Jobs for Terrorists Abroad, None for the Hood

Jobs for Terrorists Abroad,

None for the Hood

American, Afghan and NATO leaders are also preparing to start an ambitious program to convince rank-and-file Taliban fighters to give up in exchange for schooling and jobs. That plan, expected to cost hundreds of millions of dollars, will be the focus of an international conference later this week in London. The plan aims at the bottom of the Taliban hierarchy — the foot soldiers who are widely perceived as mostly poor, illiterate, and susceptible to promises of money and jobs. In 2007 and 2008, a similar effort unfolded in Iraq, where some 30,000 members of the country’s Sunni minority — many of them former insurgents — were put on the American payroll. Partly as a result, violence there plummeted.--Dexter Filkins, NewYork Times, January 24, 2010

It is absolutely ironic and mystifying that the United States of America pays billions to convince terrorists in Iraq and Afghanistan to lay down their guns and pledge allegiance to their governments. It was the payment of billions to insurgents in Iraq, rather than the so called surge that decreased the violence in Anbar Province. Money was provided to tribal elders who in turn hired young men to secure their neighborhoods. Billions are presently being allocated in Afghanistan to convince the Taliban to stop their violence.

So the question is whether decreasing violence abroad is more important than stemming violence in the hoods of America, especially between young black men who have been killing themselves at the rate of ten to fifteen thousand per year since 2005 and decades before in a low intensity war. Parents are helpless to protect their children, especially their sons. They can't make their sons understand the hood is a war zone and the only thing that will save them is putting on the armor of God or spiritual consciousness, combined with political consciousness and common sense. It seems that violence is the panacea for problems in the hood, especially between young men and women. There is little conflict resolution or thought beyond an emotional response to every situation. A young man told me yesterday he was going to kill his brother on sight, and in the same breath said he would kill anyone who killed his brother. He went silent when I asked him what if somebody killed you for killing your brother?

Much of the violence in America is due to pure and simple racism? We know if black men focused their guns at the white community it would be a problem of the national security of the United States. But since it is only young black men, let them commit homicide or fratricide. At least they are not shooting at white people or American troops and/or the national guard.

Only then would the US be concerned, only then would the ghettos become totally occupied by police. Indeed, the much heralded decrease in violence of New York City is because police are deployed throughout the hood who stop young blacks at random, questioning their status in the criminal justice system, then arresting them or permitting them to continue on their way. They also reward persons with a thousand dollars if they will turn in (snitch on) anyone (friends, co-workers) known to carry a gun.

In other American cities, the violence continues unabated, with no end in sight, no solution offered except more police, in turn filling the jails and prisons with young black men who cannot find any alternative to economic deprivation other than gang membership and the resultant violence. Much of the violence is part of gang initiation rites. The cost of violence to the physical, mental and emotional health of the community exceeds any amount of money, for the trauma and unresolved grief of family members is staggering and incalculable.

Yet, there is no national solution from the black bourgeoisie political, religious, or intellectual leadership. If black bourgeoisie children were being slaughtered in the hood, something would be done about it, yet we all know the violence is directly related to economics, just as it is in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Many of the insurgents are farmers who cannot til the soil at a living wage, so they join Al Queda and the Taliban. When will America offer her violent prone young men the same opportunity at home? Or does she prefer to continue the destabilization of the hood, since it employs any number of white people as police, correctional officers, judges, parole agents and probation officers. The cost of incarceration is a minimum $50,000.00 per man per year, almost double the cost of attending Harvard, Yale and Stanford.

Why not offer the boys and girls in the hood $50,000.00 per year to secure their community and other jobs, or reward them for staying in school, but only after a radical transformation of the educational system to make it inviting rather than boring to tears with white supremacy curriculum that is outdated and retarded, certainly not fit for the information age of high technology.

If jobs cannot be provided, why not micro loans so the young men and women can become entrepreneurs? Micro loans are allowing people to come out of poverty throughout the world. Why do Americans have their heads in the sand on so many issues? Yet, with their white supremacy arrogance, they proclaim to know everything, as President Lula of Brazil chided the President of France recently.

With respect to violence, if America continues her present policy of do-nothingism she will sow the seeds of her destruction from within, for one day the boys and girls in the hood shall discover a revolutionary solution to their problems that involves the seizure of power, the taking over of entire communities by youth and adults radicalized by an ideology born of desperation and despair. As in the 1960s, the voices of reactionary political sycophants will be ignored. Unless America intends to incarcerate entire communities, she would do well to offer an immediate solution to economic desperation in the hood.

