Study, Fast, Train, Fight: The Roots of Black August

By Joe Tache

Republished from Liberation School.

In August 1619, enslaved Africans touched foot in the first permanent English settlement in what is now the United States. The centuries since witnessed the development of a racial system more violent, extractive, and deeply entrenched than any other in human history. Yet where there is oppression, there is resistance. Since 1619, Black radicals and revolutionaries have taken bold collective action in pursuit of their freedom, threatening the fragile foundations of exploitation upon which the United States is built. These heroic struggles have won tremendous victories, but they have also produced martyrs—heroes who have been imprisoned and killed because of their efforts to transform society.

“Black August” is honored every year to commemorate the fallen freedom fighters of the Black Liberation Movement, to call for the release of political prisoners in the United States, to condemn the oppressive conditions of U.S. prisons, and to emphasize the continued importance of the Black Liberation struggle. Observers of Black August commit to higher levels of discipline throughout the month. This can include fasting from food and drink, frequent physical exercise and political study, and engagement in political struggle. In short, the principles of Black August are: “study, fast, train, fight.”

George Jackson and the origins of Black August

George Jackson was a Field Marshal of the Black Panther Party while he was incarcerated in San Quentin Prison in California. Jackson was an influential revolutionary and his assassination at the hands of a San Quentin prison guard was one of the primary catalysts for the inception of Black August.

A 19-year-old convicted of armed robbery, in 1961 George Jackson was sentenced to a prison term of “1-to-life,” meaning prison administrators had complete and arbitrary control over the length of his sentence. He never lived outside of a prison again, spending the next 11 years locked up (seven and a half years of those in solitary confinement). In those 11 years—despite living in an environment of extreme racism, repression, and state control—George Jackson’s political fire was ignited, and he became an inspiration to the other revolutionaries of his generation.

Jackson was first exposed to radical politics by fellow inmate W.L. Nolen. With Nolen’s guidance, Jackson studied the works of many revolutionaries, including Karl Marx, V.I. Lenin, Mao Tse-Tung, and Frantz Fanon. Nolen, Jackson, and other  prisoners dedicated themselves to raising political consciousness among the prisoners and to organizing their peers in the California prison system. They led study sessions on radical philosophy and convened groups like the Third World Coalition and started the San Quentin Prison chapter of the Black Panther Party. Jackson even published two widely read books while incarcerated: Soledad Brother and Blood in My Eye.

Unfortunately, if predictably, these radical organizers soon found themselves in the cross-hairs of the California prison establishment. In 1970, W.L. Nolen—who had been transferred to Soledad prison and planned to file a lawsuit against its superintendent—was assassinated by a prison guard. Days later, George Jackson (also now in Soledad Prison) and fellow radical prisoners Fleeta Drumgo and John Clutchette were accused of killing a different prison guard in retaliation for Nolen’s death. The three were put on trial and became known as the Soledad Brothers.

That year, when it was clear that George Jackson would likely never be released from prison, his 17-year-old brother Jonathan Jackson staged an armed attack on the Marin County Courthouse to demand the Soledad Brothers’ immediate release. Jonathan Jackson enlisted the help of three additional prisoners—James McClain, William Christmas, and Ruchell Magee—during the offensive. Jonathan Jackson, McClain, and Christmas were all killed, while Magee was shot and re-arrested. Ruchell Magee, now 80 years old, is currently one of the longest held political prisoners in the world.

On August 21, 1971, just over a year after the courthouse incident, a prison guard assassinated George Jackson. The facts regarding his death are disputed. Prison authorities alleged that Jackson smuggled a gun into the prison and was killed while attempting to escape. On the other hand, literary giant James Baldwin wrote, “no Black person will ever believe that George Jackson died the way they tell us he did.”

While the particular circumstances of Jackson’s death will likely forever remain contested, two facts are clear: his death was ultimately a political assassination, and his revolutionary imprint can’t be extinguished. Through the efforts and sacrifice of George and Jonathan Jackson, Nolen, McClain, Christmas, Magee and countless other revolutionaries, the 1970s became a decade of widespread organizing and political struggle within prisons. Prisoners demanded an end to racist and violent treatment at the hands of prison guards, better living conditions, and increased access to education and adequate medical care. Tactics in these campaigns included lawsuits, strikes, and mass rebellions. The most notable example may be the Attica Prison rebellion, which occurred in New York State just weeks after George Jackson was murdered. In protest of the dehumanizing conditions they were subjected to, about 1,500 Attica Prison inmates released a manifesto with their demands and seized control of the prison for four days, beginning on September 9, 1971. Under orders from Governor Nelson Rockefeller, law enforcement authorities stormed Attica on September 12 and killed at least 29 incarcerated individuals. None of the prisoners had guns.

