By Terry Wilson. From Karate.com
Mixing Jujitsu with your Tae Kwon Do may save your life!
For years Rancella Ferguson ignored her husband’s abusive ways. Like thousands of other women she believed he would change. She always told herself that tomorrow would be different. But things didn’t change and tomorrow was never any different.
The reality of Rancella’s plight came full circle one evening when her husband’s abuse escalated into a beating that left the attractive woman fighting for her very life. Normally a slug fest against an attacker would be a walk-in-the-park for this high-ranking black belt. However, the man she was fighting was not only her husband of 22 years; he too was a martial arts expert.
Rancella’s nightmare began when her husband, stoned on crack, showed up at her place of employment. She was alone when her chemically challenged significant other barged into her office. Terrified, Rancella demanded that he leave. Instead, he pushed her against a wall and began a violent assault. Grabbing a handful of hair, he pulled Rancella down the hall and flung her to the floor.
“An ax-kick doesn’t do you any good when you’re flat on your back,” said Rancella. “My husband is a very big and powerful man. After he knocked me down, he began to beat me. When I moved my head from one area he hit me in another. When you’re small and have someone bigger on top of you it’s very intimidating. If I had fought back I would have died. He was so much bigger and heavier than I was. Plus he too was a black belt. Things would have been different if I would have known how to swing him off my body or apply a choke or an arm. But those are jujitsu techniques and back then I didn’t know any of those things.”
Rancella’s irate husband had a history of domestic violence and on this particular evening he went over an already violent edge.
“He had been doing things off and on,” she recalled. I’d been grabbed by the throat, shoved and slapped but until that night he had never really beaten me. Oddly enough in class when we would par I usually won. My kicks were faster and my techniques were cleaner. But I found out the hard way that in a real fight you need more than kicking skills.”
In the dojang (Korean martial arts training hall) Rancella was the only female in class, so she always fought men.
“I fought men all the time,” recalls Rancella. “Size never mattered to me because I was always able to fire off a kick before they could. So more often times than not, I was the winner. This gave me a lot of confidence.”
So why didn’t that confidence work when Rancella was attacked by her husband? According to this 3-year veteran of the martial arts, had it been anyone other than her husband she would have fought back.
“When I go out into the street I take my martial arts confidence with me,” says Rancella. “But I never thought I would have to defend myself against my husband. So when he attacked me the way that he did I was in shock. He was really trying to take me out. The reason I didn’t try any of my
Tae Kwon Do kicks is because I knew that he could counter anything I could do. We had trained together so long that he knew all my moves inside out.”
Rancella believed that if she had fought back her husband would have killed her. In an instant she decided to try another game plan.
“I decided not to fight back at all,” Rancella recalls. “And I’m glad that I did what I did. Besides the fact that I truly believe he would have killed me, if I hit him and left a bruise or bloodied his nose, I would have been arrested too. The police would have seen it as equal combat because we were both black belts and I believe I would have been taken to jail even though I would have only been defending myself.”
As it was Rancella’s injuries were extensive but her life was spared. To this day she suffers from migraine headaches and whiplash.
“I still suffer from that beating, but if I’d fought back it would have been a lot worse. But if I knew then what I know now I don’t think it would have ended up the way it did. With the jujitsu I now know I would have choked him till he was blue in the face. I would a’ held on him till his eyes was closed and there would be no marks to get me in trouble.”
Rancella was introduced to jujitsu when her Tae Kwon Do instructor invited a guest sensei to teach a throwing and grappling seminar. Impressed with the effectiveness of these techniques, Rancella began taking jujitsu lesson privately.
“Within a few minutes of the seminar I became a believer in the power of jujitsu. After a while I felt like I had been cheated in Tae Kwon Do because we weren’t taught these types of skills. I still believe in my kicks, but I also know that to be a well rounded martial artist, and an effective fighter in a real situation, must know some jujitsu. If I knew then, a few of the jujitsu techniques that I know now, it would have been a different story. But as it was at the time of the attack I didn’t have any jujitsu training and I had no way of getting him off me.”
One of the things that impressed this trim woman about jujitsu was the fact that with good technique a smaller person would take on and whip a larger attacker.
“I didn’t have to use a lot of strength to make my jujitsu moves work,” said Rancella. “Especially chokes, I was amazed at how I could choke someone out even if they were on top of me. In fact during one drill I did a flash back to my attack. My teacher was on top of me just like my husband was. At first I freaked inwardly, and then I focused and got down to the business of learning how to defend against such an attack. I couldn’t believe how easy it was to choke someone out like that.
To begin with, an attacker doesn’t expect you to be able to do anything like that. I am not a big person, so for me to put a larger adversary out with such ease gave my self-confidence quite a boost.”
As one can imagine, Rancella practices her jujitsu techniques with an intensity that is driven from a life experience. She tends to focus on moves that directly relate to the situation she endured at the hands of her black-belt husband.
“There’s this one move my instructor calls a baseball throw,” said Rancella about front choke release that works from a standing position or on the ground. “This is something that I could have used very effectively that night. I also like the cross lapel choke and fighting from the guard. It’s too bad I didn’t know these things the night I was attacked, but I do now, and God better have mercy on anyone who ever try to hurt me again, because I sure won’t.”
Rancella had her husband arrested and he did time for his crime. They are now divorced, but she still carries the scars from that awful night.
“You never expect someone you love to act like that. He did more than hurt me physically, he damaged me mentally and it took me a long time to get over that.”
Whether she is in the dojang or walking down the street, Rancella is always prepared for the unexpected.
“I will never be caught off guard again,” exclaims Rancella. “I don’t care who it is. A neighbor, my brother, anyone! I will never be the victim of a violent crime again without fighting back”
In an effort to help other women who have also been the victims of domestic violence, Rancella raised funds and traversed the city’s red tape to open a shelter for battered women.
“I wanted to take what happened to me and turn it into something positive,” said Rancella. “This shelter is a way for me to help other women who have been beaten and need away to get on the road to a better life. I did it and so can they. I just want to help.”
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Sunday, December 27, 2009
Saturday, December 26, 2009
APSP Revolutionary National Democratic Program
On May 23-24, 2009, the African Liberation Day (ALD) Conference being held in Washington, DC at the Carlos Rosario Charter School will function as the North America Regional Conference of the African Socialist International (ASI), making the African Liberation Day itself serve the struggle for the liberation of Africa and her dispersed people. It is at this conference that the North America Regional Committee of the ASI, a worldwide African revolutionary party leading the struggle for the unification and liberation of Africa, is to be consolidated.
The following is the Revolutionary National Democratic Program (RNDP) that is to be presented, discussed and adopted at the North American Regional Conference to serve as the ASI’s program in this region. Participants in the conference are urged to review this document in preparation for discussion and adoption at the conference.
The Revolutionary National Democratic Program (RNDP) is the practical program of the African Socialist International (ASI) North American Region.
The RNDP responds to the colonial conditions experienced by African people inside the U.S. and throughout North America, and recognizes that African people in North America and throughout the world are part of a dispersed African nation that must reunite with Africans on the continent to liberate Africa.
This Revolutionary National Democratic Program recognizes that the U.S., Canada and Mexico constitute what is currently known as North America. We know that the U.S. is the reigning, though declining world imperialist power and that Canada is its imperial junior partner in North America while Mexico continues to exist as a semi-colony of the U.S. that forcibly annexed nearly half its territory in 1848. Recognizing that the three North American countries have distinctly different features, we call on African people in each country to recognize ourselves as part of the same struggle for the liberation and unification of Africa and African people worldwide.
The Revolutionary National Democratic Program understands that African people are colonized inside the borders of the U.S., and that this colonial status is the result of the historical attack on Africa. It was this attack that balkanized our African homeland and forcibly separated African people from each other and from our resources in Africa and abroad.
Reflecting the ever-escalating colonial attacks against African people in North America, the RNDP is in a continual state of development. The content of the Revolutionary National Democratic Program has been developed through struggles, meetings and collective discussions during conventions led by InPDUM, the mass organization through which the African People’s Socialist Party (APSP) forwards the revolutionary national democratic struggles in North America and elsewhere.
The program has been deepened through mass input during African Liberation Day conferences organized by the African People’s Socialist Party in May of 2008 and 2009. The African Liberation Day conferences provided the opportunity for hundreds of Africans previously unaffiliated with the African People’s Socialist Party and/or the Uhuru Movement to participate in forging this program for the liberation of African people under the leadership of the revolutionary national democratic forces of the North American front of the African national liberation struggle.
The content of this Revolutionary National Democratic Program has also been influenced by the regional conferences to build the African Socialist International, a global organization of African revolutionaries. African Socialist International conferences have been held in Sierra Leone in West Africa and Kenya in East Africa.
The Revolutionary National Democratic Program is a program that distinguishes the interests of the vast majority of African People in North America from the interests of the U.S. North American ruling class and state, and from the interests of reactionaries and opportunists within the African nation itself.
The RNDP recognizes that the primary, most dynamic contradiction in the world today is the contradiction between oppressed and oppressor nations. It understands that the United States of North America and its citizens constitute an oppressor nation state that holds a substantial sector of the African population as part of a colonially oppressed nation. As a colonized people inside the U.S. since the time of enslavement, African people long for total liberation and the ability to join humanity as a free nation, equal among other free peoples of the world.
