The Fear of Revolution by Ali Khalid Abdullah

We are living in a time when the government has completely lost touch with the concerns of the people. We see more police brutality against the people, more police in our communities, higher incarceration rates, more restrictions on constitutional freedoms, and career politicians saying and doing anything to win votes and get reelected. Yet, the people haven’t gotten tired of the way government officials and their agencies are acting and treating them. They still have hope and belief in a system that is increasingly totalitarian and fascist.

Many of us are struggling to get the information out to the people so they will get involved in the major issues facing us. Unfortunately, many of us have also landed in death kamps because of our political and social beliefs and because we had the revolutionary spirit to take a stand either by word or by direct action. Though we have taken this bold and uncompromising step for real justice, we have found ourselves languishing in state and federal death kamps (i.e. prisons) under horrific, inhumane and deplorable conditions. And without any real support either from a moral, revolutionary, financial, or legal standpoint. We wonder where the peoples’ concern or care is. Thus comes the question “WHY?”

During the 1950’s, 1960’s, and 1970’s, New Afrikans (Black people) were fighting for freedom and equality. Now, over 100 years after the Emancipation Proclamation, New Afrikan people are still struggling for their rights. We fought against Jim Crow laws of the South, lynching, unfair and unequal employment practices and pay, inferior housing, land takeovers—and we are still finding ourselves fighting these same issues today. There were groups like the civil Rights Movement, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, the Pan Afrikan Congress, CORE, SNCC, the Black Panther Party, the Black Liberation Army, the New Afrikan Independent Movement, MOVE and a host of other politically active groups all demanding and struggling for political and social changes in Amerikkka. Also in this period the Amerikan Indian Movement, the Anti-Imperialist Movement, and various Socialist and Labor Movements were raising their voices, taking action, direct action, and working to force the government to hear the VOICE OF THE PEOPLE!

Today many of the leaders and activists of the ‘50s, ‘60s, ‘70s, and ‘80s have been assassinated by various government agencies under their COINTELPRO program. Others have been discredited, thrown in state and federal death kamps to rot and die, or forced into exile—like sistah Assata Shakur who has been forced to live in Cuba to escape Amerikkka’s abuse—and no one, or very few of us today, seem to be taking the hard measures needed to defend these violated people. What is going on and why are we allowing our lives to be controlled in this manner?

It appears that the people have lost the will to resist. They have lost the will to stand up and fight for what is right. Some of us have not lost our wills…yet we have no real community support to do anything of significance and make a difference. Some of us are still fighting, demonstrating, holding rallies, teach-ins, or writing and publishing insightful materials so that the people will be aware. But as a whole we are doing nothing.

It is hard for me to sit here, confined in this death kamp, and think about the many sacrifices that were made, the loves lost, the blood spilt, and not see any forward steps towards anything resembling justice. All I see is more repression and government abuse taking more and more away from the people. Have we became so pathetic that we will stand around in a crowd of fifty and let two police officers beat or shoot someone in our very presence and do NOTHING other than offer a nervous cry or a whispered shot to “stop?” Are we that afraid that we’re ready to accept racial profiling and no-knock searches of our homes and businesses? Have we come to the point of total surrender to corporate Amerikkka’s bullying, the same corporate Amerikkka that takes away benefits, downsizes and fires workers while destroying the unions the people have fought and died for? Is the spirit of revolution dead, and does it now only exist in books, the alternative press, and in our memories?

New Afrikan communities have lost all control in rearing and raising their children and the children have lost all respect for their mothers, who they now call “bitches,” “hoes,” and “crackheads” in frustration because of what they see. The children have no male models to learn from, few male teachers in schools, and no fathers in their homes or their lives to properly love, guide, instruct, discipline, and show them the way.

In the White communities, have the people become tolerant of their children joining racist hate groups (i.e. neo-nazis, skinheads, and other groups) that target New Afrikans and other people of color, simply because they are too busy themselves chasing the capitalist dream and have replaced their consciences with greed?

A revolutionary consciousness, revolutionary thinking and action, are needed more today than in the 1950’s, ‘60s, and ‘70s, because the problem has gotten much worse. Racial prejudice is carried out in subtle “politically correct” ways—though increasingly these actions are becoming less and less subtle. We need to WAKE UP and realize that the only way we can have justice in this country is by holding those we’ve elected accountable or by removing them from office and letting the people serve the people. I will close with two quotes from President Abraham Lincoln:

“Whenever they shall grow weary of the existing Government, they can exercise their constitutional right of amending it or their revolutionary right to dismember or overthrow it.”

-First Inaugural Address

“Any people anywhere, being inclined and having power, have the right to rise up, and shake off the existing government, and form a new one that suits them better. This is a most valuable, a most sacred right, a right which we hope and believe, is to liberate the world. Nor is this right confined to cases in which the whole people of an existing government may choose to exercise it.”

-U.S. House of Representatives, January 12, 1848

The above speeches were made over 150 years ago and the truth of these words stands out more today than at the time they were uttered. The people do have a right to stand up and defend their rights. But how many of us are exercising our right? How many of us are willing to follow what Abraham Lincoln said in his Inaugural Address or stated to the United States House of Representatives?

There shouldn’t be any questions that we are in need of some accountability among today’s politicians. Accountability in terms of the way they aren’t representing the people but are taking advantage of them. So, what are WE going to do about this?

Write our brother in struggle:

Ali Khalid Abudllah #148130

Mound Correctional Facility

17601 Mound Rd.

Detroit, MI 48212

Learn more about Ali Khalid Abdullah http://www.friendsofaka.org

For more ‘struggle’ related links please click HERE.