A Call to Action
Put forth on March 7, 2007 by XicanoPwr
Posted in Aztlán, Civil Rights, Mobilization, Raza
There is an urgency this minute, I am alarmed by the complacency in reaction to the things that are taking place right here, right now in the United States of America. Most people of color love to say about the bygone days of the struggle, what they have been through to maintain what they call freedom and how we must preserve our faux freedom. While all these ideals are noble, they must be put on the backburner because the struggle is extremely further from being over. In fact, in the large scheme of things, the war has just begun. The more complacent we become, the more susceptible we are to being misled and carried down to the path to our own self-destruction. It is time to wake up before it is too late.
The symptoms of this nationwide problem are best exemplified among people who are widely disinterested with anything having to do with education, politics, spirituality, health, the social structure, and the issues affecting their community and the country as a whole. We are a society of sleepwalkers, not wanting to care or get involved.
The most dangerous people that exist right now are not the ones who are running White House, but the ones on the streets of our municipal communities, where solidarity was once shown between the communities of color are now being replaced with disputes of quen es el mas chingon. This type of thinking is dangerous because it enslaves to apathy, which leads us towards our slaughter by coveting to be entertained than being engaged. The opiates of the masses these days has to do with materialistic goods, such as - pop-culture, music, sports, fashion, movies, television, computers, video games, cell phones, alcohol, sex, drugs, and whatever suits our fancy. With all these distractions and idol worship, how could anyone possibly trust this generation to lead the world in fifteen to twenty years?
The question can be asked. Is there really anybody we can blame for the chaos we are in? Or do we actually fear that being idealistic will eventually become compromised, so why bother since the natural order of things is to start off young and energetic and idealistic and well, you know, drop everything because we got ours? Remember, it was the Woodstock kids that emigrated to Wall Street suits. Have they passed down their pessimistic view? However, can we absolutely put the blame on them for throwing in the towel, grabbing the money and running? Or maybe they too fell victim to corporate elites’ societal pressures because eventually everyone has to “sell out” when the rent is two months past due or forced to lick clean the last jar of peanut butter.
The truth is, this social phenomenon has been created make sure that the status quo continues. And those wishing to challenge the apathy or extend a hand of help in creating a movement toward exchange is coped with approximately and eventually are vilified and worse turned into the authorities in certain instances. I believe this mass warping of people’s minds is today’s offshoot of COINTELPRO. Their collective minds are willing to do whatever it takes to squash individuality and all forms of free speech that do not go along with the government’s utopian world view. A police state continues to form slowly, the hardest hit right now are the communities of color. If we do not act now to become aware, educate our family and community, and establish a real movement to ward off the threat of the fourth Nazi Reich, we might as well, live the rest of our lives on our knees.
Global change requires a strong willed, moralistic leader with underlying caliber and ethical pursuit. However, political power cannot be won by a single minority group. But through alliances with other oppressed peoples and the working class, a revolutionary movement can be built as occurred in revolutionary upheavals (1848, 1917) and the mass struggles of the 1930s.
The future lies in building strong broad-based multi-tendency extremist organization that must comprise liberal and revolutionary nationalists, socialists, union militants, church activists and idealist and visionaries. It is time to call for the unity against all orders of oppression, comprising class exploitation, racism, patriarchy, homophobia, anti-immigration prejudice and imperialism. The war against structural is a relevant arena for our struggle, and must be fought head-on. I cannot do this alone, the question is - who is willing to step up and lend a hand.
A discussion needs to take place, opinions need to be expressed and shared. So who is in favor of this strategy? Let me hear your thoughts.
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This is the blog of Edmundo "XicanoPwr" Rocha, a social worker, an activist, freelance writer and founder and editor of The Sanctuary. My interests include: immigration reform, critical race theory and it's interaction with equality/inequality and freedom/oppression as they relate to the experiences of people of color in the Americas.
Para Justicia y Libertad is a Latino-centered political blog focusing on the humanistic perspective of politics, history, and society as they relate to the Latina/o community throughout Texas and the United States.
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The civil rights movement in the United States had something we do not. They had a very clear goal: to build the “Beloved Community.” This Christian ideal of the human race living together as a family–as children of God–was what inspired people to make the sacrifices it took to succeed over deeply entrenched systems of racism, segregation, and militarism.
Make no mistake, we need a goal, but not any old goal will do. We need the same goal. Dr. King said “We are all tied in a single garment of destiny,” and “what affects one directly affects all indirectly.” Because of this goal, the civil rights workers of the 1960’s acted very peculiarly. They refused to hate those who hated them. They refused to hit those that hit them. They insisted on loving their enemies. When they were physically attacked, they did not return blows, nor even resist, but instead turned the other cheek.