This Revolutionary National Democratic Program responds to the reality that all African people, those in Africa and those abroad in locations such as North America, constitute one people, one nation. None of us can achieve genuine freedom without the total liberation and unification of Africa and African people worldwide.
The program recognizes that neocolonialism, the indirect control of African people by white power in black face by an opportunist, usually petty bourgeois traitor sector of the African nation, carries out the exploitation of Africa, African people and our resources today.
The Revolutionary National Democratic Program also shows that capitalism, born of the enslavement, colonization and division of Africa and African people, must be defeated and replaced with a just social system in which social production of the means of existence is accompanied by social ownership of the means of production.
In other words, this program understands that capitalism must be replaced by socialism. The laboring producers must collectively own and control the means of production, controlling the power necessary to guarantee social progress and protect and advance the interests of the workers and toiling masses.
We understand that the only social force capable of leading the struggle for the unification and liberation of Africa and African people to its conclusion; the only social force capable of leading the struggle for the total defeat of capitalism and its replacement by socialist democracy, is the African working class aligned with the poor peasantry.
This Revolutionary National Democratic Program speaks to the selfish interests of the oppressed African majority throughout North America and the world. It recognizes that all Africans in North America, like Africans worldwide, suffer direct or indirect national oppression, a reality that establishes the objective basis for cross-class, anti-colonial unity under the leadership of the revolutionary African working class that addresses this national oppression.
This is the program that speaks to the interests of that majority. The Revolutionary National Democratic Program calls out to the workers and other toiling masses as well as African students and revolutionary intellectuals. This is the program of the African national cultural workers and pro-independence democratic nationalists as well as African small business owners suffocating under the weight of disadvantageous colonial laws and monopoly capital.
This Revolutionary National Democratic Program speaks to the millions of Africans tied to the prison concentration camps of North America and to their families, friends, neighbors and organizations founded for their defense.
This program calls on all enlisted Africans and junior officers who are connected to any arm of the imperialist military organizations of the U.S. and North America – including the police departments – to unite with the legitimate interests of their oppressed people for national liberation, unification and socialism.
The program is a call to the exploited African farmers, struggling to regain their land, and to African schoolteachers who have been prevented by colonial law and tradition from bringing liberating education to African students.
The RNDP represents African people struggling throughout the U.S. against gentrification and the destruction of our communities and in the interest of the countless African people facing job cuts, foreclosures and chronic underemployment.
The Revolutionary National Democratic Program calls for an end to colonially-imposed divisions between African people inside the U.S. and North America and calls for all Africans to recognize that we are one colonized people, regardless of whether we speak Spanish, French Portuguese, have recently arrived from the Continent of Africa or are transplanted from the Caribbean islands.
This Revolutionary National Democratic Program is opposed to the programs of the Democratic and Republican parties and other organizations that represent the interests of other, hostile classes and oppressor-nation groups. It is opposed to all programs that would attempt to reconcile the interests of the revolutionary national democratic African masses with those of imperialism, no matter how liberal or radical.
With this program we shall wage furious struggle to thrust the genuine interests of African people into the political arena of North America. We call on all revolutionary national democratic African forces to embrace this program as their own. With this program we call on all allies of our struggle to unite. This is the program to win the dictatorship of the revolutionary national democratic power of the African people.
This is our program. We must win and implement it.
1. We demand all rights consistent with being a free people, rights which include self-determination and self-government as the highest expression of genuine democracy. We demand independence in our lifetime.
2. As a colonized component of the dispersed African nation, we are compelled to say to Africans and the peoples of the world that the views and actions of U.S. President Barack Obama, are not representative of the views, interests and aspirations of the African working class and toiling masses of Africans within the U.S.
3. As a serious component of the struggle to achieve state power, we call on Africans throughout the U.S. to unite with the Uhuru Movement-established tribunal, founded in 1982 as the first session of the International Tribunal on Reparations for African people in the U.S. The International Tribunal is the basis of our incipient revolutionary national democratic state power wherein Africans will conduct our own trials and hearings in the quest for justice within our colonized communities as well as the achievement of justice in issues between Africans and the U.S. colonial state and citizens.
4. We call on the world community to support and recognize the legitimacy of the World Tribunal on Reparations for Africa and African People, established by African people ourselves, that puts imperial white power on trial for the offenses committed against African people.
5. We demand the exemption of all African people within North America from paying taxes to the U.S. and Canada that use these taxes to further enable our colonial domination as well as the military domination of colonized and oppressed peoples around the world.
6. We demand a plebiscite wherein only Africans will be allowed to participate to determine and implement the will of Africans who:
a. Wish reparations and true democratic integration into a U.S. society that has come to a just resolution with the indigenous populations that still suffer U.S. settler colonialism;
b. In democratic, anti-colonial unity with the indigenous peoples of the U.S., seek reparations and a land base within U.S. borders upon which to establish an independent African government and;
c. Who, in possession of reparations for colonial slavery and subsequent exploitation and injustices, wish to return to Africa to contribute to its liberation, unification and development.
7. We demand reparations for the hundreds of years of slavery, colonial oppression, exploitation, terror and deprivations that continue to be experienced by African people to this day.
8. We call on Africans of the world and the international community at large to recognize the African population within the U.S. and North America as a colonized component of the dispersed African nation. Everywhere we are located we are still suffering from all the conditions of colonialism with which the world is familiar. We are a population that is due all the rights afforded a colonially oppressed nation by international laws and traditions, including those that recognize the legitimacy of insurgency by nationally oppressed peoples.
9. We demand free, compulsory and comprehensive education for all Africans within the U.S. Such an education program must equip Africans for independent, self-reliant prosperity in this technologically driven era, and is based on our true history as African people who bring the totality of our own legitimate culture and experiences to the educational process.
10. We demand free access to the educational opportunities offered to Africans by countries like Cuba, as well as U.S. recognition of the legitimacy of such education.
11. We demand an end to the discriminatory, humiliating and expensive immigration laws and procedures that limit or prohibit African entry into the U.S., suggesting that slavery is the primary legal process permissible for entry into the U.S. by Africans from Africa and the rest of the African world.
12. We demand free and uncomplicated entry by Africans into the U.S. from any part of the world. We demand travel rights comparable to the freedom of entry enjoyed by U.S. citizens traveling to Africa and other African-governed locations.
13. We demand immediate reparations for African farmers and an end to the land theft and discriminatory laws and practices used against African farmers within the U.S. and North America that result in loss of land and livelihood and the eradication of farming as a viable choice for African people.
14. We demand that the so-called “bailout” money given to U.S. auto corporations from public funds by the U.S. government be returned for just distribution to the exploited African auto workers of Detroit and Flint Michigan and other cities and communities where African workers have suffered because of the predatory, profit-driven mismanagement of the auto industry by the auto corporations.
15. We commit ourselves to relentless struggle against the state and municipal budget adjustments in the U.S. of North America that attempt to respond to the economic crisis by cutting benefits and services to the African community while maintaining or increasing resources to occupying army police organizations and other institutions of state repression.
16. We demand an end to the public policy of police containment of African people within the U.S. and its replacement with a public policy of economic development through massive capital infusion that would be used to uplift the entire community by supporting existing African businesses, establishing new African businesses, including cooperatives, and by contributing to the general self-reliance of the African community.
17. We demand recognition of the legitimacy of African culture and denounce all acts and practices by the oppressor nation, government and other institutions that are used to justify the oppression and exploitation of African people and the African nation through cultural disparagement.
18. We call on African artists and cultural workers to join in this struggle by demanding reparations that would contribute to a cultural revolution, promoting the liberation and unification of Africa and African people and the implementation of this Revolutionary National Democratic Program.
19. We demand immediate, free healthcare for all Africans in the U.S. and North America to deal with the colonially-based plethora of illnesses and diseases that afflict our people subsequent to slavery, colonialism and the continued abrogation of our right to self-determination.
20. We demand African community control of schools, police and all the institutions of coercive colonial state power that wreak perennial havoc within our colonized community.
21. We demand freedom of religion, press and the right to free speech, assembly and political association with any group and/or organization, inside North America or elsewhere that has been determined by our people to be beneficial to our struggle for revolutionary national democracy.
22. We commit ourselves to the relentless struggle for the rights and dignity of African women and the end of social and political oppression, and sexual and economic exploitation of African women by any sources, including our own colonized community. We demand the recognition of African women as equal partners and leaders in the struggle for the emancipation and unification of Africa and African people worldwide.
23. We are opposed to and committed to struggle against any denial of rights and any oppression of Africans because of sexual orientation.
24. We demand the right to return and reparations for all Africans who lost or were forced to leave their homes by the actions of the U.S. government leading up to, during and subsequent to Hurricane Katrina.
25. We demand reparations for and/or reinstatement of homes lost by scores of thousands of African people who lost their homes due to foreclosure stemming from the U.S. government-supported subprime mortgage scam that targeted Africans and Mexicans as primary victims of predatory capitalist financial institutions.
26. We recognize the Northern Command or Norcom, the thousands of battle-hardened troops stationed at Fort Stewart, Georgia, as counterinsurgent preemption to frustrate the efforts of Africans and others of the oppressed nations within current U.S. borders to win our liberation, and demand its immediate elimination.
27. We claim the national right to self-defense and recognize that in our struggle for self-determination and national liberation any act of resistance is self-defense, whether initiated or responsive.
