What awesome
times in which to be alive! The rainbow of everyday ordinary
Black, White, Brown, Red, and Yellow people are awakening!
The protracted national and global people’s struggle for
genuine systemic change is stirring!
An increasing
number of everyday people are demanding an end to corporate
rule, political chicanery, economic austerity, and perpetual
wars. Everyday people are demanding and organizing for
systemic change and justice, not reform or rhetoric,
but real change and actualized justice!
Despite actions by the U.S.
corporate-controlled government, its agents, agent-provocateurs,
and the machinations in the form of distortions and omissions
by the corporate-stream ‘news’ media - the yearning
of the masses of everyday people has already taken root.
The Democratic
Party foxes and the Republican Party wolves, in service
to the corporate / military elite, are frantically attempting
to “neutralize” the legitimate hopes and aspirations of
the people. Ultimately, these foxes and the wolves
will fail, and the people will prevail in this protracted
struggle. This however, is not an overnight affair
or some scripted Hollywood movie. It is real.
This struggle
is, and will continue to be, a rocky road with
many pitfalls along the way. Thus, it is essential
that we everyday people, grasp and adhere to, firm political
principles that give no quarter whatsoever to those
who would co-opt and distort this ongoing people’s
movement.
Instead
of this Mr. “hope & change” - predator drone-missile
president Barack Obama unequivocally siding
with everyday Black, White, Brown, Red, and Yellow people,
he will continue to offer up a combination of regurgitated
misleading rhetoric and simultaneous de facto repression
on the altar of political expediency. This must be recognized
for precisely what it is: more of the same - only much
worse.
We must remember
that being consciously Black transcends the obvious physical
reality of color. “Beyond mere color, being Black is,
first and foremost, a conscious political, social, and
economic commitment to the struggle for the collective
betterment of the descendants of the Black slavery
holocaust in what has now become the United States of America,
in conjunction with other people of color
and humanity as a whole.” We, as Black people must
rejoin and take our places in the present collective political
reawakening of everyday people of all colors, in
this nation and throughout the world. This is incredibly
challenging and difficult but it can and must be fulfilled.
Among other things, racism and classism, are quite strong
and they must also be addressed within this collective
people’s struggle in which we must be a part, even
as we seek to nurture this movement.
The time is
here not only to physically ‘Occupy’ the bastions of corporate
greed throughout this nation and world, but just as importantly,
to mentally occupy (or re-occupy) our own minds with our
precious and collective everyday people’s narrative, telling
our own stories as we carry out our roles in the ongoing
people’s movement and struggle. After all is said and
done we really are not helpless in this regard.
It is up to
each of us to help bring about a new day, a better and
different society, and a fairer and more just world. In
the words of Frantz Fanon: “Each generation must, out
of relative obscurity, discover its mission, fulfill it,
or betray it.” Surely, we must fulfill rather than
betray our individual and collective humanity.
Let us be firmly principled as we creatively carry on
in this struggle on behalf of humanity and Mother Earth.
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.