America's prison problem - People & Power - Al Jazeera English

America's prison problem - People & Power - Al Jazeera English

America's prison problem

Why does the US put so many people behind bars and what lies behind California's new push for leniency? People and Power Last Modified: 01 Nov 2012 14:40 inShare6 Email Print Share Feedback

By filmmakers Michael Montgomery and Monica Lam, The Center for Investigative Reporting The US locks up more people than any other country in the world, spending over $80bn each year to keep some two million prisoners behind bars. Over the past three decades, tough sentencing laws have contributed to a doubling of the country's prison population, with laws commonly known as 'three strikes and you're out' mandating life sentences for a wide range of crimes. But a clear sign that Americans are rethinking crime and punishment is a voter's initiative on California's November ballot called Proposition 36 that seeks to reform the state's three-strikes law. Some 27 states have three-strikes laws patterned after California's version, which was one of the first to be enacted in the country. Since it was passed in 1994, nearly 9,000 felons have been convicted in California under the law. One of them is Norman Williams, a 49-year-old African-American man who was a crack addict living on the streets. He was convicted of burglarising an empty home and later stealing an armload of tools from an art studio. His third strike: filching a jack from a tow truck in Long Beach. His fate sealed under California's three-strikes law, Williams was sent to a maximum security prison alongside murderers, rapists and other violent criminals. "I never wanted to do my whole life in prison. Nobody wants to be caged like that," Williams says. Williams was lucky. After 13 years behind bars, his case was reviewed by a judge and he was released. He is one of about two dozen 'three strikers' who have won sentence reductions through the work of a Stanford University law clinic founded by Michael Romano. In Williams' case, the prosecutor actually agreed that the original sentence was too harsh. An idea emerged from Romano's work: Why not draft a ballot initiative to ensure that sentences like Williams' will not be repeated? "When people originally passed the three-strikes law in 1994 the campaigns were about keeping serious and violent murderers, child molesters in prison for the rest of their lives," Romano says. "I think that's what people want and are kind of shocked to hear that people have been sentenced to life for petty theft." Romano helped write Proposition 36, which would amend Californian law so felons could be sentenced to life only if their third strike is a serious or violent crime. Current 'three strikers' could appeal their sentences if their last conviction was non-serious and non-violent. However, the three-strikes law could still apply to felons whose third strike is a minor crime if their past strikes include violence, or what many call "super strikes" like murder, rape and child molestation. Adam Gelb, the director of the Pew Center on the States' Public Safety Performance Project, says the proposition could be a bellwether for crime policies across the US. "California's three-strikes law really stands out," he says. "If it's changed it will definitely send a dramatic signal to policy makers across the country that it is a new day." 'Hope for strikers' Opponents of the initiative argue that the current three-strikes law works well, and has contributed to a dramatic fall in violent crime over the past two decades. "We want to remove the worst offenders from society for the sake of our communities," says Carl Adams, the head of the California District Attorneys Association. "And we want to do it no matter what it costs and we want to do it no matter what the impact on the prison population." Opponents also say prosecutors today are using the current law judiciously, pointing out that more than 80 per cent of 'three strikers' were sentenced prior to 2000. Changing the law, they say, would remove an important tool from the prosecutorial toolbox. "I don’t know why anybody would want to fix something that doesn't require fixing," says Marc Klaas, one of the state's fiercest defenders of the current three-strikes law. Klaas led the charge to pass tough, mandatory sentencing laws after his 12-year-old daughter Polly was raped and murdered by a career criminal in 1993. "It's really about preventing future victimisations," Klaas says. But critics of the current law say the net is cast too widely. At San Quentin State Prison near San Francisco, some inmates convicted under third strikes have formed a self-help group called 'Hope for Strikers'. Some of the men here even voted for the original three-strikes law. Joey Mason lived in Polly Klaas' hometown and remembers the uproar surrounding her murder. "It devastated a lot of people," he says. Mason was later convicted of burglary when he relapsed into drug addiction and is now serving a life sentence. Most of the men in the group say they are here for non-violent crimes, like Eddie Griffin, who was sentenced to 27-years-to-life for possession of cocaine, or Forrest Lee Jones, who caught a third strike when he stole a VCR. "I never believed that three-strikes was going to go after us men," says Mason. Indeed, an analysis of state data by the Center for Investigative Reporting in collaboration with the San Francisco Chronicle found that 'three strikers' are not more prone to violence than other inmates. Instead, they have a higher risk of drug and substance abuse problems. Behind bars: Prison conditions Activists who are campaigning to change the three-strikes law in California are also trying to raise awareness about conditions inside prisons. They are targeting the use of special security units at maximum security prisons like Pelican Bay State Prison. A recent report by Amnesty International condemned the long-term use of these special units, equating them to solitary confinement. "Pelican Bay is a vivid example of a criminal justice system at its most extreme," says Suzanne Nossel, the executive director of Amnesty International USA. Corrections officials defend their use of the special units, saying they are necessary to segregate some of the state's most dangerous criminals - powerful gang members and violent inmates. "The design is based on providing the maximum amount of security in housing these men separate from our general population and it provides for the safety of my staff, which is paramount," says Pelican Bay warden Greg Lewis. But national scrutiny is being aimed at the stark conditions inside Pelican Bay and other so-called supermax prisons. In June, US Senator Dick Durbin of Illinois called for a hearing on the use of solitary confinement. "We as American citizens are driving other American citizens out of their minds," testified Anthony Graves, a former Texas death row inmate who was exonerated after 18 years. For 10 of those years, Graves was held in isolation. "No one can begin to imagine the psychological effects isolation has on another human being," he says. Durbin says Americans are ready to rethink the costs of 'tough on crime' policies - both the human and financial costs. "There are things we can do that sound tough that are a waste of money and lead America down a path that we don't want to go down," he says. The cost of incarceration As election day approaches, the campaign to change California's three-strikes law is focusing its message on the burden to taxpayers. In a TV ad, district attorneys from Los Angeles, San Francisco and Santa Clara counties endorse Proposition 36, saying: "Save millions of dollars, instead of wasting millions on non-violent offenders." The Yes-on-36-campaign has gathered support from across the political spectrum, including conservative watchdog Grover Norquist and religious conservatives like Pat Nolan. Even if California voters decide to amend the three-strikes law, only a few thousand inmates would qualify to have their sentences reduced. Still, the change would send an important signal to the rest of the country, says Adam Gelb. "California started this trend, as it starts so many trends," says Gelb. "What's happening in California now is going to resonate loudly across the country in terms of criminal justice policy for years to come." People & Power can be seen each week at the following times GMT: Wednesday: 2230; Thursday: 0930; Friday: 0330; Saturday: 1630; Sunday: 2230; Monday: 0930. Click here for more on People & Power.