After his first year in office ended on a sour note with the Republican victory in Massachusetts, President Obama and his Democratic party sycophants should take note that people are disgusted with his policies that rewarded the very ones who caused the economic meltdown, while the suffering of the middle class and poor has gone unattended.

Massachusetts should be a wake up call to any reasonable person. Senator Edward Kennedy is surely turning over in his grave. And yet the health plan is another concession to the rich, to the insurance companies and others who impeded the bill's passage. Contrary to his pledge of an open administration, Obama has made back room deals that call into question his honesty and suggest an inclination to political chicanery.

His administration and the Democratic party are scrambling after their disastrous defeat in Massachusetts. Politicians only respond to pressure, thus the message must be gotten out that the violence caused by economic deprivation must end immediately. Must we have a poor people's march on Washington--a march of the unemployed and homeless, including the mothers and fathers of slain children?

My friend, Dr. Cornel West says we must protect, respect and correct our president. I will add that we must check him as well by organized protest until he understands it is not only the bankers and wall street robber barons who need an infusion of funds for survival. He can no longer ignore violence at home, while rewarding violence abroad. If employment is the simple solution in Iraq and Afghanistan, why not in the ghettos of America to insure the social security of the hood?

--Marvin X

1/21/10

Reply From Gerald Ali:

Marvin X. -- '''Yet, there is no national solution from the black bourgeoisie political, religious, or intellectual leadership. If black bourgeoisie children were being slaughtered in the hood, something would be done about it, yet we all know the violence is directly related to economics, just as it is in Iraq and Afghanistan. '''

Gerald Ali: Which puts it in the nutshell, since when do the Bourgeois class send it sons to fight, when the British Monarch's grandson went to Afghanistan, he sat in a shelter thirty miles away and guided missiles at Afghanis.The 'black bourgeois' do the same, they spread the ideology of capitalism amongst the working class, who themselves have no basis for setting up businesses, there is only two main ways of doing so, either they have high skills and can produce a commodity/product or they need finance, of which most have neither.Many of the 'black bourgeois' have made money from entertainment, but its limited.So 'finance' is gained through enterprise, theft, extortion, robbery, but like the sperm only the occasional one gets through, the rest end up dead, literally or metaphorically, prisons and destroyed lives, with of course all the collaterall damage to others. But its not correct that the 'sons of the black bourgeois' are not being killed, they are doing it through proxy, those in the Hood that emulate the form of what they understand capitalism to be, however wrongly, expropriation of wealth from the working classes.The other side is the working classes fighting back, its all class based warfare. But a question can be asked here, why just in the 'black community'', why not gereralised throughout the USA ?

Marvin X -- ''We know if black men focused their guns at the white community it would be a problem of the national security of the United States.''

Gerald Ali: But of course that won't happen, that was solved in the 1970's with the 'black civil right's campaign' [BCRC], one that has led to the development of the Black bourgeois class, which is its only natural offspring.The 'BCRC segregated the civil rights movement, one that had roots back to the 1860's and earlier, but encompassed all Americans, now in Britain, Europe, Australia, China, India etc, all children learn that the 'Civil rights movement'' in the USA in the 1970' was only for ''black folk'', not for any other section.It was used to divide the population, one that had just seen the ending of the Vietnam war, it then drew off many of the anti war movement into having to oppose the racist right wing, and in doing so the anti war movement lost all its momentum.The BCRC had and still has no application outside the USA in the majority of people who took part in it, only as far as the black bourgeois is concerned does it spread wider, the new proposed rape of Africa. At the moment what one is seeing is the growing conflict between the 'Black' American and the 'African' American. Following the death, by extreme violence, of MLK, the campaign collapsed, the working class African American was said to have become poorer than prior to pre campaign, but the Black bourgeois began to grow, feeding off the working class. The condition for its growth had been gained, the soil in which it could send out root was prepared, workers who could not acquire jobs, were forced to take lower pay to work for Black capitalists.

