Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor: The Fight Against the New Jim Crow

Lianne La Havas - Unstoppable

Every Second Every Hour by Iyeoka

Janet - Runaway

Conscious Words

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What capitalistic competition also does is to create MASS POVERTY, the concentration of greater and greater wealth into fewer and fewer hands and, in this era of electronic revolution in global capitalism, we have the growing obsolescence of labor itself. In short, labor itself is being abolished. I don't know whether you failed to take economics, but you failed to UNDERSTAND it.

-Savant

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The "American Dream" has proven to be an illusion, which is why neither Blacks nor whites can achieve it. Worst, it has turned out to be---as even Dr. King observed after Selma--to be a NIGHTMARE.

-Savant

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There are no kings or queens in America, though capitalism is creating a growing mass of paupers--in all colors, genders and persuasions

-Savant

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I may be back this weekend to reply to some things that have been said, especially things said in reply to my posts. Suffice it to say for now that Baltimore has in the last two weeks seen the largest demonstrations since the1960s. And I'm quite tired out myself. But the Struggle Continues.

-Savant

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Isn't it interesting how often these gender warriors like SadbutTrue are right ringers? In her case, she's proves here to be an apologist for capitalism and the predatory 1%. And SBT, like many other reactionaries, imagine herself to be Christian. Yet there's hardly anything more antithetical to the values of capitalism than the gospels of Jesus Christ (at least as presented in the Bible). Of course, SBT is a known hater of Black men even though Jesus preaches against hate and promotes a gospel of love. Of course, this is quite common among Christians. All the more reason why I should remain an agnostic.

-Savant


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Actually, most Black women do NOT reject Black men--however much SBT would have us believe otherwise. Most Black men do not reject Black women--the buffoonish rants to the contrary by Uncle Tom Sotomayor notwithstanding.

-Savant

Updates on Baltimore from Savant (who actually lives in Baltimore)

Tu dois visiter un eglise noir pendant un de vos voyages en Amerique. Je crois que votre tutor Afro-American ici est un intellectual et pas tres religieux. Il ne vous introduit pas des eglise noir. Au Baltimore maintenant beacoup des notre "town hall" meetings sont dans les eglise Noir. Some of the spokepersons de La Resistance contra la terrrorisme de la police sont preachers---par exemple, Rev. Jamal Bryant. Je crois que le Catholicism, come tous religions, ont positive and negative tendencies. A L'Amerique Latin, l'eglise est souvent part de la lutte pour la liberation des pauvres. Par examples, Bishop Oscar Romera ou Padre Camillo Torres of Columbia. Aux Etas-Unis, c'est tres complexe. There is a deep strain of anti-Black racism among Irish Catholics, surtout a Boston. I've seen a bit of this in Baltimore aussi. Irish Catholics from Ireland qui visite l'Amerique are often stunned by the degree of anti-Black racism among many Irish Catholic Americains. In Ireland itself le Mouvement Afro-Americain des annees 60s has been an inspiration t their resistance to British tyranny. Dr. King is deeply revered over their. (Une femme Catholiqe from Ireland who was here during the crisis relating to the busing program to integrate Boston schools was shocked an embarrassed that her American cousins, so to speak, were so deeply hostile to Black Americans, and that some had even taken to mob violence against buses of Blacks school children). Mais il y'avait aussi les activiste progressive qui supported the civil rights movement in the 1960s. Not in as large proportion que les Juifs, but in substantial numbers. It may be that Mario Savio, who participated in the Mississippi Freedom Summer before leading the Free Speech Movement at Berkeley U, was of Catholic background.

-Savant

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The KKK were FASCISTS, but were members of both corporate parties. And frankly, I despise both Republicans and Democrats as hirelings of the 1%.

-Savant

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It's remarkable how much time is spent talking nonsense. Guess what? If you bump into one of our loony fascist pig cops in Baltimore or other cities, the pig won't care (or even notice) if you're Black American, African or West Indian.

-Savant

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There's no end to it. And some voices in the Black community, though not presently a majority, are beginning to propose the forming of armed self-defense groups.

-Savant

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Here in Baltimore we've seen whites, Asians, Latinos and numerous others rallying to our cause. There is an awakening underway. And it unnerves reactionaries like Masud.