Pull Yo Pants Up: Critical Notes on Obama Drama: 2008-2012

Obama, Black Killer for White Supremacy

A fictional interview

By Marvin X

MX: Mr. President, thank you again for allowing me this precious time to talk with you.

Prez: Marv, the pleasure is all mine.

MX: Mr. President, you are rapidly gaining the reputation as the black killer President.

Prez: That's a dubious honor, Marv. I certainly would not label myself in that manner.

MX: Well, you took out Osama Ben Laden, Al Alaki and now Qaddafy.

Prez: I'm only trying to make America and the world safe for democracy.

MX: Are you preparing to eliminate the President of Syria, Assad?

Prez: We have no plans in that direction, of course if events continue to deteriorate in that nation, we may need to consider some type of action, in coordination with our friends in that region.

MX: Prez, your policy smells of selective action. You certainly are not thinking about taking out those repressive regimes in Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Jordan and elsewhere.

Prez: Well, we must think strategically. Those nations you mentioned are important to us in spite of certain human rights abuses, although we encourage them to extend more freedom to their populations.

MX: So your friends get a pass, is that it?

Prez: That's not the term I would use.

MX: Well it's clear those regimes are nowhere in your radar for radical change, especially as per taking out their leaders. But I want to know how you justify assassinating an American citizen without bringing charges against him in a court of law, considering you are a constitutional lawyer?

Prez: You're referring to Mr. Awlaki, of course.

MX: Yes, the man you took out in Yemen a few weeks ago.

Prez: He was an enemy combatant. He tried to killed American citizens. We had no choice but to go after him with all the weight of the American military.

MX: He didn't deserve a trial in a court of law?

Prez: In a normal situation, perhaps, but this war on terror has presented us with special circumstances.

