By Saswat Pattanayak







The legend of Sean Bell will forever ring a bell.

And it is in the interest of the larger humanity to remember this. His brutal murder by the “50 Shots” of state power is a grim reminder of the times we live in: of the democratic forces being reduced to serve the plutocratic interests.

Police force is not separable from state machinery. Indeed, the state power is as big as its police power. The more the state emerges powerful, the more it is so because of the cloak of brute power it wears on its sleeve.

Often times, on its grave.

Today’s massive demonstration in the heart of New York City by people from all quarters of life displaying their disgust at American police state will go down as irrelevant by the mainstream media. Indeed, it will not be quoted by the White House officials, not aired by FOX and CNN alike. It may not even find a place in the national dailies of China (as prominently as the New York Times decides to showcase arrests of Chinese prostitutes recently, to denounce its human rights records). But the cloak of power politics eventually leads the state to its demise. And people replace the power in the struggle. Even Kissinger ate his words. And Bush is no smarter.

That a police force, serving the “most democratic”, “free” country of the world, the famed glamorized NYPD, will kill an entirely innocent black youth and pull in 50 shots to get rid of an unarmed person and his unarmed friends, should not surprise us. That, subsequently the Mayor of the city who has an eye on White House will stand by the action, should not surprise us either. And naturally enough, the mass protests today in New York City amidst the otherwise times of religious festivities, were not conducted to express surprises.

And the media, as we know, love to cover only the surprises. Alas, today was a march for justice. And that’s almost a part of daily life for the average American. The means to seek justice possibly may be disputed. Marches and demonstrations are after all the tools of hopelessness. Yet, no denying the fact that the world can ill ignore this huge gathering of thousands of people against the most powerful forces in the world. And it’s a matter of time for the tools of hopelessness to turn themselves into rage machines of power reversals. At least, if we go by what the “first world” people of the world have to say in the following footages.

(All pictures and videos by Saswat Blog. Feel free to distribute.)

Tags: Saswat, Black Power, Racism, USA, Capitalism

Got this from Dr TSB of the media blog Drums in the Global Village.


Hey, Folks -

Yup, the first 6 hours of EYES ON THE PRIZE will, finally, be re-broadcast nationally on PBS’ “The American Experience” on the first three Mondays in October (Oct. 2, 9, 16) at 9:00 pm (check local listings). They’ll air 2 hours each Monday.

Hour 1 - “Awakenings” (1954-1965) — Emmett Till and Montgomery Bus Boycott

Hour 2 - “Fighting Back” (1957-62) — School Desegregation, including Little Rock and ‘Ol Miss.

Hour 3 - “Ain’t Scared of Your Jails” (1960-61) — Sit-ins and Freedom Rides

Hour 4 - “No Easy Walk” (1961-63) — Albany, Ga; March on Wash.; Birmingham

Hour 5 - “Mississippi: Is This America? (1962-64) — Medgar Evers and Miss. Freed. Summer

Hour 6 - “Bridge to Freedom” ( 1965) - Selma March

**Important - PBS is waiting to see the audience response to the first series before it commits to air the 2nd EYES series(8 hours). Though the first series is really inspirational, it is the 2nd series that is most relevant to the issues we’re dealing with today: the war; growing gap between rich and poor, etc. (It’s in the 2nd series that you see footage of the Dr. King speech in which he calls for “a radical redistribution of economic power.&rdquo It’s also in the 2nd series that you get the murder of Black Panthers Fred Hampton and Mark Clark in Chicago, the establishment of COINTELPRO, and the Attica Rebellion.

So, it would be great if folks would call their PBS station and let them know you: a) appreciate seeing the first series again and b) hope they’ll also air the second series.

Both the first AND second series will be available on VHS and DVD through PBS Video — but ONLY as institutional sales — no home video.

Thanks!
- judy
(Judy Richardson)

Tags: Saswat, History, Black Power, Racism, USA, Media

By Saswat Pattanayak

With February being declared and celebrated as the African-American Month in this country, it is only apt that we need to reflect upon the history a bit and evaluate for ourselves where we are up until now, and if this actually tantamount to celebration.

A couple of years ago, on my journey to the National Civil Rights Museum in Memphis, I did a small survey of the personalities, events and processes that are given due recognition and the tones attached to them. Specific to my interest was the reception to the most brilliant African-American by any yardstick: William Edward Burghardt Du Bois.

Since a couple of weeks now, I have been again approaching few students to get an idea of what they know of Du Bois and how they came to know of it. The students I interacted with came from different races, they studied various subjects and are well-educated in American schools.

The findings are predictable: there is an official version of telling history. We know it when we have the flawed historical account of Columbus (that he was a great sailor who discovered America!) or of Helen Keller (that she was a blind girl who lived the American Dream of demonstrating how anyone can do anything if one sets her mind at it). In case of Du Bois, it is no different at all. So the acclaimed Museum or the educated youths have the official history: that Du Bois was a great African American leader (some also hesitatingly add, “Pan-African” leader who founded NAACP and edited The Crisis).

What the official version never gets into is the roots. In case of Columbus, the history books don’t tell us that he was a greedy, inhuman oppressor who took pleasure in leading the murder trials and silencing thousands of indigenous peoples who had discovered America long before he even chanced upon it. In case of Helen Keller, the history books don’t tell us about her life spent amidst trade unions, calling for socialist revolution and standing up for the working class, and actually challenging American Dream by saying that it’s not an individual’s talent, but the overarching socio-political structure that creates standards of living.

