The Progressive Plantation: Racism Inside White Radical Social Change Movements

by Lorenzo Kom'boa Ervin on Sunday, October 23, 2011

Besides just the current issues around Occupy Wall Street, the white radical Left
itself is riddled with racism, opportunism, class treachery, and internal
oppression which must be recognized and smashed, if it is to be any force for
radical change of society. I went back and reviewed the stuff from my earlier book,
part of which is a critique of internal racism and racist exclusion in Anarchism
specifically, but socialism generally, and it is pretty much the same criticism I
am making now against that current tendency. I had done this as part of the
research for "The Political Plantation". Since we know this is a deep seated
problem inside White radical social justice organizations, this leads us to the
unmistakable conclusion that white Left-led tendencies cannot lead us to
revolution, just political reform benefiting themselves as a class primarily. They
are the Left wing of the white middle class, no matter what rhetoric they use to
describe themselves and their goals. The OWS is a perfect example, but before that,
the anti-globalization movement, and even further back Socialist and Communist
parties have all succumbed to racism and white supremacy. More specifically, it all
raises this question: after a new society is created will it be another unjust
white-dominated one, with only political or economic differences from the previous
capitalist society, but still maintaining white supremacy? After we have shed
blood, sweat and tears in response to this white-led revolution, will Black/POCs
have to fight all over again for their liberation, because we will have once again
been betrayed? We are not fighting to replace one white master for another, nor to
be put back into the ghetto. There is only one possible conclusion to be reached:
we need a social revolution with Black/POC leadership to destroy this system
entirely and thoroughly, leaving no traces of racism or capitalism, rather than
have the very classes and peoples who have historically oppressed us in charge of
our fate. I do not believe or argue that white people are inherently evil, rather
that if we do not organize for our own freedom, nobody else will. The only question
is how many white people will unite with us in genuine unity, mutual aid, and with
the same fervor for total change?

So, that is why it is important that we raise class and political fights over these
issues now. We should not tolerate or give poitical cover for white supremacy inside
Left formations. It is the worst form of treachery and sellout in a nation based on
a history of racial slavery and the super-exploitation of peoples of color. It was
always assumed by many, even Blacks/POC activists, that the white Left tendencies
were one of the few groupings of white people in American society that would stand
with the Black Liberation movement and other tendencies of POC, but that is every
day being proven not to be true. In fact, what is being proven is that they will
sell out to retrograde forces in the Progressive wing, just to be part of a popular
movement of the moment, rather than wage an internal anti-racist fight to end
internal racism and other oppressions inside the movement. This is a decisive
moment, one that tests white people especially, to break away from conformity to
whiteness. White radical vanguardism is just another form of opportunism iin this
period. At a time when Black workers and poor peoples are literally being wiped out
by massive unemployment, poverty, homelessness, and oppression more than any other
group in society, the white Left has not built any fightback movement in support,
and has proven to be unwilling to force the Occupy Wall Street mass movement to
raise this as a major issues for them to struggle against in support of the Black
community. This treachery, as well as political and idological failings will be
noted by all activists of color, and propel them to launch autonomous movements in
their own defense and for their own liberation. History, and the current period
prove that white radicals simply do not make good political or anti-racist allies.

Yet, we can use the support of white activists who are willing to humble themseves
and recognize the fact that they are not the vanguard, and yet are willing to work
with to build a new type of revolutionary political entity. Further, we need to
politically educate and challenge others to join with us that we can reach. That is
why a conference is being planned to deal with the issues of internal racism and
colonialism in North America. That conference tentatively called "The Progressive
Plantation: Racism inside white radical movments, and the way forward!" is being
planned by myself and other activists now, and is expected to be held sometime in
mid-to-late 2012. More information will be provided when available. It will follow
the conference of Black/POC activists being prepared for the first quarter of 2012.
More details as available.

