A-Infos (sup) Anarchist Panther zine #4 One Journey into and out of the Anarchist ... BLACK! by Ashanti Omowali

[Worker <a-infos-en@ainfos.ca>(http://www.anarco-nyc.net/anarchistpanther.html)]

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Anarchy as a journey in the human story has a long and
crazy road. In fact, it is where the Human Story begins. It
is the story of human life BEFORE the advent, the
institutionalization of The Muthafuckas. (Eldridge
Cleaverian definition, ha). 

Increasingly, anthropologists, archeologists, etc., have
been finding pieces to a fantastic set of puzzles. And
notice that I used the plural! As they begin to lay these
pieces down, pictures are forming of our social beginnings
that will shock, surprise and amaze many. Most of us may
even find them revolting because these pictures go so
extremely contrary to all that we've been raised to believe
about the stories of the human species on this planet.

In the Beginning was the WORD? No.

In the Beginning was the WOMB! Hmm?

I remember one of Nikki Giovanni's poems where she
took us on a daydream journey into the land of New York
City , USA before it was Babylon, when it "belonged" to
the Indigenous Peoples; when there were no sky-scrapers,
cars, pollutions, materialism, etc. It made me think how
easy it is for us to take urbanism for granted, for the way
it is and has always been. Point:

Take things back, de-volve in time to simpler and simpler
realities. Or ... minus buildings, minus cars, mijus
exploiters, protective forces, drugs, churches, marriages,
etc. The firther back we go, the simpler the ways of living
and social arrangements were. Simpl questions come to
surface, like: If Iroquois didn't have Pentagon, Executive
Branch, CocaCola, CIA, Cop Joe Pig ... then how did they
(Iroquois) manage their affairs?

Come to find out that these so-called "savages" had some
pretty simple, effective, direct ways of governing
themselves and of living off the natural resources of the
land ("Turtle Island"). These so-called savages were
actually kinda peace loving and democratic in a way
Babylon aint never been. Yet, in terms of written ideals,
those White AngloSaxonProtestant "founding fathers"
stole a lot of their ideas for their wonderful Declarations
and Constitutions and Bills from these very human beings
they labeled "savages."

Next, I read this book, "When God Was A Women." Its
title was outrageous to begin with; not even worthy of
serious inquiry. But I was in a situation where I had the
time and the "outrageous" caught my attention, like
seeing a porno magazine for the first time when nobody
else was around. Again, I had always taken it for granted
that this was a "Man's World," that "God" was a man (by
verbal and painted word-pictures) and that Man was
Supreme and His top position in society verified it. OR
DOES IT? Was it possibly that such ideas and beliefs and
practices just being continually REINFORCED by sexist,
male-constructed culture made it seem to be
common-sense, TRUE? Hmm?

To have a well-researched book challenge age-old ideas
and beliefs that I had held about God as this book did,
was to QUESTION MY OWN SANITY. God a Woman? 

Is somebody looking at me? God as a His-storical
idea/belief is definitely a SHORT story ... in the overall
Story. Possibly 5,000 to 10,000 years old. Compared to,
what, hundreds of thousands and possibly a million years
of human communities. Found deep within the earth of a
East Afrikan basin, what could Lucy "the Afrikan"
ancestor tell us now about our Beginnings. What might
she startle us with?

Bible, Quran, Torah are definitely creation stories. But
now, here were the summarized findings of many
researchers, or searchers, period, who's collective
evidence pointed to societies, communes way, way older
than Adam & Eve, and the One God stories we in the
West have been spoon-fed. Their living arrangements
have been labeled matriarchy, matrifocal, Mother-Right,
etc. The available evidence points to simplicity and
DIFFERENCE in creation stories, in governing and in
living off the natural resources of the land. The available
evidence also points to little or no violence, rape,
rich/poor dichotomies, no pigs enforcing shit; no religious
and philosophical rationalizations for accepting one's
constructed or contrived powerlessness, one's need for
muthafuckas called authorities to lead you, or one's need
to restrict the dynamic feel-good of pussy/dick/body/spirit
and play...
IN LIFE.

