African Inter-Communalism
By: Black Autonomy Federation
Originally Published on December 2, 2012
The Black Autonomy Federations / Anarchist ideals lead logically to internationalism or more precisely trans-nationalism, which means beyond the nation-state. Anarchists foresee a time when the nation-state will cease to have any positive value at all for most people, and will in fact be junked. But that time is not yet here, and until it is, we must organize for inter-communalism, or world relations between African people and their revolutionary social movements, instead of their governments and heads of state.
The Black Panther Party first put forward the concept of inter-communalism in the 1960s and, although slightly different, is very much a libertarian concept at its core. (This used to be called "Pan Africanism," but included mainly "revolutionary" governments and colonial or independence movements as allies). Because of the legacy of slavery and continuing economic neocolonialism, which has dispersed Blacks to every continent, it is feasible to speak of Black international revolutionary solidarity.
Here is how African / Black Anarchists see the world: the world is presently organized into competing nation-states, which through the Capitalist Western nations have been responsible for most of the world's famine, imperialism and exploitation of the non-white peoples of the earth. In fact, all states are instruments of oppression. Even though there are governments that claim to be "workers states," "Socialist countries" or so-called "Revolutionary governments," in essence they all have the same function: Dictatorship and oppression of the many over the few. The bankruptcy of the state is further proven when one looks at the millions of dead over two world wars, sparked by European Imperialism, (1914-198 and 1939-1945), and hundreds of "brush wars" incited by the superpowers of the West or Russia in the 1950s and continuing to this day. This includes "workers' states" like China-Russia, Vietnam-China, Vietnam-Cambodia. Somalia- Ethiopia, Russia-Czechoslovakia and others who have gone to war over border disputes, political intrigue, invasion or other hostile action. As long as there are nation-states, there will be war, tension and national enmity.
In fact, the sad part about the decolonization of Africa in the 1960s was that the countries were organized into the Euro-centric ideal of the nation-state, instead of some sort of other formation more applicable to the continent, such as a continental federation. This, of course, was a reflection of the fact that although the Africans were obtaining "flag independence" and all the trappings of the sovereign European state, they instead were not obtaining freedom. The Europeans still controlled the economies of the African continent, and the nationalist leaders who came to the fore were for the most part the most pliable and conservative possible.
Entire countries of Africa were like a dog with a leash around its neck; although the Europeans could no longer rule the continent directly thorough colonial rule, it now did so through puppets it controlled and defended, like Mobutu in the Congo, Mengistu Haile Mariam, leader of the Derg in Ethiopia, and Kenyatta in Kenya. Many of these men were dictators of the worst sort and their regimes existed strictly because of European finance capital In addition, there were white settler communities in the Portuguese colonies, South Africa, and Zimbabwe, who oppressed the African peoples even worse than the old colonial system. This is why the national liberation movements made their appearances in the 1960s and 70s.
Anarchists support national liberation movements to the degree that they struggle against a colonial or imperialist power; but also note that in almost every instance where such liberation front’s have assumed state power, they have become "State Communist" parties and new dictators over the masses of the people. These include some who had engaged in the mass epic struggles, but also include many based on the most obvious military dictatorship from the start.
They are not progressive and they tolerate no dissent For instance, no sooner had the MPLA government been in power in Angola, than it began to arrest all its left-wing ideological opponents (Maoists, Trotskyites, Anarchists, and others) and began to forcibly quell strikes by workers for higher pay and better working conditions, calling such job actions "blackmail" and 'economic sabotage." And with the Nito Alves affair and his alleged coup attempt, (Alves was a hero of the revolution and a popular military leader), theirs was the first party purge of opponents in the new government. Something similar to this also took place when the Sandinista National Liberation movement took over in Nicaragua in the 1980s. None of this should seem strange or uncharacteristic to Anarchists, when we consider that the Bolshevik party did the same thing when it consolidated state power during the Russian Revolution (1917-1921).
Countries such as Benin, Ethiopia, the People's Republic of the Congo and other "revolutionary" governments in Africa, are not in power as the result of a popular social revolution, but rather because of a military coup or being installed by one of the major world powers Further; many of the national liberation movements were not independent social movements, but were rather under the influence or control of Russia or China as part of their geopolitical struggle against Western imperialism and each other. This is not to say that revolutionary movements should not accept weapons and other material support from an outside power, as long as they remain independent politically and determine their own policies, without such aid being conditional on the political dictates and the "party line" of another country.
But even though we may differ with them politically and tactically in many areas, and even with all their flaws after assuming State power, the revolutionary liberation fighters are our comrades and allies in common struggle against the common enemy - the U.S. imperialist ruling class, while the fight goes on. Their struggle releases the death grip of U.S. and western imperialism or as Anarchists more precisely call it Capitalist world power), and while the fight goes on we are bound together in comradeship and solidarity.
Yet we still cannot overlook atrocities committed by movements like the Khmer Rouge, a Marxist-Leninist guerrilla movement in Cambodia, which just massacred millions of people to carry out rigid Stalinist political policies and to consolidate the country. We must lay this butchery and other crimes committed by State Communism bare for all to see. We do not favor this kind of revolution, which is just sheer power seeking and terrorism against the people. This is why Anarchism has always disagreed with how the Bolsheviks seized power in Soviet Russia; and Stalin's butchery of the Russian people seems to have set a model for the State Communist movements to follow over the years.
The national liberation front’s made one basic mistake of many nationalist movements of oppressed peoples, and that is to organize in a fashion that class distinctions are obliterated. This happened in America, where in the fight for democratic rights, the civil rights movement included Black middle class preachers, teachers and others, and every Black persons was a "brother" or" sister," as long as they were Black. But this simplistic analysis and social reality did not hold for long, because when the Civil rights phase of the American Black struggle had spent itself, “class distinctions” and class struggle came to the fore. They have been getting sharper ever since. Although there are Black mayors and other bureaucrats, and now Obama; they merely serve as pacification agents of the State, "Black faces in high places."
This neocolonial system is similar to the type of neocolonialism which took place in the 3rd World, after many countries had obtained their "independence" in the 1960s. Europe still maintained control through puppet politicians and a command of the petty bourgeois class, who were willing to barter the freedom of the people for personal gains. These people merely preside over the misery of the masses. They are not a serious concession to our struggle. They are put in office to co-opt the struggle and deaden the people to their pain.
So while Black revolutionaries generally favor the ideas of African inter-communalism, they want principled revolutionary unity. Of course, the greatest service we can render the peoples of the so-called "Third World" of Africa, Asia and Latin America, is to make a revolution here in North America - in the belly of the beast. For in freeing ourselves, we get the U.S. imperialist ruling class off both our backs.
We wish to build an international Black organization against Capitalism, racism, colonialism, imperialism, and military dictatorship, which could more effectively fight the Capitalist powers and create a world federation of Black peoples. We want to unite a Brother or Sister in North America with the Black peoples of Australia and Oceania, Africa, the Caribbean and South America, Asia, the Middle East, and those millions of our people Living in Britain and other Western European countries. We want to unite tribes, nations and Black cultures into an international body of grassroots and struggling forces.
All over the world, Black people are being oppressed by their national governments. Some are colonial subjects in European countries, and one or another of the African States exploits some. Only a Social revolution will lead to Black unity and freedom. However this will only be possible when there exists an international Black revolutionary organization and social movement. An organization which can coordinate the resistance struggles everywhere of African peoples; actually a network of such organizations, resistance movements, which are spread all over the world based on a consensus for revolutionary struggle. This concept accepts any level of violence that will be necessary to enforce the demands of the people and workers.
In those countries where an open Black revolutionary movement would be subjected to fierce repression by the state, such as in South Africa and in same Black puppet dictatorships in other parts of Africa, the Caribbean, and Asia, it would be necessary to wage an underground resistance struggle. Further, the state has grown more and more violent, with widespread torture and executions, prisons and maximum police controls, spying and deprivation of democratic rights, police brutality and murder. Clearly such governments-and all governments-must be overthrown. They will not fall due to internal economic or political problems, but must be defeated and dismantled. So we call for an international resistance movement to overthrow governments and the system of Capitalist world government.
But even in the Western imperialist countries, we must recognize the legitimacy of revolutionary violence. When such forms of revolutionary action are required, however, a clear difference should be seen among revolutionaries between simple terrorism without popular support and coherent political program and guerrilla warfare arising out of the collectively felt frustrations of the common people and workers. The use of military methods would be necessary in a case where the violence of the state made it imperative for Black revolutionaries to defend themselves by taking the armed offensive against the state and the ruling class, and to expropriate the wealth of the Capitalist class during the Social revolution.
