Wednesday, June 8, 2016

Burning Spear News on Muhammad Ali: A man of the times!

Burning Spear News

Muhammad Ali: A man of the times!

Jun 7, 2016

Omowale Kefing

Muhammad Ali with Malcolm X
HOUSTON—“Cassius Clay is a slave name. I didn’t choose it and I don’t want it. I am Muhammad Ali––a free black name.”

These are the words of the great Muhammad Ali following his super upset victory over Sonny Liston in Miami Beach, Florida on February 25, 1964. On that day Ali also declared, “I am the Greatest!”
This great son of Africa passed away on June 3, 2016 following a 30-year bout with a form of Parkinson’s Disease. Ali was 74 years old. Funeral services will be in his birth place of Louisville, Kentucky on Friday June 10. Let’s look at his life.

In a sense there were two Muhammad Ali’s. One, squarely in the camp of the oppressed and downtrodden of the Earth. The other side in the camp of neocolonialism.

Born in Louisville, Kentucky in 1942, Ali began his boxing career at age 12. As an amateur fighter he compiled a 100 wins, 5 loss record. He won all sorts of Kentucky and national Golden Gloves awards including winning a Gold Medal as a Light Heavyweight in the 1960 Summer Olympic Games at age 19.

By the time 1964 rolls around with 22-year old Muhammad Ali’s stunning victory against the previously considered “unbeatable” Sonny Liston, the peoples of the entire colonized world––from Harlem to Congo to Vietnam–– were engaging white imperialism in open revolutionary struggle for control over our own lives and resources.

Ali’s refusal to be a tool in U.S. war of aggression

Ali and the stance he took with the rejection of the slave masters name to his refusal to be cannon fodder in the U.S. war of aggression against the heroic people of Viet Nam was the embodiment of the Black Revolution of the time.

As he was called for the draft into the U.S. Military in Houston, Texas in 1966 his response was “I ain’t got no quarrel with the Viet Cong. No Viet Cong ever called me nigger.”

And “You want to send me to jail? Fine, you go right ahead. I’ve been in jail for 400 years. I could be there for four or five more, but I ain’t going no 10,000 miles to help murder and kill other poor people. If I want to die, I’ll die right here, right now, fighting you, if I want to die. You my enemy, not no Chinese, no Viet Cong, no Japanese. You my opposer when I want freedom. You my opposer when I want justice.”

What Ali was saying is what was being articulated by the Black Revolutionary Movement as it’s most coherent leader, Malcolm X was articulating it. Malcolm was Ali’s mentor and teacher as he was by his side before and after Ali defeated Liston down in Miami.

Much of the political era of the period consolidated in what Ali manifested to the world. The ideological influence of Malcolm X, whom he would later desert, but who defined a new political era of struggle that would capture the imagination of millions of Africans in the U.S. and worldwide, in addition to the colonized and oppressed everywhere.

Malcolm X’s views on Ali

Here is what Malcolm had to say on the militant image and projections of Ali: “The power structure created the image of the American negro as someone with no confidence, no militancy. They had done this by giving him images of heroes that weren’t militant or confident. Then here comes Cassius, the exact contrast of everything that was representative of the Negro image.

“He said he was the greatest; all odds were against him. He upset the odds makers, he won. He became victorious. He became the champ. They knew that as soon as people started to identify with Cassius and the typo of image he was creating, then they would have problems out of these negroes. They would have negroes walking around the streets talking about I am the greatest!”

The Mau Mau in Kenya, the National Liberation Front and Vietnamese Workers Party in Vietnam and the colonized throughout the world was the era of national liberation revolution. Mao in China and the Great Cultural Revolution; the anti-colonial struggles in Africa, Asia and Latin America were the main trend in a world where white power had gone uncontested for decades.

Malcolm X as the National Spokesman for the Nation of Islam recruited millions to join this great movement that was sweeping the earth. Cassius Marcellus Clay was also swept up in this euphoria of freedom on the horizon. Malcolm was proving concretely on the ground that we could win.

The war of the flea

Malcolm’s organizational children: The Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee, the Black Panther Party, the Junta of Militant Organizations, etc. also came to fruition in the era of guerrilla warfare, the war of the flea.

Ali translated this into a boxing style of a small, weaker force defeating a larger, more powerful force.
Malcolm often gave the example of the underdog, little nation of Vietnam taking on the big bad U.S. tyrants and bullies. He said they had nothing but a blade and a bowl of rice and the will to win; knowledge of when to hit and run, when to mount and offensive and when to go on defense.
In most of Ali’s professional fights his opponents were larger and stronger, but nonetheless he devastated them.

