Speech for May 19 2015 Political Science Graduation at San Francisco State University

NOTE:  This beautiful plaque was presented to me on stage at McKinney Auditorium right after my speech.  I was stunned.  The whole experience was surreal -- a completely unexpected honor.

First I want to thank you and my neighbor, Candice Bell, for this honor and opportunity to speak to your graduating class in political science.

I think of myself as a political social scientist and a revolutionary journalist.

I was active in the Black Panther Party from 1969 to 1971, where I was introduced to Marx, Mao, Che, and Fanon – and committed my life to serving the people and fighting their enemies.

As Frantz Fanon noted in The Wretched of the Earth,

“Each generation must discover its mission, fulfill it or betray it...”

That’s the question to ask your selves individually and collectively.

Freedom is a Constant Struggle: Michelle Cordova

June 4, 2015 episode of the Freedom is a Constant Struggle TV Show

Freedom is a Constant Struggle: Phavia Kujichagulia and Call-in with Pam Africa

May 24, 2015 episode of the Freedom is a Constant Struggle TV Show

Freedom is a Constant Struggle: Jeffrey Blankfort

May 7, 2015 episode of the Freedom is a Constant Struggle TV Show

Commentary re Youth Uprising for 12/18/14 Freedom Is A Constant Struggle, by Kiilu Nyasha

For the first time in nearly 45 years, I’m really excited about young people rising up all over the country in the wake of police murders of Black and Brown people, esp. the blatant killings of Michael Brown and Eric Garner. In those cases, neither of the rogue cops was indicted or had any charges filed against them.  As a former Panther, police brutality and murder is nothing new.


From Ferguson, Mi. where Michael Brown was left to bleed to death for 41/2 hours to NYC where Eric Garner was choked to death – Black youth have been in the forefront of a mass movement taking to the streets.

In solidarity with Blacks, who’ve been the most targeted by racist police, people of all backgrounds and ages are collectively protesting this open season on Black people,.

Malcolm X Day Speech – May 17, 2015 By Kiilu Nyasha

We are gathered here today to honor our martyred hero, El Hajj Malik el Shabazz, Malcolm X, who would be 90 years old had he survived another 51 years. Born on May 19, 1925, Malcolm X was assassinated Feb. 21, 1965 in NYC’s Audubon Ballroom. It’s notable that he and Martin Luther King were assassinated when both were 39 years of age.

I want to share with you some quotes you rarely hear expressing Malcolm’s changed ideas. More often his anti-white notions are propagated, virtually ignoring his transformation once he returned from the Hajj in Mecca and visits to Northern Africa. Only about a month before he was murdered, he clarified his positions on race, segregation, and capitalism. E.g., In Jan. 1965, on New York’s WBAI, he said:

"We don’t judge a manby the color of his skin. We don’t judge you because you are white; we don’t judge you because you’re black….We judge you because of what you do and what you practice.”

Freedom is a Constant Struggle: Ayana Labossiere and Robert Roth on Haiti

This April 2, 2015 episode of Freedom is a Constant Struggle features Ayana Labossiere of Haiti Action Committee and Robert Roth of Haiti Emergency Relief Fund.

Ruchell Cinque Magee and the August 7th Courthouse Slave Rebellion By Kiilu Nyasha, 2008

On Wednesday, August 6, 2008 9:13 PM, Kiilu Nyasha <kiilu2@sbcglobal.net> wrote:

I can hardly believe that 38 years have gone by since the Marin Courthouse Slave Rebellion of August 7, 1970.  Ruchell is now 69 years old, same as me.  It's a sin and a shame the fascist state has taken this brother's whole life, damn near.  And he has never seriously injured anyone.  Quite the opposite, Ruchell has been responsible (through his jailhouse lawyering) for the release of countless prisoners over the decades he's been incarcerated.  

Fast forward to April 2015 and Ruchell has now been locked up for a total of 60 years, 52 in California gulags and 8 in Angola State Prison, Louisiana.

Ruchell Cinque Magee and the August 7th Courthouse Slave Rebellion

“Slavery 400 years ago, slavery today, it’s the same but with a new name”.-- Ruchell Cinque Magee

Haiti Solidarity Interview with Mildred Aristide, former First Lady of Haiti (www.Haitisollidarity.net)

Mildred Aristide is an attorney, who as former First Lady of Haiti, headed the country’s National AIDS Commission and authored a book on the root causes of child domestic service.  Since her family’s return home from forced exile in 2011, Ms. Aristide and her husband, former President Jean-Bertrand Aristide (known throughout Haiti as Titide) have focused their efforts on developing the University of the Aristide Foundation. 

