NATION-BUILDING: RECONSTRUCTING AFRIKAN

POLITICAL PRAXIS 12TH ANNUAL MARCUS GARVEY CELEBRATION

SOUTHERN UNIVERSITYBATON ROUGE, LOUISIANA

9/9/05KEYNOTE SPEAKER:

DR. AMBAKISYE-OKANG DUKUZUMURENYI[DOCTORATE OF PHILOSOPHY-PUBLIC POLICY]

BATON ROUGE, LOUISIANA

INTRODUCTION

As we assemble here today under the watchful eyes of a Just God and in the Spirit of the Ancestors in commemoration of the Afrikan and Afrikan Diasporan Nationalist Socio-political Program as it is embodied in the life, philosophy and policies of the Honorable Marcus Mosiah Garvey, we are only a few days removed from one of the most catastrophic natural disasters to strike the United States of America and in particular the southern United States. In viewing the emotional, physiological, psychological, and spiritual destruction, as well as the material upheaval in the devastated areas one is able to see plainly the necessity of social reconstruction [which is

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the rebuilding of a societies infrastructure-social, political, religious and economic institutions, following some traumatic event, such as a war or natural disaster]. However, when social reconstruction is mentioned and debated throughout the mainstream, Eurocentric White controlled media, the emphasis is upon rebuilding the economic infrastructure of a social system that has served to enrich the few Whites and their Afrikan, Asian and Hispanic tokens, at the expense of the many in the impoverished masses.

Furthermore, since this is the United States, a country with a long history of racial terrorism perpetrated by persons primarily of European descent, the racist dogma of White Supremacy, which advocates the White administration and control of the socio-political and socioeconomic positions of power and social domination, is ever present. As El Hajj Malik El-Shabazz so often stated, America has a political, economic, and social atmosphere [patterns of behavior/interaction] that automatically [both consciously and subconsciously] nourishes a racist psychology in its White participants. This racist psychology manifests itself in an overt/blatant or

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covert/subtle manner. He noted also that “...Here in America, the seeds of racism are so deeply rooted in the White people collectively, their belief that they are 'superior' in some way is so deeply rooted, that these things are in the national White subconsciousness. Many Whites are even actually unaware of their own racism, until they face some test, and then their racism emerges in one form or another.”

We ourselves have often noted from our study of our historical experience in White dominated countries that the socioeconomic and socio-political atmosphere nourishes the same racist psychology in the Afrikan and Afrikan Diasporan sycophants. These sycophants are individuals who were known during the Maafa, [“The Great Suffering” or Period of Enslavement & Colonizing of Afrikan Peoples] as House Niggers. They were described by Brother Malcolm X as House Negroes and the Caribbean psychiatrist Dr. Frantz Fanon spoke of them as men and women with Black skins, but wearing white masks. Today we even recognize them as White "selected" not Afrikan elected, public officials, persons who are dyed in the wool patriotic Americans until it is time to receive government funds that are earmarked for so-

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called minorities. When the government grants and special loan programs are presented they transform themselves miraculously into Afrikan-Americans. Or we see these same sycophants as apolitical entertainers, clowns and buffoons- the athletes, actors, musicians and comedians that remember themselves to be Afrikans only when the mirage of assimilation dissipates violently beneath the truncheons, tanks, gases and automatic weapons of the Police, who liberally distribute American style justice upon them regardless of name, status or so-called social rank.

The racist, elitist nature of social reconstruction as presented in the mainstream media to society may be immediately noted in the manner in which the media presented the events that occurred in New Orleans in the aftermath of the Hurricane. The lethargic response on the part of national government officials, such as the American President Bush flying over in Air Force One and surveying the damage, then later spending extended time in Mississippi is a case in point. The Presidential response only reached a state of urgency when so-called acts of “looting” began to occur and when “law and order” supposedly broke down. Always ask yourself when you hear that phrase

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“law and order”, whose law? And what order? The media presentation of these events was a lesson in racial contrasts. White persons were presented as having “found” bread and soda in a local grocery store. Few if any media reports were concerned with Whites who were carrying away appliances, clothing or weapons. Does this mean that it didn't occur? No, but that is the perspective of the average mainstream American. After all the media was replete with images of Afrikan Americans carrying DVD players, Televisions, microwaves, designer shoes and clothes. Few if any images were provided which consisted of Afrikan Americans who had “found” food. The Afrikan Americans were delineated as looters, Whites as “finders”. Images were carefully presented so that this would be the perspective that the passive, uncritical viewer of the news would leave with.

But now lets take a look at this word loot. It is defined by the Random House College Dictionary Revised Edition as “spoils or plunder taken by pillaging, as in war. To despoil, plunder, ransack or pillage a city, house, etc. as in war.” The word is derived from the Sanskrit term luntati, which means “To steal or take away in the aftermath of war.” In Germanic history during the era of the Roman

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Empire [200 B.C.E. - 476 C.E.] and for extended periods thereafter, the tribes that became the current nations of Western Europe, were known to wreak havoc upon a place, to loose destruction and plunder upon those they came into contact with who were not necessarily their enemies. The word loot has since this time retained its meaning as an act carried out by an aggressor upon a vanquished enemy. It was seen as the last act of humiliation as it were, for by taking his most prized possessions which he could no longer protect you crushed his very ideal of manhood. Gold, cattle, livestock and all other valuables were looted as well as children to serve as slaves and women to serve as slaves and concubines. Men of fighting age and the elderly were generally put to death. Looting was viewed as the action of an uncivilized and barbaric horde, a blood thirsty army of uncouth, inhuman beasts lacking in all understanding of human decency.

Another term used to describe our people in New Orleans is thug. Now a thug is defined as a brutal ruffian or an assassin, a gangster, a killer. It is derived from the Hindu term thag, which literally means a thief, but which was applied specifically to the members of a group

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of professional robbers and murderers active in India from the 16th to the 19th century, who strangled their victims. We also find our people in New Orleans being called vandals. The Vandals were one of a group of Germanic people over running Gaul, Spain and Northern Afrika in the 4th and 5th centuries C.E. In 455 C.E. they sacked Rome. They name came to be used to describe someone who willfully destroys, damages, or defaces public or private property.

The media also labeled us refugees. A refugee: is an exile who flees for safety; a displaced person; a stateless person; a person forced to flee from home or country. The Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952 defines "refugee as: "Any person who is outside any country of such person's nationality or, in the case of a person having no nationality, is outside any country in which such person last habitually resided, and who is unable or unwilling to return to, and is unable or unwilling to avail himself or herself of the protection of, that country because of persecution or a well-founded fear of persecution on account of race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular social

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group, or political opinion…" To label us as refugees is obviously a Freudian slip.

For the Ancestors were refugees, displaced persons, a stateless people; people who were forced to flee from their homes and country in a vain effort to avoid enslavement; and we today continue to be treated as a stateless people; a people persecuted because of race.

We have spent the better part of our existence in the United States as an enslaved people an then as so-called "second-class citizens", a term which has no legal standing whatsoever. Here in the year 2005, there is still a need for the Voting Rights Act, to fight for so-called equal education, and equal access to public accommodations, regardless of socioeconomic standing. If we were citizens by birth, we would not need Civil Rights Legislation.

Our communities are in areas where we are forced to live as a result of socioeconomic segregation and Marginalization and they are

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occupied by a paramilitary force. Today's police are as highly equipped as the standing military of the United States. We are for all intents and purposes, as much a stateless people, a displaced people as are the Kurds of Turkey and Iraq, the Tibetans of Chinese occupied Tibet or the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip and West Bank of Israel.