This is the context out of which Black August was born in 1979. It was first celebrated in California’s San Quentin prison, where George Jackson, W.L. Nolen, James McClain, Willam Christmas and Ruchell Magee were all once held. The first Black August commemorated the previous decade of courageous prison struggle, as well as the centuries of Black resistance that preceded and accompanied it.

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Political prisoners and the prison struggle

Observers of Black August call for the immediate release of all political prisoners in the United States. That the US government even holds political prisoners is a fact they attempt to obscure and deny. In reality, dozens of radicals from organizations such as the Black Panther Party, the Black Liberation Army, the American Indian Movement, and MOVE have been imprisoned for decades as a result of their political activity. As Angela Davis, who was at one time the most high profile political prisoner in the US, explains:

“There is a distinct and qualitative difference between one breaking a law for one’s own individual self-interest and violating it in the interests of a class of people whose oppression is expressed either directly or indirectly through that particular law. The former might be called criminal (though in many instances he is a victim), but the latter, as a reformist or revolutionary, is interested in universal social change. Captured, he or she is a political prisoner… In this country, however, where the special category of political prisoners is not officially acknowledged, the political prisoner inevitably stands trial for a specific criminal offense, not for a political act… In all instances, however, the political prisoner has violated the unwritten law which prohibits disturbances and upheavals in the status quo of exploitation and racism.”

Prisons in the United States are a form of social control which serve to maintain the status quo of oppression. Over the last few decades, prisons have become an increasingly important tool for the US ruling class. Prisons not only quarantine revolutionaries, but also those segments of the population who have become increasingly expendable to the capitalist system as globalized production, deindustrialization, and technological automation decrease the overall need for labor-power. These shifts, which began in earnest in the 1970s, have hit Black, Latino, and Indigenous communities the hardest, as exemplified by the sky high unemployment and incarceration rates those communities face. These groups are also historically the most prone to rebellion. Angela Davis noted in 1971 that as a result of these trends, “prisoners—especially Blacks, Chicanos and Puerto Ricans—are increasingly advancing the proposition that they are political prisoners. They contend that they are political prisoners in the sense that they are largely the victims of an oppressive politico-economic order.”

Though that definition of political prisoner is unorthodox, it illustrates the political and economic nature of criminalization. This is why observers of Black August connect the fight to free “revolutionary” political prisoners to the broader struggle against US prisons. Mass incarceration is a symptom of the same system that political prisoners have dedicated their lives towards fighting.

As increasing numbers of the US working class are “lumpenized,” or pushed out of the formal economy and stable employment, the potential significance of political struggle among the unemployed and incarcerated increases. George Jackson wrote in Blood in My Eye that “prisoners must be reached and made to understand that they are victims of social injustice. This is my task working from within. The sheer numbers of the prisoner class and the terms of their existence make them a mighty reservoir of revolutionary potential.”

George Jackson’s own journey is a perfect example of that revolutionary potential. Jackson didn’t arrive in prison a ready-made revolutionary. He had a history of petty crime and was apolitical during his first years in prison. He would have been dismissed by many people in our society as a “thug.” But comrades who knew that he held the potential inherent in every human being found him and took him in. They helped him understand his personal experiences within the context of capitalism and white supremacy. In turn, George Jackson dedicated his life to doing the same for others incarcerated individuals.

Black August today

August, more than any other month, has historically carried the weight of the Black Liberation struggle. Of course, enslaved Africans were first brought to British North America in August 1619. Just over 200 years later, in August 1831, Nat Turner led the most well-known rebellion of enslaved people in US history. This historical significance carried into the 20th century, when both the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom and the Watts Rebellion—an explosive uprising against racist policing in Los Angeles—occurred in August during the 1960s.

Even today, the month remains significant in the struggle. John Crawford, Michael Brown, and Korryn Gaines were three Black Americans who were murdered in high-profile cases of police brutality; Crawford and Brown in August 2014, and Gaines in August 2016. Their deaths have been part of the impetus for a revived national movement against racist police brutality. Finally, on August 21, 2018, the 47 year anniversary of George Jackson’s death, thousands of U.S. prisoners launched a national prison strike. They engaged in work stoppages, hunger strikes, and other forms of protests. The strike lasted until September 9, 47 years after the Attica Prison Uprising began. Like the Attica prisoners, the 2018 prison strike organizers put forth a comprehensive list of demands that exposed the oppression inherent to the U.S. prison system, and laid out a framework to improve their conditions.

Each of these historical and contemporary events reveal a truth that the Black radical tradition has always recognized: there can be no freedom for the masses of Black people within the white supremacist capitalist system. The fight for liberation is just that: a fight. Since its inception in San Quentin, Black August has been an indispensable part of that fight.

