The Need (Importance) for Student Activism in the 21st Century
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The Need (Importance) for Student Activism in the 21st Century 
“The future success of our race does not solely fall on the shoulders of our parents but on us as young activists and future leaders of tomorrow” – Aisha Samad Student activism is needed now because America is at the crossroads of either becoming a consolidated fascist global empire or a more equalitarian democratic state. But before we venture into the present and future, we need to address the past and look at how we got here in order to see where we need to go. Often the past is the blueprint for the future. We always have to look back. African American college-university students, for the most part, represent a mobile intermediate strata for the stable upper-middle sectors of the African-American working class. College-university students’ traditional role is determined by the relative strength and balance of forces between the bourgeoisie (the capitalist class) and the proletariat (working class). Students are socialized to become servants (managers, ceo’s, and white collar workers) of the bourgeoisie (the capitalist class). But if students develop a revolutionary consciousness, they can transform into a revolutionary intelligentsia cadre and become servants of the working class (“the people”). This is what happened in the 1960s and 1970s. I try to address some of this in my book, We Will Return in the Whirlwind: Black Radical Organization 1960-1975. The two primary factors facing students in the 1960s and 1970s were de jure segregation (Jim Crow–racial apartheid) and the compulsory draft into an imperialist war against the people of Vietnam. The two movements, the Civil Right Movement (black liberation movement) and anti-war movement converged, making a powerful anti-establishment movement, which was crushed by overkill by the racist imperialist, capitalist state. The basic premise of We Will Return in the Whirlwind: Black Radical Organizations 1960-1975 is that the foundation of the civil rights movement begun in Montgomery, Alabama in 1955 emerged into a full blown pre-revolutionary upsurge led by students, youth and workers. The black radical organizations in the study, SNCC-the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee, 1960-1971; RAM, the Revolutionary Action Movement, 1962-1968; the Black Panther Party, 1966-1975; and the League of Revolutionary Black Workers, 1969-1971; all contributed to awakening every ethnic group in the United States to the oppressive and imperialist nature of the capitalist status quo. But this uprising would not have been possible if it was not for the forerunners who came out of the African –American radical left, and whose legacy we have yet to fully record and appreciate. Most notable in the 1960s were E.D. Nixon, Rosa Parks, Jo Ann Robinson, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Ella Baker, Queen Mother Audrey Moore, Robert F. Williams, James and Grace Lee Boggs and Malcolm X all who I briefly describe in Chapter One: Context for Change. Of course, we would not have had these mentors if it were not for Alexander Crummell, W.E.B. DuBois, Marcus Garvey, Hubert Harrison, Cyril Briggs, Richard B. Moore, A. Phillip Randolph, and Paul Robeson, to name a few. While all were not in agreement over strategy and tactics, we can conclude that most drew a race, class and gender analysis. What is a race, class and gender analysis? The RCG (race, class and gender) analysis states that in the last 500 years all of the world society has been dominated by the Western Capitalist power, nation states, capitalist class which Malcolm X called the “international power structure.” Within this international capitalist power structure, race or racism is used to divide the majority, workers or proletariat so that the minority, capitalist can reap surplus value on profit from the labor or labor power of the majority. So a racial hierarchy has been established with the capitalist white male on top and persons of African descent on bottom. The closer an ethnic group comes to having the hue of African descent the lower they are on the totem pole. Women are relegated to a subordinate status within the world capitalist system, with the women of African descent on the very bottom. Now it was with this understanding that many youth in the 1960’s targeted to break down first the primary contradiction of the time, de jure segregation, “Jim Crow, separate and unequal apartheid.” All of the organizations in the study were formed first by African American college/university students who had dropped out of school for a period of time to dedicate themselves to the cause of national liberation. It was the spontaneous “sit-in” movement (after much training and nurturing by adults) on Feb. 1, 1960, in Greensboro, N.C., that started the revolutionary upsurge of 1960s and 1970s. This movement led to SNCC, a permanent mobilizing organizational structure of professional full time non-violent revolutionaries who dropped out of school temporarily; giving a year or two, even three years, (some more) to go into the rural south to mobilize African-American communities to break down racial apartheid (segregation). From these efforts came the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party, whose challenges eventually led to the partial de-racialization of the Democratic Party in the south that stimulated (along