Tyler Perry's Daddy's Little Girls
Daddy's Little Girls,Movie With A Positive Message For Black Folks Give Tyler Perry credit he has parlayed his fame and success with the man in drag Madea stage plays and films into a film producing deal with Lions Gate Films and he has done well with his latest flick entitled Daddy’s Little Girls. The film stars Gabrielle Union, Idris Elba, Lou Gossett Jr. Tasha Smith, Tracee Ellis Ross, Malinda Williams, Terri J Vaughn Gary Anthony Sturgis and an excellent supporting cast. Tyler Perry and Lions Gate have partnered to produce a very good film. The movie is set in Atlanta and features Idris Elba (Stringer Bell on HBO’s
The Wire) as a hard working brother who is a skilled auto mechanic trying to purchase the garage where he works that is owned by Lou Gossett Jr. Elba has three little girls by Tasha Smith who plays a round the way skeezer who is hooked up with a local drug dealer. Juxtaposed against the working class housing project neighborhood where Elba, Gossett and Smith reside and work is Gabrielle Union’s character who is the hard driven high priced attorney Elba meets while working for Gossett’s other business (a limousine service) to make extra money so he can buy Gossett’s garage.
Union plays a very successful attorney. She is high strung, stuck up, frustrated and man less. Her girlfriends Tracee Ellis Ross (
Girlfriends) and Terri J Vaughn (Cedric the Entertainer’s girlfriend on old
The Steve Harvey Show) are always trying to hook her up on blind dates that always turn out disastrous for Union. Initially the blind date scenes provide comic relieve for a film that deals with some very heavy issues: irresponsible and shallow females, misunderstood black males, the underground crime economy and its impact on the black community, the “class” divide in the black community , black male-female tension and community helplessness in the face of escalating poverty, crime and predatory lifestyles.
To his credit, Perry looks at all the stereotype about male-female tension, class divisions and parenting and pathology but he turns them upside down and inside out to show there are brothers out there who have character, who love and support their children despite the vicissitudes of life as a black man in AmeriKKKa. The action of the film takes place mostly in the Atlanta working class neighborhood where Elba and Gossett and Co live and work. Because of circumstances Elba is forced to try to raise his three girls on his own following the death of their maternal grandmother who raised them with his financial support even though he was struggling to raise the money to buy Gossett’s garage.
Tyler made sure their mother played by Tasha Smith had no redeeming characteristics. Even before we see her we learn she has abandoned the girls and lives with a cold blooded drug dealing thug who is terrorizing the neighborhood. Smith’s mother tells Elba she is dying of lung cancer and asks him to go with her to file for legal custody of the girls. She still smokes amidst all the medication she is taking and the cancer eventually takes her life. The grandmother dies and Smith’s character doesn’t even attend the funeral service. When she does show up at the cemetery she is loud and wrong. Smith, her thug boyfriend and Elba have much drama throughout the course of the film. Elba’s life is complicated even more by his meeting Union, driving her around and watching how she lives. She is eye candy but she is so bougie Elba knows he has no chance with her.
The movie offers emotional tension and a serious look at the pathology and conflicts within the African American community. It addresses too many issues to bring up here but suffice it to say Tyler Perry pulls it off extremely well. The movie has a message about character, responsibility both personal and community, doing the right thing, love and not judging a person by outer appearances and circumstances. Union and Elba hook up when out of pure desperation he asks her to help him regain custody of his children. While working on the case pro bono after hours she begins to see him in a different light. A spontaneous chance date ignites mutual feelings but Union’s girlfriends try to dissuade her from engaging in anything other than a brief fling with Elba. Their class biases blind them to the fact an auto mechanic can be a good man.
I will not give any more of the story line away, I strongly recommend you see this film. It surprised me because it is not the typical Tyler Perry opus. It is a well crafted motion picture with a good message. He is to be commended for his work. Hopefully the box office will reward him for his effort.