The Black liberation movement needs an organization capable of international coordination of the Black liberation struggle, a world federation of African peoples. Although this would not just be an Anarchist movement, a federation like this would be made effective than any group of states, whether the United Nation or the Organization of African Unity, in freeing the Black masses. It would involve the masses of people themselves, not just national leaders or nation states.
The military dictators and government bureaucrats have only proven that they know how to spend money on pomp and circumstance, but not how to dismantle the last vestiges of colonialism in South Africa or defeat Western neocolonialist intrigues. Africa is still the poorest of the World's continents, while materially the richest. The contrast is clear: Millions of people are starving in much of Equatorial Africa, but the tribal chiefs, politicians and military dictators, are driving around in Mercedes and living in luxury villas, while they do the bidding of Western European and American bankers through the International Monetary Fund. They are part of the problem, not part of the solution!
Our ideas about the importance of inter-communalism are based on a firm belief that only a federation of free Autonomous peoples will bring true Black power to the masses "Power to the people" does not mean a government or political party to rule in their name, but social and political power in the hands of the people themselves. The only real "people's power" is the power to make their decisions on matters of importance, and to merely elect someone else to do so, or to have a dictatorship forced down their throats is not freedom. True freedom is to have full self-determination about one's social economic and cultural development. The future is Anarchist Communism and Autonomy, not the nation-state, bloody dictators, Capitalism or wage slavery.
The Official Blog of the Black Autonomy Federation. A hub of Black Autonomy literature, ranging from commentaries to organizational plans.
Saturday, September 13, 2014
The Commune
The Commune: Community Control of the Black Community
By: Black Autonomy Federation
Originally Published on November 30, 2012
How do we raise a new revolutionary consciousness against a system programmed against our old methods? We must use a new approach and revolutionize the Black Central City Commune, and slowly provide the people with the incentive to fight by allowing them to create programs, which will meet all their social, political, and economic, needs. We must fill the vacuums left by the established order... In return, we must teach them the benefits of our revolutionary ideals. We must build a subsistence economy and a sociopolitical infrastructure so that we can become an example for all revolutionary people."- George Jackson, in his book 'Blood in my Eye'
The idea behind a mass commune is to create a dual power structure as a counter to the government, under conditions, which exist now. In fact, Anarchists believe the first step toward self-determination and the Social revolution is Black control of the Black community. This means that Black people must form and unify their own organizations of struggle, take control of the existing Black communities and all the institutions within them, and conduct a consistent fight to overcome every form of economic, political and cultural servitude, and any system of racial and class inequality which is the product of this racist Capitalist society.
The realization of this aim means that we can build inner-city Communes, which will be centers of Black counter-power and social revolutionary culture against the white political power structures in the principal cities of the United States. Once they assume hegemony, such communes would be an actual alternative to the State and serve as a force to revolutionize African people-and by extension-large segments of American society, which could not possibly remain immune to this process. It would serve as a living revolutionary example to North American progressives and other oppressed nationalities.
There is tremendous fighting power in the Black community, but it is not organized in a structured revolutionary way to effectively struggle and take what is due. The white Capitalist ruling class recognizes this, which is why it pushes the fraud of "Black Capitalism" and Black politicians and other such "responsible leaders. These fakes and sellout artists lead us to the dead-end road of voting and praying for that which we must really be willing to fight for. The Anarchists recognize the Commune as the primary organ of the new society, and as an alternative to the old society. But the Anarchists also recognize that Capitalism will not give up without a fight; it will be necessarily to economically and politically cripple Capitalist America. One thing for sure we should not continue to passively allow this system to exploit and oppress us.
The commune is a staging ground for Black revolutionary struggle. For instance, Black people should refuse to pay taxes to the racist government, should boycott the Capitalist corporations, should lead a Black General Strike all over the country, and should engage in an insurrection to drive the police out and win a liberated zone. This would be a powerful method to obtain submission to the demands of the movement, and weaken the power of the state. We can even force the government to make money available for community development as a concession; instead of as a payoff to buy-out the struggle as happened in the 1960s and thereafter.
If we put a gun to a banker's head and said "Yore know you've got the money, now give it up," he would have to surrender. Now the question is: if we did the same thing to the government, using direct action means with an insurrectionary mass movement, would these both be acts of expropriation? Or is it just to pacify the community why they gave us the money? One thing for sure, we definitely need the money, and however we compel it from the government, is of less important than the fact that we forced them to give it up to the people's forces at all. We would then use that money to rebuild our communities, maintain our organizations, and care for the needs of our people. It could be a major concession, a victory.
But we have also got to realize that Africans in America are not simply oppressed by force of arms, but that part of the moral authority of the state comes from the mind of the oppressed that consent to the right to be governed. As long as Black people believe that some moral or political authority of the white government has legitimacy in their lives, that they owe a duty to this nation as citizens, or even that they are responsible for their own oppression, then they cannot effectively fight back. They must free their minds of the ideas of American patriotism and begin to see themselves as a new people. This can only be accomplished under dual power, where the patriotism of the people for the state is replaced with love and support for the new Black commune. We do that by making the Commune a real thing in the day-to-day lives of ordinary people.
We should establish community councils to make policy decisions and administer the affairs of the Black community. These councils would be democratic neighborhood assemblies composed of representative elected by Black workers in various community institutions-factories, hospitals schools-as well as delegates elected on a block basis. We must reject Black Mayors and other politicians, or government bureaucrats, as a substitute for community power. We must therefore have community control of all the institutions of the Black community, instead of just letting the State decide what is good for us. Not just jobs and housing, but also full control over schools, hospitals, welfare cents, libraries, etc., must be turned over to that community, because only the residents of a community have a true understanding of its needs and desires.
Here is an example of how it would work: we would elect a community council to supervise all schools in the Black community. We would encourage parents, students, teachers, and the community at-large to work cooperatively in every phase of school administration, rather than have an authority figure like a principal and his/her uncaring bureaucratic administration run things as are done at present. The whole Black community will have to engage in a militant struggle to take over the public schools and turn them into centers of Black culture and learning. We cannot continue to depend on the racist or Black puppet school boards to do this for us.
The local council would then be federated, or joined together, on a local level to create a citywide group of councils who would run affairs in that community. The councils and other neighborhoods collectives organized for a variety of reasons would make a mass commune. This commune would be in turn federated at the regional and national level the aim being to create a national federation of Black communes, which would meet periodically in one or a number of mass assembly meetings.
This federation would be composed of elected or appointed delegates representing their local commune or council Such a national federal of communes would allow community councils from all over North America to work out common policies and speak with one voice on all matters affecting their communities or regions. It would thus have far more power than any single community council could However, to prevent this national federation from bureaucratic usurpation of power by political factions or opportunistic leaders, elections should be held regularly and delegates would be subject to recall at any time for misconduct, so that they remain under the control of the local communities they represent.
The Black community councils are really a type of grassroots movement made up of all the social formations of our people, the block and neighborhood committees, Labor, student and youth groups, (even the church, to a limited degree), social activist groups, and others to unite the various protest actions around a common program of struggle for this period. The campaigns for this period must utilize the tactics of direct mass action, as it is very important that the people themselves must realize a sense of their organized power. These grassroots associations will provide to the usually mass spontaneous actions, a form of organization whose social base is of the Black working class, instead of the usual Black middle class mis-leadership.
The Anarchists recognize these community councils as being a form of direct democracy, instead of the type of phony American "democracy," which is really nothing but control by politicians and businessmen. The councils are especially important because they provide embryonic self- rule and the beginnings of an alternative to the Capitalist economic system and its government. It is a way to undermine the government and make it an irrelevant dinosaur, because its services are no longer needed.
The Commune is also a Black revolutionary counterculture. It is the embryo of the new Black revolutionary society in the body of the old sick, dying one. It is the new lifestyle in microcosm, which contains the new Black social values and the new communal organizations, and institutions, which will become the sociopolitical infrastructure of the free society.
Our objective is to teach new Black social values of unity and struggle against the negative effects of white Capitalist society and culture. To do that we must build the Commune into a Black Consciousness movement to build race pride and respect, race and social awareness and to struggle against the Capitalist slave masters.
This Black communalism would be both a repository of Black culture and ideology. We need to change both our lives and our lifestyles, in order to deal with the many interpersonal contradictions that exist in our community. We could examine the Black family, Black male/female relationships, the mental health of the Black community, relations between the community and the white establishment and among Black people themselves.
