Unity with the Indigenous Peoples in the Americas

Toward the Unity of North American Africans
With the Indigenous Peoples in the Americas

There is clear evidence North American Africans were here before Columbus. We know Africans traveled here during the time (circa 900 AD) of the Ghana, Mali and Shonghay empires. Thus we have an integral relationship with the indigenous people throughout the Americas. Certainly we have a blood relationship with the kidnapped Africans who are scattered throughout the Americas, the millions in Brazil who speak Portuguese, the Spanish speaking millions in Columbia, Nicaragua, Peru, Honduras, Mexico and throughout the Caribbean.

Our oppressed condition is more in harmony with the indigenous and Africans throughout the Americas than with the oppressor Euro-Americans. Yet we are mostly ignorant of our historic relationship with our brothers and sisters. It brought tears to my eyes to discover Afro-Mexicans, Afro-Cubans, Afro Columbians, Afro-Hondurans, Afro-Brazilians, et al. Part of the tears was because I could not communicate with them in Spanish and Portuguese. In spite of language, there was an undeniable spiritual unity and brotherhood. There was instant love between us. The tragedy was than we didn't know each other existed.

Today, the moment has arrived for Pan American unity of us with our indigenous and African American brothers and sisters. At this hour we have much to learn from them. Yes, we have a black president for the first time in 400 years. But in Bolivia we have an indigenous man as president for the first time in 500 years and he, unlike Obama, is a revolutionary! The winds of revolutionary change are blowing throughout the Americas and we need to be in harmony with the winds blowing in Cuba, Nicaragua, El Salvador, Ecuador , Brazil, Venezuela and elsewhere.

They are striving to destroy the raw capitalist economic model imposed on them by Yankee imperialism, that has kept them in poverty, ignorance and disease for centuries. We have been in the identical situation but out leaders would have us continue in this state of economic wretchedness. We must unite and work with our brothers and sisters throughout the Americas to create a common future for ourselves that transcends the European white supremacy culture.
Our ignorance of the need for Pan American unity is quite similar to our attitude toward Pan African unity (but we will deal with Pan African unity is another essay).

We harbor racist attitudes toward our Pan American brothers and sisters just as the white man hates them, though he loves to exploit their labor and natural resources. Yes, he loves everything about them but them, to quote a poem by Paradise. But they have declared death on capitalism. They have declared that economics is not totally about profit but there is a social element, economics is for cultural development, not simply growth.

We must detox from our addiction to raw capitalism. And we need our Pan American brothers and sisters to help us detox and recover. You may need to unite and learn from the people who survive on rice and beans, who live on dirt floors without electricity and running water. You must rid yourselves of your white supremacy mentality of arrogance and superiority. Do not hate the indigenous people for wanting to come across the border to reclaim their land, yes, their land! How can you talk about Mexicans, at least they make their own soap, their own toilet paper, their own beer and tequila , their own clothes. You don't, so yes, we must unite to defeat this horrible monster called capitalism that has enslaved us and seeks to devour us, that has kept us divided and full of hatred, jealousy and envy of each other.
--Marvin X

Parable of Pimpin'

Parable of Pimpin

By Marvin X


I am not a pimp. I am a hustler, sometimes a trick. A hustler waits for no one to bring his money, he gets his own. It is beneath his dignity to wait or depend on a woman or anyone to get his hustle going. All he needs is product, almost anything will do, even a roll of toilet paper he can hustle. But the pimp's thing is women, he considers himself their manager and they consider him the same, usually by mutual agreement, often by torture, kidnapping and exploitation, including mind control, deprivation of sleep, food and isolation.

Having never been a pimp, I cannot speak with total authority, although I have been around pimps off and on my entire life, from growing up on 7th Street in Oakland to hanging with pimps in New York. My brother's claim to fame is pimping. He never desired anything else in life but pimping, as a result his life has been pimping and prison, nothing else. I have been deprived of his brotherly love because of his pimping and prison life.

Many of my friends were pimps, including some of my Muslim brothers who said they made their ho's make salat or prayer before they went out on the stroll. I was around Muslim pimps on the east coast who had their women selling bean pies and whoring to buy Crack.