-30-
Random Thoughts On Barack Obama's Candidacy
Random Thoughts on Barack Obama's Candidacy “
WASHINGTON -- Sen. Barack Obama took an important formal step on Tuesday toward a Democratic presidential campaign that would make him the most formidable African-American candidate ever, offering a call to common purpose as a remedy to bitter partisan divisions and marking a potential turning point in the nation's race relations.By filing papers to form a presidential exploratory committee, the first-term Illinois senator signaled his intent to run for the presidency, a move that he has been publicly considering for months. Advisers said Obama and his family had made the personal commitment to a grueling, two-year presidential bid and the senator now would concentrate on assembling a campaign apparatus and testing support among financial backers and grass-roots activists.” http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/politics/chi-070116obama,1,6709924.story
Negroes are all hyped up about Barack Obama’s announcement he will seek the Democratic presidential nomination for 2008. Most Africans in AmeriKKKa are clueless about real deal politics having been brainwashed to believe this is a “Democracy” of the people by the people and for the people. Alas nothing could be further from the truth. AmeriKKKa as we experience it in 2007 is an oligarchy essentially run by a small clique of families and their hatchet and bag men who pull the strings behind the scenes and call the shots for what will go down as public policy. This cabal is made up of international financiers, media moguls, bankers, heads of multinational corporations and a few religious and intellectual leaders. For them electoral politics is merely a means to carry out their long term business agenda. The AmeriKKKan social and mind shaping apparatuses are used to keep the masses duped and falling for the okey-doke of consumerism, imperialism, hedonism, distraction and cowardice.
Within this framework most politicians are the puppets and dummies of the ruling elites. The power elites pull the strings and provide the sound that appears to come out of the mouths of their dummies. AmeriKKKa provides the illusion the people elect their representatives when in reality the candidates have either sold their souls to these devils or the elites use their intermediaries (lobbyists, bag men and women, prostitutes and bribes) to buy the attention, votes and loyalty of the politicians.
Barack Obama is fresh meat. Let’s give him the benefit of doubt and say he is an honest man who wants to do the right thing. The AmeriKKKan system will change all that! In order to run for president of the United States of AmeriKKKa Obama will have to raise millions of dollars. Grass roots folks don’t have the kind of money to donate to his campaign given most are struggling just trying to keep their heads above water. We don’t control the local or national political infrastructures, the political machines and local ward politics that would facilitate Obama’s election. He will have to go out hat in hand asking for money. AmeriKKKan politics is not based on altruism or the love civics, it is based on the reality money talks, all else walks! He will have to canvass the various constituencies and ethnic blocks. Unfortunately for him black folks ain’t even seriously in the mix or the game. So he will have to depend on white folks, white folks who do not have our best interests nor the best interests of humanity at heart.
Race/color will be an issue as will the fact Obama is running as a so called “critic” of the Iraq war (he voted to give Bu$h the authorization to invade Iraq). Keep in mind the monied class wants to continue the occupation in Iraq indefinitely (the US still has troops in Germany, Japan and Korea almost sixty years after WWII and there is no oil an any of these places. Plus the US is building permanent bases in the Persian Gulf and Central Asian region). Not only do they want the occupation to continue, they want to expand the war into Iran! Obama will be fighting an uphill battle against the warmongers and fascists. Black folks wouldn’t be able to help even if we had the political organization, sophistication and savvy, which we don’t. For him to “win” he must depend on whites.
Each ethnic and business group has their own agenda. If Obama is unresponsive or is perceived to be insensitive to a particular group’s interests and agenda, it gives that group a ready excuse to dis him. For example, the Zionist and their pro-Israeli US lobby want war with Iran, but if Obama is genuinely anti-war, he risks raising the ire of the Zionists, the Christian Zionists (Christian religious fanatics) and military industrial complex. Not only won’t they give him any money they will actively and aggressively oppose him. Can you say Cynthia McKinney?
Because he is of mixed parentage, color (race) will be an issue. While he currently enjoys wide recognition, media celebrity status and gets props for his eloquence, Obama will still be painted as an upstart wanna be with no real foreign policy experience (that didn’t stop George W Bu$h but Obama doesn’t have the political connections Bu$h had.). The color and race issue will be pivotal. If you don’t think so, look at what happened to Harold Ford in his bid to be elected US Senator from Tennessee last year. Ford’s family is big in politics in Tennessee in Memphis, they are nonthreatening light complexioned Negroes, who never go out of their way politically to do anything risky or controversial on behalf of the masses of black folks. To garner white votes during his US Senate bid, Ford openly bragged his grandmother was white, he parroted the mantra of the religious right, and as a Congressman he voted for the Iraq war, but he still lost because his opponents used his race/color against him.
