We must provide our predictions of the future with action

"There is so much that could be done, right now... But I won't talk about those things right here. I will say that it should never be easy for them to destroy us. If you start with Malcolm X and count all of the brothers who have died or been captured since, you will find that not even one of them was really prepared for a fight. No imagination or fighting style was evident in any one of the incidents. But each one that died professed to know the nature of our enemies. It should never be so easy for them. Do you understand what I'm saying? Edward V. Hanrahan, Illinois State Attorney General, sent fifteen pigs to raid the Panther headquarters and murder Hampton and Clark. Do you have any idea what would have happened to those fifteen pigs if they had run into as many Viet Cong as there were Panthers in that building. The VC are all little people with less general education than we have. The argument that they have been doing it longer has no validity at all, because they were doing it just as well when they started as they are now. It's very contradictory for a man to teach about the murder in corporate capitalism, to isolate and expose the murderers behind it, to instruct that these madmen are completely without stops, are licentious, totally depraved - and then not make adequate preparations to defend himself from the madman's attack. Either they don't really believe their own spiel or they harbor some sort of subconscious death wish." - George Jackson, Soledad Brothers

Recognizing the racist, sexist, homophobic, imperialist, capitalist nature of this system that we live in is only the first step. After we reach this realization, we must understand that the system, because of its nature, will never give us liberation and will never stop oppressing us.

It is absurd and otherwise foolish to even begin to think that the system would be interested in amending or stopping oppression. So why do we continue to act surprised when pigs brutalize someone in the community and get let off clean, when universities (cough, UC San Diego, cough) fail to take action against racist fraternities but threaten to expel protesters, when the nation's first black president decides to escalate warfare and armed occupation in Afghanistan and poor communities of color in America, when banks get bailed out while welfare gets cut, or when prison systems get more funding than public education? Why wouldn't the system continue want to continue its oppressive policies?

We have to question and understand each and every apparatus of the system. Let's take the legal system for example. Who makes laws? Who gets to participate in the legal process? Who does the law benefit? Who is the law? Who gets to enforce the law? Who is immune from the law?

When we begin to question the system's apparatus in this nature, we begin to see that it is all a farce. Who makes the laws? Politicians - not the people. And for who? Themselves and the corporations/capitalists they serve. Who gets to enforce the law? The racist, facist pigs. Who is immune from the law? The same people who get to make and enforce the law - the pig capitalists,politicians, and police.

The legal is system is not flawed - it operates very efficiently in the manner in which it was designed to operate - to delude the masses with the sorcery of 'justice' while legitimizing means of oppression through enlightenment rationale.

What do I mean by this? It took over a year of strenuous legal battles to legally free Angela Davis from captivity in the 1970s, but since then, California has almost tripled its prisons, sent more black men to prisons than schools, and deported countless people of color (and I ain't just talking about Mexicans - I'm talking about Vietnamese and Cambodian as well). While it's great that Angela Davis is free, we must understand that the nature of such a decadent system, is to give the people an inch, only to take back ten inches.

Understanding this and coming to terms with the absurdity of a politics of liberalism or reformism, we must, as George Jackson says, "make revolution", "we must find out exactly what the people need and organize them around these needs." We must mobilize and create a condition where a politics of rupture and revolution is possible. At the same time, we must recognize that the terrain is different now than in the 60s and 70s. While oppressive systems such as racism or sexism are still stronger than ever, they take different forms. The system is not dogmatic in its oppression of people, but rather, it is very dynamic and constantly changing and we, as revolutionaries, but recognize this and also change tactics with the times. We cannot confine ourselves to strict dogmatism. We must recognize that the people lost the war against the system - the Black Panthers, Brown Beret, Red Guard, American Indian Movement - they no longer exist, not because of peaceful disbanding, but forceful and violent repression. So while it is important to learn and adopt principles and tactics from past revolutionary groups, we must recognize that they ultimately failed and we must adapt their tactics to our situation. Take and adopt principles in order to forge material praxis.

What do I mean? Take the Việt Cộng for example. They were notorious for creating elaborate tunnel systems to fight against American, French, Japanese, Cambodian, and Chinese imperialism. It is absurd to begin to argue that such tunnel systems would be fitting in urban sprawl such as Los Angeles, but instead, principles such as learning and becoming attuned to your environment and using your understanding of the environment that against the oppressor is something that is practical and useful today and applies to any environment. Instead of imagining jungle guerrilla warfare and resistance, we must begin to imagine urban guerrilla warfare and resistance. The Việt Cộng, understanding that the people of South Việt Nam lived in poverty, went into villages and distributed food to the people at no cost - understand the needs of the people and work to meet the needs of the people.

Apply concepts and principles, not word-for-word examples.

So the question is, how do we learn from the successes and failures of the past, while imagining new revolutionary possibilities?

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