"Power Anywhere Where There's People": A Speech by Fred Hampton (1969)

The following is the full transcript of a speech given by Chairman Fred Hampton Sr. at Olivet Baptist Church in Chicago in 1969.

Power anywhere where there's people. Power anywhere where there's people. Let me give you an example of teaching people. Basically, the way they learn is observation and participation. You know a lot of us go around and joke ourselves and believe that the masses have PhDs, but that's not true. And even if they did, it wouldn't make any difference. Because with some things, you have to learn by seeing it or either participating in it. And you know yourselves that there are people walking around your community today that have all types of degrees that should be at this meeting but are not here. Right? Because you can have as many degrees as a thermometer. If you don't have any practice, they you can't walk across the street and chew gum at the same time.

Let me tell you how Huey P. Newton, the leader, the organizer, the founder, the main man of the Black Panther Party, went about it.

The community had a problem out there in California. There was an intersection, a four-way intersection; a lot of people were getting killed, cars running over them, and so the people went down and redressed their grievances to the government. You've done it before. I know you people in the community have. And they came back and the pigs said "No! You can't have any." Oh, they dont usually say you can't have it. They've gotten a little hipper than that now. That's what those degrees on the thermometer will get you. They tell you "Okay, we'll deal with it. Why dont you come back next meeting and waste some time?"

And they get you wound up in an excursion of futility, and you be in a cycle of insaneness, and you be goin' back and goin' back, and goin' back, and goin' back so many times that you're already crazy.

So they tell you, they say, "Okay niggers, what you want?" And they you jump up and you say, "Well, it's been so long, we don't know what we want", and then you walk out of the meeting and you're gone and they say, "Well, you niggers had your chance, didnt you?"

Let me tell you what Huey P. Newton did.

Huey Newton went and got Bobby Seale, the chairman of the Black Panther Party on a national level. Bobby Seale got his 9mm, that's a pistol. Huey P. Newton got his shotgun and got some stop signs and got a hammer. Went down to the intersection, gave his shotgun to Bobby, and Bobby had his 9mm. He said, "You hold this shotgun. Anybody mess with us, blow their brains out." He put those stop signs up.

There were no more accidents, no more problem.

Now they had another situation. That's not that good, you see, because its two people dealing with a problem. Huey Newton and Bobby Seale, no matter how bad they may be, cannot deal with the problem. But let me explain to you who the real heroes are.

Next time, there was a similar situation, another four-way corner. Huey went and got Bobby, went and got his 9mm, got his shotgun, got his hammer and got more stop signs. Placed those stop signs up, gave the shotgun to Bobby, told Bobby "If anybody mess with us while were putting these stop signs up, protect the people and blow their brains out." What did the people do? They observed it again. They participated in it. Next time they had another four-way intersection. Problems there; they had accidents and death. This time, the people in the community went and got their shotguns, got their hammers, got their stop signs.

Now, let me show you how were gonna try to do it in the Black Panther Party here. We just got back from the south side. We went out there. We went out there and we got to arguing with the pigs or the pigs got to arguing-he said, "Well, Chairman Fred, you supposed to be so bad, why dont you go and shoot some of those policemen? You always talking about you got your guns and got this, why dont you go shoot some of them?"

And I've said, "you've just broken a rule. As a matter of fact, even though you have on a uniform it doesn't make me any difference. Because I dont care if you got on nine uniforms, and 100 badges. When you step outside the realm of legality and into the realm of illegality, then I feel that you should be arrested." And I told him, "You being what they call the law of entrapment, you tried to make me do something that was wrong, you encouraged me, you tried to incite me to shoot a pig. And that ain't cool, Brother, you know the law, dont you?"

I told that pig that, I told him "You got a gun, pig?" I told him, "You gotta get your hands up against the wall. We're gonna do what they call a citizens arrest." This fool dont know what this is. I said, "Now you be just as calm as you can and don't make too many quick moves, cause we don't wanna have to hit you."

And I told him like he always told us, I told him, "Well, I'm here to protect you. Don't worry about a thing, 'm here for your benefit." So I sent another Brother to call the pigs. You gotta do that in a citizen's arrest. He called the pigs. Here come the pigs with carbines and shotguns, walkin' out there. They came out there talking about how they're gonna arrest Chairman Fred. And I said, "No fool. This is the man you got to arrest. He's the one that broke the law." And what did they do? They bugged their eyes, and they couldn't stand it. You know what they did? They were so mad, they were so angry that they told me to leave.

And what happened? All those people were out there on 63rd Street. What did they do? They were around there laughing and talking with me while I was making the arrest. They looked at me while I was rapping and heard me while I was rapping. So the next time that the pig comes on 63rd Street, because of the thing that our Minister of Defense calls observation and participation, that pig might be arrested by anybody!

So what did we do? We were out there educating the people. How did we educate them? Basically, the way people learn, by observation and participation. And that's what were trying to do. That's what we got to do here in this community. And a lot of people don't understand, but there's three basic things that you got to do anytime you intend to have yourself a successful revolution.

A lot of people get the word revolution mixed up and they think revolutions a bad word. Revolution is nothing but like having a sore on your body and then you put something on that sore to cure that infection. And Im telling you that were living in an infectious society right now. Im telling you that were living in a sick society. And anybody that endorses integrating into this sick society before its cleaned up is a man whos committing a crime against the people.

If you walk past a hospital room and see a sign that says "Contaminated" and then you try to lead people into that room, either those people are mighty dumb, you understand me, cause if they weren't, they'd tell you that you are an unfair, unjust leader that does not have your followers' interests in mind. And what were saying is simply that leaders have got to become, we've got to start making them accountable for what they do. They're goin' around talking about so-and-so's an Uncle Tom so we're gonna open up a cultural center and teach him what blackness is. And this n****r is more aware than you and me and Malcolm and Martin Luther King and everybody else put together. That's right. They're the ones that are most aware. They're most aware, cause they're the ones that are gonna open up the center. They're gonna tell you where bones come from in Africa that you can't even pronounce the names. Thats right. They'll be telling you about Chaka, the leader of the Bantu freedom fighters, and Jomo Kenyatta, those dingo-dingas. They'll be running all of that down to you. They know about it all. But the point is they do what they're doing because it is beneficial and it is profitable for them.

You see, people get involved in a lot of things that's profitable to them, and we've got to make it less profitable. We've got to make it less beneficial. I'm saying that any program that's brought into our community should be analyzed by the people of that community. It should be analyzed to see that it meets the relevant needs of that community. We don't need no n*****s coming into our community to be having no company to open business for the n*****s. There's too many n*****s in our community that can't get crackers out of the business that they're gonna open.

We got to face some facts. That the masses are poor, that the masses belong to what you call the lower class, and when I talk about the masses, I'm talking about the white masses, I'm talking about the black masses, and the brown masses, and the yellow masses, too. We've got to face the fact that some people say you fight fire best with fire, but we say you put fire out best with water. We say you don't fight racism with racism. We're gonna fight racism with solidarity. We say you don't fight capitalism with no black capitalism; you fight capitalism with socialism.

We ain't gonna fight no reactionary pigs who run up and down the street being reactionary; we're gonna organize and dedicate ourselves to revolutionary political power and teach ourselves the specific needs of resisting the power structure, arm ourselves, and we're gonna fight reactionary pigs with INTERNATIONAL PROLETARIAN REVOLUTION. That's what it has to be. The people have to have the power: it belongs to the people.

We have to understand very clearly that there's a man in our community called a capitalist. Sometimes he's black and sometimes he's white. But that man has to be driven out of our community, because anybody who comes into the community to make profit off the people by exploiting them can be defined as a capitalist. And we don't care how many programs they have, how long a dashiki they have. Because political power does not flow from the sleeve of a dashiki; political power flows from the barrel of a gun. It flows from the barrel of a gun!