While it makes for good copy and discussion, AmeriKKKa is not ready for a black man who is thoughtful, who says he is for peace, who talks a “common ground” populous game. It’s still way too early but as this thing unfolds look for his Democratic opponents to gang up on him, take pot shots at him on his positions and lack of experience while stealing some of his ideas and rhetoric. Look for the Republicans to be more vicious if his candidacy gains traction. But in the final analysis it’s all a sham, a contrived show. The ruling oligarchy will never allow Barack Obama to advance unless he totally sells his soul and becomes like Colin Powell, Condoleeza Rice or Alberto Gonzales, a melanated shill for global white supremacy and war.
-30-
Uncle Sam In Africa
Uncle Sam In Africa “STUTTGART, Germany — For U.S. forces, the new Africa Command will mean more of the same: troops training their African counterparts, medics providing medical and dental aid, and airmen providing flights from place to place. The headquarters itself would be staffed by middle- and senior-level military and civilian personnel. In fact, the missions that have typically been carried out by younger troops are expected to continue. There might even be more of them, according to Rear Adm. Richard K. Gallagher, director of the U.S. European Command’s Plans and Operations Center.” Deployment of U.S. troops to Africa will pick up pace
AFRICOM means more missions, training By Charlie Coon, Stars and Stripes
Mideast edition, Thursday, February 8, 2007 http://stripes.com/article.asp?section=104&article=43391
The United States government like most Con Artists never tells the mark what their real intentions are. The term Con Artist is s shortened form for “confidence game” or confidence artists. Obviously the object is for the Con Man to gain the confidence of the mark so he or she can fleece, defraud, swindle or gyp the person out of something valuable like their life savings, their jewelry or their very lives. In the case of AmeriKKKa the Euro-AmeriKKKans gangsters in suits who represent the multi-national corporations and financiers approach their marks, so called third world countries, with noble sounding phrases like humanitarian aid, democratization, freedom and liberation. While they are beguiling them with noble verbiage, they are sizing them up leading them on, setting them up for the proverbial and literal kill.
While the economic hit men are setting their marks up the snake oil salesmen politicians and media are also doing a massive con job on the AmeriKKKan public to dupe Joe and Jane Sixpack into sacrificing their children on the alter of AmeriKKKan imperialism. They have to do this because sooner or later the countries their economic hit men are setting up figure out they have been swindled, they get pissed off and try to reclaim their country’s resources and land. Of course this is a no-no so the economic hit men tell their bosses to tell Uncle Sam to send in the, Seals, Special Ops or if the natives get too rowdy the Marines and Army.
This what is happening in Africa now. The monopoly capitalists have set their sights on the resources rich continent of our forefathers and mothers, they covet the gold, oil, water and other resources that abound there. Under the pretext of humanitarianism or the even more bogus Global War on Terrorism, AmeriKKKa is increasing its presence in Africa. An article in the latest edition of Stars and Stripes the US military’s internal propaganda vehicle, downplays the nefarious mission of the US war machine choosing rather to merely highlight the increase in missions. These amorphous “missions” will increase over time,
“As the new Africa Command, also to be based in Stuttgart, begins taking shape, EUCOM will continue overseeing missions in Africa. The Defense Department is garnering more money for missions in what it calls ‘Operation Enduring Freedom — Trans Sahara’: From $31 million in 2006 to $81.7 million in 2007 to approximately $100 million annually for 2008 through 2013, according to figures provided by EUCOM. OEF-TS is designed to bolster nine nations in the northern and western part of the continent. The money is to pay for sending U.S. troops into the nations to train with host-nation militaries and other missions.” http://stripes.com/article.asp?section=104&article=43391
By that reckoning we can expect more Somalia type missions where US airships blast and kill innocent civilians as they fight their bogus war against terror. It has not dawned on most people due to the incessant propaganda and brainwashing aimed our way, you cannot wage a physical war against terrorism because “terrorism” is not a human enemy, it is not a country; it is a tactic! The recent US heavy handed air attack in Somalia resulted in the deaths of innocent civilians. But of course the US media suppressed that information.
