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archives of may, 2004
the archives contain old posts from the home page.
2 may 2004
the poverty of philosophy
Most of my Latino and black
people who are struggling to get food, clothes and shelter in
the hood are so concerned with that, that philosophising about
freedom and socialist democracy is usually unfortunately beyond
their rationale. They don't realise that America can't exist
without separating them from their identity, because if we had
some sense of who we really are, there's no way in hell we'd
allow this country to push it's genocidal consensus on our homelands.
This ignorance exists, but it can be destroyed.
Niggaz talk about change and
working within the system to achieve that. The problem with
always being a conformist is that when you try to change the
system from within, it's not you who changes the system; it's
the system that will eventually change you. There is usually
nothing wrong with compromise in a situation, but compromising
yourself in a situation is another story completely, and I have
seen this happen long enough in the few years that I've been
alive to know that it's a serious problem. Latino America is
a huge colony of countries whose presidents are cowards in the
face of economic imperialism. You see, third world countries
are rich places, abundant in resources, and many of these countries
have the capacity to feed their starving people and the children
we always see digging for food in trash on commercials. But
plutocracies, in other words a government run by the rich such
as this one and traditionally oppressive European states, force
the third world into buying overpriced, unnecessary goods while
exporting huge portions of their natural resources.
I'm quite sure that people
will look upon my attitude and sentiments and look for hypocrisy
and hatred in my words. My revolution is born out of love for
my people, not hatred for others.
You see, most of Latinos are
here because of the great inflation that was caused by American
companies in Latin America. Aside from that, many are seeking
a life away from the puppet democracies that were funded by
the United States; places like El Salvador, Guatemala, Peru,
Columbia, Nicaragua, Ecuador and Republica Dominicana, and not
just Spanish-speaking countries either, but Haiti and Jamaica
as well.
As different as we have been
taught to look at each other by colonial society, we are in
the same struggle and until we realise that, we'll be fighting
for scraps from the table of a system that has kept us subservient
instead of being self-determined. And that's why we have no
control over when the embargo will stop in Cuba, or when the
bombs will stop dropping in Vieques.
But you see, here in America
the attitude that is fed to us is that outside of America there
live lesser people. "Fuck them, let them fend for themselves."
No, _fuck you_, they _are_ you. No matter how much you want
to dye your hair blonde and put fake eyes in, or follow an anorexic
standard of beauty, or no matter how many diamonds you buy from
people who exploit your own brutally to get them, no matter
what kind of car you drive or what kind of fancy clothes you
put on, _you will never be them_. They're always gonna look
at you as nothing but a little monkey. I'd rather be proud of
what I am, rather than desperately try to be something I'm really
not, just to fit in. And whether we want to accept it or not,
that's what this culture or lack of culture is feeding us.
I want a better life for my
family and for my children, but it doesn't have to be at the
expense of millions of lives in my homeland. We're given the
idea that if we didn't have these people to exploit then America
wouldn't be rich enough to let us have these little petty material
things in our lives and basic standards of living. No, that's
wrong. It's the business giants and the government officials
who make all the real money. We have whatever they kick down
to us. My enemy is not the average white man, it's not the kid
down the block or the kids I see on the street; my enemy is
the white man I don't see: the people in the white house, the
corporate monopoly owners, fake liberal politicians--those are
my enemies. The generals of the armies that are mostly conservatives--those
are the real mother-fuckers that I need to bring it to, not
the poor, broke country-ass soldier that's too stupid to know
shit about the way things are set up.
In fact, I have more in common
with most working and middle-class white people than I do with
most rich black and Latino people. As much as racism bleeds
America, we need to understand that classism is the real issue.
Many of us are in the same boat and it's sinking, while these
bougie [?] mother-fuckers ride on a luxury liner, and as long
as we keep fighting over kicking people out of the little boat
we're all in, we're gonna miss an opportunity to gain a better
standard of living as a whole.
In other words, I don't want
to escape the plantation--I want to come back, free all my people,
hang the mother-fucker that kept me there and burn the house
to the god damn ground. I want to take over the encomienda and
give it back to the people who work the land.
You cannot change the past
but you can make the future, and anyone who tells you different
is a fucking lethargic devil. I don't look at a few token Latinos
and black people in the public eye as some type of achievement
for my people as a whole. Most of those successful individuals
are sell-outs and house Negroes.