Thus, Ali’s “Sting like a butterfly, and float like a bee.” It was the war of the flea. So it was true, that with Ali’s never before seen skills in a heavyweight boxer and the teachings of Malcolm X, he was indeed the greatest.

Ali had contradictions

But Muhammad Ali, probably the most recognizable human in world history also had contradictions. He could not go all the way with the Black Revolution. While the Nation of Islam made great contributions to our movement, especially it’s “Do for Self” philosophy and toward breaking the myth that the white man was god.

The Spokesmen for the Nation of Islam posed the proposition that the white man was the devil right here on earth. The history of the white man––genocide, lynchings, rapes, murders and slavery provided proof that the white man was indeed the devil and should be struggled against.

The Nation of Islam itself was incapable of going all the way precisely because this ideological perspective represents a class question––it is incapable of carrying out the revolutionary project in the interests of the vast majority of Africans who are of the African working class.

Malcolm could not take the Nation of Islam nor Muhammad Ali on his Revolutionary path. Both refused to follow his lead. Both fell victims of the U.S. governments COINTELPRO anti-black revolutionary operation designed to assassinate African leaders and to destroy our organizations that stood for self-determination.

The inability to go all the way to the revolutionary conclusions is what can be expected of the African petty bourgeoisie and their organizational formations. The only class capable of leading the African revolution to the seizure of State power is the African working class, guided by its revolutionary vanguard Party.

The imperialists’ Ali

Muhammad Ali who actually never fell from favor from the African masses, did however fall from grace with those still devoted to overthrowing U.S. imperialism and fighting for black workers’ power.

We saw Ali in 1978 masterfully destroy George Foreman in Kinshasa, Zaire (Congo) in one of boxing’s most memorable moments. But what is not talked about here is that fight also promoted Mobutu as a credible African leader. When in fact Mobutu was a dictator of the foulest order who was responsible for the murder of tens of thousands on Africans in Congo and for the overthrow and murder of the great African patriot Patrice Lumumba.

In 1984, after the failed bid by Jesse Jackson to win the Democratic Party nomination, Ali stood firm with Ronald Reagan’s reelection bid although Reagan had a long anti-African history. Not the least of it, was the 1983 invasion of Grenada where the legitimate New Jewel Movement government was overthrown, it’s leaders including Maurice Bishop were killed and imprisoned among much Reagan braggadosio.

Ali even participated in the Tournament of Roses parade in Pasadena, California aboard the Constitution and Bill of Rights Float as one who pontify the freedoms of the United States during it’s 200-year celebration.

Then Ali let the powers that be send him into Iraq in 1991 to negotiate prisoner of war release after George Bush had invaded and murdered thousands. In addition, he was sent into Afghanistan as a “Messenger of Peace.”

These were all efforts initiated by our colonial bosses to meet their strategic goals––goals which include the total subjection of the non-white peoples of the world.

The Ali of the people

So indeed, when Cassius Clay stood up in Miami, Florida and said my name is Muhammad Ali, he was in fact the greatest boxer and African patriot.

When he stood up in front of a federal courthouse in Houston, Texas and said “my fight is right here with you.” That was the Ali of the people. That was the greatest.

But we accept those contributions he did make, and the imperialist will take that from us if they can and make Ali all theirs to serve their own needs. They want Ali to serve their interest as they use Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and now Harriet Tubman on the twenty-dollar bill to serve them.

Former U.S. President William Jefferson Clinton is scheduled to deliver the Eulogy at Ali’s Funeral. What a hypocritical love affair the U.S. had with King, Tubman and Ali. If Clinton had the opportunity, he would have locked Ali in prison.

But neither Clinton, the U.S. and none of those, journalists included who are professing to love Ali now, loved him when he was the voice of the oppressed. In fact, they were all hostile to Ali. They hated him. He was the “uppity nigger.”

He only became their darling after the defeat of the Black Revolution and his capture by our enemies.
Right now as we celebrate the life of Ali, we are still confronted with the defeat of the Black Revolution of the Sixties. We are entering a new era of struggle under the leader of the African People’s Socialist Party which is based in the African working class and has the ability to take us all the way to the realization of black workers’ power.

We are set to reproduce and surpass the era of the sixties characterized by Malcolm, black power, black is beautiful and “I am the greatest and the prettiest.”

The African People’s Socialist Party (APSP) represents the National Liberation that Malcolm was talking about––the liberation of the African working class while the NOI’s national liberation meant the liberation of the African petty bourgeoisie.

So let’s take that fighting legacy Ali left us and move on toward the Revolution.
While Clinton and the others can have the Ali they created, the Ali created by the revolution of the oppressed will forever belong to us.

