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The Official Website of Kiilu Nyashahttp://www.kiilunyasha.blogspot.com/
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From The Official Website of Kiilu Nyasha
.
Kiilu Nyasha is a revolutionary journalist and former member of the Black Panther Party. Through the end
of 2009, Kiilu hosted a weekly TV program, "Freedom Is A Constant Struggle," on SF Live, and many
shows are archived here. Beginning in May, 2012, "Freedom..." returned to the airwaves every first and
third Thursday for a live half hour on BAVC Commons (SF).
It can be streamed at http://www.bavc.org/public-access-tv/program-schedule/channel-76-stream. And
archives can be found by searching the title at www.archive.org.
Kiilu writes for various online and print publications and her blog: kiilunyasha.blogspot.com.
A former radio programmer, she has worked for KPFA (Berkeley), SF Liberation Radio, Free Radio
Berkeley, and KPOO in SF. She can be contacted via email: [email protected]
Be sure to visit Kiilu's pages at YouTube, Facebook, and MySpace.
From the Official Website of Kiilu Nyasha
http://www.kiilunyasha.blogspot.com/
Charles Garry, Kiilu Nyasha, and Huey P. Newton in Connecticut, 1970.
2 | P a g e
From The Official Website of Kiilu Nyasha
Recent Blog Post:
Thursday, October 18, 2012
ON BOYCOTTING THE ELECTION 2012 by Kiilu Nyasha
If voting could change the system, they would make it illegal. (Jamil Al-Amin, aka
H. Rap Brown)
Here are a few arguments for those who insist on voting for the lesser of evil.
One of the first things Black folks say is, “We fought and died for the right to
vote.”
Yes, having fought in every war beginning with the revolutionary war of
independence from Britain, we have always done the dying; we've always been on
the front lines of struggle in this country. SNCC, Fannie Lou Hamer, and all the
valiant freedom fighters of the civil rights movement are to be honored and revered
for their uncompromising fight for our right to vote.
However, after we won that particular battle in1965, the reactionaries in power
initiated new ways to suppress and vacate our vote -- new rules and laws of
disenfranchisement, such as denying prisoners and felons the vote, fraudulent
registration procedures, vote tampering, rigged voting machines, etc. Eric Nielson
writes that since 2010, 11 states have passed laws that make it more difficult to
vote. Citing a report from The Sentencing Project, 5.85 million people are now
barred from voting because of a felony conviction, about 2.5 percent of the total
population.
The systematic disenfranchisement of Black voters in Florida, 2000, and elsewhere
across the country validates the following statement:
"...the two parties have combined against us to nullify our power by a 'gentlemen's
agreement' of non-recognition, no matter how we vote...May God write us down as
asses if ever again we are found putting our trust in either Republican or the
Democratic parties." (W.E.B. DuBois)
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From The Official Website of Kiilu Nyasha
Moreover, the recent Citizens United Supreme Court decision making corporations
persons and unleashing unlimited sums to campaign financing corrupts the voting
process with media madness and chicanery. It’s been projected that this
presidential campaign will ultimately cost nearly $11 billion.
“All political parties, as things stand, will support the power complex. Any
individual elected will either be a supporter of the established politics -- or an
'individual.' [Such as Ralph Nader] What would help us, in fact, is to allow as
many right-wing elements as possible to assume 'political' power...The fascists
already have power. The point is that some way must be found to expose them and
combat them. An electoral choice of ten different fascists is like choosing which
way one wishes to die. The holder of so-called high public office is always merely
an extension of the hated ruling corporate class [the 1%]. It is to our benefit that
this person
be openly hostile, despotic, unreasoning. We are not living in a nation where left-
wing parties hold eighty out of two hundred seats in a congressional body....This is
a huge nation dominated by the most reactionary and violent ruling class in the
history of the world, where the majority of the people just simply cannot
understand that they are existing on the misery and discomfort of the world."
(George Jackson, Blood In My Eye)
In fact, we Americans are hated more and more as this President targets innocent
civilians with drones and kill lists for massacres and assassinations, supports
fascist dictatorships, military occupations (such as the Zionist occupation of
Palestine), and escalating militarism across the globe in his aggressive pillaging of
global resources.
We are hated because we claim to elect these imperialist warmongers and thus
bear responsibility for their ongoing atrocities against other peoples in other
sovereign nations.
