In
the regal room, around the conference table, the heads
of families came to a consensus and only the Don himself
seemed embarrassed but remained silent. �I don�t want
it sold to children! That�s an infamia. In my city,
we would keep the traffic in the dark people, the coloreds.
They�re animals anyway, so let them lose their souls�
(The Godfather). Don Zaluchi. And, as I said,
everyone in the room nodded in agreement, and I suspect
everyone in 1972, in theaters throughout the U.S.,
also nodded and understood. The FBI�s COINTELPRO program
in full force, the next line of attack would target
the hearts and minds of Black children: Dispense with
educating them. Instead, feed them the incomprehensible,
and when that fails, close their eyes.
So
we have another year of �Black History Month.� Another
February in the year 2012 in which the Left raises its
ugly head to expound on the �great� achievements of
the imprisoned or assassinated Black activists
of the past: Martin Luther King Jr. tops almost everyone�s
list, along with W.E.B. DuBois, Sojourner Truth, Frederick
Douglass, Medger Evers, Langston Hughes, if they
are poetically inclined and, if radical, it is
El Hajj Malik El-Shabazz (Malcolm) and George Jackson,
maybe even Huey Newton and Fred Hampton of notable activists
and their contributions to�to what? To Black life? To
�democracy� in the U.S. Empire? Because most were assassinated
before the goal of achieving liberation from the repressive
system of capitalism was accomplished. That is why most
were murdered!
I
happened to pick up a copy of something called Book
Page at the local library. The first pages were
filled with reviews of mainly U.S. authors of popular fiction,
nonfiction, romance novels, mysteries, and cookbooks,
until I reached the section on Black History: Children�s
books. About six titles were listed under yet another
heading: �African-American Tales of Triumph.� The titles
of the reviews under this heading were �Making Spirits
Soar,� �the story of the first black woman to win an
Olympic gold medal... [born to] impoverished parents�destined
to defy gravity.� �Ovation for A Legend� is the title
of another review of a book on Josephine Baker��born
dirt poor�spends part of her childhood in the city slums.�
Another book offers �a stirring account of a history-making
event,� the March on Washington
in 1963. On the following page is an interview by a
young Black woman writer and the title of this interview:
�A Hopeful Path from Addiction.�
So
we have another month of �Black History,� embraced by
the Left. A duplicitous photo shoot: the deceased and
assassinate warriors and the �triumphant� youth. If
he were alive today, Malcolm would be prompted to dismiss
the Left�s allegations of sincerity and commitment.
To
appease the masses in the U.S.
is to stultify resistance but to deceive them is to
call forth the means of your own annihilation.
And the chickens have come home to roost!
Uncle
Karl warned us! Ever vigilant, the capitalist system
accumulates �wealth at one pole is�at the same time
[accumulates] misery�agony of toil�slavery�ignorance�
brutality�mental degradation, at the opposite pole.�
The
Left, former Maoists, SDSers, Weather Underground, anti-war,
feminists, and civil rights activists, now faces the
consequences of their decision, consciously or
unconsciously, to let the system handle the animals!
And it still is, as the capitalists� repressive militia
and media apparatuses repeats, all these many years
later, still handling the �animals,� that is, resistance
itself, abandoned by white and Black Leftist more than
30 years ago. A system, such as the one we live under,
is a strange thing. Like a bird, it flies any which
way but always towards what sustains life, and for the
biggest birds in the sky, that means not just killing
the others� young but its own as well.
Sever
the ties to the criminal elements of our society!
Step aboard the wheel of fortune and run like so many
little mice. But now, is there anywhere to run but in
a downward spiral? Because the corporations make sure
it is a downward spiral just as they have been busy
brewing a brand of corporate workers to keep the wheels
spinning.
We
now see them: they are super-heroes and avatars, video
game characters and idols. The corporate world is mother
and father, for it is identification with Ronald McDonald,
Big Bird, and every Ninja and X-Man narrative and real
live Madonna drama that has fed them burgers, chicken,
and fries, supplied them with educational programs on
PBS and has entertained them with reality TV shows,
blockbuster films, and the Harry Potter series (the
great books of literature in the 21st Century!). The
corporations clothe them in the chic fashion, cut, styled,
and dyed their hair, assuring these generations that
there is no greater freedom than this material
freedom!
They
are the want-to-be Mark Zuckerbergs and the world�s
next Bill Gates. Only the corporate world has meaning
for them; from any other comes subordinates - �working
class� smucks, Wal-Mart and K-Mart dressers, in contrast
to the chic fashion-conscious corporate workers. They
tweet, text, chat, and Facebook friends are their best
friends. In this world, the young get younger. In the
future, this generation will always be twenty or thirty-something
going on twenty or thirty-something, with angelic voices
of 10 year olds. Ageing is laughable! And the Baby
Boomers are ageing!
The
young corporate workers learn that everything that happens
in this corporate world is good because the tragedy
of an earthquake in Haiti
or a massacre of a family in Haditha,
Iraq
is as profitable as the signing of a high school or
college basketball player to a multi-million dollar
contract. LOL ideology promotes laughing at the incomprehensible
in life. Have a chuckle and a beer. Press the �send�
button and follow the drone along the dotted line to
its destination. It is like a video game!
