Against Akon's New Liberia: Class Remains The Key Link

By Christopher Winston

This was originally published at Hood Communist.

There has been much confusion regarding the character, purpose, and benefit of projects in Africa such as those launched by multimillionaire musical artist Akon in Senegal. This project is described by the New York Post as being “run entirely on renewable energy” and Akon himself is quoted as saying: “With the AKoin we are building cities, the first one being in Senegal…we’re securing the land and closing out all the legislation papers for the city. We want to make it a free zone and cryptocurrency-driven as a test market.” Essentially, this is a capitalist project. This is an old strategy, one of wealthy diasporic Africans (Akon himself is of Senegalese extraction) returning to the motherland, buying up property, and trying to construct little Wakandas. The recolonization movement in the early 1800s (backed by wealthy colonizers in the UK and US) led to the formation of two “independent states” on the West Coast of Africa, Liberia, and Sierra Leone. These countries were not independent, they can be seen as the first neocolonial test cases. In the case of Sierra Leone, initially populated by diasporic Africans who self-liberated from slavery during the American “Revolution”, it remained a colony of Britain until 1961. Both countries lacked native control over their natural resources. Liberian rubber was the property of Yankee corporations, diamonds from Sierra Leone remained in the grasping hands of the British. One of the main reasons that the Americans sought to destroy the movement led by Marcus Garvey was that it promoted, encouraged, and developed strategies for African economic self-determination in the US, in the Caribbean and Latin America, and in the Continent. The imperialists simply could not allow this, and it is to the eternal demerit of Communists that we failed to develop mass links and a United Front with this movement which captured the energy and support of tens of millions of Africans, instead of working for its destruction because we saw it as an ideological and political rival. 

Back to the Akon City project. Akon’s goals, I believe, are not willfully malicious. I begrudge no African that thinks they are genuinely helping their people. However, this project is a capitalist project and thus is doomed to either fail or set up a wealthy utopia for Europeans and Africans with the means to play around with cryptocurrency and such. In essence, Akon is hamstrung by his class position and class stand. Rich Africans returning to the Continent and seeking to set up what are essentially little Liberias and little Wakandas is a strategy that does not take into account the presence and insidious machinations of neocolonialism and bureaucratic capitalism (compradorism). Africa is poor not because the people there are bad capitalists. Africa is poor because of capitalism and imperialism and its lackeys on the Continent who are installed to ensure the flow of resources to the old colonial metropoles. Akon City is closed to the tens of thousands of Congolese youth who mine the coltan which will fuel Akon’s cryptocurrency. Akon City is closed to the hundreds of thousands in Dakar who live in shipping containers and do not have running water, or electricity. Akon City is as real to the majority of Africans as Wakanda is. For all Africans to enjoy a high standard of living it is essential to replace capitalist pipe dreams with Pan-African socialist reality. Africans, working-class and peasant Africans, must have control of our wealth and our Continent. Neocolonialism and imperialism must be buried with armed force. As long as colonizers continue to loot our continent we will see no peace, millions of us will continue to die no matter how many glass and concrete monstrosities Akon constructs. Look to Liberia and Sierra Leone as negative examples, and study the works of those such as Kwame Nkrumah, Malcolm X, and other Pan-African revolutionaries. Apply them to our day to day reality, analyze and criticize everything, and seize the time. Take class as the key link.

MLK and the Black Misleadership Class

By Glen Ford

Originally published at Black Agenda Report.

Dr. Martin Luther King’s birthday is the greatest sheer spectacle of hypocrisy and historical duplicity of the year, as Black misleaders take center stage to claim his mandate and mission on behalf of a corporate party.

The birthday of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. is commemorated each year at thousands of events in literally every U.S. city, yet the martyred human rights leader’s political philosophy is totally absent from the agenda of today’s Black Misleadership Class, a grasping cabal of hustlers and opportunists that have grown fat and infinitely corrupt through their collaboration with “the giant triplets of racism, extreme materialism, and militarism.” Their “freedom train” was the Democratic Party, the half of the corporate electoral duopoly that allowed colored folks to ride as first class passengers – as long as they didn’t question the schedule or the destination. The budding Black misleaders hopped on board the Democratic Party express to the boardrooms of corporate power at about the same time that Dr. King was making his definitive break with the evil “triplets’” infernal machinery, including both corporate parties.  

In his April 4, 1967 “Beyond Vietnam – A Time to Break Silence” speech  at New York City’s Riverside Church, Dr. King burned his bridges with the nation’s top Democrat, despite President Lyndon Johnson’s indispensable role in pushing civil and voting rights and anti-poverty bills through Congress and championing an affirmative action rationale that -- as spelled out in his 1965 speech  at Howard University -- was a principled endorsement of reparations for crimes committed against Black people by the U.S. society and State. Johnson went farther than any previous U.S. president in acknowledging Black American citizenship rights and grievances, even as the Republican half of the electoral duopoly was preparing to assume the role of White Man’s Party through Richard Nixon’s “southern strategy.” Yet, Dr. King, a proponent of peace and democratic socialism, understood that the way to the “Promised Land” was not through Black collaboration with the evils inherent in capitalism and its ceaseless, predatory wars. “I have come to believe that we are integrating into a burning house,” King told his friend , Harry Belafonte. 

By 1967, the War in Vietnam was consuming the promises of Johnson’s Great Society. America was undeniably the “greatest purveyor of violence in the world today,” King declared. The U.S. had already killed a million Vietnamese, “mostly children,” but it was also a war on America’s poor. “I knew that America would never invest the necessary funds or energies in rehabilitation of its poor so long as adventures like Vietnam continued to draw men and skills and money like some demonic destructive suction tube,” King told the crowd at Riverside. “So, I was increasingly compelled to see the war as an enemy of the poor and to attack it as such.” That meant breaking with the Democrats and their president. More importantly, in his Riverside speech Dr. King framed the Vietnamese as engaged in a righteous struggle to complete their long quest for sovereignty and independence. King broke with imperialism, the consummate expression of the all three “triple evils.” So they killed him, the next year.

The National Security State, the protector of the capitalist order, to which both parties are beholden, then proceeded to crush the Black movement to the left of Dr. King – most fiercely in the Gestapo-like assault on the self-determinationist and staunchly anti-imperialist Black Panther Party in the bloody year of 1969. 

By 1970, the Black Radical Tradition lay mostly in the graveyard, and the way was clear for the Black Misleadership Class to monopolize Black politics on behalf of their corporate overseers. The first act of the first big city Black mayor, Cleveland’s Carl Stokes, was to put the police under the command of a Black retired general, whose first act was to issue the cops flesh- and bone-destroying hollow point bullets. 

The rise of the almost entirely Democrat-allied Black Misleadership Class is perfectly coterminous with construction of the Black Mass Incarceration State. The “New Jim Crow” was a bipartisan project, initiated under Democrat Lyndon Johnson’s Law Enforcement Assistance Administration, which vastly increased the manpower and funding for local police departments, and was put on hyper-drive by Republican President Richard Nixon’s “War on Drugs” – a War on Blacks that never ended but was re-declared by Republican President Reagan and reinforced by Democrat President Bill Clinton. At the local level, the exponential growth of the Mass Black Incarceration regime was administered by increasingly Black city governments, which oversaw and processed the deportation of millions of Black men, women and children to the Prison Gulag. Virtually all of these Black operatives of race and class oppression are Democrats. And all of them are celebrating their own political ascension as the wondrous outcome of Dr. King’s “dream.”

By 2014, 80 percent of the Congressional Black Caucus was voting to continue the Pentagon 1033 program that funnels billions of dollars in military weapons and gear to local police departments. Four years later, 75 percent of the Black Caucus voted to make police a “protected class” and assault on cops a federal crime. (See BAR, “Black Caucus Sells Out Its Constituents Again – to the Cops.”)