with the Freedom Now Party) African-American political representation in the north in the Democratic Party. This process involved the mass requirement and radicalization of hundreds of white youth in Freedom Summer in Mississippi in 1964. The Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), an organization of white student radicals grew from a membership of 500 in 1960 to 100,000 by 1968 as it began to protest the imperialist war against the people of Vietnam. White (Anglo’s) such as Virginia Durr and Anne Braden who had been supportive of the student movement were members; Bob Zellner, Mary King and Casey Hayden who were active in SNCC were also involved. After the shift to Black Power, RAM and SNCC worked together to build Black Panther parties. RAM which grew from the black student movement in the mid-west, worked on local issues such as equal access to jobs, education and housing in the north. RAM also organized African-American high school youth to demand the inclusion of African and African-American history into the Public Educational system in the north. On November 17, 1967 in Philadelphia, led by the Black People’s Unity Movement, the Black Guards and others, 4,000 African-American students marched on the Philadelphia Board of Education to demand the inclusion of African, African-American history and the right to fly the Red, Black and Green flag. They were beaten by the racist Frank Rizzo and racist police. The Philadelphia Board of Education some 40 years later is just implementing plans to include African and African-American history as a requirement in its curriculum. This movement spread and grew to all sectors of the country and became a mass grassroots movement. RAM and the Black Panther Party for Self Defense were active in the mass student movement for black studies from 1968 to 1975. These groups also worked closely with SDS at university campuses. Mark Rudd from SDS at Columbia played a key role in supporting the African-American students’ demands. There were attorneys, William Kunstler and Arthur Kinoy, who served as defense lawyers for framed Panthers in New York. The Black Panther Party helped mobilize the first “Rainbow Coalition” of the Young Lords (Puerto Ricans), Brown Berets (Mexican-American), AIM (American Indian Movement), Native-Americans, Red Guards (Asian Americans) and the Young Patriots (Radical White Youth). In May 1968, 4,000 African American workers went on wild cat (spontaneous) strike at Dodge Main Plant in Hamtramck, Michigan. Within two years, thousands of African-American workers were in upsurge in auto plants all across Detroit. In 1969, this led to the development of the League of Revolutionary Black Workers; an organization of 500 African-American workers who demanded inclusion in the local leadership of the UAW. With the motion generated by black radical organizations, a general motion for a more democratic America was created, which still has not been completed. A second reconstruction period was implemented which incorporated millions of, previously excluded, folk. But then the forces of reaction struck against this people’s movement in various ways; mass imprisonment, assassinations and cooptation Why did the Revolutionary Movement in America come to a standstill in the late 1970’s? The reason why the revolutionary movement in America came to a standstill in the late 70’s and was setback is because many true freedom fighters (the “second wave”), were imprisoned and killed, and over one hundred remain incarcerated after thirty years. Under the intelligence community’s counter-insurgency program called C.O.I.N.T.E.L.P.R.O, over 30 civil rights workers were killed, 30 Black Panthers were murdered and hundreds if not thousands imprisoned. I cover this briefly in We Will Return in the Whirlwind, in Chapter Six, pages 287-294 and in more detail in African-American History Since 1900 (pages 98 to 124). Hundreds of revolutionaries were assassinated, or set up to be eliminated, in secret plots in which the assassinations were made to look like domestic or drug-related conflicts. Many people were bought off. Others were given millions of dollars to become the “new dons” of the Black Mafia (new black comprador street sell-outs.) Thousands were driven into poverty and forced to live off their “wits” on a daily basis. Much of the leadership of several “militant” organizations were co-opted by giving them “coke jones” through orgies (parties thrown for them by the prettiest of call girls who beckoned to their every desire), until the system (intelligence agencies) compromised, controlled, neutralized or destroyed them. At the same time territorial franchises were given to the next generation of street youth. Under the Reagan administration a conscious political decision was made to intensify the Genocide against African-Americans. This was known as the Iran/Contra conspiracy.1 With the invention of mass production of crack cocaine, came the emergence of a mass comprador street drug culture which served to dull or eliminate the national, race, class and gender consciousness of young working class people, particularly African-Americans. This is reinforced by the gangster “rap”, hip-hop media culture and has led to the present self-destructive genocide of drive-by shootings of young black men by black men and incarceration (criminalization) of one million African-American men for years. According to the Sentencing Project, 32.2% of young African-American men between the ages