We would hold Black consciousness raising sessions in schools, community centers, prisons and in Black communities all over North America-which would teach Black history and culture, new liberating social ideas and values to children and adults, as well as counseling and therapy techniques to resolve family and marital problems, all the while giving a Black revolutionary perspective to the issues of the day.
Our people must be made to see that the self-hatred, disunity, distrust, internecine violence and oppressive social conditions among Black people are the result of the legacy of African slavery and the present day effects of Capitalism. Finally the main objective of Black revolutionary culture is to agitate and organize Black people to struggle for their freedom.
As Steve Biko, the murdered South African revolutionary, has been quoted as saying:
"The call for Black consciousness is the most positive call to come from any group in the Black world for a long time. It is more than just a reactionary rejection of whites by Blacks... At the heart of this kind of thinking is the realization by Black that the most potent weapon in the hands of the oppressor is the mind of the oppressed. Once the latter has been so effectively manipulated and controlled by the oppressor as to make the oppressed believe that he is a liability to the white man, then there is nothing the oppressed can do that will really scare the powerful masters... The philosophy of Black consciousness, therefore expresses group pride and the determination by Blacks to rise up and attain the envisaged self."
By the "envisaged self," Biko refers to the Black self, a liberated psyche. It is that which we want to rescue with such a Black consciousness movement here in America. We need to counter Black self-hatred and the frivolous "party mentality. We also want to end the social degradation of our community, and rid it of drug addiction, prostitution, Black-on-Black crime, and other social evils that destroys the moral fiber of the Black community. Drugs and prostitution are mainly controlled by organized crime, and protected by the police, who accept bribes and gifts from gangsters. These negative social values, the so-called “dog-eat-dog” philosophy of the Capitalist system teach people to be individualists of the worst sort, willing to commit any kind of crime against each other, and to take advantage of each other. This oppressive culture is what we are fighting. As long as it exists, it will be hard to unify the people around a revolutionary political program.
By: Black Autonomy Federation
Originally Published on November 30, 2012
How do we raise a new revolutionary consciousness against a system programmed against our old methods? We must use a new approach and revolutionize the Black Central City Commune, and slowly provide the people with the incentive to fight by allowing them to create programs, which will meet all their social, political, and economic, needs. We must fill the vacuums left by the established order... In return, we must teach them the benefits of our revolutionary ideals. We must build a subsistence economy and a sociopolitical infrastructure so that we can become an example for all revolutionary people."- George Jackson, in his book 'Blood in my Eye'
The idea behind a mass commune is to create a dual power structure as a counter to the government, under conditions, which exist now. In fact, Anarchists believe the first step toward self-determination and the Social revolution is Black control of the Black community. This means that Black people must form and unify their own organizations of struggle, take control of the existing Black communities and all the institutions within them, and conduct a consistent fight to overcome every form of economic, political and cultural servitude, and any system of racial and class inequality which is the product of this racist Capitalist society.
The realization of this aim means that we can build inner-city Communes, which will be centers of Black counter-power and social revolutionary culture against the white political power structures in the principal cities of the United States. Once they assume hegemony, such communes would be an actual alternative to the State and serve as a force to revolutionize African people-and by extension-large segments of American society, which could not possibly remain immune to this process. It would serve as a living revolutionary example to North American progressives and other oppressed nationalities.
There is tremendous fighting power in the Black community, but it is not organized in a structured revolutionary way to effectively struggle and take what is due. The white Capitalist ruling class recognizes this, which is why it pushes the fraud of "Black Capitalism" and Black politicians and other such "responsible leaders. These fakes and sellout artists lead us to the dead-end road of voting and praying for that which we must really be willing to fight for. The Anarchists recognize the Commune as the primary organ of the new society, and as an alternative to the old society. But the Anarchists also recognize that Capitalism will not give up without a fight; it will be necessarily to economically and politically cripple Capitalist America. One thing for sure we should not continue to passively allow this system to exploit and oppress us.
The commune is a staging ground for Black revolutionary struggle. For instance, Black people should refuse to pay taxes to the racist government, should boycott the Capitalist corporations, should lead a Black General Strike all over the country, and should engage in an insurrection to drive the police out and win a liberated zone. This would be a powerful method to obtain submission to the demands of the movement, and weaken the power of the state. We can even force the government to make money available for community development as a concession; instead of as a payoff to buy-out the struggle as happened in the 1960s and thereafter.
If we put a gun to a banker's head and said "Yore know you've got the money, now give it up," he would have to surrender. Now the question is: if we did the same thing to the government, using direct action means with an insurrectionary mass movement, would these both be acts of expropriation? Or is it just to pacify the community why they gave us the money? One thing for sure, we definitely need the money, and however we compel it from the government, is of less important than the fact that we forced them to give it up to the people's forces at all. We would then use that money to rebuild our communities, maintain our organizations, and care for the needs of our people. It could be a major concession, a victory.
But we have also got to realize that Africans in America are not simply oppressed by force of arms, but that part of the moral authority of the state comes from the mind of the oppressed that consent to the right to be governed. As long as Black people believe that some moral or political authority of the white government has legitimacy in their lives, that they owe a duty to this nation as citizens, or even that they are responsible for their own oppression, then they cannot effectively fight back. They must free their minds of the ideas of American patriotism and begin to see themselves as a new people. This can only be accomplished under dual power, where the patriotism of the people for the state is replaced with love and support for the new Black commune. We do that by making the Commune a real thing in the day-to-day lives of ordinary people.
We should establish community councils to make policy decisions and administer the affairs of the Black community. These councils would be democratic neighborhood assemblies composed of representative elected by Black workers in various community institutions-factories, hospitals schools-as well as delegates elected on a block basis. We must reject Black Mayors and other politicians, or government bureaucrats, as a substitute for community power. We must therefore have community control of all the institutions of the Black community, instead of just letting the State decide what is good for us. Not just jobs and housing, but also full control over schools, hospitals, welfare cents, libraries, etc., must be turned over to that community, because only the residents of a community have a true understanding of its needs and desires.
Here is an example of how it would work: we would elect a community council to supervise all schools in the Black community. We would encourage parents, students, teachers, and the community at-large to work cooperatively in every phase of school administration, rather than have an authority figure like a principal and his/her uncaring bureaucratic administration run things as are done at present. The whole Black community will have to engage in a militant struggle to take over the public schools and turn them into centers of Black culture and learning. We cannot continue to depend on the racist or Black puppet school boards to do this for us.
The local council would then be federated, or joined together, on a local level to create a citywide group of councils who would run affairs in that community. The councils and other neighborhoods collectives organized for a variety of reasons would make a mass commune. This commune would be in turn federated at the regional and national level the aim being to create a national federation of Black communes, which would meet periodically in one or a number of mass assembly meetings.
This federation would be composed of elected or appointed delegates representing their local commune or council Such a national federal of communes would allow community councils from all over North America to work out common policies and speak with one voice on all matters affecting their communities or regions. It would thus have far more power than any single community council could However, to prevent this national federation from bureaucratic usurpation of power by political factions or opportunistic leaders, elections should be held regularly and delegates would be subject to recall at any time for misconduct, so that they remain under the control of the local communities they represent.
The Black community councils are really a type of grassroots movement made up of all the social formations of our people, the block and neighborhood committees, Labor, student and youth groups, (even the church, to a limited degree), social activist groups, and others to unite the various protest actions around a common program of struggle for this period. The campaigns for this period must utilize the tactics of direct mass action, as it is very important that the people themselves must realize a sense of their organized power. These grassroots associations will provide to the usually mass spontaneous actions, a form of organization whose social base is of the Black working class, instead of the usual Black middle class mis-leadership.
The Anarchists recognize these community councils as being a form of direct democracy, instead of the type of phony American "democracy," which is really nothing but control by politicians and businessmen. The councils are especially important because they provide embryonic self- rule and the beginnings of an alternative to the Capitalist economic system and its government. It is a way to undermine the government and make it an irrelevant dinosaur, because its services are no longer needed.
The Commune is also a Black revolutionary counterculture. It is the embryo of the new Black revolutionary society in the body of the old sick, dying one. It is the new lifestyle in microcosm, which contains the new Black social values and the new communal organizations, and institutions, which will become the sociopolitical infrastructure of the free society.
Our objective is to teach new Black social values of unity and struggle against the negative effects of white Capitalist society and culture. To do that we must build the Commune into a Black Consciousness movement to build race pride and respect, race and social awareness and to struggle against the Capitalist slave masters.