In the current political moment, when some misleaders would have us bury the radical nature of Black resistance and instead prop up reformist politics that glorify celebrity, wealth, and assimilation into the capitalist system, Black August is as important as ever. It connects Black people to our history and serves as a reminder that our liberation doesn’t lie in the hands of Black billionaires, Black police officers, or Black Democratic Party officials. Those “Black faces in high places” simply place a friendly face on the system that oppresses the masses of Black people in the United States and around the world, often distorting symbols of Black resistance along the way. Black liberation lies, as it always has, in the hands of the conscious and organized masses. Study, train, fight, and in the words of George Jackson, “discover your humanity and your love of revolution.”

Elites Disparage the Working Class, Yet Deny Responsibility

(PHOTO CREDIT: Getty/Chip Somodevilla)

By Modesty Sanchez

The election of Donald Trump has often been attributed to poor, undereducated white voters who, it’s been implied, either didn’t understand the implications of Trump’s vulgarity, or were willing to overlook his bigotry because it aligned with their underlying beliefs. This demographic has been severely maligned by liberals, who are usually affluent or at least financially stable, and this repulsion felt by them towards white working class voters manifests itself in slanderous, petty insults. There are memes that make fun of people who live in squalor and immiseration, simply because they voted for Trump — the irony is lost on those applauding the memes that these types of ignoble living conditions are possible in the richest country precisely because of the politicians and government that these jokesters sycophantically praise and defend. Not to say that Trump is any better or worse at alleviating these circumstances, despite what he claimed on the campaign trail, but these types of memes and jokes are perfect reflections of liberal elites’ incapability of understanding why Trump’s anti-establishment stance and politically indecorous behavior would attract those who have been continuously marginalized by corrupt political governance.  Instead, these liberals laughed at the squalid state working class people — white and black — live in, they joked that because of these poor whites’ lack of education and purportedly bigoted belief system, they were more than deserving of these types of living conditions.  

Of course, this tireless berating and deriding is completely devoid of any type of awareness: history has shown time and time again the necessity of propagandistic slander to maintain the power of the ruling class. In 1671, when a wealthy landowner in Virginia, Nathaniel Bacon, wanted to drive Native Americans out of the incipient colony, he drew upon the frustration workers felt at their conditions in order to organize them in a revolt against the governor, William Berkeley. After what became known as Bacon’s Rebellion, the nascent capitalist class was terrified by the interracial solidarity between white indentured servants and enslaved black people because that unity showed how powerful and expansive the working class was, and how dependent upon their labor the capitalists were. To sever any links between white workers and black slaves, as well as to justify the brutal colonist practices of violently forcing Native Americans off their land and kidnapping then enslaving Africans, the foundations of modern racism were laid. A fierce propaganda campaign disavowing the humanity of anyone that wasn’t white was unleashed. Myths surrounding the intelligence and the potential of black and brown people were propagated as a way of fueling white people’s sense of superiority and to manufacture a distrust of non-white people. The white workers who had before banded together with their fellow black and brown workers, now looked upon their comrades in disgust. They were now thoroughly convinced that, while they were still being exploited by the ruling class, their position was temporary, and that, on virtue of their race, they were destined for greater things, while black and brown people were exactly where they belonged. This propaganda has proven to be successful, and the division of the working class is still present today.

Since Bacon’s Rebellion, this ambient propaganda has dictated the society we live in, and has been intensified depending on the point of history. Even Martin Luther King, Jr., in his address at the conclusion of the Selma to Montgomery March, cited this divisive rhetoric as one of the leading factors of Southern segregation following the Civil War: as a response to the emerging Populist Movement that was uniting white workers and formerly enslaved black people, the threatened capitalist class “... began immediately to engineer this development of a segregated society...Through their control of mass media, they revised the doctrine of white supremacy. They saturated the thinking of the poor white masses with it, thus clouding their minds to the real issue involved in the Populist Movement. They then directed the placement on the books of the South of laws that made it a crime for Negroes and whites to come together as equals at any level. And that did it. That crippled and eventually destroyed the Populist Movement of the nineteenth century.”

New threat, same solution: whenever there are indications of laborers working together, despite race or gender, the intimidated capitalist class resorts to a racially charged narrative that has been proven to be successful in stultifying any dissent by discouraging any type of working class unity. When white workers are led to believe they have more in common with capitalists than their fellow workers, the ruling class can more easily pass laws that not only persecute lower-class individuals (black people especially), but that also codify this bigoted propaganda. As MLK stated, this rhetoric has been solidified through legislation such as the Jim Crow Laws, but more recently through the passage of bills during the War on Drugs (like the ‘94 Crime Bill) that disproportionately disadvantaged black people while also seeming to “prove” the inherent savagery of this demographic.  

