Has the Fighting Spirit of Black America Been Co-opted & Neutralized? By Larry Pinkney

Keeping it Real

BlackCommentator.com Editorial Board

"The most important thing to remember is this: To be ready at any moment to give up what you are for what you might become."

- W.E.B. DuBois

"Our only hope today lies in our ability to recapture the revolutionary spirit and go out into a sometimes hostile world declaring eternal hostility to poverty, racism, and militarism."

- Martin Luther King, Jr.

As today's systemic political war mongers and economic blood-suckers offer their fake tributes in Washington, D.C., to the statue, life, and legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., everyday people of all colors are occupying streets throughout this nation, and around the world, demanding an end to corporate blood-sucking and perpetual wars.

The avaricious corporate/military elite of this nation (Democrat and Republican), including the corporate-stream 'news' media - which is its de facto propaganda arm, is about the business of propping up a nominally black U.S. president who is the antithesis of everything for which Martin Luther King, Jr. struggled for in conjunction with Black America as a whole. Nevertheless, much of Black America's intelligentsiahave, in the name of supporting a biological nominally black president of the U.S. Empire, traded in principles for crass opportunism.

Yet, where does Black America stand collectively at this historical juncture? After all, the joblessness, homelessness, incarceration, and police killings, etc. of Black and other poor people have massively and disproportionately increased during the almost three full years of this nominally black president's tenure. Moreover, this president has repeatedly and arrogantly chastised the very constituency that was duped into electing him, as being "whiners" and "complainers" while shamelessly engaging in making back room deals with the greedy, blood-sucking pharmaceutical, banking, and insurance corporate power brokers of Wall Street. This same same president has expanded U.S. "militarism" throughout the world including Afghanistan, Pakistan, and on the African continent. He has made a mockery not only of the life and legacy of the late Martin Luther King, Jr., but of Black America collectively.

Under the auspices of the criminal, so-called trillion dollar 'bail-out' of Wall Street, this president has overseen the largest single transfer of wealth from the public coffers of everyday people to the blood-sucking wealthy elite in the history of this nation.

In a word, the relatively tiny U.S. corporate / military elite continues to bank on this president and his cronies to, articulately bamboozle and simultaneously emaciate, everyday Brown, White, Red, and Yellow people - and in particular the everyday people of Black America. As the year 2011 draws to a close, the systemic contradictions and incredible pain of the everyday people are becoming ever more apparent.

Irrespective as to whether or not he is re-installed in the next national corporate-funded fraud - referred to as an "election," the usefulness of this president Barack Obama, to his corporate masters is approaching an end. As everyday people continue to comprehend the enormous damage that has been done to them/us, so it is that Black America collectively, like other segments of this nation, will politically re-awaken as if from a slumber. Indeed, this process has already begun.

The people can be fooled for only so long. The fighting spirit of Black America is not dead, and we shall, in the words of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., "recapture the revolutionary spirit." Notwithstanding certain pathetic, opportunistic, and hypocritical biologically black misleaders, who continue to urge Black America to stay politically asleep, the reality of the political and economic times is rapidly approaching, and Black America collectively will yet reclaim its place as an important part of the struggle of ordinary everyday people of all colors in this nation and around the globe.

Onward, then, my sisters and brothers! Onward!

BlackCommentator.com Editorial Board Member, Larry Pinkney, is a veteran of the Black Panther Party, the former Minister of Interior of the Republic of New Africa, a former political prisoner and the only American to have successfully self-authored his civil / political rights case to the United Nations under the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. In connection with his political organizing activities in opposition to voter suppression, etc., Pinkney was interviewed in 1988 on the nationally televised PBS News Hour, formerly known as The MacNeil / Lehrer News Hour. For more about Larry Pinkney see the book, Saying No to Power: Autobiography of a 20th Century Activist and Thinker, by William Mandel [Introduction by Howard Zinn]. (Click here to read excerpts from the book.) Click here to contact Mr. Pinkney.