Even today, we'd even feel crazy or a bit uncomfortable to
shit or piss in the open or in an Out-house in the country.
So uptight. We're still uneasy about admitting that we
masturbate. Lord knows what's going through our minds
when we see same-sex kiss and hug. Arab men do it in
greeting. Gay and lesbian people do it in greeting and may
do it also in passion. Parents of newborns just do it simply
in the spell of JOY, greeting and passion. WHAT!!!
Simple things. Sit quietly on a Harlem bench and watch
the sunrise and feeling at one with the Cosmos. Crazy
mutha... 

Point: what happened when society grew so large, so
complex, brutal and disorienting that we found ourselves
LOST? Or: what happened BEFORE all this shit
happened? How might we have experienced Life before
"Civilization." This is where my mind was leading me,
provoking me to not only investigate and explore, but to
be imaginative.
God? Lemme understand how and why some of these
specific ideas about God came about and for whose
benefit did it become canonized, organized, and
institutionalized? That's why it is so good that people
debate religion versus spirituality today.
Civilization? What the fuck is so great about it when it
has us on the brink of a total planetary pigocracy that is
just destroying humanity. Whose idea was "civilization"
and for whose benefit?

So, I had already accepted a new value in my life as being
questioning, daring to question, humble and revolutionary
enough to stand up for whatever my new findings,
conclusions laid in my lap. It's not an easy process. It's
rough. We're all so thoroughly conditioned to purfumed
bullshit, to shit that keeps us locked into, glued to the
very Monster that is devouring us.

MANY INFLUENCES

In the same vein, entrenched in the Nationalist,
Marxist-Leninist and Maoist teachings, I had accepted
their identification of The Enemy, the Opposition
(Trotsky & the anarchists put in with the kapitalists)
without even fully understanding WHY. In other words,
why the hell didn't I check "the Other" side of the story? I
had never even availed myself to other Black
revolutionary thinkers like CLR James, James and Grace
Lee Boggs, Adolph Reed, Pat Robinson, Lucius Outlaw,
James Cone, Audrey Lorde and the Combahee River
Collective, the black critical theorists, the black
existentialists, the black surrealists. Or even "the Other"
European thinkers like Prince Kropotkin, Simone
Beavoir, Sartre, the Situationists, Rosa Luxemburg, Paul
Goodman, Antonio Gramsci, Malatesta, Regis Debray,
Herbert Marcuse, etc. 

The dialectical method had helped me tremendously in
being personally analytical and critical in my thinking and
viewing things. I am forever grateful to that skool to this
day. But, I wouldn't have put Marx and company and their
ideas and prognosis under the same critical, scientific (my
best) microscope. (The Panther Party DID, in fact, pull
my coat to Mister Marx's racism, which told me that he
wasn't no perfect mutha...) It had to happen with the
interaction and urging of others of my comrades who had
already made a similar journey as my own. And it wasn't
but two or three! So, when first exposed to anarchist
literature, I rejected it with a biased boot, a fascistic boot.
At some point, with the help of conversation and
suggestions of humility, I relaxed a bit and read some of
their shit, as I had read Islamic literature when trying to
understand Muslim comrades beliefs and arguments.

Panther ideology had joined with other revolutionary
theoreticians like James Boggs ("Racism and the Class
Struggle"), in critiquing white kapitalist Babylon, and the
traitorous role of its "working klass and trade unions"
towards Black folks struggle for liberation and revolution
within Babylon period. My own independent studies,
provoked by Panther Frankie Ziths who gave me my first
anarchist reading, verified that. Frankie's hand-written
notes on the sides of these readings would always relate
the `lessons', for example, on the Maknovists' betrayal by
the Russian communists, to our possible betrayal by white
communists and other privileged white activists. So, when
I read my first anarchist tract on "unions" and how their
hierarchies consistently aligned themselves with patriotic
materialism and pig boss management, I concluded that
anar-KISM made some solid critiques. So, it can't be that
bad. But key in the anarchist critique was not so much
Labor's (our "natural ally") treachery or incorporation into
the System. It was Labor's STRUCTURE and
middle-klass goals and capitalist aspirations. But
structure & culture was key! For, regardless of your
rhetoric, even the most radical, if your structure and
aspirations are basically in line with your enemy's, then
whatever you produce will be basically in line with your
enemy. And being that Labor groups' rhetoric was
materialism and amerikan blindness to the root causes of
racism, what else could it do BUT betray its alleged
revolutionary potential and its allies ...LIKE US
NIGGUHS?

