It should be no question as to whether or not political expression is a practice essential to the fabric of life in America. After all it is political expression which carved out the democratic values of equality and fundamental rights upon which this country was founded. It is also political expression which forced the ancestors of my people into chains and onto slaveships to serve and build this supposedly just and equal nation.
It is precisely this hypocrisy in the political and moral D.N.A. of America - which in one breath expresses goodwill for mankind and in the next declares the destruction of humanity necessary in order to create that goodwill - which makes the expression of Black political desires paramount in importance to the destiny of the American project. With a stroke of the pen the founders of this nation cemented a covenant, with God as their witness, to create a government which would facilitate the realization of freedom for all those to come in contact with it: Or so they said. However, any reasonable person could understand why those whose freedom was plundered in order to construct such a government might feel that this project could not be considered finished until they too tasted the honey and milk promised to those who held chaos and terror over their lives. In all likeliness this is not a narrative you are unfamiliar with - and it is possibly one to which we have been overexposed. This narrative expresses the sentiment of many a great American hero, from John F. Kennedy and his brother Robert, to Martin Luther King Jr and Abraham Lincoln. All of these men are celebrated almost unanimously in our society. All of these men were murdered for championing the cause of freedom for Black and other suffering peoples. What does it say about the collective conscious that we memorialize the heroic images of these figures yet fail to fearlessly champion the cause for which they were martyred? Moreover, what does any of this have to do with the chorus of calls to denounce the so-called bigot, so-called anti-semite, so-called homophobe, Louis Farrakhan? The reality of America is that her hypocrisy has infected her and now the cancers of white supremacy and the physical, political and economic violence which are necessary to maintain such an unnatural status quo threaten the very existence of the Nation. White supremacy is the implicit and subliminal vision for this country and as such it is at war with the false promise of freedom and equality for all, which Black, indigenous and poor people across the country - and world - have clung to for dear life over the span of 400+ years. Louis Farrakhan, regardless of what some may think about his ideas and the organization which he is at the head of, has stood for 40 years of the ground of fighting to see that justice is mete out for the victims of American hypocrisy. Recent calls for Black leaders such as Barack Obama, Rep. Keith Ellison and other members of the Congressional Black Caucus as well as Tamika Mallory of the Women's Organizing Committee to denounce Farrakhan follow a historic pattern of attempts to mute the voices of Black leaders who speak without fear to the nature of American hypocrisy by those who - consciously or subconsciously - wish to see the continuation of white supremacy. These mark the renewal of an age old racist project to portray those who speak for Black people without shame as enemies to the collective good. We must make no mistake in realizing that this is in fact an act of violence, for we know that in America the "collective good" is defended by any means necessary. It was in the interest of the (white) collective good that similar leaders such as Medgar Evers, MLK and Fred Hampton were slain; or that the likes of Marcus Garvey, Elijah Muhammad, Angela Davis, Huey Newton and Assatta Shakur were brutalized, persecuted and thrown in jail. That's not to mention the thousands of unrecognized warriors who were assaulted and unjustly made political prisoners during the Civil Rights and Black Power Movements. In each of these cases the target(s) were identified publicly by being labeled as threats to America and her supposed values. Just as MLK was falsely labeled a communist and unpatriotic, just as the Panthers and their sympathizers were labeled as militant, just as the civil rights protesters were portrayed as vagrants disturbing the peace; so now is Louis Farrakhan being presented as an enemy to equality and tolerance. The point of this implicit form of fearmongering is to control Black leadership, and subsequently the Black masses, by dividing and conquering. These are attempts to show those who are attached to and may even depend on the white power structure that there are consequences for challenging white authority. They aren't just done out of a concern for civility, rather they are a blatant attempt to interrupt Black political expression and intervene in the possibility of the formation of a Black political body around narratives of chastisement and independence. The accusations hurled at the Minister should not be mistaken as being undergirded by a fear of the power of a slumbering Black political powerhouse. We are a strong people and as such we should choose our own leaders. Those who understand the true nature of politics in America know this all to well; this is, in fact, the essence of democracy which this nation is supposed to hold sacred. However, rather than making peace with strong Black leadership and working with them to improve American society, many of those with institutional power in America wish to make cowards out of Black people by labeling their strongest leaders as the enemy. At its core this is no different than the psychological tactics employed by slave owners and racial terrorists for centuries to destroy Black autonomy. In a nation which has never been of moral rightness, who are those