More recently I had the pleasure of meeting several pimps-in-recovery at my theatre in San Francisco's Tenderloin district when we produced the Black Radical Book Fair in 2004. The pimps included Fillmore Slim, Gansta Brown, Jimmy Starr and Rosebud Bitterdose. They claim to have given up pimpin and have indeed written books and films on the gospel of the game.

In the case of Fillmore Slim, he is still greatly respected as the godfather of pimpin, especially on the West coast. He hooked up with me to see if I could help him get the message to young people that pimpin ain't easy and there's a price to be in the game. If you willing to pay the price, then go for it, but just know you are going to pay. Fillmore paid with several prison terms.

He says these young brothers call themselves pimpin but ain't hardly pimpin, ain't doing nothing but messin up the game. Don't have no style, no class. If you saw the BET awards last night, Prince was the only artist with class, the others looked like bums and derelicts, especially the hip hop brothers.

As Fillmore said about young pimps, they don't know how to dress. And he said they most certainly don't know how to treat a lady. They want to beat women. He said they don't understand if they don't beat her, she might come back. They want to kill another nigguh if she runs off with him. This ain't part of the game. Don't be killing people, he said, like you own the woman. You don't own nobody. When she choose you, she with you, when she choose somebody else, let her go. Fillmore said these young nigguhs act like they in love. And keep a night job, he says, because pimpin ain't easy.

Young brothers so close up on the ho a trick can't get to her. And the nigguh look more like a woman than the woman. You don't know who to turn a date with, the pimp or the ho. He got earrings in both ears, blond hair and pants hangin off his behind, living at his mama's house, pimpin on a bicycle. Nigguh please.

Pimp like Bush. Get you a real ho like Condi Rice that can ho all over the world, that can serve presidents, prime ministers, generals. Dr. Bey used to say, "If you going to do something, do it in a big way." Some would say Dr. Bey did right and wrong in a big way (may he rest in peace). And my daddy said, "If you gonna be something, be the best."

The white man is the world's greatest pimp: he pimpin you and yo woman, but you don't have a clue. On BET last night he pimped some of our greatest artists, had them parading as nothing but naked whores.

Nigguh pimps got babies on the street, eleven, twelve and thirteen. What they know about ho'in? They don't know how to put a rubber on a nigguh, let alone give head. They need to be in school. Get their GED. And the pimp needs to go with them to get his. Imagine the social consequences of over a million children dropping out of school each year, over 50% of them. Society, including the school, the religious community and the politicians are responsible for children choosing the pimp life, especially when our nation needs scientists and engineers if we are to have a future beyond pimpin and whoring.

posted 29 June 2006

Neo Feudalism or Wage Slavery

Neo Feudalism or Wage Slavery

Ideally, capitalism desires cheap labor and resources in order to increase profits or capital to the maximum. The primary motive is profit, regarding labor as expendable or replaceable since there is an infinite supply of slaves or workers. And it assumed there will be a infinite amount of natural resources to exploit, ultimately at the point of the gun, i.e., obtainable by warfare.

We can use the African slave trade as a recent example of how capitalists kidnapped Africans and through behavior modification or brainwashing enforced by terror, the whip and gun, made them labor from can't see to can't see til eternity without paying them one dime. African land was in turn raped of all natural resources available, gold, diamonds, ivory, and other precious minerals and metals.

The industrial revolution made a minor change from chattel slavery to wage slavery that has persisted to today, of course for some workers wage slavery existed simultaneously with chattel slavery. The end of Reconstruction returned freed Africans to virtual chattel slavery when they became sharecroppers for racist white landowners, after the Africans were tricked out of their promised 40 acres and a mule. Landless yet forced to work the land without little compensation for their labor ultimately drove them Up South in the great migration of the latter 19th century.
Once there, the status of Africans was upgraded only slightly to the status of wage slaves, but never on par with the white workers, and this wage disparity has persisted to today. White labor is more important than black labor, and of course male labor more precious than female labor.

The unions gave workers a degree of improvement in their wages although the capitalist bosses fought tooth and nail to keep wages low, ultimately conspiring with union bosses to trick workers of their new found gains in job security, health insurance and retirement benefits.