John Lewis (then President of SNCC and now Congressman) put it this way. “It is not hard to find forgiveness. And this, Jim Lawson taught us, is at the essence of the nonviolent way of life–the capacity to forgive. When you can truly understand and feel, even as a person is cursing you to your face, even as he is spitting on you, or pushing a lit cigarette into your neck, or beating you with a truncheon–if you can understand and feel even in the midst of those critical and often physically painful moments that your attacker is as much a victim as you are, that he is a victim of the forces that have shaped and fed his anger and fury, then you are well on your way to the nonviolent life…. This sense of love, this sense of peace, the capacity for compassion, is something you carry inside yourself every waking minute of the day. It shapes your response to a curt cashier in the grocery store or to a driver cutting you off in traffic just as surely as it keeps you from striking back at a state trooper who might be kicking you in the ribs because you dared to march in protest against an oppressive government. If you want to create an open society, your means of doing so must be consistent with the society you want to creates. Means and ends are absolutely inseparable. Violence begets violence. Hatred begets hatred. Anger begets anger, every minute of the day, in the smallest of moments as well as the largest.”
In so doing, they not only ended segregation, but moved our nation in the direction of unity and healing.
If we hope to have the kind of results they did, and hope to be the type of people they were, we need to adopt the philosophy and methods taught by Jesus of Nazareth, Mohandas Gandhi, and Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. If we fail this test of character we will have no more claim to the beloved community than the Minutemen.
Inspiring words, XP. You’ve got me thinking.
We are here in class, just reading your article. It is a sixth grade class in Brownsville, TX. And what I think about your article is that that story is great because we shouldn’t fight with each other. And like you said in your article, if we have to fight to see who is the “jerk” we will, but it won’t get us anywhere.
Lots to chew on here, XP. Is anyone else bothered by the press’ recent interest in highlighting the “problem” of brown-on-black violence? It is to the benefit of the ruling elites that brown & black be framed as being at odds.
I’ve been eyeing that for a bit, too, Arcturus. It’s the ole Divide and Conquer, it is.
The first time this dynamic began catching my eye recently, and a good rejoinder.
John - you are correct that we are lacking a unifying goal, something what we want to strive for - it was easy to define racism, it was overt like segregation. Once the laws were passed, it just went underground, terms changed and it was easier to manipulate.
That is a very powerful quote you used. It is hard not feel anger towards the oppress, that person is physically hurting you. Living in the South, the non-violent movement was very effective, just like Gandhi’s movement was before him. It worked in CA with Cesar because violence was very overt. People have to remember that violence is initiated by those who oppress, who exploit, who fail to recognize others as persons and not by those who are oppressed, exploited, and unrecognized. It is not the helpless, subject to terror, who initiate terror, but the violent, who with their power create the concrete situation which begets the “rejects of life.”
We must not prove them right because for the oppressors, it is always the oppressed who are the who are “violent,” “barbaric,” or “vicious” we react to their violence.
Welcome Linda, thank you for replying. You have a smart teacher, not because your teacher is making you read my post, but because your teacher is having you learn to start thinking for yourself instead of being told what to think, which is a good thing. One of the things that makes me sad, teachers are forced to read you what you should lean, so students can pass a dumb TAKS test. This is not teaching, it is narrating a subject, while you sit an listen to become lifeless. No wonder students hate going to school. I used to work for an after school program and my students would complain how they hated to go school because their teachers were running the school like it was the army - sit down, don’t talk, open book, TAKS TAKS TAKS. Like I said, you have a smart teacher.
So it makes me happy to see students like yourself interested and thinking about things that are happening outside of school and home. What class were you reading this in?
The whole brown vs black has been going on here in Texas for a long time, especially in Houston and Dallas. I agree with you Arcturus and Nez, I think it is ruling elites who are using thing as a divide and conquer. Nez I am glad you provided the link to your post and the one that Daniel did. I was really floored to see Sara say what she said, ethnic cleansing? That is total BS.
When I lived in LA, both the Brown and Black were united and the same thing occurred in Chicago, hell, even the gangs were united within the umbrella groups. It was not odd to find a Latino, an Asian and African American gangs united under an umbrella group. It frustrated me that here in Texas, we are like oil and water. It think we were just an experiment to see if we can be divided and conquer.
i believe we are all trapped within a capitalist contextual finger puzzle. want out? keep struggling.
