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.