This Black communalism would be both a repository of Black culture and ideology. We need to change both our lives and our lifestyles, in order to deal with the many interpersonal contradictions that exist in our community. We could examine the Black family, Black male/female relationships, the mental health of the Black community, relations between the community and the white establishment and among Black people themselves.
We would hold Black consciousness raising sessions in schools, community centers, prisons and in Black communities all over North America-which would teach Black history and culture, new liberating social ideas and values to children and adults, as well as counseling and therapy techniques to resolve family and marital problems, all the while giving a Black revolutionary perspective to the issues of the day.
Our people must be made to see that the self-hatred, disunity, distrust, internecine violence and oppressive social conditions among Black people are the result of the legacy of African slavery and the present day effects of Capitalism. Finally the main objective of Black revolutionary culture is to agitate and organize Black people to struggle for their freedom.
As Steve Biko, the murdered South African revolutionary, has been quoted as saying:
"The call for Black consciousness is the most positive call to come from any group in the Black world for a long time. It is more than just a reactionary rejection of whites by Blacks... At the heart of this kind of thinking is the realization by Black that the most potent weapon in the hands of the oppressor is the mind of the oppressed. Once the latter has been so effectively manipulated and controlled by the oppressor as to make the oppressed believe that he is a liability to the white man, then there is nothing the oppressed can do that will really scare the powerful masters... The philosophy of Black consciousness, therefore expresses group pride and the determination by Blacks to rise up and attain the envisaged self."
By the "envisaged self," Biko refers to the Black self, a liberated psyche. It is that which we want to rescue with such a Black consciousness movement here in America. We need to counter Black self-hatred and the frivolous "party mentality. We also want to end the social degradation of our community, and rid it of drug addiction, prostitution, Black-on-Black crime, and other social evils that destroys the moral fiber of the Black community. Drugs and prostitution are mainly controlled by organized crime, and protected by the police, who accept bribes and gifts from gangsters. These negative social values, the so-called “dog-eat-dog” philosophy of the Capitalist system teach people to be individualists of the worst sort, willing to commit any kind of crime against each other, and to take advantage of each other. This oppressive culture is what we are fighting. As long as it exists, it will be hard to unify the people around a revolutionary political program.
2012 Let’s Organize the ‘Hood
2012 Let's Organize The 'Hood: Black Autonomy Federation Program
By: Black Autonomy Federation
Originally Published on November 29, 2012
What is the Let’s Organize the ‘Hood--Black Autonomy Federation?
The ideas of the present Let’s Organize the ‘Hood--Black Autonomy Federation (BAF) go back to 1994, when the Black Autonomy Collective was created in Atlanta, Ga., by seven black college students and five community activists. The collective soon spread to ten other cities in the U.S. and Canada and eventually involved several hundred people.
We believe that poor and working class people of African descent are the ones who can free us--not traditional civil rights leaders or politicians. Our first loyalty is to poor and working class black people because that is who we are, but we defend the rights and liberties of working class people of all nationalities. We want a revolution by the poor against the rich.
Our local Memphis chapter is part of what is called a “federation.” A federation is a mass membership organization in which each member has an equal say in running the organization. There is no single “leader” or group of “leaders” in our organization. The membership is the leadership!
All members work in their local chapters. The larger federation helps us to coordinate widespread strategy and tactics with each other and the people in each community in which we work.
Who Are We?
1. We are advocates for black revolution worldwide.
Unlike some other activist groups on the scene today, we are not satisfied with fighting for hand-outs or reforms. We don’t believe that African and non-white workers in the U.S. or anywhere in the world will receive their freedom under capitalism. We work toward building a social and economic system in which all land and machinery is held in common and all goods and services are produced and distributed based on the needs of the community--not the profits of a boss, corporation or “socialist” state. We utilize many methods to achieve this end while at the same time defending the minimal rights of workers and poor people.
2. We are opposed to politicians.
We believe in the total liberation of all people from all oppressive social conditions in work places, in schools, in the ‘hood, and in our cities. Not only do we fight against the oppression of the black community by the white power structure and those who support it, but also against the oppression of governments over people. It is for these reasons that we see no good in government. It is the government which is keeping us in prison and in poverty.
Poor and working class people are capable of running our own affairs. No so-called “leader” or politician has superior knowledge over us or anyone else.
3. We organize poor people.
We believe that it is black poor and working class people who have nothing to lose and who can change things--not middle class leaders or politicians. The Black Autonomy Federation is a black working class and poor people’s organization. We work toward building a society run by today’s “homeless,” “pimps,” “whores,” “gangstas,” “welfare moms,” “low income elderly,” “laborers,” “at-risk youth,” and “permanently unemployed”-- basically anyone who does not benefit from living in the so-called “land of the free.”
We Need You!
As we reorganize the Black Autonomy Federation, we are always looking for talented people to join our organization and represent their ‘hood. We are planning to again publish our newspaper, Black Autonomy, and to reorganize the Black Autonomy Prisoner Support Program and our grassroots organizing group against police brutality, (Memphis BA Copwatch).
The Memphis Black Autonomy Federation is open to all people of African descent.
By: Black Autonomy Federation
Originally Published on November 29, 2012
What is the Let’s Organize the ‘Hood--Black Autonomy Federation?
The ideas of the present Let’s Organize the ‘Hood--Black Autonomy Federation (BAF) go back to 1994, when the Black Autonomy Collective was created in Atlanta, Ga., by seven black college students and five community activists. The collective soon spread to ten other cities in the U.S. and Canada and eventually involved several hundred people.
We believe that poor and working class people of African descent are the ones who can free us--not traditional civil rights leaders or politicians. Our first loyalty is to poor and working class black people because that is who we are, but we defend the rights and liberties of working class people of all nationalities. We want a revolution by the poor against the rich.
Our local Memphis chapter is part of what is called a “federation.” A federation is a mass membership organization in which each member has an equal say in running the organization. There is no single “leader” or group of “leaders” in our organization. The membership is the leadership!
All members work in their local chapters. The larger federation helps us to coordinate widespread strategy and tactics with each other and the people in each community in which we work.
Who Are We?
1. We are advocates for black revolution worldwide.
Unlike some other activist groups on the scene today, we are not satisfied with fighting for hand-outs or reforms. We don’t believe that African and non-white workers in the U.S. or anywhere in the world will receive their freedom under capitalism. We work toward building a social and economic system in which all land and machinery is held in common and all goods and services are produced and distributed based on the needs of the community--not the profits of a boss, corporation or “socialist” state. We utilize many methods to achieve this end while at the same time defending the minimal rights of workers and poor people.
2. We are opposed to politicians.
We believe in the total liberation of all people from all oppressive social conditions in work places, in schools, in the ‘hood, and in our cities. Not only do we fight against the oppression of the black community by the white power structure and those who support it, but also against the oppression of governments over people. It is for these reasons that we see no good in government. It is the government which is keeping us in prison and in poverty.
Poor and working class people are capable of running our own affairs. No so-called “leader” or politician has superior knowledge over us or anyone else.
3. We organize poor people.
We believe that it is black poor and working class people who have nothing to lose and who can change things--not middle class leaders or politicians. The Black Autonomy Federation is a black working class and poor people’s organization. We work toward building a society run by today’s “homeless,” “pimps,” “whores,” “gangstas,” “welfare moms,” “low income elderly,” “laborers,” “at-risk youth,” and “permanently unemployed”-- basically anyone who does not benefit from living in the so-called “land of the free.”
We Need You!
As we reorganize the Black Autonomy Federation, we are always looking for talented people to join our organization and represent their ‘hood. We are planning to again publish our newspaper, Black Autonomy, and to reorganize the Black Autonomy Prisoner Support Program and our grassroots organizing group against police brutality, (Memphis BA Copwatch).
The Memphis Black Autonomy Federation is open to all people of African descent.
Black People Should Rebel
Black People Should Rebel By Any Means Necessary
By: Lorenzo Kom'boa Ervin
Originally Published on August 26, 2014
So, I have been approached several times about what I think about Ferguson by activists who say that all street protests are "useless", ineffective and should be stopped, and we should just go straight over to armed self-defense. I do not think that is the only lesson to be drawn from the Ferguson insurrection.
First, let me say that the insurrection in Ferguson was a local protest, although it has had national and even international effects. The fact is that we have no ability to control such events, and should not seek to "take them over". We also are not strong enough at this moment, nor well armed or well organized enough to go over strictly to armed self-defense alone. We need to win the masses of our people over to the idea of challenging the cops, the white ruling class, and its police state with means other than pacifism, while we eventually go beyond mass unarmed street fighting. Street fighting is an important stage, if done properly; it actually becomes a new form of protest.