Although the Black misleaders were quick to join the domestic war on the Black poor, African American public opinion remained war-averse, skeptical of U.S. motives on foreign shores. In 2003, only four Black members of Congress backed George Bush’s invasion of Iraq. But the advent of the Black Democratic President -- a misleader par excellence – gave much of the Black Caucus a free pass to play warmonger. Half of the Blacks in Congress voted to continue the bombing and regime change in Libya, an African nation, in the summer of 2011. None of the Caucus has raised serious objections to the U.S.-aided slaughter of more than six million Congolese under Presidents Clinton (Dem.), Bush (Rep.), Obama (Dem.), and Trump (Rep.). The American military occupation of much of the African continent through AFRICOM is a non-issue among the Black misleaders. 

RUSSIA!!! on the other hand, is an existential threat “to our democracy,” say the Black Democrats, who are eager to pledge their allegiance to the same CIA and National Security State that assassinated Patrice Lumumba, murdered Malcolm, King and scores of Black Panthers, and worked hand in glove with white-ruled South Africa to kill thousands of freedom fighters across the continent. Los Angeles Black Congresswoman Maxine Waters, who once (correctly) charged the CIA with flooding her city with crack cocaine, now struts around waving an American flag while denouncing “Russian” meddling in a U.S. election that was actually stolen by Republican suppression of Black votes, as usual – with no serious protest by Democrats, as usual. 

The Black misleaders are as silly as they are shameless, but they are not ineffectual. No white man could eviscerate Dr. King’s radical legacy, or make Malcolm X appear harmless to the imperial order – that’s a job for the Black Misleadershsip Class. While Dr. King rejected an alliance with the “triple evils,” Black Democratic misleaders describe their deal with the Devil as smart, “strategic” politics. They whip up war fever against small, non-white nations that seek only the right to govern themselves, behaving no differently on the world scene – and sometimes worse – than Donald Trump.

They shame and weaken Black America, and have joined the enemies of life on Earth. King would shake his head, mournfully. Malcolm would keep his tight smile, doggedly. Then both would organize to expose and depose the Black Misleadership Class. 

BAR executive editor Glen Ford can be contacted at Glen.Ford@BlackAgendaReport.com.

Never Forget the Real MLK

As our state-sponsored celebration of Martin Luther King, Jr. commences, let’s not forget some important facts about this great man:

1. He was against the Vietnam War during a time when many Americans were not. Decades later, this view against the war has developed into a mainstream narrative, but in the 1960s, those who spoke out and marched against it (students, Civil Rights leaders) and refused to serve (Muhammad Ali) were beaten, hosed down, killed, and jailed. He would undoubtedly be railing against the US imperialist state and its perpetual war machine today

2. He condemned issues like poverty, inequality, and racism as systemic ills, not merely individual shortcomings. To this day, such broad analyses (those touching on capitalism and white supremacy) are rejected and disregarded by most as “fringe” or “too radical.” In this way, Dr. King would still be viewed as “too radical” by the current mainstream media (the same folks who whitewash and co-opt his legacy, and then celebrate this watered-down version of the man).

3. He was hated and despised by a majority of white America. In 1966, he had a 63 percent negative poll rating. He had rocks thrown at his head and was routinely spat on during marches. This hatred still exists today. Simply turn on TV stations or radio shows or peruse social media comments to see how black liberation movements are ridiculed, loathed, and detested by the thousands. Nazis and white supremacists are marching in US streets and congregating on social media. There is no doubt that Dr. King would be on the front lines of current movements; and, therefore, would still take the brunt of this hatred, ignorance, and disrespect - even today.

4. He was considered to be “an enemy of the state” by various government agencies. The FBI tapped his phone calls, blacklisted him as a “suspected Communist,” and sent anonymous letters demeaning him and encouraging him to commit suicide. Various levels of the government, from the FBI to the Memphis Police Dept, have been found to have some involvement in his death.

5. He initiated the “Poor People’s Campaign” and put forth an economic and social bill of rights that espoused “a national responsibility to provide work for all.” Dr. King advocated for a jobs guarantee and would end unemployment by requiring the government to provide jobs to anyone who could not find one. The bill of rights also included “the right of every citizen to a minimum income," regardless of whether they are employed. Today, these proposals would be laughed at by media pundits, and he would be written off as "crazy" by many of the same folks who pretend to celebrate him.

6. He supported the Planned Parenthood Federation and believed that things like “family planning and contraception” should be fully funded by the government – ideas that are despised by modern conservatives who have no shame in calling on their whitewashed version of Dr. King’s legacy to use for their own agendas.

Celebrating Dr. King’s life and role in the struggle is important, but learning and considering the real man and his real ideas is even more crucial in a time that still needs them.

Let’s celebrate Dr. King for who he really was: a radical people’s champion who confronted the power structure, faced down the defenders of this structure, challenged capitalism, challenged poverty, challenged white supremacy, challenged militarism and war, and challenged the status quo that engulfs all of these elements – a status quo that still exists. A status quo that now shamelessly co-opts his legacy for its own use.

Never Forget.

Lessons of Rojava and Histories of Abolition

By Brendan McQuade

Originally published at Marxist sociology blog.

The Rojava Revolution is one of the most important revolutionary struggle of recent years. In the context of civil war and great power intrigue, the Kurdish movement evolved into a multi-ethnic and non-sectarian autonomous administration that governs approximately two million people in Northeastern Syria. These liberated areas have produced important experiments in direct democracy, cooperative and ecological development, and community self-defense and conflict resolution.

The Revolution is also the liberatory counterpoint to the Islamic State. In 2014 and 2015, Rojava’s militias received international attention for breaking the Islamic State’s siege of the city of Kobani and creating an evacuation corridor for some 50,000 Yazidis who were fleeing the Islamic State. Given the Syrian Civil War is also a climate conflict, the great political question of the 21st century may well be the socialism of Rojava or the barbarism of the Islamic State.

It’s no surprise the Rojava Revolution has been a point of inspiration for radicals across the world and, particularly, abolitionists and others on the libertarian-left. In their manifesto, Burn Down the American Plantation, the Revolutionary Abolitionist Movement, an anarchist organization with chapters in Philadelphia, New York Chicago, New Haven, and California’s Inland Empire, considers Rojava to be a blueprint for organization elsewhere: “The Rojava Revolution, the anti-state revolution in northern Syria, provides us with a successful example of the strategies of organization and resistance we need to apply in the US today.”

It’s also no surprise that the Rojava Revolution may soon be over. The revolution developed in a power vacuum created when Assad government unilaterally withdrew from the Kurdish regions in Northeast Syria to focus on the developing civil war in Western Syria. The United States made a pragmatic alliance with Rojava during the campaign against the Islamic State but what that support meant going forward was never clear. Turkey, Syria’s neighbor to the north, is keen to both see Assad out and the Kurdish movement crushed. Between Turkey and the Trump administration, it was only a matter of time before the precarious balance of political forces shifted against Rojava. In October 2019, the US withdrew troops from Syria, clearing the way for Turkish invasion. This threat, in turn, forced Rojava to reconcile with Damascus for short term survival. What this means for the future of the Revolution is far from clear but it’s hard to feel encouraged.

What does this tragedy mean for our understanding of political struggle today? Does the seeming twilight of the Rojava Revolution mean that it is just another failed one? The Rojava Revolution could not defend itself against the state. It’s unclear how similar strategies could prevail in the United States, where the openings for the type of democratic autonomy seen Rojava are much smaller (or perhaps fundamentally different).

