The Black Commentator: An independent weekly internet magazine dedicated to the movement for economic justice, social justice and peace - Providing commentary, analysis and investigations on issues affecting African Americans and the African world. www.BlackCommentator.com
January 29, 2009 - Issue 309
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Why We Must Not Give Up In the Struggle
Keeping it Real
By Larry Pinkney
B
lackCommentator.com Editorial Board

 

 

The revolutionary struggle for freedom and justice may not be televised but it will most definitely be organized, and it will continue.

The corporate media will ignore and/or seek to distort and denigrate this struggle, but then that has been and continues to be the role of the media. We don’t need to be televised in order to effectively organize.

There are some who mistakenly believe that the presidency of Barack Obama means an end to racism, injustice, economic inequities, and U.S. wars; when in fact said presidency is nothing more than a cynical and well orchestrated corporate public relations stunt with no real, concrete, substantive, systemic changes whatsoever. There are others who contend that the regime of Barack Obama will successfully stifle and crush the liberation struggles of peoples in this nation and around the world.

The fact is that if allowed, the Obama regime backed by the U.S. corporate / military elites will stifle and crush the struggles for justice and liberation inside and outside of the United States. However, this is where we the people come in. We must not and will not allow this to occur, nor will we go to sleep simply because the pigmentation of the corporate-backed, pro apartheid-Zionist ‘American’ emperor inside the White House has been switched.

Black, White, Brown, Red, and Yellow peoples both inside the U.S. and worldwide must understand that if anything, the installation of Barack Obama as U.S. president means that we must intensify in our efforts in the struggle for justice and peace; and uncloak & expose the never ending double-speak rhetoric emanating from Obama and his regime.

We must understand that is we the people, Black, White, Brown, Red, and Yellow peoples, young and old alike, who hold the key to justice and liberation, not Barack Obama the chameleon or his minions. Even as Obama was being installed in the White House, police executions and brutality against people (especially young people) throughout the nation were and are sharply increasing. As a presidential candidate, Obama made his position on such police executions and brutality quite clear when he refused to speak out against the despicable police murder in New York City of Sean Bell, just as he subsequently refused to speak out against the recent and ongoing genocidal Zionist actions of the Palestinian people in Gaza. His silence and subsequent double-speak are deafening and reprehensible. They are cause for great alarm.

Make no mistake about this, even as this writer pens these words the Obama regime U.S. personnel and the Iraqi people are dying in Iraq, and plans are being drawn up to expand the war in Afghanistan, and attack and destabilize Pakistan. These actions represent the real Barack Obama, former so-called and would be corporate-backed “peace” candidate, who was in reality no “peace” candidate at all, unless of course peace is spelled p-i-e-c-e.

Let us not be like the ostrich with its head in the sand. We have an obligation to ourselves, each other, and future generations not only in the U.S., but around the globe, to intensify in our efforts to organize, while speaking truth to power. 

This phase of the struggle by Black, Brown, White, Red, and Yellow peoples for social and economic justice at home and abroad has only just begun. We cannot, must not, and will not shirk our responsibility to carry on in this struggle.

Onward then my sisters and brothers. Onward! There is so much work to be done and precious little time to do it for the sake of humanity---all humanity. There is no more pressing or urgent calling than this.

BlackCommentator.com 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. In connection with his political organizing activities in opposition to voter suppression, etc., Pinkney was interviewed in 1988 on the nationally televised PBS NewsHour, formerly known as The MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour. 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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