Kilombo Republic

Obamaism: Neo-Colonialism’s Last Gasp

2010-03-10T07:38:00.002-05:00

Obamaism: Neo-Colonialism’s Last Gasp

I am not a Marxist (then again, neither was Karl Marx); however, to be totally dismissive of Karl Marx’s class analysis would be intellectually foolhardy. There may be room for debate as to whether or not “class” is THE motor force in human history, as Marx postulated, but, one thing is certain, “class” has definitely played a critical role in that history. Before we proceed, maybe we should define our terms. To paraphrase a definition that I borrowed from Osagyefo Kwame Nkrumah “a class is the sum total of individuals, in a society, who share a common position and interest relative to the means of production, distribution and exchange, that, as a class, they are bound to preserve and protect”. Looking at this concept in its practical manifestation, Marx saw, in the ancient slave societies (i.e. Egypt, Greece, Rome etc.), a primary division, along class lines, between bond and free. A closer inspection of Rome, for instance, would reveal a Patrician class (rulers), Plebeians (free workers) and, of course, slaves.

Without going into the details of the evolutionary development of class society that he documented and explained, Marx charted the transition of the ancient slavery system into the feudal system of the so-called “Middle Ages”. During this period, we witnessed the continuation of class domination, but, this time it was between the Aristocracy (landowner) and the Serf (landless). Regardless of the euphemistic label you affix to it (i.e. Patrician/Plebeian, Aristocracy/Serf), the relationship between the respective classes is exploitative. In other words, it is a master/slave relationship to the detriment of the latter. Since resistance is an inevitable consequence of oppression, class struggle becomes the order of the day; in other words, the friction which is engendered by the exploitative nature of the class arrangement, leads to slave revolts (i.e. Spartacus) and, in some instances, revolution (i.e. French Revolution). By the term “revolution”, I mean when one class seizes state power from another.

Capitalism is the global economic system which emerged from the class struggle between the European merchant class and the feudal aristocracy. When the Spaniards, under Ferdinand and Isabella, succeeded in driving the Muslims (Moors) from Spain, the door to westward expansion was opened. This led to the rise of a merchant class due to the international trade and commerce that was engendered. The system that emerged is called mercantilism (or infant capitalism). The power of this merchant class grew exponentially due to the Atlantic Slave trade which produced untold wealth. This enabled that merchant class to challenge and ultimately supplant the authority of the aristocracy. The wealth produced by slavery not only provided the fuel for the Industrial Revolution, it also enabled the new European ruling class (Bourgeoisie) to extend their system of class domination globally in the form of Imperialism and Settler Colonialism. By mentioning “Imperialism”, I don’t mean to gloss over V.I. Lenin’s theoretical and practical contribution to this discourse.

Marx made predictions based on his class analysis of society. Marx believed that the class antagonism between the European ruling class (Bourgeoisie) and the European working class (Proletariat) would ultimately lead to the supplanting of Bourgeois power by a workers revolution. He saw European workers as being the “gravediggers of Capitalism”. By enlightening workers to the reality that they have no stake in a system which is rooted in their own exploitation, proponents of the Marxist ideology (Communists), armed with class consciousness, would be able to guide the working class to the seizure of state power. The famous maxim “workers of the world unite, you have nothing to lose but your chains” became the Communist mantra.

Marx, with all of his brilliance, failed to foresee the role European global imperialism would play in muting the contradictions inherent in European class society. In other words, the European working class received larger “crumbs” from the pie of exploitation due to the super-exploitation of the peoples of Afrika, Asia and Latin Amerika, in the form of European colonialism. So, instead of becoming a revolutionary force, the global white working class became the most reactionary oppressed class on earth. V.I. Lenin, the great, Russian revolutionary, analyzed and articulated this dynamic in his classic “Imperialism: the Highest Stage of Capitalism”. It was not in the “advanced” countries of the West where revolutionary ferment was exploding, contrary to Marx’s predictions. It was in the super-exploited nations of Afrika (Ghana, Angola, and Namibia etc.), Asia (China, Viet Nam etc.) and Latin Amerika (Cuba, Nicaragua etc.) where anti-capitalist/anti-imperialist revolution became the order of the day, as Lenin had predicted. Courtesy of Comrade Lenin’s theoretical contribution, “Marxism” became “Marxism-Leninism”.

Any student of history has to extend kudos to the resilience of the global white ruling class. When the capital of global white supremacy shifted from Europe to amerika, after World War II, amerika did not take it lying down when her hegemony became embattled both at home (Civil Rights, Black Power and Anti-War Movements) and abroad (Korea, Viet Nam, Cuba etc.). She responded with a brilliant subterfuge called Neo-colonialism. In short, Neo-colonialism is indirect imperial control via indigenous elites. Internationally, this means the Mother Country (Imperial Power) no longer plants its flag on the conquered soil but, rather, maintains its de facto control through some local thug (Somoza, Pinochet, the Shah, Marcos, Batista, Papa Doc, Baby Doc etc.), and his cronies, who they arm to the teeth. The colonizer still siphons off the wealth of the neo-colonized people, only it’s now done through the agency of a local puppet regime. Osagyefo Kwame Nkrumah brilliantly described this in “Neo-colonialism: the Last Stage of Imperialism”.

Domestically, this same neo-colonial dynamic was manifested by “putting Black faces in high places”. I can’t articulate this point any better than our late, great giant Dr. Amos N. Wilson (“Blueprint for Black Power: A Moral, Political and Economic Imperative for the 21^st Century):

“Black politics and activism without the Black ownership of and control over primary forms and bases of power such as property, wealth, organization, etc., is the recipe for Black political and non-political powerlessness.

The rather obtuse pursuit of political office and the ballot box as primary sources of power by the Black community and its politicians without its concomitant ownership of and control over important resources, has actually hindered the development of real Black power in America. More ominously, there appears to be a paradoxical and positive correlation between the number of Blacks elected and appointed to high office and retrogressions in the civil and human rights extended to Black Americans during the past twenty years.

Increases in homelessness, poverty, unemployment, criminality and violence in the Black community; disorganization of the traditional Black family, inadequacies in education, increases in health problems of all types, and a host of other social and political ills have all attended increases in the number of Black elected and appointed officials. That is, the more elected and appointed Black politicians, the more social-economic problems the Black community has suffered.

While we are not implying a causal relationship between the increase of the number of Black appointed and elected officials and the increased misery indices of the Black community, we are implying or asserting that their increase obscures those things which are responsible for and do little to ameliorate or uproot the increasing prevalence of social and economic problems in the Black community.

The community's concern with the election and appointment of Black political figures helps it to maintain false hopes that their attainment of office will significantly resolve its problems. The activities of Black politicians, given the current inadequacy of social organization and economic resources, harmfully distract the Black community's attention from recognizing and eradicating the true causes of its problems and the remediation of its powerlessness."

"The responsibility of the Afrikan American community [is to ensure] Afrika's economic development. The ignoring of Afrika by the Western nations provide windows of opportunity open to native Afrikans to drastically reduce the massive outflow or flight of capital, which has been estimated to exceed 80 percent of the Gross Domestic Product, and to reinvest it in their own countries.

Afrikan peoples and nations across the Diaspora must apprise themselves of a full, ongoing knowledge of the social, economic and cultural history of Afrikan nations as well as their contemporary status and reorganize their sociocultural and economic structures so as to initiate and fuel continental Afrika's growth and development.

The Afrikan American community, especially, should vastly overhaul and reconstruct its educational orientation toward a knowledge of the Motherland. It must realize that its own economic salvation is coterminous with or tied to that of Afrika's. It must invest money and human resources in Afrika's development and perceive its economic prosperity as its special responsibility and mission…

The Afrikan American community must become vigilantly and jealously interested in U.S. and European policies toward Afrika and seek to influence those policies in both its own and Afrika's favor."

Dr. Wilson also wrote:

“For Afrikan Americans, all the promises of the Civil Rights Era have been betrayed, everything has been reversed. The more Black officials have been elected the worse the Black electorate has fared; Black homelessness became a national scandal during the tenure of a Black Secretary of Housing; the Black community was overrun with AIDS, drug addiction, tuberculosis, all sorts of diseases and maladies during the tenure of a Black man as Secretary of Health; Black nations were overrun by the imperial armies of the United States while a Black man was Head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff; the more Black judges appointed to the bench, the more Black men fill America’s prisons and the more Black-on-Black violence ravages America’s Black ghettos. While some 60 distinguished Black men and women sat on some 165 major corporate boards, Blacks were the only ethnic group who suffered net employment losses in major American corporations. At the same time when Afrikan Americans suffered net losses in employment and other minority groups and Whites achieved net increases, Black conservative men presided as the heads of the Equal Economic Opportunity Commission. At the same time when the masses of Blacks are ghettoized in America’s declining cities and no longer live on, own or work the land, a Black man presided as Secretary of Agriculture…”

“In light of the foregoing discussion we think it more appropriate and productive to critically look at the ideological orientation of certain types of leadership establishments which prevail or are emergent in the Afrikan American community today, than to critically analyze the individual leaders and their politics.”

[ Amos N. Wilson from "Blueprint for Black Power: A Moral, Political, and Economic Imperative for the Twenty-First Century"]

The back cover of my book, “The Black Muslim Manifesto: From Inside the Belly of the Beast”, reads:

“The “Manifesto” takes the unabashed position that the “Obamamania”, which has been signed onto by most “recognized” Black “leadership”, is no more than a corporate controlled deception. It is a deception designed for international as well as domestic consumption. The American ruling class is faced with the “browning of America”. They are also confronted with an increasingly non-white, anti-American global population. According to the “Manifesto”, “Obamaism” represents the apotheosis of neo-colonialism.”

In light of the ideological groundwork laid out in this essay, I don’t feel it necessary to expound further on the aforementioned quote from “The Manifesto”; however, it is my fervent hope that imperialism will be unable to reach into its bag of tricks and pull out another deception. Hopefully, “Obamaism” will prove to be “Neo-Colonialism’s Last Gasp”.

Lukman

BISHOP HENRY MCNEAL TURNER

2009-08-07T19:16:00.000-04:00

(1868) Reverend Henry McNeal Turner, “I Claim the Rights of a Man”

African Methodist Episcopal minister and later Bishop Henry McNeal Turner emerged immediately after the Civil War as one of the most ardent defenders of African Ameriacn rights. Turner was also among the first group of Reconstruction-era African American elected officials. In July 1868, Turner was among the two state senators and twenty-five black Republican state representatives elected to serve in the Georgia legislature. Less than two months later, Georgia Democrats, the majority of the legislature, boldly expelled all of the black members. On September 3, 1868, Turner stood before the assembled representatives and denounced the legislators who had refused to seat the African American senators and representatives. That speech appears below.

Mr. Speaker: Before proceeding to argue this question upon its intrinsic merits, I wish the members of this House to understand the position that I take. I hold that I am a member of this body. Therefore, sir, I shall neither fawn nor cringe before any party, nor stoop to beg them for my rights. Some of my colored fellow members, in the course of their remarks, took occasion to appeal to the sympathies of members on the opposite side, and to eulogize their character for magnanimity. It reminds me very much, sir, of slaves begging under the lash. I am here to demand my rights and to hurl thunderbolts at the men who would dare to cross the threshold of my manhood. There is an old aphorism which says, "fight the devil with fire," and if I should observe the rule in this instance, I wish gentlemen to understand that it is but fighting them with their own weapon.

The scene presented in this House, today, is one unparalleled in the history of the world. From this day, back to the day when God breathed the breath of life into Adam, no analogy for it can be found. Never, in the history of the world, has a man been arraigned before a body clothed with legislative, judicial or executive functions, charged with the offense of being a darker hue than his fellow men. I know that questions have been before the courts of this country, and of other countries, involving topics not altogether dissimilar to that which is being discussed here today. But, sir, never in the history of the great nations of this world never before has a man been arraigned, charged with an offense committed by the God of Heaven Himself. Cases may be found where men have been deprived of their rights for crimes and misdemeanors; but it has remained for the state of Georgia, in the very heart of the nineteenth century, to call a man before the bar, and there charge him with an act for which he is no more responsible than for the head which he carries upon his shoulders. The Anglo Saxon race, sir, is a most surprising one. No man has ever been more deceived in that race than I have been for the last three weeks. I was not aware that there was in the character of that race so much cowardice or so much pusillanimity. The treachery which has been exhibited in it by gentlemen belonging to that race has shaken my confidence in it more than anything that has come under my observation from the day of my birth.

What is the question at issue? Why, sir, this Assembly, today, is discuss¬ing and deliberating on a judgment; there is not a Cherub that sits around God's eternal throne today that would not tremble even were an order is¬sued by the Supreme God Himself to come down here and sit in judgment on my manhood. Gentlemen may look at this question in whatever light they choose, and with just as much indifference as they may think proper to assume, but I tell you, sir, that this is a question which will not die today. This event shall be remembered by posterity for ages yet to come, and while the sun shall continue to climb the hills of heaven.

Whose legislature is this? Is it a white man's legislature, or is it a black man's legislature? Who voted for a constitutional convention, in obedience to the mandate of the Congress of the United States? Who first rallied around the standard of Reconstruction? Who set the ball of loyalty rolling in the state of Georgia? And whose voice was heard on the hills and in the valleys of this state? It was the voice of the brawny armed Negro, with the few humanitarian hearted white men who came to our assistance. I claim the honor, sir, of having been the instrument of convincing hundreds yea, thousands of white men, that to reconstruct under the measures of the United States Congress was the safest and the best course for the interest of the state.

Let us look at some facts in connection with this matter. Did half the white men of Georgia vote for this legislature? Did not the great bulk of them fight, with all their strength, the Constitution under which we are act¬ing? And did they not fight against the organization of this legislature? And further, sir, did they not vote against it? Yes, sir! And there are persons in this legislature today who are ready to spit their poison in my face, while they themselves opposed, with all their power, the ratification of this Con¬stitution. They question my right to a seat in this body, to represent the people whose legal votes elected me. This objection, sir, is an unheard of monopoly of power. No analogy can be found for it, except it be the case of a man who should go into my house, take possession of my wife and chil¬dren, and then tell me to walk out. I stand very much in the position of a criminal before your bar, because I dare to be the exponent of the views of those who sent me here. Or, in other words, we are told that if black men want to speak, they must speak through white trumpets; if black men want their sentiments expressed, they must be adulterated and sent through white messengers, who will quibble and equivocate and evade as rapidly as the pen¬dulum of a clock. If this be not done, then the black men have committed an outrage, and their representatives must be denied the right to represent their constituents.

The great question, sir, is this: Am I a man? If I am such, I claim the rights of a man. Am I not a man because I happen to be of a darker hue than honorable gentlemen around me? Let me see whether I am or not. I want to convince the House today that I am entitled to my seat here. A certain gentleman has argued that the Negro was a mere development similar to the orangoutang or chimpanzee, but it so happens that, when a Negro is examined, physiologically, phrenologically and anatomically, and I may say, physiognomically, he is found to be the same as persons of different color. I would like to ask any gentleman on this floor, where is the analogy? Do you find me a quadruped, or do you find me a man? Do you find three bones less in my back than in that of the white man? Do you find fewer organs in the brain? If you know nothing of this, I do; for I have helped to dissect fifty men, black and white, and I assert that by the time you take off the mucous pigment the color of the skin you cannot, to save your life, distinguish between the black man and the white. Am I a man? Have I a soul to save, as you have? Am I susceptible of eternal development, as you are? Can I learn all the arts and sciences that you can? Has it ever been demonstrated in the history of the world? Have black men ever exhibited bravery as white men have done? Have they ever been in the professions? Have they not as good articulative organs as you? Some people argue that there is a very close similarity between the larynx of the Negro and that of the orangoutang. Why, sir, there is not so much similarity between them as there is between the larynx of the man and that of the dog, and this fact I dare any member of this House to dispute. God saw fit to vary everything in nature. There are no two men alike no two voices alike no two trees alike. God has weaved and tissued variety and versatility throughout the boundless space of His creation. Because God saw fit to make some red, and some white, and some black, and some brown, are we to sit here in judgment upon what God has seen fit to do? As well might one play with the thunderbolts of heaven as with that creature that bears God's image God's photograph.

The question is asked, "What is it that the Negro race has done?" Well, Mr. Speaker, all I have to say upon the subject is this: If we are the class of people that we are generally represented to be, I hold that we are a very great people. It is generally considered that we are the children of Canaan, and the curse of a father rests upon our heads, and has rested, all through history. Sir, I deny that the curse of Noah had anything to do with the Negro. We are not the Children of Canaan; and if we are, sir, where should we stand? Let us look a little into history. Melchizedek was a Canaanite; all the Phoenicians all those inventors of the arts and sciences were the posterity of Canaan; but, sir, the Negro is not. We are the children of Cush, and Canaan's curse has nothing whatever to do with the Negro. If we belong to that race, Ham belonged to it, under whose instructions Napoleon Bonaparte studied military tactics. If we belong to that race, Saint Augustine belonged to it. Who was it that laid the foundation of the great Reformation? Martin Luther, who lit the light of gospel truth alight that will never go out until the sun shall rise to set no more; and, long ere then, Democratic principles will have found their level in the regions of Pluto and of Prosperpine . . . .

The honorable gentleman from Whitfield (Mr. Shumate), when arguing this question, a day or two ago, put forth the proposition that to be a representative was not to be an officer "it was a privilege that citizens had a right to enjoy." These are his words. It was not an office; it was a "privilege." Every gentleman here knows that he denied that to be a representative was to be an officer. Now, he is recognized as a leader of the Democratic party in this House, and generally cooks victuals for them to eat; makes that remarkable declaration, and how are you, gentlemen on the other side of the House, because I am an officer, when one of your great lights says that I am not an officer? If you deny my right the right of my constituents to have representation here because it is a "privilege," then, sir, I will show you that I have as many privileges as the whitest man on this floor. If I am not permitted to occupy a seat here, for the purpose of representing my constituents, I want to know how white men can be permitted to do so. How can a white man represent a colored constituency, if a colored man cannot do it? The great argument is: "Oh, we have inherited" this, that and the other. Now, I want gentlemen to come down to cool, common sense. Is the created greater than the Creator? Is man greater than God? It is very strange, if a white man can occupy on this floor a seat created by colored votes, and a black man cannot do it. Why, gentlemen, it is the most shortsighted reasoning in the world. A man can see better than that with half an eye; and even if he had no eye at all, he could forge one, as the Cyclops did, or punch one with his finger, which would enable him to see through that.

It is said that Congress never gave us the right to hold office. I want to know, sir, if the Reconstruction measures did not base their action on the ground that no distinction should be made on account of race, color or previous condition? Was not that the grand fulcrum on which they rested? And did not every reconstructed state have to reconstruct on the idea that no discrimination, in any sense of the term, should be made? There is not a man here who will dare say No. If Congress has simply given me a merely sufficient civil and political rights to make me a mere political slave for Democrats, or anybody else giving them the opportunity of jumping on my back in order to leap into political power I do not thank Congress for it. Never, so help me God, shall I be a political slave. I am not now speaking for those colored men who sit with me in this House, nor do I say that they endorse my sentiments, but assisting Mr. Lincoln to take me out of servile slavery did not intend to put me and my race into political slavery. If they did, let them take away my ballot I do not want it, and shall not have it. I don't want to be a mere tool of that sort. I have been a slave long enough already.

I tell you what I would be willing to do: I am willing that the question should be submitted to Congress for an explanation as to what was meant in the passage of their Reconstruction measures, and of the Constitutional Amendment. Let the Democratic Party in this House pass a resolution giving this subject that direction, and I shall be content. I dare you, gentlemen, to do it. Come up to the question openly, whether it meant that the Negro might hold office, or whether it meant that he should merely have the right to vote. If you are honest men, you will do it. If, however, you will not do that, I would make another proposition: Call together, again, the convention that framed the constitution under which we are acting; let them take a vote upon the subject, and I am willing to abide by their decision...

These colored men, who are unable to express themselves with all the clearness and dignity and force of rhetorical eloquence, are laughed at in derision by the Democracy of the country. It reminds me very much of the man who looked at himself in a mirror and, imagining that he was addressing another person, exclaimed: My God, how ugly you are!" These gentlemen do not consider for a moment the dreadful hardships which these people have endured, and especially those who in any way endeavored to acquire an education. For myself, sir, I was raised in the cotton field of South Carolina, and in order to prepare myself for usefulness, as well to myself as to my race, I determined to devote my spare hours to study. When the overseer retired at night to his comfortable couch, I sat and read and thought and studied, until I heard him blow his horn in the morning. He frequently told me, with an oath, that if he discovered me attempting to learn, that he would whip me to death, and I have no doubt he would have done so, if he had found an opportunity. I prayed to Almighty God to assist me, and He did, and I thank Him with my whole heart and soul...

So far as I am personally concerned, no man in Georgia has been more conservative than I. "Anything to please the white folks" has been my motto; and so closely have I adhered to that course, that many among my own party have classed me as a Democrat. One of the leaders of the Republican party in Georgia has not been at all favorable to me for some time back, because he believed that I was too "conservative" for a Republican. I can assure you, however, Mr. Speaker, that I have had quite enough, and to spare, of such "conservatism" . . .

But, Mr. Speaker, I do not regard this movement as a thrust at me. It is a thrust at the Bible a thrust at the God of the Universe, for making a man and not finishing him; it is simply calling the Great Jehovah a fool. Why, sir, though we are not white, we have accomplished much. We have pioneered civilization here; we have built up your country; we have worked in your fields and garnered your harvests for two hundred and fifty years! And what do we ask of you in return? Do we ask you for compensation for the sweat our fathers bore for you for the tears you have caused, and the hearts you have broken, and the lives you have curtailed, and the blood you have spilled? Do we ask retaliation? We ask it not. We are willing to let the dead past bury its dead; but we ask you, now for our rights. You have all the elements of superiority upon your side; you have our money and your own; you have our education and your own; and you have our land and your own too. We, who number hundreds of thousands in Georgia, including our wives and families, with not a foot of land to call our own strangers in the land of our birth; without money, without education, without aid, without a roof to cover us while we live, nor sufficient clay to cover us when we die! It is extraordinary that a race such as yours, professing gallantry and chivalry and education and superiority, living in a land where ringing chimes call child and sire to the church of God a land where Bibles are read and Gospel truths are spoken, and where courts of justice are presumed to exist; it is extraordinary that, with all these advantages on your side, you can make war upon the poor defenseless black man. You know we have no money, no railroads, no telegraphs, no advantages of any sort, and yet all manner of injustice is placed upon us. You know that the black people of this country acknowledge you as their superiors, by virtue of your education and advantages...

You may expel us, gentlemen, but I firmly believe that you will some day repent it. The black man cannot protect a country, if the country doesn't protect him; and if, tomorrow, a war should arise, I would not raise a musket to defend a country where my manhood is denied. The fashionable way in Georgia, when hard work is to be done, is for the white man to sit at his ease while the black man does the work; but, sir, I will say this much to the colored men of Georgia, as, if I should be killed in this campaign, I may have no opportunity of telling them at any other time: Never lift a finger nor raise a hand in defense of Georgia, until Georgia acknowledges that you are men and invests you with the rights pertaining to manhood. Pay your taxes, however, obey all orders from your employers, take good counsel from friends, work faithfully, earn an honest living, and show, by your conduct, that you can be good citizens.

Go on with your oppressions. Babylon fell. Where is Greece? Where is Nineveh? And where is Rome, the Mistress Empire of the world? Why is it that she stands, today, in broken fragments throughout Europe? Because oppression killed her. Every act that we commit is like a bounding ball. If you curse a man, that curse rebounds upon you; and when you bless a man, the blessing returns to you; and when you oppress a man, the oppression also will rebound. Where have you ever heard of four millions of freemen being governed by laws, and yet have no hand in their making? Search the records of the world, and you will find no example. "Governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed." How dare you to make laws by which to try me and my wife and children, and deny me a voice in the making of these laws? I know you can establish a monarchy, an autocracy, an oligarchy, or any other kind of ocracy that you please; and that you can declare whom you please to be sovereign; but tell me, sir, how you can clothe me with more power than another, where all are sovereigns alike? How can you say you have a republican form of government, when you make such distinction and enact such proscriptive laws?

Gentlemen talk a good deal about the Negroes "building no monuments." I can tell the gentlemen one thing: that is, that we could have built monuments of fire while the war was in progress. We could have fired your woods, your barns and fences, and called you home. Did we do it? No, sir! And God grant that the Negro may never do it, or do anything else that would destroy the good opinion of his friends. No epithet is sufficiently opprobrious for us now. I saw, sir, that we have built a monument of docility, of obedience, of respect, and of self control, that will endure longer than the Pyramids of Egypt.

We are a persecuted people. Luther was persecuted; Galileo was persecuted; good men in all nations have been persecuted; but the persecutors have been handed down to posterity with shame and ignominy. If you pass this bill, you will never get Congress to pardon or enfranchise another rebel in your lives. You are going to fix an everlasting disfranchisement upon Mr. Toombs and the other leading men of Georgia. You may think you are doing yourselves honor by expelling us from this House; but when we go, we will do as Wickliffe and as Latimer did. We will light a torch of truth that will never be extinguished the impression that will run through the country, as people picture in their mind's eye these poor black men, in all parts of this Southern country, pleading for their rights. When you expel us, you make us forever your political foes, and you will never find a black man to vote a Democratic ticket again; for, so help me God, I will go through all the length and breadth of the land, where a man of my race is to be found, and advise him to beware of the Democratic party. Justice is the great doctrine taught in the Bible. God's Eternal justice is founded upon Truth, and the man who steps from justice steps from 'Ruth, and cannot make his principles to prevail.

I have now, Mr. Speaker, said all that my physical condition will allow me to say. Weak and ill, though I am, I could not sit passively here and see the sacred rights of my race destroyed at one blow. We are in a position somewhat similar to that of the famous "Light Brigade," of which Tennyson says, they had

Cannon to right of them, Cannon to left of them, Cannon in front of them, Volleyed and thundered.

I hope that our poor, downtrodden race may act well and wisely through this period of trial, and that they will exercise patience and discretion under all circumstances.

You may expel us, gentlemen, by your votes, today; but, while you do it, remember that there is a just God in Heaven, whose All-Seeing Eye beholds alike the acts of the oppressor and the oppressed, and who, despite the machinations of the wicked, never fails to vindicate the cause of Justice, and the sanctity of His own handiwork.

Sources:

Ethel Maude Christler, "Participation of Negroes in the Government of Georgia, 1867 1870" (Master's thesis, Atlanta University, June 1932), pp. 82 96.

John Langalibalele Dube

2009-08-05T12:29:00.001-04:00

A Biographical Sketch

John Langalibalele Dube (1871-1946) looms large as one of the most important figures in South African history. He led a public life as an educator, an orator, a writer, a newspaper editor, and a international civil rights leader. He was the founding president of the African National Congress (1912), the political organization primarily responsible for overthrowing the Aparthied system. In addition Dube and Nganzana Luthuli, an eminent African journalist, “co-founded Hanga Lase Natal (The Natal Sun)(1903), the first Zulu language newspaper of which he later became editor.”[1] In addition Dube often traveled to the United States, finding encouragement at Oberlin College, and inspiration from Booker T. Washington’s Tuskegee Institute. In South Africa, Dube founded one of the first schools of higher learning for the indigenous peoples, the Zulu Christian Industrial School (1901), later renamed the Ohlange Institute.

