On May 1st, Occupy Wall Street has called for a General Strike. We are calling on everyone who supports the cause of economic justice and true democracy to take part: No Work, No School, No Housework, No Shopping, No Banking - and most importantly, TAKE THE STREETS!

An Accumulation of Contradictions Represent Our Resistance By Dr. Lenore J. Daniels, PhD BlackCommentator.com Editorial Board

I believe that if we understood ourselves better, we would damage ourselves less. But the barrier between oneself and one’s knowledge of oneself is high indeed. There are so many things one would rather not know! We become social creatures because, we cannot live any other way. But in order to become social, there are great many other things which we must not become, and we are frightened, all of us, of those forces within us which perpetually menace our precarious security. Yet, the forces are there, we cannot will them away. All we can do is learn to live with them. And we cannot learn this unless we are willing to tell the truth about ourselves, and the truth about us is always at variance with what we wish to be. -James Baldwin. “The Creative Process” We have enjoyed prosperity. You there in Africa, India…what…how do you manage to deal with all of the poverty? asks the BBC radio host. (What’s the matter with you people?). The respondent, the guest on the other end of the line in Nigeria or in Mumbai rarely if ever tells the truth. What if, one day, Western philosophers suddenly looked among themselves, conferred among themselves, repeating the same questions posed by the “great” European thinkers, while congratulating one another on the latest upgrade of the question to include technology or even women, women “universally” represented by European and North American women - what if these current thinkers stopped thinking and just looked? What if the question were limited to those Speakers who have continued to ask the question but who have posed as the universal voice of the masses of humanity? What is the question, who are we?, already excluding the enslaved, exterminated, marginalized, is directed specifically at the Europeans and their descendents who, having accrued a mass of “knowledge” about “humankind,” have yet to reached any nearer to understanding themselves? Who are we to have perceived ourselves as so righteous, moral, privileged - gifted with the ability to reason or blessed with divine wisdom? Who are we to deny the questions of the majority of humanity, creating the world in words as if it had never existed before, and by so doing, enabling generation after generation of our young to pontificate on every categorized subject except the subject we know least about or refuse to examine? The Poets, the ones that matter, describe how “everyone” has this certain “pain” that can now be cured - therapeutically or with a little pill. But that “specific” pain therapy can cure - is it not unique, not to “everyone,” but to those who, for centuries, following their “great” Greek and Roman Masters, have asked the question while enslaving, exterminating, and marginally almost “everyone” else - and yet never receiving a suitable answer from the accumulation of “knowledge.” Oh, there have been “answers” suitable for the market, but to truly shatter the market, to bring the global market to a complete halt, the answers to that “ancient” question posed by the Speaker could never appeal to the market. But the “pain,” as the wise ones know, is marketable, too. What is the alternative if the great mass of mimes among the majority, already incapable of asking their own questions, continue to promote and distribute the answers and mimic in their speech and actions those self-appointed Speakers with the task of asking the question? Is it possible to “retract” the “multiple” voices of the one similar to the respondent who cannot speak truth to the Speaker, who, in turn, cannot ask himself to respond to his question? Obama vows openly to stand by the U.S.’s friend Israel. Americans always stand with the underdog. Over three billion a year to the underdog! Over $509,722,678,219 to save the world from terrorists breeding in Afghanistan, and hardly anything saves American children from the deplorable education they receive in the public school system - except, of course, privatized education! The Palestinians are the great threat to Israel’s peace; however, Israel could not be more peaceful in their deployment of F-16s and tanks against the Palestinians with their rocks, their diminishing lands, and their Hamas. Underdogs, you see. The U.S. Empire does not sponsor terrorists. Only days ago, the “US administration offered to supply Israel with advanced bunker-busting bombs and long-range refueling planes” (AFP, March 9, 2012). “In return,Israel would agree to put off a possible attack on Iran till 2013, after the US elections in November.” The capitalist must drink Iranian blood next, must feed on Iranian flesh - but not untilafter the electoral process has been played out in the U.S. Stick with the usual diet of Palestinian women and children until then. It is no wonder that the white and Black liberal