Revolution Against Fear
"The only thing to fear is fear itself."--President Roosevelt
No
human progress is possible while people are paralyzed by fear. Fear is
the great monster of the mind that prevents people from standing against
oppression. Once the great monster fear is cut off, we see people can
stand tall in the face of any challenge, whether from the guns of state
terror, the tanks, police, jails, prisons and ultimately death.
Overcoming the fear of death is the ultimate challenge of man. Once a
man or woman accepts that his/her life and death are all for God,
transcending the self, fear is discarded into the dustbin of history.
We
see this occurring in North Africa and the Middle East at this hour.
The people have cast off the illusion of fear and are standing tall
against oppression from regimes long supported by American Imperialism.
America has been the major arms supplier, the guns, bullets, poison gas,
equipment for torture chambers and dungeons that were established to
allow the most wicked and repressive regimes to flourish for the last
forty years.
Let us be clear that America has a
history of oppressing its own citizens, of filling their bodies and
minds with fear, of reducing them from Kunta Kinte to Toby en mass. We
have yet to learn the true story of resistance to the American slave
system by North American Africans, who mastered fear during three
centuries of chattel enslavement, not recognized as humans or citizens.
And yet from within the slave system, North American African resisted by
any means necessary, ultimately taking up arms in the Civil War, only
to be betrayed by those who won the war and those who were defeated,
especially when the 200,000 African soldiers were disarmed.
It
is this disarming that allowed fear to return in the from of state
terror in the guise of the KKK, the lynchings, virtual slave labor and
disenfranchisement during the short lived Reconstruction.
Imagine,
for a time the people who were banned from learning to read and write,
upon emancipation exercised a thirst for learning so great the children
had to be beaten out of the classroom and made to go home. Today we have
flipped the script, the children must be beaten or taken to juvenile
hall for refusing to attend school. School districts have gone broke
because their daily attendance was so low they could not qualify to fund
their budgets.
How did the fear of knowledge
become pervasive? How did it become a hip fad to be ignut? We need only
examine the lives of men who read books and not only transformed their
lives but the lives of their people, e.g., Fredrick Douglass, Malcolm X,
George Jackson, Eldridge Cleaver. These men cast aside their fears,
stood up and made their people stand. Imagine the eternal words of
Harriet Tubman, "I could have freed more slaves if they had known they
were slaves."
We see here the need for the slave
system, today the neo-slave system, to keep people in ignorance and
fear. The slave system rules through ignorance and fear. The Civil
Rights movement was on the road to success once the people in the South
cast off their fears, especially the fear of death, the fear of jail,
prison and retaliation.
The 2.4 million people in
US jails and prisons are special examples of the fearless. Most people
who commit crimes are somewhat fearless, otherwise they would not take
penitentiary chances, as they say. Those addicted to fear may be those
who decide to hold down a job, to never consider economic independence,
until of late when it is crystal clear the job for life is a myth.
We
see a college education is no guarantee of a job. Our children will
thus need to cast away their fears to configure a fair market system of
economic justice. Free market capitalism is exhausted, surely America
and her gang of global bandits are in their last days before being
rounded up and divested of their ill gotten gains.
By
what right should 400 people possess the wealth equal to 150 million?
There must be a redistribution of the wealth stolen from the deaf, dumb
and blind, yes, those robbed and left half dead on the roadside, those
who are victims of American capital accumulation since the beginning of
the slave system, i.e., the founding of this nation.
And
yet the greatest robbery is not what occurred yesterday, but the
robbery of the present global finance bandits who have ripped off the
people with their pyramid schemes and sub prime loan scams that stole
trillions from people and nations, since the blood suckers of the poor
care nothing about people or nations.
The jobless
and homeless of today will not rise from this condition until they cast
away all fears and seize the means of production and the housing they
need. Every human being needs a job and a dwelling. There is no mystery
about the human right to a job and a place to stay.
Every
human being should have a home with a life estate. This is the true and
final solution to homelessness. The home with a life estate cannot be
sold or transferred, thus a person will become free of the anxiety of
homelessness. And then we consider the reality that all persons need a
way to earn money to survive and thrive.
A
society that cannot provide its people with economic security shall have
no national security, for it is a failed society, a society in chaos,
such as we see in America today. There are almost three million people
in prison, mostly due to economic crimes, crimes of necessity.
And
yet many of these criminals are fearless, some have the very creative
minds we need to address the issues of society. And yet they are locked
down, many for the most trivial offences, 80% were drug addicted at the
time of their arrests and perhaps 50% have severe mental health issues,
so what we have in American prisons and jails are drug addicts and the
mentally ill or the dual diagnosed.
Still, we have
seen that some of our greatest minds came from prison, recall Malcolm,
George Jackson, Eldridge, Tookie. Even today we have millions of
fearless minds locked down, e.g. Ruchell McGee, and so many other men
and women, not to mention our greatest mind on death row, Mumia Abu
Jamal. If a man can be productive as Mumia has been on death row, what
excuse do we have out here on the big yard?
As
Amiri Baraka asked, "Is it difficult for you?" And so I ask, is it
difficult for you out here on the big yard? I especially ask the people
of the Bay Area who have the legacy of the Black Panther Party who
taught one essential lesson which was to discard our fears and stand
tall in the face of oppression, is it difficult for you? I say smash
your fear of the police, politicians, blood sucking merchants who refuse
to hire you yet you do not protest. Challenge the oil and gasoline
bandits who reap quarterly profits in the billions by manipulating the
markets. But no, you won't dare confront Shell, Mobil, Exxon, Chevron,
but you want to kill a brother who jumps ahead of you in the line at the
gas station.
It is time to be informed and fearless.
Use your cell phone to be informed, Google words you don't understand
rather than spend the entire day asking your mate, "Where you at?" Ask
yourself where your mind is at, where is your heart and soul at? Where
is the fearlessness of your ancestors at?
--Marvin X
5/5/11
Marvin X and the Black Arts Movement Poet's Choir & Arkestra will celebrate the 50th anniversary of BAM at Laney College Art Gallery, Feb 7, 2015. Tentatively, Marvin X and BAM will perform at Merritt College for the Black Caucus of California Community Colleges Conference, Feb. 12, 13, 14, 2015.
Marvin X and Danny Glover attended San Francisco State University where Marvin's first play Flowers for the Trashman was produced by the drama department. Danny performed at Marvin's Black Arts West Theatre, San Francisco, 1966, in the Fillmore District. While Danny was part of the student strike at SFSU, 1968, a few months later, 1969, Marvin X was fighting to teach at Fresno State University but was removed on orders from Gov. Ronald Reagan. Gov. Reagan also removed Angela Davis from teaching at UCLA the same year, 1969. 
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