28. We demand an apology to African people of the U.S. and the world for U.S. involvement in the harassment, overthrow, imprisonment and assassinations of African leaders including Marcus Garvey, Malcolm X, Martin Luther King Jr., Lawrence Mann, Kwame Nkrumah, Jean-Bertrand Aristide, all members of the Black Panther Party, as well as members of the Black Liberation Army and countless others within the U.S. and elsewhere.
29. We also demand full disclosure of the direct or indirect role of the U.S. government in the assassinations of African leaders Patrice Lumumba of Congo Kinshasa, Robert Sobukwe of South Africa and Walter Rodney of Guyana.
30. We demand the immediate removal of all U.S. intelligence and military forces from African territory, including the Africa Command or Africom, the newly-formed military command formed to prevent revolution and African unification and to oppose foreign competition, especially by China, to U.S. economic and strategic interests in Africa.
31. We recognize that the U.S. justice system functions as a tool of colonial domination of African people and demand immediate transformation that includes:
a. An immediate, transparent investigation of the court processes that have resulted in the highly disproportionate number of incarcerated African people, especially young African men;
b. All trials of African people be heard by juries of our peers, African people from like communities and classes;
c. The immediate abrogation of designer laws such as three strikes, stop and frisk, two-tiered drug charges, mandatory minimums and so-called anti-gang initiatives that target African people. We demand that reparations are paid to those imprisoned by these and other such discriminatory colonial laws;
d. An immediate cessation of the practice of trying African juveniles as adults and imprisoning them in adult institutions;
e. An immediate cessation of the massive imprisonment of African children in juvenile concentration camps, their release and an end to the capture of and trade in African children through the foster care system;
f. Recognition of prisons in the U.S. as concentration camps for our colonized population, and that such colonial domination of our people makes all Africans imprisoned in the U.S. political prisoners, regardless of the charges against them;
g. The immediate release of all conscious African political prisoners, including those who were arrested because of political actions or statements, or who were first arrested for violations of colonial laws, and subsequently became politically active in the cause of our liberation;
h. Immediate cessation of use of the death penalty and a transparent, internationally supervised investigation of every conviction of an African sentenced to death;
i. A transparent, internationally supervised investigation of every police killing of an African person within the last 10 years and every controversial police killing of an African regardless of the time that has passed since the killing, with police found to be guilty of murder to be duly punished within the full capacity of the law and reparations paid to their families.
32. We demand the immediate and unconditional release of all African political prisoners and prisoners of conscience in Africa and throughout the world.
33. We stand in complete unity with our brothers and sisters in Kenya in recognition of the heroic revolutionary stance of the Kenyan Land and Freedom Army or Mau Mau and its leader Dedan Kimathi who gave the African world the slogan demand of Uhuru in the struggle against British colonialism.
34. We call for the immediate end to the economic embargo of Zimbabwe and for reparations to be paid by the U.S. and England to the people of Zimbabwe for the deprivations caused by the embargo.
35. We call for Africans and our allies around the world to stand in solidarity with the masses in Zimbabwe in the struggle for power to the working class and land to the peasants.
36. We demand the disclosure and return of all the art and cultural artifacts looted from Africa by colonial powers and imperialist nationals that are now housed in museums and private hands in Europe and North America.
37. We demand full disclosure of all economic activity by the U.S. government and North American corporations throughout all of Africa.
38. We call on all African engineers, scientists and health care workers to join with the All African People’s Development and Empowerment Project to work for the revolutionary development of Africa and overcome the deprivations in economic development, healthcare and social progress stemming from imperialism and neocolonialism.
39. We unite with building the African Socialist International as the revolutionary advanced detachment and general staff of the international African working class that is the essential requirement for the African working class, working in its own selfish interests, to lead the struggle for the liberation and unification of Africa and African people worldwide.
40. We also offer our full support for the current efforts of our comrade brothers and sisters in Sierra Leone to build the African People’s Socialist Party-Sierra Leone as the legitimate representative of the African workers and poor peasants on that front of our struggle for the liberation, and unification of Africa and African people worldwide.
41. We stand in unconditional solidarity with the Palestinian people in their struggle against the Israeli white nationalist settler state that functions as a military outpost for U.S. and international white imperialist power.
42. At the same time we denounce those Palestinians who emigrate to the U.S. and other areas of North America and in their business and commercial dealings treat African people in the same demeaning, disrespectful and dehumanizing manner that Palestinians are treated by Israeli settlers in Occupied Palestine.
43. While the struggle of African people in North America is recognized as an important front of the international African revolution, we also understand that our struggle is part and parcel of the revolutionary impulse of the Americas.
44. We stand in complete unity with the indigenous peoples of North America in their struggle to reclaim their land from the settler colonialists of the U.S. and Canada and the semi-colonial state and ruling class of Mexico.
45. We unite with the revolutionary trajectory of South America that is exemplified by the governments of Venezuela, Bolivia, Ecuador, Nicaragua and Cuba.
46. We demand an immediate end to the punitive, decades long counter-insurgent economic quarantine of Cuba by the U.S. government and its allies and lackeys.
47. We demand the immediate release of the Cuban 5 from U.S. custody and call for the return to the Cuban government of Guantanamo Bay, upon which the U.S. government has established a Marine base and concentration camp.
48. We call on Africans at home and abroad in Europe, North America, the Caribbean and elsewhere to support all genuine resistance by Africans worldwide and to struggle to help these resistance efforts achieve coherence and effectiveness by winning them to principles and organization of the African Socialist International.
49. We call on all existing African governments to demand protection for and protest violations of the rights of African people living in European-dominated countries around the world.
50. We demand that the U.S. government, corporations and financial institutions renounce any claims of debt from Africa, which has been responsible for the development of the U.S. economy and, through the enslavement of African people, centuries of free, near-free and underpaid labor for which reparations are due to Africans in the U.S., throughout North America and Africa.
Go here for more info.
The following is the Revolutionary National Democratic Program (RNDP) that is to be presented, discussed and adopted at the North American Regional Conference to serve as the ASI’s program in this region. Participants in the conference are urged to review this document in preparation for discussion and adoption at the conference.
The Revolutionary National Democratic Program (RNDP) is the practical program of the African Socialist International (ASI) North American Region.
The RNDP responds to the colonial conditions experienced by African people inside the U.S. and throughout North America, and recognizes that African people in North America and throughout the world are part of a dispersed African nation that must reunite with Africans on the continent to liberate Africa.
This Revolutionary National Democratic Program recognizes that the U.S., Canada and Mexico constitute what is currently known as North America. We know that the U.S. is the reigning, though declining world imperialist power and that Canada is its imperial junior partner in North America while Mexico continues to exist as a semi-colony of the U.S. that forcibly annexed nearly half its territory in 1848. Recognizing that the three North American countries have distinctly different features, we call on African people in each country to recognize ourselves as part of the same struggle for the liberation and unification of Africa and African people worldwide.
The Revolutionary National Democratic Program understands that African people are colonized inside the borders of the U.S., and that this colonial status is the result of the historical attack on Africa. It was this attack that balkanized our African homeland and forcibly separated African people from each other and from our resources in Africa and abroad.
Reflecting the ever-escalating colonial attacks against African people in North America, the RNDP is in a continual state of development. The content of the Revolutionary National Democratic Program has been developed through struggles, meetings and collective discussions during conventions led by InPDUM, the mass organization through which the African People’s Socialist Party (APSP) forwards the revolutionary national democratic struggles in North America and elsewhere.
The program has been deepened through mass input during African Liberation Day conferences organized by the African People’s Socialist Party in May of 2008 and 2009. The African Liberation Day conferences provided the opportunity for hundreds of Africans previously unaffiliated with the African People’s Socialist Party and/or the Uhuru Movement to participate in forging this program for the liberation of African people under the leadership of the revolutionary national democratic forces of the North American front of the African national liberation struggle.
The content of this Revolutionary National Democratic Program has also been influenced by the regional conferences to build the African Socialist International, a global organization of African revolutionaries. African Socialist International conferences have been held in Sierra Leone in West Africa and Kenya in East Africa.
The Revolutionary National Democratic Program is a program that distinguishes the interests of the vast majority of African People in North America from the interests of the U.S. North American ruling class and state, and from the interests of reactionaries and opportunists within the African nation itself.
The RNDP recognizes that the primary, most dynamic contradiction in the world today is the contradiction between oppressed and oppressor nations. It understands that the United States of North America and its citizens constitute an oppressor nation state that holds a substantial sector of the African population as part of a colonially oppressed nation. As a colonized people inside the U.S. since the time of enslavement, African people long for total liberation and the ability to join humanity as a free nation, equal among other free peoples of the world.
This Revolutionary National Democratic Program responds to the reality that all African people, those in Africa and those abroad in locations such as North America, constitute one people, one nation. None of us can achieve genuine freedom without the total liberation and unification of Africa and African people worldwide.
The program recognizes that neocolonialism, the indirect control of African people by white power in black face by an opportunist, usually petty bourgeois traitor sector of the African nation, carries out the exploitation of Africa, African people and our resources today.
The Revolutionary National Democratic Program also shows that capitalism, born of the enslavement, colonization and division of Africa and African people, must be defeated and replaced with a just social system in which social production of the means of existence is accompanied by social ownership of the means of production.
In other words, this program understands that capitalism must be replaced by socialism. The laboring producers must collectively own and control the means of production, controlling the power necessary to guarantee social progress and protect and advance the interests of the workers and toiling masses.