-Savant

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It is commonplace for someone to start talking about "black crime" whenever the issue of racism or police brutality against Africans Americans is raised. Mainly this is a deflection. But actually, police brutality and crime are related; though not in the way reactionaries imagine. The fratricidal activities in oppressed communities are actually the dysfunctional reactions to oppression itself. Oppression breeds dysfunction (which is why you also find some much of the same problems in poor white and Latino communities.) Moreover, the police are the armed enforcers of the oppressive power structure of racism and economic exploitation--whic h is one of the reasons that talk about good vs bad cops is largely irrelevant. Moreover, every kid in the ghettoes knows about the criminality of the police themselves. For examples, open air drug markets--unimagina ble in affluent white communities--opera te within full view of the cops in the ghetto; and everyone KNOWS it. Hence the one of the reasons (aside from racism and brutality) for the widespread contempt in the hood for the police. Actually, the issue is justice; and the only other side is injustice. The system of injustice, of structural racism and economic exploitation and dispossession, is the roots both of crime and police terror. Moreover, history has shown that whenever there is a high level of social activism, of progressive and revolutionary struggle, crime tends to drop. The black cirme rate dropped 60% during the Montgomery Bus Boycott. In sections of NYC where the Black Panthers and similar groups exerted great influence, prostitution and dope peddling tended to dry up as youth were engaged in liberatory struggle. I PERSONALLY observed this as a youngster in the neighborhood in East Baltimore (an area similar to the one in which Freddy gray lived). When the Black Panthers and others moved into the area where we lived and began to form educational programs, clinics, breakfast for children, and community patrols of police (which were also quite effective against dope dealers and pimps) the neighborhood became safer for us. As for most black leaders ---opportunistic poseurs of the black bourgeoisie--they can't effectively address issues of crime, poverty, police brutality or anything else because they're not committed to any liberation struggle to end oppression. They mainly about furthering their class interests. And like Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake and Barack Obama who denounced our kids as "criminals " and "thugs" (but were not so denunciatory of the fascist pig cops, or the predatory corporate elite which created the social misery we see in the ghetto and elsewhere), we see that when their own class interests are threatened by the masses of Black folk, they are just as contemptuous of the people as the most rabid white racist. No, the entire police system must be dismantled and replace by a force democratically controlled by the community itself, and we must curtail (eventually terminated) the powers of the racists and corporate predators whose piratical system created this crisis to begin with.

-Savant

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The term reactionary fits a good number of people, as do terms such as racist, and so forth. As for the extraordinary affluence you think is available to the average person, you need to be better informed about the USA, and maybe even about Europe. Everywhere there is a growing divide between the haves and have nots; and this may be greater in America than in Europe. You say that the average person has more to protect than every before. Maybe there's something to that in Scandinavia. In America, people are generally poorer than they were one or two generation ago. More people have lost homes and jobs than ever since the Great Depression. The average standard of living is lower than it was 40--50 years ago. The old working class has been virtually destroyed by the electronic revolution in national and global capitalism. And the new proletariat is increasingly LESS like the working class that Marx and others envisioned and more like the ancient Roman proletariat, a class increasingly forced out of productive work altogether. What important about this is that WHITES in America have been impoverished to an extent unimaginable since the Depression. Blacks, on the other hand, have lived under Depression like conditions in this racist corporate regime even during periods of relative economic stability. Even former Pres. Clinton acknowledged that America could not tolerate the general level of poverty among whites to reach the depths it has in Black and Latino America. And as Noam Chomsky once noted, if the police and the judiciary were allowed to operate within white America as they do as a matter of course in black and brown America, the USA would already be regarded as a fascist state. The impoverishment of the American people, the global deprivation of people nearly everywhere by growing divide between haves and have nots, is generating a situation in which massive progressive movements are becoming possible and appealing again. Unfortunately, reactionary movements from Golden Dawn to America's Christian Right are also enabled by these tendencies. So fascism is still possible. It's partially already operable in Black communities. But something new is also happening, from Occupy to the Black Lives Matter Movement, to militant labor in Wisconsin. Interestingly, enough it was recently noted in one study that about 60% of American WHITES now believe that America has an unjust income system and class system. About 75% of Blacks believe the same. But this recognition is actually more RECENT among whites, whereas Blacks have perceived this system as unjust for as long as anyone have recorded our views of the matter. It may be that the rest of America is coming slowly but surely to our point of view. And it may not be a coincidence that the black lives matters movement is drawing so many whites, Latins, Asians, Jews, Arabs (in Ferguson Jews and Palestinian Americans who hardly talk were marching together against police terror is a movement started by young black women) , East Indians and others have been marching with us against police, and that this may even be larger than the Occupy Movement.