of twenty and twenty-nine are either in prison, jail or on probation or parole. The average inmate is a 34 year-old man without a high school diploma. There are 2.1 million prisoners in the U.S. (2005). Since then, African-American youth in particular and youth in general have been derailed. The labor of African-American males is mainly, but not exclusively, being rendered into a new (21st century) form of slavery. In the prison industrial complex, African-American men work for nearly slave wages. The U.S. capitalist class is extracting more surplus value from the one-million plus (African American) inmates through the privatization of prisons. Their labor is being contracted out, making the prisons the number one growth industry in the U.S. The international drug industry in the 1990s was estimated to be the third largest industry world-wide. This is America’s final solution for African Americans: imprisonment and coerced semi-slave labor equals genocide. Marx did not foresee the continued persistence and increasing existence of structural racism (economically) within the capitalist system. In the southeastern and southwestern sections of the U.S., African Americans are being rendered into a low wage, non-unionized proletariat. Class struggle takes place on the international level with persons of African descent struggling to keep Africa from being rendered into a depopulized mineral and industrial reserve for international finance capital. In order to achieve liberation of Africa for persons of African descent on the international, national, regional and local levels, the ultimate objective must be to create a new humanitarian sharing of wealth of world society by working peoples’ socialism. While global forces of finance capital further lower the living standards of white workers, it still offers them a higher standard of living (white skin privilege or so-called middle class standards) than African American and other workers of color. The industries that do remain within the borders of the U.S. have been relocated to semi-rural areas and around urban villages (white suburbs) near highway intersections that surround central (inner) cities. Thus, white workers in the U.S. are kept central to the point of production and receive higher wages than the majority of the African American sector of the proletariat.2/3 This has been in effect for the last 30 years which has rendered African Americans into the lower tier of the service industry.4 Racism has become a more potent force creating a new neo-structural economic global apartheid; a de facto apartheid with “no signs, but with a concrete ceiling.” Class struggle alone will not eradicate racism. There must be a continued (permanent) struggle against racism and gender oppression simultaneously with class struggle of the working class for the overthrow of the bourgeoisie in each country and globally, as well as the struggle for “true national liberation.” This struggle should be led by African youth (wherever they may find themselves) in relationship to the entire African descent sector of the world proletariat and their allies against the global, international, national, regional, and local structural institutionalization of racism. But at the same time that youth of African descent wage this struggle they must be careful not to fall into the trap of narrow nationalism and avoid the dual dangers. Because of racism on a local, regional, national and international scale persons of African descent should be able to have their own specific cadre organization in each nation they are in, to deal with the unique local, regional and national circumstances they face. They should also be a part of an international Pan-African cadre organization and a multi-national revolutionary internationalist organization. These are some of the peculiarities that race, class and gender struggle present us with. Without the triple forms of organization, persons of African descent will remain on the bottom of the political economic world system even in and after a socialist revolution. Alternative “Holistic” Culture/ Revolution: Those of us who are politically conscious must engage with those who are less conscious and intervene to accelerate positive self emancipating (critical analytical skills) development and arrest, slow down, retard and eliminate negative development in our communities. Grace Lee Boggs says, “We must change ourselves in order to change society.” We must create a new holistic idealized goal “liberation” culture or an African American cultural revolution in the 21st century for our people; i.e. a code of conduct. Among conscious youth we should negate the gangster hip-hop rap culture and replace it with music that emulates respect for black woman and positive male, female relations integrated with themes of unity to achieve liberation. Each cultural movement does indeed have but one period of effloresce; when the economic conditions which gave rise to it change, artistic works giving expression to it, however excellent they may be; ceased to be worshiped as before. 5 Amiclar Cabral in discussing national liberation as an act of culture says: The value of culture as an element of resistance to foreign domination lies in the fact that culture is the vigorous manifestation, on the ideological or idealist level, of the material and historical reality of the society that is dominated or to be dominated. Culture is simultaneously the fruit of a people’s history and a determinant of history, by the positive or negative influence it exerts on the evolution of relations between man and his environment and among men or human groups within a society, as well as between different societies. 