To deny the reality of injustice is to perpetuate it.  To acknowledge the reality of injustice is the first step in seriously addressing and changing it.

Let us be candid, the United States of America is not now nor was it ever “the land of the free and home of the brave with liberty and justice for ALL.” Indeed, it was never meant to be anything other than what it is today. America’s atrocities against many millions of Black, Red, and Brown peoples attests to this fact and denying it only perpetuates it. Where is this “liberty and justice” even today for the masses of Black people and our Red and Brown sisters and brothers? It can be found only in the slop jar of hypocrisy and deceit. It can be found in the overflowing US prisons. It can be found in the jail cells of Guantanamo. It can be found in the US supported exploitation and misery of the courageous people in Haiti. It can be found in the hypocritical US quagmires of Iraq and Afghanistan. It can be found in the opportunistic and hypocritical rhetoric of so many politicians. It can be found in the white racist hanging nooses springing up and dangling all across America. It can be found in the despairing and legitimately angry eyes of the increasingly homeless, unemployed, under-employed and uninsured also right HERE in America, “the [so-called] land of the free and home of the brave.”    

As for capitalism, it should be understood that capitalism and racism are undeniably intertwined - inseparable twins. The simple working definition of capitalism is: the systemic, legalized thievery from, and exploitation of, the poor by the avaricious rich. Capitalism is systemic terrorism against the poor.  Capitalism has no conscience as its monsters of ENRON, Halliburton, Blackwater and so many blood-sucking corporations have so clearly demonstrated inside America and throughout the world.

In order to legitimize and perpetuate this thievery and exploitation, America uses against its own populace a host of barbaric, often secretive, and always hideously insidious programs including the Counter Intelligence Program, now known infamously as COINTELPRO. COINTELPRO existed and continues to exist under various guises, and its stated purpose is to “frame, murder, imprison, discredit, and neutralize” those political activists, especially Black, Red, and Brown activists and organizations who dare to seek to effectively expose the United States of America for what it really is: A continuing hypocritical and dangerous nation built and maintained upon the genocide of the indigenous native Red peoples of the so-called North American continent and elsewhere, and the brutal enslavement of Black people. COINTELPRO and COINTELPRO-type government and police activities are the ongoing embodiment of US injustice and government sponsored terrorism.        

Political, economic, and social JUSTICE, particularly for the vast majority of Black, Red, and Brown peoples, substantially has been and continues in the 21st century to be, a cruel and fleeting hoax that is merely conceptually maintained for the precise purpose of actually denying said justice to people in America and throughout the world.  From its very inception, and with unspeakable brutality and hypocrisy, the United States of America has deliberately engaged in lie after bloody lie - in essence torturing, impaling and crucifying the very meaning of justice itself, as though it were some kind of seditious criminal to be distorted and eternally denied to the majority of earth’s inhabitants at all costs. 

Be clear about this: COINTELPRO and COINTELPRO-type programs are alive, well, and functioning in 21st century America by a government (of both Democrats and Republicans) who fear most especially its population of color, and fear losing control if enough white Americans were actually to have a momentary lapse of INSANITY and realize that their precious whiteness is being used against them by their own brethren as a manipulating control mechanism, as in the well publicized 20th century laboratory of Pavlov’s salivating dogs.

COINTELPRO and similar such government/police programs have no boundaries, no limitations, no conscience. COINTELPRO is utterly amoral and existed in the recent past, and continues to exist presently, in order to STIFLE AND NEUTRALIZE political consciousness and any effective resistance to economic and social control in this sham democracy. Moreover, without the active collaboration on the part of some of the US populace, COINTELPRO would, itself, be neutralized, and it is precisely this that politically conscious and justice-loving people must recognize and comprehend. COINTELPRO and COINTELPRO-type programs must be exposed as the internal terrorist activities they are and be neutralized [i.e. made defunct] by a politically conscious populace.   

It is also past time to stop pretending that physical and/or psychological torture is not an integral part of the so-called US justice (‘just us’) system inside the United States. It’s time to stop feigning shock at the torture tactics engaged, both directly and indirectly, by the United States Government against people in other parts of the world. Torture is as American as America itself, both at home and abroad.  The only thing truly shocking about America’s use of torture is white America’s pretense of being shocked that it is used. The torture that occurs on a daily basis inside of most of America’s own prisons makes a mockery of America’s supposed shock at the US government’s use of torture. To reiterate: to deny the reality of injustice is to perpetuate it. Our calling as Black, Brown, and Red peoples, indeed as any and ALL justice-loving people, is to acknowledge these injustices for the specific purpose of eradicating them. Nothing less will do.

We Black Americans, along with our Red and Brown brothers and sisters, can and must acknowledge and fulfill our incredibly important historic roles in this, the 21st century, or certainly be relegated to cultural and political oblivion.

No, it’s not easy. It is, however, imperative. Let us continue to wake up, educate, agitate, and organize.  Oblivion is not an acceptable option. Onward then in our struggle to keep it real.  

BC Editorial Board member, Larry Pinkney is a veteran of the Black Panther Party, the former Minister of Interior of the Republic of New Africa, a former political prisoner and the only American to have successfully self-authored his civil/political rights case to the United Nations under the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. For more about Larry Pinkney see the book, Saying No to Power: Autobiography of a 20th Century Activist and Thinker, by William Mandel [Introduction by Howard Zinn]. (Click here to read excerpts from the book) Click here to contact Mr. Pinkney.

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