It's Party Time for the Black Misleadership Class
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A Black Agenda Radio commentary by Glen Ford
If, as Michelle Obama claims, “voting is the new movement,” then Black people are going nowhere. Absent a genuine people’s struggle, the periodic ritual of voting empowers only “the same class that abandoned mass movement politics 40 years ago, in favor of pursuing their own corporate and electoral ambitions.”
It's Party Time for the Black Misleadership Class
A Black Agenda Radio commentary by Glen Ford
“A class that is concerned mainly with celebrating its own existence.”
Michelle Obama was the main attraction at the Congressional Black Caucus’s annual Legislative Weekend gala affair. She told the party-goers that voting, “going to the polls every single election…is the movement of our era.” That is part of the great tragedy that has befallen Black America. The same class that abandoned mass movement politics 40 years ago, in favor of pursuing their own corporate and electoral ambitions, now claims that going to the polls every couple of years is the same thing as having a movement. And that’s got a lot to do with why, by many key measurements, Black people are as bad off, or worse, than in 1965.
Some of us remember the days, after Martin Luther King’s death, when the aspiring Black political class lectured movement activists to get out of the streets and into the suites. They said Black folks needed to position themselves on the inside of power where they could, supposedly, do the most good for the Black masses. But these selfish actors were only looking out for their own upward mobility.
It would be unfair the say that these misleaders shut down the Black Freedom Movement in the late Sixties – the U.S. government’s hit squads made their own murderous contribution to the death of the movement, and a national policy of mass Black incarceration put lower class African Americans on permanent lockdown.
“Our history did not prepare us to fight Power when it wears a Black face.”
But some segments of Black America have done pretty well for themselves, as is on display every September at the Black Caucus weekend. With Barack Obama in the White House, the Black common folk experience a vicarious sensation of power – which, as it turns out, is not a very healthy thing, since African Americans as a group have never gotten anywhere without fighting the Powers-That-Be. However, our history did not prepare us to fight Power when it wears a Black face, a problem few of us ever expected to confront. It appears likely that we will experience another four years in which the Black political class makes no demands of Power, so as not to discomfort or embarrass the First Black President in his second term, a man who serves the financial oligarchs on Wall Street, not the folks on Martin Luther King Boulevard.
The Black Caucus also honored Eric Holder, the first Black U.S. attorney general. Holder has failed to prosecute any of the Wall Street plutocrats whose criminal financial enterprises threw millions out of work and set Black America back two generations. It was Holder's job to explain why his boss’s preventive detention bill was not a death blow to due process of law in the United States – an impossible task. Even in the Age of Obama, most of the Black Caucus opposes indefinite detention without charge or trial – but not enough to let a little thing like the Bill of Rights get in the way of honoring a “first Black”…anything.
This is the logical end-result of what people like professor and preacher Michael Eric Dyson cynically call “getting in the game”: the empowerment of a slim sliver of a Black Misleaderhip Class that is concerned mainly with celebrating its own existence. That's what happens when the money-soaked rituals of American electoral politics are mistaken for a people's movement.
For Black Agenda Radio, I'm Glen Ford. On the web, go to BlackAgendaReport.com.
BAR executive editor Glen Ford can be contacted at Glen.Ford@BlackAgendaReport.com.
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NYers: Join the Boycott of the 2012 presidential election in NY!
https://www.facebook.com/groups/429053157130723/
http://electionboycott2012.org/
NYers: Local/state groups around the u.s. are forming in the building of an active, organized, public boycott of this year's u.s. presidential election, including here in NY. Election boycotts have occurred in numerous societies around the planet in resistance to illegitimate regimes, illegitimate political systems, and illegitimate elections, and the u.s. political system, the democrat/republican regime that controls the u.s. political system, and this year's presidential election, as is the case with most, if not all, u.s. presidential elections (because the democrat/republican/corporate war crime regime effectively prohibits independent candidates and/or independent political parties from participating in any significant manner in most, if not all, elections in the u.s.), in which the incumbent president, democrat Barack Obama and his crime partner and main "challenger," republican Mitt Romney, are the only two candidates with any real chance of being elected president, are as illegitimate as any.
Election boycotting is the complete opposite of simply not voting. Election boycotting is a deliberate and effective tool (just as one of the most important boycotts in u.s. history, the Montgomery bus boycott in Alabama in the 1950s, was a deliberate action) that requires concrete, visible action, such as the recent voter card-burning by boycotters in front of Obama's campaign office in Chicago, and maximum publicity, otherwise it is not a boycott, but is instead mere apathy, non-action, and surrender to the regime. Everyone is needed to help brainstorm, plan, organize actions, and help build an active, deliberate, and well-publicized presidential election boycott in order to remind the illegitimate democrat/republican/corporate war crime regime that the masses know that the regime is illegitimate & that the regime is further warned of what might follow if it continues to refuse to obey the needs of the People in its tyrannical governance.