-Savant

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Well I've tired myself out between school and these meeting and demonstrations. But the semester is coming to a close, and emphasis is shifting toward organizing all this popular energy in Baltimore. Some of my students were involved. And I didn't hesitate to tell them how proud of them I am. "I am impressed" said I to some of my students. "Not since I was a kid during the 1960s has Baltimore seen such MASS demonstrations and demands for justice.." I'd like to give them extra credit for their civic engagement, but that might be crossing the line. LOL! I hope you have a wonderful day, Sioux sister....and, perhaps a happy Mother's Day tomorrow.

-Savant
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You know, black on black crime isn't the big mystery some take it to be. Oppression breeds dysfunction; and this has been noted among the poor in Latin America, among white American poor, and among the "wretched of the earth" in various parts of the world. Paulo Freirie talks about this in PEDAGOGY OF THE OPPRESSED, and Frantz Fanon more famously in THE WRETCHED OF THE EARTH. (And I highly recommend Fanon). Dr. King and Malcolm X both talked about this phenomenon, and it has been noted than when liberation struggles reach a certain height, a certain intensity, crime tends to drop. As a kid I saw that happening in my East Baltimore hood when the Panthers started organizing and offering alternatives to ghetto youth. In Montgomery, Al during the 1955 Bus Boycott that made famous Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King, the crime rate dropped by 60%. The role of liberation struggle in reducing crime and even certain psychosocial disorders among the oppressed has been noted by Fanon, and by some leaders of our movement during the 1960s. (Check out FROM CIVIL RIGHTS TO HUMAN RIGHTS: MLK and the FIGHT FOR ECONOMIC JUSTICE). If you want to heal emotional injuries and dysfunctons induced by oppression you must fight oppression. Only this can no longer be a matter of a "Birmingham Campaign" or Montgomeruy Boycott. We must have a PROTRACTED liberation struggle to reconstruct society, our communities, and our personal and social lives.

-Savant

Black Heritage Tours

http://www.blackheritagetours.com/herstory.html

Savant on Baltimore

Already there are some young Black people who say "We need to bring back the BLack Panthers." These youngsters in their late teens or early 20 weren't even BORN then. But it is the legend of the Panthers, and their symbolism of militant resistance, that they seem to have in mind." This shit ain't going away. If the cops walk there will hell to pay. You may recall what I said to you when you were in Baltimore back in 2010. I spoke of the pent up anger within the Black community--especia lly among the dispossessed masses of our black poor and working class. You may remember in that published interview of me that you read, that an interviewer asked whether I thought the riots such as happened in Baltimore after King was killed, and in many other cities that same year (1968) and earlier, could happen again. I recall now that it was a Zimbabwean woman from Balt Univ, who asked that question. I told her that I wasn't looking forward to this, but it was certainly possible because the same conditions exist (or have gotten worse) for the MASS of my people as existed then. I said that Baltimore and most other cities powder kegs. That the elites, black and white (and others), are sitting on social dynamite and don't even seem to notice. Well the dynamite exploded. Duh....how long have we been warning of this? Well there are a lot of activity this weekend. They include at least one meeting of people seeking to organize this discontent in ways which will make the resistance more effective than the futile outbreaks of rock and bottle throwing and the smashing of windows. For as I told one colleague and comrade: Rebellion doesn't need justification, but rather EDUCATION and organization. We must become more organized, more politically sophisticated, MORE (not less) militant, and (as Dr. King even argued) to contest "the whole order of society.

-Savant
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A black cop can (and sometimes do) racially profile other black people. There are white racist Negroes with pretty much the same white racist frame of mind as we find in among the most reactionary bigots. Some are so eager to be accepted as part of the club that they are even WORSE than the white cops. And those Black and Latin cops who try to move against the grain, who speak out, are severely punished. It's the entire police system. As some the protesting groups here in Baltimore are now saying, we had to rid ourselves of the entire system. Black, Latin and poor communities (including whites) are continually subject to police abuse, police terror. We have come to the point, as some protestors are saying, when we will simply have to DISMANTLE the police, and replace them with a force subject the democratic control of the communities in which they work. When the protests against police terror began nearly a year ago, I was saying that while an admirable nonviolent discipline has been maintained, it is not guaranteed to persist indefinitely. The riots in Baltimore are just a warning sign. For those of us who regard those youngsters as our younger brothers and sisters (not thugs and criminals), our effort must be to organize and educate. I do not say to the disinherited youth of our ghettoes "Don't be angry, and don't rebel." Indeed, I say that " It is natural to be angry at injustice; and that there is something mentally and morally wrong with those who are not angry. It is RIGHT to rebel, and that it is those woo are not in rebellion, or are even in collaboration, who ought to explain themselves. But sporadic outbreaks such as this is not the way to effectively wage a struggle of liberation. You must become politically educated and organized." What both the peaceful demonstrations ---and they have been 99% despite the media sensationalistic focusing on incidents--and the violent out break indicate is that we're entering an era in which oppositional movements on the scale of the 1930s and 1960s are becoming possible again. The mood of the masses is changing