6 Cabral goes on the elaborate: The more one becomes aware that the major goal of the liberation movement goes beyond the conquest of political independence to put itself on the superior plane of total liberation of productive forces and the building of the people’s economic, social and cultural progress, the more evident becomes the need to proceed to a selective analysis of the values of the culture within the framework of the struggle. The negative values of the culture are generally an obstacle to the development of the struggle and to the building of that progress. 7 A people’s culture comes from a people’s history. It is a people’s movement to change or improve their economic relations of the material base of production that makes their traditions relevant to their future development or not. Culture is based on traditions that are learned and acquired customs that serve a people’s “spiritual” life or morale. Culture serves as the es spirit de corps that motivates a people to continue to pursue the economic activity of social life. From cultural practice one is socialized in the A, B, Cs of what the people consider is right and wrong, good or bad and the reasons why. In order to move beyond the concept of assimilation into capitalist society which is self -negation (self-destructive genocide), the African-American needs to engage in a revolutionary cultural revolution during a political revolution to change the economic order. Gangster rap is self-destructive “assimilation” genocide, into the … capitalist system. It only concentrates on the negative and has no theoretical premise of elimination of oppression. Dr. Johnette B. Cole in her article, “What Hip-Hop has done to Black Woman” says: There has been a growing war between Black men and women since the ‘60s, and hip-hop is a significant and influential site of contemporary gender battles. Added to this cultural “war between the sexes” is the overriding influence of the huge profit-making machine which is hip-hop. It is critical to note that gangsta rap does not appear out of nowhere. It is profoundly connected to patriarchical values that are pervasive in American society... I strongly believe that hip-hop is more misogynistic and disrespectful of Black girls and women than other popular music genres such as the blues. The casual references to rape and other forms of violence and the soft-porn visuals and messages of many rap music videos are seared into the consciousness of young Black boys and girls at an early age. The lyrics and the images- and attitudes that undergird them- are potentially extremely harmful to Black girls and women in culture that is already negative about our humanity, our sexuality and our overall worth. They are harmful to Black boys and men because they encourage misogynistic attitudes and behaviors, and misogyny- woman hating- is not in the interest of men no less than women. 8 We must establish a cultural resistance to the gangster street comprador “sell out,” counter-revolutionary culture. How to uproot backward (reactionary) ideas ideology in the African-American community and isolate counter revolutionaries both in the African-American community and in American in general is the key question for the 21st century. The African-American liberation movement is the organized political expression of the struggling people’s cultures. The leadership of the movement should have a clear notion of the value of culture in the framework of struggle and a profound knowledge of the culture of their people. Our oppressed community is the bearer and creator of culture. The African-American liberation movement must understand the mass character, the popular character of culture. It is generally within the cultural factor that we find the germ of challenge that leads to the structuring and development of the liberation movement. A people will not free themselves unless they reject the harmful influences subjected upon them by capitalist cultural imperialism/ neo-colonialism oppression. National liberation is an act of culture. Cabral continues in his reflections on cultures: Culture reflects at all times the material and spiritual reality of the society… any culture contains essential and secondary elements, strengths and weaknesses, virtues, defects, positive and negative aspects, factors for progress and stagnation or for regression.9
Basically there are six features to class consciousness:
Black radical organizations achieved various accomplishments. Many advancements were made, varying from voting rights, social service programs such as free breakfast for school children (Head Start), Affirmative Action programs in the skilled trades and in unions, to calls for civilian review board of Police and African-American studies among others. The period 1960-1975 was marked by a rise of national racial consciousness among the African-American minority in the United States. This consciousness and direct action to implement a program that would institutionalize its goals caused a general upsurge of other minorities and a sizeable sector of the white majority of American society to take an anti-establishment position. The study of African-American radical organizations from 1960-1975 therefore had a direct legacy towards regenerating a