[Peace] Black Power Revolt of the 1960s: Tomorrow!

Tue May 31 11:29:13 CDT 2011

http://www.facebook.com/home.php#!/event.php?eid=213390312016634

The Black Power Revolt of the 1960s: A Video Presentation
Wed. June 1, 6 PM
Graduate School of Library and Information Science, R. 131
501 E. Daniel St. (between 5th and 6th street, across from and just west from Espresso Royale)

For a generation of activists in the Black Power movement from the mid-1960′s into the 70′s, Black liberation seemed not just a theoretical possibility, but an immediate reality, achievable through the organization of Black people fighting on every front for their emancipation. Black Power became the rallying cry in uprisings across the country, as movement activists learned that legal rights meant nothing without the political power to enforce them.

Join the International Socialist Organization (ISO) with a video presentation from last year's Socialism conference by Socialist Worker columnist and activist Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor, to discuss this essential history and its lessons for anti-racist activists today.

Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor is a Ph.D candidate in the department of African American Studies at Northwestern University.  Her research is on race, class and American housing policies in the 1970s.  She wrote an award-winning paper based on her initial research on Blacks and housing discrimination called, “The Race Tax: Black Chicago’s Fight for Homeownership.”  She is active in local housing struggles in Chicago and is an organizer with the Chicago Anti-Eviction Campaign. Taylor has had several articles published on racism in the United States for publications like CounterPunch, The Black Commentator, Black Agenda Report, Gaper’s Block, New Politics and the International Socialist Review among others.  She is on the editorial board of the International Socialist Review.

This public screening is of a talk that was more than 100 to take place at last year's Socialism conference, and is an example of the kinds of talks you can expect at the Socialism 2011 conference in Chicago July 1-4. To learn more or register, visit www.socialismconference.org. To get in touch with folks carpooling to the conference, or learn more about this forum, email iso.champaign at gmail.com. Also feel free to stop by our next working meeting, Monday May 23 at 6 PM in the conference room downstairs at Urbana Free Library. 

Meetings @ Socialism 2011 challenging Racism and fighting for Civil Rights:
The Political Economy of Racism
Out on the street: The Housing Crisis and the Movement Against Foreclosures
Black history and politics
Martin Luther King Jr.: The last yearsMalcolm X: A life of reinvention"People wasn’t made to burn": A story of race and housing in ChicagoRacism and inequality today: The state of Black America
The criminal injustice system
The Attica rebellion 40 years laterChallenging the new “Jim Crow”Crime, cops, and capitalismIncarceration nation
Register for the conference Today: www.socialismconference.org 
_________________________________________________________________________________