“Instead of killing Fazul Abdullah Moham-med, Saleh Ali Saleh Nabhan and Abu Taha al-Sudani, supposedly ‘al-Qaeda’ operatives responsible for the 1998 US embassy bombings in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam, the Pentagon killed ‘herdsmen … gathered with their animals around large fires at night to ward off mosquitoes’ in Somalia, according to the Independent. ‘Oxfam yesterday confirmed at least 70 nomads in the Afmadow district near the border with Kenya had been killed. The nomads were bombed at night and during the day while searching for water sources. Meanwhile, the US ambassador to Kenya has acknowledged that the onslaught on Islamist fighters failed to kill any of the three prime targets,’ described as ‘backfir[ing] spectacularly’ by the British newspaper... It is of no concern to the Pentagon that above mentioned ‘terrorists’ were not killed and innocent nomads suffered instead. In fact, such reckless behavior will serve as a ‘blueprint’ for future operations against Muslim enemies. ‘U.S. commandos’ military operations in Somalia and the use of the Ethiopian army as a surrogate force to root out al Qaeda operatives there provide a blueprint for counter terrorism missions across the globe, Pentagon strategists say,’ reports the neocon propaganda syndicate, the New York Times. ‘U.S. officials said the recent military efforts in Somalia have been led by the Pentagon’s joint Special Operations Command, which directs the military’s most secretive and elite units, including the Army’s Delta Force.’” http://www.prisonplanet.com/articles/january2007/140107Somalia.htm
The US could care less they killed innocent nomads looking for water, since they were Africans. This is what the rest of the continent has to look forward to as Uncle Sam increasingly casts his covetous eyes on African resources. The US government will continue to flim-flam countries like Ethiopia bribing them with US aide and support to allow them to be used as surrogates in their crusade against Islamic nations that just happen to sit over vast stretches of natural resources, in this case Somalia which has oil and geo-strategic importance.
The power drunk imperialists plan use the recent Somalia incident as their blueprint for their total African campaign.
“Troops have been used increasingly in Africa in recent years. U.S. Naval Forces Europe, for example, had forces in the Gulf of Guinea for less than 20 days in 2004, but for approximately 140 in 2005 and more than 300 days last year. African Contingency Operations Training and Assistance events coordinated by U.S. Marine Corps Forces Europe is increasing from eight in 2006 to about 12 in 2007... ‘The activities we do in Africa are coordinated with the host nations,” Gallagher added. “Everything that we do, we coordinate with the U.S. embassy in the country and with host-nation military and government authorities, so that we are working in each other’s best interest.’” http://stripes.com/article.asp?section=104&article=43391 The US claims it is working in partnership with the host nations. But we know what that really means, they are setting them up for the proverbial (and literal) kill.
-30-
Not The best Way To WIn Friends
Not The Best Way to Win Friends “In warning of possible scapegoating, insiders point to the experience of the Iraq War. Since the initial invasion in 2003, antiwar groups have charged, with growing vehemence, that the war was promoted by Jewish groups acting in Israel’s interest — even though the invasion enjoyed bipartisan backing and popular support, and was not at the top of most Jewish organizations’ agendas. The Iraq backlash prompted former Israeli prime minister Ariel Sharon to order in 2005 that his ministers keep a low profile on Iran. Now, however, Jewish groups are indeed playing a lead role in pressing for a hard line on Iran. The campaign comes at a time when President Bush’s popularity has reached record lows and members of both parties are cautioning against a rush toward war. Malcolm Hoenlein, executive vice chairman of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, addressed the fears head-on last week in an address to Israel’s prestigious Herzliya Conference. Lamenting what he called ‘the poisoning of America,’ Hoenlein painted a dire picture of American public discourse turning increasingly anti-Jewish and anti-Israel in the year ahead.” http://www.forward.com/articles/groups-fear-public-backlash-over-iran/
Ashkenazim (Eastern Europeans who converted to a form of Judaism) groups are gearing up for a major AmeriKKKan backlash because of the Zionist/NeoCon created fiasco in Iraq and their incessant agitation for war with Iran. It is no secret most of the prominent NeoCons who crafted the ideological framework for AmeriKKKa’s current “foreign policy” in Iraq are duel loyalist Ashkenazim. Many Jewish organizations now fear they will be scape-goated because Iraq has devolved into a disaster of monumental proportions bordering on an humiliating no win situation for AmeriKKKa.
Now the cabal that controls the AmeriKKKan mass media has to screen out and filter increasing anti-Israeli news and growing skepticism and discontent with the Bu$h administration’s plans to initiate a war with Iran. Recently the corporate media did a counter assault on former President Carter’s depictions of Israel’s massive human rights violations against the Palestinians in his latest book
Palestine: Peace, Not Apartheid . For the most part, the corporate media either ignored Carter’s book or trashed it, sending a clear message no criticism of Israel will be tolerated.
