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by Shaka Shakur
Oppressive power, oppressive governments, the elites, the privileged, those who benefit from the status quo and the institutions that move to protect, facilitate and reinforce the status quo always move to kkkriminalize those who rebel against or attack them. This has been the case throughout history. Those in power – particularly oppressive power – get to make the rules and have those rules legitimized, often through force or coercion: prison.
This is why we can’t abide by their rules. This is why we can’t comply with or respect those rules. Rules that are corrupt, that serve and protect genocide, racism and outright murder, we can’t abide by.
This is the whole point of rebelling, of non-conforming, of resisting. You don’t play a game on a field or chess board with rigged rules: You change the game. You take over the field. You either get a new board or create new rules – fairer rules. Just rules. Equal rules. You create a better system.
It is the job of those who benefit from the unjust and corrupt rules to dissuade you, to discourage you, to intimidate you, to misdirect you in order to preserve themselves and the oppressive system that they represent.
Save my life as I save yours and we all save our own.
Amerika has always practiced a double standard. You see, you can talk about bringing democracy to foreign countries – which we know to be a lie and propaganda – but you can’t bring democracy to the streets of Amerika for New Afrikan and Black people, other people of color and poor people in general. Amerika can’t bring democracy to the ghettos, barrios, trailer parks or reservations that house the working class, so-called underclass people, who struggle every day.
Yet what you can do is put your knee on our neck and kill us in cold blood. I watched a Black man be murdered, lynched, in real time by a white kkkop, who pressed the life out of a man. Nobody physically intervened.
Why? Because we are continuing to play by their rules, continuing to respect their so-called legitimacy. We honor and appreciate the decision to film the lynching and murder of brother George Floyd, but by the same token, we must have the courage to attack that which we know is wrong and unjust.
Save my life as I save yours and we all save our own. They have no right to take our lives! They have no right to slaughter us in the streets!
If you watch the video of George Floyd’s lynching, after his body was picked up like a wild beast and thrown onto the gurney, a face print was left in the concrete, where his face had been pressed. It was as if the man’s soul went into that concrete and remained in that silhouette.
The epitome of government hypocrisy
It’s interesting how the powers that be and the average person celebrate the so-called forefathers of white folk – ol’ George Washington, Thomas Jefferson; incidents like the Boston Tea Party rebellion, where people violently rebelled against oppressive power. Who stated it is the duty to remove and rebel against tyrants?
What we see happening in this country isn’t a coincidence. It is not a result of a few bad apples. This oppression, this misery, this slaughtering, has a historical context and foundation reinforced by its institutions. It is cloaked, masked and legitimized by these institutions. It is structural. It is a built-in mechanism that was founded on slavery and genocide.
That original sin, that original contradiction has never been resolved or corrected. We live in a society under a system that must dominate and exploit in order to survive, that must maintain the gap between the haves and the have nots, that must keep its knee on the neck of the 99 percent while 1 percent continue to get fat off our blood, labor and sacrifice.
We see tens of thousands of people in the streets. The government is using the same fascist, police state tactics they accuse Venezuelan and Iranian governments of using. They try to kriminalize the righteous rage of the people.
When the same exact thing was taking place in Arab and Afrikan countries like Egypt and Libya, they called it the Arab Spring. They said that it was bringing in democracy against oppressive governments. Why is it any different for Amerika?
What did former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld say about looting in Iraq? “Looting is the first step taken on the path to freedom.” Now imagine that!
Freedom can never be given; it must be fought for, it must be struggled for, it must be taken!
The masses, the people, are rebelling and attacking the symbols and institutions of oppressive power. The government has troops on the streets with automatic weapons, and is using sophisticated technology to monitor its own people: people whom they claim have the right to protest, to free speech, etc.
So why isn’t this considered a failed state, a terrorist state, that kills its own citizens? A failed state that mass detains and incarcerates its own people, that shoots rubber bullets and live rounds at its own people. Isn’t it the same thing?
What did the orange man in the White House say? “You will be met with vicious dogs and some of the most ominous weapons.” Sounded like Saddam Hussein or Assad, didn’t it!
The emperor has no clothes and Amerika’s dirty underside is being revealed to the world. The young people of today, discounted and dismissed, are the future of tomorrow.
You must fight for the society and world you want to live in, on what side of history you want to stand, because white supremacy, racism and neo-colonial domination are equally deadly viruses that must be stopped.
Freedom can never be given; it must be fought for, it must be struggled for, it must be taken! We stand in solidarity with the people and their righteous anger. The price for our lives must increase!
All Power to the People!
Send our brother some love and light: Shaka Shakur, 1996207 KMCC, P.O. Box 860, Oakwood, VA 24631. Email Shaka at shakashakur1996207@jpay.com. Extraordinarily astute political commentary like this and the writing that comes from Kevin “Rashid” Johnson frightens prison authorities. They try to blunt the influence of such writers by incarcerating them far from home. In the cases of Shaka Shakur, who is under the jusrisdiction of his home state of Indiana, and Rashid Johnson, whose home state is Virginia, the two were “traded” by those state regimes.