2014 MIDTERM ELECTIONS: Big Bucks & Political Mercenaries by Kiilu Nyasha

This midterm election has not only spent a whopping $4 billion, the highest yet; it also witnessed the lowest voter turnout. Given these two facts, I would deduce voters are fed up with the blatant corruption endemic to U.S. electoral politics.

It’s clear to me that in practice, Democrats and Republicans comprise one capitalist party with a Left and Right wing. Republicrats, as Mumia dubbed them.  I simply call them fascists, meaning they are in bed with big business and the military with no regard for the lives of the U.S. majority, everyday working people, employed and unemployed.

BLACK AUGUST 2014: Quotations from George Lester Jackson, ed. by Kiilu Nyasha

August 21, 2014, marks the 43rd anniversary of the assassination of our beloved Comrade George Lester Jackson.  Here are more quotes from his two books; the first was the bestseller, Soledad Brother: the Prison Letters of George Jackson and Blood In My Eye, published after his death.  It’s remarkable that these statements are as pertinent today as they were 43 years ago, perhaps more so.

"Iola," Princess of the Press: The Story of Feminist Anti-Lynching Crusader, Ida B. Wellls-Barnett, by Kiilu Nyasha

"I then began an investigation of every lynching I read about.  By 1893, over a thousand Black men, women and children had been hanged, shot and burned to death by white mobs in America."

A tireless champion of her people, Ida B. Wells was the first of eight children born to Jim and Elizabeth Wells in Mississippi in 1862, six months before chattel slavery was ended with the Emancipation Proclamation. Her parents, who had been slaves, were able to support their children because Elizabeth was an excellent cook and Jim a skilled carpenter. But when Ida was only 16, her parents and youngest sibling died of Yellow Fever during an epidemic.  In keeping with the strength and fortitude she demonstrated throughout her remarkable life, Ida took responsibility for raising her six younger siblings with her grandmother’s help. Educated at nearby Rust College, a school run by white missionaries, Ida was forced to drop out; she got a full-time teaching job by lying about her age, and spent weekends washing, ironing and cooking for her large family.

Wells eventually moved to Memphis, Tenn., where she taught school in a small town called Woodstock and continued her education by attending Fisk University and Lemoyne Institute during the summers.

‘Day of the Gun’ - How KRON-4 distorted the story of Black August- Review and rebuttal (2002)

George Jackson was a unifying force who fought to transform the gangster mentality into a revolutionary one. KRON-4 aired a special program in October labeled “Day of the Gun.” The “day” was Aug. 21, 1971, when George Lester Jackson, three prison guards and two inmate trustees were killed.

As one of countless people who knew and loved George, I found the title itself offensive. How would you feel if your loved one had been murdered by gunshot and the day of his death symbolized by the weapon of destruction, not the human tragedy, the loss of life?

Comments for Freedom is a Constant Struggle on BAVC July 17, 2014 by Kiilu Nyasha & Israel's War on Gaza, July 20, 2014

I've never been so ashamed to admit I'm an American citizen. The past weeks have demonstrated clearly that this nation hates children. Not only does it hate its own children for whom there's no safety net, but the suffering, endangered children fleeing Central America and being threatened, harassed, and jailed, as well as children being murdered in occupied Palestine, over 40 to date.

Mass-murdering Israeli dictator, Netanyahu, had the chutzpah to thank Obama and thank Americans for our support on network television! It enrages me that we have to listen to some fascist thanking us for slaughtering children.

Fourth Draft of A Revolutionary Party Platform

Fourth Draft of A Revolutionary Party Platform

"If there is to be revolution, there must be a revolutionary party." (Mao Tse-Tung)

We the people of these United States in recognition of our shared oppression under the current, corporate-dominated government do hereby propose the establishment of a revolutionary political party. Such a party would be launched outside of the established parameters and would not be dependent upon corporate financing or subjected to its lobbying influence.

Our people’s party will recognize and acknowledge the following:

 * The genomic breakthrough by the Human Genome Project of the new millennium confirms the biological, singular human race to which we all belong regardless of color or other differences.  In short, there’s one race, the human race, and we all descended from Africa, the Motherland of humankind.  While racism persists, we will de-institutionalize it through our revolutionary education and media, fighting bigotry with international solidarity, appreciation of differing cultures, and revolutionary politics.  We will become the new men and women who will forge a new, nonracist paradigm.