These questions, I contend, can only be answered if we confront them on the level of political strategy and opportunity, rather than political philosophy and identity. Abolitionists and anti-authoritarians are right to be inspired by example of Rojava but translating the lessons of the Revolution to a wildly different political context like the United States is no simple task. To better understand the Rojava Revolution, I return to the fundamentals of historical materialism. My recent article published Social Justice, “Histories of Abolition, Critiques of Security,” considers Rojava in relation to the debates abolition in the nascent US left: the rejection of abolition as fanciful and its defense as an area of non-reformist reformism in the struggle for 21st century socialism and strategy of insurrection. The impasse between a rejection of abolition and the tired revolution/reform binary can be resolved by returning to fundamentals of historical materialism, and particularly, W.E.B. Du Bois’ analysis of “abolition democracy” in his seminal work, Black Reconstruction.

Histories of Abolition

Abolition democracy refers to the social forces that led the “Reconstruction of Democracy” after the Civil War. It was revolutionary experiment made possible, first, by the direct action of black workers, a General Strike, and, later, advanced through continual mobilization (including armed self-defense) and the non-reformist reforms of Radical Reconstruction. While the antislavery struggle provided the political content of abolition democracy, this revolutionary project existed in precarious conditions, the temporary alignment of black workers, middle class abolitionists represented in Congress by the Radical Republicans, and, eventually, northern industrialists and poor southern whites. It was a revolutionary moment that was never fully consolidated and, as result, its gains were rolled back.

Despite this seeming failure, the moment held a deeper significance that middle class Abolitionists (and many subsequent scholars) largely missed. Abolition democracy challenged the fundamental class relations upon which historical capitalism stood: a racially stratified global division of labor, which, starting the in the sixteenth century, tied Europe, West Africa, and the Americas together in a capitalist world-economy. Black workers were the most devalued and exploited laborers, what Du Bois called “the foundation stone not only of Southern social structure but of Northern manufacture and commerce, of the English factory system, of European commerce, of buying and selling on a world-scale.”

By striking at the root of global capitalism, the American Civil War that produced the cataclysm and change that created the possibility for radical change. This possibility was lost because the Abolitionists never confronted capital and the labor movement never embraced abolition. When politics shifted, the temporary class alliances that enabled radical reconstruction gave way to what Du Bois called a “counter-revolution” or “dictatorship of property.”

On a more general level, Du Bois establishes the need to understand abolition in relation to the (1) social relations and (2) historical processes that define a particular historical moment, while also considering (3) social movement clusters that were contesting these relations of forces. In Black Reconstruction, then, Du Bois analyzes the abolition democracy in relation (1) the class composition of the antebellum United States, (2) the consolidation of an industrial economy, and (3) the interaction of the budding labor movement with the anti-slavery actions of black workers and Abolitionists.

In this way, Black Reconstruction offers a different understanding of abolition, beyond the tired revolution-reform binary. As an analytic and organizing concept, abolition democracy becomes the liberatory politics embedded within struggles of historically-specific mobilizations of popular forces. It is the struggle for freedom from violent regulation and subjectification. Du Bois shows that it is organically tied up with the related fights to secure conditions for social reproduction, distribute the social product, shape shared institutions, and set collective priorities. In other words, abolition—or socialism, for that matter—is not a political program we can define in the abstract and implement. It is a process of liberation tied to broader clusters of emancipatory movements as they emerge and exist within specific historical moments. The question, then, is not revolution or reform but who is fighting for abolition—or socialism—what does that even mean in the contemporary United States and what will it take to win.

Du Bois provides a historical materialist understanding of abolition as interplay of disruptive direct action and incremental change within a historically informed understanding of a particular social struggle. This holistic approach highlights the specific social relations that constitute the exploitative and oppressive social formations in which we live. In this way, Du Bois can provide the necessary perspective to ask what kind of interventions could be “non-reformist,” while also creating space to understand direct action and insurrection in terms of political strategy, rather than philosophy.

Abolition, Socialism and Political Strategy

This approach undermines some of the common slogans made about nature of structural violence today. Mass incarceration is not the New Jim Crow nor is it a direct a simple outgrowth of slavery. What Angela Davis terms “the prison of slavery and the slavery of prison” are different arrangements. Slavery, convict leasing, and Jim Crow were systems to marshal and mobilize labor. Mass incarceration is a system to warehouse surplus populations. These differences, moreover, speak to tremendous structural transformations in the world-economy and the American state. If we want to be politically effective, we, unlike abolitionists of the 1860s, must appreciate the specificities of our moment.

This means acknowledging that, as Julia Sudbury does, “the slavery-prison analogy tends to erase the presence of non-black prisoners.” It means recognizing that an exclusive focus on anti-black racism threatens to dismiss the experiences of Latinx and indigenous people with imprisonment, policing, and state violence. It means admitting that the incarceration rate for white people in the United States, while much lower than that of historically marginalized groups, is still grotesque in comparison with the rest of the world. In the words of Angela Davis, it means understanding that the prison “has become a receptacle for all those human beings who bear the inheritance of the failure to create abolition democracy in the aftermath of slavery,” while also recognizing that “this inheritance is not only born by black prisoners, but by poor Latino, Native American, Asian and white prisoners.” It means it thinking about revolutionary strategy in way that appreciates the historical forces that create our moment, without being unthinkingly tied to anachronistic ideas and strategies that today may be ineffective.

Most importantly, this perspective allows us to situate powerful moments of revolutionary breakthrough in their historical context and derive the appropriate conclusions from them. In this regard, we should not dismiss the way Burn Down the American Plantation highlights the experience of Rojava Revolution. Rather, we should understand the social processes and social relations that surround this important event, namely the collapse of the state during Syria Civil War and the trajectory of the Kurdish Movement.

Contextualizing the Rojava Revolution in this manner is not the same as dismissing its relevance. Instead, it allows us to usefully interpret its lessons from the vantage point of particular time and place. Recognizing that the Rojava Revolution took place amidst civil war and state collapse raises doubts about the applicability of the model in areas where the state is strong. Burn Down the American Plantation advocates “placing self-defense at the center of our revolutionary movement” and calls on existing anti-fascist groups and cop watches to model themselves on the self-defense forces of Rojava Revolution. Specifically, the manifesto calls on these organizations to “Develop…the capacity to begin launching offensive actions against fascists and the regime.” This advocacy for armed insurrection is misguided. It fails to appreciate the conditions that made Rojava possible, while also neglecting to mention the awesome coercive powers of the American state and the weakness of the nascent American left.

Moreover, contextualizing Rojava gives us the possibility of translating the lessons of the Revolution into our context. The continually high numbers of “police involved shootings” in the United States, the breakthrough of white supremacist movements, the escalating confrontations at protests, and mounting incidents of political violence all underscore the urgent need to community self-defense in this political moment. This is need is structural as evinced by the recent emergence of armed left formations in the United States like the Socialist Relief Association and the Red Guards of the Party for Socialism and Liberation that joined older groups like Red Neck Revolt.

More generally, there is a budding muncipalist movement in the United States that, in part, draws on some of the same intellectual currents that also inform Rojava. In this United States, this movement is best exemplified by Jackson-Kush Plan associated with Malcolm X Grassroots Movement and Cooperation Jackson. The plan has three pillars building cooperative economy, creating participatory structures at the city level, networking progressive political leaders. Moreover, this electoral road to libertarian socialism at the city level has already delivered some concrete results. In 2013, Jackson, Mississippi elected Mayor Chokwe Lumumba, who campaigned on the promises of to implement the Jackson Plan. Although Lumumba died less than year into office, his son, Chokwe Antar Lumumba, successfully won the mayoral race in June 2017. Already, the new administration pursuing an economic development strategy based around promoting cooperative businesses and putting in place a participatory process, empowering popular assemblies organized by to develop a budget proposal/

Notably, however, Chokwe Antar Lumumba’s young administration has been remarkably conventional when it comes to criminal justice. While the Mayor Lumumba has repeatedly drawn the link between crime and poverty, he’s also pledged to be “tough on crime.” Moreover, the new administration has maintained conventional police force and made no moves toward instituting community control of the police. Here, in a city where political power is held by radical administration, the self-defense experiments of the Rojava Revolution may make an instructive example, albeit not a simple blueprint. If grassroots alternatives to police existed in Jackson, could it pressure Lumumba to adopt more radical positions like community control of police or—better—disband the police department and replace it with community controlled self-defense forces and restorative justice bodies? The point here is not outline a political platform or provide a detailed analysis of contemporary attempts to create municipal socialism in Jackson but rather to demonstrate the way the holistic and historical conception of abolition advanced by Du Bois expands our expands our political parameters, allowing us to both make sense our current conditions and relate them to other powerful instances of abolitionist organizing.

