Why So Many Prefer Waddling in Suffering to Fighting for Victory

Examples are everywhere. Whether you live here in Sacramento, California, U.S., where the most recent indignity was the decision by the enforcers of capitalism to (big surprise) not press charges against the armed slave catcher terrorists who shot down Stephon Clark.  Or, whether you live anywhere else on Earth, the pattern is still the same.  Immediately after that decision here in Sacramento, people hit the streets to express their righteous anger.  For a few days after that decision, hundreds of people did this.  Now, a week or so later, quiet again dominates the streets of Sacramento.  Business as usual.  Capitalism flexing its power and oppression over us without the slightest consequences.  That same subtle message, that we can yell, but we can't win, is reinforced.  And if you don't live in Sacramento you hardly have space to scuff.  I can take the last several sentences, change the names and places, and the same scenario played out for Eric Garner in New York, Tamir Rice, Kendra James, Sandra Bland, everyone shot down by British police, French police, Australian police, etc.  Yet, there is never going to be any shortage of people who have strong opinions on the issue.  And, each time, every time, we continue to play out Kwame Ture's often cited theme that "African people rise up, tear up the city, and then sit down for 29 years!"  

We all know that its just a matter of minutes before state terrorists take one or some of our lives.  The next time it could be you.  It could be me.  No one is safe.  Yet, we continue to believe, irrationally, that the institutions belonging to this same system that perpetuates our oppression will serve to protect us.  All of this seems overwhelmingly dysfunctional.  You can literally talk to people about very clear and achievable solutions.  People will agree wholeheartedly with you, but no one will do anything.  Why?

There are many, many reasons, but here probably the most important ones.  Most of us possess absolutely no confidence in our ability as a people to come together to solve our own problems.  That fact that we provide more faith in, and provide more resources towards, the institutions that represent the system of oppression against us, than we do towards independent organizations working for us, indicates clearly this reality.  Since we don't have this self confidence, we truly, deep down inside, deeper than most of us are willing to admit, will never place our eggs in any baskets dominated by the masses of our people.  Meaning, we truly don't really believe we are ever going to do anything.  Consequently, for a lot of people who have accepted this sad and dysfunctional world view, what they really want is an out.  A way to build some sort of safe portal for themselves while maintaining the appearance that they have not sold our people out.  They want a compromise with this terrorist system.  A way to co-exist with it while being able to feel alright about that.  For these people, discussing truly doing anything to solve our problems will never advance beyond the rhetorical level.  In other words, they are only going to talk, talk, talk, while their true energies will always be directed towards this compromise with capitalism.  Unfortunately, since this, like everything else, is dominated by class contradictions, the people most likely to be in the positions to articulate our positions on these issues are the petti bourgeoisie among us.  Those who have been trained by these miss education institutions to believe in this system.  So, their entire portfolio is about how to make this thing work, not rip it apart.  And, these folks have the skills and resources to create the messaging that influences everyone else.

Another problem is far too many people just simply lack the personal organization, discipline, and commitment to anything in life, not just our liberation struggle, to really carry out any sustainable effort towards solving these issues.  That's why these people prefer the anger, spontaneous approach because that approach doesn't require any of those attributes.  You can go out tonight to protest and out tomorrow to nightclub and the next night to club, etc., and never do anything else for the movement for another five years and no one will bat an eye.  This can happen because accountability is one of the most foul words in today's world.  Everyone wants it for any and everything connected to anything benefiting them while no one wants anything to do with it for anything remotely pointing in their direction.  

All of these problems are not operating in isolation.  The capitalist system is the prime driver for all of this dysfunction.  It is this system that benefits the most from us doing nothing so it always has a vested interest in keeping us from taking any action against it.  Its this system that trains us in every institution in this society, from school to church, to work, to watching a ballgame, that the capitalist system is the end all, be all, absolute only option available to anyone on earth, period.  That thinking, which is reinforced everywhere you can turn your head, fuels the inability of people to believe we can win against this system.  And, another element of that conditioning is capitalism's specific focus on the individual e.g. individualism.  They have convinced most of us that whatever problems we have are our individual fault, meaning we didn't work hard enough and/or something is just wrong with us - individually.  This thinking fuels this inability many of us have to handle any adversity.  The thought of self reflection and criticism frightens so many of us to the point where we will do absolutely anything to avoid receiving it and that means lying, being deceptive, and certainly refusing to be accountable when its abundantly clear that we should be.


Despite all of these weapons being aimed against us, we still have all of the resources we need to win.  There are plenty of people, myself included, who are available and willing to spend time, valuable time, training people on how to establish and build community defense models that will help organize our people all over the world in ways that will provide self determination to our people.  This is organizing work that is rooted in strengthening our people and communities, not relying on the system ran by our enemies to continue to disappoint and sell us short.  The ability to build these models is here for us and I for one would love the opportunity to talk to as many people as possible on how to engage this work.  I have decades of experience organizing against armed and violent white supremacist groups, police terrorism, and forces of degradation within our own communities.  I've been able to develop these experiences into methods that we can use to protect ourselves.  And this is something all justice loving people, not just Africans, can benefit from and utilize.  Yet, I, like most organizers like me, stand mostly under utilized while opportunists who offer people nothing more than the type of temporary feel good that you can get from any momentary high continue to be more popular in spreading their worthless messages than there is time to calculate.  This is astonishing to me, but its the reality, clear as day.  


The only thing I can think of to do about this serious challenge is to continue to make that call to action.  Let's organize.  Let me help you learn how.  Let's talk about how we can do this.  The requirements for my assistance are minimal.  The important way that rubber meets the road here is how serious you are?  Are you willing to put time into this work?  Are you willing to invest yourself into this work?  If you are, the rewards against our oppression are well documented, but as long as we remain in this everyone wants to to go to Heaven, but no one wants to die, framework, we will continue to be sitting here, waiting to be picked off like ducks, until the next three day protest arrives with limited to no serious results.