The present economic melt down is the grand opportunity for capitalists to again approach chattel slavery in their wage war with workers. Outsourcing enabled the capitalists to destroy American workers, black and white, male and female. If American workers are prepared to enjoy the wage slavery of workers in outsourced countries, then there may be a few jobs for them. We recently heard that India is prepared to outsource jobs to America, at Indian wage slave levels, of course. An American MBA would therefore receive the same salary of his Indian counterpart, $14,000.00 per year rather than the American salary of $140,000.00.

American corporations desire the same wages from American workers if they can get it, if not, they simply out source. Capitalism does not discriminate when it comes to exploitation of labor, i.e., it cares no more about the white worker than the black worker, except in the dumb white worker's racist mind the black has always been in competition with him, this was the great fear of emancipation among white workers.

Today outsourcing is the cause of shrinking jobs in America, but again dumb white workers are blaming immigrant labor, blacks or even China. In the case of China, white workers do not understand American capitalists are in partnerships with Chinese corporations to rip off American jobs.

We have thus reached a point in time wherein the stage is being set for a workers revolution, if only the workers will get it clear in their minds what's really going on, how they are being hoodwinked and bamboozled by the greedy capitalists who have been rewarded for robbery by use of the global financial system through the perennial pyramid scheme banking network guided by the banker's bank The Federal Reserve, in cahoots with Wall Street and the military/corporate/university/prison complex.

Also understand the vital role of the petrochemical and pharmaceutical bandits who poison us with devitalized foods leading us from the dinner table to the hospital to the graveyard wherein we are laid to rest in poverty after a life of wage slavery in the hostile environment of job, home and the general society wherein we were overcome by consumerism or the world of make believe.

The corporations and banks are again flowing with cash after getting reimbursed from their losses in the global sub prime loan scheme/scam. The bosses are receiving mega salaries with mega bonuses, meanwhile the American workers suffer salary decreases, pervasive job insecurity, loss of benefits such as health insurance and retirement.

When will they protest, when will they demand economic justice? Never as long as the media magicians perpetuate the world of make believe and lull them to sleep watching video games, sport and play, i.e., pussy and dick stories and music videos on giant televisions. Let us not leave out fairy tale religiosity at the Ten Per Cent Club called church, the ultimate opiate of the people although they are being drugged from cradle to grave.

The era of jobs for life is over. Corporations desire contract workers at every level to escape the cost of permanent wage slaves. The largely unqualified black worker pool is expendable and eligible for incarceration if it attempts to rebel against its social-economic insecurity through criminality and/or revolution.

Once in the criminal justice system, the unemployed and unemployable black workers suddenly become a commodity, a valuable product of the prison/corporate complex. Rather than provide the blacks with skills to obtain jobs with living wages, they are made wards of the state at the cost of fifty to sixty thousand dollars per inmate per year, providing necessary jobs for white workers, even though many blacks are also employed at the department of corrections.

The capitalists could provide jobs with a living wage to the two million plus inmates, more than it costs to send them to Harvard, Yale and Stanford, but they rather employ slave catchers called police to round them up, often after they have dropped out or pushed out of public schools that Dr. Julia Hare calls holding cells for the departments of correction. Why should Johnny and Johnny Mae be inspired by a curriculum based on white supremacy mythology?

With a great percentage of black men on probation, parole or incarcerated, the destabilization of community is complete, thus neighborhoods ripe for gentrification. And even upon release from incarceration, they are only presented with mostly minimum wage jobs. In the South, many blacks must hold down three minimum wage jobs to make it. The fear of economic insecurity makes them submissive to racist bosses who will fire them at the first instance of organizing for improvements in salary and working conditions, and especially for spreading any semblance of radical consciousness on the job, or in the community for that matter. Even Up South in the north, the blacks work in fear, afraid to purchase literature during their lunch break for fear the boss will discover they have black consciousness.

As the economy continues in meltdown, we see few opportunities for the national advancement of North American Africans. With wages shrinking, jobs disappearing, incarceration increasing, the social-psychology of the hood is reaching the breaking point. Black mental health is deteriorating rapidly. People are trying to figure a way out of the morass.