MX: So do you envision the murder of other American citizens whom you deem a threat to the national security of the US?

Prez: It depends on the circumstances, the danger they pose to the American people.

MX: Have you not transcended former President Bush II in your interpretation of US law?

Prez: No, I'm only doing what I think is best to protect the American people.

MX: You seem to have this Manichean concept of good and evil in the world and that you represent good.

Prez: That is your view, not mine. I will say, as did President Bush, you are either with us or against us.

MX: And this includes American citizens as well, does it? No opposition allowed?

Prez: Marv, I think you're stretching it a bit. Of course, the American people have the right to differ with our policies.

MX: But you just murdered an American citizen, without trial, who differed with your policies.

Prez: He went too far.

MX: Who sets the limits, you, in the tradition of your predecessor Bush?

Prez: Circumstances establish the limits.

MX: Do circumstances supersede the US Constitution?

Prez: Not necessarily. We examine each situation on a case by case basis.

MX: Sir, now that NATO has eliminated Qaddafy in Libya, we see you are proceeding on an African campaign. You're quite ambitious and bold, don't you think?

Prez: Marv, I'm only doing what I think is right for the American people and the global community. You're referring to our intention to send troops to Uganda?

MX: Yes, and a few other African nations. Are you now the new King of Africa, especially with the demise of Qaddafy?

Prez: You have quite a sense of humor, Marv, but no, I don't desire to be the King of Africa, but I do desire to prevent mass slaughter in Africa. As a man of African heritage, I am deeply concerned about my people there.

MX: Not to cut you off, but you did receive the Nobel Peace Prize, yet you seem intent on continuing the permanent war policy of your predecessors, from Africa to Asia.

Prez: Don't you think the people of North Africa, specifically, Libya, have the possibility of a better future with the departure of Qaddafy. We all want peace, but sometimes there must be war to achieve peace. I appreciate the Nobel Prize, but I have a job to do, and my job is protecting American interests and human rights around the world.

MX: What about human rights in America? What about the two million men and women in prisons? Have you thought about giving a general amnesty to the mostly poor, ignorant, drug addicted and mentally ill who make up the majority of the prison population in America?

Prez: No I haven't.

MX: Why not?

Prez: I have other pressing issues, such as the economic situation.

MX: Don't you understand that many of those imprisoned were due to economic crimes, the type of crimes that the Wall Street protesters are presently fighting, including the call for a redistribution of wealth?

Prez: Marv, there are many reasons those two million people are in jail, but for the safety of the American people, we have no plans for a general amnesty.

MX: Do you see the Occupy Wall Street movement as a counterweight to the Tea Party movement?

Prez: I see the Occupy Wall Street protests in the American tradition and we support them.

MX: Do you and the Democratic party plan to use them in your reelection strategy?

Prez: Well, where their goals are in harmony with mine, I will call upon them. But I do not believe in class warfare, the rich against the poor. We are one people.

MX: Even when 1% own wealth equal to 99%?

Prez: There must be a  some structural change to redistribute the wealth, to insure good wages and job security. I'm for this. We can’t continue excusing the Wall Street robbers, nor can we allow crime in the street. We want the rich to recognize their obligation to the poor and middle class. I'm against corporate greed, but I'm for free trade capitalism.

MX: Aren’t they the same?

Prez: Well, there's enough to go around, no child should be hungry in America, or the world for that matter. We must continue to fight the good fight so that every American citizen can pursue happiness or the American dream. I will do all in my power to convince the people on Wall Street and the people on main street that we must stick together and not destroy the American dream because of greed and selfishness.

MX: Mr. President, thank you for your time.

Prez: You're quite welcome.

--Marvin X

11/21/11

from Pull Yo Pants Up: Critical Notes on Obama Drama, 2008-2012, by Marvin X, Black Bird Press, Berkeley CA, 2013.