To whip the masses into a pro-war frenzy based on the lies Iran poses a serious nuclear threat, the corporate media doctored and disported the words of Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to make him look like a deranged fanatic. They did this to justify their continuing blood lust and genocide against Arabs and Muslims. It is no secret the goal of Zionist imperialism is to extend the borders of Israel from Egypt to the Euphrates River.
“ In his Complete Diaries, Vol. II. p. 711, Theodore Herzl, the founder of Zionism, says that the area of the Jewish State stretches: ‘From the Brook of Egypt to the Euphrates.’ Rabbi Fischmann, member of the Jewish Agency for Palestine, declared in his testimony to the U.N. Special Committee of Enquiry on 9 July 1947: ‘The Promised Land extends from the River of Egypt up to the Euphrates, it includes parts of Syria and Lebanon.’” http://www.theunjustmedia.com/the%20zionist_plan_for_the_middle_east.htm
The Zionists will have no problem kick starting their propaganda war machine to justify an AmeriKKKan attack on Iran like they did with Iraq. The mainstream media is greatly influenced if not controlled outright by Zionists. Even they admit it.
“In the United States a very similar situation exists, at least until now. The more or less serious commentators take their information about Israel, and much of their opinions about it, from two sources. The first is from articles in the ‘liberal’ American press, written almost totally by Jewish admirers of Israel who, even if they are critical of some aspects of the Israeli state, practice loyally what Stalin used to call ‘the constructive criticism.’ (In fact those among them who claim also to be ‘Anti-Stalinist’ are in reality more Stalinist than Stalin, with Israel being their god which has not yet failed). In the framework of such critical worship it must be assumed that Israel has always ‘good intentions’ and only ‘makes mistakes,’ and therefore such a plan would not be a matter for discussion--exactly as the Biblical genocides committed by Jews are not mentioned. The other source of information, The Jerusalem Post, has similar policies. So long, therefore, as the situation exists in which Israel is really a ‘closed society’ to the rest of the world, because the world wants to close its eyes, the publication and even the beginning of the realization of such a plan is realistic and feasible.” Quoted from, A Strategy For Israel In The Nineteen Eighties by Oded Yinon.
The nonsense about “liberal American press” aside, Oded Yinon essentially admits no serious critique of Israel exists in the AmeriKKKan media. That is as true today as it was then. If you doubt what I am saying just reflect on the recent response to Jimmy Carter’s latest book or the firestorm the Zionist and their lackeys unleashed on John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt because they dared suggest in their paper entitled
The Israel Lobby and US Foreign Policy US policy in the “Middle east” was framed and set by the AmeriKKKan Israeli lobbies. The very fact these tsunamis occurred is a testament to the power and influence of the Zionists. It is this influence many Ashkenazim are now worried will spark a backlash against them. With each new body bag, each newly maimed soldier and each report of additional setbacks in Iraq, they shudder. With saber rattling and the military build up in the Persian Gulf, they know their goal of war with Iran and Syria is that much closer. But at the same time, they worry about AmeriKKKan disenchantment with them.
“Hoenlein dated the trend to the 2005 arrest of two former employees of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, Steven Rosen and Keith Weissman, on charges of passing classified national security information. Hoenlein argued that the Jewish community made a major mistake by not forcefully criticizing the arrests. Speaking via video, Hoenlein listed several events that had occurred since then: the release of the essay criticizing the 'Israel Lobby' by two distinguished professors, Stephen Walt and John Mearsheimer; the publication of former president Jimmy Carter’s best-selling book, ‘Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid’; the suggestion by former NATO supreme commander and Democratic presidential candidate Wesley Clark that ‘New York money people’ were pushing America into war, and claims by former U.S. weapons inspector Scott Ritter that Israel is pushing the United States to attack Iran. ‘In the beginning of the Iraq war they talked about the ‘neocons’ as a code word,’ Hoenlein said. ‘Now we see that code words are no longer necessary.” He warned that the United States is nearing a situation similar to that of Britain, where delegitimization of Israel is widespread. This is a cancer that starts from the top and works its way down,’ he said. ‘It poisons the opinions among elites which trickle down into society.’ According to Hoenlein, such critics tend not only to delegitimize Israel but also to “intimidate American Jews not to speak out.” He called on American Jews to take action against this phenomenon, saying that Christian Zionists seemed at times more willing than Jews to fight back.” Groups Fear Public Backlash Over Iran http://www.forward.com/articles/groups-fear-public-backlash-over-iran/
You can’t fool all the people all the time. Folks aren’t stupid, they know the war in Iraq was pushed by NeoCons the most vocal of whom are Ashkenazim. They know these same “crazies” as Colin Powell called them are pushing for war and regime change in Iran and Syria. Do the Ashkenazim plan to change their ways or alter course? Not hardly! They plan to press on beating the drums for more carnage, blood letting and warmongering all in the name of Greater Israel.