Likewise, what most scholars today do not mention, let alone describe, is Du Bois’ firm rejection of the American capitalism (including the Black Capitalism) and how very emphatically he has proposed alternatives to the same. Most young people are clearly not aware of his political standpoints. And the text book biographies, when I was going through, never mentioned Du Bois’ politics either.

As though to celebrate him as a Black success in America, the extractions applied relate to his undeniable founding of an organization that encouraged people of every color and races to join force. That sounded to the mainstream historians as one cause of celebration that might have dawned upon the man in his American dream. Indeed, one book taught at the graduate level in the universities declares that Du Bois was in fact recipient of privileged education because of absence of racism in his school! (It conveniently misses out the discriminations he faced in Fisk University.) The books also take much pleasure in describing in detail the differences he had with Booker T Washington. The texts are full of grander narrative of a biographical sketch which is at its best, little informative, and in its worst, plain misleadingly boring.

Du Bois’ lifelong quest to improve the lot of humankind through active resistance to war-discrimination-capitalistic greed, to educate majority of people of their own shared histories of oppression by minority rulers, to enlighten us of our abject ignorance of social complexities, to encourage the pursuit of scientific outlook at understanding historical inequalities have all been omitted.

Omitted from essential readings are his indictment under the Foreign Agents Registration Act (where due to lack of evidence, he was subsequently released)! Omitted are refusals of the US Govt to grant him his passport when he was abroad, and so omitted are how he and his wife renounced the citizenships and became citizens of Ghana. After all, to create a legend, to put him on postage stamp (30 years after his death) demands that certain pages of his life be publicly censored. Unfortunately, the leaves of his life that have been trampled over contain the essence of all that he stood for. For social justice everywhere. None of the students I talked to could even guess that Du Bois had anything to do with the Left. And for them, and also because today marks his birthday, I reproduce the letter he wrote to CPUSA justifying why he must choose his side. His dreams may have been unfinished. But the reminders sure buzz:

The letter appeared in "The Worker" on Nov. 26, 1961:

“On the first day of October, 1961, I am applying for admission to membership in the Communist Party of the United States. I have been long and slow in coming to this conclusion, but at last my mind is settled.

In college I heard the name Karl Marx, but read none of his works, nor heard them explained. At the University of Berlin, I heard much of those thinkers who had definitively answered the theories of Marx, but again, we did not study what Marx himself had said. Nevertheless, I attended the meetings of the Socialist Party and considered myself a Socialist.

On my return to America, I taught and studied for sixteen years. I explored the theory of Socialism and studied the organized social life of American Negroes; but still I neither read or heard much of Marxism. Then I came to New York as a official of the new NAACP and editor of the Crisis Magazine. The NAACP was capitalist oriented and expected support from rich philanthropists.

But it had a strong Socialist element in its leadership in persons like Mary Ovington, William English Walling and Charles Edward Russell. Following their advice, I joined the Socialist Party in 1911. I knew then nothing of practical socialist politics and in the campaign of 1912, I found myself unwilling to vote the Socialist ticket, but advised Negroes to vote for Wilson. This was contrary to Socialist Party rules and consequently I resigned from the Socialist Party.

For the next twenty years I tried to develop a political way of life for myself and my people. I attacked the Democrats and Republicans for monopoly and disenfranchisement of Negroes; I attacked the Socialists for trying to segregate Southern Negro members; I praised the racial attitudes of the Communists, but opposed their tactics in the case of the Scottsboro boys and their advocacy of a Negro state. At the same time I began to study Karl Marx and the Communists; I read Das Kapital and other Communist literature; I hailed the Russian Revolution of 1917, but was puzzled at the contradictory news from Russia.

Finally in 1926, I began a new effort; I visited Communist lands. I went to the Soviet Union in 1926, 1936, 1949, and 1959; I saw the nation develop. I visited East Germany, Czechoslovakia and Poland. I spent ten weeks in China, traveling all over the land. Then this summer, I rested a month in Romania.

I was early convinced that Socialism was an excellent way of life, but I thought it might be reached by various methods. For Russia, I was convinced she had chosen the only path open to her at the time. I saw Scandinavia choosing a different method, half-way between Socialism and Capitalism. In the United States I saw Consumers Cooperation as a path from Capitalism to Socialism, while England, France, and Germany developed in the same direction in their own way. After the depression and the Second World War, I was disillusioned. The Progressive movement in the United States failed. The Cold War started. Capitalism called Communism a crime.

Today I have reached a firm conclusion:

Capitalism cannot reform itself; it is doomed to self-destruction. No universal selfishness can bring social good to all.

Communism--the effort to give all men what they need and to ask of each the best they can contribute--it has and will make mistakes, but today it marches triumphantly on in education and science, in home and food, with increased freedom of thought and deliverance from dogma. In the end Communism will triumph. I want to help bring that day.

The path of the American Communist Party is clear: It will provide the United States with a real Third Party and thus restore democracy to this land. It will call for:

1. Public ownership of natural resources and of all capital.
2. Public control of transportation and communications.
3. Abolition of poverty and limitation of personal income.
4. No exploitation of labor.
5. Social medicine, with hospitalization and care of the old.
6. Free education for all.
7. Training for jobs and jobs for all.
8. Discipline for growth and reform.
9. Freedom under law.
10. No dogmatic religion.

These aims are not crimes. They are practiced increasingly over the world. No nation can call itself free which does not allow its citizens to work for these ends.”

Tags: Saswat, Communism, Black Power, Racism, USA, Capitalism, History

By Saswat Pattanayak

It was a perfect tribute to Malcolm X. The country almost forgot to recollect or celebrate him on the day he was assassinated 41 years ago. It was perfect because he would have loved it this way.