Malcolm X, elections and the politics of empire

Respect the architect: Malcolm X, the elections and the politics of empire

To be black in America is enough to be deemed "un-American", but to be black and Muslim is to be "anti-American". Last Modified: 04 Nov 2012 13:38

Though Obama went to Cairo as an "envoy of empire" who sought to universalise American power, Malcolm X had went there to "internationalise black freedom struggles with those in the third world who were its victims" [GALLO/GETTY]

With Guantanamo still open, drones still killing and anti-Muslim sentiment forming the rumbling bass line of empire, the upcoming US presidential elections have once again raised the spectre and threat of Islam and the Muslim third world to US national security and its interests. And with Obama as one of the two major candidates, the issue of Blackness is the elephant in the room. While many want to further stigmatise Obama as a "closet Muslim" and the "Arabian Candidate" of the 21st century, others see his blackness as rebranding the image of America and helping to further US interests in the Muslim third world through a new "post-racial" and benevolent veneer. But as I detail in my recent book, these relationships and histories between blackness, Islam and the Muslim third world are not new in the United States. In fact, it is Malcolm X who has come to define these converging histories, and it is his legacy that is in many ways causing so much national anxiety in a post-9/11 United States with a black president who's middle name is Hussein.  For to be black in America is enough to be deemed un-American, but to be black and Muslim is to be anti-American. While the "smearing" of Obama as a Muslim in the post-9/11 climate is informed by the threat posed by that thing called "al-Qaeda", Obama's blackness and his "proximity" to Islam is really a deeper seated anxiety around Malcolm X, who challenged American authority over not only the black past but also a black future, demanding that black people view themselves not as a national minority but as part of a global majority. For Malcolm X, "Islam was the greatest unifying force of the Dark World", and the Muslim third world had a defining impact on Malcolm X's life and political vision, whether it was the spiritual centre Mecca or the anti-colonial struggles in Egypt, Algeria, Palestine, Iraq and elsewhere. But for Malcolm one didn't have to be a Muslim. What was important was the recognition of a racial reality to one's secular suffering that would view white supremacy as a global phenomenon and link black struggles with those in the third world. Obama tried to capture the euphoria around his election during his highly publicised address in Cairo in 2009 entitled "A New Beginning", which was meant to signal a shift from the polarising militarism of the Bush II regime. But Malcolm X had also spoke in Cairo, and in 1964 he addressed a gathering of the heads of state at the Organisation of African Unity. But there has been a persistent demand to contain and even erase the possibility of black internationalism in the US. As a fulfillment of the Civil Rights tradition, Obama's presidency has symbolically suggested that not only do black people have a stake in this country, but that the feeling is mutual - as his status as "leader of the free world" seeks to wed black identification with America, its power and its destiny. Though Obama went to Cairo as an envoy of empire who sought to universalise American power, Malcolm had went there to internationalise black freedom struggles with those in the third world who were its victims. In Cairo, Malcolm implored the heads of state not to be fooled by the "imperialist wolf" of the US or the State Department's attempts to use propaganda to convince African nations that the United States was making serious progress toward racial equality through Brown v Board and the passage of Civil Rights legislation. As Malcolm said, these measures were a "propaganda manoeuver" and "are nothing but tricks of the century's leading neo-colonialist power". Malcolm implored the gathering to heed his warning: "Don't escape from European colonialism only to become more enslaved by deceitful, 'friendly' American dollarism." In highlighting the use of propaganda and the managing of America's image abroad, Malcolm anticipated not only how after 9/11 the State Department would place Muslims in high profile positions in the arts and political realms to influence Muslim public opinion abroad, but also how the election of Obama and the rhetoric of "diversity" would be used to redefine America as inclusive, "post-racial" and progressive in order to mask the entrenchment of white power domestically and globally.  And in tying domestic racial politics in the US to America's role as a "neo-colonial power" and the emergence of "American dollarism", Malcolm laid bare how race linked European colonialism and the emergence of the US as a global superpower. While Obama went to Egypt to co-opt this sacred city and put a benevolent face on American power, Malcolm had been there to strip away the veneer of benevolence and reveal the naked truth about US racial injustice and imperial ambition. This is why the legacy of Malcolm X is so important, as it sheds light on the racial dynamics that shape the global landscape today under US power.  Red, black and green scares  In the immediate aftermath of World War II, as the US replaced Europe as the dominant actor on the world's stage, President Truman declared "communism" public enemy number one, even viewing communism as a bigger threat than colonialism to the decolonising third world. As a result, the US and its allies in Europe believed that a liberated third world was the biggest threat to the post-War order that the US wanted to dominate, as it would create a vacuum of power that could be filled by Communism. The real fear, as Malcolm and others like Lumumba, Fanon and Nkrumah understood, was the liberation and independence of the majority of the world that would have the potential to radically redistribute global power and wealth away from the white world. Instead, the US expanded its imperial footprint into the third world and extended the logic of colonial racism by using "anti-communism" as a means to justify intervention, the supporting of dictators, the overthrow of democratically elected leaders, assassinations and destabilisation throughout the third world (witness Mossadegh, Arbenz, Lumumba and so many others). As a result, US foreignpolicy used "anti-communism" as a proxy for race by undermining the decolonisation of the third world. Malcolm emerged out of this Cold War crucible where Civil Rights activists embraced an American identity and argued that Jim Crow violence was an Achilles' heel that would undermine America's global ambitions to a third world already hostile to white supremacy. Malcolm was deeply critical of the Civil Rights establishment for domesticating black struggle within American frameworks and supporting the logic of "anti-communism". For Malcolm and others, by not understanding the global nature of white supremacy, the Civil Rights establishment was not going to even make domestic gains on race. Instead of tying their fate to the decolonising