Dube was born in Natal in 1871 of a royal Zulu lineage. He was raised as a Christian. John Dube’s father, James Dube, converted to Christianity bringing his family with him. James was “the first native minister of the Zulu Mission of the American Board of Comissioners for Foreign Missions.”[2] Throughout his life, John Dube navigated between his Christian spirituality and his Zulu ethnic roots, which often came into conflict. One example of this conflict is seen when Dube writes of how his family’s conversion was received by their community:

Because [My Father] was the leader of his people, a great protest went up from the Dube tribe against my Grandmother, because she had allowed him to come in contact with this new religion and be drawn away from the practices of his people.[3]

This was a serious rift. The Dube tribe was angry enough, that according to Dube,

many times they tried to kill my Grandmother, many nights she was forced to sleep in the bushes out of the way of her would be assassins.[4]

James Dube would go on to serve as a Congregational minister at the Inanda station in Natal, while his son John Dube attended the Adams School, at the same Inanda station. Both these programs were run by Herbert D. Goodenough (OC:A.B. 1878; Theol., 1881).[5]

Apparently Dube was a high spirited youth. When, with some other boys, he got into trouble at the school Rev. Goodenough called on his Oberlin classmate and fellow Zulu missionary, William Wilcox (OC:A.B. 1878, Theol., 1881, A.M. 1901), stationed at Inhambe, to talk to the boys.[6] Wilcox and Dube developed a relationship. When Wilcox and his family decided to return to the United States, Dube asked to accompany them back to Oberlin College. Wilcox agreed to bring the enthusiastic Dube to the United States. However Wilcox made it clear to Dube that this was no free ride. Dube would have to work for his education. Although Dube later explained that he was employed in the South African mines, working to save enough money for the journey,[7] other sources state that his mother gave Wilcox a sum of thirty gold sovereigns she had been saving.[8]

But even with his passage paid, Dube needed to labor in order to support himself once in the United States. When he arrived in Oberlin, Dube “had only his clothing, and two shillings remaining, all that was left of his mother’s money.”[9] Wilcox was quick to remind him “that if he intended to survive in a white man’s world he would have to obtain employment.”[10] Dube did not have easy time finding suitable work. Wilcox assisted Dube in finding work with a road gang, but the labor was rigorous and “by late afternoon he could no longer tolerate the physical punishment of common, outdoor labor.”[11] Recollecting on this experience Dube would later observe that “it was the hardest day’s work I ever had in my life.”[12] The rigorous roadwork took a toll on Dube’s health and he became ill, missing the next day’s work and promptly losing the job. In the following weeks Dube worked a number of jobs. However none suited him and he quickly became “very home sick and wished [he] had never gone away from home.”[13]

Fortunately Wilcox introduced Dube to Mrs. Frank H. Foster, and she was able to use her connections in Oberlin to find some more suitable work for Dube.

During the winter and spring 1887-1888 John swept and cleaned college classrooms, split logs into fire wood for college furnaces and did odd jobs for wealthy white students.[14]

Dube officially enrolled at the Oberlin Preparatory Academy, the pre-college division in the autumn of 1888.[15] (Click Here For Dube’s Schedule). Oberlin life was not easy for Dube. Most likely it was difficult for him to pay sufficient attention to his studies and maintain a steady job. Dube stayed in Oberlin until 1890, studying the sciences, mathematics, classical Greek works and practicing his oratorical skills.

In 1888 Dube “began work at a local printing firm, and he learned the skills of editing and publishing.”[16] These would prove important later when Dube established the first indigenous Zulu newspaper, Illanga Lase Natal. Although he never did receive an official degree from Oberlin College, the skills, connections and worldly perspective Dube cultivated during these years would prove important building blocks, laying the foundation for his later accomplishments.

Although Wilcox had left Oberlin, he and Dube remained in contact. In 1887, Wilcox had become the pastor of a small Congregational church in Keene Valley, New York. Undoubtedly Wilcox knew of Dube’s difficulties finding employment and in 1888 asked Dube to visit him. During his time with Wilcox, Dube utilized his newly acquired type setting skills.[17] He assisted Wilcox in printing a pamphlet entitled “Self Support among the Kaffirs.”[18] This pamphlet

stressed Wilcox’s belief that industrial education, courses in trades and agriculture offered at Hampton Institute, and the “ways and means for self-help” could uplift the natives of Africa.[19]

This experience clearly shaped Dube’s development perhaps even sowing the seeds in Dube’s mind that ten years later would grow into Ohlange Institute. Dube worked closely with Wilcox, accompanying him on a tour of lectures. Dube was only seventeen at the time, but had the courage to ask Wilcox, if he, too, could give a lecture. Wilcox was surprised by this request but allowed Dube the forum, scheduling “a special mid-day meeting.” Following the lecture:

influential lady was interested in him and got him dates for lectures and they succeeded in raising a sum of money with which he went back to Africa and started a school for his people on the same lines of industrial training and self-help proposed in the pamphlet he had helped to prepare.[20]

Other sources suggest that perhaps Dube used some of this money to pay for his 1888-1889 tuition at the Oberlin Preparatory Academy. From 1890 until as late as 1892 Dube lectured throughout Ohio, Pennsylvania, New York.[21]

In 1891 Dube completed a short book, A Talk Upon My Native Land. This thirty-five page work highlights Dube’s desire to bring agricultural and industrial reforms to his fellow indigenous Africans. This work also reflects the conflict between Dube’s ethnic roots and Christian teachings. The conflict was not restricted to Dube’s ethnicity as a Zulu. Dube was a Black African man in the segregated United States. During this time segregation and racism were powerful forces in both South Africa and the United States. Many schools were segregated and Oberlin was hardly an exception. A few years prior to Dube’s arrival,

College officials expelled a Black student, Reverdy C. Ransom, for organizing a protest against segregated dining room seating arrangements.[22]

But Dube chose a less confrontational path than many of his contemporaries. This choice had both positive and negative effects that will be explored later.

Chronic illness forced Dube to return to South Africa in 1892. He would later return to the United States. Upon his return to South Africa, he worked as a teacher for his former high school Amanzimtoti. It was here he met his future wife, Nokuetela Mdima.[23] The previous year, Wilcox, too, had returned to South Africa. Wilcox had been working at the Groutville mission station and Dube began to assist him.[24] Both Wilcox and Dube’s wife encouraged Dube to establish his own mission. In addition “John was dissatisfied with working under the guidelines of white missionaries and within the structure of traditional mission education.”[25] In 1894 the young couple arrived in the village Incawadi, in the Umkomas Valley, beneath the Drakensburg Mountains. From 1894 to 1896 the Dubes attempted to transform and Christianize this small village. They established a small day school were Dube taught English and basic Mathematics. In addition, Dube “built two church buildings where twenty-seven newly converted Africans attended sermons and readings every Sunday.”[26] The Dubes’ school differed from many missionary schools of its time, not only because it was taught by indigenous Africans, but also because the Dubes encouraged pupils to read in their own language, and stressed the concept of “practical work.”[27] During this period Dube realized the need for a larger industrial school. But he would need to return to the United States in order to acquire the capital.

In 1897 Dube returned, this time going to Brooklyn Heights, New York, where he was ordained in the Congregational ministry at the Lewis Avenue Church located in the Bedford Stuyvesant area.[28] While living in Brooklyn Dube attended a number of Booker T. Washington’s lectures. He heard Washington speak on topics such as, “the dignity of labor” and the methods “to teach the Negroes to become moral self-supporting, and useful citizens.” On another occasion Dube attended a speech by Washington concerning “the evils of colored men in Africa who ‘study Cicero’ in school, yet who are ‘without trousers.” [29] Washington’s speeches stressed a need for skilled industrial laborers. After hearing Washington’s speeches Dube became “very much interested in educational work, visiting Hampton and Tuskegee.”[30] (For More Information, see Section 2, John L. Dube and Booker T. Washington: Ohlange and Tuskegee).

Upon returning to South Africa in 1901, Dube founded the Zulu Christian Industrial School, later renamed the Ohlange Institute. Both Booker T. Washington’s Tuskegee and Dube’s Oberlin College experience helped shape his vision for a South African institute.[31] Oberlin’s motto is “Learning and Labor.” The Tuskegee Industrial Institute stressed empowering African Americans with basic skills so that they could effectively improve their lives and social status. Wilcox, an Oberlin alumnus, realized the potential of a Tuskegee institute in the African continent. Dube’s Ohlange drew upon on the theme of “Learning and Labor” as it sought to improve the Africans’ applied and industrial skill levels. Tuskegee and Ohlange focused on practical and obtainable goals within their segregated societies. They interpreted the meaning of “Learning and Labor” differently from Oberlin, where students worked to fund their studies, but did not make the technical skills of work the subject of their studies.

Dube wanted Ohlange to prepare its pupils to be skilled laborers. When Dube founded Ohlange, any notion of a school for higher learning founded by an indigenous African for Africans was a new and truly revolutionary concept. Later, as the school increased in size, the humanities and science curriculum continued to develop. However, some scholars argue that Dube and his fellow instructors feared the apartheid government would accuse the school of creating competition with educated whites as well as white skilled laborers if they did not maintain the façade of an industrial institute. The white status quo almost definitely feared what educated Africans might choose to accomplish with their newly developed skills. Dube’s Ohlange pushed the boundaries of what the government would tolerate. Dube’s reserve in this respect has earned him much criticism from more progressive camps. His seemingly conservative politics reflect the inner conflict he must have suffered, as he struggled to maintain his Christian morality as well as his allegiance to the improvement of the lives of indigenous South Africans, throughout his journey to rectify glaring racial inequalities.

[1] http://www.gospelcom.net/dacb/stories/southafrica/dube1_johnl.html

[2]F.H. Foster, postscript to John L. Dube, A Familiar Talk Upon My Native Land [Rochester, N.Y.: R.M. Swinburne & Co. 1891?], (Oberlin College Library Special Collections).

[3] Student File (John L. Dube), Zulu’s Appeal for Light, c. 1930, Box 72, O.C.A.

[4] Student File (John L. Dube), Zulu’s Appeal for Light, c. 1930, Box 72, O.C.A.

[5] Marlene Merrill.“Summary of Dube Findings.” March 6, 2001.

[6] Merrill. “Summary of Dube Findings”.

[7] “Big Zulu Missionary Tells of His Work.” New York Times. January 9, 1905.

[8] Merrill.“Summary of Dube Findings.”

[9] William Manning Marable, African Nationalist: the Life of John Langalibalele Dube. p.63. [Michigan: UMI Dissertation Services, 1976].

[10] Marble, p.63.

[11] Marable, p.64.

[12] Marable, p.64.

[13]Marable, p.65.

[14] Marable, p.65.

[15] Although Dube was most likely a student at OC from 1888-90, we cannot confirm this because his name does not appear in any of the annual catalogues. His name does appear in the General Catalogue p.285, as a student enrolled in the Oberlin Preparatory Academy, 1888-90, of Oberlin College, 1833-1908. Oberlin, OH. 1909, The O.S. Hubbell Printing Co., Cleveland OH.

[16] Marable, p.66.

[17] Merril, “Summary of Dube Findings.”

[18] Marble, p.66.

[19] Marable, p.66.

[20] William C. Wilcox. “The Oberlin College Library, Student File (John Dube).” Oberlin Alumni Magazine. 1927.

[21] Marable, p.68.

[22] Marable, p.67.

[23] Marable, p.69-70.

[24] Marable, p.69-70

[25] Marable, p.72.

[26] Marable, p.72.

[27] Marable, p. 73.

[28] http://www.gospelcom.net/dacb/stories/southafrica/dube1_johnl.html

[29] Marable, p.94.

[30]Student File (John Dube) Alumni Records O.C.A. John Dube. A fundraising pamphlet for the Ohlange Institute.

[31]“Big Zulu Missionary Tells of His Work.” New York Times. Jan 9, 1905.

Henry Sylvester Williams: Father of Pan Africanism

2009-08-01T02:18:00.001-04:00

Henry Sylvester Williams

Organiser of the world's first ever pan-African conference in 1906

Organising the first Pan African conference was a unique achievement for which Williams is given little credit today. When he formed the African Association, as it was first called, one of its aims was to "promote and protect the interests of all subjects claiming African descent, wholly or in part, in British colonies and other places especially Africa, by circulating accurate information on all subjects affecting their rights and privileges as subjects of the British Empire, by direct appeals to the Imperial and local Governments."

Williams was born on 19th February 1869, in the village of Arouca, ten miles east of Port of Spain, the eldest of five children. An intelligent young man, he qualified as a teacher at the age of 17, and was put in charge of a school a year later. He left for New York when he was 22, because teachers in Trinidad were paid poorly. After two years in the US, he enrolled in Dalhousie University in Nova Scotia to study law. Three years later he came to London, enrolling in King's College. He and three other Trinidadian lawyers read for the bar at Gray's Inn. Here he fell in love with Agnes Powell, daughter of a Royal Marines officer who fiercely opposed the match. They were married in 1898, and had a son, Henry Francis, a year later.

Williams lectured extensively on Trinidad and consistently denounced crown colony rule as 'a heartless system…a synonym for racial contempt'. He led a deputation of Trinidadians to meet MPs, and became the first person of African descent to speak in the House of Commons. He was also instrumental in the creation of the African Association, to promote and protect the interests of all subjects of African descent. He had always had the idea of a world conference of black people, 'the first occasion upon which black men would assemble in England to speak for themselves and endeavour to influence public opinion in their favour'.

The sessions of the conference were held in Westminster Town Hall on the 23rd, 24th, and 25th July 1900. There were 37 delegates and 10 other participants and observers. The chair was taken by Bishop Alexander Walters, a leader of the African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church in the United States and president of National Afro-American Council. The vice chairmen were representatives of independent African states: Frederick Johnson, former Attorney-General of Liberia, and the Haitian Benito Sylvain, aide-de-camp to the Ethiopian emperor.

The conference discussed many issues, among them the importance of preserving the identity of the black race, attacking colonialism, the need for the colonial powers to recognise the rights of indigenous people. There should be no human power to halt Africans' social and political development.

The African Association renamed the Pan African Association. The conference was reported in the leading London newspapers. The Westminster Gazette observed that it 'marks the initiation of a remarkable movement on history; the negro is at last awake to the potentialities of his future'.

After the conference Williams went to Jamaica, Trinidad and the United States to set up branches of the Pan African Association. He also launched a journal called The Pan African in 1901. It was designed to spread information 'concerning the African and his descendants in the British Empire' and to be 'the mouthpiece of the millions of Africans and their descendants'.

Unfortunately, the Pan African Association was short lived, due mainly in part to Williams not being able to devote all his time to the organization. He was probably the first black man to practice as a barrister, and worked extensively in South Africa, defending black people in the courts. In 1906, he was elected to public office on Marylebone borough council. He was denounced by the British consul in 1908 after going to Liberia and decided to move back to Trinidad. He was in the process of building a successful law practice there when he fell ill toward the end of 1910. In March 1911 he died in hospital.

EXTRADITION OF POSADA CARRILES REQUESTED AT NAM SUMMIT

2009-07-16T15:10:00.001-04:00

Today at 4:53am

July 15th, 2009

http://www.granma.cubaweb.cu/english/news/art0051.html

SHARM EL-SHEIKH, Egypt, July 13. — The Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) advocates the extradition to Venezuela of terrorist Luis Posada Carriles, who bombed a Cubana de Aviación plane in 1976.

The final declaration of the 15th Summit of NAM Heads of State and Government states their support for Venezuela’s request for the United States to extradite the man responsible for the aforementioned 1976 crime.

The document condemns the protection offered to this man accused of perpetrating criminal acts in Venezuela, in contravention of the resolutions of the UN Security Council and General Assembly that seek to impede all types of terrorism.

The refusal to extradite Posada Carriles, the document adds, is hindering the efforts made by the Venezuelan authorities to bring this man to justice.

According to the final declaration of the 15th NAM Summit, the member nations of this organization urge the White House to comply with the request to extradite Posada Carriles, accused of terrorist activities.

This criminal is responsible for the mid-air bombing of a Cuban plane of the Cubana de Aviación airline, carrying 73 passengers. Posada currently lives in Miami, under the protection of the US government.

According to preliminary deliberations, the participants at the summit will be also offer their support to the constitutional government of President Hugo Chavez, in view of the aggressive policy of the White House towards Venezuela.

The foreign ministers will also give their support –which will have to be approved by the heads of the delegations- to Venezuela and its right to choose its own form of government, as well as its economic, social and political system, without foreign interference.

The declaration adds the concern of the member nations for the growing intelligence activities against Venezuela and Cuba, and their condemnation of the recent conspiracies and attempts to kill President Chavez.

The representatives of the 118 member nations decided to include in the final declaration, their acknowledgment to the ALBA agreement and the Petrocaribe initiative, as well as the Unique System for Regional Compensation, governed by collaboration principles.

After two days of deliberations at the Savoy Hotel, the experts presented the draft to the ministers gathered here, before submitting it for the consideration of the heads of state and government on Wednesday and Thursday, at the Maritim Jolie Ville Convention Center.

The foreign ministers spoke of the importance of political will to advance the settlement of conflicts in the Middle East, particularly the foundation of a Palestine State, as well as the end of the Israeli occupation. (PL)

For more information concerning U.S. complicity in the activities of Luis Posada Carriles and Orlando Bosch, see: BUSH SAT ON EVIDENCE OF CUBAN TERROR, written by Robert Parry on 7 May 2007; reprinted from Consortium News; http://www.freethefive.org/usTerrorism/USTerrRobertParry50707.htm
and
ON GEORGE BUSH'S PARDON OF ANTI-CUBAN TERRORIST ORLANDO BOSCH http://www.wsws.org/articles/1999/oct1999/corr-o26.shtml

Essay about Obama's Ghana visit

2009-07-12T14:56:00.003-04:00

Feature Article of Friday, 10 July 2009

WARNING TO MY FAMILY AT HOME FROM THEIR KINSMAN IN THE BELLY OF THE BEAST

By Dr. Ahati N. N. Toure, Ph.D.

Many people seem not to understand the way things really work in the United States, and I suppose it is only natural to assume that a change of a person as president of a country signals a change in policy and direction. But this is not really true in the United States.

In the United States, the president is less a leader than a manager of policies formulated by corporate elite interests. This is what accounts for the stability of the political system, regardless of who is president.

This explains the outcome of the electoral fraud--in effect, an electoral coup--staged in 2000 (more than 2 million votes were discarded, 1 million of them cast by US Afrikans) and in 2004 (similar machinations secured a Republican electoral victory in the White House) that assured George W. Bush's ascendancy to and continued hold on the US presidency.

The Democratic Party refused to challenge the results in both years. I speculate that former Vice President Al Gore's Nobel Peace Prize was awarded as a consolation prize for his obeisance to the agenda of the true masters of US politics.

The United States’ political stability was created after the civil war of 1861-1865, when industrial capitalists consolidated their control of the economic and political direction of the country. The civil war allowed them to oust the neo-mercantilist faction of the European settler elite (owners and champions of the so-called slavery system), which mode of production depended upon exports of raw materials to western European metropoles.

As we all know, this mode of production promotes economic dependency and underdevelopment. The capitalist elites wanted the United States economically and politically to be competitive with and independent of an industrial and industrializing Europe. They did not want to be its subordinates.

Because of the changes of the civil war, both so-called parties--which are really two sides of one coin--have pledged patriotic allegiance to capitalism as quintessentially American. Their emotional and ideological commitment to its advance under the US political system includes the shaping of its foreign policy--or the definition and extension of what are defined as US interests on to the world stage.

Bush's ascendancy to the US presidency, for perceptive observers, shows that the people do not choose the manager of the country. They simply ratify, or are made to ratify, the results of a selection. Barack Hussein Obama--a name that in and of itself is astonishing in European settler political culture--is no less the product of a selection process.

This explains the consistency of policies pursued by so-called "Democratic" and "Republican" presidential administrations--or, now, "black" and "white" presidents. In the United States all US presidents are "white."

In Africa we call this neo-colonialism.

One example of this is Africom. Established during George W. Bush's regime, it is still being carried out by Barack Hussein Obama's regime. To many, at least, the Bush personality was a bit too crude and, in some respects, brutish for the world to accept. Put some color on him, with a sophisticated and intelligent personality, and now you have the same agenda for Africa, skillfully repackaged in an Obama. The agenda remains the same--imperialistic, exploitative, and, ultimately, deadly--but the general perception is different. It is seductive.

US presidents come and go, but the interests remain constant. Therefore, what is the real agenda in the US president's visit to Ghana? Oil. Africom.

We really should not underestimate the craftiness of the Europeans in their choice of this particular personality for president of the United States. The best way to test my thesis is to explore the question of African strategic interests, or, alternatively, American strategic interests in Africa, and examine the ways in which and the degree to which Obama's pursuit of American policy is consistent with or diverges from that of his predecessor. If you do this well, you will prove my point.

Do not be fooled by appearances. Look deeper, for the snare has been set for you.

Dr. Ahati N. N. Toure is assistant professor of Africana History and Black Studies at Delaware State University, USA. He is the author of John Henrik Clarke: Africalogical Quest for Decolonization and Sovereignty (Africa World Press, 2009).

Source:
Toure, Ahati N. N.

For a United Front of the People Against Imperialism

2009-07-10T06:12:00.003-04:00

South African Communist Party 1935

Source: Umsebenzi, October 26, 1935.
Transcribed: by Dominic Tweedie.
Editorial Note: After the Seventh Congress of the Communist International held in Moscow in July-August 1935, had endorsed Georgi Dimitrov’s call for a broad united front to halt the drive to fascism and war, the Communist Party of South Africa acknowledged its own sectarian errors of the past and sought to ally itself with other anti fascist and anti-racist elements amongst both blacks and whites in South Africa. With the rise of Hitler and Mussolini, Italy’s attack on Abyssinia, the Spanish civil war and Japanese aggression in the Far East, the danger of a second world war loomed ever more threateningly. At home Herzog’s Native Bills heralded a new assault on the rights of the oppressed black majority, and Cabinet Ministers like Pirow openly expressed their admiration for Europe’s fascist leaders. Fascist and racist organisations like the Greyshirts became active, stirring up hostility towards the Jews and the blacks and making physical assaults on the Communist Party’s platforms.

The Communist Party took part in the great Bloemfontein conference on December 16, 1935, which gave birth to the All African Convention and also co-operated with the National Liberation League which had been formed in Cape Town. Party members also played a key role in the revival of the African National Congress towards the end of the 1930s.

During 1936 the name of the Party’s journal was changed back to The South African Worker, though Umsebenzi remained as a sub-title. Possibly the intention behind this was to make the paper more acceptable to progressive whites whom the Party hoped to bring into the united front. A new slogan running across the head of the paper in each issue was: ‘For a United Working Class Front Against Imperialism and War’.

Some leading representatives of the Native population of the Union of South Africa such as Prof Jabavu, Dr Seme, Matseke and others proposed a few months ago to call on December 16, this year, a joint convention of all existing Native organisations. These proposals could not but be greeted by all sincere fighters for the cause of the Native people, as such a convention is of great importance for our cause and a mass movement in favour of it was already called to life

The position of the Native population becomes ever worse. In the run for profits, in the desire to strengthen their power in our country, the Anglo-Boer imperialists are tightening the rope around the necks of our people. The prosperity in the mining industry, the improvement of the economic conditions of the Native population. It just brought tremendous profits to the mine shareholders and fat subsidies of the government to the rich landowners.

On the contrary, striving to retain their profits, imperialists started a new attack on the living conditions of our people. The colonial government wants to take away the vestige of our miserable political rights, it wants to rob the Native population of the Cape of its franchise. The Native population suffers heavily of national oppression, landlessness and systematic robbery. It is now more than ever necessary, therefore, to unite the efforts of the whole Native population and its organisations for the defence of its human rights against the new brutal laws of the imperialist Union Government.

We fully agree with Mr John Chekedi, who says: ‘We shall be made slaves indeed, unless we can unite and become a nation.’

The Communist Party pointed out many a time during the last years that the unity of action of the whole Native population and its organisations is the main and decisive condition which will bring our struggle to a victorious end. The Communist Party proposed many a time that united action with the African National Congress and the ICU should be established for the fight for the immediate demands of the people. But the leaders of the ANC and the ICU without explanation have continually refused our proposals. The more heartily we greet now the initiative of the ANC leaders in calling the JOINT NATIONAL CONVENTION.

In the fight for land and independence, our people have set up many organisations: political, economic, sport, religious and so on. Each of these has its program and particular principles. Each of these organisations offers its way to solve the questions that interest the Native population-to free our country from brutal imperialist slavery. In the same time the ANC, for instance, thinks it possible to regain our land and independence through co-operation with the Colonial Government and the Anglo-Boer imperialists, the Communist Party says that our people can fully free themselves from slavery only by driving out the Anglo-Boer exploiters from our country and by establishing an Independent Native Republic. Yet, let us put away the difference of the ways towards national liberation. All of us have one common cause, requiring the unity of our efforts, and however different we regard the solution of the question of national liberation, it is clear for all of us that in the interests of national freedom we cannot allow that the imperialists should tighten more and more the rope around our necks, that our last political rights should be taken away. The fight against national oppression and exploitation, the fight for the immediate, most necessary needs of the people — that is the basis for the united action of all the Native organisations, irrespective of their political differences. That is why we greet warmly the proposal to call a joint convention.

The necessity to call such a convention now is dictated also by other external events. Italian imperialism raises its fascist fist against the last and only independent Negro state in Africa-Abyssinia. The Italian fascists prepare for a bloody war against the peaceful Abyssinian people. We cannot remain indifferent in the fight of our Abyssinian Brothers for their independence. We must rally as a united people and stretch out our hand of solidarity to the Abyssinian people and hinder the Italian fascists in fulfilling their imperialist plans.

The significance of the convention is enormous. It will be the first convention in the history of our people’s struggle for its freedom, on which there will be represented the vast masses of the Native population.

C. Mullins on Malcolm X!

2009-07-08T16:04:00.001-04:00

Malcolm X taught African Americans self-defense, regardless of the odds against us! I am 74 years old now and my mother taught me that I am responsible for a thousand enemy, I accepted that responsibility. What responsibility have you accepted Mr. Jesse Muhammad?

War has been declared on poor African Americans, Muslims, South and Central Americans, Indonesians, Iraqis, Afghanistanian people, North Koreans, Iranians and Cubans by white racist.

These people understand Capitalism is the problem:

1. Capitalism causes prostitution

2. Capitalism causes family to separate

3. Capitalism puts people in jail

4. Capitalism miss-educates

5. Capitalism creates racist prison guards that are in collusion with AB's [Aryan Brotherhood] that are torturing/killing African American inmates in Oklahoma’s Max-security McAlester prison. Ask some of your brothers that are in this prison, I know you must have some converts there!

6. Capitalism's intelligence community, the CIA, and its Contra terrorist put drugs in our community to destroy African American youth, family, organization and leadership; drugs set African American people back as far as Louis Farrakhan did after the assassination of Malcolm X.

7. Capitalism does not permit speaking out against injustice, racism or discrimination, unless you are prepared to kill or die to protect your rights. Which members of the Black Panther Party were prepared to do and did! Nobody has to tell me what happens to you when you speak out against this criminal government. What happened to Malcolm-X and the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense are classic examples. The BPP stood with the Palestinian people in word and deed. It is legal to volunteer to fight in foreign wars, Jews leave New York and Tulsa every Friday to fly to Palestine to Kill Palestine’s, are you sending Muslim volunteers to fight in Indonesia, Iraq, Afghanistan and Palestine? Some of Malcolm's people are fighting all over the world!

8. In regards to killing each other: we kill each other because we are taught to kill each other on television, the movies, in the newspapers. In your life time you will never see a member of the BLA killing a pig, a politician or a white racist, but they show you pictures of Negroes killing each all the time.

Malcolm X taught us self defense, he taught us that it is legal to kill those who attack us, including the five pigs that were attempting to kill Loween Mozell in Oakland; anyone who is attempting to kill us, he taught us to protect the community, not just the Muslim community, but the entire community was the duty of all people anywhere in the world and we had the right to retaliate when attacked.

9. This is what is so beautiful about Al Qaeda and the Taliban is that they are practicing what Malcolm-X taught poor people. They were attacked by America and are practicing self-defense, and are up against a powerful mentally ill military force, which many members of the NOI belong to.

10. History taught us that Black Moroccan Muslims [Blackamoors] took civilization to Spain in 711 AD and Europe, and the Olmecs took civilization to Central and South America 3,000 years ago. They were successful because they were advancing civilization and humanity not capitalism, the civilization they built were destroyed by Europeans as surely as America is going to be destroyed.

The Honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan is not a freedom fighter, as most of the Muslims I know are not, the Muslims in the US Military are fighting to protect capitalism not to destroy it, as a matter of fact, most of the Muslims I know are material capitalist and ideologically aligned with world capitalism, which puts you on the other side of the fence from me…………

I support Al Qaeda, the Taliban, Iraq, Iran, Cuba and the Tamil Tigers in Indonesia and all of those who kill Americans who have attacked and killed members of their families to advance capitalism. Who do you support Mr. Jesse Muhammad?