We understand that the only social force capable of leading the struggle for the unification and liberation of Africa and African people to its conclusion; the only social force capable of leading the struggle for the total defeat of capitalism and its replacement by socialist democracy, is the African working class aligned with the poor peasantry.
This Revolutionary National Democratic Program speaks to the selfish interests of the oppressed African majority throughout North America and the world. It recognizes that all Africans in North America, like Africans worldwide, suffer direct or indirect national oppression, a reality that establishes the objective basis for cross-class, anti-colonial unity under the leadership of the revolutionary African working class that addresses this national oppression.
This is the program that speaks to the interests of that majority. The Revolutionary National Democratic Program calls out to the workers and other toiling masses as well as African students and revolutionary intellectuals. This is the program of the African national cultural workers and pro-independence democratic nationalists as well as African small business owners suffocating under the weight of disadvantageous colonial laws and monopoly capital.
This Revolutionary National Democratic Program speaks to the millions of Africans tied to the prison concentration camps of North America and to their families, friends, neighbors and organizations founded for their defense.
This program calls on all enlisted Africans and junior officers who are connected to any arm of the imperialist military organizations of the U.S. and North America – including the police departments – to unite with the legitimate interests of their oppressed people for national liberation, unification and socialism.
The program is a call to the exploited African farmers, struggling to regain their land, and to African schoolteachers who have been prevented by colonial law and tradition from bringing liberating education to African students.
The RNDP represents African people struggling throughout the U.S. against gentrification and the destruction of our communities and in the interest of the countless African people facing job cuts, foreclosures and chronic underemployment.
The Revolutionary National Democratic Program calls for an end to colonially-imposed divisions between African people inside the U.S. and North America and calls for all Africans to recognize that we are one colonized people, regardless of whether we speak Spanish, French Portuguese, have recently arrived from the Continent of Africa or are transplanted from the Caribbean islands.
This Revolutionary National Democratic Program is opposed to the programs of the Democratic and Republican parties and other organizations that represent the interests of other, hostile classes and oppressor-nation groups. It is opposed to all programs that would attempt to reconcile the interests of the revolutionary national democratic African masses with those of imperialism, no matter how liberal or radical.
With this program we shall wage furious struggle to thrust the genuine interests of African people into the political arena of North America. We call on all revolutionary national democratic African forces to embrace this program as their own. With this program we call on all allies of our struggle to unite. This is the program to win the dictatorship of the revolutionary national democratic power of the African people.
This is our program. We must win and implement it.
1. We demand all rights consistent with being a free people, rights which include self-determination and self-government as the highest expression of genuine democracy. We demand independence in our lifetime.
2. As a colonized component of the dispersed African nation, we are compelled to say to Africans and the peoples of the world that the views and actions of U.S. President Barack Obama, are not representative of the views, interests and aspirations of the African working class and toiling masses of Africans within the U.S.
3. As a serious component of the struggle to achieve state power, we call on Africans throughout the U.S. to unite with the Uhuru Movement-established tribunal, founded in 1982 as the first session of the International Tribunal on Reparations for African people in the U.S. The International Tribunal is the basis of our incipient revolutionary national democratic state power wherein Africans will conduct our own trials and hearings in the quest for justice within our colonized communities as well as the achievement of justice in issues between Africans and the U.S. colonial state and citizens.
4. We call on the world community to support and recognize the legitimacy of the World Tribunal on Reparations for Africa and African People, established by African people ourselves, that puts imperial white power on trial for the offenses committed against African people.
5. We demand the exemption of all African people within North America from paying taxes to the U.S. and Canada that use these taxes to further enable our colonial domination as well as the military domination of colonized and oppressed peoples around the world.
6. We demand a plebiscite wherein only Africans will be allowed to participate to determine and implement the will of Africans who:
a. Wish reparations and true democratic integration into a U.S. society that has come to a just resolution with the indigenous populations that still suffer U.S. settler colonialism;
b. In democratic, anti-colonial unity with the indigenous peoples of the U.S., seek reparations and a land base within U.S. borders upon which to establish an independent African government and;
c. Who, in possession of reparations for colonial slavery and subsequent exploitation and injustices, wish to return to Africa to contribute to its liberation, unification and development.
7. We demand reparations for the hundreds of years of slavery, colonial oppression, exploitation, terror and deprivations that continue to be experienced by African people to this day.
8. We call on Africans of the world and the international community at large to recognize the African population within the U.S. and North America as a colonized component of the dispersed African nation. Everywhere we are located we are still suffering from all the conditions of colonialism with which the world is familiar. We are a population that is due all the rights afforded a colonially oppressed nation by international laws and traditions, including those that recognize the legitimacy of insurgency by nationally oppressed peoples.
9. We demand free, compulsory and comprehensive education for all Africans within the U.S. Such an education program must equip Africans for independent, self-reliant prosperity in this technologically driven era, and is based on our true history as African people who bring the totality of our own legitimate culture and experiences to the educational process.
10. We demand free access to the educational opportunities offered to Africans by countries like Cuba, as well as U.S. recognition of the legitimacy of such education.
11. We demand an end to the discriminatory, humiliating and expensive immigration laws and procedures that limit or prohibit African entry into the U.S., suggesting that slavery is the primary legal process permissible for entry into the U.S. by Africans from Africa and the rest of the African world.
12. We demand free and uncomplicated entry by Africans into the U.S. from any part of the world. We demand travel rights comparable to the freedom of entry enjoyed by U.S. citizens traveling to Africa and other African-governed locations.
13. We demand immediate reparations for African farmers and an end to the land theft and discriminatory laws and practices used against African farmers within the U.S. and North America that result in loss of land and livelihood and the eradication of farming as a viable choice for African people.
14. We demand that the so-called “bailout” money given to U.S. auto corporations from public funds by the U.S. government be returned for just distribution to the exploited African auto workers of Detroit and Flint Michigan and other cities and communities where African workers have suffered because of the predatory, profit-driven mismanagement of the auto industry by the auto corporations.
15. We commit ourselves to relentless struggle against the state and municipal budget adjustments in the U.S. of North America that attempt to respond to the economic crisis by cutting benefits and services to the African community while maintaining or increasing resources to occupying army police organizations and other institutions of state repression.
16. We demand an end to the public policy of police containment of African people within the U.S. and its replacement with a public policy of economic development through massive capital infusion that would be used to uplift the entire community by supporting existing African businesses, establishing new African businesses, including cooperatives, and by contributing to the general self-reliance of the African community.
17. We demand recognition of the legitimacy of African culture and denounce all acts and practices by the oppressor nation, government and other institutions that are used to justify the oppression and exploitation of African people and the African nation through cultural disparagement.
18. We call on African artists and cultural workers to join in this struggle by demanding reparations that would contribute to a cultural revolution, promoting the liberation and unification of Africa and African people and the implementation of this Revolutionary National Democratic Program.
19. We demand immediate, free healthcare for all Africans in the U.S. and North America to deal with the colonially-based plethora of illnesses and diseases that afflict our people subsequent to slavery, colonialism and the continued abrogation of our right to self-determination.
20. We demand African community control of schools, police and all the institutions of coercive colonial state power that wreak perennial havoc within our colonized community.
21. We demand freedom of religion, press and the right to free speech, assembly and political association with any group and/or organization, inside North America or elsewhere that has been determined by our people to be beneficial to our struggle for revolutionary national democracy.
22. We commit ourselves to the relentless struggle for the rights and dignity of African women and the end of social and political oppression, and sexual and economic exploitation of African women by any sources, including our own colonized community. We demand the recognition of African women as equal partners and leaders in the struggle for the emancipation and unification of Africa and African people worldwide.
23. We are opposed to and committed to struggle against any denial of rights and any oppression of Africans because of sexual orientation.
24. We demand the right to return and reparations for all Africans who lost or were forced to leave their homes by the actions of the U.S. government leading up to, during and subsequent to Hurricane Katrina.
25. We demand reparations for and/or reinstatement of homes lost by scores of thousands of African people who lost their homes due to foreclosure stemming from the U.S. government-supported subprime mortgage scam that targeted Africans and Mexicans as primary victims of predatory capitalist financial institutions.
26. We recognize the Northern Command or Norcom, the thousands of battle-hardened troops stationed at Fort Stewart, Georgia, as counterinsurgent preemption to frustrate the efforts of Africans and others of the oppressed nations within current U.S. borders to win our liberation, and demand its immediate elimination.
27. We claim the national right to self-defense and recognize that in our struggle for self-determination and national liberation any act of resistance is self-defense, whether initiated or responsive.
28. We demand an apology to African people of the U.S. and the world for U.S. involvement in the harassment, overthrow, imprisonment and assassinations of African leaders including Marcus Garvey, Malcolm X, Martin Luther King Jr., Lawrence Mann, Kwame Nkrumah, Jean-Bertrand Aristide, all members of the Black Panther Party, as well as members of the Black Liberation Army and countless others within the U.S. and elsewhere.
29. We also demand full disclosure of the direct or indirect role of the U.S. government in the assassinations of African leaders Patrice Lumumba of Congo Kinshasa, Robert Sobukwe of South Africa and Walter Rodney of Guyana.
30. We demand the immediate removal of all U.S. intelligence and military forces from African territory, including the Africa Command or Africom, the newly-formed military command formed to prevent revolution and African unification and to oppose foreign competition, especially by China, to U.S. economic and strategic interests in Africa.