Taken together, this approach to abolition allows us to both learn for the past and appreciate how previous struggles shaped the specificities of the present moment. If abolition can be usefully described as the liberatory politics immanent within the historically specific social struggles, one should be able to find abolitionist tendencies, abolitionist demands, abolitionist practices, and abolitionist institutions in most emancipatory movements. This approach can allow us to consider these moments relationally and learn the historical lessons of other moments of “abolition democracy.” This is how we learn what it takes to get free.

Brendan McQuade is an assistant professor at University of Southern Maine and author of Pacifying the Homeland. This commentary is adapted from a longer article published in Social Justice.

Ending the Epoch of Exploitation: Pantherism and Dialectical Materialism in the 21st Century

By Chairman Shaka Zulu

Lots of people aren’t familiar with the term “bourgeoisie” or for that matter with thinking in terms of the different classes—even though we live in a class-based society. Moreover, we live in an epoch of history that is based upon class exploitation and class dictatorship. In this “Epoch of Exploitation,” there have been different ages each with their own distinctive class structures based upon the relationship each class had to the mode and means of production.

These can basically be defined as: Slavery, Feudalism, and Capitalism. In each of these periods, there was an exploiting ruling class, an exploited laboring class, and a middle class. Under slavery, there were Freemen as well as Slaves and Slave Owners. These might even be slave traders or hired men of the slave owners.

Under Feudalism, the lower class were the Serfs or poor peasants, and the ruling class were the landed nobility, the Lords, and Ladies. The middle class were the Burgers or Bourgeoisie, who lived in independent towns or burgs, which were centers of trade and manufacturing. These “freemen,” who governed their towns more or less democratically, waged a struggle with the Lords to maintain their independence and this culminated in a wave of Liberal Bourgeois Democratic Revolutions that overthrew Feudalism and replaced kingdoms with republics.

The bourgeoisie became the new ruling class and the petty bourgeoisie (little capitalists) became the new middle class, and a new class--the Proletariat—the urban wage workers and the poor peasants were the lower class. As the Industrial Revolution took off, the bourgeoisie got richer and the petty bourgeoisie more numerous, while the proletariat were formed into industrial armies to serve in the struggle with Nature to extract raw materials like coal and iron ore and transform them into steel and goods of all type.

In this Bourgeois Era, the bourgeoisie reconstructed society in their own image and interest. Under this Bourgeois Class Dictatorship, the state exists to maintain the inequality of the class relations and protect the property and interests of the ownership classes. Bourgeois Democracy is basically a charade to mask over the reality of class dictatorship. The masses may get to vote, but the ruling class calls the tune. Money talks and the government obeys.

The charade is for the benefit of the Petty Bourgeoisie who are the voters and hopers that the government can be made to serve their class interests. The dream that they will one day climb into the upper class and share in the privilege and opulence motivates them to subordinate their own class interests to those of the bourgeoisie. A greater challenge to the bourgeois class dictatorship is getting the working class to adopt its world view and politics that clearly do not serve their interests.

This is where the middle class are of use, and where some proletarians find their niche and a point of entry into the petty bourgeoisie as promoters of bourgeois ideology and politics. I’m talking about all manner of jobs and positions from union boss to preacher and news commentator to teacher. These hacks and hucksters sell us the illusion that this is the best of all possible systems and all is right with the world so long as we do as we are told.

They serve the ruling class by playing the game of “divide and rule” and throwing water on any sparks of resistance. They feed the masses disinformation and “fake news” and feed people’s idealism and false hopes to prevent them from identifying and thinking about their true class interests.

The job of our Party is to help the masses cut through this BS and to arm the people with an understanding of revolutionary science on which our political-ideological line is based. We call this Pantherism, and it is based on application of revolutionary science—dialectical materialism—to the concrete conditions we face in the 21st Century.

We make no bones about it, we are revolutionary socialists determined to bring the Epoch of Exploitation to and end and empower the common people. In other words to advance the evolution of human society to Communism.

DARE TO STRUGGLE DARE TO WIN… ALL POWER TO THE PEOPLE!

Shaka Zulu is chairman of the New Afrikan Black Panther Party's prison chapter.

President Thomas Sankara: A 70th-Birthday Tribute

By Chika Ezeanya-Esiobu 

This was originally published at Pan-African Review.

President Thomas Isidore Noel Sankara would have turned 70 on the 21st of December 2019. At the tender age of 37, however, he was felled by bullets from soldiers loyal to his best friend, Blaise Campaore. Thomas Sankara’s passion was Africa’s advancement; his experimental field was Burkina Faso. What President Sankara wanted to see in Africa, he strategized, mobilized and implemented in Burkina Faso. He would then present his successes to African leaders, while encouraging them to surpass his achievements. Thomas Sankara’s achievement are too numerous to be summarized in an essay or even be elucidated in any book, but a few key points will be here noted.

Perhaps, the first in Thomas Sankara’s achievement is his refusal to borrow a dime from the IMF or any other foreign government or agency, mobilizing instead his fellow citizens to invest in community development and to consume only what the land of Burkina Faso yielded. Likewise, President Sankara, at the risk of being a target of the malignancy of Western governments, strongly encouraged other African leaders to shun external aid and borrowing. Thomas Sankara implored African leaders to rethink governance by reorganizing governmental systems and expressing those systems along a different line from the West in order to reduce costs and simplify governance.

A Pan-Africanist who was deeply committed to the cause of African people, it bothered President Sankara that African leaders were not seriously investing in the progress and unity of the continent, but were excited about uniting and aligning with the West. At a 29 July 1987 meeting of African leaders in Addis Ababa, he decried the poor attendance often recorded at meetings where Africa’s advancement is discussed; “Mister President,” he asked the [O]AU chairman, “how many heads of state are ready to head off to Paris, London, or Washington when they are called to a meeting there, but cannot come to a meeting here in Addis-Ababa, in Africa?”

Like Patrice Lumumba, Sankara incurred the wrath of the French President, Francois Mitterand when Mitterand visited Ouagadougou in 1986. Citing the spirit of the 1789 French Revolution, President Sankara reprimanded France for its oppressive policies in Africa and for the disrespectful treatment of African immigrants in France. Mitterand was livid with rage. He was used to African leaders groveling and shriveling under the mighty-hand of France. The French President would toss his prepared speech aside and take on Sankara, concluding with the thinly veiled threat, “This is a somewhat troublesome man, President Sankara!” Many would say that Sankara’s days were numbered after that fateful visit.

Prior to the French President’s visit, Thomas Sankara, a man of deep philosophical convictions, had in 1984 dumped the colonially contrived and imposed name of Upper Volta to call the nation what they wanted to be known as, Burkina Faso, “Land of Incorruptible People.” That renaming exercise was paired with an asset declaration exercise where President Sankara made known his properties, consisting of one working and one broken down refrigerators, three guitars, four regular motorcycles and one car. Thomas Sankara capped his salary at $462 and forbade both the hanging of his portrait at public places and any form of reverence attached to his person or presence.  Burkina Faso is about Burkinabes and there are 7 million of them. This seemed to be his guiding principle.

