“This is not a war zone. These are unarmed people. It doesn’t make you tough to hurt these people. It doesn’t make you tough to hurt these people. You want to go fight, go to Iraq and Afghanistan. I went to Iraq twice to fight for these people. Why are you using force on unarmed civilians? There is no honor on this. There is no honor in this.” - Sgt. Shamar Thomas, USMC to the officers of the NYPD at Occupy Times Square
“A young man, Jeffrey Lichtenstein, who is a part of Occupy Memphis wrote a beautiful anti-racist position paper on the organization. It was hard-hitting, and made serious points, none of which they intend to consider. They removed his comments off the FaceBook page of Occupy Memphis, and then somebody came along for good measure and removed my responses off of his FB page. This shows the amount of fear and hatred there is within this movement, and within the white Left generally. They simply cannot honestly deal with their internal racism, and will now engage in censorship against other activists. This show why racism has to be overthrown through ideological and political struggle, it can never be voluntarily defeated without a struggle.
…
This whole fight with Occupy Memphis shows us to what extent that it is really difficult for oppressed POC’s and whites activists to work together on a principled basis, in this the most dynamic struggle in decades, the OWS, but has the same Achilles heel as previous coalitions over the years in America:, internal racism and domination, which relegates peoples of color to the to the activist ghetto. It needs to be said again, that there is not going to be a revolution which does not include Blacks not just taking equal part, but in the front ranks with their struggles taking center stage. This society is based on slavery and the exploitation of the labor, land theft, and mass murder of POC: Indigenous, African, and other oppressed peoples. Capitalism got its very start in America from slavery, but these folks try to pretend that is not the case, and this is just the movement of the white working class. We need to reject racism and censorship by the Left, not just the state or corporations.”
…
This whole fight with Occupy Memphis shows us to what extent that it is really difficult for oppressed POC’s and whites activists to work together on a principled basis, in this the most dynamic struggle in decades, the OWS, but has the same Achilles heel as previous coalitions over the years in America:, internal racism and domination, which relegates peoples of color to the to the activist ghetto. It needs to be said again, that there is not going to be a revolution which does not include Blacks not just taking equal part, but in the front ranks with their struggles taking center stage. This society is based on slavery and the exploitation of the labor, land theft, and mass murder of POC: Indigenous, African, and other oppressed peoples. Capitalism got its very start in America from slavery, but these folks try to pretend that is not the case, and this is just the movement of the white working class. We need to reject racism and censorship by the Left, not just the state or corporations.”
Lorenzo Kom’boa Ervin - (via facebook)
I feel so resentful toward and frustrated with the white Left.
I STRONGLY ENCOURAGE EVERYONE READING THIS TO GO TO Lorenzo Kom’boa Ervin’s Facebook page and see more excellent analyses.
(via leonineantiheroine)
(Source: unpoliceyourmind)