A lot of us running around talking about politics don't even know what politics is. Did you ever see something and pull it and you take it as far as you can and it almost outstretches itself and it goes into something else? If you take it so far that it is two things? As a matter of fact, some things if you stretch it so far, it'll be another thing. Did you ever cook something so long that it turns into something else? Ain't that right?

That's what were talking about with politics.

That politics ain't nothing, but if you stretch it so long that it can't go no further, then you know what you got on your hands? You got an antagonistic contradiction. And when you take that contradiction to the highest level and stretch it as far as you can stretch it, you got what you call war. Politics is war without bloodshed, and war is politics with bloodshed. If you don't understand that, you can be a Democrat, Republican, you can be Independent, you can be anything you want to, you ain't nothing.

We don't want any of those n*****s and any of these hunkies and nobody else, radicals or nobody talking about, "I'm on the Independence ticket." That means you sell out the republicans; Independent means you're out for graft and you'll sell out to the highest bidder. You understand?

We want people who want to run on the People's Party, because the people are gonna run it whether they like it or not. The people have proved that they can run it. They run it in China, they're gonna run it right here. They can call it what they want to, they can talk about it. They can call it communism, and think that that's gonna scare somebody, but it ain't gonna scare nobody.

We had the same thing happen out on 37th Road. They came out to 37th road where our Breakfast for children program is, and started getting those women who were kind of older, around 58---that's, you know, I call that older cause Im young. I aint 20, right, right! But you see, they're gonna get them and brainwash them. And you ain't seen nothin till you see one of them beautiful Sisters with their hair kinda startin getting grey, and they ain't got many teeth, and they were tearin' them policemen up! They were tearing em up! The pigs would come up to them and say "You like communism?"

The pigs would come up to them and say, "You scared of communism?" And the Sisters would say, "No scared of it, I ain't never heard of it."

"You like socialism?"

"No scared of it. I ain't never heard of it."

The pigs, they be crackin' up, because they enjoyed seeing these people frightened of these words.

"You like capitalism?"

Yeah, well, that's what I live with. I like it.

"You like the Breakfast For Children program, n****r?"

"Yeah, I like it."

And the pigs say, "Oh-oh." The pigs say, "Well, the Breakfast For Children program is a socialistic program. Its a communistic program."

And the women said, "Well, I tell you what, boy. I've been knowing you since you were knee-high to a grasshopper, n****r. And I don't know if I like communism and I don't know if I like socialism. But I know that that Breakfast For Children program feeds my kids, n****r. And if you put your hands on that Breakfast For Children program, I'm gonna come off this can and I'm gonna beat your ass like a ...."

That's what they be saying. That's what they be saying, and it is a beautiful thing. And that's what the Breakfast For Children program is. A lot of people think it is charity, but what does it do? It takes the people from a stage to another stage. Any program that's revolutionary is an advancing program. Revolution is change. Honey, if you just keep on changing, before you know it, in fact, not even knowing what socialism is, you dont have to know what it is, they're endorsing it, they're participating in it, and they're supporting socialism.

And a lot of people will tell you, way, Well, the people dont have any theory, they need some theory. They need some theory even if they don't have any practice. And the Black Panther Party tells you that if a man tells you that he's the type of man who has you buying candy bars and eating the wrapping and throwing the candy away, he'd have you walking East when you're supposed to be walking West. Its true. If you listen to what the pig says, you be walkin' outside when the sun is shining with your umbrella over your head. And when it's raining youll be goin' outside leaving your umbrella inside. That's right. You gotta get it together. Im saying that's what they have you doing.

Now, what do WE do? We say that the Breakfast For Children program is a socialistic program. It teaches the people basically that by practice, we thought up and let them practice that theory and inspect that theory. What's more important? You learn something just like everybody else.

Let me try to break it down to you.

You say this Brother here goes to school 8 years to be an auto mechanic. And that teacher who used to be an auto mechanic, he tells him, "Well, n****r, you gotta go on what we call on-the-job-training." And he says, "Damn, with all this theory I got, I gotta go to on-the-job-training? What for?"

He said, "On on-the-job-training he works with me. Ive been here for 20 years. When I started work, they didn't even have auto mechanics. I ain't got no theory, I just got a whole bunch of practice."

What happened? A car came in making a whole lot of funny noise. This Brother here go get his book. He on page one, he ain't got to page 200. I'm sitting here listening to the car. He says, "What do you think it is?"

I say, "I think its the carburetor."

He says, "No I don't see anywhere in here where it says a carburetor make no noise like that." And he says, "How do you know its the carburetor?"

I said, "Well, n****r, with all them degrees as many as a thermometer, around 20 years ago, 19 to be exact, I was listening to the same kind of noise. And what I did was I took apart the voltage regulator and it wasn't that. Then I took apart the alternator and it wasn't that. I took apart the generator brushes and it wasn't that. I took apart the generator and it wasn't that. I took apart the generator and it wasn't even that. After I took apart all that I finally got to the carburetor and when I got to the carburetor I found that that's what it was. And I told myself that 'fool, next time you hear this sound you better take apart the carburetor first.'"

How did he learn? He learned through practice.

I dont care how much theory you got, if it don't have any practice applied to it, then that theory happens to be irrelevant. Right? Any theory you get, practice it. And when you practice it you make some mistakes. When you make a mistake, you correct that theory, and then it will be corrected theory that will be able to be applied and used in any situation. Thats what we've got to be able to do.

Every time I speak in a church I always try to say something, you know, about Martin Luther King. I have a lot of respect for Martin Luther King. I think he was one of the greatest orators that the country ever produced. And I listened to anyone who speaks well, because I like to listen to that. Martin Luther King said that it might look dark sometime, and it might look dark over here on the North Side. Maybe you thought the room was going to be packed with people and maybe you thought you might have to turn some people away and you might not have enough people here. Maybe some of the people you think should be here are not here and you think that, well if they're not here then it won't be as good as we thought it could have been. And maybe you thought that you need more people here than you have here. Maybe you think that the pigs are going to be able to pressure you and put enough pressure to squash your movement even before it starts. But Martin Luther King said that he heard somewhere that only when it is dark enough can you see the stars. And we're not worried about it being dark. He said that the arm of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward heaven.

We got Huey P. Newton in jail, and Eldridge Cleaver underground. And Alprentice Bunchy Carter has been murdered; Bobby Hutton and John Huggins been murdered. And a lot of people think that the Black Panther Party in a sense is giving up. But let us say this: That we've made the kind of commitment to the people that hardly anyone else has ever made.

We have decided that although some of us come from what some of you would call petty-bourgeois families, though some of us could be in a sense on what you call the mountaintop. We could be integrated into the society working with people that we may never have a chance to work with. Maybe we could be on the mountaintop and maybe we wouldn't have to be hidin' when we go to speak places like this. Maybe we wouldn't have to worry about court cases and going to jail and being sick. We say that even though all of those luxuries exist on the mountaintop, we understand that you people and your problems are right here in the valley.

We in the Black Panther Party, because of our dedication and understanding, went into the valley knowing that the people are in the valley, knowing that our plight is the same plight as the people in the valley, knowing that our enemies are on the mountain, to our friends are in the valley, and even though its nice to be on the mountaintop, we're going back to the valley. Because we understand that there's work to be done in the valley, and when we get through with this work in the valley, then we got to go to the mountaintop. We're going to the mountaintop because there's a motherfucker on the mountaintop that's playing King, and he's been bullshitting us. And weve got to go up on the mountain top not for the purpose of living his life style and living like he lives. We've got to go up on the mountain top to make this motherfucker understand, goddamnit, that we are coming from the valley!

What Kind of Message Does the Biden/Harris Campaign Send to the Black Lives Matter Movement?