31. We recognize that the U.S. justice system functions as a tool of colonial domination of African people and demand immediate transformation that includes:
a. An immediate, transparent investigation of the court processes that have resulted in the highly disproportionate number of incarcerated African people, especially young African men;
b. All trials of African people be heard by juries of our peers, African people from like communities and classes;
c. The immediate abrogation of designer laws such as three strikes, stop and frisk, two-tiered drug charges, mandatory minimums and so-called anti-gang initiatives that target African people. We demand that reparations are paid to those imprisoned by these and other such discriminatory colonial laws;
d. An immediate cessation of the practice of trying African juveniles as adults and imprisoning them in adult institutions;
e. An immediate cessation of the massive imprisonment of African children in juvenile concentration camps, their release and an end to the capture of and trade in African children through the foster care system;
f. Recognition of prisons in the U.S. as concentration camps for our colonized population, and that such colonial domination of our people makes all Africans imprisoned in the U.S. political prisoners, regardless of the charges against them;
g. The immediate release of all conscious African political prisoners, including those who were arrested because of political actions or statements, or who were first arrested for violations of colonial laws, and subsequently became politically active in the cause of our liberation;
h. Immediate cessation of use of the death penalty and a transparent, internationally supervised investigation of every conviction of an African sentenced to death;
i. A transparent, internationally supervised investigation of every police killing of an African person within the last 10 years and every controversial police killing of an African regardless of the time that has passed since the killing, with police found to be guilty of murder to be duly punished within the full capacity of the law and reparations paid to their families.
32. We demand the immediate and unconditional release of all African political prisoners and prisoners of conscience in Africa and throughout the world.
33. We stand in complete unity with our brothers and sisters in Kenya in recognition of the heroic revolutionary stance of the Kenyan Land and Freedom Army or Mau Mau and its leader Dedan Kimathi who gave the African world the slogan demand of Uhuru in the struggle against British colonialism.
34. We call for the immediate end to the economic embargo of Zimbabwe and for reparations to be paid by the U.S. and England to the people of Zimbabwe for the deprivations caused by the embargo.
35. We call for Africans and our allies around the world to stand in solidarity with the masses in Zimbabwe in the struggle for power to the working class and land to the peasants.
36. We demand the disclosure and return of all the art and cultural artifacts looted from Africa by colonial powers and imperialist nationals that are now housed in museums and private hands in Europe and North America.
37. We demand full disclosure of all economic activity by the U.S. government and North American corporations throughout all of Africa.
38. We call on all African engineers, scientists and health care workers to join with the All African People’s Development and Empowerment Project to work for the revolutionary development of Africa and overcome the deprivations in economic development, healthcare and social progress stemming from imperialism and neocolonialism.
39. We unite with building the African Socialist International as the revolutionary advanced detachment and general staff of the international African working class that is the essential requirement for the African working class, working in its own selfish interests, to lead the struggle for the liberation and unification of Africa and African people worldwide.
40. We also offer our full support for the current efforts of our comrade brothers and sisters in Sierra Leone to build the African People’s Socialist Party-Sierra Leone as the legitimate representative of the African workers and poor peasants on that front of our struggle for the liberation, and unification of Africa and African people worldwide.
41. We stand in unconditional solidarity with the Palestinian people in their struggle against the Israeli white nationalist settler state that functions as a military outpost for U.S. and international white imperialist power.
42. At the same time we denounce those Palestinians who emigrate to the U.S. and other areas of North America and in their business and commercial dealings treat African people in the same demeaning, disrespectful and dehumanizing manner that Palestinians are treated by Israeli settlers in Occupied Palestine.
43. While the struggle of African people in North America is recognized as an important front of the international African revolution, we also understand that our struggle is part and parcel of the revolutionary impulse of the Americas.
44. We stand in complete unity with the indigenous peoples of North America in their struggle to reclaim their land from the settler colonialists of the U.S. and Canada and the semi-colonial state and ruling class of Mexico.
45. We unite with the revolutionary trajectory of South America that is exemplified by the governments of Venezuela, Bolivia, Ecuador, Nicaragua and Cuba.
46. We demand an immediate end to the punitive, decades long counter-insurgent economic quarantine of Cuba by the U.S. government and its allies and lackeys.
47. We demand the immediate release of the Cuban 5 from U.S. custody and call for the return to the Cuban government of Guantanamo Bay, upon which the U.S. government has established a Marine base and concentration camp.
48. We call on Africans at home and abroad in Europe, North America, the Caribbean and elsewhere to support all genuine resistance by Africans worldwide and to struggle to help these resistance efforts achieve coherence and effectiveness by winning them to principles and organization of the African Socialist International.
49. We call on all existing African governments to demand protection for and protest violations of the rights of African people living in European-dominated countries around the world.
50. We demand that the U.S. government, corporations and financial institutions renounce any claims of debt from Africa, which has been responsible for the development of the U.S. economy and, through the enslavement of African people, centuries of free, near-free and underpaid labor for which reparations are due to Africans in the U.S., throughout North America and Africa.
Go here for more info.
Thursday, December 24, 2009
How I Survived Police Brutality and Lived to Tell About It (part 2)
So once I won the $50,000 settlement, the next issue was that of the IRS; who wanted a piece of it. Today, I recieved the paperwork stating that the IRS was garnishing my wages.
For anyone who has any doubts as to the reality of class in amerikka, think about this: to the IRS, I am an easy target. The wealthy with their off-shore accounts and armies of attorneys, are a hard target. Despite the unpaid millions owed by the wealthiest 1%, the IRS is after me for a mere $8,000. I make well-less than that a month and they have been withholding my refunds for years.
I say all of this not because I want sympathy, but for the reader to understand, in a very personal way, one more reason why my opposition to the forces of kkkapitalism/imperialism/inter-personal oppression is so total and resolute. As I get older, the desire to see real-deal revolution in my lifetime only grows.
For anyone who has any doubts as to the reality of class in amerikka, think about this: to the IRS, I am an easy target. The wealthy with their off-shore accounts and armies of attorneys, are a hard target. Despite the unpaid millions owed by the wealthiest 1%, the IRS is after me for a mere $8,000. I make well-less than that a month and they have been withholding my refunds for years.
I say all of this not because I want sympathy, but for the reader to understand, in a very personal way, one more reason why my opposition to the forces of kkkapitalism/imperialism/inter-personal oppression is so total and resolute. As I get older, the desire to see real-deal revolution in my lifetime only grows.
How I Survived Police Terrorism and Lived to Tell About It (Part 1).
"They say 'karate means empty hand, so it's perfect for the poor man" – hip-hop duo dead prez; "Psychology"; from their debut album "Let's Get Free".
In September of 1998, a group of friends and myself were working out in the grass of a local school in what was considered an "economically depressed" area of Seattle when we heard a loud crash.
When we got there, we saw that a small car had slammed into a telephone pole and a teenager was trapped inside. Despite the smoke pouring from the engine and the broken glass on the ground we ran over to help. My co-defendant, Kenyatto Amen-Allah (aka Moorpheus of the hip-hop duo dRED.i), climbed into the back seat to release the front passenger-side seat, so that the young man could breathe. An older man reached in with his hunting knife and cut the seat belt to help the victim breathe. The dashboard was crushing his chest, he was bleeding profusely, and going into shock.
First, the paramedics came and then the police. By now there was a large crowd gathered, a mostly black crowd (like us). The paramedics told us to get out of the way, which we did. Then a white cop (later identified as Ofc. Ronald Martin) ran up on my co-defendant, picked him up off the ground, and slammed him on the hood of the crashed car. The crowd started shouting "he didn't do anything", and "he was trying to help". The cop's black partner, an Ofc. Gregory Williams, came over to me very calmly and professionally to ask what happened, and I told him. Ofc. Martin let go of my friend after I explained the situation to them, but then decides to run after him again , this time screaming, "The next time I tell you to do something, you do it!". I walked up alongside him as he was chasing my friend and asked him, "What are you, deaf? I just told you what happened!"
He responded by attempting to strike me in the throat with a straight-lead v-strike (the 'v' is the area between the thumb and first-finger). No warning, no commands, just a slightly telegraphed movement in front of a trained eye, just before he launched the assault. As any martial artist or defense tactics instructor will tell you, this is a technique that can easily incapacitate or kill an opponent.
In that instant my 29 years of martial arts training, 10 years of ring experience, 13 years employment as nightclub security, and over 43 street fights since the first grade kicked in. According to the police report filed by Ofc Martin, obtained during the discovery phase of my criminal trial, he received "numerous punched and kicks to the head". It took three officers to take me to the ground, and one of them, Ofc Williams, unfortunately found himself caught in the constricting grip of a Brazilian Jujitsu-type Triangle choke. Once he asked me to "please turn over", I released him and complied.
In the east precinct lock-up, Ofc. Martin paid me a visit to issue threats: "I'm bigger than you and stronger than you; I'll slap you down and knock you out!"
According to him, from now on every time I am stopped a red flag goes up next to my name on their computer system warning whoever stops me that I assault cops and that they will approach me with guns drawn. Those statements, along with his courtroom behavior (screaming at our attorneys and the judge) and the facts of the case (especially the testimony of prosecution witnesses, black and white, who told the court one after the other that "the police were out of control", leading the jury to find us 'not guilty' of assaulting an officer and obstruction of justice. After our stunning "win" at the criminal trial, we were regularly followed and watched by Seattle Police. Eventually, as the WTO was preparing to come to Seattle in 1999, the FBI joined in the surveillance.