If capitalism is the number 1 problem world wide, and the number 1 solution to the problem is the destruction of capitalism, where can you possible be standing? in the middle with a bow tie and patent leather shoes on?

If Malcolm was asked the two question, I thank he would answer: 1. Pick up the gun and defend your community and family 2. Malcolm-X respected the leadership of the NOI, and was obedient to it, he also was way ahead of everyone in the NOI at the time he was assassinated by myrmidons, I do not think he would respond to being polished.

Curtis Mullins African American Council

PS: Your article is an insult to the legacy of Malcolm-X, may his memory live on forever in those who have picked up the gun in defense of their community!

"What, to the Slave, Is Your Fourth of July?" Frederick Douglass

2009-07-03T11:39:00.000-04:00

Frederick Douglass (1817-1895) was the best known and most influential African American leader of the 1800s. He was born a slave in Maryland but managed to escape to the North in 1838.

He traveled to Massachusetts and settled in New Bedford, working as a laborer to support himself. In 1841, he attended a convention of the Massachusetts Antislavery Society and quickly came to the attention of its members, eventually becoming a leading figure in the New England antislavery movement.

In 1845, Douglass published his autobiography, "The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass: an American Slave." With the revelation that he was an escaped slave, Douglass became fearful of possible re-enslavement and fled to Great Britain and stayed there for two years, giving lectures in support of the antislavery movement in America. With the assistance of English Quakers, Douglass raised enough money to buy his own his freedom and in 1847 he returned to America as a free man.

He settled in Rochester, New York, where he published The North Star, an abolitionist newspaper. He directed the local underground railroad which smuggled escaped slaves into Canada and also worked to end racial segregation in Rochester's public schools.

In 1852, the leading citizens of Rochester asked Douglass to give a speech as part of their Fourth of July celebrations. Douglass accepted their invitation.

In his speech, however, Douglass delivered a scathing attack on the hypocrisy of a nation celebrating freedom and independence with speeches, parades and platitudes, while, within its borders, nearly four million humans were being kept as slaves.

Fellow citizens, pardon me, and allow me to ask, why am I called upon to speak here today? What have I or those I represent to do with your national independence? Are the great principles of political freedom and of natural justice, embodied in that Declaration of Independence, extended to us? And am I, therefore, called upon to bring our humble offering to the national altar, and to confess the benefits, and express devout gratitude for the blessings resulting from your independence to us?

Would to God, both for your sakes and ours, that an affirmative answer could be truthfully returned to these questions. Then would my task be light, and my burden easy and delightful. For who is there so cold that a nation's sympathy could not warm him? Who so obdurate and dead to the claims of gratitude, that would not thankfully acknowledge such priceless benefits? Who so stolid and selfish that would not give his voice to swell the hallelujahs of a nation's jubilee, when the chains of servitude had been torn from his limbs? I am not that man. In a case like that, the dumb might eloquently speak, and the "lame man leap as an hart."

But such is not the state of the case. I say it with a sad sense of disparity between us. I am not included within the pale of this glorious anniversary! Your high independence only reveals the immeasurable distance between us. The blessings in which you this day rejoice are not enjoyed in common. The rich inheritance of justice, liberty, prosperity, and independence bequeathed by your fathers is shared by you, not by me. The sunlight that brought life and healing to you has brought stripes and death to me. This Fourth of July is yours, not mine. You may rejoice, I must mourn. To drag a man in fetters into the grand illuminated temple of liberty, and call upon him to join you in joyous anthems, were inhuman mockery and sacrilegious irony. Do you mean, citizens, to mock me, by asking me to speak today? If so, there is a parallel to your conduct. And let me warn you, that it is dangerous to copy the example of a nation (Babylon) whose crimes, towering up to heaven, were thrown down by the breath of the Almighty, burying that nation in irrecoverable ruin.

Fellow citizens, above your national, tumultuous joy, I hear the mournful wail of millions, whose chains, heavy and grievous yesterday, are today rendered more intolerable by the jubilant shouts that reach them. If I do forget, if I do not remember those bleeding children of sorrow this day, "may my right hand forget her cunning, and may my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth!"

To forget them, to pass lightly over their wrongs and to chime in with the popular theme would be treason most scandalous and shocking, and would make me a reproach before God and the world.

My subject, then, fellow citizens, is "American Slavery." I shall see this day and its popular characteristics from the slave's point of view. Standing here, identified with the American bondman, making his wrongs mine, I do not hesitate to declare, with all my soul, that the character and conduct of this nation never looked blacker to me than on this Fourth of July.

Whether we turn to the declarations of the past, or to the professions of the present, the conduct of the nation seems equally hideous and revolting. America is false to the past, false to the present, and solemnly binds herself to be false to the future. Standing with God and the crushed and bleeding slave on this occasion, I will, in the name of humanity, which is outraged, in the name of liberty, which is fettered, in the name of the Constitution and the Bible, which are disregarded and trampled upon, dare to call in question and to denounce, with all the emphasis I can command, everything that serves to perpetuate slavery -- the great sin and shame of America! "I will not equivocate - I will not excuse." I will use the severest language I can command, and yet not one word shall escape me that any man, whose judgment is not blinded by prejudice, or who is not at heart a slave-holder, shall not confess to be right and just.

But I fancy I hear some of my audience say it is just in this circumstance that you and your brother Abolitionists fail to make a favorable impression on the public mind. Would you argue more and denounce less, would you persuade more and rebuke less, your cause would be much more likely to succeed. But, I submit, where all is plain there is nothing to be argued. What point in the anti-slavery creed would you have me argue? On what branch of the subject do the people of this country need light? Must I undertake to prove that the slave is a man? That point is conceded already. Nobody doubts it. The slave-holders themselves acknowledge it in the enactment of laws for their government. They acknowledge it when they punish disobedience on the part of the slave. There are seventy-two crimes in the State of Virginia, which, if committed by a black man (no matter how ignorant he be), subject him to the punishment of death; while only two of these same crimes will subject a white man to like punishment.

What is this but the acknowledgment that the slave is a moral, intellectual, and responsible being? The manhood of the slave is conceded. It is admitted in the fact that Southern statute books are covered with enactments, forbidding, under severe fines and penalties, the teaching of the slave to read and write. When you can point to any such laws in reference to the beasts of the field, then I may consent to argue the manhood of the slave. When the dogs in your streets, when the fowls of the air, when the cattle on your hills, when the fish of the sea, and the reptiles that crawl, shall be unable to distinguish the slave from a brute, then I will argue with you that the slave is a man!

For the present it is enough to affirm the equal manhood of the Negro race. Is it not astonishing that, while we are plowing, planting, and reaping, using all kinds of mechanical tools, erecting houses, constructing bridges, building ships, working in metals of brass, iron, copper, silver, and gold; that while we are reading, writing, and ciphering, acting as clerks, merchants, and secretaries, having among us lawyers, doctors, ministers, poets, authors, editors, orators, and teachers; that we are engaged in all the enterprises common to other men -- digging gold in California, capturing the whale in the Pacific, feeding sheep and cattle on the hillside, living, moving, acting, thinking, planning, living in families as husbands, wives, and children, and above all, confessing and worshipping the Christian God, and looking hopefully for life and immortality beyond the grave -- we are called upon to prove that we are men?

Would you have me argue that man is entitled to liberty? That he is the rightful owner of his own body? You have already declared it. Must I argue the wrongfulness of slavery? Is that a question for republicans? Is it to be settled by the rules of logic and argumentation, as a matter beset with great difficulty, involving a doubtful application of the principle of justice, hard to understand? How should I look today in the presence of Americans, dividing and subdividing a discourse, to show that men have a natural right to freedom, speaking of it relatively and positively, negatively and affirmatively? To do so would be to make myself ridiculous, and to offer an insult to your understanding. There is not a man beneath the canopy of heaven who does not know that slavery is wrong for him.

What! Am I to argue that it is wrong to make men brutes, to rob them of their liberty, to work them without wages, to keep them ignorant of their relations to their fellow men, to beat them with sticks, to flay their flesh with the lash, to load their limbs with irons, to hunt them with dogs, to sell them at auction, to sunder their families, to knock out their teeth, to burn their flesh, to starve them into obedience and submission to their masters? Must I argue that a system thus marked with blood and stained with pollution is wrong? No - I will not. I have better employment for my time and strength than such arguments would imply.

What, then, remains to be argued? Is it that slavery is not divine; that God did not establish it; that our doctors of divinity are mistaken? There is blasphemy in the thought. That which is inhuman cannot be divine. Who can reason on such a proposition? They that can, may - I cannot. The time for such argument is past.

At a time like this, scorching irony, not convincing argument, is needed. Oh! had I the ability, and could I reach the nation's ear, I would today pour out a fiery stream of biting ridicule, blasting reproach, withering sarcasm, and stern rebuke. For it is not light that is needed, but fire; it is not the gentle shower, but thunder. We need the storm, the whirlwind, and the earthquake. The feeling of the nation must be quickened; the conscience of the nation must be roused; the propriety of the nation must be startled; the hypocrisy of the nation must be exposed; and its crimes against God and man must be denounced.

What to the American slave is your Fourth of July? I answer, a day that reveals to him more than all other days of the year, the gross injustice and cruelty to which he is the constant victim. To him your celebration is a sham; your boasted liberty an unholy license; your national greatness, swelling vanity; your sounds of rejoicing are empty and heartless; your shouts of liberty and equality, hollow mock; your prayers and hymns, your sermons and thanksgivings, with all your religious parade and solemnity, are to him mere bombast, fraud, deception, impiety, and hypocrisy - a thin veil to cover up crimes which would disgrace a nation of savages. There is not a nation of the earth guilty of practices more shocking and bloody than are the people of these United States at this very hour.

Go search where you will, roam through all the monarchies and despotisms of the Old World, travel through South America, search out every abuse and when you have found the last, lay your facts by the side of the everyday practices of this nation, and you will say with me that, for revolting barbarity and shameless hypocrisy, America reigns without a rival.

Frederick Douglass - July 4, 1852

The History Place - Great Speeches Collection

Henry Highland Garnet's "Call to Rebellion"

2009-06-25T23:21:00.004-04:00

An Address to the Slaves of the United States of America

". . . rather die freemen, than live to be slaves."

BRETHREN AND FELLOW CITIZENS:-- YOUR BRETHREN OF THE North, East, and West have been accustomed to meet together in National Conventions, to sympathize with each Other, and to weep over your unhappy condition. In these meetings we have addressed all classes of the free, but we have never until this time, sent a word of consolation and advice to you. We have been contented in sitting still and mourning over your sorrows, earnestly hoping that before this day your sacred liberty would have been restored. But, we have hoped in vain. Years have rolled on, and tens of thousands have been borne on streams of blood and tears, to the shores of eternity. While you have been oppressed, we have also been partakers with you; nor can we be free while you are enslaved. We, therefore, write to you as being bound with you.

Many of you are bound to us, not only by the ties of a common humanity, but we are connected by the more tender relations of parents, wives, husbands, children, brothers, and sisters, and friends. As such we most affectionately address you.

Slavery has fixed a deep gulf between you and us, and while it shuts out from you the relief and consolation which your friends would willingly render, it affects and persecutes you with a fierceness which we might not expect to see in the fiends of hell. But still the Almighty Father of mercies has left to us a glimmering ray of hope, which shines out like a lone star in a cloudy sky. Mankind are becoming wiser, and better -- the oppressor's power is fading, and you, every day, are becoming better informed, and more numerous. Your grievances, brethren, are many. We shall not attempt, in this short address, to present to the world all the dark catalogue of this nation's sins, which have been committed upon an innocent people. Nor is it indeed necessary, for you feel them from day to day, and all the civilized world look upon them with amazement.

Two hundred and twenty-seven years ago, the first of our injured race were brought to the shores of America. They came not with glad spirits to select their homes in the New World. They came not with their own consent, to find an unmolested enjoyment of the blessings of this fruitful soil. The first dealings they had with men calling themselves Christians, exhibited to them the worst features of corrupt and sordid hearts; and convinced them that no cruelty is too great, no villainy and no robbery too abhorrent for even enlightened men to perform, when influenced by avarice and lust.

Neither did they come flying upon the wings of Liberty, to a land of freedom. But they came with broken hearts, from their beloved native land, and were doomed to unrequited toil and deep degradation. Nor did the evil of their bondage end at their emancipation by death. Succeeding generations inherited their chains, and millions have come from eternity into time, and have returned again to the world of spirits, cursed and ruined by American slavery.

The propagators of the system, or their immediate ancestors, very soon discovered its growing evil, and its tremendous wickedness, and secret promises were made to destroy it. The gross inconsistency of a people holding slaves, who had themselves "ferried o'er the wave" for freedom's sake, was too apparent to be entirely overlooked. The voice of Freedom cried, "Emancipate your slaves." Humanity supplicated with tears for the deliverance of the children of Africa. Wisdom urged her solemn plea. The bleeding captive plead his innocence, and pointed to Christianity who stood weeping at the cross. Jehovah frowned upon the nefarious institution, and thunderbolts, red with vengeance, struggled to leap forth to blast the guilty wretches who maintained it. But all was in vain. Slavery had stretched its dark wings of death over the land, the Church stood silently by -- the priests prophesied falsely, and the people loved to have it so. Its throne is established, and now it reigns triumphant.

Nearly three millions of your fellow-citizens are prohibited by law and public opinion, (which in this country is stronger than law,) from reading the Book of Life. Your intellect has been destroyed as much as possible, and every ray of light they have attempted to shut out from your minds. The oppressors themselves have become involved in the ruin. They have become weak, sensual, and rapacious-they have cursed you-they have cursed themselves-they have cursed the earth which they have trod.

The colonists threw the blame upon England. They said that the mother country entailed the evil upon them, and that they would rid themselves of it if they could. The world thought they were sincere, and the philanthropic pitied them. But time soon tested their sincerity.

In a few years the colonists grew strong, and severed themselves from the British Government. Their independence was declared, and they took their station among the sovereign powers of the earth. The declaration was a glorious document. Sages admired it, and the patriotic of every nation reverenced the God-like sentiments which it contained. When the power of Government returned to their hands, did they emancipate the slaves? No; they rather added new links to our chains. Were they ignorant of the principles of Liberty? Certainly they were not. The sentiments of their revolutionary orators fell in burning eloquence upon their hearts, and with one voice they cried, LIBERTY OR DEATH. Oh what a sentence was that! It ran from soul to soul like electric fire, and nerved the arm of thousands to fight in the holy cause of Freedom. Among the diversity of opinions that are entertained in regard to physical resistance, there are but a few found to gainsay that stern declaration. We are among those who do not.

SLAVERY! How much misery is comprehended in that single word? What mind is there that does not shrink from its direful effects? Unless the image of God be obliterated from the soul, all men cherish the love of Liberty. The nice discerning political economist does not regard the sacred right more than the untutored African who roams in the wilds of Congo. Nor has the one more right to the full enjoyment of his freedom than the other. In every man's mind the good seeds of liberty are planted, and he who brings his fellow down so low, as to make him contented with a condition of slavery, commits the highest crime against God and man. Brethren, your oppressors aim to do this. They endeavor to make you as much like brutes as possible. When they have blinded the eyes of your mind-when they have embittered the sweet waters of life-then, and not till then, has American slavery done its perfect work.

TO SUCH DEGRADATION IT IS SINFUL IN THE EXTREME FOR YOU TO MAKE VOLUNTARY SUBMISSION. The divine commandments you are in duty bound to reverence and obey. If you do not obey them, you will surely meet with the displeasure of the Almighty. He requires you to love him supremely, and your neighbor as yourself -- to keep the Sabbath day holy -- to search the Scriptures -- and bring up your children with respect for his laws, and to worship no other God but him. But slavery sets all these at nought, and hurls defiance in the face of Jehovah. The forlorn condition in which you are placed, does not destroy your moral obligation to God. You'are not certain of heaven, because you suffer yourselves to remain in a state of slavery, where you cannot obey the commandments of the Sovereign of the universe. If the ignorance of slavery is a passport to heaven, then it is a blessing, and no curse, and you should rather desire its perpetuity than its abolition. God will not receive slavery, nor ignorance, nor any other state of mind, for love and obedience to him. Your condition does not absolve you from your moral obligation. The diabolical injustice by which your liberties are cloven down, NEITHER GOD, NOR ANGELS, OR JUST MEN, COMMAND YOU TO SUFFER FOR A SINGLE MOMENT. THEREFORE IT IS YOUR SOLEMN AND IMPERATIVE DUTY TO USE EVERY MEANS, BOTH MORAL, INTELLECTUAL, AND PHYSICAL THAT PROMISES SUCCESS. If a band of heathen men should attempt to enslave a race of Christians, and to place their children under the influence of some false religion, surely Heaven would frown upon the men who would not resist such aggression, even to death. If, on the other hand, a band of Christians should attempt to enslave a race of heathen men, and to entail slavery upon them, and to keep them in heathenism in the midst of Christianity, the God of heaven would smile upon every effort which the injured might make to disenthral themselves.

Brethren, it is as wrong for your lordly oppressors to keep you in slavery as it was for the man thief to steal our ancestors from the coast of Africa. You should therefore now use the same manner of resistance, as would have been just in our ancestors when the bloody foot-prints of the first remorseless soul-thief was placed upon the shores of our fatherland. The humblest peasant is as free in the sight of God as the proudest monarch that ever swayed a sceptre. Liberty is a spirit sent out from God, and like its great Author, is no respecter of persons.

Brethren, the time has come when you must act for yourselves. It is an old and true saying that, "if hereditary bondmen would be free, they must themselves strike the blow." You can plead your own cause, and do the work of emancipation better than any others. The nations of the world are moving in the great cause of universal freedom, and some of them at least will, ere long, do you justice. The combined powers of Europe have placed their broad seal of disapprobation upon the African slave-trade. But in the slaveholding parts of the United States, the trade is as brisk as ever. They buy and sell you as though you were brute beasts. The North has done much -- her opinion of slavery in the abstract is known. But in regard to the South, we adopt the opinion of the New York Evangelist -- We have advanced so far, that the cause apparently waits for a more effectual door to be thrown open than has been yet. We are about to point out that more effectual door. Look around you, and behold the bosoms of your loving wives heaving with untold agonies! Hear the cries of your poor children! Remember the stripes your fathers bore. Think of the torture and disgrace of your noble mothers. Think of your wretched sisters, loving virtue and purity, as they are driven into concubinage and are exposed to the unbridled lusts of incarnate devils. Think of the undying glory that hangs around the ancient name of Africa-and forget not that you are native born American citizens, and as such, you are justly entitled to all the rights that are granted to the freest. Think how many tears you have poured out upon the soil which you have cultivated with unrequited toil and enriched with your blood; and then go to your lordly enslavers and tell them plainly, that you are determined to be free. Appeal to their sense of justice, and tell them that they have no more right to oppress you, than you have to enslave them. Entreat them to remove the grievous burdens which they have imposed upon you, and to remunerate you for your labor. Promise them renewed diligence in the cultivation of the soil, if they will render to you an equivalent for your services. Point them to the increase of happiness and prosperity in the British West Indies since the Act of Emancipation. Tell them in language which they cannot misunderstand, of the exceeding sinfulness of slavery, and of a future judgment, and of the righteous retributions of an indignant God. Inform them that all you desire is FREEDOM, and that nothing else will suffice. Do this, and for ever after cease to toil for the heartless tyrants, who give you no other reward but stripes and abuse. If they then commence the work of death, they, and not you, will be responsible for the consequences. You had better all die -- die immediately, than live slaves and entail your wretchedness upon your posterity. If you would be free in this generation, here is your only hope. However much you and all of us may desire it, there is not much hope of redemption without the shedding of blood. If you must bleed, let it all come at once rather die freemen, than live to be slaves. It is impossible like the children of Israel, to make a grand exodus from the land of bondage. The Pharaohs are on both sides of the blood-red waters! You cannot move en masse, to the dominions of the British Queen-nor can you pass through Florida and overrun Texas, and at last find peace in Mexico. The propagators of American slavery are spending their blood and treasure, that they may plant the black flag in the heart of Mexico and riot in the halls of the Montezumas. In the language of the Rev. Robert Hall, when addressing the volunteers of Bristol, who were rushing forth to repel the invasion of Napoleon, who threatened to lay waste the fair homes of England, "Religion is too much interested in your behalf, not to shed over you her most gracious influences."

You will not be compelled to spend much time in order to become inured to hardships. From the first moment that you breathed the air of heaven, you have been accustomed to nothing else but hardships. The heroes of the American Revolution were never put upon harder fare than a peck of corn and a few herrings per week. You have not become enervated by the luxuries of life. Your sternest energies have been beaten out upon the anvil of severe trial. Slavery has done this, to make you subservient, to its own purposes; but it has done more than this, it has prepared you for any emergency. If you receive good treatment, it is what you could hardly expect; if you meet with pain, sorrow, and even death, these are the common lot of slaves.

Fellow men! Patient sufferers! behold your dearest rights crushed to the earth! See your sons murdered, and your wives, mothers and sisters doomed to prostitution. In the name of the merciful God, and by all that life is worth, let it no longer be a debatable question whether it is better to choose Liberty or death..

In 1822, Denmark Veazie, of South Carolina, formed a plan for the liberation of his fellow men. In the whole history of human efforts to overthrow slavery, a more complicated and tremendous plan was never formed. He was betrayed by the treachery of his own people, and died a martyr to freedom. Many a brave hero fell, but history, faithful to her high trust, will transcribe his name on the same monument with Moses, Hampden, Tell, Bruce and Wallace, Toussaint L'Ouverture, Lafayette and Washington. That tremendous movement shook the whole empire of slavery. The guilty soulthieves were overwhelmed with fear. It is a matter of fact, that at that time, and in consequence of the threatened revolution, the slave States talked strongly of emancipation. But they blew but one blast of the trumpet of freedom and then laid it aside. As these men became quiet, the slaveholders ceased to talk about emancipation; and now behold your condition today! Angels sigh over it, and humanity has long since exhausted her tears in weeping on your account!

The patriotic Nathaniel Turner followed Denmark Veazie. He was goaded to desperation by wrong and injustice. By despotism, his name has been recorded on the list of infamy, and future generations will remember him among the noble and brave.

Next arose the immortal Joseph Cinque, the hero of the Amistad. He was a native African, and by the help of God he emancipated a whole shipload of his fellow men on the high seas. And he now sings of liberty on the sunny hills of Africa and beneath his native palm-trees, where he hears the lion roar and feels himself as free as that king of the forest.

Next arose Madison Washington that bright star of freedom, and took his station in the constellation of true heroism. He was a slave on board the brig Creole, of Richmond, bound to New Orleans, that great slave mart, with a hundred and four others. Nineteen struck for liberty or death. But one life was taken, and the whole were emancipated, and the vessel was carried into Nassau, New Providence.

Noble men! Those who have fallen in freedom's conflict, their memories will be cherished by the true-hearted and the God-fearing in all future generations; those who are living, their names are surrounded by a halo of glory.

Brethren, arise, arise! Strike for your lives and liberties. Now is the day and the hour. Let every slave throughout the land do this and the days of slavery are numbered. You cannot be more oppressed than you have been -- you cannot suffer greater cruelties than you have already. Rather die freemen than live to be slaves. Remember that you are FOUR MILLIONS!

It is in your power so to torment the God-cursed slaveholders that they will be glad to let you go free. If the scale was turned, and black men were the masters and white men the slaves, every destructive agent and element would be employed to lay the oppressor low. Danger and death would hang over their heads day and night. Yes, the tyrants would meet with plagues more terrible than those of Pharaoh. But you are a patient people. You act as though, you were made for the special use of these devils. You act as though your daughters were born to pamper the lusts of your masters and overseers. And worse than all, you tamely submit while your lords tear your wives from your embraces and defile them before your eyes. In the name of God, we ask you, are you men? Where is the blood of your fathers? Has it all run out of your veins? Awake, awake; millions of voices are calling you! Your dead fathers speak to you from their graves. Heaven, as with a voice of thunder, calls on you to arise from the dust.

Let your motto be resistance! resistance! RESISTANCE! No oppressed people have ever secured their liberty without resistance. What kind of resistance you had better make, you must decide by the circumstances that surround you, and according to the suggestion of expediency. Brethren, adieu! Trust in the living God. Labor for the peace of the human race, and remember that you are FOUR MILLIONS.

August 21, 1843

Patrice Lumumba and Conflict in the Congo

2009-06-18T23:18:00.003-04:00

Patrice Emery Lumumba
Historical Biography *

Patrice Emery Lumumba
b. July 2, 1925, Onalua, Belgian Congo [now Congo (Kinshasa)]
d. January 1961, Katanga province

African nationalist leader, the first prime minister of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (June-September 1960). Forced out of office during a political crisis, he was assassinated a short time later.

Lumumba was born in the village of Onalua in Kasai province, Belgian Congo. He was a member of the small Batetela tribe, a fact that was to become significant in his later political life. His two principal rivals, Moise Tshombe, who led the breakaway of the Katanga province, and Joseph Kasavubu, who later became the nation's president, both came from large, powerful tribes from which they derived their major support, giving their political movements a regional character. In contrast, Lumumba's movement emphasized its all-Congolese nature.

After attending a Protestant mission school, Lumumba went to work in Kindu-Port-Empain, where he became active in the club of the évolués (educated Africans). He began to write essays and poems for Congolese journals. Lumumba next moved to Léopoldville (now Kinshasa) to become a postal clerk and went on to become an accountant in the post office in Stanleyville (now Kisangani). There he continued to contribute to the Congolese press.

In 1955 Lumumba became regional president of a purely Congolese trade union of government employees that was not affiliated, as were other unions, to either of the two Belgian trade-union federations (socialist and Roman Catholic). He also became active in the Belgian Liberal Party in the Congo. Although conservative in many ways, the party was not linked to either of the trade-union federations, which were hostile to it. In 1956 Lumumba was invited with others to make a study tour of Belgium under the auspices of the Minister of Colonies. On his return he was arrested on a charge of embezzlement from the post office. He was convicted and condemned one year later, after various reductions of sentence, to 12 months' imprisonment and a fine.

When Lumumba got out of prison, he grew even more active in politics. In October 1958 he founded the Congolese National Movement (Mouvement National Congolais; MNC), the first nationwide Congolese political party. In December he attended the first All-African People's Conference in Accra, Ghana, where he met nationalists from across the African continent and was made a member of the permanent organization set up by the conference. His outlook and terminology, inspired by pan-African goals, now took on the tenor of militant nationalism.

In 1959 the Belgian government announced a program intended to lead in five years to independence, starting with local elections in December 1959. The nationalists regarded this program as a scheme to install puppets before independence and announced a boycott of the elections. The Belgian authorities responded with repression. On October 30 there was a clash in Stanleyville that resulted in 30 deaths. Lumumba was imprisoned on a charge of inciting to riot.

The MNC decided to shift tactics, entered the elections, and won a sweeping victory in Stanleyville (90 percent of the votes). In January 1960 the Belgian government convened a Round Table Conference in Brussels of all Congolese parties to discuss political change, but the MNC refused to participate without Lumumba. Lumumba was thereupon released from prison and flown to Brussels. The conference agreed on a date for independence, June 30, with national elections in May. Although there was a multiplicity of parties, the MNC came out far ahead in the elections, and Lumumba emerged as the leading nationalist politician of the Congo. Maneuvers to prevent his assumption of authority failed, and he was asked to form the first government, which he succeeded in doing on June 23, 1960.

A few days after independence, some units of the army rebelled, largely because of objections to their Belgian commander. In the confusion, the mineral-rich province of Katanga proclaimed secession. Belgium sent in troops, ostensibly to protect Belgian nationals in the disorder. But the Belgian troops landed principally in Katanga, where they sustained the secessionist regime of Moise Tshombe.

The Congo appealed to the United Nations to expel the Belgians and help them restore internal order. As prime minister, Lumumba did what little he could to redress the situation. His army was an uncertain instrument of power, his civilian administration untrained and untried; the United Nations forces (whose presence he had requested) were condescending and assertive, and the political alliances underlying his regime very shaky. The Belgian troops did not evacuate, and the Katanga secession continued.

