OBAMA'S HYPOCRISY

December 17, 2012

When I first heard the news of so many children, 20, none over 7, being killed at Sandy Hook Elementary School, I was so stunned I could feel no emotion, just a kind of numbness. I’m a parent.  

Not another mass murder.

Later, on hearing of the heroism displayed by six slain teachers, I was buoyed.  Then came the anger, the rage I’ve learned to control, hone, and use as a weapon, the pen being mightier than the sword.

Barack Obama, leader of the most violent nation in world history, dabbed at dry eyes as he practically preached a sermon on the latest domestic killing spree.  Hypocritical is an understatement. 

Voting for Our Own Oppression (November 6, 2012)

I have been in physical pain at least some of which I owe to the stress of this incredible voter turnout -- an overwhelming mandate for fascism (corportavism/militarism).  

The only contradiction that proved a positive is the clear demonstration -- at last -- of our multicultural diversity and the minority that is the while ruling class and all their white lackeys (liberal and conservative).

Unfortunately, the multicultural diversity has multifaceted, convoluted politics.  

ON BOYCOTTING THE ELECTION 2012 by Kiilu Nyasha

If voting could change the system, they would make it illegal. (Jamil Al-Amin, aka H. Rap Brown) 

Here are a few arguments for those who insist on voting for the lesser of evils.

One of the first things Black folks say is, “We fought and died for the right to vote.” 

Yes, having fought in every war beginning with the revolutionary war of independence from Britain, we have always done the dying; we've always been on the front lines of struggle in this country.  SNCC, Fannie Lou Hamer, and all the valiant freedom fighters of the civil rights movement are to be honored and revered for their uncompromising fight for our right to vote.

However, after we won that particular battle in1965, the reactionaries in power initiated new ways to suppress and vacate our vote -- new rules and laws of disenfranchisement, such as denying prisoners and felons the vote, fraudulent registration procedures, vote tampering, rigged voting machines, new photo ID requirements, etc. 

Eric Nielson writes that since 2010, 11 states have passed laws that make it more difficult to vote. Citing a report from The Sentencing Project, 5.85 million people are now barred from voting because of a felony conviction, about 2.5 percent of the total population. The principled position would be all of us or none or all for one and one for all.

The systematic disenfranchisement of Black voters in Florida, 2000, and elsewhere across the country validates the following statement:

"...the two parties have combined against us to nullify our power by a 'gentlemen's agreement' of non-recognition, no matter how we vote...May God write us down as asses if ever again we are found putting our trust in either Republican or the Democratic parties."  (W.E.B. DuBois)

THE REVISION AND ORIGIN OF BLACK AUGUST by Kiilu Nyasha (2012)

     “As a slave, the social phenomenon that

            engages my consciousness is, of course, revolution.”

 (George L. Jackson)

The Revision of Black August

2012 marks the 33rd anniversary of Black August, first organized to honor our fallen freedom fighters, George and Jonathan Jackson, James McClain, William Christmas, Khatari Gaulden, and sole survivor of the August 7, 1970 Courthouse Slave Rebellion, Ruchell Cinque Magee.

During these three decades, we’ve witnessed a steady revision of the meaning of Black August and its inherent ideology, the undisputed leader of which was our martyred Comrade, George Lester Jackson. 

RAPE IGNITES A NATION DURING CIVIL RIGHTS MOVEMENT by Carmen Rivera

Introduction by Kiilu Nyasha:

As a Black woman who grew up in the 1940s, ‘50s, and 60s. I’m fully aware of the treatment of colored girls and women not only by White men, but men of every description.  I’m old enough now not to be too embarrassed to state that I was raped numerous times and didn’t even know it was rape.  It was referred to as Bogarting when men forced you into sex against your will in those days.  There were no phrases like “date rape,” or “sexual harassment,” though both were quite common, the latter mostly in the work place.  Black women were singled out particularly due to the prevailing racist notion that we were animal-like and oversexed. 

May Parole Hearing for Hugo Pinell, in Solitary for at least 42 yrs -- POSTPONED!