third world to systemically undo white power, the Civil Rights mandate only masked white power through a reformist posture domestically, while facilitating its entrenchment throughout the world by assuming the flawed logic of "anti-communism". In 1964, Malcolm X made his infamous "The Ballot or the Bullet" speech and challenged the Civil Rights establishment by asserting the futility of black voting as a means toward gaining equality in the United States. Instead, he argued, black people needed to internationalise their struggles and link them to the struggles taking place throughout the third world of Africa, Asia and Latin America. As Malcolm said, "you don't take your case to the criminal, you take the criminal to court". For Malcolm X, the move from "civil rights" to "human rights" would place the plight of black peoples in America into a broader forum that would force the US to undergo scrutiny and challenge from the third world and that might tilt the balance of power to the dark nations, as it would reveal US hypocrisies, undermine the country's foreign policy objectives in the third world and expose the country's own brutal extension of European colonial racism. As part of his radical internationalism and in profound contrast to the Civil Rights establishment, Malcolm supported the Palestinians against Zionism, likened the ghettos of Harlem under racist segregation to the Casbah in Algiers under French colonial rule, praised Nasser's stand against England, France and Israel, celebrated the Bandung Conference and saw it as a model for unifying black political culture during the Cold War, supported the Mau Mau rebellion against British colonialism and the Vietnamese against French rule, met with Fidel Castro, lauded Lumumba as the "greatest Black man who ever walked the African continent", and like Fanon, gave ethical sanction to the possibility of armed struggle, fundamentally challenging the Cold War consensus. The post-9/11 now  With the hyper-nationalism of the post-9/11 era fuelling America's war with the Muslim third world, Malcolm's legacy of resistance that combined black internationalism with the politics of the Muslim third world provides a blueprint to challenge the imperial consensus that has characterised the post-9/11 era. Forged out of the Cold War, Malcolm's legacy can challenge the embrace by minority communities (including Muslims) of the rhetoric of "terrorism" by recognising its racially coded roots and how "anti-terrorism" is used to not only police dissent, but also allows for the violent expansion of US empire. For not only does the logic of "anti-terrorism" play into the racist logic of "moderate" and "radical" Muslims, it also fails to give dignity to challenges to US state power around the world. Just as "anti-communism" was a proxy for race during the Cold War, "anti-terrorism" has become the new proxy for race and the re-entrenching of white supremacy by justifying US intervention abroad while also containing dissent domestically, as the logic of "terrorism" is used to determine who is a citizen and who is an enemy, who is human and who is not, and who is to be killed and who is allowed to live. While many activists, artists, scholars and organisations are infusing the ideas of Malcolm within their work, it's important that black and Muslim communities, as well as other communities of colour, continue to draw the deep internationalist connections that Malcolm did. The linking of these struggles isn't some romantic vision of solidarity. It's rooted in a deeper understanding of how profoundly connected these violent forces really are. And it is a recognition that the persistence of racism here in the United States is precisely because white supremacy is deeply woven into the very fabric of US statecraft and is perpetually given life through the everyday functioning of how the US conducts its affairs, whether here or abroad.  It's the recognition that the logic of mass incarceration in the US that has destroyed black political possibility and contained dissent through local policing and counter-insurgency is also what drives the US military and its imperial imprisonment in Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo, Bagram and other places. It's the recognition that the plight of migrants across the heavily militarised US-Mexico border resembles the conditions that contain and destroy Palestinian lives and livelihood. And it's the recognition that the neoliberal economic policies that have destroyed the social wage and witnessed the emergence of the warfare state in the US is deeply rooted in the exploitation of the third world through global finance capital and war. To only talk about domestic anti-racism and not see white supremacy as a global problem, or to only make tepid critiques of US foreign policy around tactics and strategies and not its fundamentally racist posture rings hollow and misses the boat entirely. For it fails to recognise that white supremacy is rooted in the very structure of global relations that the US helped bring into being - a set of relationships where diplomacy, trade, political manoeuvering, war and questions of sovereignty are played out on a radically uneven playing field where the US and Europe exert overwhelming diplomatic leverage, political power and brutal military might.  To ignore this falls into the worst forms of liberal internationalism that presume the US to be a force for good in the world, and it replicates the very problem that Malcolm X heroically struggled against, and was ultimately killed for.  Though the bullets finally caught up with Malcolm, he left an indelible imprint on generations of artists and activists. But his legacy is under attack, and even erasure, as the Obama presidency and the triumphalist narrative of Civil Rights seeks to make black internationalist impulses irrelevant and outdated. While there are those who claim that voting for Obama is the practical thing to do and that to either vote for a third party or to not vote at all is "impractical" and "misguided", Malcolm might turn the tables and ask how "practical" is it to vote for either major party when the violent forces that define them are so intractable and resistant to change, let alone transformation? And when confronting such forces, and recognising the others in the past who have tried so valiantly, how practical is it to continue to invest and commit to this process and expect something different? Isn't that "impractical" and the path to irrelevance? Sohail Daulatzai is the author of Black Star, Crescent Moon: The Muslim International and Black Freedom beyond America (2012) and is the co-editor (with Michael Eric Dyson) of Born to Use Mics: Reading Nas's Illmatic (2009). He has written liner notes to the upcoming release of the 20th anniversary of Rage Against the Machine's self-titled debut album, and is an Associate Professor in the Department of Film and Media Studies and the Programme in African American Studies at the University of California, Irvine. He currently lives in Los Angeles and is working on a graphic novel.  Follow him on Twitter: @SohailDaulatzai The views expressed in this article are the author's own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera's editorial policy.