Since the United Nations forces refused to help suppress the Katangese revolt, Lumumba appealed to the Soviet Union for planes to assist in transporting his troops to Katanga. He asked the independent African states to meet in Léopoldville in August to unite their efforts behind him. His moves alarmed many, particularly the Western powers and the supporters of President Kasavubu, who pursued a moderate course in the coalition government and favoured some local autonomy in the provinces.

On September 5 President Kasavubu dismissed Lumumba. The legalities of the move were immediately contested by Lumumba. There were thus two groups now claiming to be the legal central government. On September 14 power was seized by the Congolese army leader Colonel Joseph Mobutu (president of Zaire as Mobutu Sese Seko), who later reached a working agreement with Kasavubu. In October the General Assembly of the United Nations recognized the credentials of Kasavubu's government. The independent African states split sharply over the issue.

In November Lumumba sought to travel from Leopoldville, where the United Nations had provided him with provisory protection, to Stanleyville, where his supporters had control. With the active complicity of foreign intelligence sources, Joseph Mobutu sent his soldiers after Lumumba. He was caught after several days of pursuit and spent three months in prison, while his adversaries were trying in vain to consolidate their power. Finally, aware that an imprisoned Lumumba was more dangerous than a dead Prime Minister, he was delivered on January 17, 1961, to the Katanga secessionist regime, where he was executed the same night of his arrival, along with his comrades Mpolo and Okito. His death caused a national scandal throughout the world, and, retrospectively, Mobutu proclaimed him a "national hero."

The reasons that Lumumba provoked such intense emotion are not immediately evident. His viewpoint was not exceptional. He was for a unitary Congo and against division of the country along tribal or regional lines. Like many other African leaders, he supported pan-Africanism and the liberation of colonial territories. He proclaimed his regime one of "positive neutralism," which he defined as a return to African values and rejection of any imported ideology, including that of the Soviet Union.

Lumumba was, however, a man of strong character who intended to pursue his policies, regardless of the enemies he made within his country or abroad. The Congo, furthermore, was a key area in terms of the geopolitics of Africa, and because of its wealth, its size, and its contiguity to white-dominated southern Africa, Lumumba's opponents had reason to fear the consequences of a radical or radicalized Congo regime. Moreover, in the context of the Cold War, the Soviet Union's support for Lumumba appeared at the time as a threat to many in the West.

[Edited from Encyclopedia Britannica
with additional paragraph in italics from filmmaker Raoul Peck]

(1858) John S. Rock, “I Will Sink or Swim with My Race”

2009-06-13T10:59:00.001-04:00

Schoolteacher, dentist, physician, lawyer, graduate of the American Medical College in Philadelphia, member of the Massachusetts bar, proficient in Greek and Latin, Dr. John S. Rock was unequivocally one of the most distinguished African American leaders to emerge in the United States during the antebellum era. On March 5, 1858, Dr. Rock delivered a speech at Boston’s Fanueil Hall as part of the annual Crispus Attucks Day observance organized by Boston's black abolitionists in response to the Dred Scott decision.

Rock shared the platform with William Lloyd Garrison, Wendell Phillips, and Theodore Parker. Three years before the outbreak of the Civil War, Dr. Rock correctly predicted that African Americans were destined to play an important role in the impending military conflict over slavery. His speech appears below.

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Ladies and Gentlemen: You will not expect a lengthened speech from me to-night. My health is too poor to allow me to indulge much in speechmaking. But I have not been able to resist the temptation to unite with you in this demonstra-tion of respect for some of my noble but misguided ancestors.

White Americans have taken great pains to try to prove that we are cowards. We are often insulted with the assertion, that if we had had the courage of the Indians or the white man, we would never have submitted to be slaves. I ask if Indians and white men have never been slaves? The white man tested the Indian's courage here when he had his organized armies, his battlegrounds, his places of retreat, with everything to hope for and everything to lose. The position of the African slave has been very different. Seized a prisoner of war, unarmed, bound hand and foot, and conveyed to a distant country among what to him were worse than cannibals; brutally beaten, halfstarved, closely watched by armed men, with no means of knowing their own strength or the strength of their enemies, with no weapons, and without a probability of success. But if the white man will take the trouble to fight the black man in Africa or in Hayti, and fight him as fair as the black man will fight him there—if the black man does not come off victor, I am deceived in his prowess. But, take a man, armed or unarmed, from his home, his country, or his friends, and place him among savages, and who is he that would not make good his retreat? "Discretion is the better part of valor," but for a man to resist where he knows it will destroy him, shows more fool-hardiness than courage. There have been many Anglo-Saxons and Anglo-Americans enslaved in Africa, but I have never heard that they successfully resisted any government. They always resort to running indispensables. The courage of the Anglo-Saxon is best illustrated in his treatment of the negro. A score or two of them can pounce upon a poor negro, tie and beat him, and then call him a coward because he submits. Many of their most brilliant victories have been achieved in the same manner. But the greatest battles which they have fought have been upon paper. We can easily account for this; their trumpeter is dead. He died when they used to be exposed for sale in the Roman market, about the time that Cicero cautioned his friend Atticus not to buy them, on account of their stupidity. A little more than half a century ago, this race, in connection with their Celtic neighbors, who have long been considered (by themselves, of course,) as the bravest soldiers in the world, so far forgot themselves as to attack a few cowardly, stupid negro slaves, who, according to their accounts, had not sense enough to go to bed. And what was the result? Why, sir, the negroes drove them out from the island like so many sheep, and they have never dared to show their faces, except with hat in hand.

Our true and tried friend, Rev. Theodore Parker said, in his speech at the State House, a few weeks since, that "the stroke of the axe would have settled the question long ago, but the black man would not strike." Mr. Parker makes a very low estimate of the courage of his race, if he means that one, two or three millions of those ignorant and cowardly black slaves could, without means, have brought to their knees five, ten, or twenty millions of intelligent brave white men, backed up by a rich oligarchy. But I know of no one who is more familiar with the true character of the Anglo-Saxon race than Mr. Parker. I will not dispute this point with him, but I will thank him or any one else to tell us how it could have been done. His remark calls to my mind the day which is to come, when one shall chase a thousand, and two put ten thousand to flight. But when he says that "the black man would not strike," I am prepared to say that he does us great injustice. The black man is not a coward. The history of the bloody struggles for freedom in Hayti, in which the blacks whipped the French and the English, and gained their independence, in spite of the perfidy of that villainous First Consul, will be a lasting refutation of the malicious aspersions of our enemies. The history of the struggles for the liberty of the U.S. ought to silence every American calumniator. I have learned that even so late as the Texan war, a number of black men were found silly enough to offer themselves as living sacrifices for our country's shame. A gentleman who delivered a lecture before the New York Legislature, a few years since, whose name I do not now remember, but whose language I give with some precision, said, "In the Revolution, colored soldiers fought side by side with you in your struggles for liberty, and there is not a battle-field from Maine to Georgia that has not been crimsoned with their blood, and whitened with their bones." In 1814, a bill passed the Legislature of New York, accepting the services of 2000 colored volunteers. Many black men served under Com. McDonough when he conquered on lake Champlain. Many were in the battles of Plattsburgh and Sackett's Harbor, and General Jackson called out colored troops from Louisiana and Alabama, and in a solemn proclamation attested to their fidelity and courage.

The white man contradicts himself who says, that if he were in our situation, he would throw off the yoke. Thirty millions of white men of this proud Caucasian race are at this moment held as slaves, and bought and sold with horses and cattle. The iron heel of oppression grinds the masses of all the European races to the dust. They suffer every kind of oppression, and no one dares to open his mouth to protest against it. Even in the Southern portion of this boasted land of liberty, no white man dares advocate so much of the Declaration of Independence as declares that "all men are created free and equal, and have an inalienable right to life, liberty,"

White men have no room to taunt us with tamely submitting. If they were black men they would work wonders; but, as white men, they can do nothing. "O, Consistency, thou art a jewel!"

Now, it would not be surprising if the brutal treatment which we have received for the past two centuries should have crushed our spirits. But this is not the case. Nothing but a superior force keeps us down. And when I see the slaves rising up by hundreds annually, in the majesty of human nature, bidding defiance to every slave code and its penalties, making the issue Canada or death, and that too while they are closely watched by paid men armed with pistols, clubs and bowie-knives, with the army and navy of this great Model Republic arrayed against them, I am disposed to ask if the charge of cowardice does not come with an ill-grace.

But some men are so steeped in folly and imbecility; so lost to all feelings of their own littleness; so destitute of principle, and so regardless of humanity, that they dare attempt to destroy everything which exists in opposition to their interests or opinions which their narrow comprehensions cannot grasp.

We ought not to come here simply to honor those brave men who shed their blood for freedom, or to protest against the Dred Scott decision, but to take counsel of each other, and to enter into new vows of duty. Our fathers fought nobly for freedom, but they were not victorious. They fought for liberty, but they got slavery. The white man was benefitted, but the black man was injured. I do not envy the white American the little liberty which he enjoys. It is his right, and he ought to have it. I wish him success, though I do not think he deserves it. But I would have all men free. We have had much sad experience in this country, and it would be strange indeed if we do not profit by some of the lessons which we have so dearly paid for. Sooner or later, the clashing of arms will be heard in this country, and the black man's services will be needed: 150,000 freemen capable of bearing arms, and not all cowards and fools, and three quarters of a million of slaves, wild with the enthusiasm caused by the dawn of the glorious opportunity of being able to strike a genuine blow for freedom, will be a power which white men will be "bound to respect." Will the blacks fight? Of course they will. The black man will never be neutral. He could not if he would, and he would not if he could. Will he fight for this country, right or wrong? This the common sense of every one answers; and when the time comes, and come it will, the black man will give an intelligent answer. Judge Taney may outlaw us; Caleb Cushing may show the depravity of his heart by abusing us; and this wicked government may oppress us; but the black man will live when Judge Taney, Caleb Cushing and this wicked government are no more. White men may despise, ridicule, slander and abuse us; they may seek as they always have done to divide us, and make us feel degraded; but no man shall cause me to turn my back upon my race. With it I will sink or swim.

The prejudice which some white men have, or affect to have, against my color gives me no pain. If any man does not fancy my color, that is his business, and I shall not meddle with it. I shall give myself no trouble because he lacks good taste. If he judges my intellectual capacity by my color, he certainly cannot expect much profundity, for it is only skin deep, and is really of no very great importance to any one but myself. I will not deny that I admire the talents and noble characters of many white men. But I cannot say that I am particularly pleased with their physical appearance. If old mother nature had held out as well as she commenced, we should, probably, have had fewer varieties in the races. When I contrast the fine tough muscular system, the beautiful, rich color, the full broad features, and the gracefully frizzled hair of the negro, with the delicate physical organization, wan color, sharp features and lank hair of the Caucasian, I am inclined to believe that when the white man was created, nature was pretty well exhausted-but determined to keep up appearances, she pinched up his features, and did the best she could under the circumstances. (Great laughter.)

I would have you understand, that I not only love my race, but am pleased with my color; and while many colored persons may feel degraded by being called negroes, and wish to be classed among other races more favored, I shall feel it my duty, my pleasure and my pride, to concentrate my feeble efforts in elevating to a fair position a race to which I am especially identified by feelings and by blood.

My friends, we can never become elevated until we are true to ourselves. We can come here and make brilliant speeches, but our field of duty is elsewhere. Let us go to work—each man in his place, determined to do what he can for himself and his race. Let us try to carry out some of the resolutions which we have made, and are so fond of making. If we do this, friends will spring up in every quarter, and where we least expect them. But we must not rely on them. They cannot elevate us. Whenever the colored man is elevated, it will be by his own exertions. Our friends can do what many of them are nobly doing, assist us to remove the obstacles which prevent our elevation, and stimulate the worthy to persevere. The colored man who, by dint of perseverance and industry, educates and elevates himself, prepares the way for others, gives character to the race, and hastens the day of general emancipation. While the negro who hangs around the corners of the streets, or lives in the grog-shops or by gambling, or who has no higher ambition than to serve, is by his vocation forging fetters for the slave, and is "to all intents and purposes" a curse to his race. It is true, considering the circumstances under which we have been placed by our white neighbors, we have a right to ask them not only to cease to oppress us, but to give us that encourage-ment which our talents and industry may merit. When this is done, they will see our minds expand, and our pockets filled with rocks. How very few colored men are encouraged in their trades or business! Our young men see this, and become disheartened. In this country, where money is the great sympathetic nerve which ramifies society, and has a ganglia in every man's pocket, a man is respected in proportion to his success in business. When the avenues to wealth are opened to us, we will then become educated and wealthy, and then the roughest looking colored man that you ever saw, or ever will see, will be pleasanter than the harmonies of Orpheus, and black will be a very pretty color. It will make our jargon, wit—our words, oracles; flattery will then take the place of slander, and you will find no prejudice in the Yankee whatever. We do not expect to occupy a much better position than we now do, until we shall have our educated and wealthy men, who can wield a power that cannot be misunderstood. Then, and not till then, will the tongue of slander be silenced, and the lip of prejudice sealed. Then, and not till then, will we be able to enjoy true equality, which can exist only among peers.

Sources:

Liberator, March 12, 1858.

[USSF-NE] Chronicle of the Second NYC Encuentro for Dignity &Against Displacement

2009-06-12T19:50:00.001-04:00

En español abajo

To our sisters and brothers of The People's Front in Defense of the Land:

To our Zapatista sisters and brothers:

To our compañer@s, adherents of the Other Campaign in Mexico:

To our compañer@s adherents of the Zezta Internazional:

To our compañer@s adherents of the International Campaign in Defense of El Barrio and our allies from all over the world:

From the Other New York and zapatista East Harlem, which is not for sale and does not forget the prisoners of Atenco, receive a greeting from the women, men, and children, those socially marginalized and globally excluded, who belong to The Other Campaign New York, Movement for Justice in El Barrio:

We are writing to share with you that this past Sunday, June 7th, 2009, we held here, in zapatista East Harlem known as El Barrio, the Second New York City Encuentro for Dignity and Against Displacement, with the participation of 38 organizations representing the resistance against neoliberalism in New York, Connecticut, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Massachusetts. This second encuentro, just as the first one – held two years ago -, was inspired by the encuentros of the Zapatistas in Mexico from below and to the left, in order to get know each other and recognize one another in our struggles for a world where many worlds fit and against neoliberal exclusion.

As The People's Front in Defense of the Land expressed in their message sent to us from Atenco for our Second Encuentro: "One fight unites us, the fight against capitalism. It does not matter where we find ourselves, in Harlem, Bombay, Buenos Aires, Zaragoza, Sidney, Cochabamba, Paris, Manchester, the fight against all forms of domination are one and the same." This is what we confirmed in this encuentro, where in addition to exchanging experiences and informing each other about our forms of struggle, we had the opportunity to go into depth about who we are, where we are, the conditions we face, our forms of struggle, who is our enemy, and what is our dream. We arrived at the conclusion that, just as we did in the First Encuentro, the enemy of the organizations fighting displacement is the capitalist system of global exclusion, including the fact that this system has allies who operate at a local level as tools of the system.

As our compañero Filiberto expressed, representing Movement for Justice in El Barrio:

"Eviction and displacement are happening all over the world. Which is why we have to organize so that united we can destroy this corrupt system in its entirety. Here in El Barrio we have realized that the Mayor Mike Bloomberg and the city council members: Melissa Mark-Viverito, Robert Jackson, and Inez Dickens do not represent the community and on the contrary support and implement aggressive plans for displacement. These politicians have approved projects that directly affect the entire community, they make the people think that they are for the development and progress of the community, but they do not publicize the bad side of their proposals…

"By keeping themselves in a position to fill their pockets with money, these politicians are capable of buying the people, as in the case of one of our compañeros whom Melissa Mark-Viverito offered money to in exchange for abandoning Movement and working with her, but he refused and did not sell out. But we know that certain organizations and groups do sell out and receive money from politicians and do not represent the community, also they do fake publicity stunts and promote themselves as being against displacement when everything is the contrary."

The distinct groups from New York that participated in our round table discussion echoed this reflection. Representatives from the Thomas Jefferson Houses Tenants Association, Coalition to Preserve Community, Harlem Tenants Council, Sunset Park Alliance of Neighbors, and the combative group CAAAV from Chinatown were there, amongst others, including the group Make the Road New York that presented us with a skit about their struggle, with songs that spoke about the deplorable housing conditions they face and the useless or false response from the landlords and politicians.

Through this exchange CAAAV informed us that, in Chinatown, urban rezoning plans in the last year have accelerated to the point that people must remove all of their belongings and evacuate their homes within three hours. Meanwhile, in Harlem, the criminilization of being young and African American is a tactic of war against the community in order to expel them, not just from Harlem but from the entire system, since the young people who are arrested and marked with criminal records will no loner have access to basic services, such as housing, and to essential human rights, such as education. "Our young people are being killed in our streets by the police, for the single fact of being youth," expressed our compañeros.

With respect to the subject of education, which should be free, and the repression of youth, we want to share with our fellow student and youth members of The Other Campaign the reflections concerning the rezoning plans in the surrounding area of Columbia University, which is a private university. "They tell us that the university is good, that it cooperates with the community, and that the reurbanization plans for its surrounding areas are good for the community because they will bring a safe environment. But how? As soon as neighborhoods become residential zones, along with evicting the original community members through violent means, police arrive, sieges arrive, armed detectives arrive," expressed our compañero from the Coalition to Preserve Community in the surrounding area of Columbia University, pointing out that this has to do with a system of global exclusion. Referring to a university that promotes excluding rebellious and informed students and educating only the elites of the United States, he stated, "It is not just the elites of this country but the elites of the whole world, so it will be those who are privileged who will be displacing poor people from communities."

For their part, the representatives of that community told us the history of Central and West Harlem and of the streets that are beginning to change due to Mayor Bloomberg's plans to rezone the area. A fundamental part of our dialogue referred to those allies of the system: elected public officials that, in their district, try to bribe the people, and the "community boards" that first tried to fool the people into believing that the displacement will only happen with their opinion. "Meanwhile, the contracts with the big construction companies were already signed a long time ago; the government officials and the members of these community boards already know the pact is made since before: they don't fool us," expressed the representing organizations.

Likewise, one of the aspects of our struggle in our very own community, El Barrio, consists of dealing with cosmetic organizations that, paid for by the local government, try to confuse the community by organizing activities that don't represent the local community, with merely theatrical effects, without any social or economic repercussions, even falsely imitating symbols of the social struggle. While they do this, they promote the political agenda of public officials that approve and impose, from above, their plans of displacement.

Nonetheless, we were pleased to see that, at this second encuentro, in addition to the organizations in favor of our same cause and that were with us two years ago, many more organizations joined us as well.

In the segment of our program that followed, we showed the New York City premiere of the video that we received about the struggle in New Orleans against neoliberal displacement. As very few know, at the end of last year, the City Council of New Orleans, made up by mostly white people, not only allowed an attack, but they themselves ridiculed in front of the cameras, the protestors, members of the African American community, victims of Hurricane Katrina whose homes were demolished in order to build luxury condos. They were reprimanded, beaten, sprayed with tear gas and arrested.

We expressed our solidarity with the people of New Orleans in resistance and we reiterated our struggle is not only local, but also national.

And worldwide...

It extends from New York to New Orleans and from here to Atenco, Mexico. With great excitement we read the message from our sisters and brothers from Atenco and we concluded this dialogue by showing a video about the repression in Atenco In the video we also showed the different protests that happened in distinct parts of the world during the day of solidarity with Atenco, including the takeover of the consulate in New York on May 4th by the members of Movement for Justice in El Barrio, who succeeded in entering the consulate, unfolding their signs once inside, marching, chanting loudly, demanding the liberation of the 12 political prisoners and handing out to the people in line copies of videos of the struggle of Atenco, which made the authorities shut down the Consulate.

The pain was shared, but also the solidarity and the joy of recognizing one another: of knowing that we are not alone. In closing, once again, we asked the children to break the neoliberal piñata. They broke it with force and, by doing so, found candy, just like candy are the fruits we hope to find in the end of this struggle for a world where many worlds fit, for peace and justice, dignified housing, health, and education for all, and for the liberty of political prisoners in Atenco, in Mexico, and throughout the world.

Our heart is with all of you.

We are all Atenco!

Liberty for political prisoners!

Long live the Other Campaign!

And long live the Zapatista Army for National Liberation!

Fraternally:

Movement for Justice in El Barrio.

The Other Campaign New York

A nuestr@s hermanas y hermanos del Frente de Pueblos en Defensa de la Tierra:

A nuestr@s hermanas y hermanos zapatistas:

A nuestr@s compañer@s, adherentes de La Otra Campaña en México.

A nuestr@s companer@s de la Zezta Internazional:

A nuestr@s companer@s adherentes a la Campaña Internacional en Defensa de El Barrio y nuestros aliados de todo el mundo:

Desde la Otra Nueva York y el Este del Harlem zapatista que no se vende y que no olvida a los presos de Atenco, reciban un saludo de las mujeres, hombres y niñ@s, los marginados sociales y excluidos globalmente, pertenecientes a La Otra Campaña Nueva York, Movimiento por Justicia del Barrio:

Les escribimos para compartir con ustedes que este domingo 7 de junio de 2009, realizamos aquí, en el Este del Harlem zapatista conocido como El Barrio, el Segundo Encuentro Nueva York por la Dignidad y Contra el Desplazamiento, con la participación de 38 organizaciones sociales representativas de la resistencia contra el neoliberalismo en Nueva York, Connecticut, Nueva Jersey, Pensilvania y Massachusetts. Este segundo encuentro, al igual que el primero -realizado hace dos años-, se inspiró en los encuentros realizados por l@s zapatistas en el México de abajo y a la izquierda, para conocernos y reconocernos en nuestras luchas por un mundo donde quepan muchos mundos y contra la exclusión neoliberal.

Como nos manifestó el Frente de Pueblos en Defensa de la Tierra en su mensaje enviado desde Atenco para nuestro Segundo Encuentro: "Una lucha nos une, la lucha contra el capitalismo. No importa desde donde nos encontremos, en Harlem, Bombay, Buenos Aires, Zaragoza, Sídney, Cochabamba, Paris, Manchester, la lucha contra las formas de dominación son las mismas". Eso fue lo que corroboramos en este encuentro donde, además de intercambiar experiencias e informarnos sobre nuestras formas de lucha, tuvimos la oportunidad de profundizar sobre quiénes somos, dónde estamos, qué condiciones enfrentamos, cuáles son nuestras formas de lucha, quién es nuestro enemigo, y cuál es nuestro sueño. Llegamos a la conclusión de que, si bien tal como nos habíamos planteado en nuestro Primer Encuentro, el "enemigo" de las agrupaciones que luchan contra el desplazamiento es un sistema capitalista de exclusión global, también es verdad que ese sistema tiene aliados que operan a nivel local como herramientas de ese sistema.

Tal como expresó nuestro compañero Filiberto, en representación de Movimiento por Justicia del Barrio:

"...El desalojo y el desplazamiento está pasando en todo el mundo. Es por ello que nos tenemos que organizar para que unidos podamos derrotar a todo este sistema corrupto: aquí, en El Barrio, nos hemos dado cuenta que el alcalde Mike Bloomberg y los concejales Melissa Mark-Viverito, Robert Jackson e Inez Dickens, no representan a la comunidad, y por el contrario, ellos respaldan e implementan planes agresivos de desalojo. Han aprobado proyectos que afectan de manera directa a toda la comunidad en general; ellos hacen pensar al pueblo que todo esto lo hacen para el desarrollo y progreso del pueblo, pero no anuncian el lado malo de sus propuestas...

"Ellos, por mantenerse en el puesto llenándose los bolsillos de dinero, son capaces de tratar de comprar al pueblo, como en el caso de uno de nuestros compañeros, al cual la concejal Melissa Mark-Viverito le ofreció dinero a cambio de que abandonara Movimiento y para que trabajara con ella, pero él se negó y no se vendió... Pero sabemos que ciertas organizaciones y grupos sí se venden y reciben dinero por parte de los funcionarios, y no representan a la comunidad; además, se hacen propaganda falsa y se promueven que están en contra del desalojo cuando es todo lo contrario".

Hicieron eco de esta reflexión las distintas agrupaciones de Nueva York que participaron en nuestra mesa redonda. Compartieron sus luchas representantes de la Asociación Inquilinaria Thomas Jefferson, de la Coalición para Preservar a la Comunidad, del Consejo de Inquilinos de Harlem, de la Alianza de Vecinos Sunset Park, y del combativo grupo CAAAV del Barrio Chino, entre otros, además de que el grupo Se Hace Camino en Nueva York nos presentó una obra de teatro sobre su lucha, con canciones que hablaban sobre las deplorables condiciones de vivienda que enfrentan y la nula o falsa respuesta de los propietarios y politicos.

Mediante este intercambio nos informamos de que, en Chinatown (Barrio Chino), los planes de rezonificación urbana en el último año se han acelerado a tal grado que a la gente se le obliga a sacar todas sus pertenencias y evacuar sus casas en un plazo de tres horas. Mientras tanto, en Harlem, la criminalización por el hecho de ser joven y afroestadounidense es una táctica de guerra contra la comunidad para expulsarla, no sólo de Harlem sino del sistema entero, pues los jóvenes a los se les arresta y se les marca con antecedentes penales después ya no tendrán acceso a los servicios básicos, como es la vivienda, y a los derechos humanos elementales, como lo es el de la educación. "Nuestros jóvenes están siendo asesinados en nuestras calles por la policía, por el sólo hecho de ser jóvenes", expresaron nuestros compañeros participantes.

Respecto al tema de la educación, que debería de ser gratuita, y de la represión a los jóvenes, queremos compartir con nuestros compañeros adherentes de La Otra Campaña jóvenes y estudiantes las reflexiones respecto a los planes de rezonificación en los alrededores de la Universidad de Columbia, que es una universidad privada. "Se nos dice que la universidad es buena, que coopera con la comunidad, y que los planes de reurbanización de sus alrededores son buenos para la comunidad porque van a traer un ambiente seguro. ¿Pero cuál? En cuanto los barrios se convierten en zonas residenciales, además de desalojar a los antiguos pobladores con métodos violentos, llegan los policías, llegan los cercos, llegan los detectives armados", nos manifestó el compañero representante de la Coalición para Preservar a la Comunidad en los alrededores de la universidad de Columbia, señalando que se trata de un sistema de exclusión mundial. Al referirse a una universidad que se propone excluir a sus estudiantes rebeldes e informados y educar sólo a las élites de Estados Unidos, señaló: "No sólo son las élites del país sino las élites de todo el mundo, entonces serán los privilegiados quienes estarán desplazando a la gente pobre de los barrios".

Por su parte, los compañeros representantes de ese pueblo nos contaron de la historia del Centro y Oeste de Harlem y de las calles que están empezando a cambiar debido a los planes del alcalde Bloomberg de rezonificarlo. Una parte fundamental de nuestro debate se refirió a los aliados del sistema: los funcionarios públicos electos que, en su localidad, tratan de sobornar a los pobladores, y las "juntas comunitarias municipales" que incluso en un principio engañaron a la gente haciéndole creer que el desalojo se hará pidiéndole su opinión. "Mientras tanto, los contratos con las grandes constructoras ya están firmados desde hace mucho; los gobernantes y los miembros de las juntas ya saben que el pacto está hecho desde antes: no nos engañemos", expresaron los representantes.

Asimismo, uno de los aspectos de nuestra lucha en nuestra propia comunidad de El Barrio consiste en enfrentar agrupaciones cosméticas que, pagadas por el gobierno local, tratan de confundir a la población realizando actos que no tienen una representatividad de la comunidad local, con efectos meramente teatrales, sin ninguna repercusión social ni económica e incluso, imitando falsamente los emblemas de la lucha social. Mientras hacen esto, ellos promueven la agenda politica de los funcionarios publicos que aprueban y imponen, desde arriba, sus planes de desplazamiento.

Sin embargo, nos dio gusto ver que, a este segundo encuentro, además de la mayoría de las organizaciones partidarias de nuestra misma causa y que estuvieron con nosotros hace dos años, se sumaron otras muchas también independientes.

