{"id":1433,"date":"2011-10-06T14:44:04","date_gmt":"2011-10-06T20:44:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.blackactivistwg.org\/blog\/?p=1433"},"modified":"2014-04-15T11:52:37","modified_gmt":"2014-04-15T17:52:37","slug":"black-america-its-time-to-collectively-rejoin-the-developing-revolution","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.blackactivistwg.org\/blog\/black-america-its-time-to-collectively-rejoin-the-developing-revolution\/","title":{"rendered":"Black “America:” It’s Time to Collectively Rejoin the Developing Revolution"},"content":{"rendered":"

Published in Issue 444 of The Black Commentator on October 6, 2011<\/a>
\nRepublished in Intrepid Report on October 11, 2011<\/a>
\nRepublished in The Occupied Washington Post (Freedom Plaza, Washington, D.C.), November 2011\u00a0Issue\u00a0No. 1, Page 5, under the title, Black America: Time to Rejoin the Developing Revolution \u00a0(OCCUPIED_Washington_Post_pages_1_&_5<\/a>\u00a0– PDF)<\/em><\/p>\n

By Larry Pinkney<\/p>\n

What happens to a dream deferred?
\nDoes it dry up
\nlike a raisin in the sun?
\nOr fester like a sore–
\nAnd then run?
\nDoes it stink like rotten meat?
\nOr crust and sugar over–
\nlike a syrupy sweet?
\nMaybe it just sags
\nlike a heavy load.
\nOr does it explode?<\/em>
\n-Langston Hughes<\/p>\n

\u201cPower concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will.\u201d
\n-Frederick Douglass<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The struggles for economic, political, and social justice of everyday Black, White, Brown, Red, and Yellow peoples has been, and remains, a long, arduous, and protracted one. The legacy of Black America in this regard has been a particularly sterling one.<\/p>\n

The wealthy elite of this nation have always sought to mask, co-opt, and distort the history of these ongoing struggles. Since the very inception of this nation, color, gender, and class have consistently been used by the aforementioned wealthy elite to divide, stifle, and bury revolutionary movements. This is nothing new.<\/p>\n

However, the wealthy elite (now known as the corporate elite) have, like mad scientists, consistently tweaked their insidious designs against ordinary everyday people. Their objective to divide, distort, stifle, and bury genuine people\u2019s movements remains\u00a0precisely<\/em>\u00a0the same<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Even as the United States, and humankind as a whole, have entered into the 21st century, the corporate elite of this nation has dipped yet again into its hypocritical and bloody bag of tricks to neutralize the legitimate yearning of Black America (and everyday people of all colors) for economic, political, and social justice nationally and globally. A new trick was needed. The essence of that trick was put forth by the corporate elite in the form of the articulate, nominally \u201cblack,\u201d de facto Wall Street-backed Barack Obama.<\/p>\n

It was decided that the most effective way to neutralize Black America\u2019s cultural, political, economic, and social\u00a0struggle<\/em>\u00a0would be to present us with the\u00a0illusion<\/em>\u00a0of change, but with absolutely\u00a0no<\/em>\u00a0real systemic change at all. Thus, while many everyday people of all colors were euphorically celebrating and bamboozled by this\u00a0illusion<\/em>, the clock was in fact being turned\u00a0backwards<\/em>\u00a0by the corporate elite, by way of their articulate tool, the\u00a0corporate-brand\u00a0<\/em>Barack Obama.<\/p>\n

Under the corporate, profit-driven auspices of Barack Obama, joblessness among everyday Black people in this nation has virtually tripled. The incarceration rate of Black people under the Obama regime (including the privatization of prisons) has more than doubled. The rate of Black people attending colleges and universities has, and continues, to rapidly dwindle. The unconstitutional so-called \u201cPatriot Act\u201d has been extended and enhanced, as has the\u00a0U.S.\u00a0program of international kidnapping and torture known euphemistically as \u201cextraordinary rendition.\u201d Openness in government has become null and void. Universal single payer health care remains but \u201ca dream deferred.\u201d Judicial justice is now overwhelmingly a sick joke. And of course\u00a0U.S.\u00a0wars abroad, and economic austerity at home, continue unabated.<\/p>\n

