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Marimba Ani

BREAKING THE SILENCE: Fulfilling the Promise

Amura Onaa tells us that when our Ancestors were
being torn apart from each other, we looked into
each other's eyes and made a solemn promise. We
promised to reconnect with each other so that this
tearing apart would never happen again. It is the
Afrikan belief that we are our Ancestors reborn,
and through this spiritual rebirth, we gain eternal
life. The promise could only be fulfilled by future
generations returning as Afrikans who had made
this sacred promise to each other. What our
Ancestors suffered over centuries, could only have
been survived because they had hope. But what
could possibly have given them cause for hope? If
they had not survived and bore children who bore
children who bore children, we would not be here.
It is the Afrikan belief that we choose to be born
when we are in the spirit world, and that we make
a contract to fulfill a purpose in this life. All of this
can only mean that we have chosen to be born
Afrikan and that we are the
hope of our Ancestors. Our purpose on this earth is
to avenge our Ancestors and to achieve the victory:
Afrikan sovereignty through a Pan-Afrikan world
order based on the principles of MAAT. It is our
choice to fulfill The Promise to our Ancestors by
achieving the victory denied them.

It is now Tuesday, November 4, 2008. Is this the
final act of assimilation, accommodation, and
integration? Is this how we are fulfilling our
promise to the Ancestors? Has America made
restitution for what was done to them, still being
done to us? Is the Maafa over or has it merely
morphed into another, more insidious form of
genocide? Are we now experiencing a
life-threatening condition of cultural AIDS in which
our immune system has turned on itself? Has the
Yurugu virus mutated so that it looks like us? Are
we participating in our own self-destruction?

We are witnessing a time of the most blatant acts
of genocide such as "Katrina" (Maafa - 2005), in
which thousands of our people were slaughtered,
left to die, placed in disease-producing holding
pens, forcibly relocated, separated from their
families and support-systems, and their (our)
children "lost", all this for the purpose of corporate
profit and for the illegal misappropriation of land.

In our time, Afrikan mothers are being incarcerated
in increasing numbers, so that their presence in
the u.s. prison system almost equals that of Afrikan
men and fathers, who have, for more than a
century, been sacrificed to the prison-industrial
complex.

We are living in the time of Blackwater,
mercenaries used by government and corporations.
We are living in the time of American support of
European Hegemony taken to the most extreme
levels ever in history. We watch as America's bank,
the so-called "world bank," sucks the life out of
Afrika, Jamaica and other Black nations. We are
living in the time of the IMF, the Federal Reserve,
the Trilateral Commission, the Council on Foreign
Relations, the Bilderbergers and more.

The Patriot Act is an updated McCarran Act of
1950. We are living in a time that can be
understood as part of "the process of Fascism".
Fascism creates a demon, sells this demonization
to the public, then uses it to control (intimidate,
detain, torture, kill) anyone who challenges the
state's abuse of human rights. In the l950's the
demons were the "subversives, " and the
"communists" ?throughout the "cold war," in 1968,
following the assassination of Dr. King, the demons
were those suspected of being "guerrillas" , and by
2001 the term "terrorists" had been accepted as
describing the new "demons." Should we allow the
original, the real terrorists to define "terrorism" ?

This brief statement is only meant to point to the
reality of the times in which we live, the political
legacy that we have inherited as "americans," and
what we need to be aware of at this "historic"
moment. In the 1960's, our people were regarded
by the rest of the world as leaders in the struggle
for human rights as we fought to expose and
confront the genocidal policies perpetrated by the
american government towards Afrikan people in
the u.s.

We stopped organizing. We stopped confronting
"the system." We became part of "the system." We
sent our sons to fight for u.s. monetary gain. We
did not see value in self-determination,
self-definition, and self-reliance for our people.
Those who were politically conscious read and
talked about ancient history. We no longer
concerned ourselves with contemporary events,
systems, or political realities. Instead of expanding
our movement to become a world movement, a
truly Pan-Afrikan movement, we were content to
become "individuals" in the "greatest" (most
materially powerful) country in the world.

So now we are "making history" by being swept up
in someone else's definition of what history is. We
are "making history," by capitulating to
integration, accommodation, and assimilation. We
have reached the mountain top, for we have been
able to vote for a "first to." The struggle is over.
We have won. We can proudly say that one of our
people represents the most repressive, destructive,
inhumane, anti-Afrikan nation ever to have
existed! We are proud to be part of a multinational
corporate structure run by sociopathic adolescents
who think nothing of stealing from their own
people. (Imagine what they will do to us.)

We say that we vote because our Ancestors died to
get the vote. Yes, if you decide to vote, that is your
"right." Do not, however, blame it on "the
Ancestors." That's like saying Black people died to
go to school with white people, so I will make sure
that my children go to white schools. I have a
personal experience of that Movement. Registering
to vote in Mississippi was a means of confronting a
system of oppression head on. Today we vote to
avoid confrontation with a system that is Fascist.
In Mississippi, attempting to register, meant
putting your life on the line, if you were Black. This
effort became part of a strategy to expose the
system of oppression that existed in this country,
which continues to exist even though we, Black
people, can now "vote" (even in Mississippi) . No,
that is not what our Ancestors died for. They died
to fulfill The Promise. And that is the question that
we should raise. "What are we doing to fulfill The
Promise?"