Congrats Xicanopwr: Food For Thought
The Global is Local and the Local is Global:
Leaders, educators and communities need to provide students with multiple learning opportunities for them to develop their critical skills and dispositions for social action and to improve their life chances in a participatory democracy.
Building harmonious communities are not the exclusive domain of Christianity. Harmonious communities don’t have to coexist with entrenched systems of racism, classism, sexism and homophobia. Developing “community” has become a challenge for democracies that have had a history of personal, cultural and institutional discrimination against non-white peoples.
Is consensus needed for reaching an agreement on a common goal for the ideal society? Who controls the discourse, knowledge and power that decides? If we seek justice how do we define and decide which approach do use?
Violence breeds violence and continues the cycle of oppression. Non-violence doesn’t equate to accepting oppressive conditions but should be about utilizing alternative non-violent approaches to resisting oppression.
It is too easy to categorize societies as open or closed or democratic or non-democratic. No society is perfect and all fall somewhere along the continuum, are flexible and respond to internal and external pressures. To engage in “either or” explanations is binary and limited. For many Chicanos/Mexican-Americans, African-Americans/Blacks and other marginalized people the feeling of living under an “open society” has often felt like living in a closed society. The Supreme Court decision of Brown v Board of Education in 1954 outlawed segregation but did not eliminate it. Inner city schools today throughout the United States are more segregated then ever. Latinos and African-Americans in the United States continue to attend some of the most segregated schools in the most decrepit school buildings in the country. Race matters and society continues to struggle with addressing the legacy left by a history of personal, cultural and institutional racism against non-white peoples.
Racism and internalized racism foster the stereotypes and racial hatred espoused by the white minuteman and their people of color counter parts that support the anti-immigrant sentiments of their organization. Internalized racism is the offspring of systemic and structural racism. Oppression dehumanizes both the oppressor and the oppressed. Oppression can manifest itself in the forms of exploitation, marginalization, powerlessness, cultural imperialism, and violence.
The Black and Brown communities are not inoculated from internalizing personal, cultural and institutional stereotypes, prejudices and hatred about people of color. In my experience in working with these two groups discuss diversity and the stereotypes they had generated about each other, I found they often generate very similar stereotypes about each other. Some common stereotypes are lazy, not intelligent, dirty, thief, womanizers and many others. Stereotypes generalize and rationalize false perceptions of different groups. What Black and Brown communities need is to develop cultural, racial/ethnic awareness, understanding and knowledge of each other. Our struggles in the United Sates are unique but at the same time we have many similarities and aspirations. Our common grounds can help us build solidarity.
Latin-America has a lot to learn about racism. The Latino lens on “blackness” was skewed by the colonizer’s white Euro-centric attitudes, beliefs and values toward the indigenous people of Mexico. If you remember “Mimin Penguin” educated many in Latin American to develop negative perceptions, attitudes and beliefs toward dark people of color and indigenous populations in the Americas. The mantra of “quien es el mas chingon” plays itself at the local and global levels as well. Those that have the power or position themselves with the dominant power define the images of those less powerful.
Keep it Up
Arriba Con la Causa!
andrea lewis - Welcome and thanks for stopping by. I guess the question is how long can we as individuals can actually invest personally to the struggle before we actually throw in the when we are so tied into monetary system. The whole monetary system is such a beast, it is everywhere. There is probably a way, but how is the question.
mariachiloco - Gracias, I appreciate you stopping by and sharing your view. You have summed up everything I have been saying on this blog in your comment.
What Black and Brown communities need is to develop cultural, racial/ethnic awareness, understanding and knowledge of each other.
Absolutely!! In fact, I think that is the first goal we should start working on, if not we give into the divide and conquer.
Thanks again!!
Paulo - ¡Hasta la victoria siempre, amigo!
Mariachiloco,
I agree with all you had to say. You are right to say that Christianity is not the only social institution that seeks community. But however we seek it, we must seek a community where former oppressors and former oppressed can live in unity and love.
And thank you for pointing out that non-violence does not mean resignation. It does not mean waiting or hoping. It means doing. Dr. King said (I can’t find the exact quote right now, it’s in a book I lent out), ‘Those that call for violence have something in common with those who say we should wait patiently. At the end of the day, neither of them do anything to end injustice, while the nonviolent activist accomplishes his goal.’
Great post. YES the current mindwarp has been generated in order to maintain the status quo. Ditto the current focus on brown/black violence. ALSO, things are so bad now that just being quiet is attractive … I am less active than I was, I realize, and it is because I am less hopeful, or looking for an individual out … as in, what country should I move to.
Actual revolutionary movement, necessary, I think you’re right. Scary but true. I guess that means I’ll sign on!
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