Marvin X. -- They also reward persons with a thousand dollars if they will turn in (snitch on) anyone (friends, co-workers) known to carry a gun. ''

Gerald Ali: Its both a right and a duty for any citizen to report any crime, so any citizen doing so is not ''snitching' ', the term 'snitching' was used for crooks turning in other crooks, mainly due to jealousy, or to clear people out of the way, owning a gun without a license is a crime. Its a term that goes back to the 1700's, often used to describe thieving of goods of little value.How would it be in a society that had no policing force, and the community had to police itself ? How did they manage in Africa for all those thousands of years, in all those villages and small towns ? A 'crook' is a crook, not a worker in revolt, its an individual way out, they are almost all conservatives in politics, and if there is collateral damage, do they care ?Do we, in this day, still have a need for 'bleeding heart liberals '' ? A campaign for the 'reward' to be raised should be launched, two thousand dollars would be most helpfull, even if one has to bring in Iraqi negotiators to help advise.

Marvin X -- filling the jails and prisons with young black men who cannot find any alternative to economic deprivation other than gang membership and the resultant violence

Gerald Ali: No skills, No finance, and No brains, gang membership overall doesn't alleviate the economic deprivation, and the violence is just savages protesting, has no one ever told them the meaning of the word 'co-operative' ?How did the clans in Africa manage to survive, except by all available members working collectively, communally, to provide for all members of the clan ?They managed to provide not only for the working ones, but also for the old and the childen.Gangs are a product of the lumpen proletariat, the de-classed dregs at the base of society, not of the working class.There is a great gap that has grown between the 'Black Americans' and the 'African Americans', who themselves, obviously, are in the minority relative to the two groups.The only way any class is defined, is by its ability to oragnise and build organisations, the libaries are full of studies of co-operatives, and the hood in full of 'no brainers'.But one things comes of the violence, at least when they go to prisons, they are given an 'adult education'', the prisons being the best universities they will ever go to, and there they can learn all they need about exploitation.

Marvin X -- Many of the insurgents are farmers who cannot till the soil at a living wage, so they join Al Queda and the Taliban.

Gerald Ali:Prior to the invasion, they could all earn living wages, they are not joining criminal gangs, they are trying to remove an imperialist army.

Marvin X -- Yet, there is no national solution from the black bourgeoisie political, religious, or intellectual leadership.

Gerald Ali: Most definitely there is no 'National solution'', the American capitalist class is not going to share the capitalist structure in the USA, or internationally, that was never part of the plan, but they will and do fully involve in 'training' a new capitalist class for Africa, as and when the 'black bourgeois' get it through their thick skulls, that is where they're all going. Plus any who want to go with them, all highly trained as ex gang members, ex convicts. Economic collapse often brings in its wake, emigration.

Marvin X -- If jobs cannot be provided, why not micro loans so the young men and women can become entrepreneurs?

Gerald Ali: Have they volunteered to go to Africa now ? That's when they get the hand outs.

Marvin X -- if America continues her present policy of do-nothingism, she will sow the seeds of her destruction from within, for one day the boys and girls in the hood shall discover a revolutionary solution to their problems

Gerald Ali: All boilers have safety valves, they let out the excess steam, stop it from exploding, simple answer. The people who have joined the American army, on the excuse of poverty, they needed a job, they kill Afghanis and Iraqis, Vietnamese, anyone, but fight their own government, well it's humorous.

Marvin X -- Must we have a poor people's march on Washington-- a march of the unemployed and homeless, including the mothers and fathers of slain children?

Gerald Ali: So Marvin proves he can think, best he's come up with for a long time, everyone should give it serious consideration.

Marvin X -- My friend, Dr. Cornel West says we must protect, respect and correct our president.

Gerald Ali: Children are taught to respect adults, teachers, public figures, but when one grows up, the same people have to 'earn respect'', unless all are expected to stay in an infantile stage of development.--Constantly producing the begging bowl has only produced a population that doesn't listen anymore, why expect the government to do anything ? After all the conditions that exist now are their doing. They've had the basis for change all along, the reason there in no 'change' is because its what they want it to be. A 'revolutionary' act would be for someone to announce call for migration, not to Africa but to certain sate/s, with the intent of gaining a majority in the populations, then we will see how 'black Americans' can run a state. G.A.