We must be careful when we blindly accept terms used to describe us from the mouths of those who have perpetually shown themselves to collectively be against our best interests. In calling us looters, vandals, thugs, we have been labeled as killers, murders, thieves, persons who intentionally, deliberately or voluntarily engage in perverse and barbaric human and property destruction. All words which justify in the minds of the passive media viewer the acts of so-called law enforcement officials. Police barbarity, or so-called brutality is now justifiable and acceptable when the recipient is an Afrikan. Instead, let us consider the following question: is the only way to view the actions of the mass of poor and stranded persons in New Orleans as the act of thuggish, lawless and chaos loving, vandals or is there another manner in which to view the situation?

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The elite who control the media use the press to set the stage for your acceptance of whatever actions that they intend to pursue. Your reaction to the actions of Afrikans in New Orleans was programmed by past media coverage of Afrikan people. The media created the image of the Afrikan as a criminal long before what occurred in New Orleans. Nightly we are bombarded with statistics of a high Afrikan crime rate, a large proportion of Afrikan men and women in penal institutions or juvenile detention centers. There are daily news stories in the print and electronic media of some crime being committed by so-called Afrikan criminals. Television shows, commercials, sports coverage, and movies present a predominant image of Afrikans as thieves, drug sellers and users, pimps and prostitutes, abusers of women, possessors of illegal weapons, and sadistic murderers.

You are aware of what is being implied when they put up images of Afrikans with illegal weapons who been imprisoned. The implication is that all Afrikans have guns; they're all violent, etc. This was even emphasized in the coverage of so-called looting in New Orleans and Jefferson Parish. It was reported that in certain areas of Jefferson

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Parish, people went into stores and took food and water. Their actions were condoned in the most compassionate manner. Since they had lost everything and were without electrical power, what they were forced to do was understandable. These persons were White. Then the very next scene shifted to New Orleans and the reporter said that there the looting was unjustifiable and that the people mainly stole guns. The people pictured were Afrikan. So now they have set the stage for the in-discriminant shooting of Afrikans in New Orleans. Why, because thats who they showed you as “looting” and the media added that the Afrikans primarily stole guns. So now they have subtly indicated that the poor in New Orleans are bent on violence and destruction. So when they later told you that the government was sending in troops who have orders to shoot to kill, why you go along with it and so does the White public. Because you see the government always wants the public, especially the White public on its side. They know that there are some good and bad meaning Whites , so through a sophisticated use of media propaganda they shape the public mind to support their actions. A very sly and malicious con-game.

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Now the real criminal is the society that creates the conditions that produce a person who is forced to resort to such means. Please, think for a moment that your model of sanity and normalcy are the most genocidal, blood thirsty, violent rapist the world has ever seen. So what you call criminal is actually an imitation of your model of sanity: the European. They called the Afrikans looters, vandals, and thugs, and by doing this they took the burden off the society and placed it on the victim. They skillfully ignored the conditions which created the person and even ignored the cause of those conditions, which are sustained by a society, which caused the actions.

Now here is something that many will dispute: those were not the actions of ignorant persons only interested in chaos. You see those were all businesses owned by Whites or Bourgeois Afrikans who have a condescending and contemptable attitude toward the impoverished; and when life threatening situations occur they are gone: they have the means to get the hell out of dodge. The poor are still there and they are aware of having been exploited. They now at some level in their psyche that their condition is not of their

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own making, even if they do not verbalize it in a way that is considered meaningful to mainstream society. They know that they have been over charged for food, clothes and appliances. Prevented by a silent long standing customary ban from obtaining weapons legally. Locked out of receiving loans for homes and cars by poor credit or red-lining; unable to get descent jobs to enjoy that American Dream that is presented day in and day out to them in the media. Their poor employment prospects hampered by a slanted educational system that ensures their low status. And their own efforts at self-help, conveniently labeled as illegal.

So when opportunity presents itself, like good, enterprising capitalist applying supply and demand logic: they get the goods that mainstream society values dearly, when there is the least cost to themselves. They get their reparations in the best way they know how from the persons who have been robbing them deaf, dumb and blind; and enacting laws which perpetuate the theft. Now we as Afrikan peoples in America used to have a customary law during enslavement and colonialism, that YOU WERE A THEIF, IF YOU TOOK SOMETHING FROM ANOTHER

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AFRIKAN PERSON; HOWEVER, IF YOU OBTAINED SOMETHING FROM A WHITE WITHOUT THEIR PERMISSION OR KNOWLEDGE, IT WAS JUST RECOMPENSE FOR THE FRUITS OF YOURS AND ANCESTRAL LABOR: AND WASN'T CONSIDERED STEALING.

So you see, the press was used to make the criminal, the creators and maintainers of society, look like the victim and made the victim, the impoverished, look like the criminal. So yes there is another way of viewing this political reality. The programmatic objectives of Pan-Afrikanism as contained in the policy goals of the Honorable Marcus Mosiah Garvey suggests that there is. The very theme of tonights program NATION-BUILDING: RECONSTRUCTING AFRIKAN POLITICAL PRAXIS & ACTION implies that there is another way of viewing the situation. And its is this new way of perceiving the world that is the subject of this lecture.

[Before I continue I would like to clarify some of the terms that I have used will be using. When I say Afrikan, I am speaking of all Black people who were born on the

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continent or born outside of the continent. Also when I say Afrikan Diaspora, I am speaking of peoples of Afrikan descent who were born outside of the continent. You will hear me say on occasion Afrikans of the Continent and Diaspora or Continental Afrikan and Afrikan Diasporan, so I want us to be clear as to who am I speaking about.]

MARCUS MOSIAH GARVEY

Now this is a program designed to honor Marcus Mosiah Garvey and to motivate and equip us to continue the work that he was involved in. So lets make sure that we are all on the same page in our understanding of this Afrikan great. Born in 1887 in St. Ann's Bay, Jamaica, the Honorable Marcus Mosiah Garvey dedicated his entire life to the socioeconomic and socio-political development of Afrikan people. A powerful theorist, orator and organizer Marcus Mosiah Garvey constructed the largest mass movement ever of Continental and Diasporan Afrikans. Active early in his life in Jamaica's first nationalist movements which pressed for Jamaican independence from British colonial control, Marcus Mosiah Garvey traveled extensively

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throughout Central America, and lived for a time in Britain where he worked with the Sudanese-Egyptian nationalist Duse Mohamed Ali.

To further his political and economic goals, in 1914 he organized the Universal Negro Improvement Association and African Communities League. The motto of the UNIA & ACL was “One God, One Aim, One Destiny.” The purpose of the organization was to redeem Afrika from European colonization and to carry out the socioeconomic and socio-political upliftment of the Global Afrikan population. The organization emphasized racial pride, group solidarity, self-reliance and the socio-political and socioeconomic independence of all Afrikans, where ever they may be.

In 1916 he came to the United States at the invitation of Booker T. Washington to study Washington's program for Afrikan economic development, but arrived just after Washington's death. His interest in Washington's program stemmed from his analysis that the industrial economic program of Washington was one cog in the grand plan for Afrikan redemption. The other components were a Pan-Afrikan political program designed to free all Afrikans from European domination

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and a Pan-Afrikan military apparatus which would support and protect Afrikan political goals from European counterrevolutionary actions. Marcus Mosiah Garvey sought to resurrect in the Afrikans of the Continent and the Diaspora the basic tenets of Nation-building SO AS TO ALLOW ALL AFRIKANS TO ENGAGE KNOWLEDGABLY AND SUCCESSFULLY IN THE SOCIAL RECONSTRUCTION OF THE NATIONS AND COMMUNITIES OF THE AFRIKAN ON THE CONTINENT AND IN THE DIASPORA.