who benefit from a privilege created by vicious oppression to decide who will represent the interests of the oppressed? These manufactured statements of outrage are attempts to hijack narratives of revolution; specifically Black revolution. Those who make such statements want the consequences of the evil treatment of Black, brown, indigenous and poor people to be dealt with on terms which accommodate their comfortability. Even with the power of the media, lobbyists and interest groups, state and local governments and all three branches of the federal government, the project to control Black political expression is one which will ultimately prove futile. For it has, when taken into perspective, always been futile. Martin Luther King has a nationally recognized holiday not because this nation and its political machinery loved him, but because Black people loved him. The memorialization of his legacy is an attempt to transform our love of those who loved him for taking a stand against American cruelty into love for America itself. The attempt to alienate Elijah Muhammad and his disciples, including Louis Farrakhan, from Black people has been largely unsuccessful despite more negative propaganda than perhaps any other American born citizen in the history of the United States has faced. This is because Black people's love for those who show compassion for the suffering masses is deeper than the powers that be can fathom. for they understand not that our connection to those heroes is one that resonates in our spirit. It is a bond built by centuries of agony and toil, and if our love survives the threat of death itself, surely it will take more than petty accusations to separate us from our leaders as Alyssa Milano and Debra Messing are learning from our brave sister Tamika Mallory. I was there when Minister Farrakhan turned to Tamika Mallory at Saviors Day and had her stand before a crowd of 25,000. Bright smile, backed by a chorus of supportive cheers, the minister stretched out his hands as if to personally hand her an inevitable trial by fire. He knew, as did we all, that she would face fierce scrutiny for her being recognized in that moment. Earlier in his speech Minister Farrakhan had jokingly told us not to tell our bosses we attended his lecture for surely persecution would follow. But persecution in the name of freedom is a sort of holy sacrifice for our people, and those who truly hunger for deliverance greet the opportunity to show our mettle with pleasure. Black political expression is a sort of divine practice. Surely you will understand by now why we cannot, and will not, allow anyone to intervene in that tradition.
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Every other November political energy in America climaxes in an effort to churn forward the institutions which govern our society. In this past 2018 midterm election cycle there existed a growing pressure, particularly on young, poor and minority populations to "get out the vote."
Along with this pressure came specifically a sentiment of annoyance, frustration, even disgust, for Black Americans who voiced their concerns about the prospects of voting. Articles like "Confession: ‘Woke’ Black people who want change but REFUSE to vote are wearing me out" and others like that posted by Roland Martin's website express these concerns. The reason for my inquiry is to examine what political gestures such as participation in the electoral process mean for Black people and other vulnerable populations with interrelated fates. This requires an honest evaluation of the context of electoral politics as well as an examination of "get out the vote" rhetoric and the menu of choice available to aforementioned communities. It should be safe for me to start by saying that the goal of any Black political action should ultimately be the eradication of racism and racist structures. These forms of suppression exist as a mean to deny Black people the basic condition of humanity - freedom - through violence, intimidation, social neglect, economic exploitation and cultural pathologies. Racism is an existential threat to Black life and should be treated as such. Its existence in institutions, hearts and minds is antithetical to our presence. This is about ensuring our peace. Our joy. Our safety. Our survival. Therefore, the litmus test for involvement in electoral politics for Black people and communities should simply be; will this move us towards the eradication of racist structures? The first mistake we can make in answering this question is to allow ourselves to be pressured into voting before we can answer that question on the basis that we are somehow obligated to show up to the polls on election day. You would hardly expect any well-minded person to feel obligated to support an institution before they could be sure that said institution actually has their best interests and livelihood at heart. Even so, the popular sentiment in this year's version of "go vote" fever is that voters who are traditionally apathetic (the young, the black and brown, the poor) are some how responsible this time around for mobilizing against and responding to Trumpism and the racist, authoritarian element which apparently threatens the integrity of our democracy. The argument is that those who are targeted by racist politics bear the responsibility of creating and bolstering opposition to Trump and his disciples by showing up to vote. This logic implies that to some extent these people are to blame for the current political climate. After all, racists showed up: we didn't. In my opinion this argument and other similar ones are not only mislogical but also steeped in respectability politics meant to silence dissent and ultimately keep Black people and other underrepresented people in line. The first flaw in this thinking is to assume that the Black voting bloc is somehow weak