These little anarchist pamphlets were easily available
from info-shops in Detroit and Canada, and they were
getting to us in the prisons. I was no longer averse to
reading and learning from them. But I only saw them as
making a lot of good and interesting critiques of
kapitalism and authoritarian opposition groups, like
unions and vanguard parties.. Actually, I was reading and
learning a lot from the works of the Frankfort skool of
psychology (E. Fromm, Marcuse, W. Reich, etc.) and
feminist literature ("The Black Woman" edited by Toni
Cade Bambara, Third World Women's Alliance, Sheila
Rowbotham, interviews with women of the national
liberation movements, Michelle Wallace's "Black
Macho...", Merlin Stone's "When God Was A Woman,"
Angela Davis, etc.). 

These readings eventually led me back to reading and
re-reading anarchist works as a serious study of its frame
of references, its principles, it's style, and it's
contemporary relevance. This was all basically
prison-time, thinking time, reflecting time. Rebel
philosophy in prison is that you be pro-active when
dealing with "KAPtured Time." Don't let time do you -
you DO time. DO, as an active, aggressive, defiant verb.
And as a POW I most certainly did. As POW Sundiata
Acoli had said from the beginning of his kaptured-time:
"Turn prison into your university." I read till my eyes
hurt!

BLACK REVOLUTIONARY INTELLECTUAL
DARINGNESS

Just a quick cruise through some of these major
influences. Number one were Huey Newton and Eldridge
Cleaver's intellectual daringness and radical application
of the Marxist dialectical method of thinking within the
context of a highly technological and racist Babylonian
empire; the "organic" or public intellectual-activists like
James and Grace Lee Boggs, the Black and Asian
revolutionary couple out of the Detroit auto plantation.
They kept me ground in the larger meaning and power of
Black Revolution. The book, "Racism and the Class
Struggle" was required reading when I came into the New
Jersey/New York Black Panther Party. They both
described themselves as dialectical humanist, and in
comparison with nationalists, marxists, leninists,
trotskyists and maoists, I think they'd be considered
"anti-authoritarian" because organizing was about raising
the grade of the revolutionary in terms of personal
responsibility in creating more democratically advanced,
liberatory human and social relationships in governing.

Their thing was in creating ways to challenge people to
take responsibility for their own lives and their own
communities, from their personal relationships with their
loved ones to neighborhood, national and world issues. 

REVOLUTIONARY SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY

The Frankfort skool of psychology developed out of the
Freudian skool. They dug many key limitations with
Freud for various reasons. And they tended to be socialist,
or socialistic and sometimes movement involved. They
also tended to be critical of the State Forms of Official
Socialism that had developed in the Soviet Union and
other European nations. Erich Fromm's works were the
first to impact on me, my thinking. "The Art of Loving"
was my first socialist-humanist break-down of love
psychologically, romantically, socially and politically. I
began to really understand the importance of Love as a
power for healing and sustaining revolutionary struggle for
the long-haul. "Escape From Freedom" awakened me to
understandings of freedom that I had never grasped in
terms of its psychological dimensions. Like, why were
people AFRAID of freedom, how did this
AUTHORITARIAN MENTALITY he talked about come
into being and operate? Fromm also wrote about
"socialized technology," or how to humanize technology in
the interest of PEOPLE, not profits ("Revolution of
Hope").