We will win!
Uhuru!
Subscribe to The Burning Spear newspaper!

Tuesday, June 7, 2016

Marvin X on the Last Rites of Muhammad Ali

Muhammad Ali reading Message to the Black Man, Black Studies 101, a must read for people serious about regaining aboriginal consciousness not tainted by white supremacy mythology, including much "tenured Negro" academic white man approved scholarship.

As we say goodbye to our beloved brother Muhammad Ali, I submit the following notes on the most recognized man on the planet earth, the man who made the transition from Toby to Kunta Kinte or in his own right or rite, made the revolutionary transformation from a man of Clay (dirt) to Muhammad Ali, (Arabic: Ali:one who is most high; Muhammad: one who is worthy of much praise).

In my essay The Psycholinguistic Crisis of the North American African, I wrote:

...The proud African was beaten down from Kunta Kinte to Toby, perhaps the first level in his psycho-linguistic crisis: who am I, what is my name? Once in the Americas, he was no longer Yoruba, Hausa, Ibo, Congo, Ashanti but Negro, and according to Grimm's law (the consonants C,K, and G being interchangeable) he was dead, from the Greek Necro, dead, lifeless, without motion and spirit.

Of course, he retained some of his African consciousness in the deep structure of his mind, in the bowels of his soul and he expressed it in his dance, his love life, his work habits, his songs and shouts, but basically he was a traumatized victim of kidnapping, rape and mass murder--genocide, for after all, when it was all said and done, between 50 and 100 million of his brothers and sisters were lost in the Middle Passage, the voyage between Africa and the Americas, thrown to the sharks trailing slave ships, one ship named Jesus, the one whose captain had the miraculous conversion and wrote the song Amazing Grace!

But changing the African into Negro was a primary problem in terms of identity which persists until today, even as we speak a new generation is now in the psycholinguistic crisis trying to decide whether they shall be called by Christian, Muslim or traditional African names, trying to decide whether they are Americans, Afro-Americans, African-Americans, Bilalians, Kemites, Sudanese, or North American Africans. For sure, the white man may not know anything else but he knows he's white!

With the term North American African I've tried to emphasize our cultural roots by making Africa the noun rather than the adjective. Also, I wanted to identify us geo-politically: we are Africans on the continent of North America, as opposed to Africans in Central and South America, the Caribbean, Europe, Asia or the Motherland. As such, we are unique and have created an original African Culture in North America, imitated throughout the world. For our unique improvisational genius, the Black Arts Movement mystic Sun Ra said we were, "The Latter Day Egyptian Revisionists"....
(See The Psycholinguistic Crisis of the North American African by Marvin X, revised 2016)

Muhammad Ali is the grand persona in our psycholinguistic crisis, for he represents our battle for identity formation and verbal expression, i.e., his verbosity and poetics, and yet he transcended psycholinguistics to encompass and express the crisis of the African physique (the struggle of the African body in time and space) as well as the political struggle of the North American African nation to achieve liberation from oppression in America and throughout the world.

In the manner of his model, Jack Johnson, the North American African who beat America's great white hope, Jim Jeffries, to win the heavyweight championship of the world and caused one of the worse race riots in American history, July 4, 1910, Ali also expressed unforgivable Blackness, minus the white women of Jack Johnson's delight.

Alas, America established the Mann Act after Jack Johnson's ritual (and conviction) of transporting white women across state lines for prostitution. Psycholinguistically speaking, call it the Black Man Act, a more precise definition of the term.

Jim Jeffries and Jack Johnson

Ali’s greatness transcended the boxing ring to advance our struggle beyond civil rights (civil rites, Sun Ra) into the arena of human rights that Malcolm X tried to teach Ali and us.

Of course we cannot mention Ali and Malcolm X without including their teacher, the Most Honorable Elijah Muhammad.

Ali and Minister Farrakhan

Imam Warith Deen Muhammad

aka Wallace Muhammad

Ali and Malcolm, both inspired by Elijah’s son, Warith Deen or Wallace, attempted to transcend the Nation of Islam’s unorthodox theology for Sunni orthodoxy but we see today with the turmoil in the Sunni Islamic world, North American Africans are being forced to reconsider the teachings of the Honorable Elijah Muhammad (evidenced by the Hip Hop generation’s embrace of 5% Islam and Noble Drew Ali’s Moorish Science), especially his cry to leave Sunni Islam alone and embrace North American African Islamic mythology in the same manner Africans, especially West Africans, have their unique version of Islam, no matter what Arabs, Pakistani or others say about it. West Africans have their own holy city in Touba, Senegal, a city as sacred to them as Mecca to Sunni Muslims. (While writing in North Carolina, when a taxi driver told me he was Senegalese, I asked him if he knew about Bamba? He turned around to show me his T-shirt with a picture of Bamba. I then asked if Bamba was a holy man? He replied, “Bamba was beyond holy!” Of course, Bamba was a Sufi or Islamic mystic revolutionary who fought against French colonialism in Senegal. The story goes that he was under arrest aboard a ship being transported to an island prison when he wanted to pray, so he jumped off the ship, prayed in the water and returned to the ship for the ride to prison.

