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.