We “own” a humble home in the Hood.
Paying your mortgage is not a threat against the Revolution. Hell, if not paying your mortgage helped the Revolution we would have won and been liberated in the 2008 housing collapse cuz almost a 3rd of the market stop paying their mortgages. LoL.
I am against Private Property, I’m a Socialist, I don’t support private ownership of Resources, any Resources. I don’t support turning fundamental human necessities into commodities. I don’t support investment property or a housing market, it’s inherently immoral and creates homelessness and slums. I’m for Personal Property and full Personal Property Rights, and the full retraction of Private Property and Private Property Rights. Power and Property to the People!
African people need to Collectively secure Private Property in this System, and operate it according to Communal Principles. We can practice Socialism within this “Capitalist” system. In fact that’s how the most successful groups in this society operate. Noam Chomsky long exposed that the Wealthy Elites in the US actually practice Socialism among themselves, while forcing the working class masses to engage in cut-throat, competitive Capitalism. Jews, practice Group and Communal Economies, many Asian groups, many Mexican immigrant populations also practice communal economics. In fact you will not find a Wealthy, or emerging group that does not practice Ethnically Exclusive, Group Based, Communal Economics.
The Black Community, we just do what White people told us to do, without any critical analysis. We practice Capitalism. We even run around talking about rebuilding Black Wall Street, even though in my life time White Wall Street has collapsed over a dozen times! SMH. We have these Black money gurus running around telling us how to get rich without telling us that real wealth is rooted in collective power, control of resources, and principled unity, not mass accumulation of fiat currency. SMH.
Black people are the most loyal to the corrupt ideas a practices of Capitalism, and that’s why we are the poorest group in this fucking country. We embrace the “hard work” rhetoric, we embrace Individualism, when we do get a few dollars, or a lot of em we get scared, we become isolated, we don’t employ the basic principles of Communal Power and Economics.
We doing dog-eat-dog, cannibalistic Capitalism, while the White people who taught us to do that are practicing Socialism that they stole from our Ancestors on the low-low. SMH.
I opened two Cooperative Enterprises in one year in Chicago. I exited one due to internal disagreements, only to see it close within a year, and I had to close the other one myself due to the lack of disciple and commitment from the other co-op members.
This is actually a painful issue for me, because it has been one of the areas I’ve failed to make progress. I’ve literally put a successful business in the hands of conscious Black people only see them run them into the ground in just over two years, then those same people attacked me even though I wasn’t living in the city the whole time they operated the business. It failed because they were being Capitalist, they were operating their shit the way they learned in business school instead of employing Communal, Cooperative, and Group Based Economics. We were successfully because we fully engaged the community, we ran the business communally. SMH.
The only thing worse than all the failing Black businesses, are the ones that succeeded, because they’ve found that the key to successes is exploitation of their own people, from Cash Money Records (and all the other Black Labels), to Beats by Dre, to the local Black Businesses that enrich a Black individual or family while leaving the larger community in poverty and dysfunction. There’s no such thing as individual wealth, that’s why even the Black billionaires are treated like Ni99as when they travel the world, because they haven’t build Collective wealth and status, and that’s the only real wealth. The first lesson we learned as children is “whatever yo people is, you is,” you can’t raise above your Race, even if you have a shit load of money.
So, we need to do what the system requires of us, because they out gun us, but we can then do what we need to do internally, we could handed our resources and properties better, but we don’t; it’s like one Black scholar said, “we’ve gone through a Holocaust, but we haven’t paid enough of a cost,” to really change our shit up yet.
SMH. Man, I don’t even like discussing this issue, too painful. But I’ve learned the lessons and I’m working to construct more viable cooperative enterprises.
As for returning to African, it depends on your mission and the nature of your work. The system of oppression and genocide is global, so must our resistance be, we need global resistance, from Africa and across the globe. Dr. Clarke said; “you can’t run the African economy, if you can’t operate a candy store in Harlem.” We can’t stop Gentrification in Black communities, how we gon stop the recolonization in Africa? I see people who can’t change shit in the Hood, but they gon go teach Africans something?
If any African of the Diaspora returns to Africa they should do so as students, allies, and followers of the Revolutionary leadership in Africa; they shouldn’t return as Saviors, or leaders just because they got some Yankee dollars in their pockets.
I’m for any African going anywhere in the world they think they can best struggle against the Systems and Institutions of White Domination, but I’m not down with people thinking they can escape the Struggle or Racism by running to African or anywhere else. I’m not down for Westernized Black people playing Saviors for other populations of Black people either.
If I got the call to go to African to make any contribution, I’m there; but the same goes for anywhere else I can make a contribution to my people and the struggle. This whole world is ours.