He would not have loved to be idolized, by the system of exploitation he gave up his life struggling against. Neither would he have liked to be converted into a heritage site or a street name or a public controversial holiday. He would not have liked to be eulogized by the presidents nor discussed over in a relaxed talk show. He would not have wanted us to remember his face on the postage stamp nor to have him imprinted on colorful tees that could be worn in rallies.

In every way, the silence of betrayal that spirals the country’s knee-jerking responses to his death anniversary was the befitting tribute to Malcolm X. The betrayal is deafening at the point when God is being called upon every so often to bless America, as though the destiny of this good country were being authored by the people who inhabit it. Malcolm would have greatly differed today as he differed back in 1964 (April 3, in Cleveland, Ohio; “The Ballot or the Bullet&rdquo :

“Sitting at the table doesn’t make you a diner. You must be eating some of what’s on that plate. Being here in America doesn’t make you an American. Being born here in America doesn’t make you an American.”

Malcolm would have hated us to glorify him in this age of war-mongers and indifferent citizens voting the same military-industrial complex back to power time and again. He would have opined similarly as he did back in 1963, while speaking in New York City:

“If violence is wrong in America, violence is wrong abroad. If it is wrong to be violent defending black women and black children and black babies and black men, then it is wrong for America to draft us, and make us violent abroad in defense of her. And if it is right for America to draft us, and teach us how to be violent in defense of her, then it is right for you and me to do whatever is necessary to defend our own people right here in this country.”

Malcolm would have chided us for our naiveties. For the misplaced faith of the collective whole on reactionary forces. For mistaking hunger-for-power as democracy. For lack of conviction as successful personality. Just as he never minced his words while criticizing the most beloved president this country has seen, back on the Valentine’s Day of 1965:

“John F. Kennedy also saw that it was necessary for a new approach among the American Negroes. And during his entire term in office, he specialized in how to psycho the American Negro. Now, a lot of you all don't like my saying that, but I wouldn't ever take a stand on that if I didn't know what I was talking about. And I don't -- by living in this kind of society, pretty much around them -- and you know what I mean when I say "them" -- I learned to study them. You can think that they mean you some good ofttimes, but if you look at it a little closer you'll see that they don't mean you any good. That doesn't mean there aren't some of them who mean good. But it does mean that most of them don't mean good.

Kennedy's new approach was pretending to go along with us in our struggle for civil rights and different other forms of rights. But I remember the expose that Look magazine did on Meredith's situation in Mississippi. Look magazine did an expose showing that Robert Kennedy and Governor Wallace -- not Governor Wallace, Governor Barnett -- had made a deal, wherein the attorney general was going to come down and try and force Meredith into school, and Barnett was going to stand at the door, you know, and say, ‘No, you can't come in.’ He was going to get in anyway. But it was all arranged in advance. And then Barnett was supposed to keep the support of the white racists, because that's who he was holding up, and Kennedy would keep the support of the Negroes, because that's who he'd be holding up. That's -- it was a cut-and-dried deal. And it's not a secret; it was written, they write about it. But if that's a deal and that's a deal, how many other deals do you think go down? What you think is on the level is crookeder, brothers and sisters, than a pretzel, which is most crooked.”

Malcolm would have ridiculed the deep fascination of our present times with the minority celebrities, the well-meaning billionaires, the filthy rich colored sports and music successes. If he would not have brought the analogies of field and house slaves, he would have perhaps talked about tokenism, just as he did four decades back:

“I would like to point out that the approach that was used by the administration right on up until today -- see, even the present generation -- was designed skillfully to make it appear that they were trying to solve the problem when they actually weren't. They would deal with the conditions, but never the cause. They only gave us tokenism. Tokenism benefits only a few. It never benefits the masses, and the masses are the ones who have the problem, not the few. That one who benefits from tokenism, he doesn't want to be around us anyway -- that's why he picks up on the token.”

Or he would have really felt sad witnessing the current false pride among most of us, because we identify our entity and bask in glory, with the miniscule minority of us, assuming that since the ‘few’ among us made it, the onus lies on all of us to emulate (to pick up the tokens frantically and join the system unquestionably). He would have become infuriated at the repetition of the “dream” (which according to him, led to nothing other than the Black people marching from one dead president’s statue to another dead president’s statue) He would have felt exactly the way he did the year he was killed when he was 39:

“Whenever you see a Negro bragging about "he's the only one in his neighborhood," he's bragging. He's telling you in essence, "I'm surrounded by white folks," you know. "I love them, and they love me." Oh yes. And on his job "I'm the only one on my job." I've been listening to that stuff all my life, and the generation that's coming up, they're not going to be saying that. The generation that's coming up, everybody is going to look like an Uncle Tom to them. And you and I have to learn that in time, so that we don't pose that image when our people, when our young generation come up and begin to look at us.

The masses of our people still have bad housing, bad schooling, and inferior jobs, jobs that don't compensate with sufficient salary for them to carry on their life in this world. So that the problem for the masses has gone absolutely unsolved. The only ones for whom it has been solved are people like Whitney Young, who's supposed to be placed in the cabinet, so the rumors say. He'll be one of the first Black cabinet men. And that answers where he's at. And others who have been given jobs -- Carl Rowan, who was put over the USIA, who is very skillfully trying to make Africans think that the problem of Black men in this country is all solved.”

You know, the problem of the Black people in this country is still not solved. And therefore, you reside in our minds, brother, and your words reverberate.