The chickens have come home to roost!
There
is not a Crazy Horse or Malcolm in the lot of MBAs,
lawyers, computer and military specialists. These young
Americans are propped to be the new dispensers of �misery�agony
of toil� slavery� ignorance� brutality�mental degradation�
in search of their share in the wealth. In their visions,
one by one, they replace the old man at the conference
table in that regal room with themselves.
The
new corporate servants filling not only the contracts
of middle management positions in Pakistan, India, and
Bangladesh or the directorships of NGOs in Africa or
in Latin America or the advisory boards at Yahoo or
Google, but they are at hand, in the management of health
services, banking facilities, senior housing and services
- and thanks to the corporate education funding by their
parents, they are incapable of deviating from the corporate
script.
You
can say that these hearts and minds have been contaminated
by the corporate drug of choice: greed! And you may
be right. Nothing happens once, Faulkner wrote.
What
the corporate nooses cannot reign in, it brutalizes
and incarcerates. That time again when something has
gone awry with the socializing Machinery and thousands
of young people forming Occupy Movements break rank
and stop taking orders. Their determination to exercise
the right to protest is greeted by the repressive apparatus
used on reservations, in ghettoes, in barrios, and in
prison cells.
I
cannot end this article without commenting on Chris
Hedges� article, �The Cancer in Occupy,� (Truthdig,
February 6, 2012). I do not agree with all of its points
or with Hedges� uncompromising stand on non-violence
as a strategy for confronting the criminals of Wall
Street, but I do agree - there is a �cancer� in the
Occupy Wall Street Movement, but this was bound to be.
This is America!
For
Hedges, the Black Bloc anarchists are professional denouncers
of any process contrary to the violence of the system
itself. Their only �strategy� is violence - direct violence,
and some may even be agent provocateurs, he writes.
I would not be surprised! That there seems to be an
expression of a �disturbing hypermasculinity� among
these Black clad youth, well, I would not be surprised
here either. But the Black Bloc�s tactics are not new:
the rhetoric and the posture of aggression of a Theodore
Roosevelt, the Rough Rider in western gear, and the
business-suit-wearing Bush II, �Bring �em on!� is as
American as pre-sliced apple pies to feed the wealthy
1%.
There
is no excuse for the behavior of any group who uses
violence for violence sake, but we have seen this tactic
/ strategy before, covered in white sheets. They were
the lynching picnics held after church services on Sundays,
the photographed participants, dressed in their finery,
with children sitting on the shoulders of hypermasculine
fellows of �happier� days in the ole� South. They were
the �brave� Calvary fighters, clearing
the land, �honorably,� of Indigenous men, women, and
children. They were the dog trainers and the water hose
users during the marches of fellow citizens and civil
rights activists. They are, as we know, still around,
as the shooters of Amadou Diabllo, Sean Bell, and Oscar
Grant, and the executors of Troy Davis. How different
are their acts of violence from those who removed the
history of Chicano Americans from the Tucson
classroom?
This
tactic / strategy of violence is the tactic / strategy
of the U.S. Empire itself! The long-standing embargo
against Cuba
is far more violent than a rock thrown at a window.
And where is the Left�s voice against this violence?
There are young American men who sign up with the Army
or Marines to kill �rag heads,� and just as their parents
believe Black Americans are criminals and violent, so
do they.
From
where I stand, the so-called �Black Bloc anarchists�
are not the �fringe� any more than their compatriots
in the corporate orientation programs or at the universities
these days, who think an �old head� needs to just die.
The Occupy (De-Colonize) Wall Street Movement (OWS)
is not the problem.
I agree with Occupy Oakland that the participants are
not Black Bloc members. I can understand why Occupy
Oakland protesters are upset with Hedges� article. I
have heard many Black Occupy Oakland protesters speaking
out and organizing grassroots actions.
There
is violence in the OWS, but the violence does not originate
from the protesters, a situation similar to Dr. Martin
Luther King, Jr. and the Civil Rights marchers, who
encountered violence often from law enforcement and
the average Southern �law-abiding� citizen. King did
confront and disobey the laws that brutalized daily.
He may have wanted a non-violent march, but dealt with
things as they stood in the 1950s and 1960s. Today,
the violence used against the OWS is more repressive.
How to confront a militarized police force is connected
to OWS�s work of organizing against the capitalists
on Wall Street. We must remember, here in the U.S., �non-violence� was crushed and shot dead,
too, and the survivors of that era became Democrats
and members of the bourgeoisie.
Misery
at one end and mental degradation at the other - this
is the issue. The �cancer� is capitalism and its
mechanisms of violence which maintains its ability to
suck the life out of resistance movements in the U.S. It has been with
us long before the younger generations came into being,
and it has never been benign. Capitulation to this economic
system remains the elephant on the Left side of
the room.
If Malcolm were here, he would repeat: �The chickens
have come home to roost.� So what are we going to do
this time around?
BlackCommentator.com Editorial Board member, Lenore Jean Daniels,
PhD, has a Doctorate in Modern American Literature/Cultural
Theory. Click here
to contact Dr. Daniels.