2009-05-29

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

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)

2009-05-25

RIP: TAJUDEEN ABDUL RAHEEM

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

******

2009-05-21

Malcolm X and the Revisionists

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.

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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!

2009-05-19

African Liberation Day 2009 in Pittsburgh

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!

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

2009-05-05

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
























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!