Bruno Bettlehiem and Victor Frankel also dealt with this
authoritarian FASCIST mentality. What made their
insights particularly powerful for me were their actual
experiences under Nazi Europe and in Koncentration
Kamps. Here were victims of that holocaust who defied
submission and lived to pass their psychoanalytic insights
on to generations to come. Immediately experienced BY
ME were parallels between their predicaments and ours
(Black folks and Native folks), here. Psychology, hmm ...
Powerful tool.

Of all the break-away students of Freud, Wilhelm Reich
captured my attention the most. He was radical in
analysis and in practice. He was involved in the
Revolutionary Movement in Europe deeply. And his
commitment to fact-finding and total liberation of
humanity was extreme, so much so that the leading
revolutionary organization (he was a member!) expelled
him for developing new forms of struggle based on his
concepts of revolutionary sexuality (critique of bourgeois
morality and oppressive upbringing even within activists)
and anti-fascist character-analysis (confronting the
internalization of kapitalist, authoritarian culture EVEN
within the revolutionary ranks). Having been run out of
Germany by the Nazis, and kicked out of the "hung-up on
bourgie morality" authoritarian revolutionary party and
Freud's Psychoanalytic Society, Reich eventually made
his way to Babylon, USA. (That's a whole notha story, so
don't ask me why?) Essential here is that he continued his
search for deeper scientific insights into the
character-structural fear of freedom (deeper than Fromm)
and the "essence" of Life, of living and free human
biological functioning leading to him developing the
anarchistic concept of "Work-Democracy," and what I
might call "anti-authoritarian socialist revolution. I was
following that and learning so much about people,
personalities and roles as more than merely lip-service
important. They held a certain "key" to understanding
frustrations in our revolutionary behaviors.

Work-democracy in short was one of the most
revolutionary concepts that I had come to understand.
Borne in the midst of European fascism, Reich developed
an anarchistic concept without even knowing it. Here he
raised some very key things that could, on the one hand,
begin to destroy the roots of fascism in the oppressed
character-structure of the "mass individual," and on the
other, provide guidance on destroying the social `plague"
of authoritarian, fascist order in general. 

If George Orwell's "1984" laid out that dreaded prognosis,
then Reich offered us at least one way to un-ancor that
shit out of our very souls. It didn't matter whether this
fascism was emanating from kapitalist metropoles of
imperialism or socialist/communist metropoles of
imperialism. Work-democracy based itself in the
commitment to fact-finding, knowledge or information,
through the honest work of scientific pursuit. Reich had
this idea of the "human essence" which was basically
expressed in his words, "Love, work and knowledge are the
wellsprings of life. They should also govern it." He felt
that that was the only purpose behind the honest pursuit
of understanding life, especially if one wanted to change
life. Reich felt that this search for practical, love-oriented
knowledge was primary, that not even party or ideological
loyalty could stop it or should interfere with the process
and/or results being used to further the revolution of life..
He said that the revolutionary basis of work-democracy
was in the free, living functioning of the human organism
which was oriented to pleasure in the biological sense and
to the joy of life and life exploration in the social sense.
Everyday Culture & Politics were frustrating that. 

In his political experience, Reich found that the most
revolutionary organization which did not challenge its
cultural upbringing, which did not concern itself with
helping people devise programs that addressed their
everyday social and sexual misery and "existential angst"
(my input), as it related to their struggles for
self-determination, THEN they would help perpetuate the
very society they were intellectually trying to destroy.
Reich was just as concerned with why the revolutionary
was reproducing the same authoritarian, life-negating
society oppressing them within their own ranks. And he
was on to something very basic to life with this attention
he put on sexuality, the body and one's ability or inability
to make revolution as desire, desirable and
pleasure-oriented. It was like, if you can't shake from the
hip and let-cha backbone slip, yo' stiff ass can't hardly
make no revolution that will jingle and tingle with a
life-affirming child-like social-ism. Rosa Luxemburg said
it, in a twist-around of the Parliament of Funkadelic:

Free Yo' Ass & Yo' Mind Will Follow.