Later, we filed a lawsuit in federal court, demanding 11 million dollars each in damages and an apology from the police chief and the mayor on local television,…from their knees.
In December, 2000, on the one-year anniversary of the WTO protests, I was arrested while eating my lunch at Seattle Vocational Institute (I was a student there at the time). I was arrested by six riot cops in full body armor and three plainclothes detectives. One of them said to me, "keep your feet on the ground, Mr. Lewis, we know you're a karate expert" as he put his boot on my foot. They claimed that I had sent an email threatening the mayor's life. Like the last arrest, the King County Prosecutor saw this charge was groundless and even said this to my attorney. The only "threat" from me received by former Mayor Schell was the subpoena to appear that my attorneys sent to him and the police chief Gil Kerlikowski regarding our lawsuit, which happened a few days before my arrest. I was released on bail on my 30th birthday. No charges were ever filed in this case.
In 2003, a concerned citizen (who wished to remain anon.) contacted me and showed us a document obtained during a mid-afternoon meeting of the 'liberal' Seattle City Council. The meeting was a formal request from the Seattle Police to put certain individuals under surveillance and to renew surveillance placed upon 'suspects' the year prior. I was on that list.
The lawsuit wasn't "won" exactly. We had a hung jury. The lawyers attributed that to our civil trial happening shortly after 9/11. The city finally did settle with us for $50,000 each, plus attorney's fees. Officer Martin was not fired or charged with any crime, and at the time of this writing still works for the Seattle Police Department.
I call it a small 'v' victory. The city has increased their liability insurance with federal grant money, so they have greater financial resources to either fight victims in court or settle when new incidents occur and the victims or their families sue. Interestingly, it is only the firefighters and paramedics that I have seen running t.v. commercials for levy campaigns to raise additional funds for their critical services. This is one small example of putting social order and control over public safety.
This pattern serves to give fuel to right-wing arguments against paying victims of this type of violent crime, citing tax increases on small businesses; who pay for police, firefighters, and paramedics with the quarterly business and occupations tax, collected with every sale of dine-in/take out, deli foods, classes or services, entertainment, or any merchandise. But, in Seattle, the liberal brand of fascism is more friendly and astute: public relations efforts such as community policing initiatives, block watch parties, and the Office for Professional Accountability (OPA) have helped to muffle critics on both the right and left, while fostering more confusion than clarity amongst those seeking real solutions to this problem.
In September of 1998, a group of friends and myself were working out in the grass of a local school in what was considered an "economically depressed" area of Seattle when we heard a loud crash.
When we got there, we saw that a small car had slammed into a telephone pole and a teenager was trapped inside. Despite the smoke pouring from the engine and the broken glass on the ground we ran over to help. My co-defendant, Kenyatto Amen-Allah (aka Moorpheus of the hip-hop duo dRED.i), climbed into the back seat to release the front passenger-side seat, so that the young man could breathe. An older man reached in with his hunting knife and cut the seat belt to help the victim breathe. The dashboard was crushing his chest, he was bleeding profusely, and going into shock.
First, the paramedics came and then the police. By now there was a large crowd gathered, a mostly black crowd (like us). The paramedics told us to get out of the way, which we did. Then a white cop (later identified as Ofc. Ronald Martin) ran up on my co-defendant, picked him up off the ground, and slammed him on the hood of the crashed car. The crowd started shouting "he didn't do anything", and "he was trying to help". The cop's black partner, an Ofc. Gregory Williams, came over to me very calmly and professionally to ask what happened, and I told him. Ofc. Martin let go of my friend after I explained the situation to them, but then decides to run after him again , this time screaming, "The next time I tell you to do something, you do it!". I walked up alongside him as he was chasing my friend and asked him, "What are you, deaf? I just told you what happened!"
He responded by attempting to strike me in the throat with a straight-lead v-strike (the 'v' is the area between the thumb and first-finger). No warning, no commands, just a slightly telegraphed movement in front of a trained eye, just before he launched the assault. As any martial artist or defense tactics instructor will tell you, this is a technique that can easily incapacitate or kill an opponent.
In that instant my 29 years of martial arts training, 10 years of ring experience, 13 years employment as nightclub security, and over 43 street fights since the first grade kicked in. According to the police report filed by Ofc Martin, obtained during the discovery phase of my criminal trial, he received "numerous punched and kicks to the head". It took three officers to take me to the ground, and one of them, Ofc Williams, unfortunately found himself caught in the constricting grip of a Brazilian Jujitsu-type Triangle choke. Once he asked me to "please turn over", I released him and complied.
In the east precinct lock-up, Ofc. Martin paid me a visit to issue threats: "I'm bigger than you and stronger than you; I'll slap you down and knock you out!"
According to him, from now on every time I am stopped a red flag goes up next to my name on their computer system warning whoever stops me that I assault cops and that they will approach me with guns drawn. Those statements, along with his courtroom behavior (screaming at our attorneys and the judge) and the facts of the case (especially the testimony of prosecution witnesses, black and white, who told the court one after the other that "the police were out of control", leading the jury to find us 'not guilty' of assaulting an officer and obstruction of justice. After our stunning "win" at the criminal trial, we were regularly followed and watched by Seattle Police. Eventually, as the WTO was preparing to come to Seattle in 1999, the FBI joined in the surveillance.
Later, we filed a lawsuit in federal court, demanding 11 million dollars each in damages and an apology from the police chief and the mayor on local television,…from their knees.
In December, 2000, on the one-year anniversary of the WTO protests, I was arrested while eating my lunch at Seattle Vocational Institute (I was a student there at the time). I was arrested by six riot cops in full body armor and three plainclothes detectives. One of them said to me, "keep your feet on the ground, Mr. Lewis, we know you're a karate expert" as he put his boot on my foot. They claimed that I had sent an email threatening the mayor's life. Like the last arrest, the King County Prosecutor saw this charge was groundless and even said this to my attorney. The only "threat" from me received by former Mayor Schell was the subpoena to appear that my attorneys sent to him and the police chief Gil Kerlikowski regarding our lawsuit, which happened a few days before my arrest. I was released on bail on my 30th birthday. No charges were ever filed in this case.
In 2003, a concerned citizen (who wished to remain anon.) contacted me and showed us a document obtained during a mid-afternoon meeting of the 'liberal' Seattle City Council. The meeting was a formal request from the Seattle Police to put certain individuals under surveillance and to renew surveillance placed upon 'suspects' the year prior. I was on that list.
The lawsuit wasn't "won" exactly. We had a hung jury. The lawyers attributed that to our civil trial happening shortly after 9/11. The city finally did settle with us for $50,000 each, plus attorney's fees. Officer Martin was not fired or charged with any crime, and at the time of this writing still works for the Seattle Police Department.
I call it a small 'v' victory. The city has increased their liability insurance with federal grant money, so they have greater financial resources to either fight victims in court or settle when new incidents occur and the victims or their families sue. Interestingly, it is only the firefighters and paramedics that I have seen running t.v. commercials for levy campaigns to raise additional funds for their critical services. This is one small example of putting social order and control over public safety.
This pattern serves to give fuel to right-wing arguments against paying victims of this type of violent crime, citing tax increases on small businesses; who pay for police, firefighters, and paramedics with the quarterly business and occupations tax, collected with every sale of dine-in/take out, deli foods, classes or services, entertainment, or any merchandise. But, in Seattle, the liberal brand of fascism is more friendly and astute: public relations efforts such as community policing initiatives, block watch parties, and the Office for Professional Accountability (OPA) have helped to muffle critics on both the right and left, while fostering more confusion than clarity amongst those seeking real solutions to this problem.
Wednesday, December 23, 2009
Health Care Bill
View the original facebook thread here. Below is my reply.
Anything less than full coverage for all, without penalty, is a win for big phrama and HMOs. "Gee, this is the best we can do" is a cop-out from the mouths of relatively privileged, complacent sheeple. There is a qualitative difference in accepting the dictatorship of one class over another as a fact of life vs. accepting this as a fact of life that is unchangeable in a fundemental way.
When this latest Health Care Bill was announced, stocks in the largest HMOs (Cigna being one of them) went up 52% between all three. It is NOT about saving lives, it is about saving the stock portfolios of the top 1% of the society.
We live in a country where over 50% of our income taxes goes for warfare every year (even as O-Bomb-Yah continues to borrow money from China at 60 billion a week + interest to keep troops deployed in the Middle East). Yet, we are told there is "no money" for universal health care, education, or housing assistance (or homelessness prevention). Bulls--t!...
Stand for something, or fall for anything.
Anything less than full coverage for all, without penalty, is a win for big phrama and HMOs. "Gee, this is the best we can do" is a cop-out from the mouths of relatively privileged, complacent sheeple. There is a qualitative difference in accepting the dictatorship of one class over another as a fact of life vs. accepting this as a fact of life that is unchangeable in a fundemental way.
When this latest Health Care Bill was announced, stocks in the largest HMOs (Cigna being one of them) went up 52% between all three. It is NOT about saving lives, it is about saving the stock portfolios of the top 1% of the society.
We live in a country where over 50% of our income taxes goes for warfare every year (even as O-Bomb-Yah continues to borrow money from China at 60 billion a week + interest to keep troops deployed in the Middle East). Yet, we are told there is "no money" for universal health care, education, or housing assistance (or homelessness prevention). Bulls--t!...