NEWS ALERT (4/6/12):


Yogi's board hearing has been postponed another year due to CDCR's new gang validation rules.  Uncommon Law, the firm of Keith Wattley, is handling Yogi's case and they think they can get some relief for him under the new rules.  So let's take this year to do everything we can to support Yogi and help him to stay strong in that hell hole for another year.It would be a good thing for those with resources to check with Att. Wattley to see if Yogi needs financial assistance in covering legal fees.

BOOK REVIEW: Fatal Invention: How Science, Politics, and Big Business Re-Create Race in the 21st Century

Book Review, by Kiilu Nyasha
March 19, 2012

Dorothy Roberts’ new book, Fatal Invention: How Science, Politics, and Big Business Re-Create Race in the 21st Century is a must read for all human beings desiring to witness the beginning of the end of racism.
“We have long had scientific confirmation that race is a political and not a biological category. The recreation of biological race in genomic science today, like its invention by scientists in past centuries, results from an ideological commitment to a false view of humanity,” writes Roberts.

In 2000, The Human Genome Project mapped the entire human genetic code, proving that race could not be identified in our genes, that we are not naturally divided into genetically identifiable racial groups, that there is one human race.

Roberts explains and elucidates race as a political division, not a biological one. And details how the new science and technology of racial genetics is threatening “to steer America on a course of social inhumanity that already has begun to dominate politics in this century. Government policies that have drastically slashed social services…accompanied by particularly brutal forms of regulation of [so-called] racial minorities: mass imprisonment at rates far exceeding any other place on Earth or any time in the history of the free world; roundup and deportation of undocumented immigrants, often tearing families apart; abuse of children held in juvenile detention centers or locked up in adult prisons, some for the rest of their lives;…torture in police stations and prison cells; and rampant medical neglect that kills.”

U.S. PRISONS: SLAVERY ON THE NEW PLANTATION (update March 2012 and retitled May 7,,2014) By Kiilu Nyasha

"Slavery 400 years ago, slavery today. It's the same, but with a new name. They're practicing slavery under color of law." (Ruchell Cinque Magee)

The 13th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution retained the right to enslave within the confines of prison.  “Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States or any place subject to their jurisdiction.” Dec. 6, 1865.

Even before the abolition of chattel slavery, America's history of prison labor had already begun in New York's State Prison at Auburn soon after it opened in 1817. Auburn became the first prison that contracted with a private business to operate a factory within its walls. Later, in the post Civil War period, the "contract and lease" system proliferated, allowing private companies to employ prisoners and sell their products for profit. 

Today, such prisons are referred to as “Factories with Fences.” (/www.unicor.gov/information/publications/pdfs/corporate/CATMC1101_C.pdf) 

Slave Farms in the 21st Century: Reflections on the Socio-economic and School Pipeline to Prison

In the age of globalization, Blacks, Immigrants, and resisters are targeted for elimination and enslavement by the power brokers, fearful of losing their wealth, privilege, and whiteness. Central to this process is the school to prison pipeline, high unemployment, homelessness, and the so-called war on drugs that supply the prison system with its oppressed population. In this presentation, we explore some of the facts that characterize this system—no less insidious than past forms of slavery—and some of the narratives, policies and practices that work in the interest of the dominant corporate plutocracy.

To accompany this new video of Kiilu addressing the University of Wisconsin, she has released an updated version of her 2006 essay entitled "Slavery On The New Plantation" (Read the full article here), where Kiilu writes:

Chattel slavery was ended following prolonged guerrilla warfare between the slaves and the slave-owners and their political allies. Referred to as the “Underground Railroad,” it was led by the revolutionary General Harriet Tubman with support from her alliances with abolitionists, Black and White. It only makes sense that this new form of slavery must produce prison abolitionists.

As George Jackson noted in a KPFA interview with Karen Wald (Spring 1971), "I'm saying that it's impossible, impossible, to concentration-camp resisters....We have to prove that this thing won't work here. And the only way to prove it is resistance...and then that resistance has to be supported, of course, from the street....We can fight, but the results are...not conducive to proving our point...that this thing won't work on us. From inside, we fight and we die....the point is -- in the new face of war -- to fight and win."

Power to the people.