Recently, the avaricious power elite of this nation celebrated the bloody, expansionist escapades of Christopher Columbus and his gang of thieves and murderers. Even as these ‘Columbus Day’ celebrations took place in the United States, many thousands of everyday Black, White, Brown, Red, and Yellow people throughout this nation were physically occupying the symbols of this corporate / military government and demanding an end to corporate greed and hegemony, economic austerity at home, and perpetual bloody U.S. wars, military forays, and targeted assassinations abroad.

Notwithstanding the overwhelming silence and/or distortions by the U.S. corporate-stream ‘news’ media in this regard, the revolt on the part of everyday people is nonetheless underway and growing. In actuality, this revolt was, and continues to be, a long and protracted one. It has taken on many forms and has at its roots the unquenchable, legitimate, and burning desire of everyday people for social, economic, and political justice at home and abroad.

The ordinary people of all colors in this nation are being systemically incessantly pimped by the corporate-controlled Democratic Party foxes and the Republican Party wolves, without letup. Wars are waged in our name though we overwhelmingly oppose these wars. We are terrorized at home by the unconstitutional police-state policies of the corporate government’s so-called ‘Patriot Act.’ We are cynically pitted against one another by this corporate government’s corporate-stream media on the artificial basis of color and/or gender. We are told that the legally codified loss of our human rights, increasing economic austerity, and no single universal payer universal health care are all for our own good. We are publicly told by the corporate politicos of the Democrat and Republican parties (i.e. the Republicrats) that job creation, etc. is important, even as these same politicians privately make back room deals with the corporate elite robber barons of the banking, pharmaceutical, insurance, and weapon’s makers multi-national companies, to keep everyday people in a perpetual state of economic and political servitude. Constitutions and similar such eloquent documents are meaningless when they are, as in this nation presently, subverted and owned by the tiny, blood-sucking, wealthy corporate elite.

The very bodies of the ordinary everyday people of this nation are the cannon fodder for the bloated and greedy corporate / military elite. The irrational rationale for endless wars, used by the corporate government in service to the corporate / military elite, are disfigured and distorted terms such as ‘national security’ and/or ‘patriotism.’ Yet, so-called ‘national security’ is really all about the amassing of wealth for the tiny corporate elite of this nation, and in the words of the noted writer and scholar, Samuel Johnson, regarding misguided and false patriotism: “Patriotism is the last bastion of a scoundrel.” Indeed, the 21st century corporate elite have given a new and even more insidious meaning to the word “scoundrel.”

We must have genuine systemic change, not the superficial mockery of systemic change. We must have a bottom-up everyday people’s revolution, one that rejects the mythology of celebrations such as ‘Columbus Day,’ which is nothing more than a celebration of hypocrisy and genocide. We must collectively join together with one another to be creative revolutionaries who will settle for nothing less than real systemic change. We must celebrate our objectives even as we struggle for them, in conjunction with our brothers and sisters around the world.

We know that this corporate government will continue to utilize every conceivable tactic of subterfuge in an attempt to neutralize the people’s revolt. But we must remember that we are not struggling merely against the evils of this system; we are struggling for what we know can and must be a different nation and a different world. No amount of corporate government subterfuge, agent provocateurs, or constant disinformation etc. can stop this protracted struggle for a better nation and planet! The spirit of the people will prove to be indomitable!

Those who say that the system is too big or too powerful to be changed have internalized their oppression and are reinforcing their own mental, physical, economic, and political miserable lot. On the other hand, those who commit to the ongoing and protracted people’s struggle for systemic change are creatively engaged in the indomitable people’s struggle to bring about a new human, a better society, and a more equitable and just world. This will not be done unless we the ordinary people do it! We must recognize that we are the stewards, not the owners, of and for Mother Earth, and that within us is contained the mighty roar of humanity - collectively.

It’s time to get real. In the words of the late revolutionary from Grenada, Maurice Bishop: “Forward Ever, Backward Never!” May we also always remember the words of Frederick Douglass: “Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will.”

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.