But, I don't consider brothers
a sell-out if they move out of the ghetto. Poverty has nothing
to do with our people. It's not in our culture to be poor. That's
only been the last 500 years of our history; look at the last
2000 years of our existence and what we brought to the world
in terms of science, mathematics, agriculture and forms of government.
You know the idea of a confederation of provinces where one
federal government controls the states? The Europeans who came
to this country stole that idea from the Iroquois lead. The
idea of impeaching a ruler comes from an Aztec tradition. That's
why Montezuma was stoned to death by his own people 'cause he
represented the agenda of white Spaniards once he was captured,
not the Aztec people who would become Mexicans.
So in conclusion, I'm not
gonna vote for anybody just 'cause they black or Latino--they
have to truly represent the community and represent what's good
for all of us proletariat.
[Concluding line in Spanish.]
these are the lyrics of the song "the poverty
of philosophy" by the conscious rapper immortal technique.
the song appears on his first album, _revolutionary vol.1_, and
is titled after karl marx's response to pierre-joseph proudhon's
_the philosophy of poverty_.
i highly recommend you get your hands on this
track (or the entire album actually). immortal gives us an accurate
analysis of the latin-american and west indian situation. when
i first heard this track, i had to restraint myself from jumping
up. i couldn't sit still; he's really on point. i was really struck
by a few lines that encompassed a lot of what i was trying to
say back at _guyanese in america are_ (see 'about'):
But you see, here in
America the attitude that is fed to us is that outside of America
there live lesser people. "Fuck them, let them fend for
themselves." No, _fuck you_, they _are_ you. No matter
how much you want to dye your hair blonde and put fake eyes
in, or follow an anorexic standard of beauty, or no matter how
many diamonds you buy from people who exploit your own brutally
to get them, no matter what kind of car you drive or what kind
of fancy clothes you put on, _you will never be them_. They're
always gonna look at you as nothing but a little monkey. I'd
rather be proud of what I am, rather than desperately try to
be something I'm really not, just to fit in. And whether we
want to accept it or not, that's what this culture or lack of
culture is feeding us.
the opening line is very pertinent to my return
to guyana in june, that "people who are struggling to get
food, clothes and shelter in the hood are so concerned with that,
that philosophising about freedom and socialist democracy is usually
unfortunately beyond their rationale." i completely understand
the mental, intellectual, and economic barriers that will separate
me from the people i'll be trying to educate, organise, mobilise.
even right here in america, where one has access to vital revolutionary
information, where one has more room for free-thinking (if one
so desires), where one _can_ afford to work towards freedom, i
receive wide-eyed stares and loud gasps from people when i suggest
the most elementary revolutionary actions things like eating fruits
instead of mcdonalds, walking instead of driving, using a library
card instead of a credit card, doing something more constructive
than staring at the tel-lie-vision, or regulating spending.
"but we're in america now!"
oh yes, almighty america. they think they're
better off, when they're really slaves for the rich--only getting
a piece of the pie if they sell-out and become the white man's
yes-man.
sometimes i think that guyanese in america cannot
be saved. but really, everyone can be saved. it's just that they're
not _worth_ saving. i'll fix the problem at the root, in guyana.
6
may 2004
guest article #2
here's a guest article on slavery reparations by Nick C., written
for a scholarship and admission to the university of georgia.
see guest article #1 in the guest
articles section.
In the essay, I wanted to focus on why reparations
were necessary and why I feel the fight is as much a moral battle
as it is a financial one. The essay does not offer clear solutions
but it helped me get out some of the emotions I was dealing
with and hopefully will open the eyes of others. Today's white
supremacist, capitalistic American society is very likely to
frown upon issues such as these, but their opinions really can
do nothing to hide the horrendous crimes commited [sic] by their
european ancestors upon the african people.
-----
The issue that is the most profoundly meaningful
to me and that I truly feel is worth fighting for is the issue
of slavery reparations. I feel strongly that every person who
is descended from the millions of Africans, who were forcibly
brought to North America, Latin America and the Caribbean Islands
by the present day Western European nations of Portugal, Spain,
France, Germany, England and Holland (the Netherlands), should
be granted some form of reparation. These reparations should
be granted to people of African descent for the suffering of
their ancestors at the hands of European oppressors. Reparations
should also be granted to ease the present hardships that people
of African descent suffer that are directly attributed to the
horrendous crime of slavery and the racial discrimination that
made slavery in the Western Hemisphere very unique.