Marvin X Replies to Gerald Ali

Gerald Ali, thank you for your response. Let me first say something that was told to me on a personal level, yet it can be applied on the communal level. Firstly, a white man told me he could not help me because I was not part of "the family." If he could find some way to make me part of "the family," he could help me. More recently, a progressive black bourgeoisie member told me he could not help me because I wasn't a mulatto. He said mulattos are a priority, so I would need to wait a little while. But when I ask the grass roots, the common, low class lupen, they help me in a generous way. And so maybe it is only on the communal level that we can survive, the people must help each other, and maybe the crabs can crawl out the barrel together. But speaking collectively, a brother asked me to attend a meeting of peole who wanted to invest money. I told him I would not come because it would be a waste of time unless and until the people subject themselves to the mental health peer group to recover from the addiction to white supremacy. I told him unless we go through this process, there will only be chaos and conflict one the money is collected, simply because there is no trust, no love, jealousy, envy and most of all, fear in the brotherhood and sisterhood. We fear something is going to run off with the money, or run off with somebody's girlfriend and/or wife. So in this mental state, no progess can be made, economically or otherwise. We must first detox, then recover from the addiction to white supremacy, only then can we work together, only then can we organize for survival and thrival. Your comment on people who receive a reward for turning in someone who informs the police a person is carrying a gun is quite absurd. Breaking the law? What law? We live in a jungle, or call it the Wild Wild West. When I was in New York, a barber told me his co-worker turned in the beautician because she had a gun. She had a gun because she was from Queens and the shop was in Brooklyn, so since she didn't know the people in Brooklyn, she wasn't going to get caught naked. I agree with her, although I travel all over America without a weapon, but I have a conscious policy to be careful at all times because I know one wrong move, one wrong word that upsets someone, can be a cause for violence, and especially in the South where everyone is packing, even the women (of course Up South is catching up with the Dirty South in this regard--they say the girls have more guns than the boys Up South, these days.) So in this atmosphere of violence, people have a human right to bear arms for their safety or to level the playing field. Why should a student at a high school or university be subjected to a madman who comes to school with a gun to massacre everyone while they are helpless? Yes, it is a sad society that reaches this state, but this is the present situation. Even the black bourgeoisie are allowing their children, especially the boys, to go about armed so they won't get caught naked. So the only law operating is the law of the jungle. As per the police, they are the judge, jury and executioner. If they can avoid it, they take no prisoners in the hood. Lately here on the West Coast, the brothers are taking out police rather than return to prison. Last year four police were killled in Oakland and another four in Seattle. As per your final statement that blacks should establish their own state or states, I maintain that it is our state of mind that prevents us from establishing a state. We are defacto in control of many cities and states at this hour. With four million blacks in New York, it is to me The Republic of Pan Africa, yet the blacks exist in a kind of stateless condition, devoid of political power, economic and military power. They are actually under police occupation, especially since 9/11. And the Pan Africans from throughout the diaspora suffer a full blown addiction to white supremacy that prevents organizing for statehood or even community control. I see no progress being possible until we deal with our serious mental health issues. Of course, we were taught by Dr. Fanon that the process of revolution is therapy for the oppressed. Only through social action can we regain our mental equilibrium, but we must first detox. No fighter gets into the ring without training and discipline. Almost every day, people ask me how to write a book. When I tell them they must still themselves, forget about pussy and dick for a moment, they get quiet. When I tell them to write a page per day, they say ok, but most never do it. So without discipline, there shall be no co-operative economics (you only hear this term at Kwanza time) or any of the other seven principles. No self determination because this only comes about through the process of thinking and thinking involves having the correct information to think with, followed by the right action, as the Buddhists teach, not just action but the right and correct action. We know the definition of insanity, doing the same thing over and over, yet expect different results.

Marvin X is now available for speaking engagements. Email him at jmarvinx@yahoo.com

Writings by Marvin X

In the Crazy House Called America, essay, 2002

Land of My Daughters, poems, 2005

Wish I Could Tell You The Truth, essays, 2005

Beyond Religion, toward Spirituality, 2006

How to Recover from the Addiction to White Supremacy, 2007

Eldridge Cleaver, My friend the Devil, a memoir, 2009

Mythology of Pussy, 2009

The Wisdom of Plato Negro: A Hustler’s Guide to the Game Called Life, 2010

$19.95 each

Black Bird Press 1222 Dwight Way Berkeley CA 94702

Comments about Marvin X

Malcolm X ain’t got nothing on Marvin X. Still Marvin has been ignored and silenced like Malcolm would be ignored and silenced if he had lived on into the Now.Marvin’s one of the most extraordinary, exciting black intellectuals living today—writing, publishing, performing with Sun Ra’s Musicians (Live in Philly at Warm Daddies, available on DVD from BPP), reciting, filming, producing conferences (Kings and Queens of Black Consciousness, San Francisco Black Radical Book Fair); he’s ever engaging, challenging the respectable and the comfortable. He like Malcolm, dares to say things fearlessly, in the open (in earshot of the white man) that so many Negroes feel, think and speak on the corner, in the barbershops and urban streets of black America….