Thomas Sankara believed and invested in the education of Burkinabes. Literacy rate was at 13% when he became the president in 1983, and by the time of his assassination in 1987, it stood at 73%. Under his administration, numerous schools were built in Burkina Faso through community mobilization, teachers were trained and women were strongly encouraged to pursue education and career.

Burkina Faso’s agricultural fortunes experienced a turnaround during Thomas Sankara’s administration. First, the consumption of imported goods was strongly discouraged and Burkinabes once more reclaimed their taste buds from France. Thomas Sankara redistributed idle-lying lands from wealthy landowners to peasants who were eager to cultivate them. In three years, wheat cultivation jumped from 1700 kg per hectare to 3800 kg per hectare. His administration further embarked on an intensive irrigation and fertilization exercise leading to an outstanding success across other crops including cotton. Burkina Faso soon become self-sufficient in food production, while cotton was used to make clothes, after having banned importation of clothing and textiles.

Convinced that the health of Burkinabes was paramount in any conversation regarding national advancement, President Sankara flagged off a national immunization program that–within weeks–saw the vaccination of over 2.5 million children against meningitis, yellow fever and measles. Access to healthcare was a basic human right of every Burkinabe and President Sankara mobilized communities across the nation to build medical dispensaries, thereby ensuring the proximity of primary healthcare to citizens in the most remote areas.

Infrastructural challenges were tackled headlong by President Sankara, mostly through the mobilization of citizens, both rich and poor, as construction workers in the building of access roads and other structures across the country. Within a short period of time, all regions in Burkina Faso became connected by a vast network of roads and rails. In addition, over 700 km of rail was laid by citizens to facilitate the extraction of manganese. In order to move Burkinabes away from slums to dignified houses, brick factories were built, which utilized raw materials from Burkina Faso. For the sake of emphasis, all these were achieved without recourse to borrowing or external financial assistance in a nation dubbed one of the poorest in Africa before Thomas Sankara became the President.

A man of integrity and transparence, Thomas Sankara expected nothing less from everyone in leadership position in Burkina Faso. Thomas Sankara refused to use air conditioning system as president of the country, since according to him, that will be living a lie as majority of Burkinabes could not afford such. Upon assumption of power, Thomas Sankara sold off the government fleet of Mercedes cars and commissioned the use of the cheapest brands of car available in Burkina Faso, the Renault 5. Salaries of public servants, including the president’s, were drastically reduced, while the use of chauffeurs and first-class airline tickets were outlawed.

Ever before women advancement became a buzzword globally, President Thomas Sankara led the way in advocating for the equal treatment of women. His cabinet was heavy with female appointees while numerous governmental positions were occupied by women. Female genital mutilation, polygamy, underage and forced marriages were outlawed while women were encouraged to join the military and to continue with their education even during pregnancy.

Thomas Sankara was passionate about the environment and its conservation.  He encouraged citizens to cultivate forest nurseries and over 7,000 village nurseries were created and sustained, through which, over 10 million trees were cultivated in order to push back the encroachment of the Sahel desert.

President Sankara pursued peace with his adversaries. On the morning he was gunned down, he was armed with a speech he had worked on all night, aimed at reconciling opposing factions in Burkina Faso and addressing the grievances of certain sections of the labor force. He did not live to present that speech.

In the short time he had, Burkinabes advanced as a nation and as a people. Outside of the already enumerated physical signs of progress, the social psychological impact on Burkinabes, of being truly and completely independence for the first time since the late 19th-century colonial incursion, was tremendous. Ironically, it was that same independence from France, termed “a deteriorating relationship” with the former colonial powers that Captain Blaise Campaore cited as one of the major reasons why he instigated the coup against Sankara.

Africa has produced much greatness; let it never be said that the continent is lacking in greatness. If truth be told, Africa’s great people of character and principle have often been silenced by forces of greed, exploitation and selfishness. Africa must then learn to build strong and enduring systems for the protection of virtue, the promotion of character and the vilification of vice. Africa would have been better than what it is today, if Thomas Noel Isidore Sankara were alive as an elder statesman to celebrate his 70th birthday anniversary. Yet, in death, he continues to serve as an inspiration to many Africans on what we can become as individuals and as a continent if we choose selflessness, commitment and passion for the continent and her people as the driving force behind our actions.

In Defense of Self-Defense (1967)

By Huey P. Newton

Source: The Huey Newton Reader

Men were not created in order to obey laws. Laws are created to obey men. They are established by men and should serve men. The laws and rules which officials inflict upon poor people prevent them from functioning harmoniously in society. There is no disagreement about this function of law in any circle the disagreement arises from the question of which men laws are to serve. Such lawmakers ignore the fact that it is the duty of the poor and unrepresented to construct rules and laws that serve their interests better. Rewriting unjust laws is a basic human right and fundamental obligation.

Before 1776 America was a British colony. The British Government had certain laws and rules that the colonized Americans rejected as not being in their best interests. In spite of the British conviction that Americans had no right to establish their own laws to promote the general welfare of the people living here in America, the colonized immigrant felt he had no choice but to raise the gun to defend his welfare. Simultaneously he made certain laws to ensure his protection from external and internal aggressions, from other governments, and his own agencies. One such form of protection was the Declaration of Independence, which states: ". . . whenever any government becomes destructive to these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute a new government, laying its foundations on such principles and organizing its powers in such forms as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness."

Now these same colonized White people, these bondsmen, paupers, and thieves deny the colonized Black man not only the right to abolish this oppressive system, but to even speak of abolishing it. Having carried this madness and cruelty to the four corners of the earth, there is now universal rebellion against their continued rule and power. But as long as the wheels of the imperialistic war machine are turning, there is no country that can defeat this monster of the West. It is our belief that the Black people in America are the only people who can free the world, loosen the yoke of colonialism, and destroy the war machine. Black people who are within the machine can cause it to malfunction. They can, because of their intimacy with the mechanism, destroy the engine that is enslaving the world. America will not be able to fight every Black country in the world and fight a civil war at the same time. It is militarily impossible to do both of these things at once.

The slavery of Blacks in this country provides the oil for the machinery of war that America uses to enslave the peoples of the world. Without this oil the machinery cannot function. We are the driving shaft; we are in such a strategic position in this machinery that, once we become dislocated, the functioning of the remainder of the machinery breaks down.

Penned up in the ghettos of America, surrounded by his factories and all the physical components of his economic system, we have been made into "the wretched of the earth," relegated to the position of spectators while the White racists run their international con game on the suffering peoples. We have been brainwashed to believe that we are powerless and that there is nothing we can do for ourselves to bring about a speedy liberation for our people. We have been taught that we must please our oppressors, that we are only ten percent of the population, and therefore must confine our tactics to categories calculated not to disturb the sleep of our tormentors.

The power structure inflicts pain and brutality upon the peoples and then provides controlled outlets for the pain in ways least likely to upset them, or interfere with the process of exploitation. The people must repudiate the established channels as tricks and deceitful snares of the exploiting oppressors. The people must oppose everything the oppressor supports, and support everything that he opposes. If Black people go about their struggle for liberation in the way that the oppressor dictates and sponsors, then we will have degenerated to the level of groveling flunkies for the oppressor himself. When the oppressor makes a vicious attack against freedom-fighters because of the way that such freedom-fighters choose to go about their liberation, then we know we are moving in the direction of our liberation. The racist dog oppressors have no rights which oppressed Black people are bound to respect. As long as the racist dogs pollute the earth with the evil of their actions, they do not deserve any respect at all, and the "rules" of their game, written in the people's blood, are beneath contempt.

