination is in many ways totally outside of the parameters for most people of all races in Portland where there is little context for the African liberation movement.  Still, if you are serious about this problem than it’s time to broaden your perspective and hear African voices and what we believe to be the best solution for us.  One of those solutions, and the one I wholeheartedly endorse, is Pan-Africanism.  As wide of a stretch as this is for you if you see America as the center of the world, and/or if you have little understanding of African history or politics, the core issue involving racism is the continued exploitation of the African continent.  Racism didn’t start in the U.S. and it doesn’t just exist in the U.S.  That’s why the problem can’t be solved just within the U.S.  Kwame Nkrumah, the first president of Ghana, and the founder of the All African People’s Revolutionary Party, was correct when he stated that “No Black
person anywhere on the planet will be free until Africa is free.  The total liberation of Africa under one scientific socialist government must be the primary objective of all Black revolutionaries wherever they are on the planet!”  My experiences from
the ghettos of this country to the bush in Africa have led me to this conclusion.  Racism is about power and the lack of it for African people and other people of color.  The key to empowerment for African people isn’t the U.S. electoral process and it isn’t in relying on the White working class in the U.S.  either.  It’s in establishing African self-determination and that’s in creating a free, united, and socialist Africa.  This was the call of Nkrumah, Sekou Ture, Patrice Lumumba, Marcus Garvey, Amy Garvey, Malcolm X, Shirley Graham and W.E.B. Dubois, Amilcar Cabral, Walter Rodney, Muammar Gaddafi, and many others.  It’s in
creating an All African Committee for Political Coordination in Africa and throughout the African world.  It’s  in understanding and respecting that just as the “Communist Manifesto” is the core values document for Marxist/Leninists, the “Handbook of Revolutinoary Warfare” by Nkrumah is the core values document for revolutionary Pan-Africanists. If you aren’t familiar with those values or those people, don’t dismiss Pan-Africanism simply as a“back to Africa” movement.  Pan-Africanism is about African people returning politically and spiritually to Africa, wherever they live on the planet.  It’s about strengthening Africa and creating a power base for African people utilizing Africa’s vast resources to empower African people for self-determination.  It’s about raising the stock of African people and shattering this racist system that makes African people reliant on European systems of power, thus perpetuating the concept that African people are less, which creates an environment where
African life is less.  It’s time to start talking in Oregon about a program that is advocated and endorsed by African people all over the world.  Consider how you can help Portland become a part of this critical worldwide movement.   Please  contact me at the email below or go directly to www.aaprp-intl.org/Cached - Similar  if you want to find out more about Pan-Africanism and the current work of the A-APRP to address this problem on a worldwide basis.  
rayvon is dead because his real mother, Africa, is unable to protect
him.  For those who are serious
about eliminating racism, we owe that much to Trayvon, and to the future victims
of this vicious system. 
umifam@gmail.com

0 Comments



Leave a Reply.

    Picture

    Author

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

    Archives

    March 2023
    February 2023
    January 2023
    June 2022
    March 2022
    January 2022
    December 2021
    November 2021
    October 2021
    September 2021
    August 2021
    July 2021
    June 2021
    May 2021
    April 2021
    March 2021
    February 2021
    January 2021
    December 2020
    November 2020
    October 2020
    September 2020
    August 2020
    July 2020
    June 2020
    May 2020
    April 2020
    March 2020
    February 2020
    January 2020
    December 2019
    November 2019
    October 2019
    September 2019
    August 2019
    July 2019
    June 2019
    May 2019
    April 2019
    March 2019
    February 2019
    January 2019
    December 2018
    November 2018
    October 2018
    September 2018
    August 2018
    July 2018
    June 2018
    May 2018
    April 2018
    March 2018
    February 2018
    January 2018
    December 2017
    November 2017
    October 2017
    September 2017
    August 2017
    July 2017
    June 2017
    May 2017
    April 2017
    March 2017
    February 2017
    January 2017
    December 2016
    November 2016
    October 2016
    September 2016
    August 2016
    July 2016
    June 2016
    May 2016
    April 2016
    March 2016
    February 2016
    January 2016
    December 2015
    November 2015
    October 2015
    September 2015
    August 2015
    July 2015
    June 2015
    May 2015
    April 2015
    March 2015
    February 2015
    January 2015
    December 2014
    November 2014
    October 2014
    September 2014
    August 2014
    July 2014
    June 2014
    May 2014
    April 2014
    March 2014
    February 2014
    December 2013
    November 2013
    October 2013
    September 2013
    August 2013
    July 2013
    June 2013
    May 2013
    April 2013
    March 2013
    February 2013
    January 2013
    December 2012
    November 2012
    October 2012
    September 2012
    August 2012
    July 2012
    June 2012
    May 2012
    March 2012
    February 2012
    January 2012
    December 2011
    November 2011
    October 2011
    September 2011
    August 2011
    July 2011
    June 2011
    May 2011
    April 2011

    Categories

    All

    RSS Feed

Proudly powered by Weebly