After traveling extensively in the Americas and Europe, the Honorable Marcus Mosiah Garvey established a branch of the UNIA & ACL in the United States. The purpose of his foreign travels was to study firsthand the conditions and causes of those conditions of Afrikans on the Continent and throughout the Diaspora and to design, implement and evaluate for further corrections, a proper course of action for Afrikan development. To support the programmatic objectives of the UNIA & ACL Garvey established the Black Star Line, which was an international shipping company; he organized international conventions on Afrikan Continental and Diasporan development and published a

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weekly newspaper, the Negro World. No other Afrikan organization on the Continent or in the Diaspora in contemporary times has had the impact of the UNIA & ACL. At it's height the UNIA & ACL had branches throughout North, South and Central America, the Caribbean, Africa, Europe and Australia.

The Honorable Marcus Mosiah Garvey, was a twentieth century link in the long Afrikan chain which stretches back into antiquity to the first nation-builders of the earliest civilizations in the world in Classical Afrika: Kemet and Ta-Nehestu [Egypt and Nubia] beginning in 8000 B.C.E. [some scholars and archaelogists postulate a date before 10,500 B.C.E.] and continuing through the Classical Empires and states of West Afrika [Ghana, Mali, and Songhai, 300 C.E. - 1591 C.E. ] to the Maroon communities of the Americas [Afrikans who escaped from enslavement and founded states] and the founding of the Haitian Republic during the Maafa [1444 C.E. - 1888 C.E.].

The tradition of nation-building of which Garvey is but a link reaches us today through the programs, policies and speeches of such Afrikan greats as Brother Malcolm X of the US assassinated in 1965, Brother Walter Rodney of the Caribbean assassinated in 1980,

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Mwalimu Julius Nyerere former President of the East Afrikan nation of Tanzania from 1964 to 1985 and Osagyefo Dr. Kwame Nkrumah former Prime Minister of the West Afrikan nation of Ghana from 1951 to 1960 and then President of Ghana from 1960 to 1966 and Afrikan American historians and social scientists, such as Drusilla Houston, Dr. Chancellor Williams, Dr. John Henrik Clarke and Dr. John G. Jackson [all who have passed on and joined the Ancestors] But what exactly do we mean when we use the term nation-building?

NATION-BUILDING

World-view

Any word, thought or social, political, economic and religious aspect of reality is filtered through the lens of what is called a world-view. A world-view, which is a group as well as an individual phenomenon, encompasses mental pictures of reality, that rest upon the use of shared assumptions about how the world works; the information for such images being created by the elite members of any society. As people interpret everyday

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experiences in light of these assumptions, they make sense of their lives and their lives make sense to other members of the society. A world-view shapes how you view yourself, your morals and understanding of what is right and wrong, your conceptualization of what is beautiful and what is valuable and so forth. Multiple world-views may coexist in a single society.

In essence, a world-view is a Cognitive Culture, or the mental organization in each individual's mind of how the world works. The common aspects of our individual cognitive culture make up the cultural world-view of the group, which shapes the social culture, which is the way people relate to one another in daily activities, and how they cooperate together for the perceived good of society. For our purposes we will focus on two different world-views: the Afrocentric or Afrikan-Centered world-view and the Eurocentric or European-Centered world-view.

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Afrikan-Centered World-view

The Afrikan-Centered World-view is centered around the following assumptions:

1.The highest value of life lies in the interpersonal relationships between men.

2.One gains knowledge through symbolic imagery and rhythm.

3.One should live in harmony with nature.

4.There is a oneness between humans and nature.

5.The survival of the group holds the utmost importance.

6.Men should appropriately utilize the materials around them. Appropriately being defined in regards to how the use affects the well being of other members of society.

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7.Society exists, thus the individual exists.

8.One's self is complementary to others.

9.Spirituality and the indwelling presence of the Creator hold the most significance in life.

10.Different aspects of the Creator are manifested throughout creation.

11.Cooperation, collective responsibility, and interdependence are the key values to which all should strive to achieve.

12.All men are considered to be equal, share a common bond, and be apart of the group.

13.The Afrikan-Centered World-view is a circular or holistic one, in which all events are tied together with one another.

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Eurocentric World-view

The Eurocentric World-view is centered around the following beliefs:

1.The highest value of life lies in the object, or in the acquisition of material possessions.

2.One gains knowledge through counting and measuring.

3.One should control and dominate nature.

4.There is a dichotomy, or separateness, between nature and humans.

5.The survival of the fittest holds the utmost importance.

6.Men should have an unlimited exploitation of the materials around them.

7.One's self is distinct from others.

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8.The individual exists, thus society exists.

9.Change occurs to meet the immediate objectives, and is quite arbitrary.

10.A distant, impersonal god holds the most significance.

11.Competition, independence, separateness, and individuals rights are the key values to which all should strive to achieve.

12.All men are considered to be individualistic, unique and different.

13.The Eurocentric World-view is a linear one, in which all events are separate and there is no togetherness.

Many people of the world as a result of European ownership and control of national and international institutions of socialization have a Eurocentric World-view.

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Eurocentric Nation-Building

From the Eurocentric World-view Nation-Building is a process of constructing or structuring a nation using the power of a state. This process aims at the unification of the people or peoples within the proposed geographic area so that the territory becomes and remains politically stable and viable to Western economic interests in the long run. It involves the use of propaganda and major infrastructure development to foster Western oriented social harmony and economic growth with the geographic area serving as an appendage to the global market economy centered in the Western or Western Oriented countries of the United States, the United Kingdom, Germany, France, Japan and increasingly today China.

Historical and current examples of Western nation-building are the American Reconstruction following the U.S. Civil War from 1865 to 1877; the American invasion and occupation of Haiti from 1915 to 1934 and its continued domination of the Haitian nation into 1956; along with its current nation-building exercise there today with the reoccupation; the

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Marshall Plan of the 1950s, which sought to rebuild the devastated nations of Western Europe following the European peninsular tribal war [WWII]; the United States actions in South Vietnam from 1950 to 1975; and the current United States and United Kingdom invasion, occupation and rebuilding of Iraq.

The steps involved in Western style nation-building begin with the establishment of security. Previous security having been destroyed by Western military and economic violence, but to the Western passive media consumers the lack of security is presented as the result of dictatorial, tyrannical, barbaric totalitarian practices of the former leaders of the conquered nation. The security being established however, actually focuses on providing protection for the Western directors of the nation-building exercise from grass roots or mass level revolutionary violence of the occupied people, who like any sane person do not wish to have any uninvited guests in their home. The establishment of security is also presented to the western populace as necessary to ameliorate the humanitarian crisis, which actually follows on the heels of the overthrow the previous government, what the U.S. and U.K. label regime change.

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Western humanitarianism operates in a peculiar way, for it installs, pliant locals as leaders and implements economic policies that continue the pattern of elite benefit at the expense of the masses. To aid in the aversion of a “humanitarian crisis” supposedly created by the previous regime a new civil administration is constructed.

This civil administration is based on American/Western style democracy instead of on the cultural practices of the conquered people. The myth of the all powerful franchise [vote] is passed off onto the masses by their elite and through a strong propaganda campaign by the invading forces. In the west we know this propaganda campaign as the news from our “free and independent” press; where believing that the American way of life is the best, we think it right and proper that it should be extended over the world. Never mind the fact that as Edward Bernays stated in 1928 “The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society. ...We are governed, our minds are molded, our tastes formed, our ideas suggested, largely by men we have never heard of.” Incidentally, Bernays is apart

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of the required reading for college students at those Universities where men and women are being prepared to rule the world, as opposed to the fact he is unheard of at those Universities where men and women are being prepared to be ruled.

