Organization is the weapon of the Oppressed

[disciplesofmalcolm]

Some years ago around the time Martin Luther King’s birthday had just become a holiday, I had the opportunity to speak at spelman college. You know those sisters were fired up! Martin Luther King’s birthday had just come, and they were out there. When I walked in it was wall-to-wall Africans, and they were excited. I asked them a question: ‘How many of you love Martin Luther King? Put your hands up.’ I mean, some put both hands up (raises both hands). Then I asked them a simple question: ‘Keep your hands up if you have read one book by Dr. Martin Luther King.” (slowly puts hands down). They don’t even read about King. All they know about King is what they get off of television, and the television can only give you sound-bytes at best.

Kwame Ture (Stokely Carmichael) on Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. (via disciplesofmalcolm)

[ontologicalummah-deactivated201]

Black Power means that we see ourselves as part of the Third World; that we see out struggle as closely related to liberation struggle around the world. Our people are a colony in the United Staes; you are colonies outside the United States. It is more than a figure of speech to sat that the black communities in America are victims of white imperialism and colonial exploitation.

Kwame Ture (via medicine)

[black-0rpheus]

“This generation is saying if you wear a sheet at night, or a badge in the day, if you put your filthy white hands on our beautiful black skin, we gonna take care of business, period! Period! Period!” Stokely Carmichael, c. 1967

[geekyroyalaficionado-deactivate]

For racism to die, a totally different America must be born. This is what the white society does not wish to face; this is why that society prefers to talk about integration. But integration speaks not at all to the problem of poverty, only to the problem of blackness. Integration today means the man who ‘makes it,’ leaving his black brothers behind in the ghetto as fast as his new sports car will take him. It has no relevance to the Harlem wino or to the cotton-picker making three dollars a day…. Integration, moreover, speaks to the problem of blackness in a despicable way. As a goal, it has been based on complete acceptance of the fact that in order to have a decent house or education, blacks must move into a white neighborhood or send their children to a white school. This reinforces, among both black and white, the idea that ‘white’ is automatically better and ‘black’ is by definition inferior.

Stokely Carmichael, later known as Kwame Ture, in “Black Power,” The New York Times Review of Books, 22 September 1966

Full Article 

(via awjila)

[disciplesofmalcolm]

Any time you make an analysis of an oppressed people in any aspect of their lives and you leave out the enemy, you will never come to a correct analysis. On the contrary, you will blame the oppressed for all of their problems. Even if one where to talk about the drugs in our community, if you just talk about drugs and not talk about the enemy, you make no analysis at all. If you haven’t brought in the question of who brings the drugs in, why the drugs are brought in, for what purpose they are brought in, you will never understand the problem at all. When we speak of the conditions of the African masses we begin with the enemy of the African masses, especially the racist, capitalist system in the United States of America.

Kwame Ture (Stokely Carmichael), mid-1990s.

(via disciplesofmalcolm)

[chancellorschamber-deactivated2]

"I maintain that every civil rights bill in this country was passed for white people, not for black people. For example, I am black. I know that. I also know that while I am black I am a human being. Therefore I have the right to go into any public place. White people don’t know that. Every time I tried to go into a public place they stopped me. So some boys had to write a bill to tell that white man, “He’s a human being; don’t stop him." That bill was for the white man, not for me. I knew I could vote all the time and that it wasn’t a privilege but my right. Every time I tried I was shot, killed or jailed, beaten or economically deprived. So somebody had to write a bill to tell white people, “When a black man comes to vote, don’t bother him." That bill was for white people. I know I can live anyplace I want to live. It is white people across this country who are incapable of allowing me to live where I want. You need a civil rights bill, not me."

Stokely Carmichael, setting shit straight and placing responsibility for the “race problem” squarely where it belongs.   

The very language in regards to civil rights in this country is embedded in white supremacist ideology. How many of us have been duped into accepting the fallacious notion that whites have “given” blacks rights? The notion itself presupposes black inferiority while failing to acknowledge the root problem: white racism. Change the language, change your mind.

(via chancellorschamber)

OMG

(via weakdaes)

Pair with “Racism is the white people’s disease”. Ya’ll brought on the problems.

