Even as everyday ordinary Black, White,
Brown, Red, and Yellow people in this nation are mercilessly
stomped on by Barack Obama (and his Democrat and Republican
party cohort's)� 2012 New Year's trojan horse law
- of unmitigated repression, in the form of the so-called
National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) - which law
legalizes the right of the U.S. military to carry
out secret kidnappings, indefinitely detain,
interrogate, torture, and murder U.S. citizens without
�even the right to jury, trial, legal representation,
or the requirement that the government produce evidence
against the accused - we ordinary people struggle simply
to survive as dignified human beings.
[Reference The Black Commentator, January
5, 2012, 'Beyond Vietnan' Into Afghanistan and
Indefinite Detention of U.S. Citizens.
Yet, there's more.
The United States of America has officially,
for many decades, lived in denial of the fact that there
are thousands of political prisoners and/or prisoners
of conscience confined in its brutal and barbaric prison
gulag system nationally. Many citizens have chosen to
pretend that we in this nation are protected by the
U.S. Constitution. Thanks to COINTELPRO (the infamousand
ongoing U.S. government's� Counter Intelligence Program),
the so-called 'Patriot Act,' and the heinous and hideous
National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), no critically-thinking
and conscious person can honestly subscribe to the notion
that this nation does not engage in institutionalized
torture or that the United States is a people's
democracy. In this 21st century, even the U.S. Constitution
itself (which in any case was often ignored)
has met the ignoble fate of being blatantly destroyed
and trashed by the opportunistic, corporate politicians
of this nation.
The physical and/or psychological torture
and deprivation of prisoners (political and otherwise)
in the United States of America is standard operating
procedure. It is routine - considered as
no big deal. Nonetheless, many persons in this nation
continue, like euphemistic ostriches, to hide behind
the decaying mythology of a very dead U.S. Constitution
and non-existent democracy. The daily horrors
and deprivations endured by the many wrongfully imprisoned
blatant U.S. political prisoners, including Mumia Abu-Jamal,
Leonard Peltier, Lynne Stewart and so many others
is but the tip of a blood curdling, burgeoning ice berg.
For the poor and dispossessed of this
this nation, irrespective of their color, justice is
a sick joke. Be clear about this: If you do not
act NOW, YOU can and will be next!
The disgusting debacle of the Guantanamo Bay prisoners
is but a reflection of what occurs on a daily
basis with prisoners inside the United States itself.
So you think you have human and political
rights in this nation?! Stop fooling yourselves,
you don't, WE don't! This political and judicial
system is all about serving the rich and the
powerful, not the everyday people of this nation
or world.
We must understand that we are ALL
Mumia Abu-Jamal, Leonard Peltier, and Lynne Stewart!
We are ALL prisoners of this self-serving, viciously
hypocritcal system of physical and mental confinement!
But we are not helpless! There is much we can and must
do! Time to break the bondages as we wage this protracted
and collective people's struggle!
The time is upon us to bring about an
absolute end to this corrupt political system. We must
have real systemic change. Not reform,
but real systemic change!
For whom does the bell toll? It tolls
for us - ALL of us! No more damn wars abroad or the
glorification of them! No more corporate domination,
replete with its privatized U.S. prisons and
hegemony of the daily lives of WE, THE PEOPLE,
inside this nation and around the world!
Remember Mumia! Remember Leonard! Remember
Lynne! For we are all of them and so
many others. Mother Earth calls and we must answer!
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.