Tags: Saswat, History, Black Power, Racism, USA

By Saswat Pattanayak

It was only natural that Rosa Parks received the unprecedented recognition, as the first woman in American history to lie in state at the Capitol, an honor usually reserved for Presidents of the United States.

After all, as the conservatives would have liked to put it: She was the perfect American woman. Securely married, well settled, employed and was a quiet, patient, spiritual woman. The American dreamer. One whose dream could be retold by Martin Luther King Jr. years later.

In the revisionist histories, there have been at least two versions of the same story. One that portrayed her as a humble woman, a seamstress, who got tired of segregation one day in December, 1955 and refused to give up her seat on a Montgomery, Alabama bus. Her individual action then led to a whole nationwide movement like magic. This led to the non-violent leader Martin Luther King, Jr., to lead the people down the long road to freedom, which was established with the end of segregation. And the world became free of discrimination in the United States.

Following this story, people wonder what would have happened to MLK if Parks would not have boarded that bus that day. And what would have happened of all of us. Yes, by all of us, I mean ALL OF US. Asians in America as well (We owe it all to the mutual freedom struggles, dammit. Else, today the Indian and Chinese software engineers would not be negotiating salaries in the States. I wonder if most of the American born kids of Asian heritage have any idea of the connections. Or if all the temporary workers realize the saga of exploitation amidst the glory of dollarizations.)

This version also relates to the idea that the trip was not planned. Indeed, Rosa Parks has said on various occasions that she had not planned to be arrested. She had boarded the bus to reach home.

The second version takes a stab at the first and claims, well, you see, Rosa Parks was not tired (indeed Park has said this too). And that she was not the first one to do it anyway. She was required to be there. That she was the perfect case for the NAACP and all plans were underway. Time magazine wrote of her: “Parks was not the first to be detained for this offense. Eight months earlier, Claudette Colvin, 15, refused to give up her seat and was arrested. Black activists met with this girl to determine if she would make a good test case — as secretary of the local N.A.A.C.P., Parks attended the meeting — but it was decided that a more “upstanding” candidate was necessary to withstand the scrutiny of the courts and the press. And then in October, a young woman named Mary Louise Smith was arrested; N.A.A.C.P. leaders rejected her too as their vehicle, looking for someone more able to withstand media scrutiny. Smith paid the fine and was released.”

Hence this version demystifies the previous version and basically says, the trip was well planned. And that MLK was anyway going to lead the movement since he knew it was coming. And that the legendary trade union leader E. D. Nixon apparently said, “My God, look what segregation has put in my hands!” Parks was the ideal plaintiff for a test case against city and state segregation laws.

Both versions do not tell the story. Because they claim to be the stories themselves. Rosa Parks was an event, not a process. And the event is being confused as being the process. After all its easy to recall an event, celebrate and normalize it. MLK has become a national event today. Malcolm X and Paul Robeson are today featuring on the postage stamps. And Rosa Parks is an icon today—of righteousness, humbleness and generosity.

Let’s reset the contexts. The prepositions:
a. Rosa Parks was married to Raymond Parks. Actually after her husband’s death in 1977, she even co-founded an organization named after both of them. And yes, Raymond Parks was the force behind her. We shall soon need to discuss who Raymond Parks was since no one pretty much discusses him.

b. Rosa Parks was a social activist long before the bus event. She was involved in a process that culminated in the event. We shall need to understand the processes that led to her actions.

What do we know about Raymond Parks? Well, the official foundation named after both “The Rosa and Raymond Parks Institute” says the following about Raymond:

"Raymond Parks married Rosa McCauley December 18, 1932. He was a barber from Wedowee in Randolph County, Alabama. He had little formal education but a thirst for knowledge and a no nonsense approach to life. He supported his wife's "Quiet Strength" and encouraged youth to get a good education to sup-port themselves, their families and to eliminate discrimination in this country.”

If you notice the page, there are just two pictures of Rosa. Nothing about Raymond.

Wow!

Part I:

Well, to begin with, Raymond was a barber alright. But he was an activist way before Rosa had stepped in. So much so that he was raising funds for the National Committee to Save the Scottsboro Boys! Does that sound a bell? So the story begins from here. What has been conveniently forgotten in the recent recalling of history is that the case of Scottsboro Boys was the first event that actually put the process of struggle in place.

It involved the alleged gang rape of two white girls by nine black teenagers on the Southern Railroad freight run from Chattanooga to Memphis on March 25, 1931. And yes, this was a case that the NAACP then during the 30's refused to take up.

“The NAACP, which might have been expected to rush to the defense of the Scottsboro Boys, did not. Rape was a politically explosive charge in the South, and the NAACP was concerned about damage to its effectiveness that might result if it turned out some or all of the Boys were guilty. Instead, it was the Communist Party that moved aggressively to make the Scottsboro case their own…. The Communist Party, through its legal arm, the International Labor Defense (ILD), pronounced the case against the Boys a “murderous frame-up” and began efforts, ultimately successful, to be named as their attorneys. The NAACP, a slow-moving bureaucracy, finally came to the realization that the Scottsboro Boys were most likely innocent and that leadership in the case would have large public relations benefits. As a last-ditch effort to beat back the ILD in the battle over representation, NAACP officials persuaded renowned defense attorney Clarence Darrow to take their case to Alabama. But it was by then too late. The Scottsboro Boys, for better or worse, cast their lots with the Communists who, in the South, were “treated with only slightly more courtesy than a gang of rapists.”