“Whatever worries exist about a negative backlash over Israel, they have not deterred Jewish and pro-Israel activists from publicly pressing for tough U.S. action against Tehran or invoking concern for Israel. A particularly forceful argument for a hard line against Iran appeared this week in The New Republic, a Washington insider journal widely viewed as a bellwether of pro-Israel opinion. The lengthy article, written by two respected Israeli writers, Michael Oren and Yossi Klein Halevi, both fellows at the Shalem Center, a hawkish Jerusalem think tank, names Iran as the main threat to Israeli survival, regional stability and to the entire world order. This theme has been echoed in publications and press releases put out by most major Jewish groups, including Aipac and the Conference of Presidents.” ibid
The fact these people are directly and indirectly responsible for the deaths of thousands of innocent Iraqis and they are waging a genocidal war against the Palestinians for land they have absolutely no genetic or historic claim is the crime of the century! No wonder they are hated by so many around the world. The problem is, the Ashkenazim are cunningly dragging Joe and Jane Sixpack into the vortex of a multi-generational regional war. The tail is waging the dog.
Sadly because of the role played by buck dancing House Negroes like Colin Powell and Condoleeza Rice, much of the world now thinks Black people support AmeriKKKa’s madness. If as many suspect, the region ignites into a nuclear wasteland after the US or Israeli attack on Iran and subsequent attacks on Syria; won’t the Ashkenazim settlers in Palestine and the occupied territories also be affected? Why haven’t they thought about that? Don’t they care? Won’t AmeriKKKan military in the region also be put in grave danger? If the Zionists’ plans to foment attacks on Iran and Syria go forward they could very well be the catalysts for the next World War. Even if by some chance sanity prevails and their nefarious plans are stymied, the fact the world knows they actually contemplated something this Nazi like will turn world opinion against them. This is obviously not the best way to make friends.
-30-
Our Solution To Eurocentric Oppression is Developing an African Consciousness
Our Solution To Oppression is Developing An African Consciousness “Consequently, if we are to be empowered and our power is to work in our interests, then our consciousness must be an Afrikan consciousness, our values must be Afrikan values, our personality must be an Afrikan based personality. If not we may suffer first ethnicide and then genocide. What we are saying here is that our culture will not be functional in a way that it protects our interests. We must then, as a people, develop a new Afrikan consciousness- an Afrikan centered consciousness- and that means we develop it based on an Afriakn history, Afrikan culture and Afrikan values. Most of all, we must develop an Afrikan sense of nationhood.” Amos N Wilson,
Afrikan-Centered Consciousness Versus The New World Order page 120-21
When we critically examine world events, we see the same conditions the Honorable Marcus Mosiah Garvey observed in the early twentieth century. We see Africans languishing in brutal oppression mired at the bottom of a global Western Neo-colonial (as opposed to the virulent colonialism of Garvey’s time) socio-economic and political system. As we pause to celebrate the resilience, perseverance and creativity of Africans in AmeriKKKa, let us not lose sight of the fact that everywhere we find Africans in this world, we are in a state of disorganization, subjugation, oppression and victims of ongoing genocide.
Marcus Garvey launched his Pan-African program the UNIA-ACL with the expressed purpose of waking the masses of Africans around the world, organizing, uniting and galvanizing them to act in their best interests. The enemies of African people, Western imperialists, their European settler kin and the treacherous Negroes who aligned themselves with their European masters saw Garvey as a major threat to their quest for global dominance. Using their Negro lackeys, those in in the NAACP and Garvey’s Caribbean rivals, the US government framed Garvey using a prototype of COINTELPRO on a bogus mail fraud charge. The US government then imprisoned Garvey subsequently deporting him to England. They were successful getting Garvey out of their hair, removing him as an organizational threat to their global dominance.
