Other than that religious shit, Malcolm is a heroic giant.

Welcome to the real “america”

As many of you know I ventured up to New York City late last week to put my new camera to good use filming “Radical America’s Homeboy” Mickey Z in Astoria. I’m so happy I went. I got to meet actual “expendables” Keir and James in the human freaking flesh! I met up and coming folk machine Val Turner (Bonus alert: mega-cute!) And, yes comrades, I met Michele and Mickey Z. I can safely report that Mr. Z is in fact the real deal and seeing the two of them as such a revolutionary, genuine and yet tender duo was an inspiration.

[Warning: don’t ever fuck with Zed in Michele’s presence. Yes, Mickey is like a ninja or whatever, but every time someone got too loud upstairs during his talk she turned into like a mama freaking Grizzly! Viva.]

As goofy as the above imagery is, I request that you watch all of the following videos in there entirety and straight through. It builds nicely. It is funny, tragic, heartbreaking and inspiring, (he didn’t call it “Stand-Up tragedy” for nothing!) So here it is and I’m incredibly proud to be a part of:

“Myth America: war, elections and our way of life”

View part 3-5 by clicking below
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So I was reading The Washington Post earlier today and learned that there is a great controversy underway.

Apparently the planned memorial of King looks too “confrontational.” King confrontational? Gasp! No!

The first thing that had to go was his furrowed brow. We can’t have a pissed off black man appear to be thinking now can we. The truth is that all of these “tributes” to MLK by the political class have nothing to do with loving him or his work. The truth is they hate his guts and always have. Every “tribute” they offer usually is nothing more than an extension of his first murder. We are told that King “Had a dream” but are supposed to forget that that dream was in fierce competition with the American nightmare. The nightmare persists. We are supposed to forget why they hate him; it’s that he didn’t dance right. When other “responsible Negro leaders” were adjusting to their new found middle class status he radicalized. Forget that he came out against the Vietnam genocide, that he called the US (rightly) the greatest purveyor of violence in the world or that he said things like “A riot is the language of the unheard.” We are told to vaguely talk about this “dream” or maybe now we can safely discuss “change” or “hope we can believe in.” It’s the same way they murder Rosa Parks over and over again. You know, the “meek” and “polite” seamstress who just happened to be really tired that day on the bus. Never mind that she was a committed activist who took a shockingly courageous stand that helped shift the paradigm of that time. King can’t be confrontational now. We’ve moved beyond the “excesses” of that time. MLK should be a friendly brand that can be fit into a CNN love fest or on a Starbucks coffee mug. We aren’t to remember that in his last days he was making the connections between race, class and Capitalism or the implications of his planned Poor People’s Campaign right before he was murdered the first time. They want us to let him die once and for all. Let’s not.

This is an excerpt from Ken Knabb’s online work at www.bopsecrets.org. There is plenty to debate about here, but it is an outstanding critique of the radical world in 1972. Have fun!

Critique Of the New Left Movement

By Ken Knabb

The Movement in General

. . . With all too few exceptions the “democracy” of the New Left was a myth. . . . As for a participatory democracy that would break down the separation between decision and execution, this was present only among a few small groups (for example, some of the earliest agitational experiments in the South) and, very briefly, in such massive actions as the spontaneous surrounding of the police car during the Berkeley Free Speech Movement. Usually whatever democracy there was lasted just long enough to elect a steering committee. . . .

Such democracy as did exist in the New Left organizations cannot be separated from its lack of subversive content. The early SDS maintained a democratized marketplace of ideas which were only the ideas of a democratized marketplace.

This plethora of fragmentary issues finds its echo in the desire for decentralization and leaderlessness (which is less the absence of leaders than the creation of the conditions for leaders to take over) within SDS chapters. . . . Many . . . militants have seen in the relative autonomy of SDS chapters not the early forms of another hierarchical organization — which it is — but a healthy rejection of hierarchies, cell bosses, party chairmen, secretaries. [Robert Chasse, The Power of Negative Thinking, or Robin Hood Rides Again.]

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Here is part of his last speech. Our brother and our father, Martin Luther King Jr. 1929-1968

Fred Hampton (August 30, 1948 – December 4, 1969)

Read about Fred Hampton here.

Check out one of his speeches.

Graffiti from the May 1968 Student Uprising

Commute, work, commute, sleep . . .

Meanwhile everyone wants to breathe and nobody can and many say, “We will breathe later.”
And most of them don’t die because they are already dead.

We don’t want a world where the guarantee of not dying
of starvation brings the risk of dying of boredom.

In a society that has abolished every kind of adventure
the only adventure that remains is to abolish the society.

We will ask nothing. We will demand nothing. We will take, occupy.

It’s painful to submit to our bosses; it’s even more stupid to choose them.

We will have good masters as soon as everyone is their own.

Don’t get caught up in the spectacle of opposition. Oppose the spectacle.

Quick!