progressive multi-national (radical) mass motion forward towards creating a new equalitarian democratic socialist America. Since all four organizations generated from the African-American student movement, it is important to have a theoretical understanding of African-American college/university students’ relations to an African-American worker and youth alliance and its role in the worker/youth/student alliance. It is also important to understand this alliance’s role in preparing the majority of the African-American community to become a vanguard force again towards creating the Rainbow party that will lead an electoral and community struggle for democratic socialism. But before we engage in a legacy for the future, lets try to analyze common denominators of the organizations, strengths and weakness much of which has already been discussed. In the 1960s and 1970s there was confusion between reforms, relationship to revolution. Often revolutions and reform were viewed as counter-posed to one another rather than a dialectical relation to each other. The combining of the movement for reforms with the longer-term movement for revolutionary change is one of the central concepts of the theory of social transformation. In more abstract terms, the reform-revolution relationship (i.e. struggles for state reforms in relation to the revolutionary struggle for state power) is at heart ties to our understanding of the nature of the State. The former viewed the state solely as an instrument of class coercion – or racial coercion in our case. A redefinition of the nature of the state requires ongoing elaboration as one which understands the liberal-democratic state as a structure that to some degree can serve the movement relative to the balance of class forces reflected upon and within the state. As such, the state and the struggle for state reforms becomes an object of struggle for power. Blm confusion was in fighting solely against the instrument of the state rather than fighting towards and for state power at the same time. This involves rather than the posing of reform vs. revolution or “protest vs. politics” against one another; the art of combining of the two. Out of 500,000 elected officials in America, there are about 9,000 African-American elected officials; 541 African-American mayors. Being 12 percent (36 million) of the total population according to proportional representation (true democracy), African-Americans should have approximately 55,000 elected officials in the USA in 2007. “A race without a programme is like a ship at sea without a rudder”11
African-Americans need allies. We need to enter into sincere coalitions and alliances. There can be only one sort of alliance with other peoples and that is an alliance to fight our enemies, in which case our allies must have the same purposes as we have. Our allies may be actual or potential, just as our enemies may be actual or potential. The small oppressed nations who are struggling against the capitalist exploiters and oppressors must be considered as actual allies. The class-conscious white workers who have spoken out in favour of African liberation and have a willingness to back with action their expressed sentiments, must also be considered as actual allies and their friendship further cultivated. The non-class conscious white workers who have not yet realized that all workers regardless of race or colour have a common interest, must be considered as only potential allies at present and everything possible done to awaken their class consciousness toward the end of obtaining their co-operation in our struggle.12 So we must ask ourselves, what are the unifying issues that can be the broadest alliance of forces in this period; “uniting the many to divide the few.” They are opposing the imperialist war in Iraq and cryptic fascism. Struggling against an imperialist war against the people of Iraqi that is benefiting the most reactionary right wing (fascist) sectors of the capitalist class and their willing servants (Ms. Condeleeza “Bush” Rice, Uncle Clarence Thomas and crew) and is lowering the living standard of the American people. Money is going into the military-industrial complex while domestic social programs such as healthcare get more expensive. Neighborhoods deteriorate as cities go into the red; Students have a responsibility to say, where are we going? We have a president that was not popularly elected but chosen by the Supreme Court. Students should say, wait a minute is that democracy, or oligarchy? Fascism represents the interests and policy of the most reactionary chauvinistic, racist, sexist, militaristic section of the capitalist class that has legally and illegally seized control of the U.S. capitalist state. Is the choice either a global fascist new world order or a humanitarian socialist world or any civilization at all with global warming? It is important now because unless we turn the negative self destructive tendencies that are destroying the environment around in the next ten years, that environment may destroy humanity. The issues for students today are both similar and different from the past. War, institutional racism (de facto segregation), global warming and the conscious genocide of the African-American people are some of the issues students face today. What can college and university students do now to help prepare for another mass breakthrough in the movement? We should link everyday issues with political participation. Organize