By Matthew Dolezal

On August 11, presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden announced that he had chosen former presidential candidate and California senator Kamala Harris as his vice-presidential running mate. In a campaign email, Biden proclaimed that Harris “is the best person to help me take this fight to Trump and Mike Pence and then to lead this nation starting in January 2021.” In an overview of the news, CNN highlighted Harris’s “multi-racial background”, indicating that the Biden campaign’s decision may have partially stemmed from a desire to embrace the reinvigorated movement for racial justice in these tumultuous times.

Following the murder of George Floyd by a white Minneapolis police officer on May 25, the nation erupted in protest, demanding justice and accountability. These massive, ongoing, nationwide uprisings are primarily a manifestation of the renewed Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement. As American police departments responded by doubling down on their flagrant brutality, the movement coalesced around efforts to “defund the police.” This was encapsulated in a July 6 post on the official BLM website:

“We know that police don’t keep us safe — and as long as we continue to pump money into our corrupt criminal justice system at the expense of housing, health, and education investments — we will never be truly safe. That’s why we are calling to #DefundPolice and #InvestInCommunities…”

On the surface, Biden’s VP pick may appear to be an olive branch to the BLM movement, as Harris’s identity as a black woman has been given significant attention. This is certainly a noteworthy development in the 2020 election season, as Harris is the first woman of color to run as VP on a major party presidential ticket (though others, such as Angela Davis, have run as third party VP candidates). Despite the historic nature of this news, we must also observe Harris’s troubling decade-long record as a prosecutor in the state of California, a topic that law professor Lara Bazelon summarized in a New York Times op-ed. For instance, during her tenure as San Francisco district attorney, Kamala Harris “fought tooth and nail to uphold wrongful convictions” and “championed state legislation under which parents whose children were found to be habitually truant in elementary school could be prosecuted, despite concerns that it would disproportionately affect low-income people of color.”

When Harris later became California’s attorney general, she fought to continue the death penalty, opposed investigating police shootings, opposed statewide standards for regulating police body cameras, and remained neutral on an initiative that was approved by voters in which certain low-level felonies would be reduced to misdemeanors. When asked by a reporter if she supported marijuana legalization, Harris laughed (marijuana prohibition is a major focus of the disastrous and racist War on Drugs). And this is just the tip of the iceberg. Furthermore, as Briahna Joy Gray observed last year, we should also zoom out from the troubling aspects of Harris’s record specifically and contemplate her decision to become a prosecutor in the first place.

Regardless of the extent to which Harris’s policies disproportionately harmed people of color and other marginalized populations, her record pales in comparison to that of her running mate. As a young Delaware senator, Joseph R. Biden supported racial segregation efforts in public schools, particularly in the area of busing. Janell Ross summarized this history last year by writing, “[Biden’s] legislative work against school integration advanced a more palatable version of the ‘separate but equal’ doctrine and undermined the nation’s short-lived effort at educational equality, legislative and education history experts say.” Biden went on to become a primary architect of the 1994 Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act (often referred to as the “crime bill”), which resulted in what we now call “mass incarceration” — a devastating phenomenon that has had a vastly disproportionate impact on minority communities.

In conjunction with the Reagan-era “tough on crime” mentality, Biden participated in the demonization of the black community through rhetoric that included the infamous term “predator” — a dehumanizing and racist dog whistle. Unfortunately, that was the least of his racist comments; he once said he didn’t want his kids to grow up in a “racial jungle”, later referred to Barack Obama as “the first mainstream African-American who is articulate and bright and clean”, and — strangely enough — eulogized the infamous racist Strom Thurmond.

Possibly in an effort to draw attention away from this disturbing record, Biden began lying extensively about his involvement in the civil rights movement (in short, he was never involved). To further exhibit his profound disrespect for the black community, Biden recently responded to questions from black radio host Charlamagne by saying, “If you have a problem figuring out whether you’re for me or Trump, then you ain’t black.”

In the era of the New Jim Crow, Joe Biden and Kamala Harris have both spent their careers playing the role of the oppressor. The Biden/Harris 2020 ticket proves that the Democratic Party is more interested in engaging in performative identity politics to entrench its corporate-backed power than engaging with the material needs of the American people, especially the most oppressed populations. Joe Biden’s disturbing record on race and mass incarceration was already a turnoff to many progressive voters and Black Lives Matter activists. It appears that the Biden campaign sought to patch up those concerns with a quick fix, a damage-control effort not unlike its appeal to women in the wake of renewed sexual misconduct scrutiny.

This isn’t to say Kamala Harris hasn’t made tremendous accomplishments. Systemic racism and sexism are indeed harsh realities, and women of color truly do face infinitely more barriers to success than individuals from more privileged demographics. But if we place significance on Harris’s identity as a woman of color, as we should, it must be even more important to take notice of the identities of those she harmed during her tenure as a prosecutor. After all, in the realm of systemic racism and mass incarceration, prosecutors play a central role in the draconian implementation of state power.

On the ground, this state power is enforced by the police, who have recently come under unprecedented levels of scrutiny. The institution of American policing initially arose from southern “slave patrols” and has subsequently maintained its inextricable link to white supremacy. We are now experiencing historic political momentum as the American people have flooded the streets to demand racial justice and an end to the domestic terrorism of police violence.

The Democratic Party has responded with a stubborn commitment to the status quo. Joe Biden and Kamala Harris have both been intimately complicit in systemic racism, mass incarceration, the War on Drugs, and violent state power more broadly. Given the backgrounds of its candidates, the Democratic Party’s plea for Americans to “vote blue” in November takes on a darker meaning, symbolizing whose lives really matter in the eyes of our callous political establishment.

Well, What Are Y'all Going To Do Then?

By Mack

On Tuesday, August 11, 2020, democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden, announced his VP pick, Kamala Harris, to a flurry of mixed reactions online. As with all events that make up the political theatre typically observed in our country, there were corners of praise and corners of dissent. On one hand, Harris’ nomination symbolizes a potential historic “first” for Black and South Asian women in the US. It’s an opportunity to be represented in the second highest office in the world. But for many like myself, the optics are totally overshadowed by the bleak reality of electing the white supremacist, grandfather of mass incarceration, and a woman who has unironically self identified as California’s “top cop”.

Under a true democracy, people should be allowed to ask questions. Under a true democracy, people should be allowed space for criticism and dissent. But in the illusion of a democracy that we find ourselves under in the so called united states, where elections cost millions of dollars to participate in, where all parties besides two are rendered virtually invisible, and where the two visible parties pull strings behind the scenes to usher forward uninspiring candidates, dissent is often viewed as life-threatening. We are taught that democracy should be free, but every four years the american people are held at gunpoint and forced to make a decision. Every election becomes “the most important election of our lifetime”.

When those among us who choose to dissent speak up, we are often met with a few similar retorts. They don’t vary much, but one that we can constantly depend on is, “So what do you want me to do then?” I want to recognize that often this question is asked from a genuine place. When you are held politically hostage the way we continue to be in this country, we find ourselves destitute and miseducated. People’s concerns about the future are real.

But more often than not, “So what do you want me to do then?” is a question asked in bad faith, particularly to leftists, people who identify as communists, socialists, anarchists, or any other faction of the true left, who, after lifetimes of study and lived experience, have decided to opt out of the dog and pony show that is american electoral politics. It’s a question asked to invoke shame. To suggest that we are the true failure of this country. To remind us that if we just took this thing a little more seriously, maybe we’d all be in a better place. This question often leads to arguments that don’t go anywhere and don’t yield any solutions. This question only serves to further isolate the people.

I do not like being asked this question, because I believe that most people who ask it, do not want the answer, and most certainly will not like mine. But for the last time, here, I will answer it: I don’t want you to do anything. I literally just want you to stop. I want you to read. I want you to listen. And then, and only then, do I want you to act.

