Message to the Masses: Link the Issues or Perish!

Published in Issue 475 of The Black Commentator on June 7, 2012
By Larry Pinkney

“Tell no lies, claim no easy victories.”

-Amilcar Cabral

“Historically, the most terrible things – war, genocide, and slavery – have resulted not from disobedience, but from obedience.”

-Howard Zinn

The struggling masses of ordinary everyday Black, White, Brown, Red, and Yellow people in the United States, and throughout the world, have been hideously and meticulously divided by those national and global power-brokers who completely understand that a people divided are a people utterly controlled.

Racism, sexism, homophobia, and economic exploitation, etc. are part and parcel of the systemic paradigm of power. They are, in fact, deliberately maintained and insidiously manipulated by the system’s power brokers in order to keep us at one another’s throats and functionally powerless.

It is high time that we reach a level of human maturity wherein we understand that we do not have to be in total agreement with one another in order to recognize the legitimacy of each other’s pain, suffering, and exploitation. Moreover, it is the recognition of that pain, suffering, and exploitation that must serve as the glue to bind us together collectively. This is by no means easy, but it is absolutely essential. It is an important part of what the term ‘struggle’ actually means. It is, and in reality should be, a constant conscious ‘struggle’ (or effort) to evolve. And therein are the power, passion, and strength of ordinary everyday people. We ourselves!

This is not about us comparing one another’s pain in order to establish who supposedly suffers or has suffered ‘the most.’ To the contrary, it is about recognizing that the pain, suffering, and exploitation of any of us is not acceptable, and that it is this hypocritical, corrupt political system, that is responsible for it. As long as this political system’s power brokers (irrespective to their color or gender) can keep us from recognizing and collectively acting upon this fact, we remain divided, and in real terms, powerless.

The beauty and strength of everyday people in this nation, and throughout Mother Earth, is not to be found in predator drone missiles strikes, ‘Kill’ Lists, bombs, or aircraft carriers; but in the rising collective consciousness of the ordinary people! This is the power of the people – our collective consciousness! And it is this that the systemic power brokers seek to deny us – our collective human consciousness! We must regain our collective consciousness, and in so doing, regain our humanity.

We are under attack by our own government in this nation, and indeed all over the world by bloated, vampiric creatures who lost their humanity long ago, and whose only mission in ‘life’ is to keep us as divided and powerless surrogates to a system built upon greed, wars, and hypocrisy. We must not abide this, for with us, we have something that these oppressive creatures will never understand – we have humanity! We shall not be moved and we will not perish! In the final analysis, we shall triumph – together.

Thus, as difficult and challenging as it most certainly is, we must link our concerns and issues together. Until we regain our collective humanity, and act upon it, we will remain our own worst enemy. We must pay attention to each other, to everyday people, not to the misleaders and traitors of humanity nationally and globally, who masquerade as ‘leaders.’ This masquerade is over. It is YOU/US who are the leaders collectively!

Each one, teach one. Each one, reach one in this long and protracted struggle. Onward, then, my sisters and brothers! There is so much work to be done. Onward!

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. 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), 107Cowgate (Ireland and Scotland), and Mayihlome News (Azania/South Africa). 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.)