media hosts are clearing their throats and crossing out whatever they have gleaned in the “Obama years.” No different from the Bush years, they shouted just last year - after their voices rang out three cheers for difference in 2008, after the bailout and the troop increase in Afghanistan, afterthe Arab Spring began, after September 2011 in Liberty Park, New York, and afterthe Occupy Movement protesters and organizers would not go away were they finally asked, what’s the matter with you people? Now, once again, the liberal media is adjusting the narrative: it is Barrack Obama vs. the capitalists, corporate greed and corruption. Obama is the people’s interests! Obama, suppress the peoples’ questions, suppress the peoples’ outrage - never! Obama is the 99%! Turn the coin over. The organization for the advancement of the colored, otherwise known as the NAACP, runs crying to the UN: Our votes have been suppressed! We want our votes to count! Please, Master, we vote! The advanced colored are no less mimes than their counterparts in the white liberal camp. Like the latter, they do not want to know just how far they have sunk, how the flesh, long rotted, reveals them for no more than those whites bones they wave about as they Vote! The fanatical racists, the warmongers, are over there in the “Republican” Party. Vote for the “Democratic” Party. Look at the white bones as they mouth the words to “We shall overcome” and point to Pettis Bridge. We will hear that Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s legacy is Obama, (what a dream), again. (Note: It is never Malcolm!). Democrats versus Republicans - again! The electoral process, again! The noise is so loud we can barely hear “we are the 99%.” We can barely remember the tear gassed and the handcuffed protesters from New York to California. It would seem that the Chief Mime in the White House would like us to keep our questions and objections to ourselves. Stay in our individual cubby holes and continue drinking the Kool-aid. The purchase of Obama from the auction block by the rulers of the U.S. Empire did not come about because the already enslaved Obama admired the trinkets and power of the system over and above freedom. The rulers had and still have plenty of such creatures among the advanced colored people who are just so happy to be enslaved to the fullest as long as they can wear the Chief Mime’s jacket and shake hands with the other Chief Mimes of “ally” countries and corporate CEOs. Obama is a little of this and a little of that, totaling up to a whole bunch of nothingness - an accumulation of contradictions that makes for a supreme mime, one incapable of recognizing kinship in any direction , a kinship that might trigger an historical reference, a consciousness. He is just the perfect entity to throw before the white liberals and the advanced colored who quibbled inaudibly among themselves but who dared to question the rulers. The Chief Mime, the white liberals, and the advanced colored would prefer we forgetTunisia and the Arab Spring. We should not identify and take note of the courage of the Greeks, the Spaniards, the Icelanders, and the Irish people standing together against the imposition of austerity measures while the global bankers wine and dine at their expense. The mimes would have us believe that Haiti is in good hands with the UN and U.S. corporate rulers. The Chief Mime knows best what is good for Haiti. We should vote Obama for four more years… The Chief Mime, the white liberals and advanced colored people were never committed to destruction of imperialism and the dismantling of the economic system they have come to depend on for their prosperity even while that same system is responsible for the yearly increase in poverty throughout the world. How many did you kill today, Empire, directly or by proxy? How many more are impoverished today? The mimes are lifeless! Can anyone expect these servants of the U.S. Empire to ask these questions, particularly not while they are out in full force taking care of the Master’s business? Remember who we are, a great democracy. Americans vote! To hell with the 99%! The ELECTION is serious business! Remember who you are! And we do! They think we are not asking your questions! But we are. On May 1st, Occupy Wall Street has called for a General Strike. We are calling on everyone who supports the cause of economic justice and true democracy to take part: No Work, No School, No Housework, No Shopping, No Banking - and most importantly, TAKE THE STREETS! ---because you are not full of lies; you are not deceived by the skin color of the man in the Oval Office who does not care about the U.S.-inflicted deaths of children in Palestinian or Afghanistan or Iran or down the street in Washington D.C. And because the knowledge you have amassed tells you that the government of Democrats and Republicans is a government created by the corporate rulers for the corporateinterests. You are not an accumulation of contradictions! BlackCommentator.com Editorial Board member, Lenore Jean Daniels, PhD, has a Doctorate in Modern American Literature/Cultural Theory. Click here to contact Dr. Daniels.