You’re invited...SOCIALISM 2011: REVOLUTION IN THE AIRRevolutionary politics, debate and entertainmentJULY 1-4 | CHICAGOhttp://www.socialismconference.orgEverywhere we look in the world there are revolutions and struggles that are challenging dictatorship, economic inequality, and oppression.From Cairo to Madison, these struggles show us that "another world is possible." But they also raise questions about what ideas, strategies, and tactics are necessary to carry the struggle forward.Socialism 2011 will provide an opportunity for new and veteran activists to discuss what these events mean for our world, and for our own movements today.Last year, more than 1,500 people turned out to Socialism 2010 in Oakland and Chicago.Don’t miss the chance to meet with hundreds of others like you who want to build an alternative to a system of greed, racism, war and oppression.Featured speakers: Anthony Arnove • Omar Barghouti • John Carlos • Todd Chretien • Mark Clements • Eric Cobb • Nicole Colson • Dana Cloud • Paul D'Amato • Steve Early • Egyptian Activists • Sam Farber • Joel Geier • Rayyan Ghumma • Anand Gopal • Glenn Greenwald • Arun Gupta • Sarah Knopp • Dan Lane • Paul LeBlanc • Alan Maass • Marlene Martin • Scott McLemee • Immanuel Ness • Khury Petersen-Smith • Mostafa Omar • Helen Redmond •Jennifer Roesch • Elizabeth Schulte • Helen Scott• Liliana Segura • Ahmed Shawki • Sharon Smith • Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor • Jeffery Webber •Lee Wengraf • Sherry Wolf • Elizabeth Wrigley-Field • Dave ZirinChoose from more than 100 meetings, including: Egypt: The revolution continues •Wisconsin: The end of the one-sided class war • Teachers vs. billionaires: The fight for real education reform • Nuclear madness: Why nuclear power is not a “clean” option • Sitdown! The rise of the CIO • The Mexican Revolution of 1910 • Imperialism and revolution in Libya • The fight for transgender rights • Class and class struggle in Africa • Racism and inequality today: The state of Black America • Malcolm X: A life of reinvention • Abortion without apology: The case for a new movement • Out on the street: The housing crisis and the movement against foreclosures • From the Moral Majority to the Tea Party: Understanding the right in the U.S. • Crime, cops and capitalism • Crisis and class struggle in the age of austerity • The fight for immigrant rights after Arizona • Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions: The global struggle for Palestinian rights • Portugal 1974-75And many, many more:http://www.socialismconference.org/talksWhat they say about past Socialism Conferences...The young people at the conference took me back in time to when you were ready to stand for what was right. It lets you know that what you may have planted years ago will come to reality today. I feel great to have become a part of it.—Dr. John Carlos, 1968 Olympic bronze medalist who raised the Black Power salute.Socialism conferences are exciting gathering places for students and young activists, for revolutionary scholars and fighters for social justice, to share ideas and experiences that can help us understand and change the world. I've been to a couple—it's not enough. I'm coming again.—Paul LeBlanc, socialist and authorVisit the Socialism 2011 website for updateshttp://www.socialismconference.org/Register today onlinehttp://www.socialismconference.org/registerSponsored by the Center for Economic Research and Social Change, publisher of the International Socialist Review and Haymarket Books, and co-sponsored by the International Socialist Organization, publisher of SocialistWorker.org ____________________________________________________________________________________________
http://socialistworker.org/2011/05/24/beyond-the-legend-of-malcolm-x

Column: Brian Jones

Columnist: Brian Jones 

Brian Jones is a teacher, actor and activist in New York City. He is featured in the new film The Inconvenient Truth Behind Waiting for Superman, and his commentary and writing has appeared on MSNBC.com, the Huffington Post, GritTV and the International Socialist Review. Jones has also lent his voice to several audiobooks, including Howard Zinn's one-man play Marx in Soho, Wallace Shawn's Essays and Noam Chomsky's Hopes and Prospects.

Beyond the legend of Malcolm X

Brian Jones reviews a riveting--and controversial--biography of one of the most important revolutionaries of the 20th century.
May 24, 2011

Malcolm X 
COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY professor Manning Marable has written the most detailed account to date of the life of a legendary African American. Malcolm X: A Life of Reinvention is the product of at least two decades of research. Tragically, this work is Marable's last--he died of lung disease just days before its publication.
"The great temptation for the biographer of an iconic figure," Marable wrote in the book's introduction "is to portray him or her as a virtual saint, without the normal contradictions and blemishes that all human beings have...My primary purpose in this book is to go beyond the legend: to recount what actually occurred in Malcolm's life."
Marable's telling of Malcolm's biography makes for a fascinating read. Following his theme of "reinvention," Marable takes us through Malcolm's various incarnations--including, but not limited to, Malcolm Little, Detroit Red, Malcolm X and El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz.
Marable weaves together what he learned from extensive interviews, personal testimonies, police and FBI records, the public record of Malcolm's speeches and writings, and some new documentation that was unavailable to previous researchers. Based on this evidence, Marable also presents his own theory of Malcolm's assassination.

Review: Books 

Manning Marable, Malcolm X: A Life of Reinvention, Viking Press, 2011, 608 pages, $30.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
WHAT MOST people know of Malcolm, they learned from The Autobiography of Malcolm X, the book he "told to" Alex Haley--or from the Spike Lee film based on the book. But Marable sets out to show that this text was itself another "reinvention." Marable argues that the Autobiography's omissions, exaggerations and politics are the product of Haley's attempt to package Malcolm for a liberal integrationist audience, and of Malcolm's attempt to shape his posthumous image. The extent of his criminal activity, for example, Marable claims, is greatly exaggerated to amplify the narrative power of his conversion to the Nation of Islam.
Furthermore, Marable asserts "[b]ased on circumstantial but strong evidence" that Malcolm also made money from sexual encounters with an older white man. This claim takes up no more than two pages out of nearly 600, but has become a prominent feature of the controversy surrounding the book.
Malcolm's grandson Malcolm Shabazz disputes many of the book's claims, arguing that Marable's purpose was primarily to "make money." But Shabazz is particularly angered by the claim that his grandfather had same-sex relations. "They want to promote homosexuality at the end of the day," he told the Amsterdam News. "When I was at school, people were not openly gay; today, people are saying they are gay in the first grade. It's really acceptable today. They want to promote that today to our people with one of our greatest leaders. But there is no proof, there's no basis, no facts."