The legacy of this propaganda campaign is still resonant within our own media class, which continues to use this divisive rhetoric to serve the interests of the ruling class. The only difference is the substance: whereas before this narrative consisted of outwardly racist, white supremacist claims, now it espouses declarations of racial tolerance and concern toward the multitude of social injustices. Suddenly, media pundits are vilifying low-income people, specifically white people, for their “backwards” and “bigoted” beliefs; nevermind that this same demographic is forced to work in horrific conditions for very little compensation, and they’re too focused on their own personal immiseration to get started on their anti-racist reading lists. They’re also, understandably, fed up with these media elites who shame workers using pretentious and condescending jargon before returning to the luxuries of their affluent lives, completely insulated from the harsh reality of capitalism.

While these elites go on and on about the importance of “reconciling with America’s racist history” and creating a “radically tolerant society,” they remain incapable of sacrificing any of the prestige and comforts afforded to them by a capitalist society that runs on the exploitation and disenfranchisement of an interracial working class. Rather than acknowledge the factors contributing to the prejudices they claim comprise the working class, liberal pundits would rather reprimand white workers who are simply trying to make a living and have subscribed to the false propagandistic campaign that has been fed to them since imperialism and colonialism became major fixtures of the Western economy. The only job of the ruling class, it now seems, is to stir up superficial moral outrage at any type of racial injustice as a way to distract from the politicians (who now attempt to sway voters by disavowing interpersonal prejudices and promoting tolerance) that continue to pass policies deepening the economic crisis felt by so many Americans.

Of course, as a way to express the ruling class’s newfound commitment to representation, now black and brown people have been granted the authority to perpetuate this repulsive austerity. By diversifying the people responsible for bombing Middle Eastern countries, or for cutting Social Security, the government has inoculated themselves from any real critique. If one were to express frustration at the increasingly worsening material conditions of everyday citizens, they can be repudiated by this supposedly tolerant and understanding liberal establishment using extrapolating claims of racism, sexism, or bigotry. It’s more than clear, and at this point redundant and boring to point out, that this new mainstream media social justice narrative that champions issues of representation is merely another way to placate Americans into accepting their oppression, making anyone that rejects this narrative a narrow-minded chauvinist.

Though this contemporary media narrative isn’t outwardly racist or white supremacist, it still serves the same goal in maintaining the legitimacy of the ruling class, and does not, contrary to its outward appearance, care about creating a tolerant society in which everyone is equal. It is still just as divisive though, as shown by the persistent ridicule of the white working class, to which America’s existing backwardness is attributed. Even if it were true that this immiserated and impoverished demographic was just as openly bigoted as it’s claimed to be, any interpersonal prejudices its members hold do less damage than what liberal and conservative politicians enact on a daily basis through the passing of legislation that prioritizes corporate interests over those of everyday, working people. If people who use this morally righteous jargon truly do want to help alleviate the wretched living conditions affecting black and brown people, they should stop myopically venting their frustrations on white workers who are struggling to put food on their plates, and instead focus on dismantling a capitalist system that will always depend on the exploitation of working people in America and abroad

Frantz Fanon: A Personal Tribute to the Philosopher of the Colossal Mass

By Alieu Bah

Originally published at Red Voice.

"The colonized intellectual you so much detest has come to become the so-called guardian of your name. I hope you come into the whirlwind and destroy that myth... But in the end, I guess that’s our battle to fight."

The wretched of the earth, the damned of humanity are still here. Still clamoring, still caught in a thousand many battles with themselves and the world built to keep them in their place. Their fate signed, sealed, and packaged for the consumption of the rich and wealthy few of the earth — buffets where the flesh, blood and tears of the poor are served to a greedy, barbaric, capitalist horde are even more sumptuous. Their feasting is the stuff of legend and their belch a recognition of a satisfied bunch of heartless thieves who rejoice more in their heist than any sort of remorse or regret thereof. The proverbial cocktail party list that was supposed to be changed at the dawn of decolonization remains the same even as it is inherited and one family name supplanted for another in a vicious circle of inheritance.

(Un)fortunately your book ‘The Wretched of the Earth’ is still relevant to us. It was supposed to be an artifact of history, forever to rest in the museums of liberated territories. But fact is, it remains this living, breathing, painful reminder to us the colonized of the earth. We still study it because it’s more relevant than ever in this colonial continuity. From the favelas of Brazil, the hoodlands of America, the jungles of Chiapas, from the townships of Johannesburg to the slums of Nairobi, this masterpiece continues to shine in the eyes of a new generation whose parents were sold nothing but dreams.

