PRESSURE
Do you all realize what’s happening?
First, Kenneth Foster, now, Mychal Bell.
Pressure. Collective, organized pressure. Results.
Could it be due to the pressure that black folks are bringing to bear on the system of injustice?
The white man is organized, this is partly why he pooh-poohs the spasmodic violence of our communities. When we get organized, however, things begin to shake up. White folks get shook up, though that’s not our intention. Our intention should be to become mature, independent actors in our own lives and communities.
If you know the history of black movements – when we organize, they strategize – to break us up, break our nascent unification. And I’m not talking about us as a people being completely together on A-N-Y-T-H-I-N-G!! That’s not realistic. But when enuf of us organize and exert pressure – simultaneously – we seem to make shit happen. Selective, conditional, case-by-case organizing.
PRESSURE.
Something is happening in our black world and perhaps now we need to elevate our vision.
Instead of only “reacting” to injustices in a more coordinated, organized fashion (which is progress of sorts) we need to begin visioning what our future black community will look like, refining what our values are and differentiating them from the oppressor. If we and our oppressor share qualities/values, share behaviors and thought processes – which way too many of us fail to detect in ourselves – we ain’t leadin’ nobody nowhere but straight to hell.
Understand: I believe that we need to hash out our differences, need to deal with the “Isms within,” ‘we are not a monolith,’ etc, etc. This is no binary equation; we do this all at the same time.
PRESSURE
What does our positive black future look like? How do our communities look? Are sticking with patriarchy, or are we open to creating dynamic new ways of relating to each other? Can we drop the homophobia, the religiousity? Nothing damages us more than the promotion and espousal of counter-revolutionary, backwards philosophies handed down to us by, who?! The white man.
What kind of economies do we want to create, if any? How do we separate ourselves from this society while utilizing its resources for our own endeavors?
PRESSURE
We canNOT continue to participate blindly in the bankrupt institutions of this culture and progress. America is designed to fail us. As long as we maintain our individualistic, egoistic, myopic attachment to phony-democracy, to dichotomized, tru-black/patriarchal/elitist non-thinking, non-thinking that works for the monstrous, idiotic few – we can kiss our asses goodbye.
But here’s an elitist thought: where are the folks who are at the place where they can go vision at this altitude? Where is are our Fidel’s and Fidelia’s, crouched in the hills above DC or NYC, plotting the revolution?
What about you?!
3 Responses to “PRESSURE”
Leave a reply to darkdaughta Cancel reply
thefreeslave 
Hard to believe that we will need to lose more, hurt more, to be jolted into action, but it seems true at this point. You ask a valid question. Where are the revolutionaries?
They’re at home, smoking weed, watching TV, playing XBox, eating pizza and drinking soda, sitting on their $1200 couch, in their $200 tennis shoes, pretending everything is still OK, because they have enough money to play.
Same people who stopped voting because they’re apathetic to the process, to a system that has failed us all.
Free, you are the revolutionary. We are the revolutionaries. The AfroSpear! As was said during the Sandinista revolution against the left over Samosa Regime (Reagan/Bush fed regime), “the revolution began with the poets, this is the poets war.” The revolution begins in the hearts and minds of the people. I don’t think it will last if it “grows from the barrel of a gun.”
“What does our positive black future look like? How do our communities look? Are sticking with patriarchy, or are we open to creating dynamic new ways of relating to each other? Can we drop the homophobia, the religiousity? Nothing damages us more than the promotion and espousal of counter-revolutionary, backwards philosophies handed down to us by, who?! The white man.”
Sweet and on point.