Is this occasion "historic" because it represents the
abandonment of our sacred obligation to the
Ancestors? Will we go down in "his" story as
having finally capitulated and become satisfied
with the evil that is represented in contemporary
globalization, privatization and international
capitalism? Have we aborted our movement for
freedom, liberation and sovereignty? Or have we
merely redefined that objective in "american"
individualistic, "what's in it for me" terms? Have
we now "won"? Or have we simply taken the easier
road, finding it more comfortable to be colonized
than to fight for liberation? Are we excited about
the possibility of being closer to power than we
have ever been beforeS, even though that power
rests on the exploitation, even murder, of Afrikans
and other non-Europeans throughout the world?
Have we even dared to ask ourselves "what kind of
person would want to be president of the United
States of America?"

What is the significance of this moment, Tuesday,
November 4, 2008, in "our" story?

Let us make this a time for reassessment of our
lives, each of us. Let us reconnect with each other
in ways that will help our people to become
self-sustaining. Let us read and study and become
aware of what this country stands for in the world.
Let us teach and learn about the monetary system.

Organize, Organize, Organize!

Food cooperatives,
Investment groups
Independent Afrikan schools
Alternative sustainable energy
Communal and collective social entities
Susus (saving together)
Vehicles for harnessing and sharing our resources
Ways of educating ourselves for optimal healthy
living
Methods for alternative social organization
The study of ways in which our Ancestors
organized communities, so that we can get ideas
for the future (doing Sankofa)
Black political conventions
An independent Afrikan/Black vehicle for political
action and race (Kanda) decision-making
A Back-to-Afrika process.


We must read the following:

Blueprint for Black Power (Amos Wilson)
(especially chapter 31)
The Choice (Sam Yette)
There is A River (Vincent Harding)
The condition, Elevation, Emigration and Destiny of
the Colored People of the United States of America
(Martin Delany
The Miseducation of the Negro (Carter G. Woodson)
The Destruction of Black Civilization (Chancellor
Williams)
Two Thousand Seasons (Ayi Kwei Armah)
Wretched of the Earth (Franz Fanon)

By Europeans:
The Shock Doctrine (Naomi Klein)

And watch:

Goodbye Uncle Tom
Zeitgeist
Zeitgeist Addendum
End Games
Loose Change
The Corporation
(pass this on and add suggestions)

Go to:
www.libradio. com
www.blackagendarepo rt.com
www.houseofknowledg e.com


Let this be a beginning again for us. Let us have
the courage of Martin Delany and others, who
organized the Black Convention Movement, and
sought Afrikan sovereignty in the 1850's. Let us
recapture the spirit of the 60's, with its
"togetherness" of our people, only now with
greater clarity about what we want. Let us revive
the independent political party movement of the
early 70's (NBIP and CAP), when our people came
together in activism in Gary, Indiana and
elsewhere. Let us organize with our people, out of
love for our people. Let us build a movement
without hierarchy among the most economically
depressed of our people; a movement that will be
responsive to the immediate survival needs of our
people, while raising the political consciousness
and knowledge-base of us all. Let us study together
and build together and fight together and teach
each other. Let us build a revolutionary
Pan-Afrikanist movement of all of our people, so
that we can hold any
and all elected officials accountable for their
decisions and actions. Let us be in the vanguard of
the movement for radical upheaval of the american
reality. Let us organize a support system for the
Katrina resistors. Let us not forget them. Let us
organize sustainable struggle and self-sustaining
institutions that can protect our people from the
intentional "disasters" of monopoly capitalism, and
save them in the natural disasters caused by the
greed and selfishness of the rulers.

Let this be the moment in which we step back onto
the stage of history, shouting ourstory to the
world. "We are not capitulating. " "We are not
allowing ourselves to be part of a Fascist nation."
We are not giving up our people, our movement, or
our Ancestors for "one america." Let us be
unrelenting in our confrontation with the
anti-Afrikan, anti-human mechanisms of
oppression.

Never forget that our power is in our
connectedness. If they did not succeed in
disconnecting us through the middle passage,
through enslavement and lynching and
incarceration, let them not succeed now through
the duplicity of false "democracy."
Let us not believe the hype. This is not our victory.
This "historic occasion" is a victory for america, it
is a victory for the status quo, for all of the things
that we should be fighting against. Be in
Washington DC in January to make demands on the
new administration. If you voted for it, make it
work for you!

Let us make this a time for real change, a time for
fulfilling The Promise. Tugane pamoja tutafune nia
yetu. "Let us come together and define our cause."
Let the circle be unbroken.

Marimba Ani,
A Race Woman, A Cultural Warrior.