En el siguiente segmento de nuestro programa, proyectamos el estreno en Nueva York del video que recibimos sobre la lucha en Nueva Orleáns contra el desplazamiento neoliberal. Como muy pocos saben, a finales del año pasado, el Concejo Municipal de Nueva Orleáns, formado en su gran mayoria por gente blanca, no sólo permitió un ataque, sino que se burló ante las cámaras, de los manifestantes, pobladores de raza negra, damnificados del huracán Katrina a quienes ahora les demolieron sus viviendas para construir zonas de lujo. Éstos fueron reprimidos, golpeados, rociados con gases lacrimógenos y arrestados.

Expresamos nuestra solidaridad para el pueblo de Nueva Orleáns en resistencia y reiteramos que nuestra lucha no sólo es local, sino nacional.

Y mundial...

Se extiende de Nueva York a Nueva Orleáns y desde aquí a Atenco, México. Con gran emoción leímos el mensaje de nuestros hermanos de Atenco y concluimos ese debate con la proyección de un video sobre la represión en Atenco. En él, mostramos también las diferentes protestas que ocurrieron en distintas partes del mundo durante la jornada de solidaridad con Atenco, incluyendo la toma del consulado de México en Nueva York efectuada el 4 de Mayo por los compañeros de Movimiento por Justicia del Barrio, quienes lograron entrar al consulado, desdoblar sus pancartas una vez dentro, marchar, gritar consignas, exigir la liberacion de los 12 presos politicos y repartir a la gente formada copias de los videos de la lucha de Atenco, lo que hizo que las autoridades cerraran el Consulado.

Se compartió el dolor, pero también la solidaridad y la alegría de reconocernos: de saber que no estamos solos. Para concluir, una vez más pedimos a los niños asistentes que rompieran la piñata del neoliberalismo. La rompieron con fuerza y, al hacerlo, encontraron dulces, como dulces son los frutos que esperamos encontrar al final de esta lucha por un mundo donde quepan muchos mundos, por la paz con justicia, vivienda digna, salud y educación para todos, y por la libertad a los presos políticos de Atenco, de México y del mundo.

Nuestro corazón está con ustedes.

¡Todos somos Atenco!

¡Libertad a los presos políticos!

¡Viva La Otra Campaña!

¡Y que viva el Ejército Zapatista de Liberación Nacional!

Fraternalmente:

Movimiento por Justicia del Barrio.

La Otra Campaña Nueva York

May 19th Victory Statement: "Transforming Ward 2, Jackson, and the South"

2009-05-29T00:48:00.000-04:00

A genuine peoples victory was won on Tuesday, May 19th, 2009, the 84th Birthday of Malcolm X (El Hajj Malik El-Shabazz). The people’s lawyer, attorney Chokwe Lumumba, was elected to the City Council in Jackson, Mississippi representing Ward 2.

The foundation of this victory was laid by the decades of dedicated community service and organizing that Attorney Lumumba, the New Afrikan People’s Organization (NAPO), and the Malcolm X Grassroots Movement (MXGM) have engaged in Jackson. The victory was secured through the broad mass mobilization and fundraising efforts of the campaigns organizers, supporters and allies in Jackson and throughout the United States.

By electing Lumumba the residents of Ward 2 declared that they want a new leadership committed to their social and economic interests, and that of the City, with a proven ability to organize, motivate, and educate for positive change. By organizing themselves into People’s Assemblies in support of the election campaign, the people of Ward 2 have begun to build and exercise the power necessary to address their needs and solve the problems of their ward. Through the vehicle of the People’s Assembly the residents of Ward 2 have determined that the People’s Platform is THEIR Platform.

A new, independent, and potentially transformative force is being built in Jackson through the combined power of the Council office and the People’s Assembly. This force will not be bound by the confines of the two-party system. The building of this force will advance the development of a genuine participatory democracy that will help our people fulfill all their human rights, including the economic, social and cultural rights so often denied in the United States.

We hope this victory and the development of this model will not only inspire but also help build a new force in Black and progressive politics in the United States, one that will put the needs of people and the environment before profits. The victory on May 19th was just the first step. Now the hard work of utilizing the limited political power this victory enables to transform Ward 2 and the entire city of Jackson and beyond begins. We hope everyone who reads and or hears about this victory will pass on this critical news and join us in the concrete work of building viable alternatives for the people of Ward 2, Jackson, the South and entire country by any means necessary!

Committee to Elect Chokwe Lumumba
New Afrikan People’s Organization (NAPO)
Malcolm X Grassroots Movement (MXGM)

RIP: TAJUDEEN ABDUL RAHEEM

2009-05-25T23:23:00.001-04:00

A GIANT IS LOST ON AFRICAN LIBERATION DAY

Firoze Manji

Pambazuka News
http://www.pambazuka.org/en/category/features/56535

25 May is Africa Liberation Day. What a day to learn the terrible news
that one of the leading proponents of Africa's liberation – Tajudeen
Abdul Raheem - should be so tragically lost in a senseless car
accident in Nairobi. Messages have been pouring in from across the
world as we all fail to hold back our tears at this loss.

Tajudeen led Justice Africa's work with the African Union since its
early days. He combined this with his role as General Secretary of the
Pan-African Movement, chairperson of the Centre for Democracy and
Development, the Pan-African Development Education and Advocacy
Programme, and was a fighter in the struggle to get the UN's
Millennium Development Campaign to support meaningful programmes.
There was hardly a pan African initiative that took place without
Tajudeen's inimitable presence, support, humour and perceptive
political perspectives. Quite how he managed to combine all of this
with writing his weekly 'Pan African Postcard' that were published
regularly in Pambazuka News and in several newspapers including The
Monitor (Uganda), Weekly Trust (Nigeria), The African (Tanzania),
Nairobi Star (Kenya) and the Weekly Herald (Zimbabwe), has always been
a mystery to us. You could always rely on Tajudeen to draw our
attention to the most significant aspects of the latest political
event in Africa - just as you could rely on him to provide guidance
and encouragement during hard times, restoring in us the courage for
the longer struggles ahead for emancipation of the continent.

Tajudeen's departure leaves a massive hole in all our lives. We all
need to grieve the loss of this giant of a man. But if his life is to
mean anything, we must follow his call in the signature line of his
every email – 'Don't agonise, Organise!'

As part of our tribute to Tajudeen, comrade, brother and fighter of
Pan-Africanism, Pambazuka News invites you to send messages of
condolence and tributes, please send these to edi...@pambazuka.org or
comment online at http://www.pambazuka.org/en/category/features/56535

******

Malcolm X and the Revisionists

2009-05-21T23:59:00.000-04:00

The Umpteenth Assassination of Malcolm X

Just a few words on Omowale Malcolm X and the two media hacks who recently broached the subject. Stanley Crouch and Tariq Nelson are totally wrong about Malcolm, who spent his life fighting racism. The two repudiate Malcolm’s life (Crouch crab) with typical white supremacist boilerplate. In fact, they kowtow to the Klan idol erected for them by the likes of arch neocon Pat Buchanan (see Parasite) and others.

Malcolm X grew up in a household where his Garveyite father was lynched by the KKK, and his mother starved out by racist society. A Jim Crow social services agency broke up his family. Malcolm’s brilliance in the public school system was thwarted by the segregationist educators themselves. When Malcolm grasped the vision that his father had left for him, his energy and commitment awakened a brand new era of struggle for the black community. Were it not for his contribution, black middle class mobility would be thirty years behind; yet had Malcolm’s efforts succeeded, the masses of African people would also be moving forward on their own. Adversity builds character and principle, something notoriously absent from all Crouch’s writing.

The scenario painted by Crouch and Nelson, and I say “they” because Tariq Nelson seconds Crouch’s neo-colonialist dogma, echo FBI and John Birch views of circumstances surrounding Malcolm’s death. Plus, the counterinsurgency that killed Panthers like John Huggins and Bunchy Carter had nothing to do with fratricide anymore than Crouch and Nelson have any fraternal relations with black liberation. Their character assassinations of black revolutionaries lacks even the most remote fraternal sentiments. And that is the framework that we must use for those who gunned down Malcolm X, and other black liberation proponents.

Stanley Crouch’s alienation from black power and even the civil rights movement puts him out of touch with history, with the black community and with reality. The counterinsurgency that slaughtered Patrice Lumumba, Amilcar Cabral, Eduardo Mondlane, Walter Rodney, Maurice Bishop, and numerous others was part of a broad international effort to stop African progress. This included the FBI, CIA, NATO, MI6, the SADF, the Special Branch, the Flechas, Renamo, Mobutu Sese Seko, Jonas Savimbi’s UNITA, Buthalezi’s Inkatha, US organization, USAID. Then Crouch and Nelson will want to lament the violence and crime and unemployment in the black community and the crisis in the Congo, by blaming guess who? Black people!

Africa’s revolutionary patriots were at times killed by forces claiming membership in the liberation movement. Crouch’s a-historical idiot logic may characterize that as fratricide, too. But Crouch does a grave disservice to the entire history of black liberation from the first Africans who fought colonialism or made any form of resistance to those of us who carry on the struggle today. His words deface the valiant freedom work by Mother Harriet Tubman, who personally rescued over 300 people from chattel slavery. They dismiss the entire history of black freedom fighting for a job sitting at a desk selling newspapers, or for a party hack in the White House just for skin colorism. While Crouch and Nelson apply Occam’s razon on behalf of Imperialism, their poot butt silouettes will eventually be obscured by the giant legacy cast by black freedom.

===============================

On Obama, Powell, Rice and ‘House Negroes’

A. Peter Bailey wrote a great article, if only because we don’t have enuf discussion around Omowale Malcolm X these days. As many people kno, the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense was rightly considered “the angry children of Malcolm X”. If any group carried on that giant man’s legacy of anti-racist polemics and principled ideological struggle, it was the Panthers.

I say that to remind Bailey that where he apparently agrees with statements issued by CIA agent Al Zawahiri (in order to spark this discussion), this is problematic! Al Qaida is a CIA terrorist organization. Al Qaida uses all the tactics of violence from the colonial era, tactics used by the Portuguese flechas in Mozambique, Guinea-Bissau and Angola. Al Qaida uses the same type violence deployed by Tipu Tib, and by King Leopold’s forces in the Congo and Central Africa. These same bloodthirsty tactics used by apartheid Rhodesia and South Africa had been defeated during Africa’s epic anti-colonial struggles. Only a neo-colonial force would use the methods of suicidal violence, sectarian anarchism and brainwashing adopted by Al Qaida, taught to them by the White House’s CIA corps from the time of Jimmy Carter. Thus, I don’t think Malcolm X would have been flattered that the Al Qaida pigs have used his turn of words to describe anybody, except themselves.

Moving on, about the house negro controversy Bailey states:

If Brother Malcolm was still with us today, I believe he would use it to describe those “Negroes” who are constantly called upon by white television and radio talk show hosts, journalists and academicians who are looking for a “house Negro” to attack black folks whom they consider insufficiently grateful for “all the good whites have done for them.”

We have to remember, Malcolm X himself popularized the term “Black” and gave it a political context. It is as different from “Negro” as a revolution is from reform. Which means that lots of people genuinely might never kno the difference. The last four paragraphs of Bailey’s article places in perspective the very ideological meaning of the word as christened — to use that term for lack of a better one — by Malcolm. Yet we are jumping ahead of ourselves.

Bailey goes on to mention his disapproval inasmuch that:

…such “house Negroes” are Ward Connerly, Jesse Lee Peterson, Clarence Thomas and their cohorts in the political, journalistic and academic arenas.

Bailey is dead on the point tho he hesitates to make a complete sweep, as Malcolm most likely would have done. In not finishing the job with style, A. Peter Bailey leaves the barn door open and a few jackasses have escaped.

Here are the ones too stupid to bolt: Connerly, for those who do not kno, is president of the California Board of Regents, appointed responsibility for striking down quotas for black students and other minorities. Rev. Jesse Lee Paterson makes his living lambasting critics of the white power system on behalf of the neoconservative right. Of course, Clarence Thomas is the underqualified Supreme Court lackey who lacks any understanding of democracy and votes with his bosses 100% of the time.

Now why does Bailey believe Malcolm X may have approved of Barack Obama, Condoleeza Rice and Colin Powell? For a hint, we quote his own words…

One doesn’t often see white power propagandists such as Sean Hannity, for instance, calling on them when they want to launch an attack on a black person whom they want to put in his or her place.

C’mon, brother Bailey, that’s a weak argument with even weaker logic! Hannity isn’t any great expert. If he were, the petty job of interviewing traitors, sell outs and other stooges would be beneath him. You must remember, the neocons need to cultivate the most abysmal failures amongst the oppressed nation because the neocons themselves feel threatened by widely recognized and thoro black intellectuals who can challenge their idiot logic and duplicity. People like Na’im Akbar, Abdul Alkalimat, Angela Davis. If Hannity cannot hold his ground with them, he cannot possibly have an intelligent conversation with a secretary of state even if they have the same basic ideological views.

While Obama, Rice and Powell may not have made their careers off the defeat of the black liberation movement (PSYCHE!) they made their careers from getting white people to not think of them as black?! Notice the difference when you split those hairs? And Bailey neglects the crucial, bootlicking appearance Powell put in for US imperialism at the 2001 World Conference Against Racism. There, Powell deliberately tried to derail the entire conference by insisting that zionism is not racism. Then the pig walked out. Somebody left that barn door open again, my brother.

How can Bailey legitimize Sean Hannity’s choice of flunkies, who just cannot even remotely relate to Powell and Rice on a mental level. Hannity cannot discuss international affairs or any serious area of the State Department for his viewers because Hannity is a media hack. A spin doctor. A yellow journalist and nobody worth citing except to use his own words against him.

Should Hannity interview Connerly or Thomas, themselves nothing more than paid shills for the most racist segment of mainstream American politics — so inept at holding real jobs that they have minimal qualification for the positions they do hold — what does that say about Hannity and US democratic standards. It suggests the old boy network means more to capitalism than quality personnel, which is why capitalism is a failure. What does this say about the racist class system and the notion of enforcing quotas on the bourgeoisie for us as Africans rather than building the liberation movement.

Furthermore, we must say that Malcolm’s analogy of the house and field negroes was nothing except a homily on class. Much to his credit, Bailey hasn’t taken Malcolm’s example to introduce us to the absurd concept of the house negro as hero, muddling the idea that Malcolm X sought to convey. That is not what Malcolm X meant. He did not mean it to talk about differences in skin color amongst black people in America, either. The black (see “Negro”) middle class has taken on the job of obscuring what our Shining Prince intended by dulling the discussion of class by grinding off the edges. Malcolm meant this comparison as an introduction to class stratification in our community; the relationship of one class to both the oppressors and the oppressed creates opportunities for that class based upon their strategic role in society.

Because of the black liberation struggle, the middle class (house negroes) were given accelerated mobility within the capitalist system in exchange for turning their backs on democratic standards. In other words, when the government crackdown on black liberation forces occurred, the black middle class looked the other way. Today, this historic role has made the colonized middle class of all nationalities fit to assist the anti-democratic standards of the United States. It explains why former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales so willingly pressed to erode constitutional guarantees. It shows how city governments in predominantly black cities like Atlanta can make such ridiculous laws like those prohibiting sags. Facilitating repression has been the trade off for colonized advancement and mobility.

Indeed, Bailey cites some great words by Malcolm X at the end of his article. The four paragraphs talking about black nationalism is what revolutionaries today consider self-determination, something which on paper that Obama, Rice and Powell will never touch with a ten-foot pole even if a blue-eyed Jesus Christ himself guided their shoe shining paws. Which is perplexing, because Bailey makes a train wreck of his own argument by not following the logic or applying a dialectical method to his own premise. One thing Bailey did accomplish, was inserting Malcolm back into the discussion as it concerns blacks in America, and for that he deserves his props. Here is the piece he quotes on self-determination:

“The organization of Afro-American Unity will organize the Afro-American community block by block to make the community aware of its power and potential; we will start immediately a voter-registration drive to make every unregistered voter in the Afro-American community an independent voter; we propose to support and/or organize political clubs, to run independent candidates for office, and to support any Afro-American already in office who answers to and is responsible to the Afro-American community….

“And in this manner, the organizations will increase in number and in quantity and in quality, and by August, it is then our intention to have a black nationalist convention which will consist of delegates from all over the country who are interested in the political, economic and social philosophy of black nationalism. After these delegates convene, we will listen to everyone. We want to hear new ideas and new solutions and new answers….

“We must establish all over the country schools of our own to train our children to become scientists and mathematicians. We must realize the need for adult education and for job retraining programs that will emphasize a changing society in which automation plays the key role. We intend to use the tools of education to help raise our people to an unprecedented level of excellence and self-respect through their own efforts.

“The political philosophy of black nationalism means the black man should control the politics and the politicians in his own community; no more. The black man in the black community has to be re-educated into the science of politics so he will know what politics is supposed to bring in him in return. Don’t be throwing out any ballots. A ballot is like a bullet. You don’t throw your ballots until you see a target, and if that target is not within your reach, keep your ballot in your pocket….’’

So while Malcolm X introduced the concept of house and field negroes to begin the discussion of class, I don’t think he honestly would have confined it to that level. Malcolm X introduced class that way in order to develop our understanding of class forces at work in society. Malcolm X was a revolutionary. He waged a polemical battle against racism and Imperialism, and for that he was killed. Long live Malcolm. Power to the People!

African Liberation Day 2009 in Pittsburgh

2009-05-19T16:57:00.003-04:00

Little Haiti Opposes ALD Revisionists

African Liberation Day has historically played a major role in keeping the revolutionary tradition alive in the US black community. This day has been used to introduce our community to liberation movements around the world. Held to counter xenophobia and racism, as well as to expose reactionaries, ALD has always served as an important event for building Black unity.

Little Haiti is a name given to Pittsburgh's Black community going as far back as Martin R. Delany. He was a physician, a Civil War major, and an African patriot who fought slavery. Delany settled in Pittsburgh and was its leading black citizen. The name Little Haiti derived from the fighting spirit of its community. Haiti was the first revolutionary workers republic in history. The Haitian uprising was also history's only successful slave revolt. So the name Little Haiti is one rich in heritage, and connotes the tradition of struggle associated with the Black community in this city.

This year we have decided, the Black Radical Congress in conjunction with Maroon Society, to reestablish African Liberation Day along its traditional lines of orientation. We want to do something in honor of who we are as African people, without having the government or white money or Imperialist ideology involved in our efforts. This small forum cannot match larger efforts being held around the country. However, it is a rebuilding effort which intends to take back some of the luster, energy and inspiration which has historically marked African Liberation Day as a day of pride and militancy.

...[more...]

ELEVATE BLACK LIBERATION IN ZIMBABWE AND IN AMERICA

.......[N]eo-colonialism within Zimbabwe's liberation movement tails behind the plague of neo-colonialism which remains rife thru out the United States. Neo-colonialism within our own liberation movement has taken the form of poverty pimps and other sell-outs on the government dole since 1968 up to this day. Many disparate forces contend to hi-jack and water down the legacies of Malcolm X, SNCC, the Black Panther Party, NBIPP, CAP and others. Our people have begun to think that nothing can be accomplished without the government or that the government is omnipotent. Legitimizing Imperialism on any level -- including the pretense that it functions somewhere quietly in the background -- poses a dangerous precedent in terms of our future as African people.

Neo-colonialism just does not take the form of an apparatus. It also shapes up into co-optation within a movement; it may appear as a political line within an organization. While the prefix “neo” means “new”, it also means “somewhat” or “likened to”, and that is good enuf for our purposes.

When Kwame Nkrumah wrote Neocolonialism, the Final Stage of Imperialism, he elaborated on how Imperialism needed the oppressed to maintain their own oppression. We see this see thru out Africa, the Caribbean and North America. Nkrumah showed how Imperialism arrived at its most degenerate moment in history, and how its collaborators exploit their people for the sake of wealth and power rather than throwing off the shackles of capitalism. He said that neo-colonialism poses the greatest danger to African people, since it waters down the concentrated class question (racism) by replacing the historical oppressor with one from your own community.

For that reason, we have decided to show the African liberation movement on film, in the form of a video that interviews black fighters who took up arms and drove out or overthrew colonialism. While many events in this film wrapped up almost thirty years ago, nevertheless it provides valuable lessons for us in terms of organization, resolve and taking back our community. Our struggle against shape-shifting racism has taken hesitant steps forward over the last thirty years or more, because people no longer recognize the enemy. However, by deepening our understanding of Imperialism and class struggle, we can elevate black consciousness and restore faith in our own community, belief in our own forms of struggle. Because, the Struggle continues!

===============================

What does the acronym ZANU-PF mean, and who leads the MDC?
When did neo-colonialism become entrenched in the black community and why?
What is the name of Kwame Nkrumah's book and what does it address?
Why is ZANU-PF so popular thru out Southern Africa, and who are some of its supporters?
What is Neo-Colonialism and what is Imperialism?
Where does Horace Campbell instruct, and what is ZIDERA?
Who is Martin R Delany, and what is the legacy of Little Haiti?
How did the US invasion affect Iraqi Arab women?
What has been taking place in the global economy over the last three years?
Who is Jonas Savimbi and who supported him? Who is Luis Posada Carilles?

Scientists "Startled": AFRICAN CULTURE IS THE FUTURE!!

2009-05-05T18:13:00.015-04:00

If you are a human being, you should kno that Africans come from 200,000 generations of ancestors. Our history does not begin with slavery or colonialism. You should kno this.

If you are a human being, you should kno that we Africans did not gain our identity or culture when the Imperialists declared our existence and named us negroes, slaves, pygmies, bushmen or anything else. If you kno an African who continues to carry a “government” name, a colonial or slave name, that name is an insult to African ancestry, an insult to all those 200,000 generations of Africans who rose above the plains and forests of our Motherland and built something greater than your enfeebled imagination can feature.

If you are a human being anywhere on this planet, you should kno that African villages and structures built upon scientific principles that have become the subject of doctoral theses and scholarship, and you can only appreciate an Ipod or cable television, which continues to infuse your soul with the anti-collective principles of bloodsucking capitalism.

If you are a human being with a human soul, you should kno that those who think they have “good hair” and those who believe their thick lips and dark skin reflect some burnt ham curse, all races came out of us. They all descend from Africans but everybody is not an African. WE SPRANG FROM THE SOIL OF AFRICA, other races merely come from the Africans.

If you are a human being, you should kno that Africans are more diverse within ourselves than Europeans and Asians who differentiated out of us. Our genetic diversity gave birth to them; our genetic diversity is several times greater than any other group. This study shows that the greatest genetic diversity on the planet is concentrated in Africa. There is no African race, we are a group of groups that is more diverse than all other groups combined.

Which means, if you are a human being, African peoples are the mothers and fathers of humanity, and therefore AFRICAN CULTURE IS THE FUTURE!

Neo-Colonialism, the Police State, and Revolution

2009-04-30T17:47:00.002-04:00

What It Means to Be FREE!

In this period of Obama-ite neo-colonialism, our colonial experience as Africans reminds us that we have previously travelled this road. To qualify this as a colonial experience clarifies the fact that African history does not begin with slavery or any relationship with Europeans. Therefore, any statements or feelings that the presidency of Barack Obama is in any way history-making or even "the end of racism" grossly misrepresents reality. It smears our role as a people in the vast interwoven social fabric that produces history thru collective development and activity.

So some racist ideologues continue to say that "your own people sold you into slavery", and if it weren't for slavery we could not enjoy freedom, etc. These views, all too often backed up by negro preachers and politicians at some level or another, derive directly from colonialist self-justification rather than any message that will liberate our people from the bondage of colonialism and Imperialism.

True, the seeds of ne(gr)o-colonialism took root when the first slatees received handfuls of beads in exchange for capturing their fellow Africans and selling them to white slavers. Hence, the guilt of neo-colonialism – beyond being an emotional game but embedded in a criminal activity – requires that the crooks engaged in this enterprise maintain their grip on the minds of a people sold out and eviscerated. In hand with slavery, neo-colonialism justifies Imperialism and obstructs our community from elevating critical issues like reparations, prisons, the war-of-drugs, health-care, and so forth.

Now it must be said that Obama is a neo-colonialist who speaks very differently from any prior US president. Obama seems to support the unions; he points out how Cuba's relates to Latin America by sending physicians, while the US has historically sent weapons. If Obama wants to place a human face upon Imperialism, that will fail in the long run. He cannot dismiss any of the deep-seated hostility of a racist system, which presses down upon our community.

Thru out our colonial experience, those wielding power whose faces remain indistinguishable from ours have typically remained unable or unwilling to diminish the State monopoly on violence. Obama has yet to discuss critical issues relating to the State's conduct in its operations, policies, and undue weight of forces on the black community. The apparent diluting effect of Obama-ite neo-colonialism, on the concentrated class question better known as racism, so far has failed to dilute anti-black police State repression.

For this reason, Africans must recognize the realities of Imperialism. The State continues to display naked aggression against the black community. Arizona's Maricopa County sheriff, Joe Arpaio recently expressed his admiration of the Ku Klux Klan in a broadcast interview. This same official imposes the worst work camp conditions on detainees, and recently fired NBA law enforcement slatee Shaquille O'Neal.

Former US congressman turned Oakland mayor, Ron Dellums attempted to intervene in a demonstration protesting the recent police murder of Oscar Grant. Officers involved in the execution of Grant, a New Year's Day reveler, in full view of scores of people on a BART platform, had remained at large. The State dragged its feet, despite more than ample footage captured by camera phone users, plus eyewitness accounts. For some reason, Dellums believed that protests were uncalled for and people should never take to the street.

Well, the demo turned int a rebellion when the mayor disappeared tand the pigs moved in to arrest San Francisco Bay View activist/reporter JR Valrey. Following that day's uprising, the State finally arrested the triggerman, tho his two accomplices – who accessorized the crime by confiscating camera phones – have not been charged. Meanwhile, Valrey continues to fight charges for participating in a demonstration.

Mumia Abu-Jamal, another journalist, has spent 26 years on Pennsylvania's death row for a wrongful murder conviction. He steadfastly continues to write about the plight of poor and disorganized working people. The State refuses to not only recognize his innocence, it refuses to review exculpatory testimaony from witnesses, and ignores established legal precednets where Mumia's rights have been violated.

Indeed, across Pennsylvania mor political prisoners waste away in prison than in any other state. Maroon Shoatz has been on 23-hour lockdown since 1991. The MOVE Eight cannot receive a fair and lenient parole hearing for a crime that they did not commit. These are the conditions which real freedom fighters face, and our community must not wait for anybody else to speak for these oppressed sisters and brothers.

Four percent of the world population, the US accounts for 25% of all prisoners worldwide. Of that number, fully two-thjirds are colonized workers, being Latino and African. Tegether, these two groups maku up one-fourth of the US population. FBI crime states have consistently stated that crimes are committed fairly evenly across populations, meaning that white commit the same crimes at the same rate as anybody else, which means that white prisoners should out-number blacks or Latinos by eight-to-one. But they do not because law enforcement and the prison system are based upon colonialism and racism.

While any number of somebodies still need to justify the State by pleading for balance, when the conditions demand mass uprisings, that blind lady with the sword and scales comes from mythology. Our mistress for justice is Mama Assata Shakur, living in exile in revolutionary Cuba with a $1 million bounty on her head by this same injustice system.

Cuba, the embargoed country which sends doctors to Latin America while America sends guns. Cuba, a land where people took up arms and joined the fight against apartheid South Africa ten thousand miles away, while America continues to do everything to keep Africans oppressed. Negroes want to become doctors and politicians not to help their own people but to help capitalism. Yet African people need revolutionary physicians, revolutionary politicians and journalists, and revolutionary thinkers and doers who will help liberate our people. We must not believe in neo-colonialism no matter how well it works; we must pick up on revolution.

Niyabingi Nation on the Rise

2009-04-26T01:09:00.003-04:00

In the language of the African liberation struggle, Niyabingi comes from several traditions. It is the synthesis of the different elements of African culture that give us strength. The rupture of this has led to our downfall. Niyabingi means "death to all downpressors". The word honors an African queen who led an uprising against colonial rule. It became popular in modern Jamaican Maroon culture, among the Rastafarians.

We, today's Revolutionary Maroons, aim to build a Maroon Society, a Kilombo Republic. We seek to free humanity from the bondage of a plastic and paper world. We want to end systematic oppression made on the backs of workers who produce the real wealth and have it taken off of them in the form of paper money.