“When any election is held it will fortify rather than destroy the credibility of the
power brokers. When we participate in this election to win, instead of disrupt,
we’re lending to its credibility and destroying our own. With all the factors of
control over the electoral process in the hands of the minority ruling class, the
people’s party can always be made to seem isolated, unimportant, even
extraneous. If these tactics [and voting is just that, a tactic] still give the
appearance of revolution to some after decades of miscarriage, we are justified in
replacing them as vanguard.”(Jackson, Blood In My Eye)
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From The Official Website of Kiilu Nyasha
In this case, or currently, “vanguard” should indicate a new revolutionary people’s
party and platform NOT plugged into the system or trying to win a seat at the
table-- or a united front of like-minded organizations/parties.
Finally, we don’t have a one-person-one-vote electoral process. The Framers
opted for a complex system of delegates called the Electoral College. Each state
would have a number of electors equal to their Representatives in the House plus
their two Senators. Whoever wins the most votes in the state gets all the electoral
votes. This provided for a winner-take-all ballot in which voters cast their ballots
for the candidate of their choice indirectly. I.e., they are really signaling their
choice to a slew of delegates who in turn are supposed to honor the popular vote in
the final plebiscite a month later at the Electoral College. This process literally
discards all the "losing" votes in each and every state, giving more power to the
small states and putting a check on the power of the majority. And rest assured that
people of color are the current majority.
For example, in Wyoming, it takes 167,000 votes to gain a single electoral vote; in
California, it takes at least 645,000 to get one electoral vote, giving the Wyoming
voter four times the voting power of Californians. Then, let’s say one million
voters in California split their votes between the two candidates at 49% to
51%. The 49%, or close to a half million votes would be discounted. Repeat this
process in 50 states and the number of votes discarded is mindboggling. Yet we
continually hear the propaganda that “Every vote counts!” Nothing could be
further from the truth. In fact, four presidents were elected after losing the popular
vote.
You must have noticed that neither candidate, Barack Obama nor Mitt Romney,
spent time courting votes in the largest cities (New York, Chicago, Los Angeles,
etc.). Instead, they campaigned furiously in small, so-called “swing states” with
predominately White populations to win the crucial electoral votes. It’s clear that
centuries of racial segregation, regional redistricting and poll maneuvering,
especially the primaries, has rendered the smallest, Whitest states the most critical
to Presidential candidates, presenting illusory photo ops for visual consumption on
national TV fortifying the illusion of a predominately White, conservative
electorate.
In a kind of extension of the 3/5 of person adjudication by the Framers, the
predominately urban Black/Brown prisoners are inflating the rural white
populations leaving the urban areas underrepresented.
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From The Official Website of Kiilu Nyasha
Since in most states no law binds the electors to honor the people's vote, the elector
is free to vote for whomever he or she chooses. Thus, it's easy to see that this
undemocratic electoral process lends itself readily to fraud, manipulation, and
corruption. A number of polls found at least 70% of the American population
favors abolishing the Electoral College. I think that percentage would be 99% if all
eligible voters clearly understood it.
As for myself, I simply cannot be FOR what I’m AGAINST. I cannot in good
conscience vote for a fascist, for evil. That’s my bottom line.
However, I will work to help organize our people, especially poor people, around
their basic human needs: clean water, healthy food, decent housing, free quality
education, health care, and child care while fighting warmongering foreign policy
and the divisive negatives that preclude unity -- racism, classism, sexism, and
homophobia. In the effort to become the new woman, I’ll work on my own flaws
and isms in the process of making revolution. I hope you’ll do the same. Believe
me, it’s a lot harder than casting a vote and will produce tangible, positive results,
instead of more of the same only worse.
Think outside the box. Dare to struggle; dare to win!
Posted by Kiilu Nyasha
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From The Official Website of Kiilu Nyasha
Wednesday, August 1, 2012
THE REVISION AND ORIGIN OF
BLACK AUGUST
by Kiilu Nyasha (2012)
“As a slave, the social phenomenon that
engages my consciousness is, of course,
revolution.”
(George L. Jackson)
The Revision of Black August
2012 marks the 33rd anniversary of
Black August, first organized to honor
our fallen freedom fighters, George and
Jonathan Jackson, James McClain,
William Christmas, Khatari Gaulden, and
sole survivor of the August 7, 1970 Courthouse Slave Rebellion, Ruchell Cinque
Magee.
During these three decades, we’ve witnessed a steady revision of the meaning of
Black August and its inherent ideology, the undisputed leader of which was our
martyred Comrade, George Lester Jackson.