Why I support Occupy The Hood

by Lorenzo Kom'boa Ervin on Monday, October 10, 2011

The new mass movement, Occupy Wall Street, has already birthed a number of movement
of oppressed peoples of color:Indigenous/African/Carribbean, etc. They are
DeColonize OWS, the People of Color Working Group, and Occupy the Hood. It is Occupy
the Hood, which is an actual Black working class political tendency, which has the
most promise as far as Africans in America are concerned. They are not only trying
to pressure the white majority to make a place the for voices of Black/POC people,
but also organzing an independent tendency which can organize inour communities
around issues effecting us especially. it is that latter dimension which really
excites me.

For years, I have heard, but not seen a Black revolutionary mass movement in the hip
hop era, which is free of middle class conventional politics or being manipuated by
some power-hungry preachers/politicians. This movement has the potential to create a
genuine mass movment of the poor and oppresssed, based in the urban inner cities. It
is a youth centered movement, but seems to understand if it raises issues of
oppressed peoples in Harlem, North Philly, South Memphis, or other hoods in other
places, they can bring a true majority together, an army of the poor.
In order for that to happen, they have to put the people and mass grassroots
politics in command, and be based totally around popular issues. In saying
"politics", I am not talking about electoral politics, which I considere virtually
useless and weak, I am talking about putting the Black poor together as a class, and
then using their numbers to confront the white capitalist government and its
financial sector in an anti-capitalist protest movement.

It is this what made the Black protest movement of the 1960's so dynamic, not just a
number of small militant groups fighting isolated in various communities. Black
Power was a widespread, but decentralized mass movement which superceded the civil
rights phase, even before the assassination of Dr. M.L. King. Groups like the Black
Panther Party, League of Revolutionary Black Workers and others had become mass
movements in their own right, instead of tailing after white radicals.

This can happen again, and in my mind, Occupy the hood is that movement best
situated to make that hapen in this period. They are part of the Wall Street
tendency, and can unite with other POC tendencies and even anti-racist/anti-colonial
whites to wage an internal battle inside OWS to make it accountable to POC's instead
of just white middle class workers who have lost their jobs, homes, or money in this
period. We have suffered far worse.

Over 1 million Black/POC people are in the prison system, which destroys not just
the prisoner but his family and community. We have the highest evels of unemployment
in the USA, "officially" 16.7%, but actually far higher at Great Depression levels
of 26%. We have the highest number of urban homeless. We have record levels of
infant mortality, approaching the 3rd world. On and on we are catching hell more
than anybody, and we are the class of surplus labor that all economists speak of who
have considered the matter.

But we need to organize, not not just bemoan our fate or curse our luck. We can
change everything with out all-out struggle, on our own terms. We do not have to be
shackeled by the racism and backwardness of white workers. Through a movement like
Occupy the Hood, we can orgnize not only our own communities, but through that
organize the world who would unite with our struggle. So, to end this, I see the
potential of this movement more than anything else to come along in the hip hop era.
They seem to "get it", and understand instinctively that they can organize their
peoples to not only destroy Wall Street, which is based on our slavery and
exploitation, but the entire system of capitalist oppression. Memphis has been
designated the poorest city in the USA. I'm honored to be part of this movement in
anyway, and will do everything I can to push it forward. I am not interested in
"leading" it, they seem to have already gotten founders and collective leadership
that can do the job at this early stage. I hope tht all power will continue to rest
in the local communites, and that they shut out all m anner of political
opportunists seeking to become the next Obama or politician using the movement as a
launching pad. Only if power is in the hands of the people will it succeed.


*****

Lorenzo Kom'boa Ervin: I have pointed out many times that middle class white people
cannot represent the interests of the poor and communities of color. We must
speak for ourselves, and not allow our issues to be coopted by white middle class
poseurs. These Occupy Memphis people aren’t suffering from mass imprisonment,
depression levels of unemployment, the highest levels of poverty in the nat...ion,
record infant mortality of Black babies, and other ills we are suffering from, they
are not even among the number of peoples losing their houses, these folks are just
trying to empower themselves at our expense. They are not in solidarity with the
struggles of peoples of color, and don’t even care if we are represented at all.
This is “their” movement, and they have made it clear that they mean to maintain
control over it. Sure, individual Black, Hispanic or other POC can join in, but our
issues are not taking precedence or even being discussed at all, even in a majority
Black city like Memphis. After years of faking that the Left had concerns about
diversity and so on, now it is revealed that they don’t give a damn at all.