Hugo Pinell denied parole again

It's with great sadness, but renewed hope, that we announce the results of of our brother Yogi's May 2nd Board hearing.

His attorney, Keith Wattley, reported the Board gave Hugo a five-year hit, but with the following caveat:  If he participates in the prison's Step-Down program (attends group therapy, etc.), he will get another hearing in about a year to a year and a half.

This is certainly better than the worst possibility, a 15-year denial, but I'm quite sure it doesn't make Hugo's mother very happy.  She's well into her 80s and has been waiting nearly 50 years to have her son released and back home.

We are all disappointed, but still very committed to Yogi's ultimate release.  So please keep up your support, and send Yogi some love.  He'll need it to get through this disappointing period, as well as encouragement to endure this next phase of incarceration.  As far as we know, he is still in lockup, albeit with less tortuous conditions than at Pelican Bay.

End the death penalty!  Stop the torture of solitary confinement! Abolish the prison system!

FROM PARIS TO PELICAN BAY by Kiilu Nyasha, February 2001

In behalf of two of our most treasured prisoners of war -- Mumia Abu-Jamal

and Leonard Peltier -- we visited seven European cities in ten days and

spent our last four days in Paris where a major demonstration happened on

December 2, 2000. A letter from one of the longest held political prisoners

in the country (37 years!), Hugo L.A. Pinell (Yogi) awaited my return from

Paris. I thought to myself, if I could travel all over France for Mumia and

Leonard, I could make it to Pelican Bay to see Yogi again.

Portrait of Mao and Selected quotes from Mao’s Red Book, The Quotations of Chairman Mao TseTung, ed. by Kiilu Nyasha

Note:   Mao suffered from Parkinson’s disease prior to his death in 1976 at 82.  Since then, the Communist Party has taken the capitalist road and is no longer communist or socialist in practice.  So I rarely use the word “communist” anymore, but replace it with “revolutionary,” because its meaning has been so distorted over the decades. In any case, Mao was the greatest revolutionary leader of the 20^th Century, having liberated women and nearly a billion peasants in China, declaring victory after the incredible Long March in 1949.  Mao also gave active support to the independence struggles in Africa.  He gave Africans the first and only interest-free loan, and provided Chinese workers to work along side African workers at the same pay building the Tan-Zam railway linking the landlocked Zambia to the Port of Dar es Salaam, Tanzania.

Revolutionary culture is a powerful revolutionary weapon for the broad masses of the people. It prepares the ground ideologically before the revolution comes and is an important, indeed essential, fighting front in the general revolutionary front during the revolution.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY! George Lester Jackson, September 23, 1941-August 21, 1971 Ed. by Kiilu Nyasha

“I have a plan, I will give, and give, and give of myself until it proves our making or my end.”

As we honor the birthday of our beloved, Comrade George Jackson, Field Marshall of the Black Panther Party behind prison walls, may we remember his revolutionary ideas and practice, his mentors and his sacrifice.

Author of two books, Soledad Brother: the Prison Letters of George Jackson, a 1970 bestseller reprinted three times and translated into several languages, and Blood In My Eye, published posthumously and recently reprinted.  In a New York Times editorial titled, Death of a Brother, Tom Wicker described George as a “talented writer, a sensitive man, a potential leader, and a political thinker of great persuasiveness.”

Archived Commentary on Haiti

https://archive.org/details/FreedomIsAConstantStruggle20130919_201309

In perusing my files re Haiti, I found this commentary and decided to put it online since it has good information on recent Haitian history.  Here is the link to the show, Freedom Is A Constant Struggle, 9/19/13 on Haiti with an update from guests recently returned from the neighboring Caribbean island- Ayana Labossiere, Aimee Riechel and Ruth Beyene of Haiti Solidarity Club at Mission High School.
http://www.bavc.org. Freedom Is A Constant Struggle. 

Commentary on Haiti for KPFA, Berkeley, 3/14/1992, by Kiilu Nyasha.

Thousands of Haitian boat people picked up by Coast Guard cutters have been detained at the U.S. Naval Base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.  After fleeing Haiti’s newest military dictatorship, the Caribbean refugees are being imprisoned in tents on a hot airfield fenced in by barbed wire and fed army rations.  Only a small percentage has been granted political asylum.  They’ve been held virtually incommunicado with no access to lawyers, telephones or postal services.  To date, nearly 9,000 men, women and children have been sent back to Haiti where they face arrest, torture and even death. 