"Whereas both major political parties have sold out to the Wall Street banks and multinational corporations with no allegiance to the Nation or the people,
Whereas third parties have no possibility of winning the Presidential election due to corporate control over the electoral process and the media,
Whereas three decades of solid efforts to reform the electoral process have been subverted by the corporate state,
Whereas participation in the electoral process lends legitimacy to a system that has lost its legitimacy,
We hereby refuse to vote in the 2012 Presidential election."
http://electionboycott2012.org/
The "Anglo-elite" who left
The "Anglo-elite" who left Europe to literally take this country from the indigenous people have passed their traits from generation to generation. Since their motives are always the same they are always devising new ways to add to the many functional ones they use to manipulate, brainwash, assimilate, deceive, cheat, steal, and lie to the masses. There is no need to vote or focus our mental anguish on this preconceived, propagandized social structure. Too many people are still not getting the proper information because they are totally assimilated and brainwashed, or simply ignorant, retarded, and/or mentally ill in other ways. Futher still the elite have used the 'divide-and-conquer' tools well, decade after decade, century after century. We witness the emotionally retarded, insane, and uselessly ignorant going completely ballistic against each other because they have no direction and no proper understanding. We see others who refuse to listen or learn the truth, fall hopelessly into the chasims of this totally corrupt, capitalistic, oligarchy-elite, sociopathic society. Today it is easy to see "Blacks" turn on each other and hate each other, because their minds have been infected and distorted by this vile, deceptive, devious social structure, which is constantly creating new ways to corrupt and confuse the minds and emotions of the masses!
The bottom line to ending this madness is simple in it's rediculousness, but it is the only way. And that is to outlaw wealth and power accumulation around the globe! There must be limits to what one person or a group can obtain and hoard! The laws must be as severe as the laws that are used to war against drugs, or genocide, because it is greed, wealth and power accumulation which created all of the side affects of genocide, starvation, government deception, and mind manipulation to say the least. People who have accumulated great wealth in the face of world abject poverty can be considered insane, selfish, greedy and inhumane! They must all be made to relinquish their wealth to the 'people of the earth'! This is what they have always been most afraid of and have fought against being forced to do, and they will murder billions of people to continue their hoarding ways!
Some of these 'families-of-greed' have serious pychological hoarding problems. They need serious psychiatirc treatment just as much as those who hoard animals and other things. Imagine people who are so mentally disturbed in their hoarding that they will murder to hoard more! These wealth-power hoarders are some of the well established families the world is suffering from.
Then there are those who serve with guns and badges, and titles, and licenses to kill, who protect these great hoarders. They also have mental problems they aren't aware of and/or they are conditioned and twisted to believe and follow the lies that direct them to harm the working and poor who are fighting to help them as well!
If we cannot criminalize and outlaw world greed, power, and wealth hoarding, we will be forever caught up in this cycle of death and destruction, because nothing else will end this world enslavement and other horrible earthly abuses.
Its really quite embarassing.
Holder and Obama are the people who sprout up like in an evolutionary experiment. They are willing to say anything, they can justfy anything.If they could see the truth their knowledge would betray them, would eat at them and expose them. They won't see it, they won't be aware of it, they will refuse ittheir ruse depends on not knowing.Its an illusion, its mass hypnosis. Its the Matrix. Those guys who made that movie were geniuses.
We've been punked
What we are witnessing are the bitter fruits of the failed experiment known as “The Civil Rights Movement and Integration.” Let me preface my comments by saying I believe we are all equal and precious in the Creator’s sight and I am not advocating separatism or supremacy, I will build coalitions with any progressive force.
Stop and think for a minute why federally mandated busing failed and why residential patterns are more segregated today than during the busing era.
You can’t integrate with folks who don’t want to. Eisenhower famously said, "You can't legislate morality." Take ATL for instance, when the City proper became integrated Whites moved to the unincorporated areas like Roswell, when Roswell became integrated they moved to the suburbs, when the suburbs became integrated they moved to gated-communities, when those became integrated they moved to the exurbs. (I forget to add that along the way Roswell chartered its own City so as not to be part of ATL). Now Whites have damn near moved to Chattanooga, TN, I imagine the peaks of the Smoky Mtns. are next. LOL. And if you describe this reality, this TRUTH, then some racists will try to call YOU racist, and some sick Black’s will keep quiet as a result.
