Voice of the International African Revolution! - Uhuru News

16 THE BURNING SPEAR April 2003
Spear
continued from page 14
and they’ve got a bunch of weapons;
there’s never been in history anything
comparable in terms to the military
power that you see in the United
States — represent a crisis. It’s a
power that’s fighting
for its very life.
I say this
because in the
past when you
saw imperialism in
motion, it was a
dynamic motion,
of just taking over
everything, collecting
all the
resources and
growing stronger
and bigger as a
consequence.
Now what you
see with imperialism
in motion is an
attempt to defend
and hold everything
it stole in the
past. There’s nothing dynamic about it.
It’s an attempt to stop the revolutionary
process that’s happening all over the
world. Sometimes it doesn’t look
exactly like revolutions, but people are
taking back and fighting for their own
resources. They’re removing their
resources from the absolute control of
the imperialists and that undermines
the whole social system itself. It is
fighting for its very life.
This crisis has been deepening for
a very long time, certainly since the
second imperialist war that they like to
refer to as the Second World War or
World War II. World War II was white
power fighting to re-divide the world.
Did you know that there were no good
guys in World War II? You don’t know
that because you hear on the news
that World War II was the last honest
war made by America. There was
nothing honest there. It was a war to
re-divide the world.
In the first imperialist war, Germany
had lost a lot of its colonies and other
resources to the rest of Europe. In fact,
Rwanda was then a German colony,
and when Germany lost the war, the
white people gave the black people in
Rwanda to Belgium, to punish
Germany. Hitler was fighting to take
back for Germany what all the other
white people had all over Europe, and
he was not only going to take that, but
the white people too.
World War II was a war to re-divide
the world and there was nothing good
or decent about it. Don’t tell me that it
was wonderful because they rescued
the Jews. It had nothing to do with that.
How can somebody be good for rescuing
some white people in Germany
when they’re murdering black people
all over the planet, which is what they
were doing? They were murdering us
in Philadelphia and down South when
that was going on.
This war created space for peoples
all around the world to push for revolution.
Immediately following that war,
India became free and independent in
1947 and China in 1949. In the ‘50s
Cuba was liberated and there were
activities in Kenya with the Mau Mau;
Nkrumah was active in Ghana. There
was revolutionary work happening
everywhere.
Going into the ‘60s there was Viet
African People’s Socialist Party
Nam and people like the Tupamaros in
Uruguay; the Sandinistas were trying
to make revolution in Nicaragua. All
over places like South Africa, there
were revolutionaries under the influence
of Kwame Nkrumah. All over,
African people were trying to do
things. Che Guevara had Latin
America in flames during that period,
and he even went to Africa to try to
make that revolutionary process happen.
Since that time, you’ve seen this
incredible revolutionary process. In
1979, James Earl Carter made that
famous speech at the banquet in Iran.
He told the Shah of Iran how much he
appreciated him, because, he said,
"You’re an island of stability." Then he
got on the plane to go back to
Washington, and the Shah almost
beat him there because the people
overthrew the government.
They’ve been trying to put a cap on
the revolutionary process. That’s what
gave rise to Ronald Wilson Reagan.
Carter was a thug. Don’t make any
mistake about that. Brzezinski, who
was the National Security Advisor for
Carter, is the one who created the
modern jihad. Osama bin Laden and
the so-called Islamic fundamentalist
movement were created by the Carter
regime. It was created to destroy the
Soviet Union in Afghanistan. They
sucked the Soviets into Afghanistan,
and they brought Muslims from all
over the world and destroyed the
Soviet Union there. Carter did that.
Brzezinski was on the Afghan border
bragging about it on TV.
Then, Ronald Reagan came in with
a mandate from the American people
to stop revolutionary activities all over
the world, to get black people off welfare,
and to do the whole bit. They’ve
been trying to put the genie back in the
bottle. They’ve been trying to stop the
revolutionary process.
Now you have Bush Jr. in power,
The prison system — which began to fill with Africans immediately after slavery “ended” — sells inmates’ labor to
continue to create material wealth for the U.S. on the backs of Africans.