One must not make the mistake of assuming only
African Americans need reparations, for former French colonies
like Haiti; the poorest nation in the Western Hemisphere, and
the former Portuguese colony of Brazil, which has an even higher
black population than America, desperately need reparations.
Haiti and Brazil, along with many other countries in the Western
Hemisphere share the common thread of slavery, and the blacks
who now inhabit these countries are still living with the after-effects
of slavery. Reparations must be granted to all people of African
descent living it the Western Hemisphere because the blacks
in that region are the direct products of human exploitation
and degradation as a means to acquire material wealth for Western
European nations.
No Afro-American, Afro- Latino/South American
or Afro-Caribbean person can deny the absolute truth that his
or her ancestors were taken against their will and forced to
perform laborious and servile tasks in the Americas. It is by
the tragic situation that befell their slave forbearers that
these “Afro-Americans” who inhabit the Western Hemisphere;
a residence in which they had no say in choosing, should receive
reparations for the tremendous crimes committed against their
people. Reparations is not simply a lawsuit nor a matter of
“getting even”, but it is a moral fight to hold
all countries involved in the transporting and forced labor
of Africans accountable for actions that they try to ignore
as the years progress. Had not racially discriminatory practices,
such as the Jim Crow Laws in the U.S., been enacted following
emancipation, this fight would surely have been started much
earlier and with more effort and passion to include the entire
African Diaspora.
It has been 500 years since the first African
slaves were forcibly brought to the Americas and still, not
one European or Western nation has made any kind of formal apology
for the heinous crime. In the latter part of the 20th century,
the United States paid an estimated $20,000 to individual Japanese
Americans who had suffered during the World War II internment.
In addition, the U.S. aided the Jewish American population greatly
in the procuring of financial recompense for losses attributed
to the Holocaust. Surprisingly enough, the Dutch Crown has given
money each year to the Bush Negroes of Suriname, who are the
descendants of runaway slaves brought to the former Dutch Colony,
for many years now. On the other hand, Haiti was forced to pay
millions of dollars back to France for property lost during
Haiti’s independence struggle, which left the Caribbean
nation impoverished and the European nation richer at the cost
of human lives.
So, why is it that European and Western countries
find it so difficult to even consider the demands of their black
populations? Deeply rooted anti-black sentiments are a start.
Blacks across the Diaspora have every right
to demand reparations, and I myself would like to actively participate
in this fight. I feel that not only should the European nations
and their former colonial constituents, who were involved in
the Atlantic Slave Trade, be made to recognize their past acts
of inhumanity but, they should also be made to pay for their
actions through formal apologies of the deepest sincerity and
through the initiation of an international effort to correct
the negative, present-day effects that stem from slavery and
the Atlantic Slave Trade. Simply allotting monetary units to
individuals as a means of quickly eliminating the problem is
not an effective means of solving the issue at hand. One cannot
simply use the dollar, real, peso or gourde to measure the amount
human suffering endured by the African people and their descendants
for 400 years and then expect an overnight change to take place.
The pure human desire to help those in need must be put in place
first, and then resources must be directed into the implementation
of pro-reparations programs.
Though individual payment seems like the answer,
it is not the complete one. There are many gaps that exist in
black education, health, housing, and job opportunities in comparison
to white/ Euro-Americans across the Western Hemisphere. Reparations
need to be directed to these main problems that are affecting
blacks today. Many blacks are living in deplorable conditions
across the Americas and reside in areas that are in stark contrast
to the post card images of places such as Rio de Janeiro, Brazil,
or Kingston, Jamaica. So many issues are affecting us today
and it is time to draw attention to them.
I stand firmly in favor of reparations for
those who are descended from the African slaves brought to nations
across the Americas. However, in my stance, I cannot negate
the fact that the indigenous peoples of the Americas, have suffered
equally devastating injustices at the hands of European nations.
At the same time, I cannot forget that I too, share in the painful
history of the Atlantic Slave Trade with hundreds of millions
of others across the Americas and the Caribbean. I see the far-reaching
effects slavery has on the people of today, and with such effects
present even 100 to 200 years after emancipation, and I will
continue to support slave reparations for the people of the
Americas descended from African slaves.
11 may 2004
ready fuh revolution yet?
click to enlarge
related links:
16 may 2004
i have a dream...
related links:
24 may 2004 --
inspiration
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