       

U.S. Involvement in Haiti has a long history.  In 1915, it was invaded by U.S. Marines and occupied for 19 years during which the U.S. trained a joint military-police guard that evolved into today’s Haitian army.  For nearly 30 years, the U.S.–backed military dictatorship of Francois Duvalier, known as Papa Doc, succeeded by his son Jean-Claude, or Baby Doc, looted the national treasury, trafficked in cocaine, and terrorized Haitians with their Tonton Macoute (Creole for bogeymen).  Yet the dauntless Haitians ran Baby Doc and his entourage out of the country in 1986, when the U.S. had to airlift them to France for safety. 

  

BLACK AUGUST 2013

 http://archive.org/details/FreedomisaConstantStruggleBlackAugust

August 21, 2013, marks the 42^nd anniversary of the assassination of our beloved Comrade George Lester Jackson.  Here are quotes from his two books: the bestseller, Soledad Brother: the Prison Letters of George Jackson (1970) and Blood In My Eye, (1972), published after his death .  It’s remarkable that these statements are as pertinent today as they were 42 years ago, perhaps more so.

"International capitalism cannot be destroyed without the extremes of struggle. The entire colonial world is watching the blacks inside the U.S wondering and waiting for us to come to our senses. Their problems and struggles with the Amerikan monster are much more difficult than they would be if we actively aided them. We are on the inside. We are the only ones (besides the very small white minority left) who can get at the monster's heart without subjecting the world to nuclear fire. We have a momentous historical role to act out if we will. The whole world for all time in the future will love us and remember us as the righteous people who made it possible for the world to live on. If we fail through fear and lack of aggressive imagination, then the slave of the future will curse us, as we sometimes curse those of yesterday. I don't want to die and leave a few sad songs and a hump in the ground as my only monument. I want to leave a world that is liberated from trash, pollution, racism, nation-states, nation-state wars and armies, from pomp, bigotry, parochialism, a thousand different brands of untruth, and licentious, usurious economics." (Soledad Brother: The Prison Letters of George Jackson).

THE ACQUITTAL OF A MURDERER by Kiilu Nyasha (July 14, 2013)

A correction to my piece: I misread a statement about Trayvon's age; It was 21 days before his 17th birthday, not 21 days after his 16th birthday.  Nevertheless, he was 16 at the time of his death.  

The long-awaited verdict in the Zimmerman trial was incredible -- "not guilty."

Listening carefully to the trial judge's detailed instructions to the 6-juror panel (amazing in itself), including complete definitions of 2nd degree murder and manslaughter, I was convinced that were they to follow her instructions, the verdict was bound to be guilty as charged or at least the lesser charge of manslaughter. After over 12 hours of deliberations, my worst-case scenario was a hung jury.   

Yet how could I forget that this trial took place in a judicial system I’ve longnown (through experience!) represents white-supremacist injustice; and one the most racist states in the country – Florida, the nations’ second highest incarcerator and state executioner of Black men.

Off the top, how many other cases come to mind of a young Black man senselessly murdered by so-called law enforcers? Oscar Grant, Allen Blueford, Kenneth Harding, Amadou Diallo.  In fact, a Black person is murdered by law enforcement every 28 hours,  Are their lives valued?

An endangered, stereotyped group, Black and Brown male human beings top the prison populations and those slated for state murder.  Black women and mothers are swiftly gaining a similar fate as more and more Black babies are literally born in prison.

The Assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. – April 4, 1968

It was 45 years ago when our beloved freedom fighter, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated in what we believe was a conspiracy by the government, particularly the FBI.

I remember exactly where I was when the news came over the radio that Dr. King had been shot. 

I was in New Haven, Conn. driving my 8-year-old son and his friends from Rock Creek Road to a drive-in movie.  I turned the car around and went straight back home. We learned on arrival the shot was fatal and the King of Love was dead. I was devastated.

Happy Birthday, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY

DR. MARTIN LUTHER KING, JR.

January 15, 1929 - April 4, 1968

The following quotes from our beloved freedom fighter, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., are as pertinent today as they were when he spoke them, at least 45 years ago.  It now amazes me that he was only 39 years old when he was assassinated in the Spring of 1968. He had wisdom beyond his years.

“In the End, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends.”

“We must develop and maintain the capacity to forgive. [S]he who is devoid of the power to forgive is devoid of the power to love.”

“Never forget that everything Hitler did in Germany was legal.”

“Freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed.”

"I look to a day when people will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character."

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.