Beyond Religion, toward Spirituality by Marvin X is a dangerous book, for it reveals the inner workings of capitalist and imperialist governments around the world. It's a book that stands with and on behalf of the poor, the dispossessed, the despised, and downtrodden. He’s a needed counselor, for he knows himself on the deepest personal level and he reveals that self to us that we might be his beneficiaries. --Rudolph Lewis, editor, Chickenbones

People who know Marvin X already know him as a peripatetic, outspoken, irreverent, poetic “crazy nigger,” whose pen is continually and forever out-of-control. As a professional psychologist, I hasten to invoke the disclaimer that that is in no way a diagnosis or clinical impression of mine. I have never actually subjected this brother to serious psychoanalytical scrutiny and have no wish to place him on the couch, if only because I know of no existing psycho-diagnostic instrumentality of pathology of normalcy that could properly evaluate Marvin completely.—Dr. Nathan Hare, Black Think Tank, San Francisco

When you listen to Tupac Shakur, E-40, Too Short, Master P or any other rappers out of the Bay Area of Cali, think of Marvin X. He laid the foundation and gave us the language to express Black male urban experience in a lyrical way. -- James G. Spady, Philadelphia New Observer

He’s Plato teaching on the streets of Oakland.—Ishmael Reed, essayist, Oakland

His writing is orgasmic!—Fahizah Alim, Sacramento Bee

Consciousness-altering, astonishing -- Marvin X is the USA’s Rumi & his nation is not “where our fathers died” but where our daughters live. X’s poems vibrate, whip, love in the most meta- and physical ways imaginable and un-. He’s got the humor of Pietri, the politics of Baraka, and the spiritual Muslim grounding that is totally new in English –- the ecstasy of Hafiz, the wisdom of Saadi.--Bob Holman, Bowery Poetry Club, NYC

He’s the new Malcolm X! Nobody’s going to talk about his book, HOW TO RECOVER FROM THE ADDICTION TO WHITE SUPREMACY, out loud, but they’ll hush hush about it.—Jerri Lange, author, Jerri, A Black Woman’s Life in the Media

Declaring Muslim American literature as a field of study is valuable because by re-contexualising it will add another layer of attention to Marvin X's incredibly rich body of work. Muslim American literature begins with Marvin X. --Dr. Mohja Kahf, Department of English, Middle East and Islamic Studies, University of Arkansas, Fayetteville

Marvin X's autobiography Somethin' Proper is one of the most significant works to come out of the Black Arts Movement of the 1960s and 1970s. It tells the story of perhaps the most important African American Muslim poet to appear in the United States during the Civil Rights era. The book opens with an introduction by scholar Nathan Hare, a key figure in the Black Studies Movement of the period. --Julius E. Thompson, African American Review

He has always been in the forefront of Pan African writing. Indeed, he is one of the innovators and founders of the revolutionary school of African writing. --Amiri Baraka (LeRoi Jones)

I welcome reading the work of a “grassroots guerilla publicist” who is concerned with the psychological/intellectual freedom of his people. I think of Walter Rodney as the “guerilla intellectual” who was organically connected to the grassroots. Key book here would be The Groundings With My Brothers [and sisters]. Or Steve Biko’s I Write What I Like. I think though that Dr. M. is closely affiliated with Frances Cress Welsing’s Isis Papers: Keys to the Colors (along with Bobby Wright’s thesis). Of course we need to also consult that classic: The Black Anglo Saxons, and Frazier’s Black Bourgeoisie. What I am most impressed with is Dr. M’s Pan-Africanist perspective. We all need to “Detox” as Dr. M states, wherever we are in this world. So the Pan-African element is important. Du Bois knew this, and many of the other giants. Even though they were also, ironically, “infected” like most of us in some way today. I think this citation from Step I is important: “…We are only powerless when we deny who we are and do not recognize we exist in harmony with the universal spirit of peace, justice and mercy. White supremacy is an illusion in the minds of those who believe it and those who accept the scam”….
--Mark Christian, PhD Associate Professor Sociology & Black World Studies Miami University (Ohio)