After the establishment of the civil administration so-called reconstruction begins. Where efforts are set in motion to develop a socio-political and socioeconomic apparatus that will allow heavy military investment by the United States to support it's national interests, which are focused on Western based multinational corporate elite economic concerns. Tokenistic programs are established for the masses based on the Western individualist myth and Social Darwinism repackaged for modern eyes. Successful Western Nation-building is measured in terms of troops, money and time. These are considered to be its greatest factors. It is held that the larger the occupying force the lower the postwar casualties.

As astute and analytical persons, we all know that Western Nation-Building is nothing more than a euphemism for colonialism. For as we see daily the actions Western governments and multinational corporations

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lead to economic genocide, which in many ways is far more lethal than genocidal warfare. For economic genocide kills and maims for generations and strikes through health care policy, employment policy, educational policy and foreign trade policy. After all poverty, which is a murderous killer, is manufactured not by the poor but by the elite, just as wars are the result of elite actions. The current socioeconomic and socio-political order that is advocated by Western Nation-Building proponents purposefully breeds injustice, and ignorance among the masses and has created a global socioeconomic system that consigns 4 billion people to short lives hampered by squalor, disease and painful death.

In the words of the Honorable Marcus Mosiah Garvey “Poverty is a hellish state to be in. It is no virtue. It is a crime. To be poor,is to be hungry without possible hope of food; to be sick without hope of medicine; to be tired and sleepy without a place to lay one's head; to be naked without the hope of clothing; to be despised and without possibility of comfort. ...No one wants to be poor.” And what causes poverty? Is it an individual affliction? No, for what sane and civilized person would blame the child who is born to

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impoverished parents. And I use the term impoverished for people are made poor by social institutions that are designed to meet the needs of the few. And the impoverished are educated that their poverty is the result of personal deficiencies. The social system, through its socialization institutions makes a person a cripple and then blames that person for being crippled. It makes a person a drug addict, a prostitute, a drunk: things that are done to forget the pain of life, or to obtain the means for survival; and then the social system punishes that person for being as they are. No, poverty is not a necessity it is the result of the current social organization.

Afrikan-Centered Nation-Building

Nation-building from the Afrikan-centered perspective refers to the utilization of the resources of culture [language, cognition, art, myth, ritual] to improve the human condition by structuring social organizations [social institutions, political institutions and economic institutions] and systems of collective relationships [kinship, marriage, family, religion] so as to enhance collective power in the shaping of the world system. In the

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Afrikan-centered context nation-building is the essence of Manhood and Womanhood. Its focal point is on what some Afrikan Diasporan and Continental Psychologists call the Ori-Ire, or Properly Aligned Consciousness. The Properly Aligned Consciousness is a conscience, which is aligned with or attuned to the precepts and commandments of God as taught by the Ancestors. To be aligned with God is to be what is known in the Afrikan Continental and Disasporan religious traditions as Righteous.

Four Steps of the Ori-Ire There are four steps in the Pathway to the

Ori-Ire. The first is Self-Exploration. This is the process of examining one's life and relationships. This usually follows an experience in which an Afrikan begins to examine their function in their community. Questions one asks are: Am I the person I want to be? Am I the person that my community needs? In what direction is my life going? Do I like the direction of my life's path? The second step is Self-Cultivation. The process of weeding out negative thoughts, ideas, people and activities. Negative

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attributes encumber movement towards humanenss or what is known in East Afrika as unbuntu. In the Americas we find it represented in the our musical and religious tradition as being true to self through the service we render to others; being perfect in words and deeds, even as the Creator is Perfect. This is the initial process of making one's total self and reality conducive to planting seeds of power, prosperity, and positive thoughts and deeds.

The third step is Self-development. The process of planting positive seeds of positive growth in the mind. One draws in those things that will move one towards desirable goals. Studying, meditating, praying, participating in reading groups, and surrounding oneself with people who are complimentary to ones destiny, are the activities one engages in. The fourth step is Self-Government. The period marked by one ascribing to the Higher Self. One lives to uphold the ideals of MAAT (Righteousness) and Iwa Pele (Gentle Character). Here the concern is to view the things of others as if they were your own and to be as concerned for the welfare of others as you are for yourself. The four steps of the Ori-Ire are summed up in

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the following Afrikan Continental and Disaporan proverbs:

“A Human Being is Human Beings.”

“A person is a person because of neighbors.”

“It is through people that we are people.”

“We are our relationships.”

“Every one is the image of his neighbor.”

Ten Cardinal Virtues

The very basis of the Afrikan philosophy of nation-building is thousands of years old and was first developed by our Afrikan Ancestors of Kemet, who utilized them in their educational curriculum. Known today as the Ten-Cardinal Virtues they list ten prerequisites for successful Nation-building. They are:

1) Control of one’s thought;

2) Control of one’s actions;

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3) Steadfastness of purpose;

4) A personal identification with higher ideals and moral standards.

5) An understanding of one’s mission or purpose in life;

6) An understanding of ones place in the Higher Order of life;

7) Freedom from resentment;

8)Confidence in the ability of one’s instructor to teach;

9)Confidence in one’s ability to learn;

10)Psychological and physical preparation for success in all that one does.

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Afrikan Manhood

As the essence of Afrikan Manhood and Womanhood the Ori-Ire and the Ten Cardinal Virtues define the relationship of Afrikan Manhood and Womanhood to Nation-building. Seen in this light Afrikan Manhood can only be viewed in the context of our success or failure to uplift, educate, liberate and ensure the independence of all Afrikan people. As Men we must do everything in our power to heal the psyches of Afrikan people scarred by hundreds of years of domination and racism. We must create an Afrikan society which supports and protects us, nurtures and empowers us, uplifts and educates us. We must maintain the highest standards of Afrikan morality and ethics, providing a crystal clear alternative to the decadence of western values. We must hold competence and excellence in the highest esteem. We must always demand more from ourselves than others demand of us. We must face problems resolutely; setbacks are a challenge to our intelligence and determination, not an excuse to quit. We must never value men who talk over men who think,

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nor men who think over men who act; but we must reserve the highest honor for those men who take thoughtful action.

There can be no place in the hearts and minds of our people for intolerance or prejudice among ourselves. We must never divide Afrikan people on the basis of skin color, sex, age, religion, national origin or education. Instead we must judge ourselves against a single standard: do our actions contribute to the independence and well being of Afrikan people? We must oppose without reservation the use of addictive or narcotic drugs by Afrikan people. These drugs are an insidious weapon whose victims finance the destruction of their own minds, lives and communities. We must create the economic structures which will give us control of our communities and take us from blind consumption to community production.

The Afrikan Man must by word and deed support the stability of the Afrikan family. We must strengthen the bonds of love between Afrikan men and women, and be stable, nurturing parents to Afrikan children. Afrikan Men must form supportive, loving and permanent relationships with the Afrikan Women we choose to make our partners in life.

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We must make an emotional and economic commitment to the families for which we are responsible. The Afrikan Man must revere Afrikan People and Afrikan Culture. As Afrikan Men, we exist to protect and defend all that is Afrikan from anyone who seeks to subvert, subjugate or destroy us.

Afrikan Womanhood

From the nation-building perspective of the Ori-Ire and the Ten Cardinal Virtues, the Afrikan Woman is the bearer and nurturer of the race, the counselor of the nation, providing leadership, purpose and vision for her children, and stability for her family. She is a companion of her mate and peers, and gives respect and humility to her elders. She is honest, receptive, loving, compassionate, analytical, self-sacrificing, and supportive. Her relationships are expressions of reciprocity. Her humility and self sacrifice are examples of her strength. She is nurturing and bonding and in all ways a complement to the Afrikan Man in general and to her Husband in particular. The personality of the Afrikan Woman is a calabash of many attributes, among them:

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instrospection, spirituality and faith, humanity, intuition, initiative and leadership, creativity, ingenuity, courageousness, resourcefulness and determination. She is the living embodiment of Justice, Truth, Harmony, Reciprocity, Righteousness, Balance and Order. The Afrikan Woman provides political leadership and economic support in combination with the Afrikan Man; and goes to war for the Afrikan family and Afrikan nation.

