Thirty Pieces of Silver: 2008 – An American Revolutionary Opportunity Betrayed

Published in Issue 265 of The Black Commentator on February 21, 2008
By Larry Pinkney

It is the year 2008, and Black people have once again been betrayed.

Indeed, Black, Brown, and Red peoples have yet again been hideously betrayed. All people of good will in America and the world have been betrayed. Nothing could be clearer.

This column today will not be long.

Despite, and perhaps because of, my intense political experiences over the years in Africa, Europe, the United States, and other parts of the world, I never cease to be amazed and sickened at how many so-called “progressives” and those of the American “Left,” have in this year of 2008, demonstrated that they never really wanted to systemically change the racist, capitalist, hypocritical U.S. political structure. Rather, they only really wanted to join and administer it both nationally and internationally. They apparently see in the party of the so-called Democrats (who are systemically and inextricably tied to the Republicans) an opportunity to at last be the centurions of the empire. Not even “thirty pieces of silver” can expunge such a betrayal of the people.

I cry tears of rage as I see the corporate media, the U.S. multi-national corporations and their military partners, once again, make an absolute mockery of a people’s democracy inside the United States itself. I am sickened beyond words as I think of the increasing gentrification/economic apartheid against the poor being sponsored by the Democrat and Republican parties in this nation and throughout the world.

I am sickened beyond words as I think of more than four decades of brutal and illegal military and civilian occupation of Palestinian lands by the racist U.S.-backed apartheid Zionists, who now do not even fear saying openly that they will bring about a greater “holocaust/disaster” upon the Palestinian people if they dare to physically resist the illegal and unjust U.S.-backed Israeli occupation.

I am sickened beyond words as I witness the “liberal” poverty-pimping rats jumping ship in order to scramble for the illusive crumbs of the waning empire’s corporate, capitalist blood feast upon itself and the rest of the world. The people of this nation and the world have bled and paid, and paid, and paid again for the fruits of their own labor from which they have not benefited; but apparently the corporate blood suckers of America have decided that we have not paid enough.

I am sickened beyond words as I watch in utter horror as people, virtually stumbling over one another, regurgitate nonsense as to why they should vote for “the lesser of the evils” in America; when all along they know full well that anything short of systemic change is no change at all. Strange, but I had grown up being taught that overturning tyrannical systems was both a duty and a sacred responsibility. I was even taught that such a thing is enshrined in the preamble to the U.S. Constitution. But no matter, it was apparently all just a farce anyway.

The tyranny of injustice in the 21st Century has grown, not waned. The question is: Are we on the side of justice or tyranny? I choose justice even though superficial rhetoric and real tyranny will do all in its power to suppress, divide, and confuse us. It will not, in the final analysis, succeed. We who believe in economic and social justice will!

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, Pinkney was interviewed in 1988 on the nationally televised PBS News Hour, formerly known as The MacNeil/Lehrer News Hour, and more recently on the nationally syndicated Alex Jones Show. Pinkney is a former university instructor of political science and international relations, and his writings have been published in various places, including The Boston Globe, San Francisco BayView newspaper, Black Commentator, Intrepid Report, Global Research (Canada), LINKE ZEITUNG (Germany), 107 Cowgate (Ireland and Scotland), and Mayihlome News (Azania/South Africa). He is in the archives of Dr. Huey P. Newton (Stanford University, CA), cofounder of the Black Panther Party. 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.)