Read more »
Posted by Kiilu Nyasha
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From The Official Website of Kiilu Nyasha
Saturday, June 30, 2012
RAPE IGNITES A NATION DURING CIVIL RIGHTS MOVEMENT by
Carmen Rivera
Introduction by Kiilu Nyasha:
As a Black woman who grew up in the 1940s, ‘50s, and 60s. I’m fully aware of the
treatment of colored girls and women not only by White men, but men of every
description. I’m old enough now not to be too embarrassed to state that I was
raped numerous times and didn’t even know it was rape. It was referred to as
Bogarting when men forced you into sex against your will in those days. There
were no phrases like “date rape,” or “sexual harassment,” though both were quite
common, the latter mostly in the work place. Black women were singled out
particularly due to the prevailing racist notion that we were animal-like and
oversexed.
Read more »
Posted by Kiilu Nyasha
Saturday, April 7, 2012
A REVOLUTIONARY PARTY PLATFORM
This is the latest version of a proposal for a revolutionary party and
platform. These ideas are not new, just newly organized to fit today's realities. In
September 1970, in Philadelphia, the Black Panther Party and its allies pulled
together a Revolutionary Peoples Constitutional Convention (RPCC) that drew
10,000 - 15,000 people from all over the country and the globe for three days of
workshops and plenary sessions to rewrite the Constitution. See Liberation,
Imagination and the Black Panther Party, ed. by Kathleen Cleaver and George
Katsiaficas for details of this incredible event. A follow up convention was
thwarted by COINTELPRO no doubt. When Larry Pinkney and I agreed to
present this proposal, we were hoping for lots of comments, suggestions,
criticisms, feedback. We did receive a letter of endorsement from Mumia Abu-
Jamal and support from Terry Collins (KPOO) and Dr. Lenore Daniels of the
Black Commentator, among others. However, we're still hoping more of you who
check this out will send us your ideas/critiques. Meanwhile, here's the latest
version and a letter of introduction, written by Larry Pinkney.
Read more »
Posted by Kiilu Nyasha
8 | P a g e
From The Official Website of Kiilu Nyasha
Thursday, April 5, 2012
May Parole Hearing for Hugo Pinell, in Solitary for at least 42 yrs --
POSTPONED!
NEWS ALERT (4/6/12):
Yogi's board hearing has been postponed another year due to CDCR's new gang
validation rules. Uncommon Law, the firm of Keith Wattley, is handling Yogi's
case and they think they can get some relief for him under the new rules. So let's
take this year to do everything we can to support Yogi and help him to stay strong
in that hell hole for another year.It would be a good thing for those with resources
to check with Att. Wattley to see if Yogi needs financial assistance in covering
legal fees.
Read more »
Posted by Kiilu Nyasha
Saturday, March 31, 2012
Fatal Invention: How Science, Politics, and Big Business Re-Create Race in
the 21st Century
Book Review, by Kiilu Nyasha
March 19, 2012
Dorothy Roberts’ new book, Fatal Invention: How Science, Politics, and Big
Business Re-Create Race in the 21st Century is a must read for all human beings
desiring to witness the beginning of the end of racism.
“We have long had scientific confirmation that race is a political and not a
biological category. The recreation of biological race in genomic science today,
like its invention by scientists in past centuries, results from an ideological
commitment to a false view of humanity,” writes Roberts.
9 | P a g e
From The Official Website of Kiilu Nyasha
In 2000, The Human Genome Project mapped the entire human genetic code,
proving that race could not be identified in our genes, that we are not naturally
divided into genetically identifiable racial groups, that there is one human race.
Roberts explains and elucidates race as a political division, not a biological one.
And details how the new science and technology of racial genetics is threatening
“to steer America on a course of social inhumanity that already has begun to
dominate politics in this century. Government policies that have drastically slashed
social services…accompanied by particularly brutal forms of regulation of [so-
called] racial minorities: mass imprisonment at rates far exceeding any other place
on Earth or any time in the history of the free world; roundup and deportation of
undocumented immigrants, often tearing families apart; abuse of children held in
juvenile detention centers or locked up in adult prisons, some for the rest of their
lives;…torture in police stations and prison cells; and rampant medical neglect that
kills.”
Read more »
Posted by Kiilu Nyasha
SLAVERY ON THE NEW PLANTATION (updated March 2012) By Kiilu
Nyasha
"Slavery 400 years ago, slavery today. It's the same, but with a new name. They're
practicing slavery under color of law." (Ruchell Cinque Magee)
The 13th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution retained the right to enslave within
the confines of prison. “Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a
punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist
within the United States or any place subject to their jurisdiction.” Dec. 6, 1865.