The big issue with being socialized in a patriarchal society, which is to say, a society governed by and constructed in the benefit of men, is that solutions are constantly valued over concrete analysis. We continue to leap for solutions to problems that we do not fully understand. And that is why we continue to find ourselves repeating the same mistakes and asking the same questions (read: “So what do you want me to do then?”) over and over again. Before asking this question, understand that you need new tools. You need a new framework from which to understand the world around you.

Marxists value a process known as dialectical materialism. What dialectical materialism allows us to do is to step back from the noise— the non-stop hysteria on TV and the bought-and-paid-for political chatter, and actually evaluate the material conditions around us. Dialectical materialism reminds us that almost everything in life can be explained when you look at real world conditions and apply the context of history. It asks us to sit with the history of our world, and evaluate the contradictions that come up in our society. A person constantly asking “So what do you want me to do then?” is very far removed from this crucial process of interrogation. And what I need you to do is unplug from the theatre and join me in struggle and in material evaluation. In essence, I need you to take a break from being condescending as I invite you into the thought exercise of a lifetime.

“So what do we do then?” To tell you the truth, it would actually be great if you commit to coming back into the streets with us. I want you to stop ignoring houseless people in your own community. I want you to give them money and food and clothes every chance you get. I want you to band together with your friends and figure out ways to get them off the streets permanently. And I want you to study the history of houselesnees in your city. Why are so many people without homes where you live, while so many homes sit empty? What are your local politicians doing to address it and what’s taking them so long? I want you to get so angry about that, that you do something.

“So what do we do then?” To be really honest with you, there are likely hundreds or thousands of people where you live who have been laid off. I think it would be great if you got organized in your city and learned how to do an eviction blockade. Because people are about to get evicted. Bonus point: it would be really awesome if you have a home that someone who’s getting evicted could live in while they work to sort out their life. I’d love it if we stopped shaming people who are receiving the extra $600 a week in unemployment benefits. I’d like it if you developed a better class analysis and stopped going to war with people who share similar material interests as you on behalf of the ruling class. We all deserve more. I want you to get so angry about that, that you do something.

“So what do we do then?” I want you to figure out what resources the elderly in your community need access to. Can you help someone do some grocery shopping? Is an elder struggling to afford prescriptions? As it stands, no one running for office in this country is interested in even discussing universal healthcare. Perhaps you can help an elder pay for their meds? Maybe do some crowdfunding to help them afford them? What about the single parent households where you live? Will you be a resource to those who are about to struggle with starting virtual learning in the fall? Can you talk to them and find out what they need? Can you and a group of your friends mobilize around that? I want y'all to get so angry about what’s about to happen, that you do something.

“So what do we do then?” Well, right now we’re living through a moment where more people than ever are ready to explore getting rid of one of the deadliest forces in our country: the police. At this moment, Harris wants to “reimagine” them, an exercise we’ve done before with no result, and Biden wants more of them. It’s likely that with the current presence of police, your community already isn’t safe. Are you a cishet man? If so, you should be talking with other cishet men about the ways in which women and LGBTQ+ folks in your community are not safe and may require protection. Can you organize a system of protection for people harmed in your community, and a system of accountability and restoration for those who do harm? Are you trying to put ego aside and unlearn so much of the toxicity that persists in our society? For everyone else, will you organize with folks around you on ways to divest from violence and punishment? It would be dope if you could have a conversation or two about how your community wants to handle interpersonal conflict. I think it would be great if we all took some time to think about how we model ideas like abolition in our everyday lives. I want us to get so mad about this shit, that we do something about it.

“So what do we do then?” I want you to develop a better analysis of the country you live in and begin to engage it in a more ethical way. I want you to really process what it means to live at the heart of the US empire. I want you to not be ok with disposing of the lives of Black and Brown people in the global south on the premise of representation. Change.org petitions aren’t cutting it anymore. I want you to interrogate why you even want to be represented as the face of the death machine that is the united states. No more Black Panther cosplay until you understand the politic that set them on fire. I want you to be pissed off about the fact that you’ve never participated in a truly democratic election in your entire life. I want you to get angry about the electoral college. I want you to stop hypothetically asking me “So what are you going to do then?”, and maybe ask yourself what YOU are going to do in the event that November 2020 ends up being just like November 2016— a scenario where your favorite war criminal wins the popular vote, but still loses the election.

What a proper analysis of our situation tells us is that we did not get here by some slip of a lever. Nothing about our current situation is by mistake. The path that we continue to go down is totally predictable, in fact, people have been theorizing our current reality for decades. What a proper analysis tells us, is that if we don’t completely halt and bring the US empire to its knees, it is going to swallow the rest of the world, and when it’s done, it’s going to cannibalize itself. What it tells us is that until we wake up and stop feeding the machine, nothing is going to change. The only realistic and material way to stop this, is to start building a new world from the ground up. First, with ourselves, and then in our communities.

Via electoralism, we are being continuously asked to feed into our own demise. And no matter how much people claim “we can do both”, history shows us that until we don’t, by and large we continue to rely on elections to solve our societal problems. But no matter who sits at the helm, the machine is never going to slow,  turn around, or stop. The only path this machine is taking, is forward. So please don’t treat questions like “So what do we do then?” like big jokers in a game of spades. Before asking “What are yall going to do then?” or “What are the alternatives?” understand that those who fully understand the problem aren’t looking for alternatives. We’re trying to build something new, and we are asking you to join us.

Black Politicians: White Supremacy's Indirect Rulers

By Christian Gines

The Black Community is an internal colony within America. We have a Perpetual Foreigner status and are treated as such. We are socially, politically, educationally, and economically deprived. We have no self-determination. Where there is institutional racism, there is colonization. U.S. Imperialism affects black people abroad just as much as it does at home, and it is sustained in one fundamental way: Black Politicians. Black Politicians are the faces of white supremacy in the black community. They uphold the same structures that we need to dismantle under the guise of them having to “play ball,” which they claim will lead to “useful” compromise. That approach only benefits the individual and not the entire race. Black Politicians are colonial masters. They are indirect rulers and one of the biggest roadblocks to Black Liberation.  

Black Visibility does not equal Black Power. Just because we have black people that look like us in office or in power doesn't mean that it will benefit us. Just because you have a Black face on a white-supremacist system doesn't mean that white supremacy is over. It has just adapted to the conditions of society. Take the state of Mississippi, for example. Mississippi has the most black politicians in office. Yet, the state still has one of the highest poverty rates, one of the lowest education ratings, worst healthcare systems, and more than half of our renters are at stake of homelessness because of Covid-19. If we have a black person in power implementing the same policies that the white people are implementing, then that representation has no worth to us. What is good for America does not equal what is good for black people. That representation is only worth something to the white-supremacist structure which benefits from the facade of progress by placing a black face on racism and oppression. 

Black Politicians are the same as the indirect rulers that were in colonies during the Scramble for Africa. They come to us saying that they “see us, hear us, and are going to do something about it.” Then they get into office and say that they can't speak up about an issue plaguing the black community because if they speak up, they will be ousted from the club. They claim that they won't have a seat at the table anymore. That shows you the fundamental problem right there. Black Politicians don't really exercise any real power for the community. They are more interested in their individual wealth and comfort than actually fighting for any real change. They are no more than puppets that, instead of being loyal to the constituents that put them into office, are loyal to a political party. They are more worried about personal status than changing the status quo. 