Scottsboro Boys thus rejected NAACP’s offer and sought the help from the more radical leftist activists. And Raymond Parks was working in support of the Boys and promote radicalism within the NAACP. (For a short time much later, under Nixon, the radicalized NAACP worked together with the ILD to call for anti-lynching laws.) Rosa Parks got involved with the case of the Boys by marrying Raymond in 1932. Raymond was at that time collecting money to support the Scottsboro Boys. After marrying, Rosa took a number of jobs, ranging from domestic worker to hospital aide. At her husband’s urging, she finished her high school studies in 1933, at a time when less than seven percent of African Americans had a high school diploma. Despite the Jim Crow laws that made political participation by blacks difficult, she persevered in registering to vote, succeeding on her third try. This was made possible because both of them were members of the Voters’ League.

Part II:

In December 1943, after 11 years of marriage with Raymond who was a radical leftist activist, Parks became active in the American Civil Rights Movement, joined the Montgomery chapter of the NAACP, and was elected volunteer secretary to its president, Edgar Nixon. Lest we forget, Nixon was a renowned trade unionist of the time. He became president of the Alabama NAACP only in 1947 and radicalized it. He was a close associate of Philip Randolph, the renowned labor leader (again whose stories are hardly discussed). Nixon naturally came in problems with the moderates. He resigned qith disgust from the Montgomery Improvement Association (MIA) which was being headed by Martin Luther King, Jr., as its president.

Nixon died unsung, although he was the one without whom the bus boycott could never have taken place as a process. Remember that Nixon put up his home as security to post the bond for Parks!

Not only Nixon, who was on the political left of the things and was conveniently shoved to the history’s closed pages, but we need to remember Clifford Durr (1899 – 1975) who was an Alabama lawyer who defended activists and others accused of disloyalty during the New Deal and McCarthy eras. He was the one who represented Rosa Parks in her challenge to the constitutionality of the ordinance requiring the segregation of passengers on buses in Montgomery that launched the Montgomery Bus Boycott.

Who was Durr? He was branded as a communist and was put under FBI surveillance in 1942, because he had defended a colleague accused of left-wing political associations. His wife’s vigorous support for racial equality and voting rights for blacks and their friendship with Jessica Mitford, a member of the Communist Party, made both of them even more suspect. The FBI stepped up its interest in Durr in 1949, when he joined the National Lawyers Guild. He subsequently became the President of the Guild! And yes, hold on, Durr's wife had employed Rosa Parks as the seamstress.

Durr called the jail when authorities refused to tell Nixon what the charges against Parks were and he and his wife accompanied Nixon to the jail when Nixon bailed her out. Nixon and Durr then went to the Parks’ home to discuss whether she was prepared to fight the charges against her. Parks was then as aforesaid, working as voluntary secretary to Nixon.

They had together waited for a politicized Parks to come to the scene. For 23 years now, Rosa Parks had support of her husband who was involved in several progressive struggles including Scottsboro defense, the campaign against lynching, and the struggle for voter and citizenship rights. When she did not give up her seat on that bus, it was culmination of the long process of revolution by resistance.

It's another matter, this third version of progressive saga-- of active involvement of left wing leaders and activists, always disgraced by both the mainstream white liberals and the cautious black leadership in the US-- has been hijacked and replaced as an odd event for national celebration--by moderate activists and revisionist historians.

It must have pained her, but in her book “Quiet Strength”, Rosa Parks is categorical about one thing, that she did not change anything alone: “Four decades later I am still uncomfortable with the credit given to me for starting the bus boycott. I would like [people] to know I was not the only person involved. I was just one of many who fought for freedom.”

And yet this one of many has been canonized. For it helps to canonize than to contextualize. The dangers, as the establishments notice are not the heroes themselves. It is their heroic acts as part of a larger process that inspire generations. It is not individual acts of pacifying moderate church leaders, but radicalized moves by barbers like Raymond and lawyers like Durr and angry seamstresses like Rosa Parks who had taken to the streets to join worldwide radical movements addressing cases like Scottboro Boys or Labor Unions.

But if we go back to those pages, we will be flooded with gory images, not legendary icons. History of struggles have been fought with political aims and those aims of yesteryears conflict with the political agendas of today's. Hence the attempts to iconize the angry freedom fighters.

After all, all icons look good on statues—they always put a smile on their lips.

Tags: Saswat, Black Power, Feminism, Communism, USA, History

I had a period of silence. And it was deafening.

The so-called natural disasters are no more within the control of the nature anymore. Not just do disasters of such scale continue to persist (despite the fact that there should be none, considering the “progress” we have made in terms of our understanding of nature) because of human interference in ecological balance (what with the high-rises, the nuclear underground/water tests, the unusual warming), but even the aftermaths of the disasters continue to ravage human lives (which are logically most extremely avoidable).

So the most recent (in)human disaster has a name: Katrina. In the few subsequent blog posts, I shall publish in entirety some reactions, responses and revolutionary stances that few people are taking everyday of their lives and which need to be emulated.

Personally speaking, I have few reservations about the donation-charity society. By going this way, we are absolving the government we elect of its role: which is to conduct itself in accordance to the demands of the social situation. I would be far better to see the anger than the gratitude in the face of victims. And my heart does not go out to them because they are in a state of dismay. My whole self goes, because they are angry. Agitated. This is the wake-up call.

Tags: Saswat, Environment, USA, Black Power, Racism

Complexities within the South Asian communities are generously explored, Dinesh D’Souza and Deepak Chopra are loudly bashed, and the “model minority suicide” is critically examined. I am yet to come across anyone who is anywhere close to Vijay Prashad in terms of analyzing the “Brown Folk”.

