Imagine Victories in the New Year!

The point Dr Daniels makes here, that we must IMAGINE victories is the most critical step that needs to be taken in any undertaking to go about changing the world. Until you can IMAGINE the possibility of change, there can be no change. A simple sports analogy ought to do: Without Dr J (Julius Irving) do we have Michael Jordon? MJ saw what Dr J could do, and then, he imagined greater, soaring to incredible heights, making time, space, and the laws of physics look inoperative. Or in golf, Tiger Woods quite early on in his career set records for margins of victories that made it appear as if he was an unstoppable force of nature. What happened? The younger generation looked very closely at what Tiger did: he pumped iron, he was incredibly disciplined in his practice habits, and they emulated him in these arenas, and when th;ey now play him face to face, head up, they do not back down; they do not fear him. They are ready; they have prepared; they have imagined greater!

Represent Our Resistance By Dr. Lenore J. Daniels, PhD BlackCommentator.com Editorial Board The Big Idea they had in mind to fill the national void was world hegemony, a level of military mastery without ‘historical precedence’: ‘Full Spectrum Dominance.’ -Morris Berman, Dark Ages America: The Final Phase of Empire If building more prisons for those of us who are unlike yourselves is to be your strategy, then, I promise you, you cannot build enough to hold us all. -Leonard Peltier, Prison Writings: My Life Is My Sun Dance The U.S. continued the legalized execution of its citizens this year. In our name and for our safety, Troy Davis, whom many believed innocent, was murdered. Seven of the nine who testified against him, recanted. Coercion! The U.S. injustice system, its practitioners, gathered affidavits of lies and forced an innocent man to serve 20 years on Death Row in Georgia before the Board of Parole, ignoring the appeal to sanity from family, friends, lawyers, and prominent figures, including former President Jimmy Carter, Bishop Tutu, Former FBI Director William Sessions, and Pope Benedict XVI, among others, to refrain from taking yet another life, executed Tory Davis. This year, too, Davis’ sister, Martina Correia, lost her battle with cancer. But Correia’s struggle, that also included not only a campaign to end the Death Penalty but one also to inspire citizens to recognize their collective power over the political power that enables authority figures, has not ended. That fight to end the framing, detaining, and killing of the poor and the working class has not ended. This week, as I write this article, people around the world are preparing to gather at the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia on December 9, 2011, to call attention to the framing of Mumia Abu Jamal and his illegal incarceration, along with the entire injustice system within (and without) the U.S., particularly since September 11, 2001. It has been 30 years now of upholding the crimes of the Philadelphia Police Department, the local injustice system, and politicians. But at the end of this year, 2011, we should truly imagine, echoing activist Claude Marks (freedomarchives.org) “the victories of 2012.” Thanks to the Occupy Wall Street Movement (OWS), more U.S. citizens recognize the criminals determined to condemn the 99% to death or what amounts to the same - life without freedom! At year’s end, thanks to the exposures of uncompromising OWS protesters, more Americans are willing to admit that the 1% commit crimes against humanity: a budget of 50% for defense spending and an austerity program of cuts to services, a proliferation of bi-partisan propaganda and lies, Wall Street selected donkeys and elephants who then shuffle taxpayers’ money to banking executives, corporate personhood and the expansion of poverty and unemployment, the Wars on Drugs and on Terrorism, fusion centers and Homeland Security, illegal detention, torture, assassinations and invasions for regime change, drones and more drones and civilian deaths and the highest incarceration rates in the world. The 99% are the ones subject to being framed and sentenced to Death Row! Another political prisoner, the 22-year old Army private, Bradley Manning, detained at the U.S. Marine brig in Quantico, Virginia, may receive a maximum sentence of life in prison if he is found guilty of revealing the contents of “restricted” material from the State’s databases to WikiLeaks. That is, if we consider Manning the criminal! That is, if we consider the 36 counts against him as legitimate counts of wrongdoing. To focus on Manning’s or Julian Assange’s crimes, according to the injustice system, is to dismiss how we, too, are coerced into signing affidavits against ourselves, the 99%, the poor, the workers, the legal or so-called illegal immigrants, coerced into assigning guilt to our determination to pursue and maintain our freedom. Do I really want to be integrated into a burning house? (James Baldwin, The Fire Next Time). Do I really want to forget on which side of history should I stand? At years end, we do have something to seriously consider if the U.S. Congress has its way: a routine of indefinite detention of U.S. citizens - without trial - an Orwellian daily life in which citizens are disappeared and no other citizen dares to even remember their existence! The unthinkable has happened, repeatedly, and happens and usually begins with a germ of an idea, lit on fire by the arsonists. It is not just that the Senate, with its bill S1867, passing 93-7 on Thursday, December 1, 2011, handed over $662 billion for defense spending; it is the little germ, a provision for military detention of suspected Al Qaeda terrorists or associates. The legislation is now in the House. Well, you think - Al Qaeda terrorists! Native Americans in those days of the Colonies and Frontier! Negroes in the South and then Black militants in the North! Jews in Europe! The Irish! The Algerian! But one people almost always linked to another and others and the fire continues to evolve. Here is an image, then, of real terror: Al Qaeda start to look like OWS protesters! Law and Disorder’s (www.lawanddisorder.org) Michael Ratner, Heidi Boghosian, and Michael Smith on December 5, 2011 presented the scenario: What are the chances of the law that might go through in terms of indefinite detention of American citizens…is there a danger it could be used against the social movement here in the U.S.? It could be used against protesters at some point…not particularly with this legislation…[But] when it comes to the Occupy Wall Street Movement (OWS), this law certainly sets the groundwork for rounding up people in the U.S. who are leading huge oppositional movements and saying these people have to be detained until the emergency crisis is over… This is a very bad step. Paraphrasing now…Boghosian adds, these laws are there to protect the “financial infrastructures and corporate entities under attack by OWS protesters,” protesters who could be labeled “domestic terrorists.” “Domestic terrorists”! Yet the U.S. State Department on November 22, 2011, warns Egypt: Take care to restrain from the use of violence on your protesters! And we are expected to consider legitimate the New World Order and future it offers us? What kind of future does this order of repression offer when 30 years of illegal incarceration is not enough? When being innocent is meaningless? When protest and bravery is condemned and criminalized? On New Years 2001, who imagined a New Years 2012 in which the U.S. government’s surveillance apparatus would have expanded to include the militarization of local police forces and surveillance of everyone, so that many have come to accept Big Brother as the norm? Answer: Only those who believe that the “Full Spectrum Dominance” of the U.S. technological might could trump the Bill of Rights. But, we have to remember: “Government is an artificial creation, established by the people to defend the equal right of everyone to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” Howard Zinn continues, “I interpreted ‘everyone’ to include men, women, and children all over the world, who have a right to life not to be taken away by their own government (Howard Zinn, You Can't Be Neutral on a Moving Train: A Personal History of Our Times). This is not a government by and for the people; it is a chamber of horrors! “If this is so,” writes Baldwin in The Fire Next Time, “one has no choice but to do all in one’s power to change that fate, and at no matter what risk - eviction, imprisonment, torture, death. For the sake of one’s children, in order to minimize the bill that they must pay, one must be careful not to take refuge in any delusion…” Because the criminals will never give up, they will never rest, we, the 99%, must imagine victories in the New Year and the years to come! We must do our work in Freedom! BlackCommentator.com Editorial Board member, Lenore Jean Daniels, PhD, has a Doctorate in Modern American Literature/Cultural Theory. Click here to contact Dr. Daniels.