Lorenzo Komboa Ervin Needs Evacuation Help in Tennesse as Flood Waters Rise

Urgent Breaking News, Another New Orleans on the Horizon? Talk Nation Radio interview with former Black Panther and Anarchist Activist Lorenzo Komboa Ervin calls out for help to evacuate as floodwater rises. As of Monday morning May 2nd, both Lorenzo Kom’boa Ervin and Jonina Ervin safe at a community shelter. Thanks to all those who expressed concern and helped to get this story out. The Mississippi is going to record flood stage, it’s going to 50 feet, some 25 feet above flood stage. Americans cry out for help as they don’t know where to find help evacuating to shelter. Mr. Ervin is in White Haven, “This area is on the border with Mississippi. We’re only about a mile away from the Mississippi border, and its South West, so if you were the of South Haven or Corn Lake, any of those areas around there, you would be real close to where we are and would be in a position to help us out a great deal. –Ten miles from down town, but we couldn’t make it there, that’s where the flooding is coming from”

As of 11:30 A.M. the various emergency agencies still unclear as to transportation to shelters, and or locations of shelters, for people like the Ervins. They have been told that there is a list of shelters, however, local emergency agencies do not yet know which ones will be safe from flood waters. They are still deciding on evacuation assistance efforts such as whether or not to use public transportation services for a major evacuation of Tennessee, Mississippi, or other parts of the country that are expected to be flooded by the Mississippi River. Contact talknationradio@gmail.com with any questions or with any information you may have.

This is the web site provided to us by FEMA: http://www.redcrossnetn.org/index.php?page=evacuation-plan

TRT: 12:47
Download at Pacifica’s Audioport here or at Radio4all.net and Archive.org

1:00 a.m. EDT May 1, 2011 Another New Orleans in Mississippi as flood waters rise?

Download at Pacifica’s Audioport Or at Radio4all.net and Archive.org

Quote from interview: ‘The Mississippi is going to 50 feet. Our area is predicted to be one of those areas that are going to be hit. So we are trying to get information from the county authorities who are not telling us anything. We can’t get firm information about the danger that’s involved here so that we can get out of harms way so we are trying to make some sort of an appeal to get out of this area.

We need transportation badly.Our car is only good enough for traveling around the city its not in that great a shape. We need someone to pick us up and get us out of here. We are in Memphis on the border with Mississippi, we need help, and we are asking people if you know people in the Memphis area or around here that are evacuating or are willing to evacuate us to please contact us. I can give our phone number, 901 907-0290, email is joninaervin@comcast.net. This storm is supposed to start in a few hours we are told. And we have no confidence in the local government, they don’t seem to have it together here at all just like they didn’t in New Orleans. And we are asking for help, so anyone who is already evacuating and who has the resources to help us get out of here, such as some of my political comrades in the anarchist movement, I’m very much appreciative of any help we can get. But we have to get out of here so I appreciate any help we can get’.

Copy: This is Dori Smith of Talk Nation Radio. We have received an urgent plea for help on our facebook page from residents of Tennessee in danger from raging flood waters.

The Tennessee Emergency Management Agency has released emergency procedures for residents of Tennessee who could be affected by flooding. Yet for most people in the South, there is no clear information as to how they can get help if they have no transportation. No word yet on shelters either, according to activist and former Black Panther Lorenzo Komboa Ervin.

Lorenzo Komboa Ervin is located in Tennessee, where he is now openly calling on the general public to help him. He says they are getting word that they should be considering evacuation but cannot get any information on any help that is available to them.

Again a growing number of residents of Tennessee are being told to consider evacuation. In Dyer County for example, Emergency Management Director James Medling said people west of the airstrip in Finley should consider evacuating the area. More warnings are expected through the night.

www.talknationradio.org
talknationradioblog.blogspot.com
twitter Dori_TalkNation

LORENZO KOM'BOA ERVIN RECENTS QUOTES on WHITE SUPEREMACY & MASS INCARCERATION

Lorenzo Kom'boa wrote:

"For all ABC groups:  let's try for more unity, more serious internal critcisms of
past practices, and an attempt to bring more people of color into the movement, and
really give them a voice, not just for window dressing."