We also need to educate the masses of people why they should fight, and not listen to Al Sharpton, Obama, or the old middle class civil rights misleaders and collaborators with the government. Those forces should be exposed, challenged and smashed. Can it be done? Just remember this about the Black Power movement of the 1960's, where the youth were rebelling in the streets of hundreds of American cities, and the later rise of the Black Panther Party all came while Dr. M.L. King, Jr. was still alive, and the civil right establishment was still in existence.
King and nonviolent civil right tendencies were superseded at the time as leaders and the movements that the people trusted. In fact, Kwame Toure (Stokely Carmichael) and H. Rap Brown had national reputations equal to Dr. King's, even though the white gov't and its media were dismissive of and in fear of the Black Power movement, and promoted Dr. King exclusively. I saw this with my own eyes.
To me, there are two extremes: the pacifists and the gov't who both call for "peaceful" demonstrations", and on the other side, those activists who claim that all demonstrations are ineffective, and we should abandon this tactic. We should abandon government-controlled, scripted, pacifist demonstrations, that I totally agree with, but when the masses rise up in rebellion, we should support that.
The Ferguson insurrection shows us that it is possible to have disruptive demonstrations over many days, and give in to neither extreme, even in the face of an army of cops and middle class pacification agents among the demonstrators. They showed us that a militant demonstration can be an event to communicate with and inspire the entire world, and a denunciation of the cops and the USA government.
They showed us that we can undermine the state, government and the cops through such demonstrations, and that even though they are not a revolution, they inspire the masses to revolt. They are an essential stage. They also expose like nothing else can and has done, that the gov't has been giving massive militant armaments to the local police to try to carry out police state measures, and transform the police into an army on the local level.
We should join mass rebellions which express both the deep seated hatred of white supremacy and police state terror, and carry them to a higher level militarily and politically, if we can. What happened to Michael Brown has happened thousands of time to Black youth in this country, the only thing different is that the people in his community decided to fight back. We need to have more, not less youth-based community protests all over the country like the Ferguson insurrection, while we change over to armed propaganda units taking full advantage of "open carry" laws.
We need clear strategies for victory at this stage: organize mass movements on the local level for community control of the police, and also begin the effort of dismantling of urban police forces, demilitarizing and disarming local police, and put all such power for armed forces/self defense in the hands of a community-based militia/self-defense force. Otherwise, we allow the political pimp like Al Charlatan and other to take over the agenda, and have the masses to wait and depend on federal intervention. The recently-created Huey P. Newton Rifle Club and the Socialist Rifle Association may be showing us a way forward, and we need to build groups like this all over the country whatever the immediate politics.
This is a start, but we need to ultimately go over to a full-fledged Black Partisan Militia and other such broader-based armed protest movements. I actually think that Black Autonomy Federation and all revolutionary social change movements should begin such preparations now, while still organizing around other issues to challenge the gov't. in this period. This is my own idea about all this, which is what was asked for, not that of any organization, and it is certainly not presented as long-term strategy, just in the moments in the wake of Ferguson's insurrection. It is not the final word, even armed self-defense is not enough, we need a revolution, but it is something that we need to be busy with in this immediate period.
By: Lorenzo Kom'boa Ervin
Originally Published on August 26, 2014
So, I have been approached several times about what I think about Ferguson by activists who say that all street protests are "useless", ineffective and should be stopped, and we should just go straight over to armed self-defense. I do not think that is the only lesson to be drawn from the Ferguson insurrection.
First, let me say that the insurrection in Ferguson was a local protest, although it has had national and even international effects. The fact is that we have no ability to control such events, and should not seek to "take them over". We also are not strong enough at this moment, nor well armed or well organized enough to go over strictly to armed self-defense alone. We need to win the masses of our people over to the idea of challenging the cops, the white ruling class, and its police state with means other than pacifism, while we eventually go beyond mass unarmed street fighting. Street fighting is an important stage, if done properly; it actually becomes a new form of protest.
We also need to educate the masses of people why they should fight, and not listen to Al Sharpton, Obama, or the old middle class civil rights misleaders and collaborators with the government. Those forces should be exposed, challenged and smashed. Can it be done? Just remember this about the Black Power movement of the 1960's, where the youth were rebelling in the streets of hundreds of American cities, and the later rise of the Black Panther Party all came while Dr. M.L. King, Jr. was still alive, and the civil right establishment was still in existence.
King and nonviolent civil right tendencies were superseded at the time as leaders and the movements that the people trusted. In fact, Kwame Toure (Stokely Carmichael) and H. Rap Brown had national reputations equal to Dr. King's, even though the white gov't and its media were dismissive of and in fear of the Black Power movement, and promoted Dr. King exclusively. I saw this with my own eyes.
To me, there are two extremes: the pacifists and the gov't who both call for "peaceful" demonstrations", and on the other side, those activists who claim that all demonstrations are ineffective, and we should abandon this tactic. We should abandon government-controlled, scripted, pacifist demonstrations, that I totally agree with, but when the masses rise up in rebellion, we should support that.
The Ferguson insurrection shows us that it is possible to have disruptive demonstrations over many days, and give in to neither extreme, even in the face of an army of cops and middle class pacification agents among the demonstrators. They showed us that a militant demonstration can be an event to communicate with and inspire the entire world, and a denunciation of the cops and the USA government.
They showed us that we can undermine the state, government and the cops through such demonstrations, and that even though they are not a revolution, they inspire the masses to revolt. They are an essential stage. They also expose like nothing else can and has done, that the gov't has been giving massive militant armaments to the local police to try to carry out police state measures, and transform the police into an army on the local level.
We should join mass rebellions which express both the deep seated hatred of white supremacy and police state terror, and carry them to a higher level militarily and politically, if we can. What happened to Michael Brown has happened thousands of time to Black youth in this country, the only thing different is that the people in his community decided to fight back. We need to have more, not less youth-based community protests all over the country like the Ferguson insurrection, while we change over to armed propaganda units taking full advantage of "open carry" laws.
We need clear strategies for victory at this stage: organize mass movements on the local level for community control of the police, and also begin the effort of dismantling of urban police forces, demilitarizing and disarming local police, and put all such power for armed forces/self defense in the hands of a community-based militia/self-defense force. Otherwise, we allow the political pimp like Al Charlatan and other to take over the agenda, and have the masses to wait and depend on federal intervention. The recently-created Huey P. Newton Rifle Club and the Socialist Rifle Association may be showing us a way forward, and we need to build groups like this all over the country whatever the immediate politics.
This is a start, but we need to ultimately go over to a full-fledged Black Partisan Militia and other such broader-based armed protest movements. I actually think that Black Autonomy Federation and all revolutionary social change movements should begin such preparations now, while still organizing around other issues to challenge the gov't. in this period. This is my own idea about all this, which is what was asked for, not that of any organization, and it is certainly not presented as long-term strategy, just in the moments in the wake of Ferguson's insurrection. It is not the final word, even armed self-defense is not enough, we need a revolution, but it is something that we need to be busy with in this immediate period.
Black Community Response
Black Community Response to Vigilante and Police Violence
By: Black Autonomy Federation
Originally Published on February 17, 2014
Yet another Black child has been murdered by racist cops or vigilantes. Until we have a revolution to dismantle this entire government, overturn white supremacy and police state rule, we will continue to have the racist results as in the Michael Dunn murder trial and others, if indeed a legal prosecution is what we were even seeing, instead of a Southern lynching show trial.
We will have to begin to arm ourselves, and to demand "Stop Police and Vigilante Murder!" It is clear that we need to violently overthrow and wipe out white vigilantes, while we overthrow the state. Damn capitalist law and order!
If it doesn't mean anything to them, why should it mean anything to us? Stand your ground laws are actually the same kind of lynch laws that existed before the civil rights movement to restrict Black rights and authoritize white violence against us.
If you look at the history of Southern lynch law in this country, the appeasement and excuse of the murder of Jordan Davis, by a white supremacist who has written letters bragging about it, is par for the course. It is insane white jury nullification to not convict this man of murder, and to engage in such behavior to try the murder victim in public while this murderous fascist can shout the most vile racist garbage in the media.