The madness of Sunni inspired ISIS and the Sunni denunciation of Shia Islam, Ahmadiyya Islam and other sects to the point of annihilation of their members, is beyond the human imagination in barbarity except we know Christians have been known for similar savagery, e.g., Irish Catholics and Protestants, not to mention genocidal Hindu attacks on Muslims, Sikhs and Buddhist; or Buddhist attacks on non Buddhists. We are of the Sufi belief: the only religion is the religion of the heart!

In the end, we think Muhammad Ali saw himself as a divine being in human form, true to his name,i.e., the most high, worthy of much praise. And we think the world agreed with him, for he revealed himself to be one of the greatest human beings who walked the earth.

As-Salaam Alaikum, Muhammad Ali! Surely we are from Allah and to Him we return!

--Marvin X

6/7/16

Chapter 30 contains notes by Marvin X on Muhammad Ali; also see
his review of the film Muhammad Ali starring Will Smith, Black Bird
Press News and Review.

Marvin X at his Academy of da Corner, 14th and Broadway, Black Arts Movement Business District, downtown Oakland CA

Hillary Clinton wins presidential primary: a proud or sad day for women?

Tonight, Terry Collins interviews Marvin X on a wide range of topics, including the transition of Muhammad Ali, the presidential primary, but the focus is his recent article Will we resist America's Black Removal Plan? The interview airs on The Spirit of Joe Rudolph Show, Tuesday, June 7, 10PM, KPOO Radio, 89.5FM, www.kpoo.com

Hillary Clinton has apparently won the Democratic presidential primary, and it should be a proud day for women except for the sad fact her political persona contains a plethora of flaws equal if not far surpassing those of her likely opponent, Donald Trump. The polls have indicated both of these personalities are not liked by a great percentage of the electorate in both parties. Shall we say we have two white elephants and must choose one of them?

As per Hillary, her baggage from her past political life and personal life as the co-dependent and enabler of a sexual psychopath, dampens the joy of many who would otherwise love to honor her historic achievement of winning the Democratic presidential primary. She has done what Shirley Chisholm and Geraldine Farraro failed to do.

And yet her baggage includes possible indictments for email improprieties while Secretary of State, the Libyan fiasco that released ISIS upon the world; the abysmal failure of the Arab Spring; the fraudulent Clinton Foundation, including its receipt of millions in donations (while she was Secretary of State) from antiquated Arab regimes such as Saudi Arabia who don't allow women to drive (yet she sings Silent Night about rights of women in these autocratic regimes who are also helping destabilize the Middle East by perpetuating sectarianism); her and her husband's (along with the Bush crime family) role in the rape of funds for Haitian earthquake relief; her support for the Honduran coup against a democratic elected president, etc., etc, etc.

Personally, I would like to be proud of her gender victory, especially since I am the father of three high achieving women that I would like to see smash the glass ceiling of patriarchal culture as she has done, but something is rotten in Denmark! But we know what the people said as the Savior Jesus hung on the cross between the two thieves: give us the thieves and away with Him! America, your choice is between two thieves (forget about Bernie, he's Jesus! lol). May God have mercy on your soul!
--Marvin X
6/7/16

Marvin X is the author of 30 books, including poetry, essays, autobiography, memoir. He has taught at Fresno State University, University of California, Berkeley and San Diego, San Francisco State University, Mills College, University of Nevada, Reno, Laney College, Merritt College. He received writing fellowships from Columbia University (via Harlem Cultural Council) and the National Endowment for the Arts; planning grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities, via the Nevada Cultural Council. His archives were acquired by the Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley. Most recently, Marvin helped the City of Oakland create the Black Arts Movement Business District along the 14th Street corridor, downtown.

Monday, June 6, 2016

Books by Black Authors in 2016

Books by Black Authors to Look Forward to in 2016

You’ll want to keep this list handy throughout the year for some compelling reading.