I recently offered a woman my book How to Jump Out of the Box. She saw the title and said that's what she needs, and her friend too who was with her. Then she saw a quote by Buddha and hesitated to get the book but caught herself, "Oh, I guess it don't matter who said what, if I can get out the box." I nodded.

But how shall we get out of the box? Where do we go from here? What shall we tell our youth searching for a job when there are none? What shall we tell those smart enough to attend college, yet their future is bleak as well, unless they configure a solution in face of the continued desire for virtual slavery by the greater society.


Economic independence is the only solution, not sitting around waiting for the rustication of capitalism that shall not occur without radical structural change in a system that perpetuates greed rather than social concern. Trillions are lost in the foreign wars that benefit none but the military related corporations headed by former generals. And the supreme irony is that America can promise terrorists in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen and elsewhere education, jobs and housing if they will only lay down their guns and pledge allegiance to the puppet regimes the US is backing in her so-called war against terrorism, while who can be a greater world terrorist than the USA itself. She is the number one arms merchant of the world, thus she is the greatest purveyor of global violence. According to Nelson Mandela America is the reason there is no peace in the world.

Meanwhile cities are going broke, states as well, not to mention the looming national deficit, including the outstanding loan due China that is growing weary of the American dollar and is trading in her own currency and switching to Euros, for the Chinese are wise enough to know the American king is no more, half naked and soon to be butt naked in the sun.

Imagine Capitalists owing Communists trillions of dollars. How could this be? We've been taught the Communists were imbeciles and Capitalists were the smart guys. But we know the capitalists practice socialism among themselves and push their rotten capitalism on the deaf, dumb and blind masses, the wage slaves who shall never inherit the earth until they bury the capitalists in their own vomit. We doubt they will suddenly decide to share the wealth, so it must be seized from them by mass unity and ultimately this may include violence. Liberty or death! If you seek a better life for yourselves and your children, you must join the revolution. Fanon said revolution is not only the solution to your economic health but your mental health as well. Mao told us the reactionaries shall never put down their butcher knives, they shall never turn into Buddha heads! Sonia Sanchez says resist, resist, resist!
--Marvin X
1/5/11

Toward Gross National Happiness

It's not all about the material, is it, El Muhajir?
--Fahizah Alim






Economic Growth versus Development


In the world of economics, growth is the primary metric. It's all about the numbers, and so we try to reach the sky with growth, quarterly, annually. As long as there is growth, we know we are on solid ground. The assumption is that growth is infinite, for there are infinite possibilities for growth if we search for new lands to exploit the labor, resources and addiction to consumerism or things we have programed people to desire, even beyond their needs.

As we look at the global economic crisis and the slowdown in growth, perhaps it is time to ponder this wanton desire for growth, especially when it propels people to spend beyond their means to satisfy the bloody capitalist swine who perpetuate the world of make believe, including the addiction to growth as the only barometer of successful economic policy.

But we know a child may grow but not develop, thus perhaps we should consider development as essential to economic policy. How many people were employed with jobs at a living wage in the last quarter? How many had health insurance coverage on the job. Did we reach wage parity with Black and white men, white men and white women? How many claimed they were happy on the job in the last quarter or last year? How many feel secure?

What does it really prove to have increased growth and profits? Well, it's all about profit, right?It's all about making a profit with the cheapest labor and resources, even if we need to start wars to obtain such, even if we must remain on a permanent war footing to satisfy the bastards in the military/corporate/university complex who earn mega salaries with bonuses while the workers are rapidly slipping into poverty or require two salaried persons in the household to make it.

And because the workers have become addicted to things or conspicuous consumption, their lives suffer underdevelopment while the bosses drive them to increase the growth metric, no matter the development metric, especially the human development, after all, we are not talking of abstractions.

We are entering an era, especially here in the Americas, where Latin American or Indigenous peoples are discarding the blatant free market capitalism of the Europeans. The peoples of the Americas want an alternative to naked exploitation of labor and natural resources. Some rather keep their natural resources in the ground rather than give away for little or nothing. Bolivia is considering such with its new found lithium deposits that is needed for batteries and electronic devices. Other nations rather keep their oil in the ground, after all, it is exploited yet the people remain in poverty, ignorance and disease.