-Savant

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I am prouder than ever of my community here in Baltimore. To see my people rally for justice in numbers not seen since the 1960s (when I was a child), to also large numbers of others rallying to our cause---whites, Latinos, Asians, Jews, Arabs, and innumerable others--indicates to me that we CAN build a must just society than we have, that we can be better than we are. What's important is that while Baltimore now in the national limelight, it is part of a larger movement addressing a larger problem. Very importantly, many people are pointing out the police terrorism is only part of the picture. It is part of a larger shameful portrait of structural racist oppression and economic exploitation. It is all of piece in the same system that can give us a forest or prisons while shutting down schools; a system that can vastly expand mass incarceration but not education. A system of gentrification in which the police, as the armed enforcers of the status quo, essentially defend a system no only of racism, but of class privilege, a system of rapidly ballooning divisions between haves and have not. Given the deeply rooted racism of American society, and given that a disproportionate part of the have-nots are black and brown, the police, whose job is to defend the privileged against the rest of us, must necessarily inflict---at least for now--the bulk of the brutality on our community. It has been noted by a number of people who've spoken at rallies here in Baltimore how quickly the National Guard and even police from other states and cities were deployed to defend PROPERTY in our cities compared to the slowness or inability of such responses when it is a question of the needs of ordinary human beings. Too bad the people of New Orleans during the Katrina disaster couldn't received such swift aid as is available when property is threatened. At any rate, I think we can prevail. We must keep up our energies. And as our people are now in motion, we must organize this popular insurgent energy.

-Savant

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Direct your complaints to the white corporate elite who created this mess, and the corrupt Negro bourgeoisie of the AA political class who collaborated with them to gentrify our city, destroy manufacturing jobs, and offer mass incarceration to our youth instead of jobs and education. How about tourism? I tell you what: COME to Baltimore (and carefully conceal your white arrogance), and talk to some of the people in the West Baltimore ghetto where Freddy grew up, or the East Baltimore ghettoes where I grew up and talk to THEM about tourism. Property value? That's about the ONLY thing that is valued in capitalist America. I've said numerous times in this an other threads---and more importantly in REAL TIME to some of my angry young brothers in the streets of Baltimore--that this sporadic violence, this looting and battling with rocks armed pigs with military weapons, is NOT the way to advance the struggle for liberation. Only I make it clear to them--unlike the white racists and Negro reactionaries who see 15 and 16 years old kids as thugs an criminals--that their lives DO matter, and matter far more than the property which arouses so much concern. I emphasize ORGANIZED resistance, and political education. My attitude, like the attitudes of Dr. King and the Panthers--who also were against rioting, but not organized struggle---is that one human life is worth more than all the gold of Fort Knox. But it s property which the police and national guard are primarily designed to defend. Rioting is the outcry of the powerless, or as Dr. King said somewhere the language or "voice of the unheard." You ask who will compensate those who have suffered losses, and I take it you mean the property holders. The smaller enterprises certainly have my sympathy. The larger ones have insurance and government aid. But who will compensate for the HUMAN LOSSES of the masses of the people in this city? Who will compensate for the lives destroyed by this system, indeed this fascistic police system with its pervasive racist barbarism? Who will compensate the losses of the disinherited and dispossessed---the very people whom Dr. King lovingly described as the "disinherited children of God"---but white racist and Negro elite opportunists and reactionaries alike call "thugs and criminals."? Who will compensate them for generations of losses? And what are a few looted stores compared to their LOOTED LIVES? The very manner in which reactionaries (and now I include many liberals as well as conservatives) is itself part of the problem. As for me, I will stand with the disinherited and the dispossessed

-Savant

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Aujourd'hui, La Lutte continue Aujourd'hui, je va au manifestation des "historically black colleges and universities" (HBCU) a 10 heures, ce matin. Nous marchon au Memorial Plaza. This is exhausting, but who care? Justice calls us forth!

-Savant


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