-We were able to disrupt local, regional, and the national economy of the US through various means ranging from strikes to boycotts between the 1920s-1970s.
-We were able to dictate the Democratic political platform and push through favorable and Black-specific legislation during the Reconstruction Era and in between the 1960s and 70s (without a Black president).
-We were able to mobilize rebellions that shut down major industrial and political centers in the US to the extent that the US had to contract its international military aggression in order to deal with internal rebellions.
-Between the late 1860s and the 1960s the average Black person had a much better understanding of the nature and functions of the Systems and Institutions of Global and National White Domination than the most educated Negros today; (and most of us were not even fully literate, let alone held as many advanced degrees as we do today).
-Our families were more intact, Black women held powerful and highly respected positions in the family and larger community, and Black family and community stability were infinitely stronger up to the 1950s than they are now, and that’s before the Women’s Lib movement.
-We had the fewest children in Foster Care or abandoned per capita than Whites up until the late 1960s, it was also a very strong taboo to place our elders in nursing homes or in the care of strangers/professionals back then.
-Africans and West Indians who traveled to the US sought out the Black community, established strong bonds, and organized with the Black population, and the Black citizens of the US lobbied and protested for open immigration of Africans and other members of the African Diaspora to enter into the US to seek opportunity up to the 1960s; now a significant population of Black immigrants are taught to avoid and shun the Black community of the US, and even express open contempt of us.
-Up until the 1970s is was expected and accepted that Black people should and would talk about Black issues, Black power, and the Black Agenda without having to use diluted BS terms like People of Color, Black&Brown, or Minority; we were not shy or embarrassed to exclusively deal with our shit, and support our interest.
I’m not arguing that the distant and recent past was utopian, not by a long shot.
I’m just pointing out that the Oppression and Racism we encountered drove us together and didn’t allow us to have illusions about where we stood in this nation.
The universal isolation of the Black community provoked us to come together, we had to provide our own businesses, goods, and services. Black doctors, professors, engineers, etc. were forced to live in the same community as Black workers, hustlers, and single-mothers; that proximity allowed the prior to provide a role-model for the later, and the later kept the prior grounded, and aware of their obligation to the whole.
Even though the mainstream history tries to distort the fact that we fought and won a Race War in the 1950s and 1960s by calling it a Civil Rights Movement, a Non-Violent Protest Movement; we who study the complete history in full historical and cultural context know it was a Race War, an international Race War against White Domination and Colonization, and we won the muthafuckin war.
The problem is we spent way too much time celebrating the victory, too much time picking our Afros, telling each other that Black Is Beautiful, and applying for government grants and Affirmative Action positions in White corporations instead of consolidating our victory and negotiating the terms of our enemy’s surrender. The same happened in African, and the Caribbean; they held marches, elected Black governments, raised new flags, and failed to engaged in true State-Craft.
So, we won the War and Lost the Peace; and what I saw in #Ferguson really brought that home for me.
Without full and proper understanding of our political history, and the material/economic undercurrents of the struggle we can protest and rebel as much as we want and we will make no progress, we will not hamper or disrupt the Systems, Institutions, and Agendas of Oppressors one iota.
We need to organize and act based on the historical lessons and current Radical analysis, while fully massing and coordination our current assets and resources.
No Motherships, no Saviors, no Prophecies, no delay, no compromise; just well planned and executed agendas based on rational protocols and principles.
Reactionary outburst are unbecoming to the world’s oldest and most dynamic inhabitants. We are the Original People, we are the Standard, we are the very Template of Humanity, it’s time to really fucking start acting like it again. Right now.
The work dosen’t start today, it has been going on for some time, but we need to intensify.
Forward.