The shantytown, the medinas, the slums of the world still persist. The compartmentalization of the world continues unabated. However, the divide gets deeper and more cancerous, the line, the border isn’t in the same town or neighborhood anymore, but between the geography of the oppressed — the third world — and the center of the oppressor, the colonist. With the ever-increasing globalized configuration of capital, the choke hold of a staggering market to the expansion of “soft” imperialism in the form of intergovernmental organizations and NGOs from the colonizer, the metropolis has exceeded all expectations of a shared analysis between our generations; the chasm deepened as Hannibal crossed the alps. It all has gotten deeper since you've succumbed to the white claws of death in that hospital in Maryland. The rich neighborhood and the slums today are mostly populated by the same faces, the same race of men and women. When I was in Nairobi last year, it reminded me so much of your analysis on the divided, schizophrenic colonial society.

In more ways than one it’s as if your take was about the neocolonial state in those illuminating first chapters of The Wretched of the Earth. The naked violence of it and the wanton disregard for human life makes you a prophet in this secular tradition of progressive politics we share. But more searing and penetrating of your analysis was the scholar and intellectual who comes home from the west. They’re here after all this time, still concerned about particulars and false western moralisms. They do all kinds of gymnastics with the minds of the masses to divert them from the struggle for land, bread, and water.

They are being found out, though. Young and old progressive Africans have started studying and propagating your works and see their (colonized intellectuals') likeness once again. The objective conditions are also giving rise to a newer, more badass context that defies the pull and gravity of bourgeois intellection grown from those barren western soils. These new rebels, ghetto-grown intellectuals, unknown revolutionaries, are at once denouncing these puppets and concretely building again the old-but-known mass organizational model that led to our liberation in times gone by from the clutches of classic colonialism.

Your name, though, continues to raise colonial anxiety. It continues to sound like metal dropping on the silence and soothing sounds of the corporate world. From Palestine to Panama, it continues to liberate, to agitate, even, as it brings home sanity to a lost generation. Your righteous ghost keeps coming back to haunt the Towers of Babel. Even after all this time! It reminds one of the old saying that wickedness tarries but a little while, but the works of the righteous lives on forevermore. Your lives and afterlives have clearly shown the truth and precision of that good old saying. Year after year, you resurface in the most unlikeliest of places, but unbeknownst to bourgeois historians, so long as oppression exists and there is a demand for the objective material conditions to change, you, the philosopher of the colossal mass, will show face, heart, and mind, and guide the movement even from the grave.

But there is trouble now. Your name and your work continues to be appropriated by academe. You’ve become a career for the well-to-do, the ones who erase. They have complicated your legacy. The colonized intellectual you so much detest has come to become the so-called guardian of your name. I hope you come into the whirlwind and destroy that myth. I hope you come into the thunder, into the tsunami, into the catalytic force of nature. But in the end, I guess that’s our battle to fight. To honor your name by bringing it home to the oppressed and the wretched of the earth.

There is so much to enrich this letter with, but so little time and space. But we who inherited the disinherited, we who took the pledge to raise a billion-strong army, we who know liberation and freedom is a birthright, we who want to end the compartmentalization of the world — the Manichaeism of the land — we are here, in our many forms, subjectively and objectively honoring the call to “...shake off the great mantle of night which has enveloped us, and reach for the light. The new day which is dawning must find us determined, enlightened and resolute. We must abandon our dreams and say farewell to our old beliefs and former friendships. Let us not lose time in useless laments or sickening mimicry.”

Abolish it All: Towards Eradicating the Prison and Military Industrial Complex

By Blake Simons

I, like many other Black radicals who follow the Black radical tradition, are filled with hope to see such a large amount of people talking about abolishment of the police. A few months ago, many would deem us wild to even think that abolishment was such a possibility, let alone a mainstream conversation. With national discussion, however, nuance is erased and conversations become watered down, and the reality of the conditions we are in are not properly articulated. I want to recognize the work of Mariame Kaba, who helped me come to this abolitionist politic; in addition, I want to thank the many folks like Angela Davis who have laid the foundation for abolitionist thought. This piece seeks to provide clarity and guidance to the people, and a framework for which abolishment of the prison industrial complex is possible. 

For starters, it is important to note that the prison industrial complex is deeply tied to the military industrial complex. The weapons and gear manufactured by captured Africans in penitentiaries is used to loot countries in the 3rd world. This makes way for corporations like apple, tesla, google, and microsoft to come to the continent to loot Africa’s resources while also using African child labor. This is only made possible because the police force captures Africans and then enslaves us in penitentiaries in which our people are forced to make weapons and materials for the military. This undeniably connects the prison industrial complex with the military industrial complex. It’s important that we know our enemy and what we are up against if we are going to abolish the PIC. 