in terms of turnout. To the contrary most evidence for the past 10 years suggests that Black voter turnout, despite systematic attempts to thwart it, has been healthy when compared to the American norm. Even then, ignoring the history of voter suppression and how even healthy blocs of Black votes are watered down and even eliminated is dangerous if we are to ever create an atmosphere where Black votes matter. Through gerrymandered districts, voter id laws, intimidation tactics and other individual instances of corruption - such as that of Brian Kemp in GA who trashed rolls of registered Black voters ahead of his gubernatorial election - Black turnout is routinely rendered ineffective and meaningless. These practices are more dire threats to our political well being than the revolutionary we all know who is (correctly) skeptical of the voting process. In addition, there is currently no consolidated effort on behalf of current or prospective candidates to put forward a strategy to ensure that Black votes and the votes of vulnerable communities will be valued. Were Democrats (who are ubiquitously hailed as the anti-racist political antidote to Trumpism) to campaign vigorously on restoring the Voting Rights Act, repealing voter id laws, present anti-gerrymandering and felon disenfranchisement legislation not only would they be committing an act of good faith but would also undermine or at least threaten the effectiveness of Republican measures of modern-day Jim Crowism. You'd think over 50 years of service and loyalty would get us at least that. Another fallacy I find embedded in "go vote" rhetoric is the idea that vulnerable voters are responsible for answering to white backlash. This expectation is extremely exploitative, leveraging the very real threat to the safety of these communities as a means of coercing them into bolstering democratic institutions which have already failed them miserably. This school of thought suggests, essentially, that we should elect non-racist, non-republican candidates as a first priority, only holding them accountable after we've ensured that the racist threat is out of office. My problem with this is that accountability should be a precondition of any voter's blessing. This issue came up in a personal way just days ago ahead of the election for governor in my state of Iowa. The democratic nominee, Fred Hubbell, was and is one of the most powerful businessmen in Des Moines, Iowa's capital city and my hometown. Hubbell was a power-player in a business community which, centered on a relatively new and booming insurance industry, opened the floodgates for corporate interests into Iowan politics. This alone is monumental. Iowa is a key state in deciding the center of platforms and agendas for both major parties. Iowa was the state which, for example, helped push the Democratic party to the right on healthcare early on in the 2008 primaries. As a result the ACA was not the single-payer, medicare-for-all plan that vulnerable communities desperately needed. Surely it's not a coincidence that Des Moines is known as the nation's insurance capital. Neither is it a coincidence that Fred Hubbell, Des Moines business sweetheart, did not run on a medicare-for-all platform. Accountability is essential! When I expressed these concerns on Facebook a staffer from his campaign commented and (after admitting I was right except that Fred Hubbell was somehow different from the entire business community) argued that Kim Reynolds, his republican opponent, was "surely a direct threat to [my] interests." This lesser of two evils thinking not only allows mediocre politicians like Fred Hubbell (OR HILLARY CLINTON) to duck accountability for their obvious shortcomings but also has the long term effect of pushing the center of the political spectrum to the wrong direction, in this case towards neo-conservative norms, while at the same time strategically disarming resistance. That's not to say that Black issues and the issues which face similarly vulnerable communities even exist in the "right-left" paradigm. Racism is an issue that doesn't confine itself to the partisan plane. Party conflicts are ultimately intramural, but the issues that press us in existential ways cannot be solved through compromises or contracts with dominant social institutions. Struggle, disruption, civil disobedience, organizing and resistance are crucial to solving the problems that face us. When we affirm the voting process as one which is essential to the cause of justice we many times unknowingly pigeon hole Black political expression and other forms of political expression which seek to DESTROY systems of injustice. The other idea is that voting is somehow essential to the practice of meaningful civic engagement. Those who argue this point somehow argue that those who express concern about American society or the world for that matter but don't vote are hypocritical. "Fake ass revolutionaries," I had seen someone say of those who are skeptical of voting on my twitter timeline. "Get off your ass and go do something for your communities." Now to be honest I felt some type of way because I had vocally been considering abstaining. Given the considerable amount of activism I had done in a community shared this young lady I felt personally attacked (LOL) because my skepticism is borne from a very real concern that the pressure to assimilate into mainstream modes of political expression could result in the dilution of Black political, economic and social aspirations. In my case and many others, choosing not to vote isn't some act of bold protest, but the natural result of systemic disenfranchisement. The issues I care about and mobilize around whether they be the prison industrial complex, the military industrial complex, extreme wealth inequality, housing and education inequality and political corruption were largely absent from