Black Bird Press News & Review: AALBC.com presents Marvin X

Black Bird Press News & Review: AALBC.com presents Marvin X

Marvin X Replies to Playthell Benjamin: A Black Hangman is better than a white hangman

Marvin X and Baba Lumumba (Donald Freeman), brother of ancestor Mamadou
Lumumba (Kenny Freeman). Playthell falsely claims he sent Mamadou to recruit
Huey Newton and Bobby Seale into the RAM Black Panther Party, which did briefly
exist before the Newton/Seale version, but Playthell's involvement is highly suspect,
certainly Baba has no knowledge of him. Marvin X introduced Eldridge Cleaver to
Bobby Seale and Huey Newton after Cleaver and Marvin X founded the Black House,
political/cultural center in San Francisco, 1967.


There are some negroes who think a black hangman is better than a white hangman, just as some negroes used to think a white man's ice was colder than a black man's ice. Yet we know a hangman is a hangman and ice is ice no matter who sells it. It is only a mental delusion that makes us imagine a black hangman is softer, gentler, just as it is delusional to think the white man's ice is colder.

If find it quite interesting the comments made by Playthell, a Negro of the first order, although I love the term Negro so perhaps Playthell deserves a lower rating on the scale of negrocities and thus should simply be referred to as a nigguh of the worse kind. Long ago I wrote a poem called Did You Vote Nigguh?

Did you vote nigguh
because you feel like an American?
Well that's what you are
an American nigguh
bought/sold in America....

Or something like that since I can hardly remember a poem written in 1968. But I find it interesting that Playthell got a "Bravo" for his Open Letter to Marvin X from Ishmael Reed, a mutual friend who reviewed my Wisdom of Plato Negro and said, "If it wasn't for Black Nationalism, black culture would be extinct!" And we must ask what or who was out to destroy Black culture except white supremacy America. But understand that it was also Black integrationists who would and did help destroy Black culture with their anti-Black agenda of assimilation that continues today with their warped concept of multiculturalism, described by Dr. Julia Hare as another term for failed integration. Didn't Malcolm X talk about integrating into a burning house?