Stand for something, or fall for anything.
We are not a 'black belt factory' or a 'Mc Dojo'.
"Each student is required to know and be able to recite each section of this manual from memory with few errors, answer any and all exam questions presented by his or her Sensei (teacher), and properly execute all techniques to the satisfaction of his or her Sensei and Sempai (senior students) to receive an Kyu ranking (1st – 5th). The 5 Kyus or grades, are divided between 5 belt colors: white (5th kyu), blue (4th kyu), yellow (3rd kyu), green (2nd kyu), brown (1st kyu).
Each student must also be able teach the techniques, concepts, drills, safety principles, and guiding philosophy of this system in order to receive his or her 1st degree (1st dan) black belt and become a full instructor. A student is eligible for an instructor’s exam after completing two years as an active black belt under a qualified Sensei. All degrees beyond the 1st degree (1st dan) can only be awarded by the candidate satisfying all Kyu and 1st Dan requirements outlined above and taking an exam issued by a certified council of instructors in good standing.
Black belt (1st dan; “degree”) means you have mastered the basics. 3rd dan is the highest degree an instructor can achieve in this system through examination and testing. Any dan grades beyond 3rd are honorary, based upon ones dedication to this art/science, as well as helping others."
From "Shigaisen: Official Manual of the GCL Method of Modern Karate: The Way of Real Fighting Karate As I Understand It". by Sensei Gregory C. Lewis.
Each student must also be able teach the techniques, concepts, drills, safety principles, and guiding philosophy of this system in order to receive his or her 1st degree (1st dan) black belt and become a full instructor. A student is eligible for an instructor’s exam after completing two years as an active black belt under a qualified Sensei. All degrees beyond the 1st degree (1st dan) can only be awarded by the candidate satisfying all Kyu and 1st Dan requirements outlined above and taking an exam issued by a certified council of instructors in good standing.
Black belt (1st dan; “degree”) means you have mastered the basics. 3rd dan is the highest degree an instructor can achieve in this system through examination and testing. Any dan grades beyond 3rd are honorary, based upon ones dedication to this art/science, as well as helping others."
From "Shigaisen: Official Manual of the GCL Method of Modern Karate: The Way of Real Fighting Karate As I Understand It". by Sensei Gregory C. Lewis.
Sunday, December 20, 2009
Wednesday, December 9, 2009
The Free Market and Health Care
the "truly free market" is a myth and has never existed. It has always been regulated to some extent, generally to the benefit of the white and wealthy.
Deep inequalities both political and economic have always existed as part and parcel of the "free market" (even Adam Smith, author of "The Wealth of Nations" advocated for a certain amount of gov't regulation and occasional intervention for poverty management. The "free market" serves a particular class interest, usually the merchants (specifically the early corporations, like Hudson's Bay Company) or the nobility.
In the Americas, this class interest was expressed as politically and economically as a necessary, strategic and crucial part of the free-market, specifically accumulation, and is still a key to its existance: slavery. But that is for another time.
Single-Payer will NOT happen, unless 1,000s are ready to die fighting for it. 1,000s may die anyway due to the breadth and depth of how entrenched the lobbyists, HMOs, Insurance Companies, and their people in Congress and the Senate are; and what to lengths they will go to get paid and stay that way. These political relationships also effect access to health information, including preventitive. These realtionships also help maintain poverty. Those who live in such conditions have less chance of gaining access to this information, since neither goverment or business make serious effort to get the information to this population (the majority of the world).
Indeed, Health Care is greatly impacted by the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and effected by what these wars a truly about, in many ways (too numerous to go into here). 50% of the taxes we pay collectively in the U.S. goes to maintaining the military; the U.S. also borows 60 billion a week from China (plus interest) to field its military in these two places (and globally).
Few in Congress or the Senate openly advocate ending the war(s) or cutting the military budget. There is no mystery as to why: the allocation (theft, really) of resources and "opening new markets". This is the priority of big business and its government. And the entrepreneurs, corporate officers, shareholders,
As was true in the 19th century, in order to "open" a new market, they must first "pacify" the population they seek to conquor by neutralizing genuine resistance movements and recruiting/making deals with opportunists (local political leaders, large merchants, merchant associations, and fraternal organizations) amongst the conquored.
Now, if its true that 1in 3 children is without health insurance and 45,000 adults die in the U.S. every year for lack of health insurance, what does this tell you about the health care hu$tle, but also the overall hu$tle?
And for those who are serious about a public option that serves more than just a relative handful, what does this tell you about our opposition and what must really be done in order to overcome that opposition?
Deep inequalities both political and economic have always existed as part and parcel of the "free market" (even Adam Smith, author of "The Wealth of Nations" advocated for a certain amount of gov't regulation and occasional intervention for poverty management. The "free market" serves a particular class interest, usually the merchants (specifically the early corporations, like Hudson's Bay Company) or the nobility.
In the Americas, this class interest was expressed as politically and economically as a necessary, strategic and crucial part of the free-market, specifically accumulation, and is still a key to its existance: slavery. But that is for another time.
Single-Payer will NOT happen, unless 1,000s are ready to die fighting for it. 1,000s may die anyway due to the breadth and depth of how entrenched the lobbyists, HMOs, Insurance Companies, and their people in Congress and the Senate are; and what to lengths they will go to get paid and stay that way. These political relationships also effect access to health information, including preventitive. These realtionships also help maintain poverty. Those who live in such conditions have less chance of gaining access to this information, since neither goverment or business make serious effort to get the information to this population (the majority of the world).
Indeed, Health Care is greatly impacted by the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and effected by what these wars a truly about, in many ways (too numerous to go into here). 50% of the taxes we pay collectively in the U.S. goes to maintaining the military; the U.S. also borows 60 billion a week from China (plus interest) to field its military in these two places (and globally).
Few in Congress or the Senate openly advocate ending the war(s) or cutting the military budget. There is no mystery as to why: the allocation (theft, really) of resources and "opening new markets". This is the priority of big business and its government. And the entrepreneurs, corporate officers, shareholders,
As was true in the 19th century, in order to "open" a new market, they must first "pacify" the population they seek to conquor by neutralizing genuine resistance movements and recruiting/making deals with opportunists (local political leaders, large merchants, merchant associations, and fraternal organizations) amongst the conquored.
Now, if its true that 1in 3 children is without health insurance and 45,000 adults die in the U.S. every year for lack of health insurance, what does this tell you about the health care hu$tle, but also the overall hu$tle?
And for those who are serious about a public option that serves more than just a relative handful, what does this tell you about our opposition and what must really be done in order to overcome that opposition?
Sunday, December 6, 2009
A Reply to Sable Verity's "An Open Letter to The Family of Maurice Clemmons".
My reply to an Open Letter to The Family Of Maurice Clemmons and Ricky Hinton by Sable Verity.
Not nearly enough is being said in regards to the changes about to come to the northwest (and nationally) as far as local law-enforcement, the legislature, and even the Obama administration and Congress is concerned in light of recent events; and what that will mean to the community.
For one, we can expect a serious re-visit of policies regarding everything from how traffic stops are done to communication between detectives and prosecutors. We can also expect sped up trials and an increase in delays and/or in denials of appeals.
We can also expect more police brutality on the streets. On the day this suspect was killed, I witnessed a Seattle K-9 officer kick a downed suspect who was surrounded, cuffed, and wearing an anti-spitting hood in the middle of the street on Broadway. He was loud and obnoxious, but under control. Another witness told me that they had alrealy soaked him from head to toe in pepper spray.
It has also been revealed that the military has repeatedly violated the Posse Comitatus Act: you cannot use the military as a domestic police force. Most recently, a member of military intelligence who inflitrated a local peace group was outed. I can forsee this occuring more in local jurisdictions, particularly in outlying counties experiencing hiring freezes due to budget shortfalls.
Also, the construction of "for profit" prisons: Now there will be an economic incentive to make arrests and get convictions by any means necessary, just like in the days of slavery, but in a form that can be morally justified with greater ease; through the use of both legitimate feelings of fear (amplified by non-stop coverage and a steady monologue of sensationalist hysterics) and reactionary, chauvanistic amerikkkan ("white") nationalism.
Sheriff Arpaio of Arizona is a living, breathing, almost iconic, example of state power as a weapon of racialized political (and economic) terror. Sadly, so was the late Ofc. Tina Griswold (albeit on a smaller, lower-profile scale): according to the Lakewood Police Union's blog, she was a well-known activist amongst the Tea Bagger movement, which includes openly racist anti-immigrant organizers and right-wing anti-government forces, many of whom are very well-armed.
How many of them are also police officers in communities of color? How much of "ticking-timebomb" are they?
Something else for you all to consider is this: to current understand police/community relations mean you must understand what their original purpose was; to unearth that "hidden history".
Even today, this purpose helps shape everything from how suspects of various nationalities are treated, to what communities get the privilege of faster response times.
This also has an effect on how the family percieves and reacts to the negative public reaction they are getting.
So, one the one hand, they are making t-shirts to honor him as a loved one, and they are condemned for that. At the same time, if it wasn't for his aunt, he probably would still be at large. It is possible there are a signifigant number of folks condemning her amongst the family's own neighbors, friends, and peers for "sniching". There is a material basis for the mindset drives these to acts; one that trumps mere "morality". It's called "survival".