None of these horrible realities should come as a surprise in view of the fact that Obama\u2019s past and present \u201chope and change<\/em>\u201d rhetoric was, and continues to be, nothing more than a\u00a0corporate-brand<\/em>\u00a0smoke screen<\/em>. Instead of \u201chope and change,\u201d what Black America (and indeed\u00a0all<\/em>\u00a0everyday people in this nation) have received, is the smoke and mirror reality of the corporate \/ military\u2019s systemic\u00a0rope and chain<\/em>.<\/p>\n

What Barack Obama arrogantly refers to as \u201cwhining\u201d on the part of everyday people who are in terrible pain, is what is known, in any serious democracy, as being held accountable to one\u2019s constituency.\u00a0But of course Obama\u2019s\u00a0de facto<\/em>\u00a0constituency<\/em>\u00a0is the corporate pharmaceutical, insurance, and banking, etc.\u00a0corporate elite<\/em>. It is time for everyday Black Americans to return to our proud legacy of serious struggle. We have been bamboozled and economically and politically pimped long enough. Enough already!<\/p>\n

Indeed, what\u00a0does<\/em>\u00a0happen to a dream deferred? The time has come for everyday Black Americans to collectively and resoundingly answer that question for Barack Obama\u00a0and\u00a0<\/em>his Democrat and Republican corporate accomplices. We must remember the words of Frederick Douglass: \u201cPower concedes nothing without a demand. It never has and it never will.\u201d It is time for\u00a0systemic<\/em>\u00a0change. Time to\u00a0collectively<\/em>\u00a0rejoin the developing revolution in this nation and around the world! Wake up and organize as a part of this protracted struggle while there is yet time!<\/p>\n

Onward, then, my sisters and brothers! Onward!<\/p>\n

Larry Pinkney<\/strong><\/em>\u00a0is a veteran of the Black Panther Party, the former Minister of Interior of the Republic of New Africa, a former political prisoner and the only American to have successfully self-authored his civil\/political rights case to the United Nations under the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. In connection with his political organizing activities, Pinkney was interviewed in 1988 on the nationally televised PBS News Hour, formerly known as The MacNeil\/Lehrer News Hour, and more recently on the nationally syndicated Alex Jones Show. Pinkney is a former university instructor of political science and international relations, and his writings have been published in various places, including The Boston Globe, San Francisco BayView newspaper, Black Commentator, Intrepid Report, Global Research (Canada), LINKE ZEITUNG (Germany), 107 Cowgate (Ireland and Scotland), and Mayihlome News (Azania\/South Africa). He is in the archives of Dr. Huey P. Newton (Stanford University, CA), cofounder of the Black Panther Party. For more about Larry Pinkney see the book,\u00a0Saying No to Power: Autobiography of a 20th Century Activist and Thinker<\/a>, by William Mandel [Introduction by Howard Zinn]. (Click\u00a0here<\/a>\u00a0to read excerpts from the book.)<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Published in Issue 444 of The Black Commentator on October 6, 2011<\/a>
Republished in Intrepid Report on October 11, 2011<\/a>
Republished in The Occupied Washington Post (Freedom Plaza, Washington, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[5,31,68,4],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.blackactivistwg.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1433"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.blackactivistwg.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.blackactivistwg.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.blackactivistwg.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.blackactivistwg.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1433"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"http:\/\/www.blackactivistwg.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1433\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3341,"href":"http:\/\/www.blackactivistwg.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1433\/revisions\/3341"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.blackactivistwg.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1433"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.blackactivistwg.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1433"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.blackactivistwg.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1433"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}