It sounds fantastic, beyond the imaginable, that anybody should challenge the very foundation upon which Imperialism rests. PAPER MONEY. What will people negotiate with, how will transactions be made? Yet, stop and think how much power and wealth is concentrated thru a system managed on paper. The mortgage to your home has been reduced to a ledger; your automobile must be registered and the NOTE paid. Now, multiply this system by 130 million times. Add in all the factories, businesses, mines, ships and tankers, and entire continents swindled from native peoples around the whole globe.

All this wealth has been reduced to paper in one form or another. Material wealth has been swiped out of your own hard-working hands and you receive paper money in return. This paper, the US dollar bill, has its devaluation built in so that every fifty years it is only worth A SIMPLE NICKLE. Meanwhile, the value of precious metals like platinum and gold appear to rise. Real estate rises. The cost of living rises. YOU ARE BEING SWINDLED!! But you fail to rise. How much down-pressure must you endure until you will stand?

The Niyabingi Drums are beating. They are drumming up hearts and souls to take on this bloodsucking system. The drums are stirring the pulse of all those who want freedom from exploitation and oppression. Those who want unity to build a new society hear the Niyabingi Drums. We are marching to a new drumbeat, led by the new drum majors of Liberation.

El Comandante on the Blocqueada

2009-04-24T16:21:00.001-04:00

Yesterday I referred to what was funny about the "Declaration of Commitment of Port of Spain".

Today I could refer to what is tragic about it. I hope our friends do not take any offence in this. There were some differences between the draft that we received, which was going to be submitted by the hosts of the Summit, and the document that was finally published. In all that last-minute haste, there was hardly any time for anything. Some items had been discussed at long meetings held some weeks previous to the Summit. At the very last moment, proposals such as the one submitted by Bolivia, complicated even more the whole picture. The Bolivian proposal was included as a note in the document. It stated that Bolivia considered that the implementation of policies and cooperation schemes aimed at expanding the use of bio-fuels in the western hemisphere could affect and have an impact on the availability of foodstuffs, the increase of food prices, deforestation, the displacement of populations as a result of the land demand, and that consequently this could make the food crisis to be even worse, which will directly affect low income persons and, most of all, the poorest economies among developing countries. The note added that the Bolivian government, while recognizing the need to look for and resort to environmentally friendly alternative sources of energy, such as the geothermal, solar, and eolic sources of energy, and to small and medium size hydro-power generators, it advocates for an alternative approach, based on the possibility of living well and in harmony with nature, in order to develop public policies aimed at the promotion of safe alternative energies that could ensure the preservation of the planet, our 'mother land'.

When analyzing this note submitted by Bolivia please bear in mind that the United States and Brazil are the two biggest producers of bio-fuels in the world, something that is opposed by an increasing number of persons in the planet, whose resistance has been growing since the dark days of George Bush.

Obama's advisors published in the Internet their version -in English- of the interview the US president granted to some journalists in Port of Spain. At one point, he asserted that there was something he found interesting –an added that he had known of it in a more abstract way but that he found it interesting in more specific terms- which was listening to these leaders who, when speaking about Cuba, did so referring specifically to the thousands of doctors Cuba is disseminating throughout the region, and finding how much these countries depended on them. He said this reminded them in the US of the fact that if their only interaction with many of these countries was the war on drugs; that if their only interaction was of a military character, then it was possible that they would not be developing connections that, with time, could enhance their influence with a positive effect when they may find it necessary to advance policies of their interest in the region.

He said he thought that was the reason why it was so important -for the sake of their interaction, not only here in this hemisphere, but in the whole world- to recognize that their military power was just part of their power, and that they have to resort to diplomacy and their aid to development in a more intelligent way, so that peoples could see concrete and practical improvements in the life of ordinary citizens, based on the foreign policy of the United States.

Jake, one of the journalists, said thanks to the President and added that in Port of Spain the President had listened to many Latin American leaders who want the US to lift the embargo against Cuba. The journalist reminded the President he had said that was an important influence that should not be eliminated. But he added that in 2004 the President did support the lifting of the embargo. He reminded the President he had said that the embargo had not managed to raise the standards of living, that it had squeezed the innocent, and that it was high time for the US to recognize that that particular policy had failed. The journalist wondered what made the President change his opinion with regards to the embargo.

The President responded that the year 2004 seemed to be thousands of years ago, and wondered what he himself was doing in 2004.

The journalist answered that back then he was running for the Senate. The President added that the fact that Raul Castro had said his government was ready to talk with the US government not only about the lifting of the embargo but also about other issues, namely, human rights and political prisoners, was a signal of progress. He said there were some things the Cuban government could do. He added that Cuba could release the political prisoners, reduce the surcharge imposed on remittances, which will correspond with the policies that they have applied, whereby Cuban-American families are allowed to send remittances. He said that it so happened that Cuba applies a very high surcharge. He said that Cuba is exacting significant profits. He added that this would be an example of cooperation where both governments would be working to help the Cuban family and improve the living standards in Cuba.

There is no doubt that the President misinterpreted Raul's statements.

When the President of Cuba said he was ready to discuss any topic with the US President, he meant he was not afraid of addressing any issue. That shows his courage and confidence on the principles of the Revolution. No one should feel astonished that Raul spoke about pardoning those who were convicted on March, 2003, and about sending them all to the United States, should that country be willing to release the Five Cuban Anti-Terrorism Heroes. The convicts, as was already the case with the Bay of Pig's mercenaries, are at the service of a foreign power that threatens and blockades our homeland.

Besides, the assertion that Cuba imposes a very high surcharge and obtains significant profits is an attempt by the President's advisors to cause trouble and division among Cubans. Every country charges a certain amount for all hard currency transfers. If those are made in dollars, all the more reason we have to do it, because that is the currency of the country that blockades us. Not all Cubans have relatives abroad that could send them remittances. Redistributing a relatively small part of them to benefit those more in need of food, medicines and other goods is absolutely fair. Our homeland does not have the privilege of converting the money minted by the State into hard currency -something the Chinese very often call "junk money"- as I have explained on several occasions, which has been one of the causes of the present economic crisis. With what money the US is bailing out its banks and multinationals, while plunging future generations of Americans into indebtedness? Would Obama be ready to discuss those issues?

Daniel Ortega stated it very clearly when he remembered the first conversation he had with Carter, which today I will once more repeat:

"I had the opportunity to meet with President Carter, and when he told me that now, after the Somozas' tyranny had been ousted, and the Nicaraguan people had defeated the Somozas' tyranny, it was high time 'for Nicaragua to change', I said: 'No, Nicaragua does not need to change; you are the ones that need to change. Nicaragua has never invaded the United States. Nicaragua has never mined the US ports. Nicaragua has never launched a single stone against the American nation. Nicaragua has not imposed any government on the United States. You are the ones that need to change, not the Nicaraguans.' "

At the press conference, as well as in the final meetings of the Summit, Obama looked conceited. Such attitude by the US President was consistent with the abject positions adopted by some Latin American leaders. Some days ago I said that whatever was said and done at the Summit will be known anyway.

When the US President said, in answering to Jake, that thousands of years had elapsed since 2004 until the present, he was superficial. Should we wait for so many years before his blockade is lifted? He did not invent it, but he embraced it just as much as the previous ten US presidents did. Should he continue down that same path, we could predict he would face a sure fiasco, just as all his predecessor did. That is not the dream entertained by Martin Luther King, whose role in the struggle for human rights will ever more illuminate the American people's path.

We are living in a new era. Changes are unavoidable. Leaders just pass through; peoples prevail. There would be no need to wait for thousands of years to pass by; only eight years will be enough so that a new US President –who will no doubt be less intelligent, promising and admired in the world than Barack Obama- riding on a better armored car, or on a more modern helicopter, or on a more sophisticated plane, occupies that inglorious position.

Tomorrow we shall have more news about the Summit.

Fidel Castro Ruz

April 21, 2009

5:34 p.m.

Birthday Greetings to MAJ from Subcomandante Marcos

2009-04-24T15:36:00.002-04:00

via: Greg Ruggiero

==============

Hi All--

I thought you would like this birthday letter written to Mumia ten years ago by Subcomandante Insurgente Marcos spokesperson for the clandestine Mexican insurgent group, the Zapatistas. The original letter was written in Spanish. Both the English and Spanish versions were first published here in the books "Our Word is Our Weapon, Selected Writings of Subcomandante Insurgente Marcos" and "Nuestra Arma es Nuestra Palabra."

La lucha sigue!

va un abrazo desde Brooklyn,

Greg

Greg Ruggiero | Editor | City Lights Books | www.citylights.com

===========

Letter To Mumia Abu-Jamal

April 24, 1999

For: Mumia Abu-Jamal, American Union

From: Subcomandante Insurgente Marcos, Mexico

Mr. Mumia:

I am writing to you in the name of the men, women, children and elderly of the Zapatista National Liberation Army in order to congratulate you on April 24, your birthday.

Perhaps you have heard of us. We are Mexican, mostly indigenous, and we took up arms on January 1, 1994 demanding a voice, a face and a name for the forgotten of the earth.

Since then, the Mexican government has made war on us, pursues and harasses us seeking our death, our disappearance and our absolute silence. The reason? These lands are rich with oil, uranium and precious lumber. The government wants them for the great transnational companies. We want them for all Mexicans. The government sees our lands as a business. We see our history written in these lands. In order to defend our right (and that of all Mexicans) to live with liberty, democracy, justice and dignity we became an army and took on a name, a voice and face.

Perhaps you wonder how we know of you, about your birthday, and why it is that we extend this long bridge which goes from the mountains of the Mexican Southeast to the prison of Pennsylvania where you are incarcerated unjustly. Many good people from many parts of the world have spoken of you, through them we have learned how you were ambushed by the North American police in December of 1981, of the lies which they constructed in the procedures against you, and of your death sentence in 1982. We learned about your birthday through the international mobilizations which, under the name of “Millions for Mumia,” are being prepared this April 24.

It is harder to explain this bridge which this letter extends, it is more complicated. I could tell you that, for the powerful of Mexico and the government, to be indigenous, or to look indigenous, is reason for disdain, abhorrence, distrust and hatred. The racism which now floods the palaces of power in Mexico goes to the extreme of carrying out a war of extermination and genocide against millions of indigenous. I am sure that you will find similarities with what power in the United States does with the so-called “people of color” (African-American, Chicanos, Puerto Ricans, Asians, North American Indians and any other peoples who do not have the insipid color of money).

We are also “people of color” (the same color as our brothers who have Mexican blood and live and struggle in the American Union). Our color is “brown,” the color of the earth, the color from which we take our history, our strength, our wisdom and our hope. But in order to struggle we add the color black to our brown. We use black ski-masks to show our faces, only then can we be seen and heard. Following the advice of an indigenous Mayan elder, who explained to us the meaning of the color black, we chose this color.

Old Don Antonio, this wise elder, died in these rebel Zapatista lands in March of 1994, a victim of tuberculosis which gnawed away at his lungs and his breath. Old Don Antonio used to tell us that from black came light and from there came the stars which light up the sky around the world. He recounted a story of a long time ago (in the times when time was not measured), when the first gods were given the task of giving birth to the world. In one of their meetings they understood that the world needed to have life and movement, and to have life and movement, light was necessary. Then they thought of making the sun in order that the days move and so that there would be day and night and time for struggling and time for making love, and the world would go walking with the days and nights. The gods had their meeting and made this agreement in front of a large fire, and they knew it was necessary that one of them be sacrificed by throwing himself into the fire and himself become fire and fly into the sky. The gods thought that the sun's work was the most important, so they chose the most beautiful god so that he would fly into the fire and become the sun. But he was afraid. Then the smallest god, the one who was black, said he was not afraid and he threw himself into the fire and became the sun. Then the world had light and movement, and there was time for struggle and time for love, and while it was day the bodies worked to make the world and while it was night the bodies made love and sparkles filled the darkness.

This is what Old Don Antonio told us and that is why we use black ski masks. So we are of the color brown and of the color black. But we are also the color yellow, because the first people who walked these lands were made of corn so they would be true. And we are also red because this is the call of blood which has dignity, and we are also blue because we are the sky in which we fly, and green for the mountain which is our house and our strength. And we are white because we are paper so that tomorrow can write its story.

So we are 7 colors because there were 7 first gods who birthed the world.

This is what Old Don Antonio said long ago and now I tell you this story so that you may understand the reason for this bridge of paper and ink which I send to you all the way from the mountains of the Mexican Southeast.

And also so that you may understand that with this bridge go greetings and embraces for Leonard Peltier (who is in the prison at Leavenworth, Kansas), and for the more than 100 political prisoners in the USA who are the victims of injustice, stupidity and authoritarianism.

And with this letter-bridge walks as well a greeting for the Dine (the Navajo), who fight in Big Mountain, Arizona against the violations of their traditional Dine religious practices.” They struggle against those who favor large businesses instead of respect for the religious freedom of Indian peoples, against those who want to destroy sacred grounds and ceremonial sites (as is the case of Peabody Western Coal Company which, without reason, wants to take the lands and the land rights, and the history which belong to the Dine and their future generations.)

But this letter-bridge has more than just stories of resistance against North American injustice. In the extreme south of our continent, in Chile, the indigenous Mapuche women in the Pewenche Center of Alto Bio-Bio confront stupidity. Bertha and Nicolasa Quintreman are accused of “mistreating” members of the armed forces of the Chilean government. There you have it. An armed military unit with rifles, sticks, and tear-gas, protected by bulletproof vests, helmets and shields, accuse two indigenous women of “mistreatment.” But Bertha is 74 years old and Nicolasa is 60. How is it possible that two elderly people confronted a “heroic” group of heavily-armed military? Because they are Mapuche. The story is the same as that of the Dine brothers and sisters of Arizona—it repeats itself throughout the Americas. A company—ENDESA—wants the Mapuches' land, and in spite of the law which protects the indigenous, the government is on the side of the companies. The Mapuche students have pointed out that the government and the company with the military intelligence made a “study” of the Mapuche communities and concluded that the Mapuche could not think, defend themselves, resist, or build a better future for themselves. Apparently, the study was wrong.

Now it occurs to me that, perhaps the powerful in North America carried out a similar “military intelligence” study (frankly, this is a contradiction, because those of us who are military are not intelligent, if we were we would not be military) about the case of the Dine in Arizona, about Leonard Peltier, about other political prisoners, about yourself, Mr. Mumia.

Perhaps they made this study and came to the conclusion that they might be able to violate justice and reason, to assault history and lose the truth, and that no one would say anything. The Dine Indians would stand by and watch the destruction of the most sacred of their history, Leonard Peltier would be alone, and you, Mister Mumia, would be silenced. ( I remember your own words: “They not only want my death, they want my silence.”)

But the studies were wrong. Happy mistake? The Dine resist against those who would kill their memory, Leonard Peltier is accompanied by all those who demand his liberty, and you sir, today you speak and shout with all the voices which celebrate your birthday as all birthdays should be celebrated, by struggling.

Mr. Mumia:

We have nothing big to give you as a gift for your birthday. It is poor and little, but all of us send you an abrazo—an embrace.

We hope that when you gain your freedom you will come to visit us. Then we will give you a birthday party, even if it isn’t April 24, it will be an unbirthday party. There will be music, dance and talk, which are the means by which men and women of all colors understand and know one another, and build bridges over which they walk together, towards history, towards tomorrow.

Happy Birthday!

Vale. We greet you and may justice and truth find their place.

From the mountains of the Mexican Southeast,

Subcomandante Insurgente Marcos

Mexico, April of 1999

P.S. I read somewhere that you are a father and a grandfather. So I am sending you a gift for your children and grandchildren. It is a little wooden car with Zapatistas dressed in black ski-masks.

Tell your children and grandchildren that it is a gift the Zapatistas have sent you. You can explain to them that there are people of all colors everywhere, just like you, who want justice, liberty and democracy for people of all colors.

Letter To the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania, USA

April of 1999

For: Mr. Tom Ridge

Governor of Pennsylvania

United States, North America

From : Subcomandante Insurgente Marcos

Mexico

To the Magistrate and Governor

Dear sirs:

I write to you in the name of the men, women, children and elderly of the EZLN. Most of us are indigenous Mexicans and we struggle for liberty, democracy and justice.

The purpose of the following letter is to demand justice in the case of Mr. Mumia Abu-Jamal, condemned unjustly to the death penalty in 1982. As you know, the judicial process against Mister Mumia Abu-Jamal was plagued with lies and irregularities: the police who accuse him lied about a supposed confession of his, one of the witnesses has changed testimony and declared that he was forced to lie or face prison, the ballistic evidence has proved it was impossible that Mister Mumia Abu-Jamal fired the weapon which killed the policeman. This should be enough evidence for a new trial, but even this recourse has been denied to Mister Mumia Abu-Jamal. If the Judicial system of Pennsylvania and the governor are certain of the guilt of Mister Mumia Abu-Jamal, they should not fear a new trial which adheres to the truth.

I do not ask clemency, pardon, nor mercy from you for Mister Mumia Abu-Jamal. I demand justice, something which I believe is within your powers. No one within the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania or governor Tom Ridge has anything to lose. A new trial can bring the truth forward, and justice, supposedly, is all that should matter.

That is all. From the mountains of the Mexican Southeast,

Subcomandante Insurgente Marcos

Check Langalibalele's Political Journals I & II:
Mbantunyankompong
Kilombo Republic
Kilombo Republic II

Find Langalibalele's Work also at these Sites:
Whispering Art
Urbanite Dweller
Umshini Wam
Afro Spear
My Train of Thoughts
Assata Shakur Forums

======================================

WELL PAST TIME TO RAISE UP:
Stop the Police State Execution of
MUMIA ABU-JAMAL!!!

Remembering Samora Machel Video

2009-04-20T02:11:00.000-04:00

Remembering Samora Machel Video

Liberation Candy

2009-04-20T00:09:00.005-04:00

More on the Congo Crisis

2009-04-19T21:03:00.001-04:00

How we fuel Africa's bloodiest war

What is rarely mentioned is the great global heist of Congo's resources. The deadliest war since Adolf Hitler marched across Europe is starting again – and you are almost certainly carrying a blood-soaked chunk of the slaughter in your pocket. When we glance at the holocaust in Congo, with 5.4 million dead, the clichés of Africa reporting tumble out: this is a "tribal conflict" in "the Heart of Darkness". It isn't.

The United Nations investigation found it was a war led by "armies of business" to seize the metals that make our 21st-century society zing and bling. The war in Congo is a war about you.

Every day I think about the people I met in the war zones of eastern Congo when I reported from there. The wards were filled with women who had been gang-raped by the militias and shot in the vagina. The battalions of child soldiers – drugged, dazed 13-year-olds who had been made to kill members of their own families so they couldn't try to escape and go home. But oddly, as I watch the war starting again on CNN, I find myself thinking about a woman I met who had, by Congolese standards, not suffered in extremis.

I was driving back to Goma from a diamond mine one day when my car got a puncture. As I waited for it to be fixed, I stood by the roadside and watched the great trails of women who stagger along every road in eastern Congo, carrying all their belongings on their backs in mighty crippling heaps. I stopped a 27 -year-old woman called Marie-Jean Bisimwa, who had four little children toddling along beside her. She told me she was lucky. Yes, her village had been burned out. Yes, she had lost her husband somewhere in the chaos. Yes, her sister had been raped and gone insane. But she and her kids were alive.

I gave her a lift, and it was only after a few hours of chat along on cratered roads that I noticed there was something strange about Marie-Jean's children. They were slumped forward, their gazes fixed in front of them. They didn't look around, or speak, or smile. "I haven't ever been able to feed them," she said. "Because of the war."

Their brains hadn't developed; they never would now. "Will they get better?" she asked. I left her in a village on the outskirts of Goma, and her kids stumbled after her, expressionless.

There are two stories about how this war began – the official story, and the true story. The official story is that after the Rwandan genocide, the Hutu mass murderers fled across the border into Congo. The Rwandan government chased after them. But it's a lie. How do we know? The Rwandan government didn't go to where the Hutu genocidaires were, at least not at first. They went to where Congo's natural resources were – and began to pillage them. They even told their troops to work with any Hutus they came across. Congo is the richest country in the world for gold, diamonds, coltan, cassiterite, and more. Everybody wanted a slice – so six other countries invaded.

These resources were not being stolen to for use in Africa. They were seized so they could be sold on to us. The more we bought, the more the invaders stole – and slaughtered. The rise of mobile phones caused a surge in deaths, because the coltan they contain is found primarily in Congo. The UN named the international corporations it believed were involved: Anglo-America, Standard Chartered Bank, De Beers and more than 100 others. (They all deny the charges.) But instead of stopping these corporations, our governments demanded that the UN stop criticising them.

There were times when the fighting flagged. In 2003, a peace deal was finally brokered by the UN and the international armies withdrew. Many continued to work via proxy militias – but the carnage waned somewhat. Until now. As with the first war, there is a cover-story, and the truth. A Congolese militia leader called Laurent Nkunda – backed by Rwanda – claims he needs to protect the local Tutsi population from the same Hutu genocidaires who have been hiding out in the jungles of eastern Congo since 1994. That's why he is seizing Congolese military bases and is poised to march on Goma.

It is a lie. François Grignon, Africa Director of the International Crisis Group, tells me the truth: "Nkunda is being funded by Rwandan businessmen so they can retain control of the mines in North Kivu. This is the absolute core of the conflict. What we are seeing now is beneficiaries of the illegal war economy fighting to maintain their right to exploit."

At the moment, Rwandan business interests make a fortune from the mines they illegally seized during the war. The global coltan price has collapsed, so now they focus hungrily on cassiterite, which is used to make tin cans and other consumer disposables. As the war began to wane, they faced losing their control to the elected Congolese government – so they have given it another bloody kick-start.

Yet the debate about Congo in the West – when it exists at all – focuses on our inability to provide a decent bandage, without mentioning that we are causing the wound. It's true the 17,000 UN forces in the country are abysmally failing to protect the civilian population, and urgently need to be super-charged. But it is even more important to stop fuelling the war in the first place by buying blood-soaked natural resources. Nkunda only has enough guns and grenades to take on the Congolese army and the UN because we buy his loot. We need to prosecute the corporations buying them for abetting crimes against humanity, and introduce a global coltan-tax to pay for a substantial peacekeeping force. To get there, we need to build an international system that values the lives of black people more than it values profit.

Somewhere out there – lost in the great global heist of Congo's resources – are Marie-Jean and her children, limping along the road once more, carrying everything they own on their backs. They will probably never use a coltan-filled mobile phone, a cassiterite-smelted can of beans, or a gold necklace – but they may yet die for one.

Source: The Independent CO UK

Published Thursday, 30 October 2008

Author: Johann Hari ( j.hari@independent.co.uk )

Reparations, in the Land of the Giants

2009-04-14T01:48:00.007-04:00

Obama Policy: Imperialism thru Democracy

Black workers, we who sell our labor to make a living, travail under special circumstances in capitalist America. We have the highest rates of unemployment, imprisonment, chronic health issues. On the other hand, we have the lowest rates for home ownership, capital formation, retirement security, and higher education.

The current economic crisis is marked by increasing unemployment, to the tune of 50,000 jobs lost per month. The government giveaway to the financial giants amounts to plus $1.5 trillion over the last three years. This includes “massive liquidity injections” to Wall Street bankers and the European Central Bank since 2006.

Now with all this money floating around, no mention of reparations can be made. No mention of helping the African community get back on its feet. The goliath of Imperialism has stomped the heart out of niggers thru out this country.

Just one point of clarity; before there were African slaves in the Americas, before colonialism and Imperialism, niggers never existed. A nigger is a slave who hopes for a peaceful coexistence within the Imperialist, racist system. If you go the extra mile to justify the racist cause like, maybe, Stanley Crouch or Tarik Nelson, then you're a bootlicking nigger.

Niggers ought to kno, there is no peaceful coexistence with Imperialism. The Soviet Union was white, and thought Socialism could coexist peacefully in the world alongside Imperialism. That proved to be untrue. And Africans cannot buy into the myth that this racist country will allow them to prosper, to get a piece of the dream, and live in peace with racists next door, down the street, around the corner and on your job. Africans must begin to understand how the system of collaboration diverts our unity with the Caribbean and Africa for a myth no more real than Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny or a white deity which arose to remove your sins.

The last few weeks have presented a somewhat quiescent period despite the growing economic crisis. People seem to yearn for that crummy stimulus check in the mail. It has literally caused most critics to shut their yapping traps. Makes one wonder what kind of check niggers would settle for if we can elevate the whole Reparations issue?

George W Bush gave out stimulus checks as well, in his first term, as a reason to celebrate his presidency. That is like King David giving every man in his kingdom a bottle of wine and a loaf of bread. Then again, David was a giant killer. While the jazz artists call Pittsburgh (my home town) “Land of the Giant Killers,” Bush 43, being from Texas, came from the land of the giants. Which is why he could bogart his way into office and behave as if all us little people need to enjoy our roles as unconscious grist for the mill of Imperialism.

So far, we haven’t seen much separation between Barack Obama and Bush 43. Obama isn’t going to address the Reparations question, and so-called black leaders do not want to rock his presidential boat.

Now the white media, with its ugly, twisted rhetoric, attacks Obama on all fronts. The media did not oppose the Bush war at any juncture in its development. It did not counter the blood thirsty lies spread by Colin Powell, in his role at the United Nations as US Secretary of State. This is not just a matter of interpreting or misinterpreting satellite data, as Powell would have us believe. It involved a campaign of slander and lies aimed at the IAEA, Hans Blix, and other internationally certified authorities on Iraq’s capacity to wage war.

Obama, having made promises he obviously never intended to keep, extended the deadline for withdrawing troops from Iraq. Some will be there indefinitely, locked in step with the Rumsfeld Doctrine, “that we will be there a hundred years, if we have to.”

From the land of the giant killers, the slings are being primed.

One media goliath has have slandered the anti-war establishment as “Democratic voters who ached to see America defeated in ‘Bush’s War’”. The giant killers are not Democratic Party voters.

Besides, the US cannot be defeated in Iraq because of several factors. Superior military force always prevails over any highly disorganized and subjective anti-occupation movement. Religion worked fastidiously against Iraqi nationalism. The Brits instigated sectarian violence between Sunni and Shi’a Muslims by surreptitiously bombing the Golden Mosque. This deflected all efforts away from the occupation, the internecine conflict exacerbated by the CIA/Al Qaida anarchist Abu Musab Al Zarqawi.

Now the weak, neo-colonial micro-state struggles to survive in the face of an eventual pull out. The lessons we take from Iraq apply to this period in history.

In Iraq, the Arab world’s only industrialized nation-state, Imperialism completely shattered that country’s economic infrastructure thru twelve years of genocidal economic sanctions prior to the second US invasion, aka the Third Gulf War. The bloodsucking media has the nerve to imply that those who voted for the Obama policy of Imperialism thru Democracy actually wanted to see the US be militarily defeated in Iraq!

Today, the US economic crisis threatens to shatter the lives, jobs and communities of tens of millions of people. With over one trillion dollars already being doled out to investment banks, the giants are killing us. The black community is suffering its own war, a war where far too few of us have ever fought back, a war where those having sanctions and prisons imposed upon them are all too happy to believe the enemy is the friend.

To say, Iraq survived twelve years of sanctions then suffered another devastating military attack by the US and its allies. Now the US working class must likewise take a hit by the same giant interests, international finance capitalism. The most marginalized players, the black workers will bear the brunt of this “crisis” around the world. So black workers must begin to see themselves as giant killers.

We cannot afford to wait for a US military defeat in Iraq or Afghanistan. While the spineless white left says that plant takeovers and uprisings are “ultra-left”. However, workers cannot remain content with bearing the burden of capitalist economic crises. Black workers, who suffer chronic unemployment, chronic debt and health issues, and all the other baggage that anyone assumes goes with being avowed communists, are not communists, socialists or even conscious enemies of Imperialism.

In order to become free, black workers must make the decision to be the conscious enemies of capitalism. Black workers, the little guys, must become giant killers. You want Reparations, my People, STAND UP!! Stand up, People. To hell with Obama, he is no black savior. Only the People united will never be defeated.