The oppressor must be harassed until his doom. He must have no peace by day or by night. The slaves have always outnumbered the slavemasters. The power of the oppressor rests upon the submission of the people. When Black people really unite and rise up in all their splendid millions, they will have the strength to smash injustice. We do not understand the power in our numbers. We are millions and millions of Black people scattered across the continent and throughout the Western Hemisphere. There are more Black people in America than the total population of many countries now enjoying full membership in the United Nations. They have power and their power is based primarily on the fact that they are organized and united with each other. They are recognized by the powers of the world.

We, with all our numbers, are recognized by no one. In fact, we do not even recognize our own selves. We are unaware of the potential power latent in our numbers. In 1967, in the midst of a hostile racist nation whose hidden racism is rising to the surface at a phenomenal speed, we are still so blind to our critical fight for our very survival that we are continuing to function in petty, futile ways. Divided, confused, fighting among ourselves, we are still in the elementary stage of throwing rocks, sticks, empty wine bottles and beer cans at racist police who lie in wait for a chance to murder unarmed Black people. The racist police have worked out a system for suppressing these spontaneous rebellions that flare up from the anger, frustration, and desperation of the masses of Black people. We can no longer afford the dubious luxury of the terrible casualties wantonly inflicted upon us by the police during these rebellions.

Black people must now move, from the grass roots up through the perfumed circles of the Black bourgeoisie, to seize by any means necessary a proportionate share of the power vested and collected in the structure of America. We must organize and unite to combat by long resistance the brutal force used against us daily. The power structure depends upon the use of force within retaliation. This is why they have made it a felony to teach guerrilla warfare. This is why they want the people unarmed.

The racist dog oppressors fear the armed people; they fear most of all Black people armed with weapons and the ideology of the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense. An unarmed people are slaves or are subject to slavery at any given moment. If a government is not afraid of the people it will arm the people against foreign aggression. Black people are held captive in the midst of their oppressors. There is a world of difference between thirty million unarmed submissive Black people and thirty million Black people armed with freedom, guns, and the strategic methods of liberation.

When a mechanic wants to fix a broken-down car engine, he must have the necessary tools to do the job. When the people move for liberation they must have the basic tool of liberation: the gun. Only with the power of the gun can the Black masses halt the terror and brutality directed against them by the armed racist power structure; and in one sense only by the power of the gun can the whole world be transformed into the earthly paradise dreamed of by the people from time immemorial. One successful practitioner of the art and science of national liberation and self-defense, Brother Mao Tse-tung, put it this way: "We are advocates of the abolition of war, we do not want war; but war can only be abolished through war, and in order to get rid of the gun it is necessary to take up the gun."

The blood, sweat, tears and suffering of Black people are the foundations of the wealth and power of the United States of America. We were forced to build America, and if forced to, we will tear it down. The immediate result of this destruction will be suffering and bloodshed. But the end result will be the perpetual peace for all mankind.

The Importance of Political Education and Class Analysis in the Struggle for Black Liberation

By Erica Caines

This piece was originally published at Hood Communist.

What does organizing look like when Black radicals are being pushed out of spaces for ‘progressiveness’ that makes uncontested room for the centrist, right-wing and fascist narratives driving most platforms?  When examining the conflicts between those fighting oppression under capitalism and the capitalist state’s ruling class alongside those who subscribe to “success” and riches obtained at the expense of the oppressed, few things strike me as obvious disconnects and contradictions.

I am often asked about my relationship with the analytical science of Marxism-Leninism as it pertains to my studies, teachings, and praxis because it’s somehow shocking that a Black woman would align herself with a political ideology that’s been presented as predominantly white and male. I once used these moments as opportunities to flex my knowledge on the historical relationship between socialism/ communism and Black people (particularly Black women) as if I were a fact sheet. While it is important to highlight how many of those we’ve come to know as simply “civil rights activists” were politically and ideologically aligned with socialism/communism, what does that mean? Furthermore, why is that important? 

“Knowledge is power” is a familiar mantra. The Marxist Theory of Knowledge describes knowledge, or the idea of it, as socially constructed. Karl Marx details “power” (economic, intellectual and political) as something that stems from the ownership of the means of production. Simply put, a lot of what we *know* is predicated on the interests of the ruling class. It is in this country’s best interest to keep us ignorant. 

One way we combat ignorance is through active study and dialogue. One of the more frustrating things is the way reading is discussed as a pastime of the elite. That, in itself, highlights how comfortably ahistorical we’ve all become. We discuss accessibility and ability to study —-and by extension, obtain knowledge—- in bad faith. We fail to admit to our own intellectual laziness. It also highlights a misunderstanding of how knowledge and education should be used. 

Marx’s Dialectics of Theory and Practice assumes that none of us are “all-knowing”, but the practice of becoming politically educated, both understanding theories and using them in praxis to better conditions, ultimately improve and transform our conditions. One of the more famous examples of having done this can be found by studying members of the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense. 

The BPP implemented collective actions that not only included providing much-needed resources but, more importantly, a political education. They believed in active study and debate and with that belief, went on to educate others enough to advocate for themselves. 

When communities advocate for themselves through breakfast programs, liberation schools and providing healthcare (the more prominent examples of the BPP’s work), ‘the group’ is prioritized over the individual. These small actions that result in transforming realities (material conditions) are what the practice and principle of collectivism are rooted in.

This differs from individualism, which is dependent solely on the best interest of the individual. Black people, in mass, seem to be engulfed in a state of individualism. Many have actively disconnected from our history of collectivism (and other tenets of socialism/ communism). This is made obvious with ‘celebrity culture’, the fixation on Black Capitalism as liberation and blatant misrepresentations of our “ancestors wildest dreams”. 

The lack of implementing class analysis (recognizing the significance of class) to understand our material conditions are major factors of the collective distortion of our material realities. I am not speaking on the problematic and dangerous ways white leftists ignore “whiteness” as a class issue to generically state “race and class” and ignore their innate racial prejudices. I am speaking on how our confrontations with racism, as Black people, have disallowed us to interrogate the Black people that exist within different class statuses. 

We live in a white supremacist capitalist imperialist patriarchy so Black people are, undoubtedly, confronted with how oppressions manifest, particularly racism. Unfortunately, we do not leave room to have any introspection on how oppressions manifest through class. All Black people may experience racism, but not all Black people experience poverty. When overwhelming many experience poverty, combatting racism, solely, causes us to turn a blind eye to capitalism, imperialism, and colonialism.That “blind eye” results in a failure to [not want to] understand or implement a class analysis.

The purpose of class analysis is to clarify the agendas between classes. When we discuss the class structure of capitalism in Marxist theory, the capitalist stage of production consists of two main classes: the bourgeoisie (the capitalists who own the means of production) and the proletariat ( the working class who must sell their own labor power). If we are applying class analysis to our material conditions we are acknowledging how these class groups work and function within our realities. When applying it to our communities it is evident that the [almost non-existent] middle class would much rather align with the bourgeoisie (the rich) than the working class. This presents huge contradictions. Not just in organizing, but the way that we view liberation. 

In order for the bourgeois class to thrive, there must be an oppressed working class to exploit. If there are Black people who would much rather align with the rich, what does that mean for the Black people under the thumb of economic oppression? How does that manifest when we are talking about Black political power? 

Capitalist state ruling classes resist change. They disguise their arbitrary privileges and power behind lies, dogma, half-truths, and fallacies. This is most evident through the use of celebrity-driven and identity reductionist activism that uses “socialist” rhetoric to push neoliberal agendas that don’t seek to transform realities but make them easier to digest and not disrupt the status quo. 

In a society plagued by communities of individualists, how can we approach collectivism in substantial ways? We must have a principled commitment to political education, cooperation, and concern for the welfare of each other. 

Workers Unite. 