The Karma of Brown Folk is masterly narrated, well researched, originally argues and mustly recommended.

And Vijay Prashad who teaches International Studies at Trinity College, Hartford, CT, has indeed produced this classic to challenge classical myths. More power!

Tags: Saswat, Literature, Communism, Racism, Black Power

Long Walk to Freedom
Mandela's commitments towards the oppressed cause--in defining and achieving a sense of freedom for self, by trying to gain it for everybody else. How fortunate are we that Mandela's own words are available for us to inspire us for all times to come!
Most of this autobiography was written secretly while Mandela was imprisoned for 27 years on Robben Island by South Africa's apartheid regime.

Tags: Saswat, Africa, Colonialism, Communism, Black Power, Literature

By Saswat Pattanayak

Why is only a penny brown and got Lincoln on it?
Is that why they leave it on the ground.
-Amiri Baraka

The update about Baraka, the poet of the oppressed, is that he is not much talked about anymore. The sudden silence around him is a tragedy of our times. But it should come as no surprise. Going by a trend of how the system engulfs the same talents who once adorn its progressive horizons as cultural icons (albeit, countercultural icons, but icons nevertheless) it should come as no surprise that Baraka, the once emulated and idolized hero of the revolutionary times is not even reduced to a legend any longer.

LeRoi Jones, as he was known during the Beat period of early 1960’s, Baraka was companion to Allen Ginsberg, Frank O’Hara, and Gilbert Sorrentino. After the death of Malcolm X, Baraka became the Black cultural nationalist founding the Black Arts Repertory Theater School in Harlem. Till 1975, Baraka was well adored as the forerunner of black nationalism and culture.

Pause.

Lets get back to Paul Robeson. Or farther down the times to WEB Du Bois. As these brilliant minds served the interest of the groups that believed in the binaries of race stratification, they were hero-worshipped. Du Bois was looked at as the epitome of black intellect. Robeson was perceived as the epitome of black vigor. Towards the end of their lives, both of them had famously joined the world revolutionary struggles to condemn any form of global imperialistic designs. They reported that peoples of the world, if worked in unison, would change the face of the world, given the shared oppressed history of the colonized and the enslaved. That peoples of the world wanted peace at any cost and that was to come only by combating the world capitalism. As the world was becoming more visibly devoid of territorially encroached and was emerging as economically subjugated by interest groups, no narrow agenda of nationalistic fervor was going to do the trick. On the contrary, narrow racial agendas were going to be played up well by the ruling class to fight one against another by showering favoritism and encouraging suspicions among the oppressed groups.


As Du Bois, the greatest of all Black scholars ever, formally joined the Communist Party and Robeson, the greatest of all Black athletes ever, supported the cause of international communism, all hell broke loose. The avowed religious Blacks, the comfortable leaders of the civil rights movement who wanted to work with the system (and not against it) and the politically correct ones belonging to the minorities whose families started reaping benefits (however silly that might be the case) started distancing themselves from these erstwhile heroes, even as they were still alive. Du Bois died tragically in Ghana, his revolutionary writings hardly honored and remained a literary icon in library corners of diversity loving campuses. Robeson died unwept, unknown and unsung.

Amiri Baraka after 1975 shunned the nationalistic struggles, called it fascist in nature, called for world unity of oppressed people in identifying and combating the class enemies. He became a pronounced Third World exponent, cried freedom for the majority of the world who suffered under tyrannical rules disguising as democracies. Once the focus shifted, like it happened with both Martin Luther King Jr., and Malcolm X during their last few years of life, there was concern from three different quarters: the black nationalists who were not willing to budge from their agenda, the white racists who oh-so-hated Communism and the politically correct mix of different races who felt offended by such shifts that did not further their interests in their stronghold of media, military and state machinery. Baraka said, "I see art as a weapon of revolution. I define revolution in Marxist terms. Once I defined revolution in Nationalist terms. But I came to my Marxist view as a result of having struggled as a Nationalist and found certain dead ends theoretically and ideologically, as far as Nationalism was concerned and had to reach out for the communist ideology."

As the poet laureate of New Jersey, when Baraka recited his poetry “Somebody Blew Up America” (reproduced here), he was accused of anti-Semitism. Of course he was asked to relinquish his position. Not just the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), but even many black so-called leaders came forward to ridicule him. Such is the irony of the times that the beat poet, the radical free voice who lent his creative voice to all peoples of color of the world had to come down with an explanation to prove his authenticity. http://www.amiribaraka.com/speech100202.html After that period of gloom, I saw him on an interview at a Sundance documentary called “The First Amendment Project” and noticed that his works are being sold on his own site for $5 onwards!

The entire poem written by the revolutionary poet Amiri Baraka is reproduced below. If allowed to add, I would only suggest an additional line: “Who are these ungrateful peoples of a contented era? Who forgot their own poet, the fearless poet who called a spade a spade, a violence a violence, a revolution a revolution?” Read More...

Tags: Saswat, Black Power, Literature, Racism, Communism, USA

Malik, Jared, Todd and I, the four usual suspects held our Sunday meeting. It went well, except that it turned out to be even more gleefully unmethodical than we had thought it would.

Crash had a sequel coming, called Trash. It was not Jackson who was being vied for, rather the magnitude of black innocent brothers who were being irresponsibly imprisoned that the issue found a channel through the MJ trial. Was Adorno alright about culture industry? And McLuhan more than the messages?

It was quite a journey. There are obviously gaps we need to bridge, journeys we have to pave a common path for, and ideas we have to look at their merits. But the struggle at understanding and getting educated over is one far from over.