my local ballot. That's not to say I and other's who think like me are not politically and socially active. In fact it is those who sought alternate forms of political expression who have laid the groundwork for our current consciousness. I'm talking the Eldridge Cleavers, the Assatta Shakurs, the Huey Newtons and Malcolm Xs. I don't need to run through my own resume here, but there exists plenty avenues of community involvement and social activism that have and will continue to serve as an engine for true meaningful change in American society. Writing, speaking, programming, canvassing, protest and advocacy are all tools in my civic tool-bag and I invoke them with pride. What I don't do is shame others who choose not to participate in similar ways. In fact, that is the primary reason why I've waited until after the election season to write this post. All of that said, ultimately the electoral process is one that is undeniably broken, or at least compromised in the name of the elite class whose interests our elected representatives actually serve. Elections in America are largely for sale, from the agendas down to the advertising and campaign routes the entire process is created by the dollars of those who finance candidates on both sides of the aisle. Inevitably whoever wins will not answer to voters first, but to the lobbyists who represent their financial supporters. Of course there are exceptions, but the majority of us get the luxury of choosing which faces will represent the interests of the truly powerful, that big ole bad 1% who everybody is saying have corrupted the public institutions of this country. This is not an issue that standing alone should keep you from ever paying attention to, caring about or voting in elections. However these issues together provide more than enough evidence to support the claim that voting in elections can be counterproductive to the stated goals of equality and peace. There are many roads towards a world of justice and electoral politics may very well be one of them. I am of the opinion that we are very far from that day when justice and elections align. We should be skeptical of mainstream American institutions, including democracy, as well as their stated goals and modes of operation. We should look to challenge and redirect political energy at every opportunity towards our own narratives and issues. We should cultivate our own consensus and move forward to achieve collectively desired outcomes. In so many ways we are already doing this. In fact, it is the courage of our generation as well as those before that have allowed us a moment in history where we have the type of political flexibility we find today. I don't believe we should be eager to run to the aid of the Democratic party which has done as much as any other faction to cement the obstacles our communities face today. Yes, I hold to that opinion even in the face of a blatant White Nationalist movement which has found an ally in the Republican party. Because frustrated working class whites are rushing to embolden those who don't actually share their interests doesn't mean we should as well. If the democratic party must fail, as I've written earlier, then so be it if it means that we don't compromise our voice. We deserve representation, not just a representative. Elections only matter if they make #BlackLivesMatter. That we must remember. “Armageddon deals with the final battle between God and the Devil. The Third World War is referred to as Armageddon by many white statesmen. There won't be any more war after then because there won't be any more warmongers. I don't know when Armageddon, whatever form it takes, is supposed to be. But I know the time is near when the white man will be finished.” This statement comes from Malcolm X in an interview with Playboy in May of 1963. Read the quote again. Now take it in for a third time. If you still find yourself arguing against, or trying to assuage your cognitive dissonance, know that it is okay and natural, but at the same time it is imperative for those looking to gain any form of insight from this piece that we do not necessarily fight the content of this quote psychologically. Donald Trump, the 44th President of the United States of America, finds himself at a point in time where all of the history of the United States, from the moment that white English settlers set foot in Jamestown in 1607 to now has converged on his oval office. The ambitions and frustrations of the Ancestors of Enslaved African peoples measuring over 460 years of occupation, the disillusionment of a white working class which has been manipulated and coerced by the wealth owning elite, the righteous indignation of Native peoples in America who’s people have been subjected genocide as well as the loss of the destruction of their ancestral land and the international reputation for suffocating imperialism have all converged on one Donald Trump, a tidal wave from the annals of time. How exactly has this happened, and more so, why should you believe from my mouth that history has come to have its final word as to the story of the United States of AmeriKKKa? Why would change be upon us now, and not in the 60s, not during the depression, nor the civil war, or any other monumental time in United States history? What does any of this have to do with the quote I have provided for you from our Brother Malcolm – may he rest in power. Well, let’s dig in. The story of the United States is one that is particularly unique in the legacy of world history, because it is one of few, if any, whose national identity and foundation is one of total war. As a lover and enthusiast of world history, the story of most if not all major world powers and civilizations is founded in the growth of the essential building blocks of societies; the development of agriculture and religion, the growth of culture in the