(via kenobi-wan-obi)

[disciplesofmalcolm]

Even Martin Luther King himself was confused on this issue. When we attacked Israel he said “Any attack on Israel, no matter how you camouflage it, is anti-Semitic.” Poor King was confused. He was very confused. To attack Israel has nothing to with antisemitism. But we can understand King could not take the position we took. King’s support came clearly from Zionists who didn’t say they were Zionists. But of course, any attack against Israel would have meant serious problems for King. But for us we had nothing to worry about except the truth. So King himself was confused.

Stokely Carmichael (later known as Kwame Ture)

[disciplesofmalcolm]

Kwame Ture (Formerly known as Stokely Carmichael) on Unity of Thought, the Los Angeles Rebellion, Political Education, Organization, Discipline and Knowledge

[We] have unity of action; we lack unity of thought. Look at Los Angeles; here you have clear unity of action. If I went to Los Angeles the day before Rodney King was charged, and I said “look here brothers and sisters, they’re going to let these pigs get away free! We gots to organize, we needs to get some guns, we needs to get some Molotov cocktails-” “Oh, he’s just talking.”

But the minute at 3 o’clock in the afternoon when the decision went down, they didn’t even listen to Malcolm who said “after dark for even-steven,” they went in to the streets at 3 o’clock. And an entire people who were fighting each other, cutting each other, disgusted with each other, came together in a unified force and took on the second largest city in the greatest imperialist power in the world, and made them bring in their army to suppress them. We have unity of action. What we lack is unity of though.

Unity of action without guidance of unity of thought leads one into a reactionary position. Our people have unity of action, but this unity of action is usually triggered by an enemy action. For example, it’s only when they have an incident in Howard Beach that everyone jump up like if Howard beach all of a sudden changed; it’s the same thing. And after they jump up and make a little noise, after a while they just sit right back down and say, “oh, Lord, please don’t let them shoot nobody else while I’m alive so I don’t have to go out there and make no protest. Please wait until I die.”

Rodney King gets beat up, what’s new about it? I’ve been dealing with the Los Angeles pigs since I was in the Black Panther Party in the 1960s. And I know the pigs in Los Angeles. They are the most vicious that you can find any place in this country. They have in Los Angeles what they call a choke-hold. The police puts it on you. You go look and see how many been killed by the choke-hold. It’s your history, you’re supposed to know it. The police must bring the people back into being intimidated. They must do it.

But this unity of action which we have can only come to stop the police at certain times for certain periods because it’s spontaneous. A people will never win a war through spontaneous action. You can only win a war through planned action. You give me 100 organized brothers and sisters, and let us face 10,000 disorganized with the same weapons. as Africa is my mother, we’ll whoop them every time, hands down. Kwame Nkrumah said, “it is organization that decides everything.” And the fact that we’re disorganized proves it because we decide absolutely nothing.

In order to have unity of thought we must have collective thinking. One of the biggest problems with our movement is that we got so many individual stars and superstars. They are not disciplined to any organization. Organization disciplines you, and we are an undisciplined people. If you are just a member of the NAACP, it’s a nice Spring afternoon, you want to go out and lollygag but the NAACP has a meeting, if you’re disciplined, you go to the meeting. How many of us can actually say that we on a daily basis, on a weekly basis, go to meetings for organizations, and help to push these organizations forward through collective thinking? It’s not done.

And most cases, most organizations don’t even have political education programs built in the organization. As a member of the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee we had none. As a member of the Black Panther Party we had none. Absolutely none. As a matter of fact, when I tried to bring it, “oh you’re just a bourgeois college student!” “That’s right, Jack! And an honor roll student at that! That’s right. Not only that Jack, I took philosophy, and dig this: everything I get I give back to my people.” Does it make sense to you that you are the leader of a movement, you have 1,000 people who are following, and you are the only one who can see better than all these thousand? That’s stupidity. One woman may be more intelligent than one man, that’s a fact. But no one man can have more experiences than two people. And it’s experience that brings knowledge.

Sit down and read a book with a stupid man. Let him read the same book. Come back and discuss it: he will show you stupid things to show you how stupid you were ‘cause you didn’t even see it. These are facts.