locally around issues facing the community. Bob Moses in Radical Equations says, “Math literacy and economic access are how we are going to give hope to the young generation.” So the teaching of Algebra, higher math and science to K-12 students is very important. This should be combined with African and African-American history, because without our history, that of knowing ourselves, we will create a skilled compadore class; once we gain Math and Science literacy and gain economic access, unless that generation has a knowledge of self and of the hundreds of years of struggle. We may need students to start “Freedom Schools.” We need Saturday freedom schools that teach our young people the truth; the total truth which cannot be taught in the existing institutions of the capitalist system. Even with globalization when African-Americans work within any city organized into labor unions, they have improved their living conditions, won shorter hours, medical benefits, better safety conditions, more money and steadier employment. The strength of a people depends upon the degree of well-living by that people. We must by all means strive to substantially improve the standard of living, etc. All worthwhile African-American organizations and all African-American people including students should interest themselves in the organizing of African-American workers into labor unions for the betterment of their economic condition and to act in close cooperation with class conscious white workers for the benefit of both. At the same time as we do this we should also fight against the racism in labor. We must end the stranglehold put on the African-American community by white unions. It shouldn’t be hard to figure out why most of the people we see engaged in construction in our neighborhoods don’t look like us. They are not members of our community. However, because the labor unions dominate Philadelphia contracts, laws and also the politicians who make them, African people can’t find jobs because they are too busy being given out in white neighborhoods. Although African Americans tax dollars are used to finance these union controlled municipal contracts, rarely do African-American people have any say in how they are awarded or who will get them. Enforcement of “minority” participation in municipally-funded projects has been apprehensible & poor. This must cease now! In fact, the unions are the main reason why the voc-tech programs are being kept out of out of our high schools; so our children never learn the same skills that are used to feed white families everyday. The only effective way to secure better conditions and steady employment in the United States of America is to organize African-American labor power. There are large undeveloped sections of the city, that as of yet have not been designated as White Manifest Destiny Zones, and such lands must be protected for the development of the African population in this city. Because we are being priced-out, and outright kicked-out of our neighborhoods, we must forge ahead and develop new communities. To do this, potential African community areas must be taken off the colonization map and set-aside for development by African people through self-reliance and by use of our city tax-dollars that sit inside of municipal banking accounts, managed largely by bankers who are helping to run us out of our neighborhoods. If we address the issues facing the community, we have to look at what’s happening and try to draw solutions to resolve them. The key contradiction we face is that automation and cybernation is creating fewer and fewer jobs, and the cost of an oil-based economy is increasing the cost of living.13 In order to reverse or arrest the economic deteriorating aspects and develop a holistic ideology that is based on a policy of self reliance; raising and selling food (urban gardens) in cooperatives and developing cooperative businesses and investing in solar energy. Money circulates in the Asian community for 21 days; The Jewish community for 17 days, in the white community for 14 days, and in the African-American community for 6 hours and 37 minutes. We need to turn our committee into African towns. The education for self-reliance is not based on the theory that the African-American community can be totally economically semi-independent as long as capitalism exists. But with a self-reliant culture that harnesses the economic resources of the community, centered on central institutions the community can flourish to the extent that the circulation of the dollars turns over two to three times, supporting African-American businesses before leaving the community. Once the recirculation of the dollar within the community is established according to the African-American working class then through the economic (business) committee or commission of an African-American Workers Congress; a collective investment plan can be instituted for community development manufacturing ventures which would hire a number of people from the community. Through the food cooperative and People’s markets, and through educational centers of “What to eat”; in terms of health; the community would be developing businesses and agricultural produce and consumption developing the beginnings of a self-reliant community. This “internal” self-sufficient political economy can be centered on the African-American Christian churches, Islamic mosques or the local African-American cultural recreational, educational center. 14