arts, sciences, and language, the development of both domestic and foreign trade and then finally the development of a security force which guarantees the long term prosperity of the way of life that has been and continues to be created. The AmeriKKKan story does not follow this trajectory. The foundations of American institutions are genocide and war itself. This land is not one that was cultivated over generations and generations of its native inhabitants, or even nomads. Those people who did have that connection to this land were utterly destroyed – through war, through rape, through disease and deceit – and the victors left to lay their own (unrighteous) stake to the land as their property. The development of domestic and foreign trade was not one that was propelled by the natural culture of the society in which goods which were produced inherently from the land and the way of life (as silk with China, spices from India, gold and ivory in Africa; these are but a few of an infinite array of examples,) but was built on the theft of Black bodies from West and North Africa and their stolen labor. Their foreign influence has not and never was built on the pervasiveness of certain aspects of the culture as was for advanced cultures before, where the religious, ideological, scientific and academic values produced a genuine influence throughout the world; rather American foreign influence is based completely on the legacy of military domination and economic coercion. This is not to say that military conquest did not exist as a means of extending or protecting influence, rather that it was not the life blood of the society itself. Look at America today and it becomes clear: the Natives are all but gone, the Black people are all but mentally and spiritually dead (unable to provide for themselves basic human needs such as housing, education and health), animosity continues to grow between the populist which KNOWS that the rich continue to get richer as their opportunity for prosperity dims, and the rest of the world seems to be at war with or against America OR its allies – which if we were to dig deeper we would find are in one way or another tied at the bosom to American and Western interests, but that is a blog post for another day. Malcolm said that Armageddon is the FINAL battle between God and the Devil. This implies that the two entities have BEEN at war. It is clear, to me, that the story of AmeriKKKa has been a constant battle between the dominating force which seeks to destroy, and those trying desperately to escape their destruction. The struggle for Native American autonomy has not stopped; modern Sioux warriors recently lost a bloody battle to protect their sacred burial grounds at standing in opposition to the proposed Dakota Access Pipeline which will line the pockets of corporate interests. Black people are STILL not only subject to rampant state sanctioned violence, just recently resulting in urban uprisings in Ferguson, Baltimore, New York, Chicago, Oakland, Minneapolis and more BUT ALSO; Flint still has no water; schools are more segregated today than when the 1955 Brown v. Board of Education decision overturning school segregation was made, economic opportunities continue to be scarce especially in urban communities (where we have been historically redlined) but also new forces of racism such as gentrification continue to create themselves in an attempt to continue a tradition of profiting from the suffering of Black people. Budget preparations for the Trump tax bill has resulted in proposed cuts of $6 Billion from Department for Housing and Urban Development in public housing allocations, over $2.25 Billion from the Department of Education, and a $500 Billion cut to Medicare over the next ten years sits in the Senate tentatively as we speak. This is not to mention proposed cuts to Social Security and Welfare programs as well which are harder to pin down. These cuts undermine the ability for all poor, working, and middle class people to control their own destiny within the society without having to go to the owners of capital for opportunities, effectively putting our lives in the hands of the elite. We must ask why these budget cuts didn’t come from the military’s $700 Billion ANNUAL budget. The answer is that AmeriKKKa is currently fighting a war – rather through proxy or occupation – in North and West Africa as well as the Middle East against governments with valuable resources and wish to use those resources to improve the livelihood of their people rather than line AmeriKKKan multinational corporate interests, or whose people have taken up a general ideology of liberation, whether it be through the Islamic faith or other ideologies of TRUE freedom and self-determination. In short, the current state of AmeriKKKa is one in which it ONLY survives if it is able to continue to dominate people’s livelihoods. One need only look at Donald Trump’s campaign slogan, “Make America Great Again,” to understand that the assumption of his base and of much of the dominant political faction in this country, which happens to be the GOP, that AmeriKKKa is on the decline, or that at least the principles on which it has built itself on are eroding. It is no accident that this new wave of political thought and action comes directly after the first and only Black man to lead the “Free World.” It was in fact, no accident that President Obama served as a lame duck president for nearly two and a half years, with no ability or willingness from his congress to enact any real change to the country: they couldn’t afford to legitimize common sense and decency through policy. It is no accident that the FIRST action of Donald Trump was to undo the one policy victory for President Obama that represented a move towards a more just system of governance, the Affordable Care Act, effectively ripping away health care from millions