Playthell, perhaps you are one of the privileged few Negroes who feel good about America. Perhaps you are indeed listed in the 1%, although the supreme irony might be that you once proclaimed yourself in the 99%, even informing me you are a founding member of RAM or Revolutionary Action Movement, under the leadership of Ancestor Robert Williams (Negroes with Guns). Ancestor Robert Williams must be turning over in his grave to see the pitiful Negro American sycophant you have turned out to be.

And then you have the nerve to question my knowledge of history. FYI, at this hour I am being hosted in Washington DC by the brother of Mamadou Lumumba (Kenny Freeman) the man you listed as sent to Oakland to recruit members for RAM, and who established the first Black Panther Party under the leadership of RAM. Baba Lumumba (Donald Freeman) and I constantly discuss RAM's role it forming the Black Panther Party. Again, FYI, I shared the stage yesterday with Max Stanford, aka Muhammad Ahmed, the leader of RAM. I suggest you check your dip stick and take a reading of your past, present and future. You may need an oil change.

As per history, Max or Muhammad Ahmed, Baba Lumumba and others are presently discussing writing an accurate history of the Black Panther Party in particular and the Black movement in general, specifically to correct the lies and distortions of revisionists and reactionaries such as yourself, although you are not alone in fabricating distortions of Black liberation history and our present condition that is perilous. You are the type of Negro similar to the captain of the Titanic who will sing the happy blues while the ship is sinking. You are convinced America can be saved while we have clear evidence that other nations  and empires have fell into the dustbin of history, e.g., Egypt, Greece. Rome, Great Britain, USSR, et al.

Sadly, you submit Obama as our savior or the change we need, an imperialist in black face. And yes, 99% of Black people will vote for him again, as if they have a real choice. In reality, whether he wins or loses will not fundamentally change the condition of North American Africans. Only we can change our condition. Revolution is the only solution, not reform or some Miller Lite pseudo  solution as fabricated by muddle headed right wing Vichy intellectuals.
--Marvin X
11/3/12
Howard University
Washington DC

An Open Letter to Marvin X

by Playthell Benjamin on Saturday, November 3, 2012 at 6:28am ·

Yo Marvin!!!!!  Since I am seriously trying to get our President reelected I would prefer not to be bothered with distractions like the revolutionary fantasies of silly old men who refuse to learn even the most obvious lessons of history.  Since you persist in putting such pretentious mumbo jumbo on my wall alas, I can’t resist responding.  The laundry list of President Obama’s failings that you posted on my page exposes you as a pretentious dullard who does not began to comprehend the complexities of the Job he is tasked with performing by the American people who voted him into office.   

You say “We must not be emotional but rather employ logic.  I was guilty of emotionalism during Obama’s first run.  My revolutionary friends told me not to be fooled by a black face.”  If a man of your years and experience admits that he voted for a president of the United States – the most powerful office in the world – without employing logic, then why should we listen to anything you have to say now?  I see no evidence that you are any less a fool now than you were four years ago.  You say that your “Revolutionary friends” enlightened you? 

Well, given your history of selecting “revolutionary” comrades, before I can even consider what you say as a serious statement from a serious man I have a question for you: What became of the last "Revolutionary" organization you were involved with?  Well let's look at the leadership. Bobby Seales became an expert on Texas Barbecue "Barbecuing with Bobby," Eldridge Cleaver became a right-wing religious fanatic whose big project was designing pants that  emphasized the size of one's penis (putting yo stuff out front" was his stated objective. 

And "The Servant" Huey Newton became a paranoid crack head who was killed by a crack dealer too young to be intimidated by the fact that he was a "great revolutionary leader."  The fact that you have apparently learned nothing from that folly, and mistake the former Hip Hop DJ Glen Ford for a wise man, strikes me as irrefutable evidence that you are hopelessly deluded - a mad poet who cannot distinguish fact from fancy. It's a good thing that nobody is listening to the black left and yhall just talk to each other in the intellectual equivalent of a public jerk-off circle!   Grow tha fuck up already Marvin!!!! NO RAGTAG BAND OF DELUDED LEFTIST IS GOING TO OVERTHROW THE AMERICAN GOVERNMENT!!!!!!!  