And so we are at the precipice of a new economic order. Progressive minded people are urgently seeking alternatives to solve the present global crisis brought about from pure greed and arrogance by the white supremacy bandits.

Is more better or less? Having more is no guarantee of happiness. In the US, workers have two and three cars, closets full of shoes and clothes, yet mates are estranged, suffering physical, verbal and emotional abuse, and of course many chose to remain prisoners of love because they enjoy the golden handcuffs of material security, neglecting to consider their spiritual security.

And so we suffer psychosomatic diseases from stress, cancer, stroke and heart attack, only then do people realize things are an illusion of the monkey mind. They are horrified when they see the poor people pushing shopping carts down the street, yet expressing happiness and joy, yes, while drinking their rot gut wine, but the couple is passionate with each other, laughing and joking as if they were in a palace.

Some economists, Robert Reich, for example, say we have reached the limit of growth, that the only thing possible now in order to have peace in the world is for the rich to share the wealth, yes, return some of the ill gotten gain to the wretched of the earth. Bill Gates and Warren Buffet are the example of what must be done. They have given back or plan to give billions back to the people. They are encouraging other rich persons to do the same. Perhaps these men understand it is not about growth but development and the transformation of the human spirit beyond the material. Call it joy and happiness!
--Marvin X
12/4/10

Chasm between black wealth, white wealth biggest ever

By Alexandra Alper

NEW YORK, July 26 | Tue Jul 26, 2011 2:53pm EDT

NEW YORK, July 26 (Reuters) - The wealth gap between whites and minorities in the United States has reached the widest in a quarter century after the economic crisis hit nonwhites the hardest, a study released on Tuesday showed.

The median wealth of white households is 20 times greater than that of black households and 18 times that of Hispanic households, according to an analysis of newly available government data from 2009 by Pew Research Center, an independent think-tank.

That is the largest wealth gap since the data was first collected 25 years ago and is about double the level in the run-up to the 2007-2009 recession.

"Plummeting house values were the principal cause of the recent erosion in household wealth among all groups, with Hispanics hit hardest by the meltdown in the housing market," Senior Researcher Rakesh Kochhar said in the report.

The disparity surged from 2005 to 2009 as the housing market's collapse bled equity from homes.

Minority wealth is more concentrated in homes than among whites, which helps explain the widening: from 2005 to 2009, Hispanic median net worth shrank by two thirds and blacks' by 53 percent against a 16 percent drop for whites, Pew said.

More than half the net worth of Hispanics and blacks is concentrated in homes compared with 44 percent for whites.

Housing prices fell 27.3 percent from the fourth quarter of 2005 to the fourth quarter of 2009, according to the Case-Shiller National home price index.

In 2009, black median household wealth -- the sum of assets minus debt -- stood at $5,677, compared with $6,325 for Hispanics and $113,149 for whites, the Pew report said.

Blacks and Hispanics lost a greater percentage of wealth than whites in the stock market and mutual funds also.

High long-term unemployment and shrinking incomes, themselves a result of the economic slump, also may have contributed to minorities' dramatic dips in wealth.

In June, 16.2 percent of blacks were unemployed, compared with 11.6 percent of Hispanics, and 8.1 percent of whites, according to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Hispanics saw the largest drop in wealth, in part because many live in the regions of the country hardest hit by the housing bust -- Arizona, California, Florida and Nevada.

The Pew analysis is based on data from the U.S. Census Bureau's Survey of Income and Program Participation, a questionnaire distributed to 43,000 households. (Editing by James Dalgleish)

Another View of the Baraka, Kola Boof Affair at Harlem Book Fair

Kola Boof was behaving inappropriately. Boof interrupted a program, which was a tribute to Louis Reyes Rivera. Boof hopped up on the stage and wouldn't allow the tribute to continue. Boof was cussin' and being very belligerent toward the audience because we had grown impatient with her antics. Several folks were heckling Boof.

Boof had finally agreed to leave the space after someone from the Harlem Book Fair convinced her. Apparently, the Harlem Book Fair folks double booked the space.

As she was leaving, Boof lashed out at Amiri Baraka, who was holding his and Amina's grandchild.

