Question and Answer #2
Jeff: These days, Black Lives Matter (BLM), a non-governmental organization (NGO) is splashed all over the global mainstream media and has broad, popular support. However, it's not all such a rosy, revolutionary picture. Soon after forming, it took $100 million in donations via the Ford Foundation and affiliate NGOs. Just recently, George Soros' foundations have pumped $220 million into Black justice groups, as well as Antifa and many others. These are astronomical sums of money.
It is widely known that Ford Foundation and left-wing philanthropists are largely fronts for the CIA and deep state, hiding behind their liberal image. This strongly suggests that BLM, Antifa and their ancillary groups are being used as managed opposition to satisfy the ambitions of our oligarchic 1% and are likely fully infiltrated by agents and fifth columnists. Occupy Wall Street was another prime example of this happening.
What to do? If you were handed the BLM movement, what would you do to try to right the ship? Was MOVE infiltrated? I've read the Black Panthers also had, and I assume still fight the same problem.
What recommendations do you have for anti-imperial, anti-capitalist people who want to organize and take their movement to the next level, without becoming managed opposition?
Mumia: Dear Jeff: Ona Mover! Greetings! As I contemplated your last question, I remembered a book I read several years ago entitled The Revolution Will Not Be Funded. It illustrated how the right used its excess capital to build and sustain think tanks, which intellectually supported the system of capitalism, the wealth of the left had no quarrel, for its excess capital went to social services, but not the erection of ideological structures. The authors essentially instructed activists to not get caught in these weapons of the wealthy. But when you think about it, doesn't it make sense? Why should it surprise us that the system perpetuates the system? Who expects capitalism to build revolutionary structures that are inherently anticapitalist? BLM is not the BPP except in the mind of Rudy Giuliani, perhaps. The BPP was nominally politically independent because its newspaper funded its operations. When poor, black people organize, the wealthy seek to control and moderate them. When that doesn't work, it unleashes its "hidden" to extinguish such movements. Hence the ferocity of the attacks on groups like the BPP and MOVE. It unleashes its corporate media to demonize those who resist the forces of exploitation.
Remember this? American revolutionaries were invariably rich guys who fought to preserve a system of slavery, captive labor. George Washington was one of the richest men in the colonies, owning hundreds of people and vast tracts of land. Thomas Jefferson also owned hundreds of black captives, but had the decency to write that one hour of slavery's misery was worse than wages of British rule over America that sparked a revolution. Oppressive systems continue to buy off people so that those systems can continue to function. There's an old saying. He who takes the Kings coin dances to his tune.
If BLM were mine. I'd institute an intense study of history to show how systems try to show how systems try to defang popular movements. I develop an independent economic stream to support organizational frameworks, they teach COINTELPRO efforts to destabilize social change movements. That said, BLM or Smart inform young folks who may not want nor need anything from an old head like me. That's because the youth movements must be youth movements, that is their essence, that is who they were born to be. alla best, majà „ ª
Question and Answer #3:
Jeff: Dear Mumia, History seems to repeat itself across our Pale Blue Dot.
In 1962-1964, the leaders of the African National Congress (ANC) in the Republic of South Africa were rounded up. They were convicted for their political activities and beliefs, including Nelson Mandela. The Apartheid government wanted to put them to death, but international pressure forced them into sentencing them to prison for life. Apartheid eventually fell, due to years of internal and global pressure, as well as economic sanctions. Starting in 1985, these freedom fighters began to be released from incarceration, with Mandela being the last in 1990.
In 1966, the Black Panther Party was founded. In 1972, MOVE was founded in your hometown of Philadelphia, also becoming a primary target of the CIA-FBI genocidal war on all Black liberation movements. In 1978, nine MOVE members were rounded up and sent to prison for life for their political activities and beliefs. You actively supported MOVE and in 1981-82, also became a political prisoner and given the death penalty, which was later commuted to life. Starting in 2018, the MOVE 9 who were still alive behind bars began to be released from prison, with the last one set free in February 2020. You are still in prison for life and trying to get out.
Question: how do you compare the ANCs liberation movement and Nelson Mandela's cause to eventually be released from political prison, to that of the Black Panther Party, MOVE and your efforts to gain your freedom?
Mumia: Dear Bro. Jeff; I found your historical analysis interesting, but of course history may be similar, but rarely exact. That's because the struggles of Black peoples are different when we consider nationalism and so-called citizenship 'rights', for example. The ANC fought for a majority-rule state; Black Americans tend to struggle for rights within the US empire, rarely rights to a national homeland, such as the Republic of New Africa, (or the original Nation of Islam) for example. That said, both movements struggled for Black dignity and self-determination against the racist state power. That, to my view, is a significant degree of difference.
Plus, ANC had to surrender some of its key positions to grasp state power, as is often the case when two sides begin to negotiate.
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