of Americans. It is no accident that the FBI has targeted “Black Identity Extremists” as a major threat to the security of the Nation (as we are). It is no accident that Trump’s Federal Communications Commission repealed Net Neutrality law (also established under Obama) which will seriously restrict the general population’s ability to have free and fair access to information and light speeds. And it is no accident that days after the Net Neutrality decision Trump’s Center for Disease Control has banned language such as “vulnerable”, “diversity”, “entitlement”, “transgender”, “Science-based”, and “Evidence-based” in an attempt to restrict policy preference to people who are, well, vulnerable. This is all indicative of a power which is reacting, not being proactive. This is the strategy of retreat, not growth. In other words, the powers of white supremacy and global domination are at serious risk, so much so that they have to cut your internet off from you, track down people who are seeking justice while poisoning and restricting healthcare from people who are susceptible to rising up and overthrowing the status quo. AmeriKKKa is not a power anymore; it is a coward looking for a reason to believe it can still win the fight. What then, will it be that launches us into Armegeddon, or Ameriggedon? Is there an issue where all these – the theft of land, racism, capitalism, and militarism – will intersect? On December 6th of this year Donald Trump announced that the United States will officially be recognizing Jerusalem as the true capital of the Israeli state, undoing decades of precedence and giving a blatant middle finger to the Palestinian state which has claimed East Jerusalem to be its capital in the peace talks which were currently the only international hope for a peaceful resolution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The United States has for decades served as the arms supplier and political backbone in favor of the Israeli occupation of Palestinian land, a land which belonged to Black and Brown Arab people and was annexed during the Zionist movement by European Jews because of its fertile farmlands, abundant natural resources, and of course it’s strategic location at the heart of the Muslim/Middle Eastern world, which America is currently at war with. How fitting for Jerusalem, perhaps the holiest and most valuable city on earth in terms of historical significance, for the possible final straw to be dropped on. In the days following the announcement Palestinians and all others who support the cause for Palestinian self-determination called for a “Day of Rage” in protest of the Trump administration’s decision. The UN General Assembly voted 14-1 to oppose and overturn the decision which blatantly violates years of an agonizing peace and cease fire process. That one vote was given by the United States, which, because of the terms of the Security Council, vetoes the other 14 votes. In other words, the entire world hates this decision, except the United States (of course). As the days, weeks and months follow expect only further agitation within the region; as Black refugees fleeing persecution in West and Central Africa (which the United State also proxies) flee up and into the middle east, Western sentiments towards the region are also bound to grow more resentful. It is of my personal opinion that this, given the current state of the region, will result in us being at war by July 1st in the region with one government(s) or the other, or perhaps against another vague and faceless enemy such as when we went to war against terror itself in 2001. The questions we must ask are; can we afford a war? If we can afford a war, where is that money coming from? If not, where will the missing resources come from? How will the public perceive this war, and what will be their reaction? What of the other domestic issues yet to come even close to being resolved in the United States? Can the United States survive another double war, one abroad in a military sense, and a political one on its own domestic front? Is the United States even capable in a military sense along with Israel of drawing a clear military victory against a coalition of Middle Eastern, North and West African countries? Will the international community allow the United States to create turmoil for the entire world without imposing sanctions and other diplomatic deterrence’s? Will this put American lives at risk and if so, what will be the political cost? These are all questions we must ask ourselves, for I suspect the answers will come sooner rather than later. Peace. -515 The Revolutionary mind is both hazard and safe haven. Its functions are both obsolete and absolutely necessary. It yields the power of destruction and creation. Its life course is both chaos and supreme order. It is this paradox which I have found myself for the last 18 months of my life swimming, gasping for breaths of life’s fresh air between the long dives down into the depths of what we call our human condition. To occupy the revolutionary mind is to do no more or less than to drown in the current of our reality, to accept all for what it is, and at the same time reject everything we’ve become.