Tags: Saswat, USA, Black Power

Todd introduced Jared and I to the journalist-activist and a wonderful human being Don Rojas.

Leading an extraordinary life with myriad blend of experiences which I shall detail in near future, doth not come easy. But what keeps him still way up there for all of us to emulate is his undying spirit to listen, articulate and educate us at the crossroads.

Thank you.

Tags: Saswat, Communism, Black Power, Media

Mumia's latest post on Oakland's war against schoolchildren

Several years ago, the great activist and prison abolitionist, Angela Davis, told me that California prison guards make more money than the state's college professors.

I was dumbfounded. But it told me all I wanted to know about how the State values its places of repression, and devalues places of education.

I thought of that conversation when I heard about the latest 'financial crisis' facing the Oakland Unified School District, the state's takeover by an undemocratic agency, and the subsequent threats of cuts, of cutbacks, and the ever-present lure of charter schools. Read More...

Tags: Saswat, Black Power, Capitalism, Racism

If you have already checked the Free Mumia series on the site, here’s the latest update on the book.
I guess we need a Free Speech and Expression series alongside.

Tags: Saswat, Literature, Black Power, Academic

Malcolm X lives on. And the legands are told over again. This one is the newest.
Lorenzo Thomas reviews the book on Malcolm X--Critical Lives: Malcolm X -- by Kofi Natambu (Indianapolis: Alpha Books)
The short but astonishingly eventful life of Malcolm X—to some, more properly and
reverently, El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz—has, in the years since his assassination at the
lectern in Harlem’s Audubon Ballroom, achieved mythic proportions. His Autobiography
is a classic American story that ranks with Benjamin Franklin’s and Booker T.
Washington’s; Spike Lee produced an epic movie based on that life; the Postal Service
has commemorated it with a stamp; and people are willing to bid hundreds of thousands
of dollars to purchase his memorabilia.
Read More...

Tags: Saswat, Black Power, History, USA

Dr Todd S Burroughs, who is working on the biography of Mumia Abu Jamal, has allowed me to publish a series of articles for Saswat. com.
They can be found here.

Tags: Saswat, Black Power, Literature, History

Chicago Defender Editorial on why Journalism needs more Palmers and Jarretts for the 21st
century:

In the last four months, the Black journalism world, and
Chicago in particular, lost two esteemed colleagues in
Vernon Jarrett and Lu Palmer. The latter died Sunday night
of pneumonia, and it was cancer that took the life of the
former in May. Read More...

Tags: Saswat, Media, Black Power, Racism, History, USA

|

Gil Scott-Heron's poem on Peace is a deep resonant voice during times of war. Peace is not just absence of war, but also absence of preparation for war....

Work For Peace---
Introduction:
Back when Eisenhower was the President
Golf courses was where most of his time was spent.
So I never paid much attention to what the President said
Because in general, I believed the General was politically dead,
But he always seemed to know how muscles were going to be

flexed
He kept mumbling something about a military-industrial complex.

The military and the monetary
The military and the monetary
The military and the monetary Read More...

Tags: Saswat, Literature, Black Power, USA

|

The democratic politics of appeasement continues for the forthcoming elections. The African-Americans of course are at the receiving end of this tokenism.
Alton H Maddox Jr. writes to the AmNews
Caveat emptor: Black voters beware!
Over the next three months, the Kerry-Edwards presidential ticket will be making frequent visits to Black churches, hoping and praying that its loyal Black constituents will not look under the hood of A Strong, Respected America, the 2004 Democratic National Platform. When Sen. John Kerry and Sen. John Edwards are unavailable, Black used-car salespersons and escorts will be employed to keep Blacks distracted until November 2.

Unfortunately, most Blacks would rather listen to puffery than read the national platform of the Democratic Party. After the political season is over, these unscrupulous salespersons will resume their duties as Black Judas goats. Its all about the money and living large. This bait-and-switch gimmick repeats itself every four years. Read More...

Tags: Saswat, Black Power, USA, Capitalism

Ta-Nehisi Coates writes about why the hanging judge can't keep his hands to himself, in an article "Crouching Stanley, Hidden Gangsta"

I reserve the right to be a nigger—Aaron McGruder.

Stanley Crouch is a gangsta rapper. Throughout his career, Crouch has moved through black nationalism, bohemia, and places we haven't yet developed the vocab to name. But if there's one thing we've gleaned from Crouch's recent assault on novelist and critic Dale Peck, it is this—we have found Crouch's muse, and his name is Suge Knight. Read More...

Tags: Saswat, History, Racism, Black Power

|

I found on email a refreshingly different critique on Barack Obama by Malik Al-Arkam. The self-adulation must stop, the author hints. And the same person cannot serve the oppressed and the oppressors at the same time, for the interests will clash eventually, Al-Arkam emphatically states.

This may be politically incorrect, but it is politically very relevant.
Mr. Obama's rosy rhetoric ignores American apartheid:

To be sure Mr. Barack Obama has many admirable qualities. He is a Black man who has worked long and hard to elevate himself in an intensely racist society. He loves his wife and daughters. He has a social conscience. He has worked to secure civil rights for the downtrodden in Chicago. As a African-American who also beat the odds by fighting my way out of the segregated South and going on to earn an honors degree at Harvard College and as one who lived in East Africa, I can identify with Mr. Obama in several ways. However, an objective analysis of Mr. Obama's well-crafted keynote speech at the Democratic National Convention reveals that there is a huge gap between his rosy rhetoric and the harsh realities of American apartheid.