It is what it is folks and I’m not advocating racial or ethnic balkanization, I’m DESCRIBING it. No other ethnic group in America has slavishly bought into this concept of integration. Asians were discriminated against alongside Blacks, placed in internment camps, but you don’t and won’t see them clamoring for “Civil Rights” because they and others understand that the only integration that matters is economic integration. (And I bet they don’t won’t Blacks moving into Chinatown either).
Expect the racial divide and patterns of segregation to deepend even more after Obama's relection. Them Black and White pimps that were going to game that Post-Racial shit will get permanent amnesia. Were it not for the political correctness and hate speech bullshit, you'd get a good sampling right now. But after Obama is sworn in, the gloves will come off. Anybody want to bet me?
The Hmong in the South didn’t integrate, the Hasidic in NYC didn’t integrate, the Hispanics don’t integrate, drive down Buford Hwy in ATL and see what I mean, Asian business dominate one side, Hispanic businesses the other. Hell, the Dominicans in NYC don’t integrate either. However, the upwardly mobile but confused Blacks now get to enjoy Greek Town in Detroit and China Town in Frisco. Only us dumb-ass Black folks have tried integration to no avail as if we didn’t have millionaires when integration didn’t exist, nor could create them without it.
In the meantime, the Black Mis-leadership class has screwed the Black masses along the way for their own “upward mobility” their own “integration success stories they we are suppose to embrace. In the “D” former Mayor Kilpatrick’s trial is in its first week of testimony and the first story we hear is how as Minority Leader of the State House Kwame cut a budget deal with the GOP who in turn facilitated him receiving a “grant” intended for poor people that he flagrantly misappropriated. The slimy details are in the Detroit Free Press, including how Kwame took out a full page age in the Black rag claiming he was being “lynched.” LOL
http://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=1988&dat=20051030&id=2FwyAAAAIBAJ&sjid=Q60FAAAAIBAJ&pg=4345,4918182
It’s the old black Misleadership pimp game played for decades, tell the Negroes how horrible White folks are while you in bed with them all along. Play the race-card while they are being dealt cards underneath the table, get the ignorant Blacks all riled up about the “Man” while they kissing the Man’s ass for their own ill-gotten greed. Even Coleman Young had no problem telling Whites to get the f**k past 8 Mile while he was dealing in S. African krugerrands during the height of the apartheid era. We’ve been punked.
They only thing that “might” arouse some change in direction is when Obama uses the Lame duck recess in January 2013 to cut a grand bargain with the GOP, and take a switchblade to entitlements. When those food stamp allotments get smaller and the social security COLAs disappear, and the ranks of the poor swell even then, then perhaps Blacks will awaken, but given their psychological state of mind the jury’s out. Moreover, the Black sellouts and pimps will come to Obama’s defense because they are invested in the status quo too. They ain’t no f**king different than Mittens when you get down to it because they only pay lip service to that “47%.”
p.s. I told yall last week Obama’s lead would widen before the new polls came out, give him another 1 to 2% bump when the debates are all said and done, by that time the GOP will damn near have throw in the towel and shifted resources to the House and Senate races. And nobody compensated me for this brilliant insight. LOL
Indeed
Well said and welcome back. I haven't been here in awhile either but your comments were alwys on point.
"They only thing that
"They only thing that “might” arouse some change in direction is when Obama uses the Lame duck recess in January 2013 to cut a grand bargain with the GOP, and take a switchblade to entitlements. When those food stamp allotments get smaller and the social security COLAs disappear, and the ranks of the poor swell even then, then perhaps Blacks will awaken, but given their psychological state of mind the jury’s out."
When the govt checks decrease or cease, the bleeple will blame Republicans. As usual, Reagan,Jr., er, Obomber will escape blame.
As usual, EC, your comments are on point and then some. There's nothing wrong with integration. However, it can't be the sole focus of obtaining progress. One needs to get one's own shit together w/o having to study next to or live next to a white person to succeed. Instead of clamoring to have kids bused 2 hours across town to the "good" white school, the so-called leaders need to demand improvements in the black school. One doesn't have to be rich or highly educated to maintain a neat and clean home and neighborhood. Why couldn't PUSH or some other "advocate" for the black masses think of Habitat for Humanity for example?
Millions of dollars have come and gone for this and that program to help black folks and after all this time, on average, we are more ignorant and worse off socially and economically than before the Civil Rights Movement. These so-called leaders amongst us are a bigger impediment to progress than any Mittens Romney caricature. They make money off the misery of the downtrodden. Black folks need to wake up and smell the reality that a black face in a high place is not enough. Reject these hustlers and start at the grassroots - yourself, your family, your neighborhood - to improve your lives. We can't count on the govt anymore, if we ever could rely on it in the first place.