The revolutionary mind is a wind-up toy. It knows not what it is in the beginning stages and the vessel which contains it is equally oblivious as to the fate it will be subjected to as a result of this mind it carries. It starts as a sponge, a young, beautiful, vibrant sponge soaking up the seemingly infinite amount of data the world around it contains. It finds itself lost in the pages of books, mesmerized by the innateness of nature and most of all, obsessed with those things in life that don’t seem quite right. Over time, the latent function of the mind begins to reveal itself – not only to understand this symbolic code we call meaning and the ways in which we create it, but ultimately its job is to put straight those aspects of human life which no longer make sense. The first time something didn’t make sense to me I was 5 years old. My mother, high yellow skinned, bearing her obnoxious 90s style box glasses, belly poking out 9 months pregnant with my second little sister, sat in the living room with me staring silently at our tube television as two towers spat and billowed black smoke from them. The tv anchor said someone had flown a plane into the side of each tower. I told her I was scared and didn’t want to go to school (apparently I couldn’t stop looking out the window for planes in the following days and weeks). Then one of the towers fell. My mother fell into hysterics. My sister was born three days later. In the weeks after that event that everybody was calling “9/11” we sat in front of the tv as every night news anchors and special journalists reported on every aspect of what I was now being called “terrorism”. I must have had some genius capacity to understand things at such a young age. I knew these men came from a land called the Middle East. We watched every night as they informed us as to just how these men were to be tracked down and killed. I vividly recall at the time that the U.S. Government was using a system based on playing cards to rank the most wanted perpetrators of the plot as well as those who were “aiding and abetting” them. On each card would be the face of some brown skinned man, usually bearing a grimace and long black/black and white beard. They called these people radical islamists, jihadists, al-qaeda. The cards started from the deuce and went all the way up to the Ace, a man named Bin-Laden. That name would hang over the first decade or so of my cognitive development. His henchman, who apparently was harboring Bin-Laden and other “Al-Qaeda opperatives” was a man named Sadam Hussein. We watched night in and night out on the t.v. as war ensued. This was my introduction to how the world works – fairy tales and long days spent examining nature included – I learned that weapons of mass destruction were being hidden somewhere (LOL). I asked my mother what weapons of mass destruction were. Bless her heart, she told me that they were bombs that could destroy very big areas of land, whole countries even. I asked her if they were going to drop one on us, she told me no, that our army would protect us and find the man who was hiding these bombs. Again, bless her heart. We watched as more people, brown skinned like me and my sisters, were killed on a nightly basis, some by our own military, many others by a constant barrage of domestic terrorist attacks. Clips of soldiers running around corners, ducking and taking cover, returning fire with menacing looking rifles and more clips of bombs bombs and more bombs flooded the t.v. not only in the coming weeks and months, but years. Global war is the context of my generation’s upbringing. I remember learning about a man named Martin Luther King. We had a poster of him in my house with a long speech written on it, my mom called it the “I Have a Dream” speech. I memorized the last part of the speech and gave it to my 2nd grade class as part of show and tell one day. I wasn’t sure what it was about the words but they seemed to put a part of me to peace. It wasn’t much later that I learned Martin Luther King had to give a speech about his dream because white people in the world don’t treat black people – like us – fairly and that Martin Luther King was sent by God to do right by us. I cried when I learned he was shot in the head. He was my first hero. It wasn’t until middle school though, that I began to form an appetite for revolution. I learned of a man named Kunta Kinte from watching the t.v. with my parents. The VERY FIRST scene of Roots I watched Kunta was jumping into the back of a hay wagon, when I asked my parents where he was running from my father told me he was a slave and was running from his plantation where they forced him to work. When the white men caught him they tied him to a tree and cut off his foot. My dad told me that’s what all of our people went through. I was watching my own history. Upon further watching the series with my parents I insisted on reading the book. My mom told me she had the book in the basement, a thick beige hard cover with brown binding reading plainly “Roots, by Alex Haley” was placed in my hands and I blew the dust off of it (I had always dreamed of doing that). As I read late into the night I found out that Kunta Kinte came from an African tribe called Mandingo and worshipped a God named Allah. Their way of life was fascinating; almost like something of the fairy tales I had used to read. They built cities in the midst of the jungle, they had no police or stores or guns or schools or any of the things that made me anxious about going into the everyday (yes I still to this day can’t stand most stores) and lived happy lives filled with music and dance and the biggest decisions were made by everybody’s grandpas and grandmas who they called “the elders”. I was heartbroken when Kunta was captured in the middle of his manhood rite of passage; I almost gagged when the conditions of the middle passage were described. In fact, I had to stop reading. Not much later than that a Hurricane called Katrina hit New Orleans and I particularly remember how distraught my father, originally from the Mississippi Delta, was about the fact that black people were being left to die without food and water. One morning we watched as a helicopter camera flew over New Orleans, bodies were floating in the water and old people were left to die of thirst, disease, and starvation on their front porches. I remember the same military which had invaded Iraq and later Afghanistan marching into New Orleans. My mother screamed at the t.v. the next night when they called these people “refugees” and