Take the Congressional Black Caucus, for example. The Congressional Black Caucus is dominated by politicians who are more worried about their corporate interests and filling their pockets than actually representing the Black Community's interests. Take the race of Jamal Bowman and Eliot Engel. Jamal Bowman was a black progressive candidate running against the incumbent Eliot Engel, who is a moderate white politician. In this race, the CBC decided to endorse Eliot Engel instead of Jamal Bowman. This example right here goes to show you what the goal of black politicians is to protect the status quo of the White Supremacist Capitalist Patriarchy. They are elected to do the bidding of the ruler. Same as colonial masters. They co-opt revolutionary language to benefit the goals of neoliberalism. 

Look at Jim Clyburn, who was a Freedom Rider and participated in the civil rights movement. When young, he put in work and likely had revolutionary tendencies and thoughts. His effectiveness, though, after being brought into the Democratic Machine, has gone to waste. He no longer articulates the ideas and needs of the black community. What he does now is silence black radical thought and dissent. Take for instance what he said about the protest happening around Defunding the Police. He stated that "Nobody is going to defund the police." That statement is very disingenuous, seeing that most of the protesters are calling for defunding if not abolition. He is doing his job as a colonial master. He is watering down the movement and  trying to subside the black masses by getting us to settle for incremental change instead of fighting to dismantle current systems of oppression. 

Joe Biden picking Kamala Harris as his running mate displays this indirect rule the most. Right now, we are going through a global uprising against policing and prison systems, with people advocating for the abolition of both. During this time, Joe Biden decides to choose a candidate who is known for criminalizing black and brown bodies by keeping innocent people in jail for labor, defending the three-strike system, withholding police misconduct information, defending the death penalty, defending prosecutors falsifying confessions, and a myriad of other things. This shows you the logic of the Democratic Party. They see black people as political pawns who they can manipulate into giving their undying support to the party by just nominating a black woman as Vice President without substantial policy promises. And this strategy has worked. People who were calling for the abolition of police and prisons in June and July are now the same people supporting the Vice Presidential pick of Kamala Harris.

In Black Power, Kwame Ture quoted Machiavelli in saying, "And here it should be noted that a prince ought never to make common cause with one more powerful than himself to injure another unless necessity forces him to it.… for if he wins you rest in his power, and princes must avoid as much as possible being under the will and pleasure of other." This is the reckoning that the Black Community has to have because when we hear talks about “harm reduction,” what harm is actually being reduced. Bombs are still going to be dropped, people are still going to get shot by police, people will still be in jail under both presidents. Harris is deliberately being used to sideline the discussions of real change that we need because we have a black face as the possible second-in-charge of the oppression. We had a black face as the head of America for eight years, and the black community's situation did not get better. Black Lives Matter started under his presidency, and he was hesitant to speak about it, let alone offer substantial change. The Flint Water Crisis was under his presidency, and he didn't provide any substantial change. Not to mention, he dropped 72 bombs a day on the Global South and helped coordinate the outright destruction of one of Africa’s most prosperous nations in Libya. Black faces in high places are just brokers of White Supremacy sold with the guise of progress. 

We don't need Colonial Masters and empty representation. It's not about having a Black person in a position of White Supremacy. We need new institutions in place and new systems that will actually bring about change. Black people are not politically, socially, and economically depressed because of our character or work ethic. Black people are politically, socially, and economically depressed because we are a colonized community. The indirect ruler does not make any colonized situation better. It is just cheaper and easier than having white men run everything in the colony. If we ushered an end to colonization, then we would have an end to our economic serfdom, exploitation, and oppression. We have just as much right to self-determination and freedom than any other colonized group has, and having Black faces doing the bidding of the White Supremacist Capitalist Patriarchy is not the way to achieving that liberation and freedom.

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.”

Breonna Taylor and the Framing of Black Women as "Soft Targets" in America

By Ameer Hasan Loggins

Originally published at the author’s blog.

12:38 a.m. was the last peaceful minute of Breonna Taylor’s life.

On March 13, 2020, at 12:38 a.m., Breonna Taylor and her partner Kenneth Walker were asleep in bed. At 12:39 a.m. officers beat on her door for approximately one-minute. During that 59-seconds of banging, Taylor screamed “at the top of her lungs,” “Who is it?” But no one said a word. “No answer. No response. No anything.” The boogeymen kept beating on her door. By 12:40 a.m. Plainclothes Louisville Metro Police Department Officers Myles Cosgrove and Brett Hankison, as well as Sgt. Jonathan Mattingly, shattered the forest green front door of Breonna Taylor’s apartment with a battering ram.

“Boom. Boom. Boom. Boom. Boom.”

The police blindly shot over 20 rounds of bullets into the home of Breonna Taylor. Eight of those officers’ bullets found their way into Breonna’s Black body.

Sgt. Mattingly spoke to Louisville Police internal investigators roughly two weeks after Breonna’s killing. During that conversation he said officers were told her ground floor apartment was a “soft target” and that Taylor too was a soft target, because she, “should be there alone.”

A “soft target.”

A soft target is a person, location, or thing that is deemed as unprotected. As vulnerable. As powerless against military or terrorist attacks. Attacking soft targets are meant to, “disrupt daily life, and spread fear.” They are meant to target, “identities, histories and dignity.” They are meant to ambush and bring unexpected carnage. In 1845, attacking soft targets is how James Marion Sims, who is considered to be “the father” of modern gynecological studied, was permitted to experiment on enslaved Black women without consent, without anesthesia, and without consideration of their humanity. In 2015, attacking soft targets is what lead to 13 Black women testifying against Officer Daniel Holtzclaw. They spoke of how Holtzclaw targeted them during traffic stops and interrogations. How the officer forced them into sexual acts in his police car or in their homes. Prosecutors spoke to how Holtzclaw, “deliberately preyed on vulnerable Black women from low-income neighborhoods,” while committing his acts of sexual terrorism. 170 years separates the hellish acts of Sims and Holtzclaw, but what bridges the gap in time between those two men serially targeting the identities, dignities, and humanhood’s of these Black women is an unbroken history of war being waged on their entire self.

I cast my mind back to Malcolm X’s rebuking of this nation in 1962, when he said, “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.” Here we are, in the year 2020, and the Louisville Police are framing Breonna Taylor as a “soft target.” It’s as if Brother Malcolm was talking about Breonna’s death before she was even born into this world. Before she was awakened by police pounding on her front door. Before she had a name that needed to be said. While Malcolm’s words may feel prophetic in their preciseness, they are not. They were painfully predictable. Malcolm lived, and died in anti-Black America. He was a scholar of America’s history of anti-Blackness.

There has never been a period in the history of America where Black women’s bodies, hearts, minds and beings have not been reduced to being treated as soft targets.

Black women have always been exploited in America. Violated in America. Terrorized in America. Killed in America. The relationship between Black women and America was birthed in targeting and torture.

In Antebellum America, white owners of enslaved African women freely and with legal impunity raped them, often in front of their own families and fictive kin. In Jim Crow America, close to 200 Black women too were murdered by lynch mobs in the American South, many of whom had been raped before having their necks bound and burned by knotted nooses before being hanged to death.

Black women too, were strange fruit.

Black women like Eliza Woods. Woods was a cook. A cook, who in 1866, was accused of poisoning a white woman to death by the woman’s husband. She was arrested and taken from the county jail by a lynch mob. She was stripped naked. She was hung from an elm tree in the courthouse yard. Her lifeless body was then riddled with bullets as over a thousand spectators watched.

In 1899, the husband admitted that he poisoned his wife — not Woods.

Black women like Laura Nelson. Nelson allegedly shot a sheriff, in 1911, to protect her 14-year-old son. A mob of white people seized Nelson along with her son, and lynched them both. Laura Nelson, “was first raped by several men. The bodies of Laura and her son were hung from a bridge for hundreds of people to see.”