--Joyce Jones

North American African Economic Unity

North American African Economic Unity

There is little joy in the hood this holiday season. Not much money appears to be circulating. In Oakland a Kwanza gift show was full of vendors only, disappointed that very few persons showed up to buy gifts. At the Berkeley Flea market vendors complained that business was pitiful. At Oakland's only large store downtown, Sears, a clerk said there were no costumers after working all day.

If America is in a recession, the hood is in a depression. The Obamian Voodoo economics, derived from the Bush I era has failed to trickle down, so the economic situation is dire, resulting in people suffering depression and severe stress in interpersonal relations. Of course the violence continues on the streets, along with terrorist threats heard from those talking on their cell phones to mates and partners. People are naturally disappointed to be without in the land of plenty. For sure, the folks shopping downtown San Francisco may be downsizing to a degree but not to the level of poverty in the hood. The shoppers in San Francisco's Union Square are shopping and ice skating, singing Christmas Carols and sipping lattes and Irish coffee.

How shall the hood come out of this economic morass? What is the plan for the immediate and long range solution to the perennial economic crisis? What are the ghetto economists saying, thinking, planning, if anything, for they appear to be singing Silent Night.

Youth and adults are bereft of a solution, though a few still search for work. A young man was smart enough to get a candy wagon and work the Broadway corridor downtown Oakland. But most youth are restricted to selling their bags of marijuana, maybe some pills and cough medicine, although pimping and whoring is the latest underground endeavor since people don't have money for dope like the old days, plus prison is the likely result, so the boys have resorted to pimping, and the girls take up the slack when the boys go to jail, yes, the girls are pimping too.

But we know this is no solution, especially in the long term. We have long recommended the micro loan bank to help youth and adults become entrepreneurs, especially those with criminal records or with recalcitrant attitudes that make them unfit for a normal job even if one existed.

We need only look at our indigenous brothers and sisters selling fruits and vegetables on the street, or fresh juice. Many brothers sell movies and come up, and clothes are always a good hustle. It simply requires a little thinking, perhaps clear thinking minus the marijuana, and we can come up. One can come up selling all the paraphernalia necessary to get high, the swishers,
cigarette paper, matches, lighters, pipes. If we think, there are infinite possibilities. If we spend time singing the blues, we shall miss the boat heading upriver to the bank.

You can sell the homeless paper and come up. I did as a Crack fiend, getting $20.00 per paper on average, making $300.00 to $400.00 per day. Of course the money went to the dope man for my Crack habit. I don't make that now selling my books. Of course I don't have the motivation I had as a dope fiend. A dope fiend is a highly determined individual who is going to get his dope by any means necessary. The recovering addict appears to be unable to think with that same motivation, although ultimately he must, if he sincerely wants to step up his game.

These dire economic times are forcing us to think out the box, to transcend our dependence on the white man's job. We must now consider cooperative economics, or how can we pool our resources to come up. We did it in the dope game, we can do it with legitimate products, especially if we can overcome mistrust and greed. We do this by working my book How to Recover from the Addiction to White Supremacy. Once we overcome fear and distrust, we can work together. We can buy wholesale, keep the price low and sell fast. Make sure we have multiple sources for the goods we need. And treat your customers with compassion. Don't insult them as I sometimes did on drugs or even sober, sometimes. You can give layaway and credit, just don't kill a brother or sister because they owe you twenty dollars. Why would you go to prison over a twenty dollar debt? It doesn't make sense are you are not thinking. Life is a thinking man's/woman's game!

A rich friend of mine loaned a man ten thousand dollars. The man refused to repay, so my friend's brother wanted to kill the man. My friend told his brother to let it go, that he didn't want to jeopardize his millions over ten thousand funky dollars!

We can get through this moment and any other time that may be a little trying and stressful. Think in unity, transcend individualism. We should buy our food collectively at the wholesale house, not the retail grocery store. Why are you shopping at Safeway and Lucky, just to feel good paying high prices, when in reality you're a trick. Half the goods at Safeway and Lucky you can purchase at the Dollar Store, so what is your problem? You just want to be a blues singer, you love the blues. Better to sing a Spiritual or listen to some Gospel rap that's talking about faith and hope. Somebody better get a healing up in here!
--Marvin X
12/14/10