Afrikan-Centered Nation-building begins with the family for it is within the family that true nation-building begins. As Brother Malcolm X stated, “The Black man in the ghettos ...has to start self-correcting his own material, moral, and spiritual defects and evils. The Black man needs to start his own program to get rid of drunkenness, drug addiction, prostitution. The Black man ...has to lift up his own sense of values.” As Afrikan Men and Women, we must remember the Bibilical verse that the Ancestors never forgot throughout all of the toil of enslavement, and Jim Crowism, but that we have turned our backs on in our drive for material satisfaction and the desire to be more American, or rather more like White Anglo-Saxon Protestants; that verse is “ENVY

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NOT YOUR OPPRESSOR AND CHOOSE NONE OF HIS WAYS.”

You see, when envy rises up in you heart and you seek to be one with that which you know to be against your own good, you will only be as your enemy; and you will hate your Afrikan self just as he does. You will denigrate your Afrikan self and insult your women and children just as your oppressor does. Your will heap contempt upon you own just as he does. You will manifest an internal racist sentiment against yourself which will be even more powerful than the external racism that he gives. By sowing the seed of imitating your oppressor your will reap a thousand fold more horrors against yourself than the Ancestors ever experienced during enslavement. Always remember you may plant one kernel of corn. One small seemingly insignificant kernel of corn. However, you will not reap only one kernel of corn, but instead, you will reap a corn stalk filled with hundreds upon thousands of kernels, a far greater return on your investment, no matter whether good or bad.

The Afrikan-Centered conceptualization of Nation-Building stresses a need for a reorientation of the Afrikan mind and a return to your cultural center. As Dr. Frantz Fanon

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stated so aptly, “Let us waste no time in sterile litanies and nauseating mimicry. Leave this Europe where they are never done talking of Man, yet murder men everywhere they find them, at the corner of every one of their streets, in all corners of the globe. For centuries they have stifled almost the whole of humanity in the name of a so-called spiritual experience... That same Europe where ...they never stop proclaiming that they were anxious for the welfare of Man: today we know with what sufferings humanity has paid for every one of their triumphs of the mind... Come then we must find something different. We today can do everything so long as we do not imitate Europe, so long as we are not obsessed by the desire to catch up with Europe. ...Let us... create the whole man, whom Europe has been incapable of bringing to triumphant birth ...Let us not pay tribute to Europe by creating states, institutions, and societies which draw their inspiration from her. Humanity is waiting for something from us other than such an imitation, which would be almost an obscene caricature.”

To attain this new vision there must be social change, revolutionary social change. Complete structural change in Afrikan society,

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a new socialization from an Afrikan-Centered world-view; the construction of a new social system with social institutions which meet the needs of Afrikan peoples, and the destruction of the means of social control maintained by the dominant group. But how do we do this?

AFROCENTRIC SOCIOECONOMIC/POLITICAL ACTION

We begin to shape our existence by understanding politics. When we understand politics we then can begin to reconstruct Afrikan Political Praxis & Action. Praxis is the set of conventions, habits or customs which are grounded in the world-view of the political participant. The world-view of the participant is shaped by a historical consciousness which informs their actions through the examples provided from their past which serve as guides for current practice. Unlike the Eurocentric conceptualization of praxis, the Afrikan perspective views praxis as being informed by and informing theory or ideas. Right praxis is the foundation for right political action.

The postulates for doing politics are grouped under three topics the Creation, Maintenance and Decay of the political system.

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Creation

1.Politics begins with an idea.

2.Politics means perceiving a common need and sharing it.

3.Politics is talking toward action.

4.Politics is social action to satisfy human needs using social facts.

5.A political act repeated becomes a social relationship.

6.A social relationship that lasts is made an institution by the perceptions of the many.

7.Elites are formed when a few monopolize access to values.

8.Legitimacy of elites comes from deference produced by force and awe. Thus Sovereignty lies with the elite because of this relationship.

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9.Political men seek to maximize their values.

10.Political Organization is done to protect what you have and to get more.

11.Class and status are often based on the distribution of knowledge.

12.Names make social relationships more real.

13.Force helps to keep relationships real.

14.Reification turns social relationships into things. [Example: a Corporation is nothing more than a social relationship between its owners and employees, by giving it a name such as IBM, it becomes real in the minds of the people. This is reification, to make a thing of the unreal.]

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Maintenance

15.In reified society people stay in line and love it.

16.Elites in a stable society define behavior, distribute roles, and allocate rewards.

17.The meaning of a social event depends on who looks at it; and the elite dominate the defining of reality.

18.Perceptions of Us and Them begin with the presence of an other.

19.Identification of self with national interests becomes nationalism in an international context of “Others.”

Decay

20.Revolution occurs when legitimacy is undermined with visions of a new social order.

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Definition of Politics

Politics is a social act that attempts to resolve the tension between human needs and social facts. Needs such as food, security, love, self-esteem, self-actualization. Social facts are conditions that limit or support the satisfaction of needs. The perception of tension is political consciousness. Acting out of this consciousness is politics. Politics begins with an idea and must be understood through ideas and the assumptions underlying those ideas that fit political behavior. Therefore, be aware of assumptions and take all of them with a grain of salt. Once a relationship is initiated by two or more persons to solve the tension between social needs and social facts, institutions which are nothing more than patterns of behavior continued over time to regularize an repeat problem-solving will be formed. Politics thus is everywhere, wherever people trade in human needs or package social reality [Television, Sports, Music Industry, Educational Institutions, Male/Female Relationships].

Much of our conditioning is not in our interest; it prevents us from recognizing our human needs and using our own political

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power to fulfill them. Such conditioning is in the interest of people who already have political power. Through family, the schools, and official politics they impose their world-view on us. Such training is called “socialization”. It is the handing down of ways of getting along in society. Such ways are so designed so as not to challenge the powerful, who already have the most of what any society considers worth getting. To escape your conditioning understand that there is no such thing as a nonpolitical event. Next, know this: WHAT YOU THINK IS WHAT YOU SEE. WHAT OTHERS TEACH YOU TO THINK IS WHAT YOU GET TO SEE.

Your mind processes only what it is programmed to take in. It is programmed through definitions. If I told you that politics is the authoritative allocation of resources. And then said list activities that you associate with that definition, I will have done two things. First, I will have limited what you take into view as politics and second, I would have caused you to see all politics as flowing from the top down. I would have subtly shaped your understanding so that you think it is nice and right that some authoritative source outside of yourself determine what amount of

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resources you need. Definitions determine what you think about. For if on the other hand I said that politics was people getting together to solve their problems, I have expanded your view of politics and now you see it everywhere.

To recognize politics always understand that there will be at least two people involved, they will recognize a shared need, and interact to satisfy those needs. To analyze it even deeper note who those people are, what are their needs, what social acts do they engage in and what social facts do they face.

Most of what we call politics is merely symbolic politics: such as voting. The real decision of who you will have the choice of voting for has already been made by the elite in the back rooms. The satisfaction of your needs and the solving of your problems is not a concern. If your needs have not been satisfied and your problems have not been solved politics has not occurred only the symbol of politics has taken place and when the symbolic act has ended you find yourself in exactly the same place with the same unmet needs and unsolved problems. The symbolic

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political act in which you engage serve to reify those social relationships which meet the needs of the elite and solve their problems. Just consider the elite nature of public policies, and elite definition of problems and the elite analysis of the source of problems: it is stated that it is not society its the individual who is the problem. This is maintained because to change society is to alter power relationships and endanger elite position.

