Soledad Brothers on Yuppie-isms

"Depression is an economic condition. It is a part of the capitalist business cycle, a necessaryu concomitant of capitalism. Its colonies - secondary markets - will always be depressed areas, because eh steadily decreasing labor force, decreasing and growing more skilled under the advances of automation, casts the unskilled colonial subject into economic roles that preclude economic mobility. Learning the new skills even if we were allowed wouldn't help. It wouldn't help the masses even if they learned them. It wouldn't help because there is a fixed ceiling on the labor force. This ceiling gets lower with every advance in the arts of production. Learning the newer skills would merely put us into a competition with established labor that we could not win. One that we don't want. There are absolutely no vacuums for us to fill in the business world. We don't want to capitalize on people anyway. Capitalism is the enemy. It must be destroyed. There is no other recourse. The System is not workable in view of the modern industrial city-based society. Men are born disenfranchised. The contract between the ruler and ruled perpetuates this disenfranchisement."
- George Jackson (emphasis added).

In this passage, George Jackson touches on the absurdity of what many would call, yuppie-isms. I'm not condemning getting skilled, but condemning forgetting your community and where you come from. Moving up don't mean you gotta move out (in reference to the community). As Fanon says, we need to have revolutionaries who have skills that can aid in the construction of a new society. We need revolutionary doctors, engineers, teachers, etc. While Fanon differs from many Marxists by believing that revolution starts with the lumpen proletariat (in our society - the people completely left out - homeless, unemployed), it cannot end with the lumpen proletariat.

Falling into a yuppie mindset of strict ladder climbing pits us against ourselves. We got brothers and sisters getting educated then going off to make lofty salaries serving the ruling class, thinking that they getting something for themselves, while the communities where they come from are falling apart or being systematically militarized and forcefully repressed. Everytime someone with 'professional skills' picks up and moves out to serve the interests of the rich, the community loses resources and the rich gain another (why is it that you don't see no doctors or professionals living in places like East Long Beach?). Instead, imagine if we re-invested in our communities instead of peacing out and pull some jive ass shit and pretending to integrate into this petty bourgeoisie culture. We know they can build housing fit for human shelter, distribute food fit for human consumption, provide healthcare fit to address the needs of the people - just look at affluent communities. Imagine if our brothers and sisters with those sorts of skills invested in the community. We could actually get some shit instead of begging for scraps. We could actually have some empowerment in the community instead of resentment everytime someone calls where we come from 'ghetto'.

"Why else do men allow other men to govern? To what purpose is a Department of Health, Education, and Welfare, or of Housing and Urban Development, etc? Why do we give these men power over us. Why do we give them taxes? For nothing? So they can say that the world owes our children nothing? This world owers each of us a living the very day we are born." - George Jackson