Pitch Black Chocalicious

2009-04-08T00:53:00.004-04:00

For the Orisha Wombman, Nefertiti

You are teaching, Nefertiti Feyikemi
you revealed a million things today
you give blessings, Nefertiti
knowing you is a great pleasure
you are a treasure.

I feel you, Neff
you the link, the key
keep on and it will all happen
be the green snake in the grass
but to your hood a queen, our lioness.

Kick it, Neff you will make it happen
with just a lil help get that ball rollin
all we need is you Y-O-U.

You are the Key
your art your soul
unlocking secrets, baby
keep turning that key, unlock the door
open it up and let it flow
all for you, all for us!

Not rich in things but rich in the world.

RICH in the World!

You should have it nice
like that
just like that, like before the capture
now we the captives turnt Capturer
that drives you, i kno your secret
yes, Nefertiti, yes!
mmmmm yes
your love, Neff
who love you for that, always
whose roots run deep all over America
and into Afrika! to England France the Arabian gulf
people there in those places
they kno you laying in wait
they cannot rise without you.

You give the word
you the link in the chain
you cannot be broken!

Never been broken
dented and beaten burnt, scalded, thrashed
but never broken.

A soft piece of cotton
a pillow
your sweet dreams
that place in the sun
that is whence you derive
who will provide that for you, Neff
who will get you there
away from Babylon?

You are a sweet sweet baby
a sweet sweet baby
precious woman
pitch black power woman!

YOU make ME speechless!
You are astounding!
You astonish me
with your wisdom
your style and grace
you something precious
beyond words.
Peace!

Finance Capitalism in the World Drug Economy

2009-03-29T12:58:00.006-04:00

Overlap: Drug Gangs and Geo-Politics

Mara Salvatruchas Trece (MS-13) is a violent drug network that has filtrated from Centroamerica up thru Mexico and into the United States. MS-13 comprises blowback from the CIA-counterinsurgency terror network -- organized during the Eighties to repress the revolutionary movements -- operating in Nicaragua, El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala. They have been blamed for countless acts of horrific violence, including indiscriminate attacks against other colonized peoples, particularly Africans.

In order to understand their linkages to international narco-terrorism, you have to pose MS-13 against the backdrop of the CIA Guns-for-Drugs operations, sanctioned and financed by the National Security Administration. Also known as CIA Iran-Contra during the Reagan Administration, Guns-for-Drugs was overseen by Oliver North, and run out of the White House.

The Israelis managed a big cut in the action, traced to the vast numbers of Uzis and foreign manufacture weapons on the streets here and elsewhere. Associated with the volatile cocaine traffic that flooded the US starting in the 80s, the bullet-riddled body of an Israeli Mossad officer turned up in car trunk when US armed forces invaded Panama in 1989.

Under the Carter Administration, the CIA was assigned to arm and train Al Qaida in Afghanistan to face down the Soviet occupation. CIA/Al Qaida encouraged opium cultivation to finance the pre-Taliban mujahiddeen, which formed the bulk of the anti-Soviet fighters. As then-NSA advisor, Zbigniew Brzezinski directed this strategy, subsequently taken over by North, during Ronald Reagan’s presidency.

Reagan aimed to halt the rising leftist trend in “America’s backyard” thru the most violent counterinsurgency methods in recent history. Centroamerica’s main operatives behind US policy included Nicaragua’s Contras, Panamanian ruler Manuel Noriega (whom the US later deposed and imprisoned), the Guatemalan government. Right-wing death squads operated with impunity in El Salvador during that era, massacring 100,000 students, workers, peasants and even nuns. These vicious activities had political backing from Congress, which led a toothless investigation of CIA Iran-Contra, for the illegal mining of Nicaragua’s harbor. Columbia, Bolivia and Peru became enmeshed in violent struggles between communist rebels versus reactionary governments. Imperialist drug kingpins press ganged peasants into intense coca production, which eventually hit our streets as cocaine.

A sidebar, Nicaragua and El Salvador at that time sustained the world’s second highest amputation rates, following closely behind Angola and Mozambique. In all four cases, militarized gangs -- funded and trained by Imperialist forces -- used machetes and other edged implements to terrorize, dismember, maim and murder people by the thousands.

Undeniably connected with this time, drug money laundered thru Cayman Islands or US savings and loans institutions accounted for billions of dollars in illegal proceeds, which ultimately contributed to the collapse of 747 S&Ls like Whitewater, BCCI, and others. This is only one of many leading edges of the reactionary right-wing agenda in American politics.

MS-13 arose as the heir apparent of the Centroamericano pro-imperialist death squads and drug gangs. Parasitic excrescences backing this web of intrigue include reactionary financiers, presently looting the worldwide working class, and imposing a regime of terror across the globe.

We can connect the dots to make comparisons with CIA-trained Al Qaida, spreading its bloodsucking influence thru out Asia. Alongside Al Qaida, include the US-backed military regimes of Paul Kagame and Yoweri Musaveni presently aiming to annex DRC, the interhamwe in DRC, the Saudi-funded janjaweed in Darfur, and other similar pro-imperialist and sub-imperialist terror formations. The common thread running thru these factions involves profit-making via militarized violence, counterinsurgency, and neo-colonialism. Illuminating MS-13 makes one more case for the revolutionary transformation of Imperialism’s genocidal class system.

MS-13, like all drug gangs, poses a serious threat to the stability of working class communities. Their indiscriminate targeting of black people must meet stiff resistance. Yet it makes little sense to stampede peoples minds with scattershot information that provides primitive context, liberal-reactionary content, and race nationalist underpinnings. Our community must become organized not just for simple self-defense. That cannot survive as a successful strategy within any scenario. We have to organize by building scientific socialism, that is, revolutionary communities of resistance, a maroon society.

Build Communities of Resistance!

2009-03-25T12:26:00.004-04:00

The State and Imperialism in 2009

by I. Langalibalele

Please take a look at the powerful observation from writer Matt Taibbi that I’ve posted below. Especially take note of the sentence within the *stars*. I've added the "stars" to show emphasis and to highlight that section.

"As complex as all the finances are, the politics aren't hard to follow. By creating an urgent crisis that can only be solved by those fluent in a language too complex for ordinary people to understand, the Wall Street crowd has turned the vast majority of Americans into non-participants in their own political future. *There is a reason it used to be a crime in the Confederate states to teach a slave to read: Literacy is power.* In the age of the CDS and CDO, most of us are financial illiterates. By making an already too-complex economy even more complex, Wall Street has used the crisis to effect a historic, revolutionary change in our political system — transforming a democracy into a two-tiered state, one with plugged-in financial bureaucrats above and clueless customers below."

~ Matt Taibbi

The Big Takeover
Mar 19, 2009

Courtesy, Jawanza Diame

What is going on with President Barack Obama’s economic stimulus plan? If we can take the word of economists like Paul Krugman and others, the government needs to wait out this period of “financial crisis” because it will stabilize over the next nine months or so. However, Obama continues to push for the so-called bank bail outs, which are nothing more than massive giveaways to the already filthy rich financial sector.

The US government want absolute authority. It seeks absolute authority under the cover of democracy to carry out the most inhuman agenda in history. It wants the ability to implement its agenda under the cover of law, based upon the assumption that elected lawmakers can pass legislation that supports the most extreme goals of international finance.

This is apparent from watching trends over the last thirty years. Over this period, leaders from Reagan on thru Obama have raped public assets to fill the pockets of international bankers and other corporate financiers.

In the effort to strip down the State to its basic, fundamental soulless shell, US presidents have auctioned off, sold, or outright given the banks trillions of dollars. They are depleting the public coffers to enrich the already wealthy. Meantime, the educational system suffers, no plan for children’s health care exists, and the State wants more prisons. Because prisoners can be put to work for three hots and a cot, and fascism functions on that principle.

They have used the excuse that there is a banking crisis. Simultaneously, the banks line their pockets, the pockets of their investors, and buy up other financial assets. The banks also line their pockets with the money looted from homeowners. No consumer protection laws have shielded the working class -- the middle class has enuf education to understand fine print, or to hire a lawyer to do it for them -- from the bloodsucking banks. No laws have protected the workers stock-based retirement plans. And with the State giving money to the banks, there will be nothing left for workers who reach retirement age in this country. After all, who will be foolish enuf to invest in the financial schemes that have ripped off workers across this country?

If the bankers were operating honestly, the banks would never have sunk. It is because of their rapine greed and thirst for power that the banks have collapsed. It is not because credit has dried up, but because so much money has become concentrated in so few hands that this situation exists. Without the banks and the culture of bloodsucking greed, society might have a chance to discover its humanity. Yet the State anticipates everything necessary to prevent that.

Anytime real wages have not kept pace with inflation, anytime the US worker labors for more hours than his counterpart in other industrial workers, anytime that worker recedes into debt to maintain a house, automobile and the regular things in life, that is because cash has dried up on the street. It has dried up because the financiers have concentrated 80% of it in their own hands. Seven or eight percent of all people control 80% of all the money. Which means that the remaining 83% of the population must fight over the few dollars left.

So while Obama has joked about bailing out the auto industry, he continues to push the argument that society cannot survive without the banks. He may as well deride joblessness, which hits double digits in the African community. But the auto industry produces a product. The banks do not. Paper money is not a product with any intrinsic value whatsoever.

Why is the State giving even more money to the banks, when the government owes the banks over $10 trillion? The State can seize the banks and liquidate the debt. That makes more sense.

That is what the State did with the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan. It wanted to control the oil and the opium, so it invaded those countries. Seventy-five percent of Iraqi oil ends up on the black market; opium production has skyrocketed since the US occupation of Afghanistan. The dope ends up here. Profits from the blackmarket oil ends up in the hands of the CIA and the international financiers. These monies are used to destabilize governments and societies, including US society.

So the State ought to invade Wall Street and take it over completely. However, the State seeks to strip away all the benefits US workers have provided for this society. The State aims to strip down Social Security, pensions, health care and transform this country into a backwater of reaction. It can only achieve this by supporting the banks. In doing so, the strategy has been to give away public sector assets from cash grants to public lands.

The international financiers control the most reactionary sector of capitalism. They fuel wars all over the globe. They finance wars; they finance coups d’etat; they finance assassinations of men like Salvador Allende and Maurice Bishop. They want to transform revolutionary Cuba into a whorehouse and a den of vice. They want the world for their playground while creating misery and instability for billions of people in every single country.

The United States is rapidly moving towards fascism. It is repeating all the steps and turns that Germany and Italia made in the years preceding World War II. The marginalized right-wing has become more shrill and obstructionist, and the Obama Administration appears like the Weimar Republic, granting concessions to the enemies of the people, international finance. If this trend continues, in four more years there will be a firestorm in this country. People need to take the war to the financiers. We do not have time to wait.

A World Wide Palenque

2009-03-20T02:46:00.008-04:00

Race, Class and White Supremacy

"We are the leaders we've been waiting for." Pragmatic

The difficult aspect of figuring out this economic breakdown is breaking it down for the masses, yet maintaining a grip on what is happening so that can be simplified. Because I am not by training an economist nor an intellectual by any means. I am a working class brother, myself, and it is my commitment to translate the news and misinformation of the capitalist system into a form upon which people can ACT! I will do this until my dying breath, in the hope that you will SEIZE THE TIME, and put an end to Imperialism once and for all.

I wasn’t even going to comment on the most recent parasitic “financial meltdown” garbage, AIG taking federal “bailout” money and paying huge bonuses to executive officers and upper managers. And yet folks still don’t seem to be moving rapidly enuf to build, since we have so little time left. Workers, and African ones in particular, do not have the luxury of allowing the bourgeoisie to sort matters out for society.

Because this is a system built upon the concentrated class system (the white Left has called the oppression of colonized nationalities "superexploitation"), we sometimes call it White Supremacy. Because of White Supremacy, it is important for Africans to understand these concepts in the coming struggle. Because we will have to fight and organize and fight some more so that scores can be settled by our side, and not on behalf of racist, neo-colonial Imperialism.

What I mean to state clearly and without any mistake in meaning is that White Supremacy is RACISM. White Supremacy concentrates the class question, resulting in what colonized people as we kno as RACISM, which the white Left and its black auxilliaries call "superexploitation". Yet many Black Internationalists have soundly stated and demonstrated that super exploitation is normal exploitation in the colonial apparatus that sustains Imperialism.

White Supremacy permits white people to believe they can dilute all questions pertaining to racist (not "racial") oppression by promoting NEO-COLONIALISM. And that does dilute most questions by giving the appearance of having solved the concentrated class question, racism. The dilution arises in the delay, or lag, it creates between the contradictions which arise at the point of production. Which is merely a fancy way of saying that the struggle between the (colonized) workers and the capitalists, which is the sharpest form of struggle, becomes derailed or delayed in a neo-colonialist regime.

When we discuss the lag in the relations of production, we are talking the period between the capitalist class having its way until the workers themselves attain clear revolutionary consciousness. The colonized worker sees the contradictions more sharply; his/her relationship to production is more critical because the colonized worker is closer to being in a life and death struggle than the Imperialist worker.

MATERIAL PRODUCTION means the production of whatever has a real economic value; production is the process that we engage in thru our work in the factories, mines, fields and other places where workers are required. If you sell your labor, that is, if your labor is what you use to make a living, then you belong to the working class. Even our ancestors, capitalist slaves, were workers. In fact, they set the standards for material production and labor organization upon which all capitalist production is modeled.

Yet this period is characterized by intensified, rapine CONCENTRATION OF WEALTH in as few hands as possible. There is no “financial meltdown” or economic crisis except as manipulated by the robber barons of the financial system. It is crass manipulation which will IMMOLATE us all if not for a mass uprising against the ruling class.

The critical thing to understand is that only working class people can change this situation. Working class people make up a strategic sector of the population. Only two strategic sectors exist, that is, only two classes can determine the objective course of history. The ruling class, a small group that wields power out of proportion to its numbers, has this ability. Workers, because of several factors, form the other class.

We must discuss classes in terms of relationships. Their relationship to one another and, objectively --- therefore primarily -- their relationship to material production.

ONLY THE WORKER IS INVOLVED IN MATERIAL PRODUCTION.

For this reason, the worker (by extension, meaning "the producing classes") remains the only element, the only person, the only link in the class system without which society cannot survive! Other classes are hangers-on, or parasites.

Material production puts bread on the table, clothes on your back, a roof over the fam! YOU DO NOT NEED PAPER MONEY TO MAKE THIS HAPPEN!

But we are getting ahead of ourselves. More explaining of class relationships is in order, first.

Other classes, particularly the petty bourgeoisie, or middle class, lack the ability to objectively alter the course of history. They lack power, wealth and numbers. For them to gain power, they must manipulate society’s actual producers, the workers, in order to displace the present rulers and wield power in their stead.

The ruling class does not need numerical strength to determine the course of history. They have power and wealth which allows them to call all the shots. Imagine how much wealth and power they have at their fingertips, power they use to control the entire planet, and they do not make up more than 1% of the entire world population. Perhaps their numbers are far less than that.

But all this wealth at their disposal allows them to control the economies of entire nations, INCLUDING THE GOOD OLE USA! That chess position reveals too much of an immense control ability for a handful of people in a vast interconnected world of five billion living souls.

So as this power and wealth derives from concentrating resources into as few hands as possible, our current situation exists because society blindly accepts that ownership of PRIVATE PROPERTY is a right.

People must understand that rights are abstractions; rights exist based upon what society recognizes as moral or just or merely the way it is because the law says so. In a democracy, this abstraction cannot have any force if people strike against it. When society turns democracy upside down, people will begin to see that as the only way democracy can operate in their favor.

Once WE turn away from the notion of PRIVATE PROPERTY as a right, that will begin to erode the power which a tiny, bloodsucking minority wields over the vast coffers of collectively produced wealth.

As unemployment expands and people’s comfort zone shrinks, the outrage which remains bottled up must not stay contained as it had during the years when wages shrunk and living expenses grew. Because INTERNATIONAL FINANCE CAPITALISM must end. It is the system which has produced every problem known to the modern world. The vast interwoven social fabric which stretches across the globe cannot allow its fate to rely upon the decisions of a handful of jaded movers and shakers.

The working classes produce everything society needs for its maintenance. It produces medicine, food, housing, weapons, factories, mines, wealth and power that it has the ability to wield in its own interests by its own hands.

However, it surrenders everything it produces for the pleasure of the ruling class. EVERYTHING!! The workers and other producers give up every iota of wealth and power to the capitalists, who turn it all against the workers who created this fabulous society themselves. EVERYTHING!

The bourgeoisie produce wars over resources to turn one group of workers against another, to enslave a nation so that the bourgeoisie may themselves enjoy the power they exercise thru the spectacle of bloodshed and horrendous destruction. The bourgeoisie produce nothing except exploitation and oppression. It is impossible for them to produce a single thing of material significance.

In fact, the bourgeoisie substitute paper value for real value.

They substitute worthless paper for the things that workers produce in the factories, mines, fields and anywhere else workers replenish and subdue the earth for the life of society.

SUBSTITUTING PAPER MONEY FOR COMMODITIES AND NECESSITIES OF REAL VALUE CONSTITUTES THE BIGGEST SWINDLE IN HISTORY!

Paper for the gold you dig and for the diamonds that get forked over; the farmer gives up his crops for a debt owed to the bank.

ARE YOU FUCKING CRAZY!! Has society gone mad?

Yes, this is the beginning of the madness which brought us to this point in history. We are in a new period, where society will have to decide which way to turn. Your very existence is on the line.

We who consider ourselves "Black" do so because of our relationship to White Supremacy. Our relationship to a racist society demanded we produce a SEPARATIST identity. As Steve Bantu Biko once stated, "Black Consciousness is a STATE of Mind." It is not a skin color.

IT IS POLITICAL CONSCIOUSNESS.

It is revolutionary theory and action within the international African community. So on this basis, we have to decide if we seek to be the workers or the bosses, revolutionaries or reactionaries; can society do away with international finance?

Do we really want to get rid of the banks, the financiers and -- most of all -- the political system which tells us that the world's highest standard of living exists right here in the good ole USA. Not many people want to challenge that, for any number of reasons.

YET the behemoth is really a bloodsucking excrescence, with its tentacles wrapped around the MINDS of five billion people! And that many folks cannot and will not ever taste one tenth of that lifestyle, since we would require FOUR EARTHS to sustain that much material production.

Build a New World by tearing down the old, or sort thru the ashes of a destroyed planet. The choice is yours.

true knowledge

ETERNAL

2009-03-13T08:33:00.002-04:00

Suicide. With hands outstretchd and toes
gripping a window ledge four stories high
reached and graspd a chosen fruit and I
askd, plummeting by, why they made
the choice they had:
Africa is the Future! and You
carry her seeds within your womb.
and I am Death, your King. I am
in all things old and new; in
Life you find me close by
and in the desert paths I reign
supreme. I walk amidst joy and
vibrant Spring, when galaxies were born
and breathed the dawn upon the gods:
Osiris, Zeus, Yahweh. Them all I ate
and now they make my dung. My
arctic footsteps leave a chill that no
cold can match. I am Death, your
King. When all is safe and moments
grow sweet, I steal.
Eternal Time marks only one
companion and my heart will
never fill. Africa is the Future!
and you carry her seeds within
your soul. Black woman, Nubian
queen, sweetest fruit of the darkest
branch, bearer of the Life within,
bring forth my Myrmidons. I slay
the darkness and then the light.
One must die so another may live, and
for that shall they obey my signs! The
grey lips of a cold heart pursed
against the breast
of an unloved land, nourished
by the milk of dreams. I
am Death, your King and no
flight may escape my realm nor
satisfy my tax. No justice,
no reason or timing prevents the
hands outstretchd and toes
gripping an avalanche of sorrow.
Perish all, Death lives forever.

Some Must Read Literature

2009-03-09T01:44:00.008-04:00

A Short Revolutionary Reading List

Sista Nefertiti, my good friend and comrade, posted on Assata Shakur Forums that she is reading Sun Tzu on the Art of War! Sun's teaching resembles Tai Chi: attack when the enemy is weak; fall back when he is strong; kno the lay of the land and never give the enemy the defensive advantage. Not only is Sun Tzu a great tactician, he gives us rules for living, working and playing. That's an awesome read!

As I went over some of those posts, there are so many authors that I need to revisit! George GM James, the inestimable Diop. I don't kno if these authors were posted, but they produce some great writing: JA Rogers, Drusilla Dunjee Houston, Bobby Seale, Na'im Akbar. A personal acquaintance and friend, Abdul Alkalimat has an excellent Primer on African American History. Some more great authors from the US include classics like E Franklin Frazier's The Black Bourgeoisie, Harold Cruse's The Crisis of the Negro Intellectual, Huey P Newton's Revolutionary Suicide, George Jackson's Blood in My Eye, and my introduction to revolutionary organizations, Gene Marine's The Black Panthers.

About the same time, I got into a conversation with Gen. Peter Castro Okema-Otika on Facebook about African literature. He told me, "Okot P'Bitek is a Luo/Acholi poet and writer who wrote intriguing books like Song of Lawino, [and] Song of Ocol, etc. He was friend with Ngugi Wa Thiongo and Chinnua Achebe who wrote Things Fall Apart. Okot comes from my village/town of Gulu in Northern Uganda (RIP)."

Since Peter also suggested listening to the music of Geoffrey Oryema and mentioned Ngugi wa Thiong'o, plus Chinua Achebe, you can google them as I surely will. Being a great enthusiast of Ngugi, I had read his Decolonising the Mind and Barrel of a Pen years ago in Dennis Brutus's class on African literature when Brutus was professor emeritus at the University of Pittsburgh. Ngugi is a giant of African letters. He, Chinweizu, and Chidi Amuta are the very best critics of anti-imperialist literary art that I have ever read. And don't forget to go over the poetry of that anti-apartheid, anti-imperialist stalwart, my friend and mentor, Dennis Makhana Brutus.

Jean-Paul Sartre ("Sart"), a Frenchman, philosopher and everlasting anti-imperialist, wrote the "Foreword" to Fanon's major work, Wretched of the Earth. Sartre opposed the French-Algerian War and exposed its atrocities, and played a similar protagonistic role when both the French and then the US were in Vietnam. His anti-imperialist stance on all major questions of the Twentieth Century earned him the hatred of the US foreign policy ideologues; Sartre was honored by liberation movements everywhere. No matter how "black" you are, this is one European who deserves a ton of props.

Vo Nguyen Giap, Ho Chi Minh's general and architect of the Vietnamese wars against the French and US, wrote a number of bad ass books on Vietnam military history. Giap or Vo, don't kno which is his family name, must be one of the greatest military strategists of the last 100 years.

Mao Zedong (formerly spelt "Tse Tung") wrote down his Selected Military Writings, which have more emphasis on the political discipline of the Red Army. Like Mao, Amilcar Cabral wrote a number of books during Guinea-Bissau's guerrilla conflict with Portugal but, again, Cabral deals very little with battlefield tactics and stratagems. Same approach applies to writings by Fidel and Che Guevara. Why? Because these revolutionaries focused upon transforming society and the military solution was regarded as only a transitional and limited tool for that task.

Hence, for an understanding of the battlefield tactics and political structure of guerrilla movements in 20th Century Latin America, Regis DeBray catalogued a number of instances in interviews with Che, and DeBray also followed Che's command.

There is a book by a guy at the local library. Don't remember his name or the book title. But it essentially discusses military battles which changed history. At first I was like, what, no Hannibal crossing the Alps?! Then I caught on to what he was getting at: military battles that changed history (that might be the title, sumpin like that) are those in which the balance of power shifts, or a power vacuum is created. In any event, a new period of history begins (or ends) because of the turning point based a particular battle. So instead of the brilliant Hannibal crossing the Alps, the author featured the Battle of Zama, which determined who would rule the Mediterranean, the Carthaginians or Rome. Plus he discusses other battles of the ancient world and thru medieval times, colonial times and right up to Dien Bien Phu. A great read for military enthusiasts.

Eduardo Galeano wrote The Open Veins of Latin America. Galeano is a must read; his writing is poetic and a polemic tour de force; he exposes Bush family forerunner Herbert Walker and his role in the United Fruit Company. Galeano covers everything from Nicaragua on thru Peru and Argentina. His writing style makes reading history extremely interesting. Anybody who wants to become a good writer should read his work. But the way he puts it down will make you weep. And then it will make you outraged.

In this class, which elaborates upon Karl Marx's theory of primitive accumulation, you will find Walter Rodney's How Capitalism Underdeveloped Africa, Eric Williams's Capitalism and Slavery, and Manning Marable's How Capitalism Underdeveloped Black America. Then, CLR James wrote The Black Jacobins, which details the only successful slave revolt in history; speaking of Haiti, check up on Randall Robinson's recent book, An Unbroken Agony: Haiti, from Revolution to the Kidnapping of a President, which details the sordid US policy in that island country. For the history of resistance, Herbert Aptheker does a fine job in American Negro Slave Revolts.

Have you read Credo Mutwa? His play Nosilimela taught me rudimentary Zulu. There is a website on UFOs and mutis dedicated to him. Almost comical, but his writing gets you involved.

Also, for work on anti-imperialist struggle by some giants try getting ahold of Fanon, Cabral, Cesaire (who collaborated with Pablo Picasso on one of his books), Nkrumah, Nyerere, Brutus, Biko, Lessing, Fugard (not really). Wadada Nabudere is a must read. Haven't read Facing Mt. Kilimanjaro. On my list, too.

The Prophecy of Mbantunyankompong

2009-03-02T22:52:00.005-05:00

Mau Mau Propers for the Pope

On Friday, April first, the triple sixes,
The devil’s number, on April Fools Day
One day before the pope’s eternal slumber*
Say a sign: Mehmet Ali Agca.
The die rolled from Shaytaan’s tumbler.
Pope passed away the next day Saturday.

Set it off, niggers, for a superficial deity
Steeped in crimes enriched by thievery
Supported by dictators and presidents,
Adored by maquiladoras and sweatshop
Tyrants y’all, holding us by our balls.

Black slave truly worshipping the master
Instead of hating and defying bondage, rather
Were the master the same race or nationality
As the slave, should that mitigate the apostasy?

What’s your Nine-Eleven, niggers!

Go insane. Forget thinking, open your minds:
Fill the clip, slide close the bolt. Shut your lip.

Perhaps the slaps USA serves upside our naps
Shall someday soon earn a president coon
Or the Catholic Church a nonwhite pope.

To hope in that worse than shooting dope.

In that case put the barrel up to your face
Blast your goddamn brains all over the place.

One ecumenical joke compounded upon another.
One in particular deems the pope infallible
One pope turned to fertilizer, recycle.

Donald DeFreeze time, niggers. Shit. Cinque.

For the all powerful to depict the enslaved
In a position of power is an illusion engraved
Upon suckers paying to win a billionaire lottery
Waged on triple sixes, on April Fools Day. Hay
For you, the flip side of the illusion serves
Just a smell, deluding bombers with shaky nerves
On hopes of a cross-burning pope stuffed into Hell.

Pray to that pimp while you sweat in jail.

Triple sixes onna popes death bed, niggers!

And yet you step aside for simple shit, a dead
Antichrist, the mark upside a dragon’s head
Not upon it, leprous stains the soul within
The Mark of Oppression, niggers, not of Sin
Black skin for sinners, Oppressors wear white.
Sinners swap threads with Oppressors overnite.

Same sinners swap spit with Oppressors for cash
Asses fatuous to be freed from the Crackers lash.

What’s your Nine-Eleven, motherfucker.

Nobody from Heaven returns inflight to overthrow
This Devilz Paradise and set things right. So
Such stinking thinking strips you down
Rips you down, clowns you, frowns on you
Your hesitation forces black fighters to dissolve
Back from the streets, staked out, delayed. Resolved.

Sidelined niggers venting anger. Vent, niggers!

Dedan Kimathi. Musab Al Zarqawi. Vent that.

Crazy niggers, wild niggers, killing crackers dead
Niggers with million dollar bounties on they head.
Pick the fuck up on that, Africans, pick up the gun
Where’s the pope mobile see it catch it run
Like the Putin grenade at Bush flung so untoward
And fuck the pope and his goddamn peace award.

Damn him and sainthood, no good malingerer
To him and his successor, Ratslinger, the finger
Yeh with that Sunday voodoo shit on they altar.