Lorenzo Kom'boa wrote:

"Three things I liked about the international ABC groups: the support of migrants,
combat against fascists, and their willingness to support USA prisoners when those
in N. America would not do so.  They are by no means perfect, but they certainly
have always been more advance than those of us on this side of "the pond.""

Lorenzo Kom'boa wrote:

"In no way should the ABC be content to just making a critique of prisons, and not
build a mass community-based tendency. It has to be in communities of color,
heightening contradictions, exposing the crimes of the state, and training new
organizers of color. It has to be willing to change its focus on how and who should
be the backbone of the movement, esp. in North America."

We cannot be content to send cookies or small amounts of money to prisoners, in
lieu of a struggle to dismantle prisons as an institution, and destroy the
socio-economic base which allow so many youth to commit crimes of survival, and end
up in prison."

Lorenzo Kom'boa wrote:

"ABC has to become more than a cult or group of collectives, but a genuine mass
community-based movement. It has to become a United Front for the support of
prisoners human rights, fighting for immigrant freedom, an amnesty movment to
release pow/pp's and others, the dismantling of the prison regime, and diversion of
money from imprisonment to the creation of jobs, housing and food co-ops in
communities of color."

Lorenzo Kom'boa wrote:

"it is clear that if we are not doing organizing around issues of mass imprisonment,
then we are not building a revolutionary prison movement at all. We are in a country
with a history of African enslavement, the creation of the penitentiary, and police
state terrorism of the poor and POC. We cannot fail to understand the lessons of
what is happening now, or we will be totally ineffective in our approach."

Lorenzo Kom'boa wrote:

"it has never failed to amaxe that Anarchism and the Black Revolution, something I
first originally wrote in 1979 in the Marion Control Unit has been read by so many
prisoners, and moved so many over to Anarchism.  Now,"Let's Organize the Hood:
Version 3"  is coming out this year, and I hope that ABC and other prison activists,
and prisoners can get something out of that as well.  It is long overdue. more about
that later."

Lorenzo Kom'boa wrote:

"i realize that many in the Anarchist and Black Liberation movment do not agree with
me. I am not deterred. I believe that the Anarchist Black Cross, even with all its
weaknesses and sectarian splits, has more potential than any other tendency to
create a mass tendency that involves working class POC communities, and become a
genuine anti-racist liberation support movement. Prisons are where the youth of
color are located, and where Anarchism can spread deeper."

Lorenzo Kom'boa wrote:

"Another reason that a PLA/Black Partisan Militia is still on the agenda, is b/c of
mass imprisonment. The state has used years of chemical warfare and created a drug
mass market in communities of color, and destroyed whole areas of cities. This is
genocide, and yet very few voices are raised among radicals against it. We must
fight, not retreat into pacifism or bourgeois scholasticism."

Lorenzo Kom'boa wrote:

"The ideas around building a Prisoners Liberation Army are still on the agenda. some
tried to do that in spurts in the 1960's-70's: BLA, SLA, Earth Lib. Front, Geo.
Jackson Brigade. I have always believed that neighborhood militias are more
effective than 'vanguard military formations", simply b/c masses can be educated,
organized and mobilized, and there is more accountability."

"I have always said that ABC has to become an anti-racist tendency, as well as an
anti-prison tendency. We know that Blacks/POC are the majority of prison in this
period, and a majority white prison support tendency is unacceptable. This does not
mean that white activists are not valued, but that we need to unite with communities
of color in a battle against the state, and not just other Anarchists. White
Supremacy is gov't oppression."

One of the most distinguishing feature of the new American fascism is the mass
imprisonment of Black & POC. One in every three Blacks bet. 16-35 are in prison,
similar number of Latinos. ABC and all prison activist groups must understand this
is structural racism, and take up the call to build a mass community based movement.