Doing Politics

To do politics you must understand:

1.What are the rules of the game? Rules of the game are the taken for granted routines within which politics is done in any community. Ask yourself: how much of your life do you spend obeying someone else's rules of the game? Politics is what happens when you try to change the rules of game, not when you abide by those rules, which are not designed to satisfy your needs and solve your problems.

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2.What are the values? Values are the goals individuals strive after. Political values are the goals and conditions that the system of politics enshrines and is set up to protect. Social Values are the goals toward which society as a whole may strive. To do politics you must determine if the political and social values are in the best interest of Afrikan people and then act accordingly. When you see that they are not you must do politics which will lead to the establishment of social relationships which are in the best interest of Afrikan people.

3.What are the social and political institutions which serve as the resources for political actors? Persons in power use social and political institutions as resources of power. Social institutions are relationships set up long ago to regulate the satisfaction of some groups needs. Political institutions are

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problem-solving relationships solidified overtime into more or less permanent organizations. Elites will use class and status, political parties, interest groups and government as resources and this will matter and carry weight with those who accept the legitimacy of their position within these resources. When you alter your world-view and change your perception of existing social and political institutions and shift your view to note the social and political resources at your disposal this allow you to effectively challenge and alter power distributions. This is not merely reform however, when viewed from the perspective of the relationship of the Afrikan masses with the current holders of world power.

Becoming Politically Consciousness

To do politics on the behalf of Afrikan people, however one must become politically conscious. There are five methods utilized to keep you psychologically enslaved an thus

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prevent this. These are one-dimensionality, reification, alienation, stasis, and pathological ideology.

1.One-dimensionality: of the mind is a tendency to think that there is only one way of solving problems or doing politics. This causes us to see social facts as inevitable conditions to which our needs must always be submitted. We allow ourselves to be submerged into someone else's world-view and social reality. We are taught to do this through the agencies of socialization [Media, Family, Schools] To fight it: develop your analytical skills so that you can deconstruct or break down all of reality and take nothing for granted.

2.Reification: is believing that a social relationship such as social and political institutions are more real than the men and women who made them. Reification is attempting to make something real or concrete that is not. You take the unreal and objectify it. To fight it: We must dereify the language to expose the human details that make social facts possible. Then we will have deconstructed the

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propaganda and political myths that are all around us.

3.Alienation: is the psychic process by which we become totally estranged from our own needs and the hope of satisfying them in our society. One-dimensional thinking in modern society lead to alienation where one feels happy and therefore believes that one is living a truly human life. This happiness is superficial however, and only a mask for the failure to satisfy ones needs. By accepting society's popular media-advertised needs and their satisfaction in the consumption of consumer goods, people become alienated from their real needs and become identified and possessed by the products that they buy, save for, own and consume. Such alienation results in perceiving all social values as personal values and social facts as absolute conditions of life. This leaves the individual politically unconscious. To fight it: Know yourself, and create your own world. In the words of the Afrikan Diasporan Psychologist Dr. Naim Akbar: Structure your world so that you are

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constantly reminded of who you are and who you intend to become. Act in the best interests of your community and from the perspective of an Afrikan World-view. You will then destroy alienation and preserve your sanity.

4.Stasis: is the assumption that the state of the world is steady and unchanging. This leads to a rigidity in ones response to social facts instead of a flexible and perceptive adjustment, countering changing conditions with changed strategies. To fight it: understand the cycles through which politics moves. They are Externalization : Men create societies as answers to needs. Objectification : societies, once created, become social facts that structure the daily lives of individuals. Socialization : once created a society is then presented to newcomers as a reality to be accepted and learned. Decay : when created societies fail to satisfy human needs, men seek to recreate them to meet the new needs.

5.Pathological Ideology: freezes the mind into believing in one unchanging set

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of values as eternal guides for proper behavior. The rigidities of ideological thinking often lead to racism and war. Any condition is pathological which prevents the individual from using social facts to satisfy needs. There are two kinds of pathological ideologies: pathological idealism and pathological realism. The Pathological Idealist focuses on ideas the Pathological Realist focuses on Action. The idealist is so idea oriented that he neglects to consider the practical issues necessary to bring them into fruition. The realist so fixed on action that when he obtains power the lack the ideas to implement. Pathological realism lead to power which corrupts and pathological idealism leads to powerlessness which corrupts. To fight it: take a critical stance for action, by melding political idealism and political realism.

The final step into political consciousness is learning to critique political reality. This is difficult to do because we are taught that it is good (socialization). We accept its institutions as if they were made by God Almighty (reification). And, even in the face of

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contradictory evidence, we believe we ought to be happy in it (alienation) because this reality is the only possible one (one-dimensionality) and will always be around (stasis). How then can we escape symbolic politics, and how can we begin to rethink the world as it might be?

Critiquing Political Reality

To escape symbolic politics and to rethink the world you must become a revolutionary critic. You must step outside of your perspective. This is a mental exercise, which requires you to step to the periphery of daily life onto a platform of ideas about the world, against which you measure the performance of the world. For the Afrikan on the Continent and in the Diaspora that platform is an Afrikan-Centered World-view.

By critiquing the existing social order from an Afrikan World-view, and understanding politics as the satisfaction of the tension between human needs and social facts you enable yourself to actually do politics. You can now:

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I. Know what you want (values based on needs).

1.Determine to what extent your values are related to human needs.

2.Determine to what extent your social situation or society is set up to deny fulfillment of these needs.

II. Identify and mobilize your political colleagues.

1.Find others who share your perception of needs.

2.Persuade other to share your perceptions.

3.Identify others who do not share your perceived needs and who cannot be persuaded to share them; these are social facts arrayed against you.

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III. Determine how badly you want to achieve your goals.

1.How important in your order of values is the goal you are trying to accomplish?

2.How committed are you to working with others to reach your goals?

3.To what extent are the values of my political colleagues in line with my own?

4.How committed are my political colleagues to political action?

IV. Know where you are in political time and space (socio-political institutional environment.).

Political Time Location:

1.What social relationships have been created for me that I cannot affect?

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2.What social relationships do I partly control?

3.What social relationships am I free to totally create?

Political Space Location:

1.How many resources can I muster in relation to others-either those who work with me or those who work against me?

2.How much deference do I get, as compared with others?

3.What is my relative access to political institutions that might work in my favor-compared with the opposition's access to political institutions that might work against my goals?

V. Redefine the Rules of the Game-Structure the political world to meet your needs.

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It is not enough however to merely critique the existing political reality. To effect change more must be done, but what?

Community Organizing Goals

We must organize the Afrikan Continental and Diasporan community for social action at the local, state, national and international level and develop international coalitions within the Global Afrikan community. There are four reasons why.

People, Problems, & Power

1. Afrikan Community Organizing: brings Afrikan people together to combat shared problems and to increase their say about decisions that affects their lives.

2. Afrikan Community & Economic Development: occurs when Afrikan people form their own organizations to provide a long-term capacity to problem solving.

3. Afrikan Community Organizing: helps Afrikan people overcome the feeling that

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they face problems alone or that they are to blame for their problems.

4. Afrikan Community Organizing: combats the sense of helplessness Afrikan people feel in dealing with the problems that confront them.

Why Afrikan People Feel Helpless

1.Afrikan People feel powerless because their problems are complex and require knowledge they often lack.

2.Some Afrikans feel helpless because they blame themselves for problems they did not cause.

3.It is to the perpetrators advantage when victims blame themselves. Blaming themselves for circumstances they did not cause makes many Afrikans helpless, because they cannot respond constructively until they admit that someone or something else is at fault.