We should demand a quality Healthcare for our community and with particular focus on the Quality of life for our elders. Poor healthcare is ending lives in our community everyday. Despite the availability of community health centers that are overly burdened, rarely can many African-Americans find decent healthcare even if they are employed. Added to this problem is the ridiculously expensive costs of prescription medications for our elders who have been paying taxes in this city since they were children have very little to show for it. Coupled with the racist policy of taxing homes at nearly 100% of their market value, elder homeowners are forced to choose between staying alive or keeping a roof over their head. Pregnant teenagers can’t find medical care for their developing fetuses because they can’t afford it. We demand free and low cost health insurance for all members of our community and especially for our elders. Instead of enjoying their golden years our elders must contend with exploitative fees for life-sustaining drugs. Thus maltreatment and neglect for quality of life in the African-American community should end now. We should demand an end to the colonization and forced migration from African-American communities. A very strong race-removal (gentrification) program has been initiated to reduce the size of the African community well below that of the European population. Such tactics as imminent domain, increases in property values, high-price home sales, and manifest destiny for any white person who willing help Europeans reclaim the city was been put into play. We demand that our elders stop being taxed out of homes they already paid for and the Racist Manifest Destiny program that includes tax abatements and exemptions for out-of-town white investors while African-American tax-paying citizens drown in property debt be terminated immediately. This past year’s record-breaking tax foreclosure sale was a blatant example of the current racial blight scheme that has secretly been waged for far too long, and aimed at reducing the size of African-American citizenry in Philadelphia.15 We should build parallel structures and institutions that develop African-American people’s power. “Basically, there are two kinds of power that count in America: economic power and political power, with social power being derived from these two. In order for the Afro-Americans to control their destiny, t hey must be able to control and affect the decisions which control their destiny” economic, political and social. This can only be done through organization. ”16
In order to decrease the “lumpenization” process (criminalization) and marginalization of African-American youth particularly African-American males in the labor process, which creates a counter-revolutionary “individualistic” drug selling lumpen proletariat in the African-American community; the revolutionary working class element of the BLM needs to establish an African-American youth program. Much of this African-American youth program will be preparing youth in the competitive skills to compete adequately in an ever increasing racist labor market. This means establishing literacy (reading classes) computer literacy, math, English, other languages such as Spanish, Arabic, Chinese, French and also the skilled trades. This emphasis has come from within the African-American community itself and not from outside; even though there may be assistance from allies. The struggle for parity in the labor market is a combination of the race and class dialectic that African-Americans have to face in a system that is constantly under developing them daily. This program may appear to be bourgeois but unless African-Americans have comprehensive political, economic, social and cultural rites of passage program that prepares youth for the future; we will not have any young African-American workers who are healthy, race, class and gender conscious qualified proletarians. In the descending line of development of capitalism more and more African-American college/university students will become transformed in the process and if given the proper attention by the African-American Workers Association, can develop socialist consciousness. In the context revolutionary socialist teachers are in a position in their job situation, itself, to change bourgeois socialization and turn it into its opposite. What is upon this generation of African-American students leadership is that they must reach out to a deprived community of younger students who lack motivation, study skills and who have a high degree of self hate which comes from the result of a racist media, mis-education and Anglo-American educational genocide in the schools, to stimulate them to become a disciplined generation bent on making scientific “academic excellence and social responsibility” their motto. This is an important challenge for your generation. But how can we do this? One tool the oppressed have is “organization” and the other tool is “self education”. Thru a student organization such as yours here today will come the next generation of dedicated leadership for the African-American people. So a lot of students’ emphasis should be on “leadership building”; that is building leadership three layers deep. This can be done by establishing sub-committees and ad hoc committees of the student organization making it a recommended requirement for active participation in the student organization for the general membership. Participation