{"id":1070,"date":"2012-04-13T17:15:17","date_gmt":"2012-04-13T17:15:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.blackactivistwg.org\/blog\/?p=1070"},"modified":"2012-12-03T17:17:13","modified_gmt":"2012-12-03T17:17:13","slug":"the-election-con-and-angela-davis-ignoring-history-and-losing-their-minds","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.blackactivistwg.org\/blog\/the-election-con-and-angela-davis-ignoring-history-and-losing-their-minds\/","title":{"rendered":"The election \u2018con\u2019 and Angela Davis: Ignoring history and losing their minds"},"content":{"rendered":"

Published in Intrepid Report on\u00a0April 13, 2012<\/a>
\nBy\u00a0Larry Pinkney<\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cNever be deceived that the rich will allow you to vote away their wealth.\u201d\u2014Lucy Parsons<\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

History is both a guide into the past and an important unfinished road map for the present and future.<\/p>\n

The ordinary everyday people\u2019s history of struggle in the United States and throughout the world is a long, illustrious, and protracted one. This history is\u00a0ongoing<\/em>\u00a0and includes Black, White, Brown, Red, and Yellow people. Nevertheless, when history\u2019s lessons are buried and ignored, the results are inevitably devastating.<\/p>\n

In this year of 2012, the United States has once more entered into an intensified period of election hype, or what can more accurately be described as the \u2018election\u2019\u00a0con game.<\/em>\u00a0The\u00a0evil of the two lessers<\/em>\u00a0(i.e. the Democrat and Republican parties) are once again distracting, lying, and hoodwinking the people by feigning political skirmishes with one another even as\u00a0both<\/em>\u00a0of these systemic symbiotically-joined political parties keep people locked into the mindset of a spurious left\/right paradigm of\u00a0perpetual<\/em>\u00a0systemic servitude<\/em>\u00a0in this nation.<\/p>\n

While the corporate-owned Republican Party continues to be brazen in its support for the corporate\/military elite of this nation, the Democrat Party\u2014with its current de facto war mongering, blood soaked, corporate-owned standard bearer Barack Obama\u2014engages in a stealthy, less brazen and very effective form of emaciating everyday ordinary people. Worse yet, there are certain iconic figures who know better but who have apparently chosen to portray Barack Obama\u2014and by association the Democrat Party\u2014as the alleged champions of the people. Sadly, one such iconic figure in this context is Angela Davis, whom it appears has lost her natural mind by actually declaring that Barack Obama \u201cidentifies with the Black radical tradition.\u201d This declaration by Angela Davis is not only sad but, just as importantly, it is grossly inaccurate and demeans and distorts the ongoing struggle on the part of Black, and indeed\u00a0<\/em>justice-loving people of\u00a0all<\/em>\u00a0colors, for political, economic, and social equity. It cannot be left unchallenged.<\/p>\n

Glen Ford, executive editor of BAR (Black Agenda Report<\/em>), is right on point in his recent piece entitled,\u00a0Angela Davis Has Lost Her Mind Over Obama<\/em><\/a>,<\/em>\u00a0wherein he writes,\u00a0\u201c<\/strong>Black Freedom Movement icon Angela Davis tells people that Barack Obama \u2018identifies with the Black radical tradition\u2019\u2014as if everything he has written, said and done in national politics has not been a repudiation of the Black radical tradition.\u201d In so doing, Prof. Davis \u201cis repudiating herself,\u00a0her history<\/em>,<\/em>\u00a0her comrades\u2014all in a foolish attempt to artificially graft a totally unworthy Barack Obama onto a place he not only does not belong, but most profoundly does not want to be.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n

Has Angela Davis forgotten, or is she ignoring, the fact the Barack Obama, once in office scrapped (even the official discussion of) single payer universal health care? Has she forgotten or ignored the fact that Barack Obama\u2019s bloody wars and continual military forays into Pakistan and Afghanistan,\u00a0etc.,<\/em>\u00a0have earned him the well-deserved title of the \u2018predator drone missile\u2019 president? Has she forgotten that Barack Obama, as president, supported the trillion dollar criminal \u2018bail out\u2019 of the U.S. corporate elite whose blood-sucking practices are emaciating everyday people of this nation and the world? Has Angela Davis somehow forgotten Barack Obama\u2019s bombing of North Africa? Has she forgotten that Barack Obama signed into law the draconian National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA of 2012) which provides for the indefinite detention and disappearances of U.S. citizens inside this country without charge, trial, or legal representation etc.? Has she forgotten Barack Obama\u2019s authorization of extrajudicial murders of U.S. citizens abroad and his continued support for kidnapping and torture as part of the U.S. program known as \u2018extraordinary rendition\u2019? Has she forgotten that Barack Obama has done nothing to seriously address and alleviate the plight of political prisoners held in prison gulags throughout the United States? Has she forgotten \u201cher [own] history?\u201d Indeed, has she lost her natural mind \u201cover Obama?!\u201d Sadly, it would seem so.<\/p>\n

If anything, the wily Barack Obama stands in very real\u00a0opposition<\/em>\u00a0not only to the \u201cBlack<\/em>\u00a0radical tradition,\u201d but also to the radical (i.e.,\u00a0root)<\/em>\u00a0traditions\u00a0of people of all colors in this nation and<\/em>\u00a0throughout the world<\/em>\u00a0who hunger and thirst for self determination, transparency in government, actualized justice, and an end to corporate\/military hegemony.<\/p>\n

Ignoring reality, including the reality of our own histories, plays into the hands of the systemic Democrat and Republican parties. It is obvious to politically conscious persons in this nation that elections are nothing more than a well contrived farce<\/em>\u2014a con game<\/em>\u00a0rigged against the people. It is also obvious to an increasing number of people that the U.S. \u2018main-stream\u2019 (i.e., corporate-stream) media is a pathetic joke which long ago abdicated even the pretense of\u00a0relevant, honest, and in-depth<\/em>\u00a0reporting; and this is precisely what the corporate controlled Democrat and Republican parties count on: a woefully uninformed, misinformed, distracted, and easily manipulated populace.<\/p>\n

We everyday people must remain vigilant, learn from, cherish, and guard the legacy of our histories of struggle for a more just and humane nation and world. We can ill afford to \u201crepudiate\u201d history and lose our minds.<\/em>\u00a0To the contrary, we must embrace our histories\u00a0remembering\u00a0<\/em>that history truly is both a guide into the past and an important unfinished roadmap for the present and future.<\/p>\n

Times are challenging and perilous. Remember: Each one, reach one. Each one, teach one, as we continue in this long and protracted collective struggle on behalf of ourselves, each other, and Mother Earth. \u2018Free your MINDS and change the SYSTEM.\u2019<\/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 Intrepid Report on\u00a0April 13, 2012<\/a>
By\u00a0Larry Pinkney<\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cNever be deceived that the rich will allow you to vote away their wealth.\u201d\u2014Lucy Parsons<\/p>\n

History is both a guide into the past and an important unfinished road map for the present and future.<\/p>\n

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