4.Fear of retaliation is a powerful explanation for why many Afrikans people do not raise

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their voices in protest. Those who have the training to know care more about preserving the crumbs they receive from the American social structure than in the hell that is delivered to the masses of Afrikan people.

5.In part, the reason people suffer in silence and fail to protest is that they have been taught that those in authority must be right and questioning authority is wrong. Those in charge, maintain their positions by claiming they represent legitimate authority and cannot and should not be challenged.

6.Even when Afrikan people earnestly want to protest the conditions they live under and solve the problems they face, they often don’t know how. Many of our people have little experience with or information about the process of protest. The traditions of protest are downplayed in the schools to avoid threatening "the superstructure of beliefs and rituals" that support those in power.

7.Another reason why Afrikan people feel helpless is that they are often economically

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dependent on precisely those that are causing them harm.

8.This state of perceived helplessness is reinforced by the continuing reduction in need for unskilled labor in America, which is a product of industrialization, urbanization and the internationalization of Corporate power.

9.Finally, isolation often keeps Afrikan people from organizing. People feel vulnerable when they feel alone; they feel ineffective as long as they are the only ones complaining. One person can accomplish too little, and an isolated individual is easy for the opposition to pick off, defuse, or ignore. Sometimes it is geographic location that causes the problem. Afrikan people of the diaspora and the continent have been informed by Western Media an social institutions to view their situations as separate and thus have not noticed the congruencies that exist. The strength and resources of the Global Afrikan community are not noted particularly in the United States where Afrikans view themselves as a “minority” as opposed to being a part of the Global Majority. This is in

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stark contrast to the actions of Elite European and American interests which hand in hand to maintain Western global dominance. Social space also causes isolation. For instance the social distance between poor and so-called middle class, between those educated in schools and those educated by life experiences. These divisions in the Afrikan community contribute to the feeling of helplessness.

10.Community Organizing combats these sources of powerlessness.

Community Organizing Is A Search For Power

Let us understand that Afrikan community organizing is a search for power. The political development of the Afrikan community is the goal. It seeks to place the Afrikan community in a position of power and thus naturally challenges existing power arrangements and dominant groups, which benefit from Afrikan political impotence.

1.Afrikan Community Development: involves local empowerment through organized

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groups of people acting collectively to control decisions, projects, programs and policies that affect them as a community. It further involves the linking of organizations representing groups across the Afrikan world to effect efficient change in international power arrangements.

2.Afrikan Community organizing resolves many of the sources of Afrikan powerlessness. It works to end people isolation, to get them to recognize shared problems as political rather than personal; it confronts the myth that decision-makers are right because they are in power. Afrikan Community organizing strives to build both the skills for self-reliance and self-help and the capacity for economic betterment. It helps protect organization members from intimidation and reprisal. Afrikan Community organizations gather and focus information, pressure government agencies, and demonstrate that popular protest can be successful. All of the aspects of political participation are viable resources for the organized community. An organized Afrikan community engages in system reconstruction. It utilizes verbal criticism; written criticism; petitions;

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picketing; marches; nonviolent confrontation; obstruction of the vital organs of society; nonviolent lawbreaking; and other forms of political participation. The organized Afrikan community is prepared for state terrorism and equipped to defend itself. The degree of violence is defined by state reaction. Each successful group activity makes Afrikan community members feel more confident and competent about solving their problems. It involves a struggle for power, which is the ability to affect decisions that shape social outcomes.

How Community Organizations Gain Power

1.Afrikan Community organizations gain power by taking control of the public agenda, by using legal actions, expertise, and the threat of force, and by harnessing the energies of committed people. They question authority, and their successes build more power. Asking questions and debating policies imply that authorities do not have legitimate and exclusive control. To prevent such threats to their power, authorities attempt to keep many issues of interest to community

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organizations of the public agenda. Issues can be kept from public discussion by obscuring or redefining social problems as personal ones.

A.Controlling the Agenda

1.People in authority try to control the public agenda by non-decision making. Non-decision making means that crucial questions are not contested because they do not come under public scrutiny. It limits the scope of actual decision-making to "safe" issues by manipulating the dominant community values, myths and political institutions and procedures.

2.Afrikan Community organizations determine the issues to be discussed publicly, turning non-decisions into contested issues. Afrikan Community organizations gain power by calling attention to problems. Setting an agenda does not ensure victory, but it does deprive authorities of the power they gain

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from determining which issues will be discussed.

B.Combating Personalization

1.Personalization is another way those in power control the public agenda. They argue that they represent the general interest and that members of community organizations, by contrast, are concerned only with their personal interests.

2.The first step in combating personalization is consciousness raising. It involves a sharing of experiences to learn that what appears personal is really political. Discovering that a problem is shared and socially caused rather than a personal inadequacy is the first step in gaining power.

C.Legal Authority, Expertise, and the Threat of Force

1.Community organizations can gain power through legal actions,

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expertise, and the threat of force. Community organizations create power when they use disruption, such as public demonstrations, sit-ins, and picketing, and other public displays. However, disruption achieves power only under certain conditions. The amount of leverage that a group gains by applying…negative sanctions is widely variable. Influence depends, first of all, on whether or not the contribution withheld is crucial to others; second, on whether or not those who have been affected by the disruption have resources to be conceded; and third, on whether or not the obstructionist group can protect itself adequately from reprisal. The use of force-disruption- is dangerous for a community group unless it is able to protect its members from the use of counterforce. Sometimes it is better to try the hint of possible disruption, rather than actually doing the deed. Power is not only what you have but also what the enemy thinks you have.

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D.Power Created by Committed Members

1.The main source of power for most Afrikan community organizations is the number of members they attract and the skills, enthusiasm, and persistent dedication of the membership. Afrikan Community organizations can often achieve a great deal with financial support because community members volunteer their time and energy and risk their physical safety.

Building Power Gradually

The organized Afrikan community understands that power is built gradually and not in one gigantic sweep. The members are committed for the long term and think in terms of a historical consciousness which stretches hundreds of years into the past and future.

1.Power is gained systematically.

A.Afrikan Community organizations increase people's awareness that they

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share problems and that the solutions are collective rather than individual.

B.The Afrikan Community organization then addresses the problems faced by its members.

C.As the organization becomes more visible and associated with the successful application of power, more people join. They learn skills, generate enthusiasm, and contribute to future successes that enhance organizational power.

D.Participation in Afrikan community organizations helps make Afrikan people more politically sensitive and more effective political actors. Participation in protest leads to politicization. "Through such protests…ordinary people construct a broader analysis of politics: they shift from a non-ideological stance to an ideological stance, from defining themselves as non-political to defining themselves as political, from having a deep faith in the established political system to developing a critical political analysis. This critical perspective…

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creates the potential for grass-roots activists to play a more active and militant role." (Kraus, 1988) The more people participate in community action, the greater the future capacity to solve community problems through political action.

The Goals of Community Organizing and Development

What are the goals of Afrikan Community organizing?

1.The improvement of the quality of life, through the resolution of shared problems.

2.The elimination of social inequities caused by poverty, racism, and sexism.

3.Exercise and preservation of community values as part of the process of organizing and as an outcome of community development.

4.Enabling people to achieve their potential as an Afrikan people.

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5.The creation of a sense of community, in which people can feel more efficacious, not only as individuals, but as part of a broader Afrikan society toward which they are contributing to bring into being.

6.An equitable distribution of wealth and power in society. To effectively develop the economic capacity of the Afrikan community the community organization must be concerned with the economic and political processes necessary for affecting rapid structural and institutional transformations of entire societies in a manner that will most efficiently bring the fruits of economic progress to the whole of the Afrikan population. Effective socioeconomic change requires either that the support of elite groups be enlisted through persuasion or coercion or that THEY BE PUSHED ASIDE BY MORE POWERFUL FORCES. Economic and sociopolitical development will often be impossible without corresponding changes in the social, political and economic institutions of a nation [ such as, land-tenure systems, educational structures, labor market relationships, the distribution and control of

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physical and financial assets, laws of taxation, and provision of credit]

7.The means of accomplishing the goals must be consistent with the ends desired.