on these sub-committees or ad hoc issue oriented committees will help train an active collective leadership. This can be extended to outreach committees that form African-American student clubs in the high and junior high schools motivating future college students. Of the studies concerning black on black crime recedes when there is a mass movement for social change among African-Americans and when national African-American consciousness movement is high and when consciousness is low black on black crime rises. There are two things African-Americans must prepare their youth for. One is to excel; to be the best at what they do (positively in society) and to master the scientific and technological revolution; to raise a generation of scientists by 2025. When an African-American youth knows who she or he is (their historical lineage, what must be done, which changes in each period of history), and where he or she is headed then they will be prepared for the future. The hard-cold facts are that most of us don’t know our history, have less of an understanding of economics and politics than other populations in the U.S. ; when our circumstances of facing national race, class and gender oppression dictates that we should be the most informed people on the planet earth. In order to fight against this genocidal disinformation that the racist capitalist system and its media sector purports on our people; African-American youth need to be taught African and African-American history from a world wide or internationalist perspective. Whites have no need to invest in African-Americans. We should invest in ourselves. Young people usually don’t see the correlation between the past and the future. Some of us have blind ignorance in terms of thinking we have arrived. It is our responsibility to educate our youth. African-Americans must educate African-Americans. If not us, then who? We have to give back. It’s our duty. It is the duty of youth to learn from the past; learn from the successes and failures of the African-American struggle. It is important now because the world is taking a different turn and youth need to understand the politics of the 21st century. We should ask ourselves why are African-Americans killing one another. African-Americans don’t produce the self-genocide resources; drugs and guns. Who brings them into African-American communities and for what purpose African-American students and youth should be involved in organizations promoting the advancement of the African-American race. We need to establish a relationship with the old head revolutionaries (elders), college youth and street youth; the community. We need to break down the barrier of “old school” and “new school”; with youth having conversation with elders. Now it is time to pass the baton to this generation. Its African-American college youth is responsibility to educate the K-12 (community) youth. With the present need for a:
We say that student activism will return in the whirlwind in the 21st century. Text of Speech delivered, Friday, April 20, 2007 at Cleveland State University, Cleveland, Ohio; The 34th Annual Black Aspiration, Celebration, Ujima; Collective Work of Responsibility. 1 The C.I.A’s Darkest Secret: How the C.I.A Dumped Crack in African, Latino and Poor Communities : [Atlanta, Georgia: Volumes 1 and 2, 1986] 2 Adam, Turl, “Is the U.S. becoming post-industrial?” International Socialist Review, Issue 52 March-April 2007 pp. 46-57 3 Christopher B. Leunkerger and Charles Lockwood, “How Business is Reshaping America”, The Atlantic Monthly, October 1986, pp. 43-53 4 Michael B. Katz, Mark J. Stern and Jamie J. Fader, “The New African-American Inequality”, The Journal of American History, June 2005, pp. 75-108 5 Troung-Chinh, Selected Writings [Hanoi: Foreign Languages Publishing House, 1977] p. 219 6 Amiclar Cabral, Unity and Struggle [ New York: Monthly Review Press, 1977] p. 141 7 Ibid pp.150-151 8 Dr. Johnnette B. Cole, “What Hip-Hop Has Done to Black Women”, Ebony, March, 2007 pp. 95-96 9 Op. Cit. p. 149 10 Robert Lorring “ What is Class Consciousness?” Political Affairs, Volume 86, No 3, p 24-27 11 “Program of the African Blood Brotherhood” in Phillip S. Foner American Communism and Black Americans [Philadelphia: Temple University Press] A Documentary History, 1919-1929 p.18 12 Ibid p. 23 13 James Boggs, The American Revolution: Pages From a Negro Worker’s Notebook: 40th Anniversary Edition [ Detroit, Michigan She Adfoo T Press, 1963] 14 Dr. Claud Anderson, PowerNomics: The National Plan to Empower Black America [ Bethesda, Maryland : Powernomics Corporation of Ameica, Inc. , 2001] 15 The International Movement for the Independence and Protection of African People, PO Box 6872, Philadelphia, PA 19132 (pp 1-3) 16 George Breitman (ed.), Malcolm X By Any Means Necessary [New York: Pathfinder Press, 1970] pp.45-46 Directory: Documents -> Finder -> Black%20Liberation%20Disk -> Black%20Power! Documents -> The great global switch-off Documents -> Nonprofit grant application Documents -> The Truth about the Rwandan Genocide Documents -> Annual InStructional unit plan Documents -> Chaos equipment included Black%20Power! -> When and how I wrote toward black liberation part I and malcolm X and the black liberation movement Black%20Power! -> Notes on African-American History Since 1900 Black%20Power! -> Notes on African-American History Since 1900 Download 73.47 Kb. Share with your friends:
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