As a people, we have no collective reading, no collective study, no collective thinking. This is our greatest error as a people. This is our greatest shortcoming as a people. This is why we can’t even discuss who we are. Because somebody think they Black-American and that’s what they think, and “what I think is what I think!” Like you think you think you can think. Half the time they aren’t thinking, reacting to stimuli, and think they thinking. Unless we do collective reading and collective discussion, we cannot come to unified thought.

Of course, the enemy will confuse you. Capitalist system will tell you, “you can think whatever you think. That’s it!” Man told me that the other day. I said, “you African,” he said “I don’t think that.” I said “you think you’re thinking,” He said “I don’t care what you say. I ain’t no African, and that’s what I think and what I think is right.” I said, “Okay, please. Think that 2 plus 2 equals 5. Think it.”

No man, no woman, is born with the truth inside of them; not one. All of us come to acquire the truth by searching for it. First of all, we must even have a desire to know the truth. Acquisition of knowledge is directly related to the desire for knowledge. If you do not desire knowledge you will never acquire knowledge. Once you understand that your people are oppressed because they lack knowledge, if you love your people, you seek knowledge. If you love your people, you seek knowledge. And we understand this knowledge cannot be individual knowledge, it must be collective knowledge. Unity of thought must come.

We are concluding but we say what we always say. We will never tire of saying it because it’s the truth. If you love your people, join an organization fighting for your people. Where is the problem?

[disciplesofmalcolm]

Kwame Ture (Formerly known as Stokely Carmichael) on Guns, Capitalism, the Civil Rights Movement, Racism and Organization

We had more guns in the Black Panther Party chapter in New York alone than all the gangs in New York have today. I’m speaking to you facts. And yet nobody was getting shot in the African community by these guns. It is not guns that kill people, it is people that kill people. And they can kill you with poison. The problem is capitalism; the problem is a value that says you can get rich by any means necessary …

These guns that these youth have must be used to protect the community. But let me show you exactly how the guns came. You remember the 50s? If you stepped on a brother’s alligator shoe he’d cut you from ear to ear. The enemy was sure that in the 1950s he had us. I mean if you saw us in the 1950s, when brother Malcolm was speaking out there, you’d laugh. Africans use to come by and laugh at them, “oh, you talking nonsense.” Nobody paid attention. The enemy was sure he had them. But it was this same generation in the 50s that jumped up on him in the 60s.

The Chinese say: if you make a mistake, and you know it’s a mistake, and you don’t correct the mistake, you’ve made your second mistake. The enemy is not like us; they are scientific. When they make a mistake, they correct it. We are the only ones who make mistakes and continue making them. We revolutionaries, since mistakes are fatal, we are forced to correct them; we seek quickly to detect them. The enemy was surprised: “You mean that these Africans who were sleeping, and dope heads, and cutting each other in the 50s jumped up on the 60s, and these Africans who were afraid of the police jumped up and started shooting the police?! We must put a stop to this!”

We say you can make no analysis of the people if you leave out the enemy. The enemy said, “we must reduce these people to such a state that there will be so much internal chaos inside their community that once again they will beg the policeman to come back in.” It’s very simple. There’s nothing complicated about the plan at all. The enemy decided to pump in drugs, pump in guns and cut down on revolutionary talk. Let the culture talk about shaking their butts and nothing else.

But we struggles have a responsibility. In fight of heightened oppression of the enemy, we must heighten our resistance. I remember the other day a brother came and said, “Oh, hey, brother Kwame Ture, remember me? I was out there with you in the 60s! I was out there!” “So whatchu doing now?” “I ain’t doing nothing.” “You should be shot.” I speak the truth. I know how desperately we need anyone who has any experience of struggle out here today. We need them more than we did in the 60s. And the beautiful thing about today is we got a whole lot who got a whole lot of experience.

[disciplesofmalcolm]

We are not tired. We will never get tired. Anytime we think about getting tired, we think about our grandparents who worked from can’t see (morning) to can’t see (night), and kept going, and we get all the energy we need.

