The cage was CREATED by racists, by segregation, institutional racism and capitalist superexploitaton. In the REAL WORLD, ghettoes were directly and intentionally created by segregation, both northern and southern. That's historical reality, not a matter of opinion. But at least at one time the super-exploited, colonized Black community had a relative stable place in the economic as exploited laborers---albeit at the BOTTOM of the economic system,. That is what my parents endured. Degrading, but largely STABLE. And so my mom worked in the same miserable factory in Bmore for about thirty or forty years. My dad had a poor paying gig most of his life as a mechanic. And there was Bethlehem Steel in Bmore. In other cities you may have had GM or Chrystler. When Blacks were not excluded they were relegated to the BOTTOM. But at one time that bottom tended to hold steady. But then came the ELECTRONIC REVOLUTION within domestic and global capitalism. Then the whole picture changed. Industrial capital gave way to electronic and piratical finance capitalism. Capitalism has long been known as a system giving rise to technological revolutions. These revolutions mainly created labor saving devices which allowed the creation of more and more wealth (mainly for the capitalist) with less and less labor. But the new electronic revolution tends to created not labor saving but LABOR REPLACING devices. This new electronic revolution first obliterated that section of the economy with jobs that Blacks---thanks to centuries of racial caste--were disproportionately confined. Hence the current crisis in the Black community and the Black family. The fathers often CANNOT provide. I won't go now into a critique of the patriarchal family, which was no paradise. But now even that kind of family is increasingly impossible to sustain. Moreover, it is not just a coincidence that broken families are more common EVERYWHERE, not just in the Black community. Singlehood, not marriage, is now the statistical American NORM. Since capitalism can increasingly create wealth, profit without labor, the old New Deal social contract is now torn to shreds. Capitalism destroys families, jobs, communities, culture and civilization itself. The plight of the Black community is only a more severe example of the plight of America. Similarly, the fascistic police terror against Blacks is a foreshadowing of the fascistic future of America if this militarized police abuse isn't ended. Let's be clear. If the Black struggle is lost it will mean the end of democracy and freedom in America--what little democracy and freedom we still have left. And all you white people who demonize Black people rather than fighting the 1% are putting a noose around your own necks. An elder (who was a university student in the 1960s) tells me that when Dr. King visited Baltimore in 1967 he said at a meeting in our community "The REAL difference between us and our bemused white brethren is not what they think, and maybe no what we think. It's not that they're free and we're not. It's that we KNOW we're not free, and they think they are." Wake up, white America! It's later than you think.
-Savant
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Would you believe I had memorized those words when I was 13, and that the Black Panther Party ended their presentation of their 10 Point program with those words from the Declaration of Independence?
-Savant
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Savant's words in refuting a skeptic:
There is widespread, rampant police terror in America against the Black community. And there has been since the beginning of this decadent, racist society. The United Nations, Amnesty International, the ACLU have all spoken out against racist police terror against Black and Latin people in America. The UN has specifically named Ferguson as just one example of a PATTERN of racist abuse and police brutality. (Perhaps the whole world is "acting like a 15 year old). And your denial is an implicit apology for that terror. Your racist demonizing of Black youth (while dishonestly b_____ about "race baiters") makes you an accomplice. Furthermore, this fascistic terror cannot and will not be confined to Black and Latin communities. It will spread. Indeed, we've already seen an indication of that danger with the violent repression of Occupy activists on the West Coast a few years ago (with one veteran of our loony wars in the Middle East getting his skull cracked by a cop's rubber bullet). You'd better pull your head out of the sand. As for the Black community we're pretty fed up. Today our protest mainly takes the form of massive nonviolent resistance and demonstrations. I commend our young Black people for their preference for that kind of activism. Some of my students--black, white, Latin and other--are planning further demos as well as a series of actions (including Berkeley style teach-ins, etc) for the following semester. I am proud of them. But let no one be deceived. Our protests NOW are mainly NONVIOLENT in character. I guarantee no one that they will remain so if the terror is not curbed and ended. Would you like to see the emergence of an African American equivalent of the Irish Republican Army?