We cannot depend on the legal system and colonialist laws for our justice. No doubt it is clear to most of us, at the very least, that we still need an anti-lynching/anti-racist movement in this period, but that we need to rebel over this shit! No doubt this ridiculous result comes from the racist show trial given George Zimmerman to let him walk last year . Don't mourn, organize!
We, grassroots people, have to do it ourselves if we are to ever get on the road to freedom. Do what, you ask? Build a Black Partisan militia to patrol our communities. We must organize self-defense units to protect the Black community and its organizations, its youth and people. It is the police and the government who are the main perpetrators of violence against Black people.
They in turn encourage white vigilantes to kill and lynch Black people, with promises of lenient treatment if they do so. Every day we read of the police murdering and maiming the people in our community, all in the name of "law and order." This police brutality has included the use of deadly force against children as young as five years old and elderly persons 107 years old!
After years of mass organizing, we must then begin to disarm and demilitarize the police and force them to leave our community. Perhaps this can be done after a rebellion or insurrection drives them out, by creating a neighborhood militia, or perhaps they will have to be driven out by a street guerrilla force. We have no way of knowing exactly until we effectively organize armed opposition. We just know that they have to go. They are an oppressive occupying army, are not of our community, cannot understand its problems and do not identify with its people and their needs. Further, it is the corruption of the cops that protects organized crime and vice in our community in the first place, and Capitalism with its exploitative economic conditions which is responsible for all crime anyway.
Existing police forces should be replaced with the Black community’s own self-defense force, the Black Partisan Militia, made up of members of our community elected or appointed by their neighbors to that position, or from an existing street guerrilla force or political organization if the people agree.
They are not Black vigilantes or a drop squad who attack people just because of their race or neighborhood. It is important that the gun be under the control of the people and their political organizations, and any unjustified militia attack would be subject to immediate recall and dismissal of the armed force by the Community Control boards of an area if they abuse the people themselves.
This is so that we will have community control of the self-defense force, can begin to deal with fratricidal “Black-on-Black” crime and be able to defend ourselves from white racist or police attacks. With the increase of white racist violence today and the possibility of white mob action in the future, usually in the name of "law and order,” this community self-defense force is most important. The only question is: can we do this now?
We exist now under conditions of nominal legality and civil rights, but those gains are being rolled back by a succession of conservative governments. And after we do effective organizing to create armed self-defense and revolutionary violence, at some stage in the process of building up our community-based forces, it is inevitable that the white power structure will recognize the danger to itself represented by such a free Black commune and will then try to repress it. We must have the self-defense capability to resist. This concept of organizing a self-defense force accepts any level of violence that will be necessary to enforce the demands of the people and workers.
Yet these self-defense forces would not an elite “party vanguard,” a police force, or even a standing army in the usually thought of sense; they would be a neighborhood-based Black community militia, self-managed by the community itself: in other words, the people-in-arms. These militia organizations will allow us to engage in offensive or defensive actions, either in general community defense, or as part of an insurrection or underground resistance. If we have the right to govern ourselves, then clearly we have the right to defend our struggles, and is thus a form of limited revolutionary violence or "armed propaganda."
But what do we do right now in conditions of legality, to reclaim our community from violent racist cops? Do we sit around and debate the appropriateness of military preparation, when the enemy is in our community now, committing rape and murder of Black people, or do we hit back? How do we even get the idea across to our people, some of whom accept the police even if they criticize them?
How do we start to train the community for paramilitary operations? Black Autonomy believes we will have to educate the people about self-defense from the standpoint of it being essential against racist attacks and for self-determination. They should be made to understand we couldn't obtain our freedom or have social peace without the ability to defend our community projects and ourselves. Many Black people already have guns for their personal defense and thus are not pacifists, but they are also not organized.
We are facing extinction from class or race warfare. This government is capable of wiping us out if we just stand by and let it happen. So we must organize the masses of people into a Black Partisan militia. We need to have large scale neighborhood militia action to push out the police. The central task is for Black control of the Black community right now, its politics and economy. Not power for us as a movement, but to put that power in the hands of the people themselves, which is controlled right now by the white power structure.
We have to take over the cities, establish municipal communes and exercise self-government, as a vital step for independence. We are the majority in many of the major cities of this country and we should be able to control our own affairs (or at least obtain some autonomy), but as we should now be aware we won't ever get this community social power by voting for some Black Capitalist politician, or from passively depending for "salvation" on leaders of one sort or another.
We need self-governing community control of the Black community. The issue here is really that of a political confrontation between classes, one of the powerless poor against the rich and their police dogs. As long as we do not rule over our own affairs, others will continue to rule over us. These cops are recruited to beat and kill the poor and workers who begin to demand their rights and to dismantle this system. They are an occupying army in the Black community. Most people simply do not understand this; they persist in believing that there are “good cops” who will just impartially do their jobs. No such luck.
We must therefore build grassroots anti-racist/anti-cop movements to not only destabilize the state over their police misconduct, but also to educate the masses of people active in those struggles that it is an illusion to depend on the government for any justice, unless it is compelled through a resistance struggle. If you look at the situation now, only when the government is convinced there will be a “riot” or massive rebellion will they rein in and perhaps prosecute their racist, killer cops. It is not just to do simple justice. That’s why we fight and organize our own self-defense force.
By: Black Autonomy Federation
Originally Published on February 17, 2014
Yet another Black child has been murdered by racist cops or vigilantes. Until we have a revolution to dismantle this entire government, overturn white supremacy and police state rule, we will continue to have the racist results as in the Michael Dunn murder trial and others, if indeed a legal prosecution is what we were even seeing, instead of a Southern lynching show trial.
We will have to begin to arm ourselves, and to demand "Stop Police and Vigilante Murder!" It is clear that we need to violently overthrow and wipe out white vigilantes, while we overthrow the state. Damn capitalist law and order!
If it doesn't mean anything to them, why should it mean anything to us? Stand your ground laws are actually the same kind of lynch laws that existed before the civil rights movement to restrict Black rights and authoritize white violence against us.
If you look at the history of Southern lynch law in this country, the appeasement and excuse of the murder of Jordan Davis, by a white supremacist who has written letters bragging about it, is par for the course. It is insane white jury nullification to not convict this man of murder, and to engage in such behavior to try the murder victim in public while this murderous fascist can shout the most vile racist garbage in the media.
We cannot depend on the legal system and colonialist laws for our justice. No doubt it is clear to most of us, at the very least, that we still need an anti-lynching/anti-racist movement in this period, but that we need to rebel over this shit! No doubt this ridiculous result comes from the racist show trial given George Zimmerman to let him walk last year . Don't mourn, organize!
We, grassroots people, have to do it ourselves if we are to ever get on the road to freedom. Do what, you ask? Build a Black Partisan militia to patrol our communities. We must organize self-defense units to protect the Black community and its organizations, its youth and people. It is the police and the government who are the main perpetrators of violence against Black people.
They in turn encourage white vigilantes to kill and lynch Black people, with promises of lenient treatment if they do so. Every day we read of the police murdering and maiming the people in our community, all in the name of "law and order." This police brutality has included the use of deadly force against children as young as five years old and elderly persons 107 years old!
After years of mass organizing, we must then begin to disarm and demilitarize the police and force them to leave our community. Perhaps this can be done after a rebellion or insurrection drives them out, by creating a neighborhood militia, or perhaps they will have to be driven out by a street guerrilla force. We have no way of knowing exactly until we effectively organize armed opposition. We just know that they have to go. They are an oppressive occupying army, are not of our community, cannot understand its problems and do not identify with its people and their needs. Further, it is the corruption of the cops that protects organized crime and vice in our community in the first place, and Capitalism with its exploitative economic conditions which is responsible for all crime anyway.
Existing police forces should be replaced with the Black community’s own self-defense force, the Black Partisan Militia, made up of members of our community elected or appointed by their neighbors to that position, or from an existing street guerrilla force or political organization if the people agree.
They are not Black vigilantes or a drop squad who attack people just because of their race or neighborhood. It is important that the gun be under the control of the people and their political organizations, and any unjustified militia attack would be subject to immediate recall and dismissal of the armed force by the Community Control boards of an area if they abuse the people themselves.
This is so that we will have community control of the self-defense force, can begin to deal with fratricidal “Black-on-Black” crime and be able to defend ourselves from white racist or police attacks. With the increase of white racist violence today and the possibility of white mob action in the future, usually in the name of "law and order,” this community self-defense force is most important. The only question is: can we do this now?
