Stay True to the Struggle

Published in Issue 501 of The Black Commentator on January 24, 2013
By Larry Pinkney

 “Always bear in mind that the people are not fighting for ideas, for the things in anyone’s head. They are fighting to win material benefits, to live better, and in peace, to see their lives go forward, to guarantee the future of their children…”
– Amilcar Cabral

In the fallacious name of supposedly moving forward, the people of this nation and world have been thrust backwards by a tiny avaricious national and global elite intent upon thwarting human progress and fundamental freedoms, to serve their own callous interests.

This nation’s political misleaders are essentially warmongering murderers and economic bloodsuckers who are attempting to recolonize the minds and hearts of everyday ordinary Black, White, Brown, Red, and Yellow people. The struggle today is not only a physical one pertaining to the well-being of the ordinary people – it is also an intense psychological struggle wherein the will and human rights of the people is under vicious and sustained assault by the systemic power elite and their gatekeepers.

Politicians are fundamentally nothing more than professional liars and political pimps on behalf of their corporate masters. The so-called ‘news’ media [i.e. the corporate-stream media] is a pathetic caricature of anything even resembling journalistic integrity. The ‘justice’ / judicial system is a disgusting ongoing joke which unjustly incarcerates more people in this country than any other nation on the planet. And last but not least, the ‘educational’ institutions are essentially rubber stamps for a warped, distorted, and mediocre corporate narrative of national and world events – both past and present.

Peace has come to mean waging perpetual wars in the name of peace. Human rights has come to mean corporate ‘person hood.’ Truth has come to mean an endless stream of lies, obfuscation, and propaganda. ‘Hope and change’ has come to mean ‘bait and switch’ and having our aspirations and needs endlessly pimped and thwarted. And moving ‘forward’ has come to mean walking briskly backwards while meticulously ignoring reality.

All of the foregoing are part and parcel of the sustained assault [by the systemic corporate power elite, their political puppets (from the White House on down), their talking-head ‘news’ & opinion makers, and their other assorted systemic gatekeepers] upon the psychological and physical well-being of everyday ordinary people in this nation and throughout Mother Earth. This sustained assault is quite deliberate and is meant to psychologically and physically distract and break the will of the people to seriously struggle for systemic change.

Frederick Douglass correctly said that “if there is no struggle there is no progress,” and the systemic power brokers [i. e. power elite] know full well just how accurate these words are. Thus, their constant and consuming objective is to do whatever it takes to break the will and consciousness of everyday people and keep them/us people from struggling for genuine systemic change.

Sadly, some of the so-called icons of past civil and human rights struggles in this nation have now betrayed and/or otherwise sold-out the everyday people. They tell the people that they should believe in a particularly systemic political misleader or in certain political misleaders of this system. In so doing, they repudiate and betray their own past struggles, in addition to their present pungent betrayal of the struggling masses of ordinary people. These betrayers, while attempting today to live on the laurels of their past, are among the deadliest of this system’s gatekeepers. These betrayers must and will be exposed for the sake of the ordinary people. The need to struggle for systemic change and against this system’s misleaders is greater today than at any time thus far in this 21st century.

People will not “live better” or “in peace” for as long as this corrupt, filthy, hypocritical, bloody system of the corporate U.S. Empire remains intact. It must be dismantled. This means STRUGGLE! It also means exposing these betrayers for who and what they really are. The everyday people’s struggle is by necessity a long, protracted, and collective one, and does not submit to icons or gurus – past or present.

The late great revolutionary Amilcar Cabral said, “Tell no lies. Claim no easy victories.” He was correct. Successful struggles are long, hard, tedious, and protracted. They are not easy nor do they lend themselves to believing in or following systemic politicians and/or misleaders. They call for collective creativity and longevity.

So stay true to the struggle! Do not give in or give up. And do not be misled by those who would further pimp the pain of the people – by urging them to believe in a systemic politician / misleader. We must believe in ourselves and one another. In the undying words of the martyred Joe Hill, “Don’t Mourn. ORGANIZE!”

Remember: Each one, reach one. Each one, teach one. Onward, then, my sisters and brothers. 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, 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.)