The links below help to illustrate how this relationship came about. This is important to understanding the historic and current relationship of the police to residents of color vs. law-enforcement's relationship to our settler ("white") neighbors today.
Exhibit A
Exhibit B
Exhibit C
Example 1
Example 2
Example 3
For one, we can expect a serious re-visit of policies regarding everything from how traffic stops are done to communication between detectives and prosecutors. We can also expect sped up trials and an increase in delays and/or in denials of appeals.
We can also expect more police brutality on the streets. On the day this suspect was killed, I witnessed a Seattle K-9 officer kick a downed suspect who was surrounded, cuffed, and wearing an anti-spitting hood in the middle of the street on Broadway. He was loud and obnoxious, but under control. Another witness told me that they had alrealy soaked him from head to toe in pepper spray.
It has also been revealed that the military has repeatedly violated the Posse Comitatus Act: you cannot use the military as a domestic police force. Most recently, a member of military intelligence who inflitrated a local peace group was outed. I can forsee this occuring more in local jurisdictions, particularly in outlying counties experiencing hiring freezes due to budget shortfalls.
Also, the construction of "for profit" prisons: Now there will be an economic incentive to make arrests and get convictions by any means necessary, just like in the days of slavery, but in a form that can be morally justified with greater ease; through the use of both legitimate feelings of fear (amplified by non-stop coverage and a steady monologue of sensationalist hysterics) and reactionary, chauvanistic amerikkkan ("white") nationalism.
Sheriff Arpaio of Arizona is a living, breathing, almost iconic, example of state power as a weapon of racialized political (and economic) terror. Sadly, so was the late Ofc. Tina Griswold (albeit on a smaller, lower-profile scale): according to the Lakewood Police Union's blog, she was a well-known activist amongst the Tea Bagger movement, which includes openly racist anti-immigrant organizers and right-wing anti-government forces, many of whom are very well-armed.
How many of them are also police officers in communities of color? How much of "ticking-timebomb" are they?
Something else for you all to consider is this: to current understand police/community relations mean you must understand what their original purpose was; to unearth that "hidden history".
This also has an effect on how the family percieves and reacts to the negative public reaction they are getting.
So, one the one hand, they are making t-shirts to honor him as a loved one, and they are condemned for that. At the same time, if it wasn't for his aunt, he probably would still be at large. It is possible there are a signifigant number of folks condemning her amongst the family's own neighbors, friends, and peers for "sniching". There is a material basis for the mindset drives these to acts; one that trumps mere "morality". It's called "survival".
The links below help to illustrate how this relationship came about. This is important to understanding the historic and current relationship of the police to residents of color vs. law-enforcement's relationship to our settler ("white") neighbors today.
Exhibit B
Exhibit C
Example 1
Example 2
Example 3
Sable Verity Gets her "Wake Up Call" @ the Lakewood Morgue
The Sable Verity Blog for 11/29/09: "I'm home now. After a very long, trying and emotional day in Tacoma. Stayed until the officers' bodies arrived at the morgue. There were hundreds of people on the streets, and it was silent when the bodies arrived. Lots of red flags. Lots of tears. Lots of anger. One man said to me "one of your people did it." Yeah."
Me @ Sable (on FB): Actually, I'm glad he said that. He, unlike most in the NW, is not afraid to "keep it real" and put his/her politics out front, raw and without apology.
Of course his comment didn't bother you: you fight harder for the police (and the system of capitalism and white supremacy generally) than you do for their victims or for those who's tax dollars pay for them to abuse us in the name of 'law and order' (the MAJORITY of us).
In fact, you fight harder for this system than that ignorant redneck does, when doing so is far more in his material interest than it is in yours!
Of course his comment didn't bother you: you fight harder for the police (and the system of capitalism and white supremacy generally) than you do for their victims or for those who's tax dollars pay for them to abuse us in the name of 'law and order' (the MAJORITY of us).
What Karate is NOT...!
Check out the video, then see my commentary below:
1. It is CLEAR that the person this black belt was facing did NOT have all of his mental faculties. The "threat" presented did not match the response delivered.
2. The instructor invited this person on to the floor to get pounded out by one of his senior students. This is inexcusable.
3. The black belt obviously has little to no full-contact experience. In addition, he obviously has no knowledge of how the law defines "self-defense" and "assault".
From a technical perspective, the black belt's technique was sloppy, weak, and slow. He took way too long to stop and drop his opponent: he hit him first (kicked him, WEAKLY, in the groin), and then toyed with him until he got tired; then when he saw an opportunity, he knocked him down and stomped him into unconciousness.
Again, inexcusable.
As I was taught, Karate is designed to make the weak people strong, and the strong people humble. This video is a demonstration of weakness and egotistical arrogance of both instructor and student. They are both worthy of what they dished out upon this man.
And don't get me started on the underlying racist theme of this whole incident, namely a white man instructing a black man to attack another black man for his amusement. The United States has a terrible history of this sort of thing, from bare-knuckle boxing on plantations (i.e. - human cockfighting) during slavery, to the picnic (originally called "pic-NIG"; public lynching as a 'family-friendly' event).
One would think that those who train in war arts (especially arts that come to the U.S. from countries the U.S. has conquored, colonized, and exploited), such as these "people", would know this, understand this, and act accordingly.
Apparently, NOT.
1. It is CLEAR that the person this black belt was facing did NOT have all of his mental faculties. The "threat" presented did not match the response delivered.
2. The instructor invited this person on to the floor to get pounded out by one of his senior students. This is inexcusable.
3. The black belt obviously has little to no full-contact experience. In addition, he obviously has no knowledge of how the law defines "self-defense" and "assault".
From a technical perspective, the black belt's technique was sloppy, weak, and slow. He took way too long to stop and drop his opponent: he hit him first (kicked him, WEAKLY, in the groin), and then toyed with him until he got tired; then when he saw an opportunity, he knocked him down and stomped him into unconciousness.
Again, inexcusable.
As I was taught, Karate is designed to make the weak people strong, and the strong people humble. This video is a demonstration of weakness and egotistical arrogance of both instructor and student. They are both worthy of what they dished out upon this man.
And don't get me started on the underlying racist theme of this whole incident, namely a white man instructing a black man to attack another black man for his amusement. The United States has a terrible history of this sort of thing, from bare-knuckle boxing on plantations (i.e. - human cockfighting) during slavery, to the picnic (originally called "pic-NIG"; public lynching as a 'family-friendly' event).
One would think that those who train in war arts (especially arts that come to the U.S. from countries the U.S. has conquored, colonized, and exploited), such as these "people", would know this, understand this, and act accordingly.
Apparently, NOT.
Friday, December 4, 2009
The WTO protests in Seattle: Phony opposition to oppression is in fact support for Oppression.
"The character of reformism is based on unprincipled class collaboration with our enemy"- Black Liberation Army (BLA).
The WTO protests were a major failure of the so-called "progressive" forces. I have been listening to all kinds revisionists re-tell the history on KBCS and elsewhere all week during this the 10 anniversary.
Many of these folks forget that I WAS THERE ALSO from DAY ONE (as in day one of the first organizing meetings of the Direct Action Network and Seattle Independent Media Center).
Unlike many of them, I did not use the event as means of "career advancement"!
Key events left out of the commentaries, include (but are not limited to):
* Open hostility to, and attempted sabotage of the participation of, the African-American Heritage Museum struggle by the so-called "left" in Seattle.
*The failure of organized labor to make good on their promise of a general strike during the event, despite hot rhetoric from local labor leaders prior to the event, as well as hostility to the idea by socialist organizations (specifically the International Socialist Organization), due to sectarianism and organizational cultism.
* The irresponsibility and rank opportunism of the "leaders" of the Direct Action Network.
* The irresponsibility and rank opportunism of the Olympia IWW.
* The racist depictions of black protesters as "looters" vs. the depictions of the white anarchists as "expropriators" by the Seattle IMCs newspaper.
* David Solnit calling for the arrest of "violent anarchists" at the joint press conference hosted by his organization and the Seattle IWW.
Let's REALLY get into this, so as to NOT repeat it!
The WTO protests were a major failure of the so-called "progressive" forces. I have been listening to all kinds revisionists re-tell the history on KBCS and elsewhere all week during this the 10 anniversary.
Many of these folks forget that I WAS THERE ALSO from DAY ONE (as in day one of the first organizing meetings of the Direct Action Network and Seattle Independent Media Center).
Unlike many of them, I did not use the event as means of "career advancement"!
Key events left out of the commentaries, include (but are not limited to):
* Open hostility to, and attempted sabotage of the participation of, the African-American Heritage Museum struggle by the so-called "left" in Seattle.
*The failure of organized labor to make good on their promise of a general strike during the event, despite hot rhetoric from local labor leaders prior to the event, as well as hostility to the idea by socialist organizations (specifically the International Socialist Organization), due to sectarianism and organizational cultism.
* The irresponsibility and rank opportunism of the "leaders" of the Direct Action Network.
* The irresponsibility and rank opportunism of the Olympia IWW.
* The racist depictions of black protesters as "looters" vs. the depictions of the white anarchists as "expropriators" by the Seattle IMCs newspaper.
* David Solnit calling for the arrest of "violent anarchists" at the joint press conference hosted by his organization and the Seattle IWW.
Let's REALLY get into this, so as to NOT repeat it!
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