Yeh stiff-assed hymns to a stiff-assed god of stone
Nailed to a plus, fed to dogs, Isa’s doctrine blown
Contaminated by an apostate Paul, a devil at large.

Conflagrations set by heretic popes on their charge
Suffer no apologists for slavery and genocide
To targets, hoes, who shed blood in fratricide
As rifle bolts slide forward silently, stealthily
Processions of machete-toting zombies infallibly
Committed on papal authority glide to they death,
From Kinshasa to Bujumbura, a blood soaked path
Bodies in heaps, graves en masse, now chant a mass:

Who blessed the bombs and blessed the armies
And bullets which saturated flesh, sliced arteries
For the glory of the church so that Carol Wojtyla,
Pope John Paul II, gained spoils of Vatican imperialism?

We cling to the excesses and culture to the very end.

Samora Machel, motherfuckers. George Habash.

The pope aint your friend, don’t like pussy
Don’t like niggers, but will spend your money
Swaggering with balls bigger than you can bear
Them damn popes aint no closer to God, the knaves
Than Washington came to freeing the slaves.

Should any lord of the Age of Expansion fear,
Or repudiate the power which brought them here?

From this very day, television commercials parade
Niggers in every conceivable position displayed
Projecting illusions of success, delusions nonetheless
Wealth fame fortune love beauty happiness conquest
Perceptions of what is but which also facilitates
Mainstreaming niggers thru these United Snakes.

Is everybody buying it is everybody trying it
Jumping off the boat for the pope’s lying shit?

Because the pope started all this with Da Gama
In 1492, along with that other flat world ‘bama
Colon. Now five hundred years far too long
Just different music playing to the same old song.

What’s your goddamn Nine-One-One, niggers?

Before we were niggers, before the Conquistadors
Before Da Gama bombed Mombasa, before
You remember what we really were, we had
Diamonds in the fields, made love in gardens by
Sweet fountains of the Niger in an African eden
Kings black as midnight, palaces draped in gold
And African queens dressed in riches untold
Warriors big as boats, seven foot tall, their
Spears tipped with iron, sharpened for war
Physicians philosophers sages of Sankore
Artisans aristocrats and shepherds of Ile-Ife
Catching the sun, children played care-free
Until the popes gangs came to ravage Society.

Soon after, other Europeans arrived in their wake
Yet the chimera first sprang from the popes own cape
Villages destroyed, soldiers deployed from dungeons
Force marching captive Africans into floating coffins.

From black maidens in bondage, black farmers in chains
The shackle the lash the mace bashing brains
Burnt branded tattooed like cattle and chattel
To New Millennium babies gulping cold oatmeal
Fast, as women sell their bodies for a cocaine blast…

Youth spinning Vogues, stalking with Glocks
Track down one another over handfuls of rocks.

Vibe on the corner, promoting ghetto fab glamour
To hustlers one slip away from a trip to the slammer.

Our once free world now turned right-side wrong
A dance set in motion to the popes droning gong.
Negro sell outs cop out for a chance to get paid
Like a trick in a trance by a whore, getting played…

Uprising on the horizon, streets furiously a swirl
The burnt flesh of necklaces in the air, that smell
So what’s your Nine-Eleven, niggers? Do tell.

Nat Turner, bitches. Mau Mau time.

*(On Friday, April first, 2005, one day before Pope John Paul II passed away, the Pennsylvania Lottery turned out 6-6-6 on the evening numbers draw. That provided part of the inspiration for this poem, which I had written a few months later. This is a repost from URC Discuss; hope it sets some hearts on fire.)

Stop the Police State Murder of Mumia Abu-Jamal!
Post All Activist and Organizational Messages To:
Unite_and_Resist_Campaign@yahoogroups.com

Bankers or Farmers: Dirty, Sexy Money

2009-02-22T02:55:00.014-05:00

How Market Forces Operate
redacted, from 8/2007

Who is more important in society, the banker or the farmer? This is the question we will have to answer in the very near future. Society will have to decide to save the producing masses or the small, greedy ruling class. This decision does not appear to be a difficult one, except so far all the wrong decisions have been made. This reflects the crisis in thinking that has resulted from the war of misinformation being waged against people everywhere. Those waging this war want society to believe their interests are the important ones, the interests of capital. However, we have to understand that this is a battle to the death. If the ruling class wins, the vast interwoven social fabric of our planet will suffer. We have to pose the questions in the simplest terms. It is a choice between workers and bosses, between farmers and bankers.

============================

Now, the art of the con game originated in America and spread across a World which had little concept of the swindle, since rulers and chieftains had held their own subjects in peonage from antiquity. So today's fat cat swindlers – like lawyers, politicians, bankers, insurers, accountants and stock traders – drive Imperialism. They drive it solely in their own venal interests, for their own self-enrichment.

Whatever Karl Marx sed about capitalism being a thoroly rotten, bloodsucking system, well, he barely pipped the shell.

Of course, everybody kno that the labor product is converted into values appropriated and exchanged for commodities ultimately held as futures, securities or some other stake floated on paper to peel a profit off of anything produced, traded or consumed by honest, hard-working people. Based upon a sometimes faulty yet most often dishonest assessment of what happens in this economy, working people get lured into an investment scheme which persuades them to believe they may actually own part of the "American Dream".

This swindle has been used against workers repeatedly in the housing market, the Savings and Loans busts, and stock-based retirement plans. Bank notes, shares, bearer bonds, stocks, mutual funds – their conversion from paper into real assets defines the best part of a process that 98% of all people lack any inkling of whatsoever.

For that reason, working people should be discouraged from participating in stock plans.

Then there's the saying, after every boom follows a bust. The Dot Com shake out bankrupted 401k plans, KEOGHs, and other retirement funds. The Enron scandal era – which included MCI-WorldCom, Tyco and other notables – sucked up what was left. Teachers, clerks and other "educated" workers, whom most people expect to play it smart, got soaked. Think they would have learnt from the S&L swindles of the Eighties, when lenders robbed people outright and no perpetrators were ever prosecuted.

The current housing bust earnestly began in 2006 and has shaken out dozens of investors who purchased asset-backed commercial paper with the expectation they would make a killing when interest rates rose. They never counted on the massive default rate from the introduction of exorbitant rates when Bernankhe dictated a deregulation which adjusted the predatory mortgages upwards.

Currently, stock market surges and losses have reached an unpredictability which investors characterize as volatile. Subprime housing loans drove the stampede towards mortgage lenders during the Greenspan era, now the crash bludgeons even buyers with perfect credit. Retail sales lagged during last Christmas; gas prices kept seasonal vacationers home and affect food prices, while the debate over drilling ignored the fact that oil is a privately-owned commodity and deregulation drives price, not costs.

Fear, because your house is a real asset that can be sold out from under you due to no fault of your own. Mortgages, bought and sold by investors the moment one gets signed, are pieces of paper floated all over the globe. A minute number of deep pocket investors controlling the voluminous horde of mortgage debtors, a.k.a. "homeowners", determine that sooner or later the herd will be eaten. Homes, stores, factories, office buildings and malls all sit on mortgaged property so the investment belongs to those making the loan. Tho it is the loan which investors interest themselves in, they acquire supremacy over the market (economy) because of the massive value accumulated in so very few hands. When they enforce collections, that results in market corrections.

During a "market correction", businesses fail or curtail production, resulting in higher unemployment. This spiraling effect has nothing to do with production but is based on seedy speculators whose very existence obstructs the flow of goods and services. Resources bottled up by a parasitic redundancy in trade relations can lead to the point where conflicts and wars erupt. Recent results have produced famine, shortages, hyperinflation, border wars, so-called piracy and other by-products of Imperialism.

Indeed, the farmer can't sell futures in his orange crop because the bank owns them and controls the market where they must be sold. Third-party negotiators then acquire rights to the futures and so on in transactions which do not benefit the real producer. A paradox, society can thrive without the banks and stock market, but not without the farmer. This system of wild market speculation drives prices not costs, accounting for the rise of fuel, interest rates, food, college degrees, health insurance, everything.

Keep dreaming. Anyone without a convenient $150k to sink into a mutual fund cannot even think about becoming a real capitalist. That designates the level where investments begin, as any commercial advertising portfolio prerequisites during PGA tournaments or NBA and NFL games may well tell you.

International finance capital, Imperialism, operates thru a political system which protects the swindlers and cares little for the masses. IMF-World Bank policies account for the horrendous wars in Africa, Asia and Latin America. Credit-Suisse, Deutsche Bank, CITICORP, Ameriquest Mortgage, Washington Mutual and HSBC Finance Corp. led the shake out in the current housing bust. Some are defendants in discriminatory lending suits being pressed by the NAACP. Nobody can quite quantify the social impact, but look forward to a renewed phase of the racist wars against America's colonized workers like the police murder of Oscar Grant or the New York Post negrophobic war against the black president.

Meanwhile, investors holding complex mortgage securities and Wall Street bankers always manage to come out on top. Homeowners, on the other hand, will never be winners under this system. The only advantage for the people is to decolonize their minds, return to the source, and break down Imperialism like kung fu masters…

What is the dollar value of one point on the NYSE? Anyone who doesn't kno has no business letting their employers talk them into an IRA, CDs or a 401k. Refuse to let your union leaders follow the advice of business agents who want to invest dues money in the stock market. Have they explained how that loot is converted, transferred, traded, exported and reinvested, ultimately prompting you to rant about foreign products and their threat to American workers?!

At the same time lenders poise to snatch the roof from over your family's heads, you want to bomb China, India, Pakistan, Mexico and the ghetto, America's black colony.

Dirty, sexy money is the root of great evils. Its finance scams originated when the folks who violently swindled North America from the Indians redistributed it amongst the haves. This swindlers regime imposed itself upon the "new" Indians, working people. These same suckers pay record prices for gas swindled from Iraq, then send their kids to fight terrorism.

Yes, they blame Mexicans for trying to flee a more repressed economy. Suckers blame the Arabs for resisting a Beast who occupies their land. They blame neocolonies like China and India for jumping at dollars held out to them by American financiers. Homesteaders who slaughtered American Indians for the robber barons turn to racist political theory out of expedience. They blame Blacks, just because. But in the heartland of the Homelanders, an ideological campaign must be carried out to turn society right side up. A society on the ball will choose farmers over bankers. We better fight for workers and not bosses. Make it hard, if not impossible, to find a sucker for America's racist, bloodsucking anti-labor con game.

Neo-Fascism Waiting in the Wings

2009-02-19T07:34:00.009-05:00

Capitalism Calls for Nationalized Banks

The word for today, boys and girls, is NATIONALIZE! All thru out the news yesterday, economic pundits called on the government to NATIONALIZE THE BANKS! What does this mean? Leading economists of the capitalist system calling for nationalization can mean several things. But first, we need to define nationalization and society in the age of misinformation.

President Barack Obama made a speech in Arizona, which has the third highest foreclosure rate in the country. Obama wants to help banks restructure mortgages, and refinance some mortgage holders who owe banks for homes no longer worth what they paid. All this is part of his stimulus package.

However, the automakers continue to be in distress and Goodyear lays off workers because slow car sales means less tire manufacturing. The New York Stock Exchange closed down by 300 points. Economic activity is predicted to contract and unemployment is expected to rise. Most experts believe the recession will last at least 24 months if it doesn’t plunge into a depression.

Structural readjustment for the US economy can only lead towards financial disaster. The bloodsucking international banking system proved this in Africa, Asia and Latin America. When economists begin demanding the nationalization of banks, capitalism is in big trouble. Nationalization means a government takeover of a sector or the whole economy. This can happen under a socialist state, which we do not have, or it can happen in a state moving towards fascism, which we appear to have.

While the administration has not broached this subject, since Larry Summers of the White House’s National Economic Council appeared in several interviews and never even hinted at it, business experts and leading economists have begun making powerful cases for nationalizing the banks. To underscore, Timothy Geithner, Treasury Secretary and former head of the New York Fed, has a grounded policy initiative due to a sharp change of course which resulted in tanking markets on Wall Street. The pundits have panned Geithner and made an issue of Obama trying to fix the economy from the White House, citing politics and, paradoxically, George W Bush’s policy of giving the Fed a free hand.

All the leading capitalists, from the president on down, smell like a stinking joke.

But to nationalize the banks? Wow, that is a great leap, and not of the Maoist kind. Because we must ask the inevitable question, how will that happen? Especially after banks continue to receive massive monies from the public coffers. In the age of misinformation, where the neocons have convinced white workers that welfare, national health care reform and Social Security are socialist programs while remaining silent on gov’t giveaways to financial institutions, people must be wary of what it means for certain forces to make the call for nationalization. Because if Obama’s administration emerges from this period looking like the Weimar Republic, it will set the stage for a neoconservative administration out for blood.

I am not trying to solve the Imperialist crisis. Yet a government takeover of the banks musn’t transpire after so much money has been doled out to them, nor without purging the top management of any banks that get seized. No takeover should happen with compensation going to stockholders, either. Altho this contradicts US laws concerning imminent domain, the banks have already received massive liquidity injections of public funds on a periodic basis since July 2006. Whichever banks are insolvent the government has no business acquiring them in attempting to make them float.

Thus, experts calling for nationalization seem to be pulling the wool over our heads. They have the temerity to defend Bush’s economic policy decisions while criticizing the moves made by the four week old Obama presidency. Business experts Nina Easton, Fred Mishkin, Nuriel Roubini and Mark Zandi appeared on Charlie Rose to form a consensus on nationalization and against having a White House-run national economic group. However, the calls for nationalization have been broader than just theirs, cattle-prodding the black president into a less deliberate response to a crisis that has built up over the life of the entire subprime mortgage era.

Since the Clinton-era “war on crime”, codified in repressive criminal legislation and accompanied by a massive prison boom on the backs of black prisoners that jolted the voodoo economy of his predecessors, plus the passage of NAFTA alongside the unspoken war against Chicanos and other Latino immigrant workers, the United States has become a neo-fascist republic. This trend sharply intensified under two terms of the Bush 43 administration with the so-called “war on terror”, itself a form of terrorism. Combine that with an economic crisis in the making since the S&L scandals of the Eighties thru the DotCom shakeout on to the current subprime mortgage meltdown, if it can be correctly characterized that way.

The effect of these combined scandals and crises has been a huge concentration of liquidity into the hands of ever fewer hands. The credit regime arose because liquidity had been squeezed to the extent that people lacked the resources to buy with cash.

So, in growing paper tigers from coast to coast, it became necessary for economic growth to rely heavily upon consumer credit spending. And this practice resulted in a more intensified concentration of liquidity. By concentrating cash in so few hands, money became even scarcer for workers, the middle class and small business. Towards the end, statisticians revealed how Americans worked longer and harder than their counterparts in other industrial countries, how production had increased -- because of people trying to work themselves out of debt -- and folks had less to show for it.

In a country where workers happily settle for $300 tax kickbacks while the government doles out $750 billion to financial institutions, anybody calling for nationalization of banks is either delusional or on a serious mission to turn this country into a fascist state. The steps towards fascism remain firmly in place and Obama, being a part of the ruling class, may not be turning away from that. We need a workers economy based upon distribution of wealth. We need a society built upon people power instead of crass dollarism.

Congo Crisis Update

2009-02-04T17:07:00.004-05:00

Nkunda's "Arrest:" Rwanda's Latest Shell Game in Response to International Pressure

January 30, 2009

Over the past week, events have unfolded at a dizzying pace in the Central Africa region; hence Friends of Congo thought it would be useful to add some context to the situation based on questions posed to us. Is Laurent Nkunda’s arrest a positive development?

We have reasons to doubt that Laurent Nkunda has been arrested. Rwandan Maj. Jill Rutaremara said that Nkunda was in Rwanda but "not in jail." If Nkunda has in fact been arrested it would be a positive development but not a massive change as some analysts would like you to believe. A true marker of the veracity of Rwanda’s claims of arresting Nkunda will be the extradition of Nkunda to the Congo where he committed the crimes against the Congolese people. If Nkunda is not extradited to Congo in short order then that will be a clear sign that this is part of the shell game that Rwanda has been playing for the past 12 years, a period during which they replaced one proxy leader with another while they continued to occupy Eastern Congo. Even if Nkunda were to be arrested, it would be a fundamental flaw in one’s reasoning to believe that Nkunda was the primary cause of the conflict in the east. In essence, what has happened is that Nkunda’s National Congress for the Defense of the People has been replaced by thousands of Rwandan troops. The problem is Rwanda’s and Uganda’s aggression against the Congo backed primarily by the United States and British governments and corporate interests since 1996.

If Rwanda did in fact arrest Nkunda, doesn’t this mean that they never supported him as the December 12th UN Report documented?

No, to the contrary, over the past twelve years Rwanda has shuffled different rebel leaders according to its interests. It is in part for this reason there were so many versions of the Rally for Congolese Democracy (RCD, former rebel militia backed by Rwanda), which Nkunda was a part of in 1998 – 2002 war. Nkunda’s apparent replacement, Jean-Bosco Ntaganda, also has an arrest warrant out for him issued by the International Criminal Court; one human rights offender has been replaced by another as Bosco now proclaims to head the CNDP.

A systemic and historical analysis is warranted in order to demystify current events in the Congo and arrive at prescriptions that will lead to lasting peace and stability. Unfortunately, the majority of Great Lakes analysts offer Rwanda-friendly analysis and prescriptions as Rwanda represents the US and British foreign policy interests in Central Africa. These analysts’ job is to provide intellectual and advocacy cover for an otherwise disastrous policy across now two US and British administrations that have led to the deaths of millions of Congolese and the systematic looting of Congo’s wealth to the benefit of U.S. allies Rwanda and Uganda as well as Western corporations.

Isn’t the new collaboration between Congo and Rwanda a good sign on the road to peace and stability in the region?

On December 5th, Rwanda and Congo signed a secret pact in Goma that the Congolese people know nothing about (President Kabila is scheduled to speak to his nation on this issue on Saturday, January 31, 2009). James Kabarebe, Chief of General Staff of the Rwandan Defense Forces and former private secretary and aide-de-camp of Rwanda’s president Paul Kagame was later dispatched to Kinshasa to consummate a deal with President Kabila. Thus, Rwandan President Paul Kagame, James Kabarebe, and President Kabila worked out a deal that resulted in over 5,000 Rwandan soldiers entering Congo. These are the same characters that collaborated in 1996 when Congo was first invaded by Rwanda during the Clinton administration. During that period they traversed the Congo slaughtering Hutu man, woman and child and anyone else who was in the way. The United Nations says that the killings were so massive and systematic that they can be considered crimes against humanity and possibly genocide. The United Nations investigation into these crimes against humanity by the Rwandan army, Kabarebe and Kabila was blocked and still remains to be resolved (see the UN investigations: http://www.inshuti.org/onua.htm). Once a responsible and credible government is in place in Congo all these crimes must be investigated and justice must be delivered so that the Congolese people can be made whole. Find out more about the Kagame, Kabarebe, Kabila connection in our January 20th Blog. In the final analysis, more troops and further militarization of the region is not the answer. A robust political path must be established in order to lead to peace and stability in the Great Lakes region.

So are you saying that President Kabila allowing Rwandan troops on Congolese soil to hunt down those responsible for the 1994 genocide is not a good thing?

The logic that allowing Rwandan soldiers on Congolese territory to hunt down Hutu rebels will bring about peace is fundamentally flawed. Below are some factors to consider:

1. The deal allowing Rwandan soldiers on Congolese soil was not between the Congolese government and the Rwandan government. It was between the Congolese president Joseph Kabila, whom many suspect is not even Congolese and the Kagame regime in Kigali. Neither the Congolese parliament nor the Congolese people were either consulted or addressed regarding Rwandan troops entering Congolese territory. In fact some Congolese are calling for the impeachment of Kabila. When it comes to matters in Africa, we tend to drop all critical faculties and common sense. Can you imagine troops entering US territory without the US Congress knowing about it and the president not even addressing the population to explain why? What is even more farcical is that some Congolese government officials are trying to convince the world that thousands of Rwandan soldiers are coming into the Congo as advisers to the Congolese troops. It has even been stated that the Rwandan troops will be under Congolese command. Will they be under the same compromised command that Nkunda chased out of North Kivu?

2. It is beyond imagination that Rwanda is going to do in a few weeks what it was not able to do or interested in doing when it occupied the Congo from 1996 – 2002. During this period of the occupation of eastern Congo they did not wipe out the so-called Hutu militia. In fact, the biggest battle they had was with their ally Uganda over mining concessions. Also, during this time they systematically looted Congo of its wealth. (See UN Reports from 2001 – 2003). It is this looting of Congo’s wealth that spurred the economic miracle that President Clinton and other Western officials wax eloquently about in Rwanda. You will notice that they never mention the degree to which ill-gotten wealth from the Congo contributed to Rwanda’s “economic miracle”. Former Secretary of State for African Affairs, Herman Cohen says it best when he notes “Having controlled the Kivu provinces for 12 years, Rwanda will not relinquish access to resources that constitute a significant percentage of its gross national product”.

3. What is almost certain is that Rwandan troops on Congolese soil will lead to more suffering of the people of the Congo. Analysts in the West have not fully appreciated the enmity that the average Congolese holds toward Rwanda. Remember, it was the US and British backed Rwandan and Ugandan invasions of 1996 and 1998 that unleashed the deaths of estimated millions of Congolese. So, for one to say that Rwandan soldiers are now going to make things better for the people of the Congo does not take history into account. One merely has to look at the Congo-Ugandan action against Ugandan rebels inside Congolese territory to see where this latest action is heading. Over 600 Congolese civilians lost their lives as a result of military action against the Lord’s Resistance Army in Congo, which began over a month ago. Moreover, that operation was supposed to take a few weeks and now Uganda is requesting more time on Congo’s soil, while Congo’s gold and timber continue to find its way into Uganda.

What role are great powers playing in what is unfolding in the Congo?

It is key to understand how the game is played to keep Africa dependent and impoverished. Because the West is more powerful than the divided and weak African nations, they have been able to assassinate or systematically sideline leaders who truly serve the interest of the people. They facilitate the ascension to power of those who demonstrate a proclivity for killing their fellow Africans. Once these feckless leaders are in power and predictably incapable of governing, western diplomats condescendingly intervene on the premise that those they have assisted in acquiring power either through elections or otherwise cannot in fact justly govern. This narrative is buttressed by superficial media coverage of African society, intellectuals for hire by Western powers and the humanitarian industry. It is in this context that French President Nicolas Sarkozy and former Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs, Herman Cohen, have proposed the balkanization and economic neutering of the Congo. They have made proposals to reward Rwanda and their Western support structure for the systematic looting of Congo, which has resulted in unmatched death and terror for the Congolese people. Nearly 125 years since Europe gave Congo to King Leopold II of Belgium as his own personal property, the situation is fundamentally the same whereby the affairs of the Congolese people are not determined by themselves; but rather by external forces.

So what can be positively drawn from recent events?

Several things can be looked at positively:

1. It is clear that international pressure works. It has moved Rwanda to at least announce the arrest of Nkunda. As was said, the litmus test for whether Nkunda has actually been arrested is his extradition to Kinshasa, otherwise for all intents and purposes he is vacationing in Rwanda at the behest of Kagame while Rwandan troops roam the hillsides of Eastern Congo with the blessing of Joseph Kabila. The U.S. is finding it increasingly difficult to defend its proxy, Rwanda, as both French and Spanish courts (the same Spanish court that ruled against Pinochet of Chile ) have arrest warrants out on President Kagame’s top officials for commission of war crimes, one of whom, Rose Kabuye, was arrested in Germany in November 2008. Despite such repeated damning evidence against the Kagame regime, under the auspices of Donald Rumsfeld’s AFRICOM program, the US sent a shipment of military equipment to Rwanda for peace keeping purposes in Western Sudan in early January 2009, coinciding with Rwandan troops intervention in Congo. The military shipment is supposed to be used for peace keeping in Western Sudan. Both Sweden and the Netherlands suspended aid to Rwanda and of course the damning December 12th UN Report have made it difficult for anyone to defend Rwanda except for some ideologically-driven humanitarian institutions. Even the New York Times editorial board continues to call for international pressure on Rwanda.

2. Kagame felt a necessity to adjust to the new realities in Washington. He could not necessarily count on President Obama to give him carte blanche as he has received from Presidents Clinton and Bush. Rwanda is certainly still a staunch ally of the U.S. However, Kagame cannot be certain that President Obama will fully support him in spite of some of the old guards (Susan Rice at the UN and Hillary Clinton as Secretary of State) being in the administration. The Obama administration can hardly present itself as an administration of change with an old policy for the Great Lakes in particular and Africa in general. The new administration would be best served to implement policies that serve the people and not strongmen like Kagame and Kabila.

3. The US and British baked resource war of aggression is being disrobed on a daily basis. The hunt for the Hutu rebels is an attempt to recast the conflict in an ethnic context. The Hutu rebels, otherwise know as the Interahamwe or Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda (FDLR in French) need to be dealt with, but not in the manner currently underway. Remember, it has been the Congolese people who have been the primary victims of the presence of the Hutu rebels in the Congo. Nonetheless, what is happening in Central Africa is a high stakes geo-political battle for precious and strategic resources that are vital to the world’s military, aeronautics, electronics and technology industries. This interview with British Foreign Minister David Miliband provides some insight and perspective on the vital corporate interests in Central Africa.

4. The average person is becoming better informed and more engaged about the root causes of the deadliest conflict in the world since World War Two. They are better equipped to demand action from their elected officials and challenge humanitarian institutions that come to their communities peddling warmed over ethnic explanations for the suffering of the people of Congo.

We are confident that with persistent education, organization and mobilization, the people of Congo will be free from the forces that have her sons and daughters living in absolute misery while we in the West benefit from her riches.

Join the global movement in support of the people of the Congo and strike a blow for justice and human dignity.

Produced by the FOTC Team

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Listen to weekly podcast.

Let President Obama know that a change is needed in US policy towards the Congo.

Sign-up for the Break the Silence Speakers Spring Tour.

Read the analysis on the latest UN Report on Congo by Kambale Musavuli.

Become a Friend of the Congo.

The Struggle in Slam

2009-01-27T22:59:00.004-05:00

Behind Big O’s Eight Ball

Today is the start
of a new day a new way
a fresh start for America
The end of racism, so they say.

An African-American in the Whites
House painting it beige. And the sage
wisdom of pundits across the country
telling us we all have entered
a post-racialist stage in the
history of America, blowing their horns
tooting aloud to the crowd about
how “WE” have overcome
and they have given “US” our
first black president.

“We” just ain’t ready to by into it.

At least be skeptical despite all
the cans of paint it takes to
remove the taint of Jeffersonian
slavery and neocon knavery
still won’t dissolve the smell
built up to 2009 from 1776.

The racists declaring the end
of racism. Hysterical. A trick.
As in Ward Connerly on affirmative
action, as in Colin Powell plotting
Grenada’s invasion or the overthrow
of Aristide and democracy in Haiti.
Like Atlanta’s black middle class war
against Mukasa and Jamil.
Or the black shills employed to oust
Cynthia McKinney at any cost.
IN ATLANTA, NIGGERS, ATLANTA!!
Frontline of the neo-colonialist war.

The ATL, hell on earth, from street
corner ballers to international shot
callers, black mayors and wannabe
players hustling everything except
the right thing and Mukasa Ricks
fighting prostrate cancer up against
Morehouse, the college where MLK
got his knowledge. A world upside
down turned right-side wrong
to beat down a civil rights icon, the
father of Black Power, a tower
of principle and love while
Jamil Al Amin cools
his heels behind walls of
ice cold concrete and steel for
opposing the Counterinsurgency.

Tormenters worse than
the monkeys of Tarnation,
a capitalism that runs your
momma thru a gauntlet to cop,
makes her bob and weave night
long for a hit of crack, with you
slinging from some cut feeding her.
What’s crackin, niggaz? Yo momma.
Thinking it’s some other time, not wake
up time, you stacking cheddar ain’t enuf,
since the monkeys of Tarnation run this stuff.
They mock you, they knock you, and they
clock you until you think you kno they
rules and then it’s another game.
All the same, you doing time
with Jamil yet ain’t learnt, still.

Yes. Today is the start
of a new day a new way
a fresh start for America
The end of racism, so they say.