We rebuilt the
modern economy of
the South by African
convict leasing. We
built railroads,
cleared swamps and
went into the mines
in Alabama,
Birmingham and
places like that.
That’s what we did.
They say you all
won’t work, but hell,
we’re tired.
and you see all the clothes taken off
the Emperor. It is naked, wide open.
With the failure of neo-colonialism, the
United States government is trying to
put direct white power back in control
of the whole world again. They can’t
trust the Shah. They can’t trust
Saddam Hussein, who used to be
almost in the employ of the United
States government. If we’re not careful,
we’ll be back on the plantations
again at the rate this thing is attempting
to move now.
You really have to understand. This
is not about Iraq. It is about a social
system, which was founded on the
theft of the human and material
resources of the rest of the people of
the world, attempting to rescue itself
from a terrible crisis that’s been bleeding
it for a very long time now.
That’s why we talk about reparations.
We are a part of those stolen
resources that gave rise to the creation
of imperialism and white power. I
know we like to say we’re against
injustices and we are, but we need to
learn how to be for our selfish selves
as well. In order to be for your selfish
self, you need to know what the real
contradictions are that we’re confronted
with.
Reparations due for more than
slavery
Some people handle the question
of reparations as dealing simply with
the issue of slavery. I disagree, and I
think that was one of the major contributions
that the Party brought to the
whole discussion of reparations. I
wrote a book in 1982 called Stolen
Black Labor, which, for the first time,
using a relatively scientific approach,
quantified the value of stolen labor of
African people. We came up with a
total of $4.1 trillion. It was a relatively
scientific process. If I did it again it
would be done differently, and it would
be many, many, many times more than
that amount, but it was the first attempt
at quantification. It actually put a figure
on it, saying that there were "X" numbers
of Africans brought into slavery
who produced "X" amount of cotton
and tobacco, etc.
The thing that was very interesting
about this investigation was the realization
that the rate of exploitation of
Africans has been greater since the
end of slavery. Just think about it. They
were working us for free, from "can’t
see" to "can’t see," and they made a
whole bunch of money off that. I’m
saying the rate of exploitation has
been greater since slavery ended.
That includes convict leasing.
During slavery, prisons were white.
The actual end of
slavery was
approximately
April 1865. In
December 1865,
the United States
government
passed the 13th
Amendment. So,
they freed you in
April, but in
December they
passed the 13th
Amendment,
which said neither
slavery nor involuntary
servitude
is permissible
except as punishment
for a crime.
Then they
wrote all the laws directed at Africans,
designer laws just as they have now.
So they didn’t end slavery, they
changed the terms for slavery. It was
no accident.
For 50 years after that, they didn’t
build many prisons. They had what
they called convict leasing. They made
laws, particularly throughout the
South, because Africans weren’t working
for white people any more. Not
only wouldn’t Africans work for white
people, we started wandering. If they
passed a place and saw some chickens
and vegetables, we would take
them, because we grew them. We
saw the product of our labor and would
take it.
Now black people wouldn’t work.
All the white people wanted black people
back on the job again. Not only did
they want us on the job, they wanted
us to work on terms that were unfavorable
to us. We couldn’t leave if we
wanted to quit. That was true of the
North and the South.
So there was this incredible
upheaval. They began to pass laws
that said if you didn’t have what they
called a "visible means of support,"
they could lock you up. That’s what the
vagrancy law was. They passed the
so-called pig law. It said that if anybody
stole a pig they could be sentenced
to 10 years. They’d lock you
up, then they would pay the white man
(sometimes the same white man who
you were working for on the plantation
for free) so much per African.
This white man would then put us
back to work on the plantation. We
rebuilt the modern economy of the
South by African convict leasing. We
built railroads, cleared swamps and
went into the mines in Alabama,
Birmingham and places like that.
That’s what we did. They say you all
won’t work, but hell, we’re tired.
Convict leasing was characterized
as worse than slavery. When we were
"slaves," when white people owned
us, they had an investment that they
would try to protect. Now the State
was the owner of African people, and
the white people who we worked for
didn’t care if we lived or died. It was no
skin off their backs. They had a saying,
"One dies, get another." Literally!
see Spear, page 17