Elderly Black women like 93-year-old Pearlie Golden (2014), 92-year-old Kathryn Johnson (2006), 66-year-old Eleanor Bumpurs (1984), and 66-year-old Deborah Danner (2016), all were in their homes and shot to death by the police. Michelle Cusseaux (2014) was 50-years-old. Kayla Moore (2013) was 41-years-old. Aura Rosser (2014) was 40-years-old. Tanisha Anderson (2014) was 37-years-old. Natasha McKenna (2015) was 37-year-old. Alesia Thomas (2012) was 35-years-old. Miriam Carey (2013) was 34-years-old. Charleen Lyles (2017) was 30-years-old. India Kager (2015) was 28-years-old. Sandra Bland (2015) was 28-years-old. Atatiana Jefferson (2019) was 28-years-old. Mya Hall (2015) was 27-years-old. Meagan Hockaday (2015) was 26-years-old. Shantel Davis (2012) was 23-years-old. Korryn Gains (2016) was 23-years-old. Rakia Boyd (2012) was 22-years-old. Gabriella Nevarez (2014) was 22-years-old. Janisha Fonville (2015) was 20-years-old.

The police did not give a damn about the ages of these Black women. They did not care if they had nearly lived for a century on this earth, or if they were just a few years removed from their high school graduation. They killed them just the same. The police have shown that anybody, at any age, can be on the fatal end of their force, if you were born with Black skin.

Aiyana Mo’nay Stanley-Jones was only seven-years-old. On May 16, 2010, at 12:40 am, a Detroit Police Department Special Response Team Officer ended her life. Her last peaceful minutes in this world were spent sleeping on the couch, near her grandmother. That’s before a no-knock warrant (at the wrong apartment) was executed. That’s before law enforcement threw a flash-bang grenade through her family’s front window. That’s before the grenade burned the blanket covering Aiyana’s body. That’s before the wooden front door exploded under the force of police boots. That’s before Officer Joseph Weekley fired a single shot, that entered Aiyana’s head and exited through her neck — all while an A&E crew were filming an episode of the cop- aganda program, The First 48.

There is no softer target in this world than a sleeping child.

Aiyana never had the chance to reach womanhood, but had she, her “soft target” status, both in perceived personhood and lived location, would have left her vulnerable to domestic anti-Black police terrorism attacks. The disturbing truth is that, as Kimberlie Crenshaw notes, “about a third of women who are killed by police in the United States are Black, but Black women are less than ten percent all women,” in this country. This speaks directly to the hazard level and susceptibility to anti-Black police terrorism faced by Black women of all ages in America. The devil is in the details. Look directly into the data, and see how many of the law enforcers who have killed Black women have been convicted of committing a crime. The American Judicial System does not protect Black women. It too treats them as soft targets. The lack of Black women’s names being said in conversations surrounding anti-Black police terror speaks directly to their deaths and narratives as being deemed as unworthy of outrage. Of newsworthiness. Of action.

Breonna Taylor’s killers are free. Brett Hankison, Jonathan Mattingly, and Myles Cosgrove are walking the streets…free. Breonna was shot dead in her home in March, and we are in the month of August. 143 days have passed…and her killers are free. There is no justice to be had for Black women when the intersections of their Blackness, their class, and their gender mark their bodies, their homes, and their narratives as “soft targets” to be attacked with little to no consequences.

The politics of Black women being unprotected against targeting in America, predates America being a sovereign nation. It goes as far back as Virginia’s December 1662 decree, “that the children of enslaved Africans and Englishmen would be ‘held bond or free according to the condition of the mother’ which, in effect, monetarily incentivized the sexual terror against Black women, “as their offspring would swell planters’ coffers — a prospect boon to countless rapes and instances of forced breeding.” One must understand, when you witness Black women passionately protesting on behalf of Breonna Taylor, yes, it is a fight for Black women today, but it is also a part of the uninterrupted fight Black women have always faced in America — the fight against being casualties of “soft target” terrorists attacks.

Guns Without Political Education is Like a Journey Without Direction

[Brett Carlsen/Getty Images]

By Ahjamu Umi

Originally published at the author’s blog.

Africans (Black people) everywhere are expressing joy and support for the presence of this Not F – - king Around Coalition (NFAC).  If you don’t know, they are the coalition of armed Africans who have gathered hundreds of armed Africans, mostly men identifying folks, to display weapons and demonstrate symbolic resistance against white supremacy.

The idea is understandable. Five hundred plus years of African people being terrorized systemically all over the world would certainly generate a strong desire on behalf of our people to strike out against the terror we experience.  So, the concept is perfectly valid.  The only question/concern is what the proper response actually is to address our oppression?

The answer to that last question can only be answered one of two ways.  Either we desire to engage in performative actions that make us feel better about the oppression we experience every-day.  Or, we want to figure out how to eliminate this suffering once and for all.

The challenge of this internet/social media based reality we live with today is we all function under the illusion that just because all of us have the same accounts, a computer, and an ability to voice a perspective, it has become normalized for people to believe all opinions matter.  Or, just because someone has the ability to express an opinion in a post, meme, video, etc., that constitutes a perspective where its value is gauged not on the quality of the information within it, but the form in which the perspective is presented.  In other words, form always supersedes essence.  If something looks good, it will get more likes and attention than something with much more substance that doesn’t appeal to us the same way.

As a result, most Africans, and most people overall, are choosing symbolic actions that make us feel better over actual work to eliminate the oppression.  The European woman in Portland, Oregon, U.S. stripping naked and standing/sitting in front of terrorist police makes some of us feel better because for that moment, the police left.  Of course, the gestapo terrorists came back with a vengeance the very next night, probably further infuriated that they couldn’t terrorize as they wanted the night before. This reality hasn’t stopped scores of primarily European observers from praising this individual act. This symbolic act, as if it represents some tangible victory.  This is the surreal reality we face when we know not one less African has been brutalized by state-sanctioned terrorists anywhere on earth as a result of that woman showing her genitals to those terrorists.

By the same token, these Africans come out in the thousands with these guns.  There is no clear plan or idea about how the guns will be used.  And, as someone who has lots of experience handling firearms, I was more than a little squeamish watching the video of the action today, about how careless many of the armed participants were in handling their weapons (and that was before there were reports of gunshots at the action).

Still, more than a few Africans and other goodhearted people were jumping to the ceiling at the sight of these armed Africans, as if this symbolic action was going to intimidate one gestapo cop or white supremacist from their plans to terrorize any of us.  In fact, the videos from today’s events show glimpses of the white right militia members of the Three Percenters present at the NFAC action.  I’m speaking as an activist/organizer who has stood up against the Three Percenters on multiple occasions.  If those Africans permitted those clear white supremacists (their name depicts their racist interpretation of the history of how this country was formed) to rub shoulders with them armed, that’s nothing we should feel any comfort and strength from. 

There should be absolutely no question that guns, no matter how many of them, without organized political education guiding the usage and existence of the guns, is never a good formula.  Guns without political education, like the title says; is like a journey that has absolutely no direction.  We like the guns and the imagery because it symbolizes us having the power to defend our lives, but as was demonstrated when the shots rang out earlier today, the police – the same gestapos we are in the streets protesting in the first place – were able to instantly take control of the day, despite the presence of all of those Africans with guns.  If nothing else, that should show you how its performative and not anything designed to build capacity and strength for our liberation because if it was, we could never surrender our authority to the same gestapos who are killing us.