By: Hope Wabuke

February 13, 2016

2016_books — MacMillan; Nebraska Press; HarperCollins

It is no secret that “African-American women are the largest group of readers in the country,” states Dawn Davis, head of Simon & Schuster’s 37 Ink imprint. It is also no secret that the publishing world is very, very white, with books by black authors published at an abysmal low, never rising above 10 percent of the industry’s output. Indeed, a recent survey by Lee & Low publishers found that “just under 80 percent of publishing staff and review journal staff are white,” with “Black/African Americans [at] 3.5 percent.”

But even with such conditions, key figures such as Chris Jackson, Dawn Davis and others have shepherded books by black authors through their fellow gatekeepers and to the public. Other organizations, like Cave Canem, the Kimbilio Center for African American Fiction and the African Poetry Book Fund, support black literature by offering writing retreats, workshops and small-press publishing opportunities. Here are some of the wonderful titles by black authors that readers of all tastes can look forward to in 2016.

Novel Highlights

In fiction, Darryl Pinckney offers Black Deutschland, the story of a gay African-American man who escapes his troubles in Chicago to seek refuge in 1980s Germany. The Castle Cross the Magnet Carter, from playwright and TV writer Kia Corthron, is an ambitious, brilliantly executed tale of race and family across generations. There is also the latest installment of Rachel Howzell Hall’s Los Angeles-based Elouise Norton mystery thriller series, Trail of Echoes, which comes out in May.
Literary legend Terri McMillan publishes a new book in June titled I Almost Forgot About You, the story of Dr. Georgia Young, who one day decides that there’s more to life than what she has been doing—and decides to go find it. There is also The Underground Railroad, a novel from acclaimed author Colson Whitehead, which will be published in September. And in April, Diane McKinney-Whetstone is giving us Lazaretto, her fictional account of race, lies and murder that rock the close-knit community of the island-based Lazaretto quarantine hospital. In May, from Afro-Caribbean British writer Yvette Edwards, comes the riveting novel The Mother, which explores how one mother copes with the murder of her son—and the courtroom drama of the trial that follows.

Six strong fiction debuts from black American women are a high point of 2016. In June, Los Angeles-based writer Natashia Deon gives us Grace, a tale of the love between a mother and daughter set against American slavery and emancipation. Desiree Cooper’s Know the Mother, out in March, explores race and motherhood in a series of interconnected vignettes. Jamaican-American writer Nicole Y. Dennis-Benn crafts a tale of unforgettable Jamaican women fighting for selfhood and independence in Here Comes the Sun, due out in July.

Cole Lavalais pens a tale of love, redemption and self-discovery on the campus of a historically black college in Summer of the Cicadas due in the spring. In We Love You, Charlie Freeman, out next month, Kaitlyn Greenidge has created an absurdist social commentary on race in the form of an African-American family paid to adopt a chimpanzee as a member of their family and be observed by a scientific research institute during the process. And Fabienne Josaphat’s novel, Dancing in the Baron’s Shadow, is the riveting tale of a man trying to save his brother from unjust imprisonment during the brutal regime of Haitian dictator François Duvalier in 1965.

Memoirs, Biography, Essays and More

Nonfiction is equally strong. Memoirs from literary powerhouses Roxane Gay and Kiese Laymon, both meditating on blackness and the body, arrive in June. In Hunger: A Memoir of (My) Body, Gay discusses her relationship with food, body image and self-care, a memoir couched in her usual honesty, vulnerability and depth of observation that have endeared her to so many readers. Laymon’s memoir, titled Stank: A Fat Black Memoir, is replete with his trademark wit and astute analysis. Out now is All Jokes Aside, a memoir by Raymond Lambert and Chris Bournea, which explores the rise of the African-American comedy scene centered at Lambert’s club.
April brings Kill ’Em and Leave: Searching for the Real James Brown and American Soul, a nonfiction work from 2013 National Book Award winner James McBride. Here, McBride turns his considerable talents to biography and explores the life of James Brown—from his birth into a Southern sharecropping family to musical success—against a backdrop of racism in America. A collection of essays on race called—in homage to James Baldwin—The Fire This Time: A New Generation Speaks About Race, edited by Jesmyn Ward, will be released in August. The South Side: A Portrait of Chicago and American Segregation, by Natalie Y. Moore, coming out in March, is a particularly timely and necessary work. New York Times Magazine contributor Rachel Kaadzi Ghansah is the author of the forthcoming The Explainers and the Explorers, an in-depth look at fearlessness and black art.