The us empire and its military is the most violent imperial regime in human history. Do we think that the biggest purveyor of violence will willingly concede to demands of abolishment? The national guard was called in and military rule began when windows were broken and buildings were burned. Similarly, if we seek to abolish the PIC, this fascist state will have a violent response. I purposefully start here with this framework because it’s important to know what we will be up against if we seek to truly abolish prisons and the police, and thus the military industrial complex. 

america’s economy runs off the exploitation of captured Africans and global imperial dominance. To think that prisons and police will be abolished through non violence underestimates the capacity for violence that america has. ‬america will do anything to preserve its colonial violence, history shows us this and it is a scientific fact.

Prisons won’t be abolished through the reformist calls to defund. Schools are defunded. Healthcare is defunded. Section 8 housing services are defunded. Just because the police are defunded doesn’t mean that they will be abolished. Revolution doesn’t come from policy changes, it comes from destroying these systems that kill us. This is an important distinction necessary for us to be aware of. We must be wary of reformist calls that will somehow “lead” us to abolishment. 

We know that reform only furthers fascism. The past 400 years shows us that. We can’t settle for nothing less than the complete eradication of the systems of oppression that kill and exploit our people on the daily. Whether it is transphobia, ableism, or police violence (which are all deeply connected and often intersect at the same time) we can’t concede to the demands of a fascist state for reform. As George Jackson says,.“...with each reform, revolution became more remote[...]But if one were forced for the sake of clarity to define [fascism] in a word simple enough for all to understand, that word would be ‘reform.”Our people’s lives depend on revolution. 

While new calls to abolish the police show that the general public is ready for change, we have to be honest about what true abolishment will take. As prison-industrial-complex abolitionists, we seek to eradicate systems of violence that enslave, kill, and exploit us. We seek to create new systems that address violence at its core to create peace in our communities. Kwame Ture teaches us that we (revolutionaries) are not only destroyers but we are creators. Creators of a new world where peace is possible. But we must understand that in order for peace to exist, there is a scientific method that must be used to obtain it.

We must understand that armed struggle in defense of and against this fascist state is the only way to eradicate fascism. Mussolini wasn’t defeated through non-violent protests. Hitler wasn’t defeated through non-violent protests. And trump and the united corporations of america won’t be destroyed through non-violence. Revolutionary (counter)violence, which is a defensive and life-affirming posture as much as it is an act of self-preservation, will create the conditions in which we can abolish these systems that have oppressed us for the past 400 years. As Malcolm X said best, there’s been no revolution in the world without bloodshed — from Haiti, to Venezuela, to Cuba, to Ghana. 

While many might say our people are not ready for this, I would like to remind people that it was unarmed protestors in Minneapolis who sent pigs squealing and retreating from their precinct. This happened as people in current time created a plan to do so. Imagine if the people had more organization? Imagine if the people were armed? There’s endless possibilities if we have an organized guerrilla front. 

As I said earlier, revolutionary (counter)violence is at the core of abolishment, but as revolutionaries we also create twice as much as we seek to destroy. As my comrade noname said,

“when the dust settles and the protests stop, communities will still be poor, police will still murder and violate citizens. prisons will still be filled with millions of ppl. half a million ppl will still be houseless. the past 2 weeks was the easy part. solidarity isn’t a trend”.

This is why we have to create programs, people’s programs, that serve the material needs of our people pending armed struggle. We have to show our people that a future outside the parasitic conditions of capitalism do exist. We need food programs for the hungry. Housing programs for the houseless. Medical programs for the people. COVID-19 testing for the community. We must provide this for our people. If we are to claim the title as revolutionary, it is our duty to serve the people, love the people, and free the people. 

In struggle.

*

Blake Simons is co-host of Hella Black podcast and co-founder of People’s Breakfast Oakland, a grassroots Black socialist organization in Oakland, CA. The author is on Twitter @BlakeDontCrack.

COVID-19 and the Global Pandemic of Anti-Blackness

By Ewuare X. Osayande

Originally published at the author’s website.

The initial word was that Black folks couldn’t catch it. Rumors began spreading that Black people were immune to the virus. But what we have learned and continue to learn with each passing day as the global death toll rises is that Black life is quite susceptible to this virus. But not in a way that makes sense biologically. Black people are not genetically predisposed to this novel coronavirus. What we are is generationally predisposed to an anti-Black discrimination that has weakened our communal immune system leaving each of us vulnerable to this virus in ways people in other communities are not.