The final conclusion for us has to be that even if we have a militia of 10,000 people, even 50,000, while the overwhelming majority of our people are not even involved in any organization, that represents no real strength for the masses of our people.  Instead, it has the potential to be a detriment to our forward progress.  Our history is full of examples of paramilitary groups with no political education and clearly this has not worked out well for us.  In Azania (South Africa), we had the Inkatha Movement in the 80s which was mobilized by the racist apartheid regime to use its massive military strength to work against the African National Congress, the Pan-Africanist Congress of Azania, the Black Consciousness Movement, the Azanian People’s Organization, and all the anti-apartheid forces operating there.  This was possible because of the lack of political education which caused people who rallied around Inkatha to believe the talking points that the anti-apartheid organizations mentioned were fronts for outside “communist agitators.”  In the same vein, the U.S. government was able to manipulate the lack of political maturity within our Black power organizations to easily facilitate violence between the Black Panther Party and the US Organization in which a number of Panthers, including Alprentice “Bunchy” Carter and John Huggins were killed on the UCLA campus in 1969.  There are volumes written by those who lived through those experiences expressing dismay at the toxic masculinity, patriarchy, and the use of guns without the level of organization to ensure the masses are being organized to confront the state to seize power (the only logical reason weapons should ever exist for us).
​
Until we get people engaged with organizations, the guns are useless.  We realize that Mao Tse Tung said “power grows out of the barrel of the gun” but his statement should be viewed in the context of the mass organization that his Communist Party in China certainly demonstrated. Without the organized masses – which requires people in organizations – we can’t do anything with guns above just attempting theater to make us feel better about the system continuing to dominate our lives.  At least the good news is simple.  Join some organization working for justice and if you don’t see an organization you feel you can join, start one.  And make sure your organization has a strong political education process.  Once those components are in place, you can add community defense projects that help you train with weapons, but all of that work should always be couched in political education.  Once we recognize this, we can really begin getting to work towards liberation.

Systemic Racism and the Prison-Industrial Complex in the 'Land of the Free'

[Image by Keith Negley via NY Times]

By Holly Barrow

Following the tragic murder of George Floyd at the hands of Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin on 25th May, the world has erupted into protest to demand an end to the vicious racism which continues to infiltrate society. At the forefront of this crucial public discourse on race lies the criminal justice system as it has disproportionately targeted and traumatized BIPOC (Black, Indigenous and people of color) communities for decades.

Systemic racism and inequality is intrinsic to law enforcement in the US, with mass incarceration riddled with racial disparities. From the thirteenth amendment loophole to the War on Drugs, Black communities have suffered exponentially under this facade of ‘justice’, with families torn apart as a result. The War on Drugs is in fact one of the plainest and most brazen examples of heavily racialized laws borne out of a desire to incriminate Black communities. When looking at initial federal sentences for crack cocaine offenses, such inequalities within law enforcement become strikingly clear: conviction for crack selling - more heavily sold and used by people of color — resulted in a sentence 100 times more severe than selling the same amount of powder cocaine — more heavily sold and used by white people.

This is no coincidence and just one example of a system patently stacked against low-income, Black communities. We need only look at some key statistics to recognize how deeply this goes: African Americans are more likely than white Americans to be arrested, are more likely to be convicted and are more likely to experience lengthy prison sentences. Beyond this, African American adults are 5.9 times as likely to be incarcerated as white adults.

In light of such disproportionate arrest and convictions of Black people in the US, dismantling the current prison system - particularly the prison-industrial complex - is key in the fight against racism. The prison-industrial complex describes the overlapping interests of government and industry; essentially, it refers to the corruption at the heart of the criminal justice system in the use of prisons as a mechanism for profit.

This is a system that abolitionists and activists have been attempting to eradicate for decades as it has become increasingly clear over the years that there is a very real and dangerous incentive to incarcerate human beings. With the rise of for-profit prison systems has come further exploitation of predominantly African-American men and other ethnic minorities. With regards to class, this system additionally hurts low-income citizens at a significantly higher rate, with many recognizing the harrowing reality that, in the US, poverty is often treated as a crime.

Poor and minority defendants are typically unable to access the same level of protection and defense as their wealthier counterparts. Similarly, the state recognizes the likelihood of their inability to afford bail, with over 10 million Americans in prison as they await trial on low-level misdemeanors or violations simply because they cannot afford the bail set for them. This keeps prisons filled; a key proponent of the prison-industrial complex.

With police officers incentivized to make arrests as they are aware that police departments will not be funded adequately if there is no motive to do so, and billion-dollar corporations having stakes in the private prison system - from technology such as tagging to hospitality for inmates - incarceration has become a means to generate wealth and boost local economies. This comes at the expense of the most marginalized groups, namely poor people of color.

Regrettably, this line between ‘justice’, ‘protection’ and corporate interest is becoming comparably distorted across immigration removal centers. And again, it is BIPOC who largely fall victim to this. Detention, surveillance and border wall construction have all become big business, with approximately two-thirds of all detainees being held in for-profit facilities. Tech companies have thrived off of tracking migrants, with software company Palantir holding a $38 million contract with ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement).

To provide further insight into just how money-oriented the detention of predominantly vulnerable individuals - such as asylum seekers - has become, we can observe the distressing rise in shares in the largest prison company in the world. Shares in CoreCivic — which runs both private prison facilities and detention centers — spiralled by 40% when Trump was elected as president. This came following his promises to deport thousands and demonstrates a clear recognition that this would see private, for-profit immigration detention facilities boom.

To deny the concerning correlation between incarceration - both within prisons and detention facilities - and investment suggests willful ignorance. The treatment of prisons and detention facilities as money-making machines is of detriment to democracy and makes a mockery of those who hail America as the ‘land of the free.’

In fighting systemic racism, we cannot neglect to tackle the prison-industrial complex. Its roots and very mechanisms are rooted in the oppression of the most marginalized.

Holly Barrow is a political correspondent for the Immigration Advice Service; an organization of immigration lawyers based in the UK and the US

The Case Against the Fourth of July

By Ryan Wentz

In 1992, indigenous leaders succeeded in pressuring Berkeley, California to drop the Columbus Day holiday and replace it with Indigenous Peoples Day. Since then, hundreds of U.S. cities and a handful of U.S. states have followed suit. This shift is merely symbolic, but it does reflect a change in how the general public understands American history. Today, in 2020, a national uprising against anti-Black state violence has pushed the discourse into uncharted territory: all around the country, protesters are tearing down statues of notorious racists, from Christopher Columbus to Thomas Jefferson. This reckoning is long overdue; American exceptionalism, militarism, and patriotism must be challenged. Displays and celebrations of oppressive structures like settler colonialism and white supremacy must be put to rest. This year and each of the next, don’t celebrate the Fourth of July.

As it was in 1776, the U.S. today is a genocidal, anti-indigenous, and anti-Black settler colony;  the country’s anti-indigenous, anti-Black past has transformed into an anti-indigenous, anti-Black present. The U.S. government’s response to the ongoing coronavirus pandemic and national uprising against racist police violence illuminates how little it values indigenous and Black lives. For indigenous communities, coronavirus has been especially devastating. Navajo Nation has recorded more cases per-capita than any U.S. state, and had to sue the federal government to receive the funding that it was promised. Meanwhile, police forces across the country continue to terrorize Black communities. That this global pandemic has not been able to slow down state terror against Black people speaks volumes. In fact, authorities have cracked down harder; police murdered Breonna Taylor and George Floyd, among others, during this global pandemic. Additionally, it is stunning to compare how authorities have responded to protests for justice for Black people with protests demanding the U.S. reopen its economy. 

Considering that the Fourth of July is a celebration of the U.S. and its so-called “independence,” perhaps it’s important to relitigate why the so-called “Founding Fathers” fought the British. In his 2014 book, “The Counter-Revolution of 1776: Slave Resistance and the Origins of the United States of America,” Dr. Gerald Horne asserts that the revolution was in fact a counterrevolution to preserve slavery. At the time, the British empire was inching closer to abolishing slavery, which scared American capitalists who relied on slave labor to accumulate massive fortunes. Thus, the following question must be asked: what is the Fourth of July actually celebrating, if not the creation of an inherently violent settler colony built on stolen land by stolen labor? 