The Solution to Problems

1.By working together in Afrikan community organizations, Afrikan people can acquire knowledge and power.

2.In solving problems, Afrikan community organizations play mediating roles; that is, they provide a link between individuals and larger or more formidable institutions.

3.Afrikan Community organizations gain power by aggregating individual concerns and fragmented complaints and targeting them to those responsible.

4.Afrikan Community organizations sometimes solve problems by linking them together.

5.Afrikan Community organizations address many different quality of life issues. [Housing, Community Safety, Child Care,

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Health Care, Cooperative Economic Development]

Altering Resource Distribution Patterns

How do Community Organizations achieve their goal of altering resource distribution pattern?

1. Select Preference Goal [Objective] How you define the problem impacts the solutions that you choose.

2. Assess the relationship between the African Communities influence for achieving its objective & the resistance of the socially dominant community whose policies it wants to change. To determine the level resistance of the dominant community it's major interests must be defined.

3. Determine the methods through which the dominant community can be influenced:

A.Obligation

B.Friendship

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C.Rational Persuasion

D.Selling

E.Coercion

F.Inducement

4. Determine the sources of African Community Influence:

A.Money and Credit

B.Personal Energy

C.Popularity

D.Socio-political Standing

E.Control of Information

F.Legitimacy & Legality

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Analytical and Interactional Tasks of Problem-Solving

1. Defining the Problem

A.Analytical Tasks:

1.Study and describe the problematic aspects of the situation.

2.Conceptualize the system of relevant actors.

3.Assess what opportunities and limits are set by the African Community, for these will determine what can be accomplished.

B.Interactional Tasks:

1.Eliciting and receiving information, grievances, and preferences from those experiencing the problem and other sources.

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2.Building Structure

Analytical Tasks

A.Determining the nature of the African Communities relationship to the various actors involved.

B.Decide on the types of structures to be developed.

C.Choose people for roles within the new structures. Type of Roles:

Interactional Tasks

1.Establish formal and informal communication lines.

2.Recruiting people into the selected structures and roles and obtaining there commitments to address the problem.

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3.Formulating Policy

Analytical Tasks

1.Analyze past efforts to deal with the problem.

2.Develop alternative goals and strategies, assessing their possible consequences and feasibility.

3.Selecting one or more for implementation.

Interactional Tasks

1.Communicating alternative goals and strategies to selected actors.

2.Promoting their expression of preferences and testing acceptance of various alternatives.

3.Choose from the alternatives.

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4.Implementing Plans

Analytical Tasks

1.Specifying what tasks need to be performed to achieve agreed-upon goals, by whom, when, and with what resources and procedures.

Interactional Tasks

1.Marshall resources and put procedures into operation.

5.Monitoring

Analytical Tasks

1.Designing system for collecting information on operations.

2.Analyze feedback and specify adjustments needed and/or new problems that require planning and action.

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Interactional Tasks

1.Obtaining information from relevant actors based on their experience.

2.Communicate findings and recommendations and prepare actors for new round of decisions to be made.

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CONCLUSION

We must understand that we are not talking about reform. This is no more reform minded than was the Poor People's Campaign initiated by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. As he himself stated, “We are not interested in being integrated into this value structure. Power must be relocated, a radical redistribution of power must take place ...This means a revolution of values ...We must see that now that the evils of racism, economic exploitation and militarism are all tied together, and you really can't get rid of one without getting rid of the others ....The whole structure of American life must be changed ...We must formulate a program, and we must fashion the new tactics which do not count on government good will, but instead serve to compel unwilling authorities to yield to the mandates of justice ...Nonviolent protest must now be adapted to urban conditions and urban moods. Nonviolent protest must now mature to a new level ...mass civil disobedience ...There must be more than a statement to the larger society, there

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must be a force that interrupts its functioning at some key point ....Let us therefore not think of our movement as one that seeks to integrate the Negro into all of the existing values of American society, but as one that would alter those basic values.” These are not the words of reform, but social revolution; not necessarily violent, but revolution nonetheless.

When you begin to talk about altering resource distribution, when you discuss changing values, when you speak of disrupting the functioning of society, you are talking about thrusting yourself into the heart of the struggle for power. When the exploited lifts up their head and speaks of nation-building, and challenges the exploiter, this is not reform it is SOCIOPOLITICAL AND SOCIOECONOMIC REVOLUTION. Changing the system is often violent and it is bloody because the holder of power never goes quietly. Just look at U.S. actions in Iraq perpetrated under the guise of regime change and value reorientation. All of this is in play right now: that is social reconstruction-revolution from the outside and it is not peaceful. That is how you alter an intractable system: you do what the United

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States did and has done, you prevent it from operating.

We as Afrikans must keep in mind as well that whether we acknowledge it or not we have been in a perpetual state of social, cultural, political and economic war with the powers of Europe. Beginning in 700 A.D. and ending in 1485 we fought with the European Christians for control of the Iberian peninsula. In 1485, after 785 years we began our last stand in Grenada, Spain against the Portuguese and Spanish. In 1492 we were driven out and they did not stop there. They immediately began to extend their reach into Afrika and Asia and established and Afrikan-Hindu Empire. In 1493 the Catholic Church instituted the Asiento, which allowed the Portuguese to transport enslaved Afrikans into Spanish colonies. In 1512 King Emanuel of Portugal announced in the policy plan the Regimento, Portuguese plans on the conquest of Afrika, couched in semantical terms of humanitarianism. The document stated that conquest would occur in three forms: territorial, enslavement and acculturation.

The year 1513 saw the Italian Niccolo Machiavelli write his treatise The Prince. The book provides political philosophy on the

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procedures for the successful conquest and maintenance of states and conquered territories, the establishment of colonies. From 1518 to 1880 we have the Maafa, The Great Suffering of Afrikan people under European enslavement. In 1884 there is the Partition of Afrika by European powers. From 1884 until 1994 there has been a constant struggle on the part of the global Afrikan population with European interests. A perpetual state of war sometimes hot and at other times cold. But war nonetheless. A genocidal, terroristic war which utilizes law, health care, and economics as the ultimate Weapons of Mass Destruction.

And that war has increased in intensity since 2001, with the open renewal of the policy of colonialism and imperialism by the United States and the United Kingdom under the pretense of fighting terrorism as defined from Western values and interests. And once again the other European powers [France and Germany] squabble with the U.S. & U.K. over the utilization of the spoils of imperial conquest and not over the morality of the issue.

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As Afrikan Men and Women we must use all viable options to protect ourselves and our interests and thus provide a brighter future for those yet unborn. This is a necessity that all people must satisfy or forever forfeit the right to be considered Men and Women. You as a generation must understand that you HAVE A HISTORICAL MISSION THAT ONLY YOU CAN ACCOMPLISH, AND THAT YOU CAN EITHER FULFILL IT OR BETRAY IT.

As Afrikan Men and Women it is our duty to build and protect our communities, a duty that we ignore to our and our future generations peril. Enslavement and Colonialism were merely dots on the map of Afrikan History: We now must do what we have always done, RECONSTRUCT OURSELVES, OUR COMMUNITIES, OUR CIVILIZATIONS AND ALLOW OUR LIGHT TO SHINE BRIGHTLY FOR ALL OF OUR FUTURE GENERATIONS TO GAZE UPON WITH GRATITUDE AND PRIDE.

SALANIGAHLEASANTE SANA

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