Wherever Black people are in this world, we exist mostly on the social margins, isolated and disproportionately impacted by policies and social practices rooted in notions of white supremacy that undermine our collective capacity for health, wealth and safety. Whether on the continent of Africa or throughout the Black Diaspora, our health and safety have been severely hampered by a global social order that has rested upon a racialized ranking that necessitates Black existence be fixed at its bottom to enable and justify whiteness to exist at its apex. Since the 1500s, this arrangement has had deadly implications for Black people. As the bodies pile in over-crowded morgues, hospital rooms and rented trailers in the US and in all the places where Black people live, this virus is exposing the pillars of that structure in ways that are as horrific as when European slave ships set sail from Africa to the Americas.

For the first month or so most of the news coverage in the United States addressed the issue without consideration of race. This was touted as a virus that was wreaking havoc on all segments of the population equally. Then Milwaukee happened. The first casualties in that predominantly white working-class city were all Black men. And when more Black people continued to die, the community there began to ask questions that forced a narrative change. Initial reports claimed that the upsurge in the Black community was due to Black people not heeding the warnings and precautions. Then as activists began to call out the contradictions in the news coverage, more honest reports emerged identifying racial disparities in all areas of life as the true underlying conditions that account for the sky rocketing rates of infection and death in Black communities.

Yet, scant attention had been paid to the impact that generations of discrimination in health care, housing, education, employment — the fundamental pillars of the society — has had on Black people’s overall health. Even less attention has been given to the need for strategies to redress the underlying social and economic constraints that continue to suffocate the life of Black possibilities and opportunity. That Black people in Flint are forced to tackle this pandemic without clean water is a telling indictment. Black communities have already been dealing with pandemic-like concerns for decades in the US. And as much as we would want to believe that money solves all problems, this virus is showing us that wealth or its lack is not much of a deciding factor.

Less than a week after Milwaukee, officials in the wealthiest predominantly Black county in the country, Prince George’s County in Maryland, were rushing to meet the surge in expected hospitalizations as a result of the virus spread. A few days later, the county had amassed the largest concentration of positive cases in the state.

These disparate conditions facing African Americans are further compounded by the everyday racism that puts Black life at risk. Despite the directives from all levels of government for every person to cover their nose and mouth when in public, video footage of Black people being accosted and harassed by police are seen with a regularity that is beyond baffling. Some show Black persons escorted out of grocery stores under claims of looking suspicious. In the videos we see them being followed by police as they exit stores as white customers enter wearing the exact same masks on their faces. The very racism that is responsible for the weakened immune systems of Black people due to stress and anxiety have not shown any signs of reprieve in this time of extreme grieving.

For most Black people, there is no sanctuary. There is no salvage from the turmoil of being turned away at the very places established to provide care. Each week new stories emerge on social media and national news outlets of Black people dying just days after being denied admission at hospitals despite showing symptoms of the virus.

At the time of this writing, the Black mortality rate from this Corona-virus is more than twice that of Latinos and Asians and almost three times the rate of white mortality in the US. According to the APM Research Lab, “in some places, the multiple between Black and White mortality rates greatly exceeds the 2.6 overall figure that we’ve constructed from all available data for the nation. In Kansas and Wisconsin, Black residents are 7 times more likely to die than White residents. In Washington D.C., the rate among Blacks is 6 times higher than Whites, while in Michigan and Missouri, it is 5 times greater. In Arkansas, Illinois, Louisiana, New York State, Oregon and South Carolina, Blacks are 3–4 times more likely to die of the virus than Whites.” This is incomprehensible.

African-Americans represent approximately 13 percent of the US population. In the UK, the Black population is less than 5 percent, yet the Black mortality rate from the coronavirus is running at more than three times the rate of whites there, far outdistancing other minority and immigrant groups in the process. The London-based Institute of Fiscal Studies has released a study that attempts to get at an explanation for these stark disparities. What the researchers are clear on is that Black workers in Britain are over-represented in “key worker roles,” what here in the US would be considered essential and front-line workers. What these studies have yet to get clear on is how anti-black racism, itself, is a key factor.

Britain’s own prime minister, Boris Johnson, whom many consider a Trump knock-off, recently recovered from a COVID-19 infection that had him on life-support. Yet, even his near-death experience has not led to the creation of a plan for the most impacted communities. In the land that not too long ago tried to remove its Black citizens, British leaders are lax in their concern for Black life.

Back here in the states, all concern for Black life has been overlooked as attention has been focused on the spectacle of armed white militias and white evangelicals storming Democratically-run state capitols demanding that their governors reopen the economy. Trump, for his part, calls these noose-wielding, swastika wearing, confederate flag waving Americans “very good people” and encourages governors to “give a little.” Yet Trump has not given much of any support to communities ransacked by this virus. In fact, the governor of Maryland has reportedly put the national guard on watch of essential PPE stockpiles to block Trump’s efforts at intercepting state supply. Re-opening state economies and public facilities en masse right now would amount to a national death sentence for Black America.