Again, Reich's concern was character-structure caught up
in the web of superstructure and political structure and
economic structure. So, his concern was the concrete,
immediate individual and his/her circumstances.

BACK TO BROTHA FANON

The Frankfort Skool, Reich ... again, this strong
psychological take on oppression and
liberation/revolution, led me back to that very book
Eldridge Cleaver called the Black Bible for the
Revolutionary, "Wretched of the Earth." Fanon. Fanon.
Fanon. 

Read it again, for what, the THIRD time? But why did it
seem like the first time? Because my understandings and
analyses of things (things!) were evolving. Each time I
re-read the works of Fanon I was grasping more, and for
more. Psychological terms were clearer now. Symbolic
cultural terms made more sense now (like the "veil").
Okay, "On Violence" - yeah, I got it. Strike my oppressor
and a brick from the wall of fear gets dislodged. I feel
better, empowered, etc. But now the chapter on "Colonial
& Mental Disorders" comes to life! Not just mere
warnings against uncritical nationalist trappings (read:
european influenced ideas of Nation, Government, Flag,
Representative Democracy, etc.) 

But now a deeper look at what colonialism has done to us
from a psychological perspective. Look at what we have
internalized. Look at how we have hidden/covered over
our own pain, our own wounds, and come to think of it, our
own joys & possibilities for enjoying life's many
emanations. The makings of a NIGGER. Not only
european values and ways of thinking, but also the initial
traumas that ingrained within us a fear of "them"
symbolically, and thus a fear of striking out for freedom.
Fear of freedom ... Erich Fromm, Reich, Frankel,
Marcuse, Malcolm X, Greir & Cobbs, etc. Awareness,
tie-ins are muthafuckas.

Reviewing one's life over and over again has come to be a
very necessary practice for a revolutionary dedicated to
living revolution to its fullest. You read, you learn; you
experience, you learn; you reflect on it all, you learn and
hopefully grow or move beyond where you'd just arrived.
The analysis of my Panther experience has evolved as my
revolutionary concepts has evolved and as I have been
exposed to new conceptual ways of viewing and analyzing
the world. And the contexts have changed, so threw that
in for yet more impermanence of both realities and
concepts, period.

There is no one All-Embracing, All-Encompassing concept
to contextualize experience: one's own or one's world.
Like a light shining through a prism, it's important to
reflect on experience and analyze it from as many
different angles as possible. Or at the least be open to
more than just one (which is like being stuck on stupid). I
was initially a nationalist a la Stokeley and H. Rap
Brown. 

The BPP jarred and angled me towards revolutionary
Nationalism, which was nationalism informed by national
liberation movement thinking cutting across Africa, Asia
and Latin Amerika, Marxism, Leninism, Maoism, Kim Il
Sung's Juche. The Boggs reinforced the creative use of the
"dialectical method" and a radical Humanism; Reich's
character-analysis and work-democracy, and finally
feminism, radical post-modernism and anarchism. The
last three jarred and allowed me to look at any belief,
concept, idea and practice AS TEMPORAL,
DIALECTICAL IN HAVING A BIRTH & DEATH AND
IT ALL BOTH USEFUL AND DISCARDABLE. Flesh out
their hidden and not-so-hidden sexisms, authoritarianism,
racisms, eurocentrisms chauvinisms and hierarchies.
Therefore, it is not contradictory for me to say that
Anarchism is about opening doors to greater learning and
doing, even if it means its own death. That attitude was
also a Panther attitude to knowledge and work which even
Mao's red book reinforced.

Some key words in the debate: The State, The "Masses,"
and The Revolutionaries...And why do I see the
differences.

THE STATE

I AM AN ANARCHIST WHO BELIEVES... that "The
State" is inherently oppressive as a mechanism that
cannot GIVE, GRANT, GUARANTEE OR PRESERVE
Freedom, or make revolutionary change. 