Voices From the Motherland

African writers are well-represented this year. In March, Nigerian writer Chris Abani gives us his memoir, The Face: Cartography of the Void, as part of a new series from Restless Books. Also in March comes fellow Nigerian writer A. Igoni Barrett’s allegorical, Kafka-inspired novel Blackass, the story of a Nigerian man who wakes up one day to find that he has become a white man. Another Nigerian writer, Jowhor Ile, has released his highly anticipated debut novel, And After Many Days. And acclaimed Nigerian-British novelist Helen Oyeyemi brings us a collection of short stories—What Is Not Yours Is Not Yours—this March.

In The Maestro, the Magistrate & the Magician, Zimbabwean writer Tendai Huchu explores the lives of three Zimbabwean transplants to Great Britain. In Homegoing, out in June, Ghanaian-American writer Yaa Gyasi crafts a sprawling, epic tale of two 18th-century half-sisters: one safe in Ghana, the other sold into slavery in America. Sudanese writer Leila Aboulela’s The Kindness of Enemies is an exploration of contemporary Muslim identity.

In June, Moroccan writer Fouad Laroui brings us The Curious Case of Dassoukine’s Trousers, a linked-short-story collection that won the Prix Goncourt de la Nouvelle, France’s most prestigious literary award. Another acclaimed Moroccan writer, Tahar Ben Jelloun, gives us The Happy Marriage, the story of a marriage told from the differing perspectives of husband and wife. The Queue, by Egyptian writer Basma Abdel Aziz and translated by Elisabeth Jaquette, is a dystopian novel exploring the aftermath of political upheaval.

Words in Verse
On the poetry side, in April comes Jamaal May’s The Big Book of Exit Strategies, his second collection of poetry. Kevin Young has given us his collection Blue Laws: Selected and Uncollected Poems, 1995-2015. Ethiopian writer Mahtem Shiferraw’s Fuchsia, winner of the Sillerman First Book Prize for African Poets, explores themes of identity and translation. This year, literary heavyweight Kwame Dawes will be releasing a new collection of poetry, The City of Bones; a new Spanish translation of his book Vuelo; and, in April, a compilation of his poetic correspondence with the poet John Kinsella, titled Speak From Here to There. Chris Abani and Dawes also edited Tatu, a collection of contemporary poetry by African poets due out in the spring, as part of their yearly New-Generation African Poets Series.

But these books are just the tip of the iceberg. And as the publishing industry becomes more diverse, we will hopefully have even more titles by black authors to choose from in the coming years.

The Black Panther Party and the Black Arts Movement Business District

As the 50th anniversary of the Black Panther Party approaches, the following article by Dr. Ajamu Nangwaya should be considered by those attempting to establish the Black Arts Movement Business District in Oakland. We should study the pitfalls of the BPP in ideology, organizational structure, relationship to social classes, especially the grass roots or the people on the street in particular; programs and program funding, economic independence and the united front. One thing should be clear: conditions in Oakland are critical and thus require radical solutions. Conservative approaches will not move the Movement but only hinder progress that will be slow enough as we see with BAMBD caught in the bureaucratic quagmire of Oakland City Hall politricks.--Marvin X, BAMBD

Why You Shouldn’t Romanticize the Black Panther Party

By Dr. Ajamu Nangwaya

Global Research, June 04, 2016

This year marks the 50^th anniversary of the founding of the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense (BPP). It is arguably the most revolutionary and impactful organization created by the African-American liberation struggle. There is much that may be learned from the legacy of the BPP in advancing today’s struggle for freedom, justice and a world that is free of capitalism, patriarchy, imperialism and racism.

The BPP’s explicit commitment to revolutionary socialism was a notable development, which serves as a contrast to the failure of many current activists and social justice organizations to openly embrace socialism. Well, we are not referencing Bernie Sanders’ “socialism” that is really capitalism with a human face. In Eldridge Cleaver’s On the Ideology of the Black Panther Party (Part I), he states that the BPP was committed to Marxism-Leninism or state socialism, while altering it to the Afrikan-American social reality. It should be expected that the ideas of socialism will be adapted to the concrete conditions in specific societies.

It is not enough for the radical forces to assert that they are anti-capitalist. That is a politically negative and vague position. Radicals must name the political ideology to which they are committed. If progressive individuals and organizations appreciate the BPP’s radicalism, they need to seriously explore socialism as the antidote to capitalism.

However, given humanity’s experience with authoritarian or state socialism in the former Soviet Union, the radicals of today would need to move away from the socialism of the BPP that promotes an all-power state and top-down leadership. The anarchist Mikhail Bakunin is on-point here: “Liberty without socialism is privilege and injustice. Socialism without liberty is slavery and brutality.” Revolutionary socialism must commit itself to ending all hierarchical relations in society. The creation of the classless, stateless and self-organized (communist) society is impossible through the path of state socialism.