San Diego District Attorney Summer Stephan and the Hypocrisy of Prosecutors

By Laila Aziz

At a pivotal time, when progressive constituents in the state of California are demanding criminal justice reform due to archaic, racist, classist policy, one of the reform movement’s most formidable detractors, San Diego District Attorney Summer Stephan, became a rape apologist. The criminal justice system is complex, and the District Attorney’s (DA’s) office exemplifies tremendous power within this framework by deciding which charges a person faces, which sentencing enhancements they will face, and the plea deal offered.

Pillars of the Community supports a local Participatory Defense hub created by Silicon Valley Debug. We are in the courtrooms daily observing and working closely with those closest to the pain. We court watch and aggregate data as it is happening around bail, enhancements, plea bargaining, stacking charges, and sentencing.  Our collective work with our partners and community drive policy, advocacy, and direct action.

Summer Stephan has continued San Diego’s legacy of utilizing the criminal justice system as a weapon of America’s lust for inequity and segregation. Her office piles Black, Brown, and Asian Pacific Islanders into prisons for low-level crimes regardless of the sentencing reforms we have demanded. Her office is strategic in how they charge, ensuring they pump the most inequities into our community.

When Summer Stephan was confronted with having to hold a Sheriff Deputy accountable who utilized his badge to terrorize women in San Diego County sexually, she utilized her power as the District Attorney and did the unfathomable. She turned her back on 16 women and reduced the officer’s sexual assault charges to non-serious misdemeanors and felonies. She wanted him to reap the benefits of reform; she repeatedly denies so many of us daily.

The Tale of Two Counties

Recently Summer Stephan’s office charged a young man for fights, based on mutual combat, which law enforcement viewed on another young man’s cell phone. There were no victims and no serious injuries. The DA charged the young man with two assaults. Her office strategically included two gang enhancements, which increased the underlying felony of assault to a mandatory prison term and two strikes. He was facing seventeen years and shortly before trial pled to 4-years in prison. This felony will follow him forever. He will never be able to expunge his record, and he will have to register as a gang member.

In another incident, her office charged a young man with vandalism under $400, a misdemeanor, for writing on property. Misdemeanors are always completed locally, not in prison. Summer Stephan’s office strategically added the gang enhancement, giving him a felony and sentenced the young man to three years in prison. He will never be able to expunge his record and will have to register as a gang member upon release. This young man’s life will be affected for decades for writing on a wall. It is unconscionable to send a young man to prison, where he will be around violence, trauma, and rape for writing on a wall!

According to the San Diego Union-Tribune, former San Diego Sheriff Deputy Richard Fischer faced “20 charges involving 16 accusers. Most of the charges involved allegations of assault and battery under the color of authority, but there was one allegation that he forced a woman to perform a sex act.” These charges included groping, stroking, hugging, and kissing women who expressed fear and severe trauma due to his acts.

On the day of trial, the San Diego District Attorney’s office struck a deal with the defendant. They dropped all of the sexual assault charges and refiled an amended complaint.  The DA paved the way for a man who fondled handcuffed women to avoid prison and sex offender registration.

“The Police Scorecard” a recent report published by Campaign Zero, found that the San Diego Sheriff’s Department was 47% more likely to use force on Blacks than Whites. San Diego is preparing to decide a ballot measure in 2020, which will make an independent police commission with both subpoena power and an independent investigator. Summer Stephan, in her recent decisions, has demonstrated that regardless of the proof, as long as she is in office, she will never hold law enforcement accountable for police brutality or sexual assault. Summer Stephan has proven that as long as she remains top cop in San Diego County, she will fight to maintain the status quo -the New Jim Crow.

Laila Aziz
Program Director
Pillars of the Community

A Tribute to Toni Morrison

By Cherise Charleswell

On August 5th, 2019 we lost Chloe Anthony Wofford, better known as Toni Morrison. This brilliant Griot, who was one of America's most venerated novelists, essayists, editors, social critics, teachers, and professors, died of complications of pneumonia at the age of 88.

One of her first great feats happened during the 1960s, a period of time where the United States of America was still caught up and resisting through the Civil Rights Movement's call for equity and dismantling of oppressive barriers and discrimination. Against this backdrop, Toni Morrison became the first Black female editor of fiction at Random House, and in this capacity she played a vital role in bringing Black literature and authors into the mainstream.

She got a seat at the table and not only took up space, but dragged other seats over to the table to allow room for other marginalized voices. She later described the importance of "Taking Up & Creating Space" in one of the many interviews that she conducted over her many years in the spotlight:

"I tell my students, 'When you get these jobs that you have been so brilliantly trained for, just remember that your real job is that if you are free, you need to free somebody else. If you have some power, then your job is to empower somebody else. This is not just a grab-bag candy game."

She left behind a remarkable and award-winning body of work, beginning with her first novel, The Bluest Eye, published in 1970. And went on to publish ten additional novels, numerous short stories and essays, as well as works of non-fiction.

Toni Morrison's work will forever entertain, inspire, and challenge us to reflect as individuals and as a society, and it is for those reasons and more that we pay tribute to this formidable woman who epitomized Black Girl Magic long before the phrase was first used. There was magic in her pen and tongue, and it casted spells on our psyche.

So, in this tribute I will lift up her voice and unpack the impact and legacy of Toni Morrison.

The Honors

"I don't believe any real artists have ever been non-political. They may have been insensitive to this particular plight or insensitive to that, but they were political, because that's what an artist is―a politician."

― Toni Morrison

Toni Morrison was a prolific writer who approached writing with intentions and a purpose that went far beyond storytelling. She recognized that the Political has always been Personal, and didn't shy away from using characters, themes, and language (whether engaging dialogue or thought-provoking monologue) to provide social commentary and criticism, and challenge readers to truly reflect on what they've read. Because of this, her work can't be described as "light reading," but it was certainly captivating. And thus, the honors rolled in.

Those honors included:

• Honorary degrees from Oxford University and Rutgers University

• In 1979 she was awarded Barnard College's high-test honor, the Barnard Medal of Distinction.

• She was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1993. Her citation reads that she, " who in novels characterized by visionary force and poetic import, gives life to an essential aspect of American reality." [ She was the first black woman of any nationality to win the prize

• In 1996, the National Endowment for Humanities selected her for the Jefferson Lecture, the U.S. Federal government's highest honor for achievement in the humanities.

• In 1996, she also received the National Book Foundation's Medal of Distinguished Contribution to American Letters.

• She received a Pulitzer Prize for Fiction for her novel Beloved, which was adapted into a movie, starring Oprah Winfrey in 1998.

• Her novel Song of Solomon received the National Book Critics Circle Award.

• In 2012, President Barack Obama presented her with the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

• She received the PEN/Saul Bellow Award for Achievement in American fiction in 2016.

Unapologetic About Centering Black Characters and Experiences

"Black literature is taught as sociology, as tolerance, not as a serious, rigorous art form."

― Toni Morrison

Toni Morrison's work builds on the legacy and body of work of the prolific Black authors, novelists, and writers of the Harlem Renaissance, an important artistic movement which The Smithsonian National Museum of African American History & Culture described as :

"A movement that brought notice to the great works of African American art, and inspired and influenced future generations of African American artists and intellectuals. The self-portrait of African American life, identity, and culture that emerged from Harlem was transmitted to the world at large, challenging the racist and disparaging stereotypes of the Jim Crow South. In doing so, it radically redefined how people of other races viewed African Americans and understood the African American experience."

The Harlem Renaissance - thought art, music, fashion, and literature - left an undeniable mark on American culture, but it did not end the marginalization of the Black experience in America, and this what Toni Morrison was referring to when pointing out the fact that Black literature wasn't to be taught or viewed as a rigorous art form. This occurred whether Black writers wrote novels and stories using African American Vernacular English, such as the work of Nora Zeale Hurston, or writing in standard American English.