Even before the abolition of chattel slavery, America's history of prison labor had
already begun in New York's State Prison at Auburn soon after it opened in 1817.
Auburn became the first prison that contracted with a private business to operate a
factory within its walls. Later, in the post Civil War period, the "contract and
lease" system proliferated, allowing private companies to employ prisoners and sell
their products for profit.
Today, such prisons are referred to as “Factories with Fences.”
(/www.unicor.gov/information/publications/pdfs/corporate/CATMC1101_C.pdf)
Read more »
Posted by Kiilu Nyasha
10 | P a g e
From The Official Website of Kiilu Nyasha
Thursday, March 1, 2012
Slave Farms in the 21st Century: Reflections on the Socio-economic and
School Pipeline to Prison
In the age of globalization, Blacks, Immigrants, and resisters are targeted for
elimination and enslavement by the power brokers, fearful of losing their wealth,
privilege, and whiteness. Central to this process is the school to prison pipeline,
high unemployment, homelessness, and the so-called war on drugs that supply the
prison system with its oppressed population. In this presentation, we explore some
of the facts that characterize this system—no less insidious than past forms of
slavery—and some of the narratives, policies and practices that work in the interest
of the dominant corporate plutocracy.
To accompany this new video of Kiilu addressing the University of Wisconsin, she
has released an updated version of her 2006 essay entitled "Slavery On The New
Plantation" (Read the full article here), where Kiilu writes:
Chattel slavery was ended following prolonged guerrilla warfare between the
slaves and the slave-owners and their political allies. Referred to as the
“Underground Railroad,” it was led by the revolutionary General Harriet Tubman
with support from her alliances with abolitionists, Black and White. It only makes
sense that this new form of slavery must produce prison abolitionists.
11 | P a g e
From The Official Website of Kiilu Nyasha
As George Jackson noted in a KPFA interview with Karen Wald (Spring 1971),
"I'm saying that it's impossible, impossible, to concentration-camp resisters....We
have to prove that this thing won't work here. And the only way to prove it is
resistance...and then that resistance has to be supported, of course, from the
street....We can fight, but the results are...not conducive to proving our point...that
this thing won't work on us. From inside, we fight and we die....the point is -- in the
new face of war -- to fight and win."
Power to the people.
Posted by Kiilu Nyasha
Friday, November 11, 2011
A revolutionary party platform
This is the 4th draft of a proposal for a revolutionary party and platform. These
ideas are not new, just newly organized to fit today's realities. In September 1970,
in Philadelphia, the Black Panther Party and its allies pulled together a
Revolutionary Peoples Constitutional Convention (RPCC) that drew 10,000 -
15,000 people from all over the country and the globe for three days of workshops
and plenary sessions to rewrite the Constitution. See Liberation, Imagination and
the Black Panther Party, ed. by Kathleen Cleaver and George Katsiaficas for
details of this incredible event. A follow up convention was thwarted by
COINTELPRO no doubt. When Larry Pinkney and I agreed to present this
proposal, we were hoping for lots of comments, suggestions, criticisms,
feedback. We did receive a letter of endorsement from Mumia Abu-Jamal and
support from Terry Collins (KPOO) and Dr. Lenore Daniels of the Black
Commentator, among others. However, we're still hoping more of you who check
this out will send us your ideas/critiques. Meanwhile, here's the latest version and
a letter of introduction.
Read more »
Posted by Kiilu Nyasha
12 | P a g e
From The Official Website of Kiilu Nyasha
Friday, September 23, 2011
SOLEDAD BROTHER:
Memories of Comrade George
(updated 9/23/11
SOLEDAD BROTHER:
MEMORIES OF COMRADE
GEORGE (updated 9/23/11)
By Kiilu Nyasha
It’s hard to believe that our
beloved Comrade, George
Lester Jackson, would be 70
years old this date, September
23, 2011.
On reading his first book, a 1970
bestseller, “Soledad Brother:
The Prison Letters of George
Jackson,’ I felt a kindred spirit
with George’s rage and
resistance, but thought he
contradicted himself on women.
So I began a correspondence with him from New Haven, Connecticut, where I was
a member of the Black Panther Party, and working for the lawyers defending
Chairman Bobby Seale, Ericka Huggins, and Lonnie McLucas, as well as
organizing community and national support for their freedom.
Read more »
Posted by Kiilu Nyasha
Drawing by Kiilu Nyasha