stopped them from crossing a bridge into safety with a line of men brandishing more rifles. Around this time the world stopped making sense to me. The revolutionary mind though, does not come into its full fledgeness until it decides for itself that all of these things about the world cannot be right, and – this is the key – that something MUST be done to stop whatever it is that makes humans fly planes into buildings, bomb people’s homes, fill streets with soldiers. However, one thing I’ve noticed about most others throughout history who have had minds others deemed “revolutionary” is that they don’t quite get the point of action until this madness the world has been plunged into rips something from their very own lives. One day after my middle school had gave all of the 6th grade boys “the talk” I came home to my father looking as if he had news that somebody in the family had died. He sat me down and explained to me that he was not my biological father. My world crashed. I’ve actually blocked out most of the memory from my mind to this day. After hearing the words the most I can remember is sobbing over a plate of pancakes, eggs and sausage (my parents were smart to comfort me with breakfast for dinner) while mindlessly watching Spongebob on our mini t.v. I later learned that he was from the Southside of Chicago, his name was Donald Douglas, my mother had no picture of him, he only called once when I was a toddler and though he was a brilliant legal mind in Chicago and eventually working for a man named Don Nickerson who would go on to be on the Iowa Supreme Court, ultimately the conditions of the ghetto from which he had come had infected him with the disease of addiction and depression. To this day I have not seen his face, not even a photograph. That was the source of my true pain, that loss, knowing that the madness of the world had stolen from me what was supposed to be a sacred part of my life’s story. Stolen from me – and him – simply because we are Black. As I grew older and started to deliberate as to what I wanted to do with my life I found that this mind of mine was well suited to do a great number of amazing things. I could do geometry, trigonometry, and calculus. I could write stories, long and short, fiction and non-fiction, as well as poetry. As well as I could write I could read and understand the vast complexities of the worlds of authors such as Rowling, Konigsburg, Hemmingway, Bacon, Baldwin, Silko, Shakespeare and Voltaire. I could observe, analyze, and successfully experiment on the infinite repetition of the physical sciences – drinking in biology, chemistry and physics as if they were gospel. All of these things made me a prime candidate for scholarships to virtually any school in the world. My mind had created for me the opportunity to prosper to the fullest of my heart’s desires in the world, the only limitation being my own imagination. Originally I wanted to go to the University of Iowa to study journalism and report on the destruction that was and still is occurring in the Middle East and now North and West Africa. I was told I wanted a death sentence. So I chose Political Science, much to the pleasure of my glowing family. When it became clear in my first month or so of Poli Sci classes that the area of study is ultimately framed in a way that attempts to make sense out of the utter chaos that our political system rather than condemning it for what it is, I switched to Sociology, a study which would at least allow me to examine the decay of society. Even within Sociology though I found that for every academic studying and arguing that there is social decay, this school of thought also harbored those thinkers who engineered and continue to engineer the destruction of my people and other innocent people’s worldwide. This was not a school I could in good conscious form my identity around: I refuse to make a home with those who perpetuate oppression. In my search for purpose my mind became infected with doubt, with sorrow, with pain, with anger, with despair. My first venture into the world of love, while being in the short term an exhilarating ride, ended in utter failure and heartbreak. All these things forced me further and further into the cave of my own depression. When I couldn’t afford to be depressed, I became anxious. I began to doubt my own cause for justice. My faith in myself and any sort of higher purpose waivered. I withdrew myself from the commitments I had made towards liberation – my fraternity, the literary magazine I had been an editor of, even my studies, which I had once cherished, all went to the wayside. All in all I had a complete shutdown. A revolutionary hiatus. Ultimately I have come to the conclusion that until I re align this mind of mine with the higher power – the one that carries us towards love, peace and unity – and align my energies to those things which will destroy the forces of destruction, I will not in myself find peace, unity, and love. This is my return to the world, stronger, smarter, and more indignant than ever. The world tried to extinguish my flame. No longer a flame, which consumes that which it burns, billows disgusting black smoke as a byproduct and ultimately burns itself out, I am now pure light. I come from the cosmos, I am a byproduct of existence itself, and there is no darkness that can put me out. This week is about reclaiming my voice, speaking truth to power, and setting the course of justice and righteousness, the marathon that we call the fight for liberation. I leave you with the words of that great freedom fighter Assata Shakur, “It is our duty to fight. It is our duty to win. We must love each other and support each other. We have nothing to lose but our chains.” |
Author22 Years Old. Writer. Artist. Sigma Man. Muslim. Revolutionary. Lover of all things Beautiful, I am the Eccentric Black Boy. ArchivesCategories |