We exist now under conditions of nominal legality and civil rights, but those gains are being rolled back by a succession of conservative governments. And after we do effective organizing to create armed self-defense and revolutionary violence, at some stage in the process of building up our community-based forces, it is inevitable that the white power structure will recognize the danger to itself represented by such a free Black commune and will then try to repress it. We must have the self-defense capability to resist. This concept of organizing a self-defense force accepts any level of violence that will be necessary to enforce the demands of the people and workers.
Yet these self-defense forces would not an elite “party vanguard,” a police force, or even a standing army in the usually thought of sense; they would be a neighborhood-based Black community militia, self-managed by the community itself: in other words, the people-in-arms. These militia organizations will allow us to engage in offensive or defensive actions, either in general community defense, or as part of an insurrection or underground resistance. If we have the right to govern ourselves, then clearly we have the right to defend our struggles, and is thus a form of limited revolutionary violence or "armed propaganda."
But what do we do right now in conditions of legality, to reclaim our community from violent racist cops? Do we sit around and debate the appropriateness of military preparation, when the enemy is in our community now, committing rape and murder of Black people, or do we hit back? How do we even get the idea across to our people, some of whom accept the police even if they criticize them?
How do we start to train the community for paramilitary operations? Black Autonomy believes we will have to educate the people about self-defense from the standpoint of it being essential against racist attacks and for self-determination. They should be made to understand we couldn't obtain our freedom or have social peace without the ability to defend our community projects and ourselves. Many Black people already have guns for their personal defense and thus are not pacifists, but they are also not organized.
We are facing extinction from class or race warfare. This government is capable of wiping us out if we just stand by and let it happen. So we must organize the masses of people into a Black Partisan militia. We need to have large scale neighborhood militia action to push out the police. The central task is for Black control of the Black community right now, its politics and economy. Not power for us as a movement, but to put that power in the hands of the people themselves, which is controlled right now by the white power structure.
We have to take over the cities, establish municipal communes and exercise self-government, as a vital step for independence. We are the majority in many of the major cities of this country and we should be able to control our own affairs (or at least obtain some autonomy), but as we should now be aware we won't ever get this community social power by voting for some Black Capitalist politician, or from passively depending for "salvation" on leaders of one sort or another.
We need self-governing community control of the Black community. The issue here is really that of a political confrontation between classes, one of the powerless poor against the rich and their police dogs. As long as we do not rule over our own affairs, others will continue to rule over us. These cops are recruited to beat and kill the poor and workers who begin to demand their rights and to dismantle this system. They are an occupying army in the Black community. Most people simply do not understand this; they persist in believing that there are “good cops” who will just impartially do their jobs. No such luck.
We must therefore build grassroots anti-racist/anti-cop movements to not only destabilize the state over their police misconduct, but also to educate the masses of people active in those struggles that it is an illusion to depend on the government for any justice, unless it is compelled through a resistance struggle. If you look at the situation now, only when the government is convinced there will be a “riot” or massive rebellion will they rein in and perhaps prosecute their racist, killer cops. It is not just to do simple justice. That’s why we fight and organize our own self-defense force.
There Is No Substitute For Social Revolution
There Is No Substitute For Social Revolution As A Mass Struggle
By: Lorenzo Kom'boa Ervin
Originally Published on January 2, 2014
The radical movement in this period needs to reject the Old Left ideal of the "revolutionary substitute". What is this about? The attempt of various cults, political parties, and opportunist leaderships to substitute a revolutionary organization purporting to take the place of the masses of people in revolutionary social change. Allegedly, they make the revolution in their name.
Yet, history records that it is the masses of people that make the revolution, not vanguard political organizations, though they may play a role. Some opportunist groups claim to be "riding the people to power", (like a flea on a dog's ass, one supposes) and we know how that turns out, not worker's democracy or people's self-management of the economy, but bureaucratic dictatorship, mass murder, gulags and state repression, capitalist production methods. Terror with the beat-down of the very masses that authoritarian socialists extol so much in their rhetoric.
The failure to recognize the decisive role of the people, as opposed to revolutionary politicians, theorists, and leaders has led us to the path of the current defeat of the Left and Socialism as mere caretakers of capitalist regimes in this period. These Leftists hold up Zimbabwe, Brazil, Venezuela or Nicaragua as sterling examples in this period of revolutionary regimes, but truthfully there has been no social revolution overturning capitalist property relations in either of these countries, and what is left of the revolutionary forces in Nicaragua and Zimbabwe have now been turned into a disgrace of an authoritarian one-man presidency, while the movement itself has faded away.
This has been repeated over and over with the subversion of one Old Left revolutionary movement after another in this period. They exist now not to overthrow capitalism, but to use it to have a "radical reform" government, and just provide social benefits to the masses and maintain enough popularity to stay in office. Even in the United States and other capitalist countries, Leftists and Black nationalists are rushing to join the government, now that Obama has been elected President, and is being used to hold back mass struggles, while posturing as a "progressive reformer".
They want to become a more popular, "Left version" of Obama, not to lead the masses to overthrow the capitalist regime itself, but reform it even more. They say they are doing this because "this is all we can win." If you limit yourself to radical reformism, maybe it is all you can win! That is what has led to years of treachery, political opportunism, repression, dictatorship, and ideological error in the so-called "ex-Soviet" states as well. Capitalism has subverted these ex-Communist parties into capitalism, and in some cases, like Russia, run by Mafia style ruling entities. In China, it is "capitalistic communism", a communist bureaucracy which runs a capitalist economy and state. They are now in a capitalist economic and political conglomeration in opposition to Euro-American capitalism, while running their own variant.
What are we left with here? We do not have to trapped in dogma and dead ideology; we can come up with an alternative. Too many groups and individuals, however, think you can mechanically take the practice of one country many years ago, and universally apply it through all time, as though it were gospel to all the countries of the world. We see now it has not worked, and has in fact, increased the suffering of the people of the world.
We need to put the masses in command, and recognize that all revolutionary social change must be as the result of mass action against capitalism, not vanguard cults to perpetuate their rule as the new masters of society. We know that the alternative of state socialism does not work, and in fact leads to more oppression by a "dictatorship of the state" [over the people] with state communism.
There is plenty of book theory at this time, but we still have not seen any viable alternative [be demonstrated] in this period to the state or capitalism. Certainly, we in Black Autonomy do not have all the alternatives, but we at least can ask the right questions.
By: Lorenzo Kom'boa Ervin
Originally Published on January 2, 2014
The radical movement in this period needs to reject the Old Left ideal of the "revolutionary substitute". What is this about? The attempt of various cults, political parties, and opportunist leaderships to substitute a revolutionary organization purporting to take the place of the masses of people in revolutionary social change. Allegedly, they make the revolution in their name.
Yet, history records that it is the masses of people that make the revolution, not vanguard political organizations, though they may play a role. Some opportunist groups claim to be "riding the people to power", (like a flea on a dog's ass, one supposes) and we know how that turns out, not worker's democracy or people's self-management of the economy, but bureaucratic dictatorship, mass murder, gulags and state repression, capitalist production methods. Terror with the beat-down of the very masses that authoritarian socialists extol so much in their rhetoric.
The failure to recognize the decisive role of the people, as opposed to revolutionary politicians, theorists, and leaders has led us to the path of the current defeat of the Left and Socialism as mere caretakers of capitalist regimes in this period. These Leftists hold up Zimbabwe, Brazil, Venezuela or Nicaragua as sterling examples in this period of revolutionary regimes, but truthfully there has been no social revolution overturning capitalist property relations in either of these countries, and what is left of the revolutionary forces in Nicaragua and Zimbabwe have now been turned into a disgrace of an authoritarian one-man presidency, while the movement itself has faded away.
This has been repeated over and over with the subversion of one Old Left revolutionary movement after another in this period. They exist now not to overthrow capitalism, but to use it to have a "radical reform" government, and just provide social benefits to the masses and maintain enough popularity to stay in office. Even in the United States and other capitalist countries, Leftists and Black nationalists are rushing to join the government, now that Obama has been elected President, and is being used to hold back mass struggles, while posturing as a "progressive reformer".
They want to become a more popular, "Left version" of Obama, not to lead the masses to overthrow the capitalist regime itself, but reform it even more. They say they are doing this because "this is all we can win." If you limit yourself to radical reformism, maybe it is all you can win! That is what has led to years of treachery, political opportunism, repression, dictatorship, and ideological error in the so-called "ex-Soviet" states as well. Capitalism has subverted these ex-Communist parties into capitalism, and in some cases, like Russia, run by Mafia style ruling entities. In China, it is "capitalistic communism", a communist bureaucracy which runs a capitalist economy and state. They are now in a capitalist economic and political conglomeration in opposition to Euro-American capitalism, while running their own variant.
