From Occupying To Liberating

Keeping it Real By Larry Pinkney BlackCommentator.com Editorial Board

“They do this as a message to Indians, and further to anyone who might stand up to injustices as if to say, “We will do as we please.”...Recently, as many of you know, an act was passed and signed into law that allows for indefinite detention of American citizens without charge or trial. This is perhaps the final straw, the final nail in the coffin of American freedom, the end of habeas corpus and due process. “We will do as we please.”...We Indians said it for generations: If they can kill us indiscriminately, they will do it to anyone. If they can kidnap our children and take them to prison schools, they will do it it to anyone. If they can starve us and lie to us, they will do it to anyone. If they can wrongfully imprison us, they will do it to anyone. Now, sadly, this is another Indian prophecy fulfilled. “We will do as we please.”...” -Leonard Peltier “I want to live in a country where freedom means something.” -Assata Shakur Even as the corporate-controlled farce of elections and ‘democracy’ smothers the legitimate needs and aspirations of everyday Black, White, Brown, Red, and Yellow people in this nation, the United States of Legalized Fascism, has come into its own. The promise of ‘America,’ as embodied in the U.S. Constitution, is betrayed. It is particularly sad and horrible that this egregious betrayal has been adroitly brought about by, and under the auspices of, the highly touted so-called “hope and change” president of this republic. Nevertheless, it corroborates the validity of the age-old African adage that says: “Beware of the naked man who offers you clothes.” Indeed, this hideous betrayal did not come about by coincidence or some kind of unstoppable partisan coercion. It was well planned and executed by the corporate elite to whom the politicians of both the Democratic and Republican parties, from the White House on down, overwhelmingly give unswerving systemic de facto allegiance. There is but one hope left to us, and it is to be found in the awakening of everyday women and men throughout this land as to who the real enemies of humanity are. Everyday people are incessantly lied to by Democratic and Republican politicians who wage fake debates with one another as the lives and livelihoods of the people of this nation hang in the balance. Notwithstanding the daily evidence of this, there continue to be those systemic gate-keepers who would have everyday people ignore the ever so thinly veiled obvious. They utilize the corporate-stream media to postulate phony debates in a phony democracy wherein even a semi-conscious one-eyed man could sense a rat. The ‘Occupy Movement,’ which has swept this nation and indeed the planet, poses a serious threat to the self-preservation of the corporate-owned, blood sucking, political pimps of the Democratic and Republican parties, precisely because it has enhanced the consciousness of everyday people. Ordinary everyday people, despite being deluged by a daily diet consisting of diversions and distortions by the corporate media, are steadily beginning to awaken to the fact that the Democratic and Republican parties are in essence mutual admiration and support entities whose very existence depends upon keeping people artificially divided, perpetually manipulated, and constantly controlled. The foxes of the party of so-called ‘Democrats’ are busily about the business of attempting to co-opt (and thereby neutralize) the Occupy Movement, even as the Republican party wolves blatantly call for the absolute crushing of this people’s movement. Either way, the end result would be exactly the same, i.e. the destruction of the people’s Occupy Movement. This why the reaction by the U.S. government, and its various police departments nationwide, has been so unabashedly brutal. As Malcolm X [el-Hajj Malik el Shabazz] so correctly warned: “The wolf and fox are both enemies of humanity...Both have the same objective but differ only in methods.” As persons become increasingly cognizant, even the illusion of ‘democracy’ is being shredded. Moreover, awareness of the draconian aspects of COINTELPRO (the Counter Intelligence Program), the Patriot Act, and the indefinite detention law (known as the National Defense Authorization Act of 2012), etc., makes it irrefutably clear that genuine people’s democracy in the United States is nothing more than a well perpetuated illusion. So-called ‘corporate personhood’ is the law of the land in this nation at the expense of human personhood and human rights. U.S. corporate-government political and economic war on the people of this nation, and perpetual bloody U.S. wars against the peoples of other nations is the order of the day. This cannot be allowed to continue. It has been correctly suggested by some that perhaps it is time to evolve from being merely an ‘Occupy Movement’ to a Liberation Movement. The extremely important and fundamental step of occupying our own minds and consciousness has been reignited by the Occupy Movement. Now, let us move forward to liberate ourselves and each other collectively, each one teaching one - each one drawing links and making the connections as we actualize our desires for a better, more equal, and more just society and world. Educate to liberate! Malcolm X predicted this present period of the people’s struggle when he said: “I believe that there will ultimately be a clash between the oppressed and those who do the oppressing. I believe that there will be a clash between those who want freedom, justice, and equality for everyone and those who want to continue the system of exploitation. I believe it will be that kind of a clash, but I don’t think it will be based on the color of the skin...” Be clear about this: The corporate politicians of the Democratic and Republican parties, from the White House on down, and irrespective to their color, gender, or obfuscated, self-serving political rhetoric, are in fact, “those who want to continue the system of exploitation.” They must not be allowed to do so, nor will they be. It is time, in the words of the late great historian Howard Zinn, to further develop this just and noble struggle, for it is an integral part of the ongoing “people’s history of the United States.” For ourselves and rest of the everyday people of this nation. For the everyday people of all nations. For Mother Earth herself. Let us remember the words of Joe Hill, “Don’t Mourn. ORGANIZE!” 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.