That death sentence has already been enacted unofficially in Brazil. In the country with the highest population of Black people in the diaspora, Black people are dying at rates that dwarf all other communities there. First brought to the country by the wealthy returning to major cities where Black people work in menial jobs and as house servants, the virus has now spread into the over-crowded favelas where residents live without running water and proper sanitation.

In many ways, the Brazilian government mirrors that of the US response. Both nations are led by capitalists who came to power with claims to clean up government corruption with campaigns mired in rightwing conservative rhetoric with winks to white nationalists and militia groups. Both nations have class-based economies that keep Black and Brown workers locked in poverty, discrimination, intimidation and violence, where police regularly engage in flagrant acts of brutality, assault and abuse. None of this coincidence. Donald Trump and Jair Bolsonaro flaunt their friendship before the world. Their strategic alliance as political leaders are linked in a whiteness that revels in anti-black violence that is both rhetorical and real. Both men have dismissed the guidance of medical experts on how to reduce the spread in their respective countries. Touting a tough-guy image reminiscent of Mussolini, Bolsonaro has gone as far as making impromptu appearances in densely populated areas as public acts of disregard of the pandemic. But this is not about lack of understanding or ignorance. Both leaders were receiving briefs months before the virus’ arrival on their respective shores. These are malicious acts representative of a political class that seeks to coddle a Christian evangelical base that has long kept social distance from science as they await the return of their white savior. For them, this pandemic is prophecy fulfilled.

Yet, even science has not been the friend of Black people during this pandemic. At the height of the crisis, when governments were desperate to find potential cures, two French “medical experts” went on live TV with one, Dr. Jean-Paul Mira (who heads up an intensive care unit in a Paris hospital), saying, “If I can be provocative, shouldn’t we be doing this study in Africa, where there are no masks, no treatments, no resuscitation?” Although this was met with some criticism from various sectors, the fact that two esteemed doctors would casually call for experimenting on a population of people is more than revolting. It speaks to the kind of anti-blackness that has plagued African populations since France colonized most of the continent. It speaks to a world that is willing to promote experts and leaders willing to push the envelope of acceptable parameters of denigration of Black lives. It shows us how little progress has been made since the 1921 publication of René Maran’s classic anti-colonial novel, Batouala, in which the lead character says, “We are nothing but flesh out of which taxes may be ground. … The white men are killing us slowly.”

But perhaps nothing shows the inhumane levels of anti-blackness in this time of COVID-19 than the experiences of Africans in China.

Despite being the target of Trump’s racist campaigns that seek to deflect blame for his abysmal failures to curtail this virus’ impact onto the Chinese government, China has concocted its own racist narrative which has targeted Africans throughout China. Video footage of Africans kicked out of their places of residence onto the streets without any means of support from local or national agencies sent shock-waves of anger throughout Africa. In Guangzhou there have been cases of Africans having their passports taken by police further jeopardizing their safety. Conditions deteriorated so terribly that rumors began to spread of African officials planning to send planes to return their countrymen and women back home.

The African presence in China is a direct result of the strategic inroads the Chinese government has made with African countries such as Kenya and Nigeria. Since becoming Africa’s largest trade partner more than a decade ago, China has invested billions in infrastructure development with an emphasis on port and railroad construction. Yet, what is clear is that these investments will do little to change the excessive class-stratification and extreme levels of income disparity that exist throughout Africa.

These recent events suggest a pattern of abuse all too familiar to African workers and migrants in search of a financial foothold in a global economy predicated on an exploitation that disregards their humanity to the point of death. The world may have shuttered when Trump compared countries in African to excrement, but shitty is a most accurate term to describe the response around the world to the Black COVID-19 mortality rate.

At the time of this writing, more Black people have now died in the US from this coronavirus than were lynched during segregation. Never in a white supremacist’s wildest dreams could they have imagined a plague that would wipe out thousands of Black lives in a matter of a couple of months. When the germs clear and the air is breathable again without fear, this moment in human history will be marked by the toll it has taken on Black life. It will reveal a turbulent world economic order crumbling on the backs of an essential Black labor pool kept at subsistence levels of health with no sufficient safeguards in place. Will all that may be uncertain and unknowable about our world right now, one thing is for sure — the pandemic of anti-blackness, its symptoms and effects, will remain long after the coronavirus COVID-19 has come and gone.

Ewuare X. Osayande is a writer and activist. The author of several books, his latest is a collection of poetry entitled Black Phoenix Uprising. Learn more about his work at Osayande.org.