The BPP’s survival programmes served as an excellent way for the group to implant itself among the people as well as to organize with them. The BPP provided and/or initiated a comprehensive and impressive range of programmes. Huey P. Newton explains the context for these programmes:

We recognized that in order to bring the people to the level of consciousness where they would seize the time, it would be necessary to serve their interests in survival by developing programs which would help them to meet their daily needs. For a long time we have had such programs not only for survival but for organizational purposes.

There are two things that might become obvious to the reader after going through the book The Black Panther Party: Service to the People Program. Firstly, the programmes were not sustainable. They depended on donations from individuals, businesses and religious organizations or foundation funding to survive and they generated no revenue. If a radical group gets locked into this operational mode, it might degenerate into a social service, reformist political entity. Since revolutionary organizations will not be funded by the state and foundations, they must find other ways to self-finance the struggle for liberation.

Secondly, the BPP’s survival programmes provide a compelling case for self-organizing the people to autonomously operate their projects, programmes or institutions. The people should not just serve as volunteers, advisors or clients. A central role of the organizers is to equip the people with the knowledge, skills and attitude to collectively address their needs. This approach would affirm in practice the slogan “All Power to the People” as well as operationalize participatory democracy within the ranks of the labouring classes.

Furthermore, in the event that the revolutionary organizers and organizations are rendered ineffective by the secret police, regular cops, the court and prison system, as happened to the BPP, the people would be able to continue running their programmes and institutions. The state would have to repress the people, as a whole, in order to stop them from living the resistance through their projects, programmes and institutions.

In this “Age of Vulgar Identity Politics” wherein each oppressed group retreats into the protective cocoon of its particular identity, the BPP’s practice of solidarity could instruct us on the strategic value of principled alliances among different people in society. Uniting the oppressed against the forces of oppression should be seen as a positive and essential action. In the paper Black Panther Party: 1966-1982, Michael Carpini states that “the Black Panther [P]arty connected the self-determinacy of blacks to the self-determinacy of other marginalized groups such as the poor, women, and homosexuals.” The preceding approach of the BPP offers a way forward in uniting the people who experience exploitation.

Some Black nationalists viewed the BPP’s alliance with largely White organizations such as the Patriot Party, White Panther Party and Peace and Freedom Party with suspicion. Kwame Ture (formerly Stokely Carmichael) claimed that the BPP would play the role of cannon fodder for the White left. Ture’s position reflects a lack of confidence in the capacity of Afrikan revolutionaries to enter into alliances with White organizations on an equitable and non-exploitative basis. One would not argue that there will not be difficulties in the coalitions or alliances between revolutionary Afrikan and White organizations. But they must create principles of unity that will guide their actions and processes to deal with the unavoidable problems that will emerge when people work together.

A problematic element of the BPP’s programme was the central role that it gave to the lumpenproletariat as agents of revolutionary transformation. Eldridge Cleaver channelled the BPP’s position on the lumpen when he asserted that “the Lumpenproletariat is the Left Wing” of the working-class in the Afrikan-American nation and the “Mother Country” (the United States). It argued that the working-class had embraced the values and aspirations of capitalism and had carved “out a comfortable niche for itself.” As a result of this development, the unionized working-class is now a part of a “most un-revolutionary, reformist minded movement that is only interested in higher wages and more job security.” The lumpen cannot be the left-wing of the working-class because it has no direct relationship with the world of work.

According to the BPP, the isolation of the lumpen from the means of production and the dominant institutions leaves it with “no choice but to manifest its rebellion in the University of the Streets.” Cleaver and the BPP viewed the urban rebellion as the defining feature of the struggle for emancipation in the United States. This line of thought led Cleaver to declare that “One outstanding characteristic of the liberation struggle of Black people in the United States has been that most of the activity has taken place in the streets.” Since the urban uprisings are episodic and short-lived, the bulk of the organizing work among the Afrikan-American working-class takes place in the spaces in which it lives, works and plays. It is not the members of the lumpenproletariat who carry out the consistent, systematic and ongoing organizing that is the basis of effecting Afrikan liberation. It is the working-class and its radical or revolutionary petite bourgeois allies who shoulder the task of organizing and mobilizing the people.

Cleaver rebuked some Marxist-Leninists when he wrote that “It can be said that the true revolutionaries [the lumpen] in the urban centers of the world have been analyzed out of the revolution.” There is no question about the fact that the ruling-class sees urban insurrections as frightening affairs and that the street becomes the theatre of the oppressed during those infrequent moments of resistance. But Cleaver’s claim that “by and large, the rebellions have been spearheaded by Black Lumpen,” ignored the fact that many of the young people who actively participated in these uprisings were members of the working-class.