Without The State, anarchy has existed in varying forms
since the earliest human social formations, because
anarchists believe that people can govern their own lives,
individually and collectively, based on commonly worked
out and agreed upon visions, interests, mutual aid,
non-hierarchical decision-making, codes of conduct, open
collaborative theories and plans for direct and democratic
control of the means of livelihood, and people's power to
bring about prosperity, peace, harmony, fun, adventure,
protection, nurturance and an atmosphere for spiritually
wholistic well-being without adherence to private
property, money, god, race supremacy, able-bodied
supremacy, age-ism, imperialism, etc. Belief that
organization and structure of any activity must be
consistent and identical to that which would characterize
the general picture of the new, free society (-ties)
envisioned.("prefigurative" as Cindy Milstein would say)
These activities, anarchistic or communal inspired, must
be the DNA in every social, political, economic and
military endeavor that one or one's group takes on in the
course of the revolution.

If The State, and every institution within that
Nation-State, is hierarchical, and uncritical hierarchy of
any kind perpetuates or aids the oppressive State, then I
believe it is a contradiction to the goals of a free society
to adopt the same or similar models of the Enemies of
Freedom.

I believe that "Vanguard Parties" are "The State in
Embryo" and that historically they have led to the
betrayal of the very "Masses" they initially championed.
The only time that a vanguard party has not become The
State is when they have LOST the battle. This has been
so because, in the absence of a critique of culture,
organization and the individual, they unconsciously (and
Not-So-Unconsciously, but very clearly) reproduce their
internalized oppressions. In this case, I specifically mean
the reproduction of hierarchical relationships, elitist
assumptions about people and knowledge and traditions
within initially or potentially revolutionary formations
and individuals. In this sense, The State is
EVERYWHERE ... damn-near. But so are FREE
ACTIVITIES, and in many cases both exist in crazy and
conflicting ways, side by side within people, communities,
organizations and personalities. Real people, real mutha
...

THE MASSES

Nationalists, Marxist-Leninists, authoritarians in general
see People as a "Mass Body" and believes that the
"masses' need an organization of professional
revolutionaries to both educate and lead them.

The "masses' need the "science" and the "plan"; they need
their consciousness RAISED. The professionals have both
the "science" and the ways and means to
consciousness-raising and revolution-making. Thus, the
`masses" have to be MOVED; they are DEAD,
IGNORANT until The Enlightened Ones give them the
breath of life and the light of knowledge. The Liberation
or The Revolution will be achieved through the

VANGUARD INTELLIGENCIA FOR THE
PERPETUATION OF EMPTY REVOLUTIONS (THE
VIPERS)

...who proclaim themselves the "Representatives of the
Masses." The "masses" are seen as in a state of inertia
UNTIL activated by the professionals. 

Anarchists see People as individuals with the will to live,
learn, love, work out their own individual and collective
destinies instinctively or spontaneously. Human dignity is
key. The People are their own liberators, foh-real.
Anarchists also believe that the "masses" (oh, I hate that
term!) are not only their own liberators but that they can
discover their own ways to Revolution, organization and
self-determination (the "science") spontaneously or
organically. In fact they/we are always resisting, fighting
back in many hidden and not so hidden ways. This means
that the same way these "professionals" came to
consciousness is open to and possible for ALL. * And
there is never only ONE way to consciousness. So, as long
as those who know SHARE (mutual aid, network) and
coordinate their visions and plans, then there be no need
for the professional or vanguard as AUTHORITY, and any
power won wold remain grounded with those actually
fought for and secured it.

THE REVOLUTIONARIES

Authoritarians see themselves as "vanguards", leaders. As
such, their "job" is to be in the forefront ... leading.
Leading whom? The Masses. They uncritically accept the
common-sense/place/given that the "masses" are ignorant,
stagnant, afraid to move. Therefore, they must BE
MOVED, EDUCATED, ORGANIZED. And as possessors
of that SPECIAL BODY OF KNOWLEDGE called
SCIENCE, REVELATION, DIVINE WISDOM or the
DIALECTICAL and HISTORICAL METHODS of
THINKING, it is clear that ONLY they can give the
"masses" what they need (even if they don't want it!). Like
children, you must lead the "masses" to power through the
leadership of the Vanguard or The One who is convinced
of its correctness or correct political line on success. They
therefore promote correct-line thinking, ideological
loyalty, chain-of-command, conquest of political power,
class unity, class struggle, race nationalist unity, proper
relationships, objectivity in analyzing REALITY, acting on
self-proclaimed representations of the "masses" and you
ALONE being able to clearly interpret their needs and
desires for change.