-Savant
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Interestingly enough, I know a Black social worker whose job includes some work with poor whites in South Baltimore, a part of town who economic conditions resemble those of black East Baltimore. Most of the same issues are there, but perhaps more hidden because those poor are of European descent. Low income employment, unemployment, broken families, drugs, etc. They're not stigmatized by race. But they are victimized by class. And yes, there is police brutality in those areas though not exactly on the scale of police violence in Black communities. It might intensify if these communities become conscientized. Kind of like what happened with the IWW. If there's one thing that you, I and Attai do seem to agree on, it's the need for at least the equivalent (in contemporary terms) or the ORIGINAL Black Panthers, SNCC. I would add we need the equivalent (in contemporary terms) also of the IWW.
-Savant
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Sorry. but your claim is simply and FACTUALLY false. The Democratic Party is a rotten corporate capitalist party, but not so far to the right as the Republicans. That's a FACT, and the rest is right wing paranoid nonsense. But I WISH Barack Obama was a socialist; a democratic socialist, not a Maoist. We might then have universal health care rather than the watered down ACA program. We might have had a SERIOUS effort at national reconstruction (somewhat like with FDR) rather than the tepid stimulus package. We might even have the Economic Bill of Rights that Dr. King intended to put forth had he lived to lead the Poor Peoples Campaign in spring of 1968. And the political and cultural climate of America might be more humane, democratic and radically anti-racist. No militarized police such as we've seen in Ferguson and numerous other American cities and town. I wish Obama was even HALF as left-of-center as rightists imagine, and that he had won the election on precisely that kind of platform.
-Savant
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Drilling's "Che/Mao Liberation Front" sounds as unreal as those conspiracies of Jewish Communists and Bankers that old European racists (of which Nazis were only the most notorious) use to rant and rave about. It sounds like the American (especially in the South) talk about commie, pinko, liberal Jewish conspiracies which were alleged to be behind and controlling the Black freedom Movement of the 1960s. Hey, it ain't REAL! I'm not just saying that the Democratic Party, subservient to corporate interests and money, is not the "Che/Mao liberation front." I'm saying that I do not actually believe in the existence of such a Front.....not in the real world.
-Savant
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Savant Refuting a Reactionary:
Moron! Timothy is referring to positions of Malcolm X AFTER he left NOI (though thee's some indication his thinking tacitly moved in a revolutionary direction even BEFORE breaking with that bankrupt outfit), Malcolm X, who had to deal with sexist attitudes in his new organization, had to remind brothers that at least in the MOST PROGRESSIVE African nations, there was emphasis on the emancipation of women. At least the most progressive elements he met in Algeria's FLN (who unfortunately lost out to more conservative elements) emphasized not only the end to white supremacy, but also opposition to CLASS OPPRESSION and the oppression of women. Malcolm's thinking ran along similar lines. And in that respect he was a REVOLUTIONARY Black nationalist, not a reactionary one (as were NOI and Karenga's United Slaves or US). The Cuban revolutionaries also reject racism, patriarchy and class oppression and exploitation. Unfortunately, they follow the Leninist model, which defeats the ultimate aims of the Revolution. But neither Che nor Castro were reactionary nationalists. To the extent that they are nationalists it is in opposition to US imperialism which had plundered Cuba for nearly a century. Maybe if you READ some Black thinkers (or read ANYTHING) you might at least distinguish between progressive and revolutionary nationalism and the conservative or reactionary varieties, Even in Europe there;'s a difference. French, Polish and Czech Resistance were at least progressive form of nationalist resistance to Nazi occupation. But Nazism, Italian Fascism and the Fascism of Franco were REACTIONARY European nationalisms. By at least the standards of the time the Italian nationalism Mazinni and Garibaldi were democratic and progressive. The Italian nationalism of Mussolini was fascistic and reactionary. Get a clue.
-Savant
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Bravo, young brother!!! Folk ought to READ Malcolm X or hush. Also, there's a interesting documentary called "MALCOLM X: MAKE IT PLAIN". Made by Orlando Bagwell, who also made CITIZEN KING. And who is a Bmore homeboy from a progressive black middle class family. (Probably my contemporary since his folk were involved in Baltimore's civil rights movement). We must cherish the legacy.
-Savant
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