Examining the powerful impact of Garvey’s UNIA-ACL Pan-African movement Amos N. Wilson observed, “
Wherever the organization took root, so too did its voice, Negro World, which became a thorn in the side of the imperialist powers who pulled all stops to stymy or eradicate the paper’s appeal. Indeed, in much of Afrika, all of Europe and Great Britain, the Southern states of the US, the Caribbean, Central and South America, to have been caught reading a copy of the ‘subversive weekly’ was a punishable offense, often resulting in hard jail time or worse. Nothing the imperialist governments tried, including seizing bundles of cleverly concealed papers smuggled aboard even their own ships bound for lands adjacent and afar was completely successful. The liberating message borne on the pages of the Negro World infiltrated even the most tightly surveilled borders, reaching as far as Nyasaland (modern Malawi) where it penetrated a defensive ring established by the British Foreign Office.” Afrikan Consciousness Versus The New World Order Garveyism in the Age of Globalism page 26.
What made Garvey’s Negro World such a threat to Western imperialists? It was because Garvey was so unabashedly pro-African. He exuded his love for African people and he desired the total liberation of Africans everywhere. Marcus Mosiah Garvey had both an ethnic consciousness and a nationalistic consciousness. He saw the importance and need for a unified people with a land base and an economic program. Garvey’s negotiations with Liberia to establish a beachhead on the continent posed a serious threat to the US government and the Firestone Rubber Company’s exploitation of that nation’s resources.
Garvey’s efforts to unite Africans worldwide sent chills up and down the spines of Western imperialists. The last thing they wanted to face was an aroused, unified and united African people. Garvey espoused a Pan-African ideology albeit one tinged with Anglo-Saxon cultural trappings. The key to Garvey’s rise was his promotion and exhorting Africans worldwide to embrace a Pan-African consciousness and a do for self mentality. We need to take a lesson from Garvey! We need to realize the only way we can counter our oppressors and their psychopathic will to subjugate us, is to develop and propagate a Pan- African consciousness. We must throw off the yoke of Eurocentric thinking, what some call our slave mentality. We must replace it with a pro-African, do for self consciousness. Garvey understood this implicitly. He said,
“The Negro must understand that he is standing by himself. If he is to enjoy the best out of life, he must create for himself, and he can only create for himself when he has given to the world his philosophy and code to guide him. And I can recommend to you nothing more enhancing than the Creed we have laid down in ‘African Fundamentalism’. If you will absorb it you will get inspiration to guide you and your children... When you get to understand that, you will no longer be the cringing creatures as others would have you be, but a master. The opportunity is yours, you can lift yourselves any height, as others have done, it is only for you to summon the courage and absorb these things which are at your doors, and so merit the blessings of God. The Universal Improvement Association is opening the door of intelligence to the Four Hundred Million Negroes of the world- the door of inspiration.” Marcus Mosiah Garvey
Marcus Garvey Life and Lessons Robert A Hill Editor, Barbara Bair, Associate editor page 10.
We can learn the lesson from Garvey’s movement including ways to counter COINTELPRO and the other repressive antics of our enemies. At the heart of Garvey’s success was his tapping into the latent African consciousness of Africans world wide. While this consciousness is suppressed due to Eurocentric anti-African propaganda, it is there nonetheless. The burgeoning Bring Black Back movement is designed to resurrect our latent African consciousness, revive our need for self-determination and develop a do for self mentality. Don’t wait for another Marcus Garvey to come and shout “Up you mighty race, you can accomplish what you will”. Garvey fulfilled his life mission, what about us?! Don’t look outside of yourself, for someone to free you. You are a liberator just as I am. We are the ones we have been waiting for. We are the ones our ancestors prayed for. Rise up and come forth!
-30-
Do Not Relegate History To Dusty Old Books
Do Not Relegate History To Dusty Old Books “
One of he most profound things that we’ve learned in psychology is that the most powerful forces that shape human behavior are those factors that are consciously not remembered by human beings, that are unknown by the person, are those experiences the individual can swear he never had. That is one of the paradoxes of human behavior, that the very things that shape us and make us behave the way we do, see the world the way we see it and relate to people the way we relate to them, are those things that occurred in our lives at points we cannot remember or recall.” Amos Wilson,
The Falsification of Afrikan Consciousness. Page 34.
