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BlackCommentator.com: The "Free Market" Cannot Bring You the Revolution - Represent Our Resistance - By Dr. Lenore J. Daniels, PhD - BlackCommentator.com Editorial Board

   
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It is well enough that people of the nation do not understand our banking and monetary system, for if they did, I believe there would be a revolution before tomorrow morning.
-Henry Ford
BC Question: What will it take to bring Obama home?When dictatorship is a fact, revolution becomes a right.
-Victor Hugo
Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable.
-John F. Kennedy
Good poetry and successful revolution change our lives. And you cannot compose a good poem or wage a revolution without changing consciousness unless you attack the language that you share with your enemies and invent a language that you share with your allies.
-June Jordan

Who is the author of your mantra and affirmations?

Who is the author of your narrative? Who speaks when you open your mouth?

The “free market” gives rise to entrepreneurs of enslavement and claims to offer “change you can believe in” in a narrative so full of cash registers, stocks and bonuses, exclusive gated communities, Swiss bank accounts, and the bottom line that most Americans from New York to Los Angeles Americans cannot believe it. Now!

U.S. citizens are waking up to discover that the “free market” cannot produce change. It cannot produce a revolution. It can sell images of King, Fred Hampton or Mao, but it cannot sell the end to oppression. The “free market” cannot sell honest discussions on the all-pervasive stalking of white supremacy and its insatiable partner in crime, capitalism, but it can sell you “hope”!

In plush boardrooms, the authors of American exceptionalism negotiate with peers the survival of the “free market” narrative.

Who is the author of your narrative? Who speaks when you open your mouth?

There is no market for revolution!

Phrases like “humanitarian intervention,” “humanitarian aid,” “sustainable growth,” and “green ecology” within the corporate left narrative, and echoed by freedom loving liberals feverishly managing volunteer staff, while the paid staff makes a killing in Africa or Bangladesh or Chile, and executives greedily direct the membership drives while manning global cash registers, cannot teach the history of peoples’ movements and the meaning of freedom.

The non-profit narratives of the various foundations for justice and peace, faith-based organizations, women’s and ethnic associations have given you Barrack Obama, the man of peaceful drone attacks, peaceful killings of American citizens in Yemen, peaceful warnings that U.S. citizens, protesters near and far, are subject to death - peaceful death at the conclusion of their Death Row experience. The “free market” sells weapons and military training in candy wrappers labeled “peace.”

Chevron pollutes your neighborhood through your car and pollutes the Amazon through your rah rah patriotism and you belief in American exceptionalism. Do not expect its narrative to announce the second coming of Che Guevara in Latin America or the return of Ken Saro-Wiwa.

Wal-Mart does not pay its workers a living wage; it does not offer medical insurance. So do not expect a sale on The Pedagogy of the Oppressed or even a shelf filled with pamphlets or brochures or texts about workers rights, workers’ struggle in the U.S.

The “free market” cannot sell a true and a dynamic peoples’ movement. It’s cable networks cannot mention the young peoples’ occupation of Wall Street protest and the peoples’ struggle against injustice in Georgia or Bahrain unless it reduces the Struggle to the struggle, small “s,” of one individual’s personal struggle, to his or her lonely self, to ultimately his or her failure or lack of luck. Then there is Yahoo’s solution to the economic crisis. Yahoo’s helpful tips on the myriad ways in which citizens can save money from incomes - at or below the poverty rate!

“Smart” journalists imagine Americans pressing “click” to learn how to elect the best Republican or Democratic politicians.

How much has it cost these authors to produce voting pockets and consumer pockets - echo chambers? Bonuses for PR executives who come up with a new mix of words and phrases to capture the cha-ching of cash registers is soaring, and you can only vote so much or shop so much before you realize you have been cheated, ripped off. There is no selling of the revolution among the chic and hip cartel of these executive “drug” merchants no less destructive than the “enemy” drug cartel in Mexico. The latter acknowledges it self dope!

A revolution will not come about if what comes out of your mouth sounds as hoarse as Dick Cheney’s proclamations or as soft as Barrack Obama affirmations.

Revolutions are not represented in the theatres where slumdogs become millionaires because the “free market” narrative only features Black, Brown and Yellow actors playing second fiddle behind the “star,” unless the second fiddle “stars” as the principle pimp, prostitute, drug dealer - all-around criminal - authored by the same Machine that armed the “revolution” in Libya but fears the Syrian and Bahraini protesters and any other revolution in progress, except that of the corporate revolution.

Corporations cannot afford a revolution on the home front.

The people cannot afford not to revolt against the “enemy combatant” narrative. The people cannot afford not to protest the narrative that permits detaining, deporting and incarcerating Black and Brown people while the Law and its massive enforcement agencies spy on citizens in order to protect the all-powerful.

Who is the author of your narrative?

Chains around the wrist, clasped hands in prayer. Pastors, priests, and politicians encouraged to think with their manhood, sell unsightly images of fireballs stretching to the universe. Hellfire and damnation! Charred bodies hang and scarred children cry. Rape and pillage! Collateral damage: femininity.

The revolution will not be televised because, in the U.S., when a real revolution commences, FOX NEWS, CNN, MSNBC, ABC, and CBS will go blank. The people will pull the plug and the selling of narratives of lies will cease!

U.S. citizens are waking up!

BlackCommentator.com Editorial Board member, Lenore Jean Daniels, PhD, has a Doctorate in Modern American Literature/Cultural Theory. Click here to contact Dr. Daniels.

 
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Oct 13, 2011 - Issue 445
is published every Thursday
Est. April 5, 2002
Executive Editor:
David A. Love, JD
Managing Editor:
Nancy Littlefield, MBA
Publisher:
Peter Gamble
BC Question: What will it take to bring Obama home?
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