I have been lucky to hear from many in the struggle who have had connections to those freedom fighters that commonly go unnamed or unrecognized in the sea of names like Huey P Newton, Bobby Seale, Fred Hampton, Malcolm X, Kwame Ture, Fanny Lou, Claudia Jones, Ella Baker n others. Some of the more discussed as of late have been Sister Safiya Bukhari n Brother Dhoruba Bin Wahad. I decided to take this wonderful 5-day vacation the COVID fairy has brought me to learn more, and over the last few weeks have been pointed to wonderful works like "The War Before" by Sis Bukhari, and documentary footage of Dhoruba during the time of his trial and incarceration, titled "Dhoruba Libre!" There has also been super cool video footage of Safiya.
These people n their stories of course are only two among millions of lives that were changed by the Black Liberation Movement, the Black Panthers, the BLA, n other organizations - aboveground and underground - many of whom are still truly impacted and cherish these times and memories deeply. One lovely example was some footage I peeped from '77 out in the Oakland Community Learning Center [founded by the Black Panther Party] 1977 - YouTube
Some other cool stuff to check out:
-----
When we are looking back at the times of the 60s and 70s we can sometimes get caught up in the revolutionary character of the times and this can lead us to believe we missed out on something, that we want to go back- but in a speech given by Kwame Ture, he says that we should never want to go backwards, but always forwards, always progressing to something better. He mentions how since he was there, people will come to him and say that they wish they could've been there too, that "folks were so united back then" and he says clearly, no they were not, things can be better, and its our responsibility to make that so. It's wonderful to study history, but we live in the present.
In history and in the present, contradictions exist among different movements, struggles, collectives, organizations, committees, and individuals. From thousands of years ago to likely hundreds of years from now, contradictions of all kinds will exist. People are never perfect, even revolutionaries. Once head chairwoman of the BPP, Elaine Brown at one point said, in response to questions about sexism in the party: "Yeah we had problems. Where do you think we got these men, revolutionary heaven? But we had women in power, women in positions of control, shit I was the chairman!"
We are human being, living creatures; we respond to our conditions, and we all grow up in different environments and react to them in different ways. This leads us to have to deal with real issues not only among society, such as forms of oppression and exploitation, but also n especially how these things cause issues among ourselves.
If we look at some of the problems that we have in our movement spaces we know that things like selfishness, inconsistency, a lack of compassion, lack of seriousness, lack of struggling from/with love, little or no internal debate and discussion, little connection to the masses, and poor or no study and commitment to what needs to be done, understood, and struggled against. We don't even know what we're up against in many instances, who we are up against, and we are still struggling to overcome many contradictions among ourselves and the people, but we are failing and making the same mistakes folks did in the past, because we do not know our history. There are many working against this trend to overcome and work through these contradictions, struggles, and issues, but they can not struggle alone!
-----
In speeches given by Safiya and Dhoruba, in their writings and especially in their practice, the clear note of importance is made that we need to deal with what is going wrong with us, with our organizations: the trauma, behaviors, and mindsets we take on from our environments, as well as our lack of clarity, political understanding, study, and seriousness, our exploitation and oppression of one another, our divisions, lack of communication and lack of unity, and most of all, lack of collective bases/connections among the people. One other example of failure they both have mentioned oftentimes is the lack of concern for our political prisoners- the fact that we don't even know most of their names, we don't write to them, we don't visit them, and that is something I've been guilty of, too, unfortunately.
This is why I write this, in reflecting on these words and speeches, discussions and remembrances, I have had to deal with my inconsistencies, failures, individualism, and apathy. It's real, and we all gotta work to root this out of ourselves, but we can't do it alone, and we can't do it in these random offramp activities- we need revolutionary organizing and revolutionary consciousness, revolutionary collectives too!
I've tried to simply discourage myself, or build in new habits, try to make it harder for me to slack off, and fallen into self-hatred, in the main it's led to a feeling of disappointment and lack of motivation, and a decimation of my self-confidence. This, I feel, is because we can't do anything alone, nothing we do is done by ourselves; from our food consumption to our jobs, our transportation, our information intake, our communications, clothes, homes, and ideas are all a product of collectivity.
Without strong collectives we cannot have a strong movement, without a strong movement we cannot have strong collectives; this can be resolved by coming together and overcoming our differences in the struggle- one great place to begin is with the struggle to free ALL political prisoners!
-----
Political prisoners are something that I and others have much to learn about, but in learning from folks like those who were in the Black Panthers, Young Lords, Brown Berets, the Communist Party, the Black Liberation Army and other formations, we know that political prisoners should be central in our mind. Not only because of their sacrifices, but we cannot ignore that these folks have and are making the ultimate sacrifice, given their minds, bodies, time, energy, freedom, and sometimes lives to the movement, we cannot leave them to suffer behind the walls alone.
Another more "selfish" reason might be that if we don't fight the right way now, we're gonna be locked up too. The saying goes something like, "If we don't all fight to free our political prisoners today, there will be no one left to fight to save us, the political prisoners of tomorrow" and that shit is true. If we do not accept that reality, and the reality that it doesn't matter if you're a communist, a socialist, an anarchist, a nationalist, a left-liberal, a black liberationist, a Puerto Rican nationalista, an Indigenous activist, a pro-abortion activist, an environmentalist, or even just an oppressed person, someone who disagrees with the way things are - you make one move, one remark, one wrong comment, you can find yourself locked up for life - you will suffer.
And then we will have to deal with the consequences that come.
Folks like Ruchell Magee, Jalil Muntaqim, Kamau Sadiki, Sundiata Acoli, Mumia Abu Jamal, Assata Shakur, Afeni Shakur, Claudia Jones, the NY 3, the Pendleton 2, George Jackson, Kathleen Cleaver, Oscar Lopez-Ramiro, Leonard Peltier, and many who've gone unnamed, or I've failed to learn about, can and have spoken to this reality.
If they don't kill us, they lock us up; if they can't destroy us, they remove us from society; if they can't corrupt our spirit, they compromise our bodies; if they cannot destroy our organizations, they manipulate, infiltrate and divide them into small, insignificant pieces.
We must be clear!
We have a shared enemy and a share struggle!
-----
As sister Safiya says, "We have to put aside our differences, and come together - as Malcolm says - on the basis of what we have in common. What we have in common is a common enemy and a common struggle. The common enemy being the racist, sexist, colonialist, imperialist, capitalist system of the United States of America.
A system that supports police brutality and murder of people of color, and all other oppressed people. A system that promotes property value over human lives and dignity.
A system that promotes that dollar profit over the peoples rights to decent housing, education and employment.
A system that utilizes racism as a tool to keep us divide and fighting amongst ourselves, and as a means to justify the continued inhumane acts propagated, perpetrated against people of African descent in this country.
A system that invades third world countries, underprivileged countries, and colonizes them - using their youth as cannon fodder for their wars of oppression, and their lands as dumping grounds for their weapons."
-----
I have much to learn and study, many people to be taught from and taught about, many things to overcome and root out among myself and the organizations I belong to. But I know that if we are to do anything, it has to be done with people, in action. So, once this bug is out my system, I'm going to redouble my efforts to be in the streets.
I ask that any and all reflections or comments, corrections, or experiences that folks want to share be sent to indefenseofliberation@gmail.com
All Power to the People!