According to the March 1968 issued document the Report of the National Advisory Commission on Civil Disordersthat reported on the causes behind the 1967 rebellions:

The typical rioter was a teenager or young adult, a lifelong resident of the city in which he rioted, a high school dropout; he was, nevertheless, somewhat better educated than his non-rioting Negro neighbor, and was usually underemployed or employed in a menial job. He was proud of his race, extremely hostile to both whites and middle-class Negroes and, although informed about politics, highly distrustful of the political system.

The typical participant in the rebellions were members of the Afrikan-American working-class and that may be deduced from the fact that he was “underemployed or employed.” It is reasonable to assume that the lumpen-proletariat do participate in urban uprisings but given its social characteristics, this class might simply use this festival of resistance in the streets for its own immediate material gains.

The composition of Marx’s lumpen-proletariat, as outlined in The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Napoleon, was definitely not a positive or endearing description:

Alongside decayed roués with dubious means of subsistence and of dubious origin, alongside ruined and adventurous offshoots of the bourgeoisie, vagabonds, discharged soldiers, discharged jailbirds, escaped galley slaves, swindlers, mountebanks, lazzaroni,1 pickpockets, tricksters, gamblers, maquereaux [pimps], brothel keepers, porters, literati, organ grinders, ragpickers, knife grinders, tinkers, beggars — in short, the whole indefinite, disintegrated mass, thrown hither and thither, which the French call la bohème.

The Marxist Internet Archive lists the 21^st century members of the lumpenproletariat as “beggars, prostitutes, gangsters, racketeers, swindlers, petty criminals, tramps, chronic unemployed or unemployables… and all sorts of declassed, degraded or degenerated elements.”

In the autobiography A Taste of Power: A Black Woman’s Story, Elaine Brown, former BPP Chairperson, incorrectly includes members of the working-class (“black domestics and porters, nurses’ aides and maintenance men, laundresses and cooks, sharecroppers, unpropertied ghetto dwellers”) in the lumpen category. Brown demonstrates a lack of ideological clarity on the question of the people who constitute the working-class. But she did capture key members of the Afrikan-American lumpen: “gang members and the gangsters, the pimps and the prostitutes, the drug users and dealers, [and] the common thieves and murderers.”

How realistic is the expectation that the criminalized lumpen elements, Huey P. Newton’s “illegitimate capitalists,” will serve as agents of liberation? If members of the lumpen are transformed into agents of the revolution by way of methodical political education and disciplined organizing within the working-class, they have essentially committed “class suicide” and, as such, would no longer be lumpen.

The BPP was ill-advised in believing that the lumpen, especially the criminal elements, could serve as a revolutionary force. The lumpen panders to predatory behavior, self-destructive lifestyle of the street and “militarism.” The lumpen can become a useful part of the revolutionary force, but only after extensive political and ideological education. There is not even a single case, since the emergence of capitalism, of the lumpen serving as the revolutionary force in struggles for liberation. Samuel Farber’s essay The Black Panthers Reconsidered is a good source on the challenges of the lumpen as political actors or activists.

Radical organizations and organizers should be wary of the BPP’s top-down leadership approach. Kwame Ture highlights this problem in his autobiography Ready for Revolution: The Life and Struggles of Stokely Carmichael (Kwame Ture):

From a SNCC perspective, the organization seemed to me entirely too hierarchical. With a quasi-military chain of command even. Not enough serious political education instead of slogans. Also, there apparently was no time, and absolutely no provision, for full internal discussion within the organization. Instead, “mandates,” “orders,” and “directives” were handed down whether or not folks agreed with or even understood them.

In this climate, to raise questions, even legitimate and sincere ones, was too often seen as disloyalty or as challenging authority, an error to be corrected with physical or ideological intimidation, expulsion, or both… C’mon, “beat downs” may be a common gang tactic, but they are no way to build loyalty, unity, or even discipline in a radical black political movement.

The BPP’s revolutionary legacy offers us many useful lessons in our organizing work to create the just and emancipated world. We should fully explore and draw insights from the BPP’s legacy in other areas such as gender relations in movement organizations, practising principled anti-imperialism, role of armed resistance in the global North and the centrality of systematic political education in preparing organizers. Romanticizing the contribution of the Black Panther Party would make adoring fans of us, and not clear-eyed, unsentimental revolutionaries.

Ajamu Nangwaya, Ph.D., is an educator, organizer and writer and a member of the Network for the Elimination of Police Violence.

Wednesday, June 8, 2016