What are we left with here? We do not have to trapped in dogma and dead ideology; we can come up with an alternative. Too many groups and individuals, however, think you can mechanically take the practice of one country many years ago, and universally apply it through all time, as though it were gospel to all the countries of the world. We see now it has not worked, and has in fact, increased the suffering of the people of the world.
We need to put the masses in command, and recognize that all revolutionary social change must be as the result of mass action against capitalism, not vanguard cults to perpetuate their rule as the new masters of society. We know that the alternative of state socialism does not work, and in fact leads to more oppression by a "dictatorship of the state" [over the people] with state communism.
There is plenty of book theory at this time, but we still have not seen any viable alternative [be demonstrated] in this period to the state or capitalism. Certainly, we in Black Autonomy do not have all the alternatives, but we at least can ask the right questions.
Every March Ain't A Protest
Every March Ain't A Protest: More Police Counterinsurgency In Memphis
By: Black Autonomy Federation
Originally Published on December 18, 2013
Memphis Black Autonomy Federation has talked before about how police counterinsurgency works in the city of Memphis. Yesterday, December 17, 2013, a demonstration against "police operations" took place with a small group of protesters, sponsored by the Mid-South Peace and Justice Center. Although Black people were visible in the event, this group itself is white controlled and works directly with the cops and city hall politicians. For years, they have been the "official protest movement" because they represent no threat to the status quo, in fact, they receive corporate and gov't grant money and other special privileges from city officials to mislead the masses of people.
Yesterday's so-called "people's protest against police operations” is no different. While Black people in this city are subjected to daily "stop and frisk" and other brutal police harassment, not to mention there have been 23 civilians killed by the police since February 2012, the majority of whom are Black, that did not concern these people. In fact, not one word was uttered about this campaign of police murder and all the lives that were lost, instead it was about middle class concerns over the way the police "does its business". See, this group thinks of itself as part of the police department and the governmental structure, designed to "keep the peace". That is one reason why we call them the "Peace Police".
Shamefully, their bogus "united front" called Memphis United, which was earlier discredited by working with the cops, the Mayor's office and the Chamber of Commerce to undermine the March 30, 2013 anti-Klan demonstration, resurfaced to "lead" this bogus event. These are the same people who when the Klan came to town, hid out themselves at an "alternate event", denounced the very idea of protesting the fascists, and characterized protesters as "troublemakers". They encouraged people to come to their location, rather than the downtown protest. Back then, they even worked with the cops on their security plan to hold back demonstrators and put us in a "protest pen". When word of this leaked out, they went out of existence in disgrace. We must never forget this treachery, and somehow believe that yesterday's "protest" was real, rather than play-acting or lobbying for more privileges for their middle class coalition.
This is the kind of counterinsurgency you have in this period, where bogus middle class front groups working with the cops and the political establishment try to undermine real grasroots protest movements of families whose husbands, sons and children were murdered by cops, who worked with Black Autonomy. This scam protest could not take place with the added connivance of the white corporate media, who fawn after the every move of this white-led campaign. The truth is they are not confronting the police about their civilian body count, they are talking about the "restrictions" on their rights. Of course, we do not want activists to be arresting for videotaping police, but that is not more important than people losing their lives because of excessive use of force by Memphis cops, and the police state they have created in Black poor and working class communities.
This all started on October 25, 2013 when the cops harassed and arrested people who were filming them during a hip hop event. Black Autonomy members were part of the attendees at the public event to protest the harassment, and we proposed a protest campaign at that time, rather than negotiations, filing a police internal affairs complaint, or begging for an apology from the cops who had hassled them. When we presented this, we were rejected and pushed out of the coalition at the time by a flunky of the Memphis Peace and Justice Center coalition, who said that we "threatened his authority." Now, it appears that they have found out what we were saying was true, and are trying to adopt some of the ideas we raised in our proposal, but do it in an underhanded way.
Yet, they still refuse to confront the cops over all the fatal police shootings in Memphis, which leads the entire country. So, this event was about their middle class privileges to video police, not that of fighting police brutality or defending the rights of poor and working people in the Black community.
It is important for radical activists to understand how this works in this period where left-liberals are used by the cops, so that activists and community organizers can know what is real and what is bogus, who are their enemies and who are their friends, and how the government and corporations can and does finance their own op positional movement with nonprofit organizations who accept corporate/government grants.
You also need to understand how this works so that you can see that this is not a real protest movement, it is instead a game of deception to keep those forces in power who have traditionally been there: the capitalist class and their corrupt politicians. So every march is not a genuine protest, some are political theatrics.
NO SELLOUT, STOP SNITCHING!
STOP POLICE MURDER, PROSECUTE THE COPS!
By: Black Autonomy Federation
Originally Published on December 18, 2013
Memphis Black Autonomy Federation has talked before about how police counterinsurgency works in the city of Memphis. Yesterday, December 17, 2013, a demonstration against "police operations" took place with a small group of protesters, sponsored by the Mid-South Peace and Justice Center. Although Black people were visible in the event, this group itself is white controlled and works directly with the cops and city hall politicians. For years, they have been the "official protest movement" because they represent no threat to the status quo, in fact, they receive corporate and gov't grant money and other special privileges from city officials to mislead the masses of people.
Yesterday's so-called "people's protest against police operations” is no different. While Black people in this city are subjected to daily "stop and frisk" and other brutal police harassment, not to mention there have been 23 civilians killed by the police since February 2012, the majority of whom are Black, that did not concern these people. In fact, not one word was uttered about this campaign of police murder and all the lives that were lost, instead it was about middle class concerns over the way the police "does its business". See, this group thinks of itself as part of the police department and the governmental structure, designed to "keep the peace". That is one reason why we call them the "Peace Police".
Shamefully, their bogus "united front" called Memphis United, which was earlier discredited by working with the cops, the Mayor's office and the Chamber of Commerce to undermine the March 30, 2013 anti-Klan demonstration, resurfaced to "lead" this bogus event. These are the same people who when the Klan came to town, hid out themselves at an "alternate event", denounced the very idea of protesting the fascists, and characterized protesters as "troublemakers". They encouraged people to come to their location, rather than the downtown protest. Back then, they even worked with the cops on their security plan to hold back demonstrators and put us in a "protest pen". When word of this leaked out, they went out of existence in disgrace. We must never forget this treachery, and somehow believe that yesterday's "protest" was real, rather than play-acting or lobbying for more privileges for their middle class coalition.
This is the kind of counterinsurgency you have in this period, where bogus middle class front groups working with the cops and the political establishment try to undermine real grasroots protest movements of families whose husbands, sons and children were murdered by cops, who worked with Black Autonomy. This scam protest could not take place with the added connivance of the white corporate media, who fawn after the every move of this white-led campaign. The truth is they are not confronting the police about their civilian body count, they are talking about the "restrictions" on their rights. Of course, we do not want activists to be arresting for videotaping police, but that is not more important than people losing their lives because of excessive use of force by Memphis cops, and the police state they have created in Black poor and working class communities.
This all started on October 25, 2013 when the cops harassed and arrested people who were filming them during a hip hop event. Black Autonomy members were part of the attendees at the public event to protest the harassment, and we proposed a protest campaign at that time, rather than negotiations, filing a police internal affairs complaint, or begging for an apology from the cops who had hassled them. When we presented this, we were rejected and pushed out of the coalition at the time by a flunky of the Memphis Peace and Justice Center coalition, who said that we "threatened his authority." Now, it appears that they have found out what we were saying was true, and are trying to adopt some of the ideas we raised in our proposal, but do it in an underhanded way.
Yet, they still refuse to confront the cops over all the fatal police shootings in Memphis, which leads the entire country. So, this event was about their middle class privileges to video police, not that of fighting police brutality or defending the rights of poor and working people in the Black community.
It is important for radical activists to understand how this works in this period where left-liberals are used by the cops, so that activists and community organizers can know what is real and what is bogus, who are their enemies and who are their friends, and how the government and corporations can and does finance their own op positional movement with nonprofit organizations who accept corporate/government grants.
You also need to understand how this works so that you can see that this is not a real protest movement, it is instead a game of deception to keep those forces in power who have traditionally been there: the capitalist class and their corrupt politicians. So every march is not a genuine protest, some are political theatrics.
NO SELLOUT, STOP SNITCHING!
STOP POLICE MURDER, PROSECUTE THE COPS!
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