Not only did Toni Morrison's work build on the creativity, critical, and impactful work of authors from the Harlem Renaissance, throughout her career she remained unapologetic about centering Black characters and experiences in her work. There were no White Saviors. She instead displayed the fullness of the Black experience - the good, bad, ugly, and painful. While other writers seemed to abhor labels, such as "Black writer," and didn't want their work assigned to a marginalized classification and shelf that was/is often at the back of a bookstore, Toni Morrison welcomed the term.

And being a "Black writer" didn't diminish her career. It didn't stop her from being presented with esteemed awards, or having her work adapted into a film. She remained an unapologetic "Black writer" who took up space on the highly coveted "Literature" shelves of bookstores as her work was fantastically displayed in stores, outside of and beyond February (Black History Month).

When the question about when she was going to write about and/or center non-Black characters came up, Toni Morrison didn't waste a second, immediately pointing out that those types of questions were inherently racist and were never asked of White writers. They were never asked about when they would center Black characters. And she often went on to explain her exact intentions.

Below is the explanation in her own words:

"I don't have to apologize or consider myself limited because I don't [write about white people] - which is not absolutely true, there are lots of white people in my books.

I never asked Tolstoy to write for me, a little colored girl in Lorain, Ohio. I never asked [James] Joyce not to mention Catholicism or the world of Dublin. Never. And I don't know why I should be asked to explain your life to you. We have splendid writers to do that, but I am not one of them. It is that business of being universal, a word hopelessly stripped of meaning for me. Faulkner wrote what I suppose could be called regional literature and had it published all over the world. That's what I wish to do. If I tried to write a universal novel, it would be water. Behind this question is the suggestion that to write for black people is somehow to diminish the writing. From my perspective there are only black people. When I say 'people,' that's what I mean."

When we look closer, there is one sub-group that Toni Morrison truly wrote for, and that is Black women and girls. Her books allowed us to see our stories come to life on a page in such a meaningful way. She once shared the following:

"I merged those two words, black and feminist, because I was surrounded by black women who were very tough and who always assumed they had to work and rear children and manage homes."

Her work was intersectional and didn't attempt to make us choose between our Blackness and womanhood. It all-at-once exposed our vulnerabilities, insecurities, strengths, and resilience. And being a Black woman in the United States, or any part of the world, certainly requires a level of resilience. Malcolm X's statement made during the 1960s, remains true today: "The most disrespected person in America is the black woman. The most unprotected person in America is the black woman. The most neglected person in America is the black woman."

The ubiquitous and constant disrespect that Malcolm X was describing and what Toni Morrison highlighted in her books is the effect of misogynoir. Misogynoir is something that has always existed, even before we had a word for it. It is a term coined by queer Black feminist Moya Bailey, in 2010, to describe a special form of misogyny that is explicitly directed towards Black women, where race and gender both play roles in bias. Misogynoir makes Black women the most "disrespected, unprotected, and neglected" people globally - not only in the United States. And this is due to the marginalization of our multiple identities, and the fact that every " Ism" that one can think of, whether sexism, racism, colorism, texturism, ableism, classism, along with homophobia, impacts Black women.

Toni Morrison's work gave us vivid examples of this unique form of prejudice, bias, and hatred throughout her work. In fact, it is fitting that her first and last novels, The Bluest Eyes and God Help The Child, both centered Black girls/women whose self-images were negatively impacted by misogynoir. The characters Pecola Breedlove and Bride were both made to feel like the color of their skin and eyes, as well as their features, were undesirable. While Pecola literally prayed for blue eyes, Bride depended on surface beautification that didn't lead to the acceptance or celebration of her beauty, but to fetishization.

Toni Morrison wrote an updated foreword to The Bluest Eyes in 2007, explaining her reason to create a character like Pecola, who was so deeply impacted by misogynoir: She wanted to focus "on how something as grotesque as the demonization of an entire race could take root inside the most delicate member of society: a child; the most vulnerable member: a female"

Gifts of Wisdom

Ultimately, through her novels, essays, interviews, and statements, Toni Morrison left us with gifts of wisdom. Words to reflect on and to better interrogate the world that we live in. Her words also can serve as a tool to reject misogynoir and any feelings of inferiority - a world where Black people and our experiences are at the Center, and not marginalized.

In fact, the entire notion of white supremacy, despite its horrible history, was laughable to her. She pointed out its illegitimacy or historical inaccuracy by asking, "Where was the lecture on how slavery alone catapulted the whole country from agriculture into the industrial age in two decades? White folks' hatred, their violence, was the gasoline that kept the profit motors running." And really poked holes at the entire premise by stating, "I always knew that I had the moral high ground all my life. If you can only be tall when someone is on their knees, then you have a serious problem. White people have a serious problem."

And White people, particularly White Americans have certainly proved they have a serious problem. It is a problem linked to the decades-long mass shootings that plague the country that are predominantly carried out by White men, who the media, politicians, and others immediately address with sympathetic treatment. Something "had to happen to them" or "make them" carry out these atrocious acts. That something may be mental illness, trauma, broken homes, and yes, even video games. Just a plethora of ridiculous excuses that ignores the fact that other groups in the country experience and are exposed to the same conditions (or worse), but do not go on these murderous rampages. White privilege created these mass shooters and white privilege protects them long after the dead have been buried.

For instance the Los Angeles Times published this horrible and disingenuous Op-Ed that listed four commonalities seen in mass shooters per some research study, but never once mentions the fact that they are White men. That omission of this obvious factor leaves the research as being nothing more than bias garbage, and the "journalism" lacks any credibility since the obvious is going to be ignored.

America's problems of racism, white supremacy, and white privilege continues to hurt all Americans. Those shooters are also killing white people. And the feat of losing that privilege, of having to live in a changing country led many voters to choose a president (45) whose vision of America resembles the days of decades past, that they deem to have been "Great". Much of Toni Morrison's work is based in those periods. We can just check her written record to prove that those days were far from great.

As pointed out by Toni Morrison, far too many White Americans require others to be on their knees in order for them to be tall and feel secure. Thus, for them, equality (resulting from the loss of white privilege) feels like oppression.

During Toni Morrison' 80+ years of life, she witnessed these changes in America and released the essay " Making America White Again " for The New Yorker, shortly after the 2016 presidential election. This is one of the last essays that she wrote and it is certainly a gift of wisdom that describes the cultural anxiety which motivated most White Americans to vote for Trump:

"So scary are the consequences of a collapse of white privilege that many Americans have flocked to a political platform that supports and translates violence against the defenseless as strength. These people are not so much angry as terrified, with the kind of terror that makes knees tremble.

On Election Day, how eagerly so many white voters-both the poorly educated and the well-educated-embraced the shame and fear sowed by Donald Trump. The candidate whose company has been sued by the Justice Department for not renting apartments to black people. The candidate who questioned whether Barack Obama was born in the United States, and who seemed to condone the beating of a Black Lives Matter protester at a campaign rally. The candidate who kept black workers off the floors of his casinos. The candidate who is beloved by David Duke and endorsed by the Ku Klux Klan."

Among the Ancestors

Toni Morrison was a national treasure and literary genius who garnered global acclaim for her ability to vividly and honestly tell the story of the Black American experience. She was unwavering in her centering of Blackness, and courageously highlighted the damaging effects of racism and colorism when few authors with national platforms were willing to address these issues. Her stories had depth, and were intersectional and thought-provoking.

She is a foremother, an ancestor, whose shoulders - we must now stand on - left behind a body of work that will entertain, challenge, and educate us.

And I will leave you with this challenge that Toni Morrison has left behind - it is the challenge that she first presented to herself, and it led her to write her first novel at 39 years of age:

" If there's a book you really want to read but it hasn't been written yet, then you must write it."