[BRC-NEWS] MFM Must Promote A Militant Black Agenda Via NY Transfer News * All the News That Doesn't Fit source - worker-brc-news@lists.tao.ca Thu Apr 27 15:33:51 2000 Million Family March Must Promote A Militant Black Agenda By Ron Daniels The multitude of crises that plague Africans in America and the world dictates that whenever a picket line, march, demonstration, strike, act of civil disobedience or any form of direct action is organized it must address our plight as oppressed people and seek to advance the struggle for liberation. Accordingly, this dictum must apply to the forthcoming Million Family March (MFM) led by the Honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan and the Nation of Islam. The MFM must consciously promote a militant agenda for far ranging change in the condition of Africans in America and the world. The process of mobilizing/organizing a more militant, action oriented March must begin with the theme and focus. While few would disagree that Black women and men need to atone for our sins and shortcomings and pray for improvements in our lives and a better community, the major entity that needs to atone is the United States government. It is White America and this racist, exploitative system which bears the major burden and onus of responsibility for the genocidal enslavement and ongoing assault on Africans in America.. Amilcar Cabral argued that for an oppressed people to successfully achieve liberation, they must struggle to overcome their own weaknesses. However, Cabral was clear that internal weaknesses of the oppressed are not the principal contradiction or the primary source of their oppression/exploitation. What the oppressed must do is find ways and means of overcoming the devastation, damages and disorientation suffered as a consequence of their oppression in order to wage a successful struggle to cast off the cultural, mental, spiritual and physical shackles of the oppressor and an oppressive system. We must pray and then armed with the power of God and the spirit of the ancestors engage the battle for liberation "by any means necessary." Too much emphasis on atonement is tantamount to blaming the victim and can have the effect of re-enforcing self-hatred and internalized oppression. Worst of all an overemphasis on atonement, in effect, allows the system to escape responsibility for its centuries of dirty deeds. It is the United States government and White America that must atone and be compelled to repair the inter-generational damages done by the holocaust of enslavement and the centuries of genocide against Africans in America. The Promise Keepers and the Moonies have demonstrated that they can mobilize a million families. But the agendas of these conservative movements pose no threat to the status-quo. However, when a million Black families converge on Washington, the capital of the United States and the political nerve center for global capitalism, the government and power elites of this nation should tremble before the marching masses of Black people. With the whole world watching, Black leadership should exhort Black people to overcome the weakness of self-hatred, internal fratricide and self destruction; the weakness of underutilizing the ballot/voting as a weapon in the liberation struggle; the weakness of spending billions of Black dollars as consumer junkies with retailers and corporations that smile and take our money but slit our throats by supporting or being in complicity with policies and practices which are destructive to the well being of Black people; the weakness of failing to form united fronts to formulate concerted strategies to combat the assault on Black people in this country and the world. When a million Black families march, Black leadership should demand a restoration of affirmative action or else ... an apology for the holocaust of enslavement and the payment of reparations or else... a release of all political prisoners and prisoners of war or else ...a moratorium on more police, more prisons and the death penalty or else ... a Domestic March Plan to rebuild rural and urban poor and abandoned Black communities or else Africans in America, Black people will become ungovernable - marches, civil disobedience, strikes, economic sanctions/boycotts - in defense of our interests and aspirations as an oppressed people. Indeed, there is no better occasion than MFM to proclaim Black Friday, the day after Thanksgiving, a Day of Absence and Resistance where Black people simply refuse to partake in the traditional start of the X-Mas orgy of consumerism. There is no better occasion than MFM to announce the first target of a massive economic sanctions campaign designed to bring a major U.S. corporation to its knees to demonstrate the power of Black dollars; There is no better occasion than MFM to vigorously advance the notion of Powernomics as propounded by Dr. Claude Anderson as a strategy for building economic infrastructure and empowerment within the Black community. There is no better occasion than MFM to galvanize the Black Nation to advance a militant action agenda to transform the condition of Black people. To do otherwise will render the idea of mobilizing a million Black families faddish and superfluous. Africans in America can ill afford to spend millions of dollars to journey to a March which is long on rituals, symbols and self flagellation but short on substance and prescriptions for action. This time when a million African families descend on Washington D.C., the marching feet of the masses should press for an agenda for change that will shake America to its foundations. No Struggle, No Progress! A luta continua, the struggle continues! Copyright (c) 2000 Ron Daniels. All Rights Reserved. -------------------------------------------------------------------------- BRC-NEWS: Black Radical Congress - General News Articles/Reports Subscribe: Email "subscribe brc-news" to www.blackradicalcongress.org | BRC | blackradicalcongress@email.com -------------------------------------------------------------------------- ================================================================= NY Transfer News Collective * A Service of Blythe Systems Since 1985 - Information for the Rest of Us 339 Lafayette St., New York, NY 10012 http://www.blythe.org e-mail: nyt@blythe.org ================================================================= nytrc-04.27.00-21:49:12-11190