Kwame Ture (Formerly known as Stokely Carmichael)

[decolonizehistory]

"Justice is not a quantitative question. If you steal something for long enough it doesn’t become yours"

Kwame Ture (formerly Stokely Carmichael) on settler colonialism (via decolonizehistory)

[disciplesofmalcolm]

You must understand this point very carefully. Violence has two points: reactionary violence and revolutionary violence. Everyone knows that the Africans in this country are oppressed through violence. When the police shoots down a brother; when the police shoots a 68-year-old woman; when the police shoots a 7-year-old boy anywhere in this country, it is for one reason alone: to intimidate the population to keep them in line. This is violence. America is a racist, capitalist country. Everybody knows that. I cannot, as an African, in good conscious, advocate to my people, that anyone of them put down any gun in a racist, capitalist state.

Kwame Ture (Formerly known as Stokely Carmichael)

[disciplesofmalcolm]

The FBI and the CIA must be smashed if you want revolution. In any state, it is the police force that keeps the status quo in check. Undermining the police force of any state makes the alternative easier for revolution. Thus, attacking the FBI and the CIA is a proper revolutionary strategy. Today the people have even more disrespect for the FBI and the CIA than ever before, and it will become worse and worse because of the simple truth. When they were up there like kings they did whatever they wanted to do, nobody looked at them so they didn’t cover up their dirt. They don’t even know how to cover up their dirt. Now the people are looking at them; they are going to fumble and trip up over themselves because they never had anyone looking at them. They were above everyone else but now today the people are looking at them, looking at their tricks; they can hardly move. We going to tie them up until we tie them up completely and make them a force of neutrality in the struggle to overthrow capitalism.

Kwame Ture (Formerly known as Stokely Carmichael)

[disciplesofmalcolm]

When you face an enemy, you must demystify the enemy. The enemy is a man just like you; the enemy is a woman just like you. And when they make errors, you must take all advantage of them. Demystify the enemy.

Kwame Ture (Formerly known as Stokely Carmichael)

[disciplesofmalcolm]

We know the FBI and the CIA are the pigs that wright confusion into our community. I’ve worked with all sorts of statistics and research from our party against the FBI and the CIA. Let me give you an example. When the Soviet Union was betrayed by this scum Gorbachev, Bush made the great announcement, “the evil empire has fallen. We have a lot of CIA agents who’ve been there. Now we’re going to take them and put them in the ghettos.” He said it, we have the article. He even said “most of them will be sent to the ghetto in Los Angeles.” If you would look at Los Angeles, these pigs created some havoc there. Pumping drugs and guns into the hands and developing gangs like the Crypts and the Bloods. But when the rebellion came, it was the same Crypts and the same Bloods who received guns from the police to shoot their people who shot the police. The same ones. The CIA, I laugh at them. I remember when the news was made I was talking to a sister; she said, “oh, we in real trouble now.” “Watchu mean?” “Did you hear what they said? They sent the CIA everywhere! They coming for you!” I said, “oh, I ain’t worried about them. I ain’t thinking about them.” I said they had all the sophisticated machines they had in Vietnam, and when the Vietnamese overran them they were running for the helicopters. When you face an enemy, you must demystify the enemy.

Kwame Ture (Formerly known as Stokely Carmichael)

[disciplesofmalcolm]

Everybody loves King because King was an honest man. Even if you disagree with his tactics, even if you disagree with his strategy, you must respect the man who’s actions conforms to his words. And whether you liked it or not, he said “nonviolence;” he was in the front lines, Jack. He said, “nonviolence;” he was the first who went to jail. He said, “nonviolence;” he was the first to be whooped. Therefore, you have to respect this man even if you don’t like him. I know many who said, “Well I ain’t going for that nonviolence stuff; I ain’t into that.” “Watcha doin’?” “Nothing.” “Shut up.” You don’t criticize somebody whose doing something when you’re doing nothing.

Kwame Ture (Formerly known as Stokely Carmichael)

[disciplesofmalcolm]

If you want somebody to follow something that you are telling them which is a good advice, the best way to make them follow it is to be the best example of the advice you’re giving them.

Kwame Ture (Formerly known as Stokely Carmichael)