Worse than those who deprecate the ongoing freedom and justice struggle are those who pretend to support it but who actually seek to cynically use it for personal gain.

We must always remember what  John Brown, Denmark Vessy, Harriet Tubman, Malcolm X, Reverend  Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., George Jackson, Huey P. Newton, and so very many others have struggled for. They struggled for us, all of us.   

There are numerous times that this writer has wondered about the well being and where-a-bouts of so many past personal friends and political comrade sisters and brothers who gave everything of themselves / ourselves over the years in the freedom struggle, even though it seemed then that only imminent death would be our suitors. Nevertheless, it is now the year 2009, and there is the ongoing stench of the U.S. Barack Obama hypocrisy and the concomitant false “Obama hope drug” that he and his Rahm Emmanuel, Hillary Clinton, and Robert Gates clique have shamelessly put upon the ‘American” people and the world at large. Ultimately, it will not be accepted.

It would be a lie to present to you the readers of The Black Commentator that this writer has somehow overcome all the pain and dehumanization of imprisonment. The truth is that there are still many sleepless and sweaty nights in unwanted remembrance of the physical and psychological torture of U.S. imprisonment, before and even after, the United Nations ruling was made in favor of this writer.

Yet, your writer remembers with enormous love, humility, and respect  when the impossible happened:  Black, White, Brown, Red, and Yellow prisoners physically and defiantly stood up together in respect the day your writer was finally released from prison. The actions of the old guard consisting of The Black Guerrilla Front, The Mexican Mafia, The Aryan Brotherhood & Neo Nazis, and other prison groups stunned your writer. It was hard for this writer to believe that deep in the insidious and indescribable horror of prison these Black, White, Brown, Red, and Yellow prisoners were actually collectively saluting this former prisoner as he defiantly and finally walked out of prison. They raised their collective hands in the clenched fist salute as your writer finally walked out of prison that day. This is why I know that in the people’s struggle almost anything is possible!

Today, this column is dedicated to all my comrade brothers and sisters of all colors. This writer has not forgotten you wherever you may be. I saw your beautifully intense faces in Zambia, Tanzania, Egypt, Sweden, Germany, Portugal, France and elsewhere. I saw your loving and determined faces in Oakland, San Francisco, Los Angeles, New York, Philadelphia, Washington, D.C, and so many other places in ‘America.’

To YOU the readers of my column in The Black Commentator, my friends and comrades: I thank you! Be strong and carry on in this, OUR collective struggle.

Onward….Onward my sisters and brothers!

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 NewsHour, formerly known as The MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour. 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.

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