In your youth you could be forgiven for believing in such folly, BUT YOU ARE AN OLD ASS MAN NOW DOG...AND THERE IS NO FOOL LIKE AN OLD FOOL!  Since you are a literary man and not a serious student of history, let me acquaint you with a fact that has evidently escaped your fevered imagination: THERE ARE NO VIOLENT REVOLUTIONS IN COUNTRIES WHERE PEOPLE CAN VOTE THEIR GOVERNMENT OUT OF POWER!!!!!!!  I DOUBLE DARE YOU LIKE A DOG TO CITE JUST ONE INSTANCE ANYWHERE IN THE WORLD WHERE A VIOLENT REVOLUTION HAS OCCURRED IN A COUNTRY WITH A PARTICIPATORY DEMOCRACY LIKE OURS…JUST ONE MARVIN!!!!!!   EVEN ADOLPH HITLER, WHO INTRODUCED A REVOLUTION FROM THE RIGHT, WAS ELECTED!!!!!!!!

                A revolution is only possible when the overwhelming majority of the people of a nation want a revolution. People in the US want to make money.  They want to buy houses and cars and fine clothes, smoke high grad herb and drink fine liquors  hey want to enjoy the fruits of the richest society in the world!  So please identify the constituency from which you intend to recruit your revolutionary forces.  Perhaps you can tell us how you intend to recruit and train such forces, especially since the power of the government to counter any such attempt is infinitely greater than it was in the Sixties. 

I was a gun totin revolutionary when you were probably in high-school.  I was a co-founder of the Revolutionary Action Movement, which created the Black Panther Party of Oakland, when we dispatched our cadre Mamadou Dia – whom bobby Seales refers to by his slave name “Kenny Freeman”- out to Oakland to teach at Merritt Junior College.  His assignment was to identify militant students on campus and recruit those with “revolutionary” potential.  His first two recruits was Bobby Seales and Huey Newton.  I bet you don’t know shit about this history.  I hear that you have written a lot about the Black Panther experience, would you please refer us to your writings on the founding of the part where you recount the history I am relating here?

I am carefully reading Elaine Brown’s recollections of her experience in the BPP, “A Taste of Power.”  I will be writing an extended essay on it after the election and I finish the final section of my forthcoming book “Witnessing the Motion of History: Notes on the Obama Phenomenon.”  My next book will be a collection of essays “On the Burden of History: Reflections on the Crisis of Black Leftist and Nationalist Intellectuals,  in which the critical essay on Elaine’s book will be prominently featured.  I invite everyone to read this revealing book and ask themselves if they think this country would be better off if Huey Newton and the Black Panther Party was in charge, rather than under the leadership of Barack Obama and the Democrats!  I sure as hell don’t!!!!  

Barack is superior in intelligence and character to Huey Newton…furthermore he understands the political realities in the US and Huey was clueless.  That’s why he is president and Huey is the dead victim of a street fight over dope!!!  The portrait of Huey Newton that emerges clearly from Elaine’s book is of a paranoid, megalomanical thug given to violent outburst about trivial matters like all street thugs; a  dreamer who was terrified of standing before the people and explaining his ideas.  So he spent his days isolated in a luxury penthouse on Lake Merritt, paid for by rich white admirers, snorting coke and drinking cognac conjuring up crazy ass ideas for the underlings in the Panther Party to carry out without question. 

It was a fiasco that got some serious people killed for nothing!  That’s your legacy Marvin, and now you want to do it all again?  You may not be smoking crack anymore, but whatever you are smoking these days must contain hallucinogens, because you are having a hard time distinguishing reality from illusions.  Please answer the questions I have posed about how you intend to make this “revolution” you give lip service to.  Give us your plan of action.  Otherwise please go away, shut tha fuck up about “revolution” and stop posting dumbass shit on my wall!!!!!!

Black Power 3.0, Grandbaby Mahadevi El Muhajir

Mahadevi is 3 years old. She spells, reads and writes. Knows English, French and Chinese, a little Ebonics too! Mother Muhammida calls her "Baby Human Earthquake and Black Power 3.0."