He stated: "It's that fundamental belief--I am my brother's keeper, I am my sister's keeper--that makes this country work. It's what allows us to pursue our individual dreams, yet still come together as a single American family....There's not a black America and white America and Latino America and Asian America, there's the United States of America." How sharply do those words contrast with the findings of the 1968 Kerner Commission Report: "Our nation is moving towards two societies, one black, one white--separate and unequal." For those of you who are too young to remember what was really going on in the 1960s, here is a brief summary from History Matters: "President Lyndon Johnson formed an 11-member National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders in July 1967 to explain the riots that plagued cities each summer since 1964 and to provide recommendations for the future.

The Commission's 1968 report concluded that unless racial oppression was remedied, the USA faced a 'system of apartheid' in its major cities. The Kerner report delivered an indictment of white society for isolating and neglecting African Americans and urged legislation to promote racial integration and to enrich slums-- primarily through the creation of jobs, job training programs and decent housing." In 1998, three decades after the report, former Senator and Commission member Fred R. Harris co-authored a study which concluded that "the racial divide had grown in the ensuing years with inner-city unemployment at crisis levels."
On a personal note, I was in the White House on June 13th 1967 when President Johnson Lyndon Johnson enthusiastically announced the appointment of Mr. Thurgood Marshall to the Supreme Court. I happened to be standing just a few feet away from Johnson and Marshall, close enough to see the pupils of their eyes. I was there to receive a Presidential Scholar Award.

At that moment so many of us thought that we were finally moving up in America, after centuries of brutal slavery and decades of violent discrimination. How naive we were and how expert was the American ruling class at manipulating us with symbols and rhetoric.
As a political scientist and scholar who has lived in the inner cities of New Orleans, Atlanta, Chicago and Boston, I am one of many who knows that in 2004 the masses of Afro-Descendants are suffering more from mal-education, high unemployment, drug addiction and Black-on-Black violence than they ever did in the 1960s. Since I have lived in Boston for the past ten years and witnessed the deterioration of so many of our youth, despite the sincere efforts of some educators, activists and organizations, I find it very ironic that Mr. Obama portrays Senator Kerry as a saviour for a "united" America which is now more divided along race and class lines than ever before in recent decades. The truth is that during all the years that Kerry and Kennedy have been in the Senate, the living conditions of most of our people have sharply declined.

If you want detailed scholarly confirmation of today's worsening racial oppression, please visit www.blackcommentator.com and read its excellent current series entitled "The New American Apartheid." Then visit www.AllForReparations.org and learn more about the hidden Reparations Movement which has been unfolding inside the United Nations for the past twelve years, a Movement which the U.S. government has worked hard to strangle and which the white mass media, including the Boston Globe, has arrogantly refused to cover. On the AFRE website you can read the interventions of activists who have testified before the Human Rights Commission about the devastating effects of long-term and on-going U.S. policies of ethnocide and forced assimilation.

According to Mr. Obama "the true genius of America (is) a faith in the simple dreams of its people, the insistence on small miracles. "No, sir. The evil genius of the white American ruling class is its ability to be the world's greatest human rights violator while hiding behind the facade of liberal democracy. President Bush and Senator Kerry are both members of the top one percent of the U.S. population which owns close to 50% of all private wealth. They lose no sleep at night over the fact that in the richest country on Earth nine million people are unemployed and forty-three million have no health insurance. Nor are they ashamed about the fact that 60% of all the prisoners in America's jails are Afro-Descendants. Like President Bush, Mr. Kerry fiercely opposes Reparations for African-Americans while fiercely supporting both broad Reparations and massive military aid for white Israel. In conclusion, I hope that one day Mr. Obama will learn that no man can serve the oppressor and the oppressed at the same time. And that if profits no man to sell his soul for the sake of mere riches
and fame.

Peace Be Unto The Righteous,
Malik Al-Arkam
www.AllForReparations.org

Tags: Saswat, Black Power, USA, Capitalism, Racism

Alton H Maddox Jr. writes about the Political lessons for a perpetual Black activist, for the AmNews

As Black leaders are biting off their fingers waiting for the start of the Democratic National Convention later this month in Boston, I will be reminiscing about Johnson versus Goldwater in 1964. Because Georgia allowed persons to vote at 18 years of age before the 26th Amendment, this would be my first vote in a presidential election.

This election would introduce me to the politics of fear. Barry Goldwater would nuke the world. Lyndon Johnson was the Great White Hope. The same modus operandi is in play today. Only President-select George Bush can save the United States from another 9/11 attack. Homeland Security is busy disseminating color-coded alerts. Read More...

Tags: Saswat, Black Power, History, USA, Racism, Activism

|

Gil Scott-Heron’s B Movie From the album "Reflections" has the lyrics that will stir hearts souls. No wonder he is the Soul Singer.

From gun control to corporate wars, Scott-Heron does not spare anything. And thats the reason why his revolution could not be televised. Here is the rest new poet (declaring the dawning of a new age):

Well, the first thing I want to say is…”Mandate my ass!” Read More...

Tags: Saswat, Black Power, Film, Literature

|

Mail & Guardian, Africa’s first online newspaper, has a story
on how new media will help tell African stories.

When culture meets media, interesting things happen. A provincial premier gets pictured in bed; a bunch of fortysomething journos stage a reunion; and innovative publishing technology gets deployed.

It's festival time in Grahamstown again -- the 30th edition of an event that's always like a first time. It is made possible by, among others, a healthy grant from the Eastern Cape government, whose Premier Nosima Balindlela was previously the province's arts and culture minister.

Tags: Saswat, Indigenous, Media, Technology, Black Power