These are the types of difficult questions that we must ask ourselves as we seriously interrogate U.S. history. It may be unpleasant, or even earth-shattering, to reconsider the narrative that we have been told about the U.S. But that is precisely what needs to happen; the public must grapple with the lies that it has been told to justify and uphold white supremacy, settler colonialism, imperialism, and capitalism. 

Every year on July 4th, it is nearly impossible to escape the flag-waving and fireworks. We can, however, reject everything that the holiday stands for and make the choice not to celebrate it. The U.S. government is currently terrorizing entire indigenous and Black communities both inside and outside of its colonial borders; we cannot go on ignoring these crimes.

In Bolivia, for example, last year’s U.S.-backed military coup forced Evo Morales, the first indigenous leader in a country with an indigenous majority, into exile. The coup regime and its supporters are explicitly racist towards Bolivia’s indigenous communities; in 2013, Jeanine Áñez, the unelected leader who has ruled the country since November, tweeted that “I dream of a Bolivia free of satanic indigenous rites.” Additionally, after the coup, its supporters declared: “Bolivia is for Christ.” Many burned Wiphala flags, a symbol of Bolivia’s indigenous majority. In the following weeks, the military massacred at least 18 indigenous protesters in Sacaba and Senkata. Protests against the unelected government continue to this day.

In addition, U.S. support for the Israeli occupation and colonization of Palestine illuminates how central anti-indigenous racism is to U.S. policy. In 1923, Vladimir Jabotinsky, an influential Zionist leader, wrote: “Zionist colonization must either be terminated or carried out against the wishes of the native population.” Today, as Israel moves closer to the annexation of the occupied West Bank, Zionist leaders share the same understanding. The U.S., meanwhile, enables Israel to colonize Palestine “against the wishes of the native population” by providing its military with $3.8 billion per year, approximately $10 million per day, to continue ethnically cleansing Palestine and entrenching the illegal occupation. 

Just as it has propped up anti-indigenous movements around the world, the U.S. has supported explicitly anti-Black regimes, like in Apartheid South Africa. In November 1973, the U.N. General Assembly adopted the International Convention on the Suppression and Punishment of the Crime of Apartheid (ICSPCA). The U.S., however, neither signed nor ratified the convention. Over one decade later, in 1984, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, one of the leaders of the anti-apartheid movement, declared that “apartheid is an evil as immoral and unchristian in my view as Nazism, and in my view the Reagan administration's support in collaboration with it is equally immoral, evil, and totally unchristian, without remainder.” The U.S., along with its Western allies, was one of the last states to officially cut ties with the apartheid regime in South Africa.

In the twenty-first century, the U.S.’s assault on Black lives on the African continent has continued. The U.S. has been meddling in Somalia for over three decades, and continues to drone bomb the country with impunity. Meanwhile, the U.S., with the support of N.A.T.O. and Western-backed rebels, overthrew Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi in 2011. By 2011, Libya was atop the African continent in Human Development Index; nearly 85% of Libyans were literate, while the average life expectancy hovered around 75. Yet because Gaddafi refused to completely submit to Western imperialists, he was deemed a threat that needed to be taken out. Today, Libya is a collapsed state where Black people are being sold in open-air slave markets.

The U.S.’s horrific treatment of indigenous and Black communities abroad is a reflection of the crimes it has committed against both communities at home. It is essential that we understand that anti-indigenous and anti-Black racism is foundational to the existence of the U.S.; without them, there would be no U.S. empire. Thus, celebrating the U.S. is celebrating anti-indigenous and anti-Black racism. It is celebrating settler colonialism, ethnic cleansing, slavery, genocide, and imperialism. Ultimately, what Christopher Columbus represents is no different from what the U.S. represents.

Ryan Wentz (any pronouns) is a Los Angeles-based field organizer for Beyond the Bomb, a grassroots organization committed to preventing nuclear war. Ryan has experience in the anti-war and Palestine solidarity movements, and has in the past worked at the American Friends Service Committee and CODEPINK. 

What to the African American is the Fourth of July?

[PHOTO CREDIT: BOSTON GLOBE]

By Christian Gines

I. Every time a firecracker pops I think of every pop of a whip that cracked a back of my ancestor
An uncle or aunt
A cousin
A best friend

Every whip that drove my people
Deeper
*Whip*
Deeper
*Whip*
Deeper
Into oppression
Every whip that moved my parents
One step farther from their homeland
And closer to their new land
A land that’s not really theirs
Where they are a troublesome presence
A land where they are 3/5 of a person
“A slave”
“A nigger”
“A coon”
“A boy”
“A negro”
“A convict”
“A drug dealer”
“A thug”
A
ME

II. Every time a firecracker pops I can hear their fingers pop
The blood seeping out
A paper cut
But from thorns
The same color of the white stuff that they make out of trees 
But the white that makes the white people a lot of money 
The pop that makes me want to complain and get Band-Aid 
But the pop that if they didn’t keep picking then they would be DEAD
I think of the crackling heat of that day
Gleaming on their flared backs
“How is it that we hear the loudest yelps for liberty among the drivers of Negroes?”

III. Every time a firecracker pops I think of the popped naps
The naps from the black panther party that uncurled into an Afro
The naps of my people that remains
Un kept
Un picked
Un bothered
To reflect that we are from our homeland Africa
To reflect that we belong here in America
To show that we shouldn’t be defined by our haircuts or our skin color
To show that when we pick our hair it is a symbol of black power
And that power doesn’t have to infringe on anyone else
For some reason I have to say that
But when you’re accustomed to privilege
Equality feels like oppression
When I pop my knuckles I think of all the black women that struggle with their natural hair 
That need to pop their naps to fit into what society preaches
So they can seem intelligent and smart
So they can be accepted into a society that stresses how they can and should look

IV. Every time a firecracker pops I think of the hanging nooses
The nooses that have my brothers head hanging in them 
That pop
One piece of rope at a time it pops
Waiting on the limb to break
POP
There it goes again
Another black boy dead
When I pop my knuckles I think of the gunshots that go off unexpectedly
One that didn’t have to happen
One that makes another black boy disappear from this earth like nothing ever happens
And when I pop my knuckles I think of
99% percent of those gavels that leave those officers convicted of nothing
And how this criminal justice system fails us
Time and time again
And when I pop my knuckles I think of the moment when that time will stop
And a pop will sound but
It will be a firework of equality and justice
Spreading across the world one by one
On a path that will stop only when that pop is a firework on June 19th not July 4th

V. Every time a firecracker pops I think of Thurgood Marshall and his fight for equality
I think of him hitting his gavel as the first black on the Supreme Court of the United States of America
When I pop my knuckles I think of the jails locked forever
The mass incarceration of African Americans
I think of the closing of MLK’s jail cell and the letters he sent from there
I think of the killings of 
Medgar Evers
Malcolm X

Fred Hampton

Patrice Lumumba
Laquon McDonald
Eric Garner
Sandra Bland
Freddie Gray

Trayvon Martin
Stephon Clark

Sandra Bland
Kaleif Browner

Ahmaud Arbery

George Floyd

Breonna Taylor

Oluwatoyin Salau

 VI. Every time a firecracker pops I think of the last poll closing on election night in 2008 
Black people were lynched for this right
I think of the opening of the White House door
And the hope that came with it
The dream that we could become a better America

VII. Every time a firecracker pops I think of Crispus Attucks
The first person killed in the Revolutionary war
A black person
Not even fighting for his own freedom
We have fought in every American war
We are more likely to join the army than any other race
But we're still not seen as American
Yet you still hate us
You brought us over here yet you hate us
We were told once, by virtue of our bondage, that we could never be American.
But like Langston Hughes said
“They’ll see how beautiful I am/And be ashamed —/I, too, am America.”