I have noticed over the last few years we as a people have eschewed celebrating Black History Month. It is almost as if we have internalized our enemies dread of African and African-American history, we seem to be content being dummied down and satisfied being ignorant of our legacy of resilience, struggle, greatness and divinity. Have we acquiesced to the will of our oppressor, are we mindlessly cooperating in our own demise and destruction? History is not just what happened a hundred or a few thousand years ago, it is what happened last month, last week yesterday or a few hours ago. History is really personal, history is not what we were brainwashed to believe about the world, history is the accurate record and study of our past. There are lessons in our immediate and lengthy past which we generally call history that we need to learn, benefit from and resolve.
Much of what makes us who and what we are is the result of our history, our total past, meaning past lives, past world history, past ethnic and personal history. If we relegate our past to the recesses of our unconscious we fail to learn the needed lessons from them. Ironically learning the lessons of our past allows us to better live in the moment and wisely navigate our lives as we overcome past addictions, experience success and improve on the things we need to overcome. For example there are lessons about Hurricane Katrina Africans in AmeriKKKa need to discern, learn and master. For one thing we know each of the governments: local, state and especially the Bu$h federal government performed extremely poorly. We know in the case of the Bu$h administration they knowingly, callously and deliberately allowed conditions to worsen despite being warned by weather specialists and satellite imagery days beforehand that the approaching storm was capable of major devastation and destruction. This is one more example in a long series of criminal actions by the US federal government since its founding, comparable to their program of genocide against the Native Americans and the sanctioning of the trans Atlantic slave trade as a revenue source for the government’s treasury (See Article 1 sections 2 and 9 of the US Constitution as well as Article IV and section 2) that negatively impacted thousands of our people.
Our collective and personal history in AmeriKKKa is very painful and will continue to be so into the foreseeable future despite superficial changes in the AmeriKKKan socio-economic and political system. In his new book Pawned Sovereignty Ezrah Aharone shows how the Europeans who founded this country moved to codify the subordinate status of Africans.
“The discriminatory content of the Constitution picked up where the Declaration of Independence left off. Article 1, section 2 paragraph 3 known as the ‘three fifths clause’, relegates the status of Black people to three fifths of a person and establishes bold boundaries between the races. It states, ‘Representatives and direct taxes shall be apportioned among the several states which may be included in this Union, according to heir respective Numbers which shall be determined by adding to the whole Number of free persons including those bound to Service for a Term of years and excluding Indians not taxed, three fifths of all other persons.’” . We cannot alter these facts but we can accept what happened and learn the lessons from what happened.
We can learn from our dealings with Europeans not to believe everything they say. We must make their behavior , how they act the real test of their integrity. We must also remember our history on this planet extends for millennia before our experiences in AmeriKKKa! One lesson we can learn from our collective past is if our ancestors could create magnificent civilizations throughout the continent of Africa like ancient Sudan, Kemet, Nubia, Zimbabwe and Mali and beyond as well as create a free republic in Haiti, we certainly can be just as determined and creative. It’s in our genes ad DNA. We can be creative and bold wherever we find ourselves in the world. History can teach and inspire (stir up within ourselves) us how to do it. We each have long personal histories of successes we can build upon.
Collectively African people can take direct action to resist our oppression and fight back in a myriad of ways. For example the New York police department recently fired over fifty rounds into the car occupied by three African-American males outside a nightclub killing one of them, Sean Bell. Suppose if every time there was an incident of police brutality in the Black community, our people retaliated against the system in some way? What if we stopped supporting our own oppression by buying products manufactured and sold by our enemies? What if we stopped going to the movies, buying magazines and books or watching videos that blatantly promote white supremacy and reinforced denigrating racists stereotypes about African people. What if we decided to go on a buying fast and absolutely refused to buy anything Black people didn’t make, own or distribute? Since white folks care more about the dollar then they do morality, I think such a boycott would be successful.
When we go to a doctor for the first time, they ask for a personal history so they can figure out what is wrong and how to treat us. History is just as important in psychological healing and restoration. Healing and redemption require also action. We have to cooperate in our own healing. To heal ourselves and our communities, requires both personal and collective action, mental action, emotional action and physical action! Our past is a valuable tool in our liberation, we have to embrace it no matter how painful it is, learn the lessons and use the past to heal and free ourselves now and in the future.
-30-