Anarchists see themselves as part of the "masses" or
(with more dignity and individuality) The People. Thus,
their "job is to recognize their equal identity with the
People as capable of theory and practice, consciousness,
self-acting, self-determining. On the anarchist main tenet
of MUTUAL AID AND COLLECTVE COORDINATION
OF STRATEGIES AND ACTIVITIES, you share what
you've got (knowledges, weapons, expertise, resources of
all kinds) to get what you want. This way People at all
levels of consciousness and expertise have the
opportunity to mix and grow, learn and become
empowered Revolutionaries within Mutual Aid
formations. "Correct Lines" can now reflect true
multi-level, multi-faceted, multi-experiential &
experimental contributions of all, rather than the elitist "I
KNOW WHATS BEST FOR YOU." Anarchists therefore
promote Participatory Democracy, Direct Democracy,
consensus decision-making, non-hierarchical lifestyles,
feminist praxis, organic intellectual daringness, creativity
in action, art, carnival pleasure, as well as an ecological
connectedness to All and permanent revolution.

Black Anarchists differ from Nationalists and M-L's and
most all Black community religionists (Christianity,
Nation of Islam, Afrikan Islamic and orthodox groups,
etc.) in that, with anarchists in general, we REJECT the
need for a STATE in toto. The State is inherently "evil"
and always leads to corruption, power mongering and
oppression of some for the benefit of others.

Nationalists and religionists offer NO thorough critique
of The State, its history, its historical "necessity," its
contradiction to the very concept and practice of freedom.
They may criticize the neo-colonial State, the racist
State, the welfare State, the police State, but that is a
matter of reforming its behavior and/or replacing these
aspects of oppressor States with a "black" State, a "black
socialist workers" State, or a "United States of Afrika".

M-L's offer a similar critique. They will even admit that
The State is inherently "evil" and oppressive, but they
argue that it is a "necessary evil" for the successful
transition from defeating kapitalism to constructing
socialism in combating counter-revolutionaries and other
plotting, hidden pigs bent on re-kapturing power and
restoring things back to The Good Ole Days. 

I say ... Phuck That! All Power to the People. Through
the People. No gimmicks, no fancy public relations.
Either you respect people's capacities to think for
themselves, to govern themselves, to creatively devise
their own best ways to make decisions, to be accountable,
to relate, problem-solve, break-down isolation and
commune in a thousand different ways ... OR: you
dis-respect them. You dis-respect ALL of us.

AFTER-THOUGHT

I don't wanna give the impression that even ALL BLACK
ANARCHISTS agree on everything. We are as diverse as
anybody else. But what we do agree on is TRUE
self-determination of the people, respect for the
individual involved, REAL RESPECT. We place a high
value on collectivity and communalism and other ways of
living and fighting to end these many forms of oppression
as "pre-figure (-actions)" of the kind of society we want
to bring into existence.

This writing will give you an idea of what led me to
becoming an anarchist. I want to share these thoughts
with you as Anarchist Panther continues to come out and
in speaking out when I can. I want a black anarchist
"take" on things to be more in The Mix in our community
of communities that are facing genocide. No longer should
the prevalent nationalist, progressive and revolutionary
ideologies and organizational approaches hold unopposed
court when the rhetoric always says its about THE
PEOPLE. If its truly about "The People" then let it be,
and let us together find the ways to make that happen so
that WE..WE..WE..can win and be free.

Ashanti Omowali

ALL POWER THRU THE PEOPLE!

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