In a discussion on Democracy Now! with two critics of the book, author Michael Eric Dyson put his finger on the real meaning of this "controversy"--homophobia:

[There is] the deep and profound homophobia and the resistance of certain sectarian interests within African-American culture that refuses to acknowledge the full humanity--[that] wants to talk about black unity, but always wants to exclude...You don't have a problem with Malcolm being a hustler...You haven't asked for evidence of that...None of that is being questioned. 
In prison, Malcolm became a Muslim and joined the Nation of Islam, a small but growing religious separatist movement of African Americans. Marable traces the history of Islam in general, and of the NOI in particular. According to the NOI's theology, Black Americans were the earth's Original People, and whites were "devils" created by an evil scientist. They considered Americanized surnames to be "slave names," and so, they often took "X" as a last name to stand in for their unknown African name. As Marable writes:

The demonizing of the white race, the glorification of blacks and the bombastic blend of orthodox Islam, Moorish science and numerology were a seductive message to unemployed and disillusioned African Americans casting about for a new rallying cause after the disintegration of Garveyism and the inadequacies of the Moorish Science Temple. 

Featured at Socialism 

Hear Brian Jones at Socialism 2011 in Chicago, speaking on "Malcolm X: A life of reinvention." Check out the Socialism 2011 website for more details.

Contrary to the opinions of the FBI, the NOI was not a radical group, but a profoundly conservative one. While civil rights campaigns against segregation were growing in the Southern states, the NOI built up a following in the North that advised Blacks against any civic engagement at all.
NOI members--under the leadership first of the mysterious Wallace D. Fard, and later Elijah Muhammad--built up a world within a world. They attempted to open and patronize their own businesses, establish their own schools and live according to their own rules. Members followed a strict code of diet, dress and behavior. The NOI preached that men and women had to occupy very specific gender roles. "The true nature of man is to be strong," Malcolm said, "and a woman's true nature is to be weak...[a man] must control her if he expects to get her respect."
Malcolm quickly rose within the NOI, due not only to his legendary intelligence and wit as a public speaker, but his acumen for organization. The newspaper, Muhammad Speaks, was largely Malcolm's creation, and it was his idea that it could be an organizing tool.
But it was not proper for such a prominent minister to remain unmarried. Marable thus presents Malcolm's marriage to Betty Sanders as more a matter of convenience than of love.
Two of Malcolm's daughters have publicly complained about Marable's portrait of their parents' marriage as strained, and about his claim that they were unfaithful to each other.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
BUT THE most important element of controversy surrounding the book has to do with Malcolm's political trajectory.
Although he usually prefaced his remarks with "the Honorable Elijah Muhammad teaches us," the thrust of Malcolm's appeal was less ecclesiastical and more political. Marable shows the profound continuity between the Black nationalist principles Malcolm imbibed from his parents, his development of them within the framework of the NOI, and later through his break with the NOI and his attempts to form a Pan-Africanist movement based in the U.S.
Early on, Malcolm began incorporating references to the anti-colonial struggles of the so-called Third World into his sermons. "The 'black man' are united all over the world" he told members of one mosque, "to fight the 'devils.'"
Marable takes the reader through a series of remarkable debates Malcolm conducted with leading civil rights activists, including Bayard Rustin and James Farmer. In one such event, Marable explains how Malcolm's militant opposition to any possibility of reconciliation with mainstream society connected with Black students:

Malcolm praised Elijah Muhammad's method of isolating "ourselves from the white man long enough to analyze this great hypocrisy and begin to think black, and now we speak black." He urged students not to seek the white man's "love," but rather to "demand his respect." 
The NOI's denunciation of white people became, in Malcolm's hands, an opportunity to develop a thorough critique of American society--not just of racism, but also of imperialism, and of the Democratic and Republican Parties. Importantly, he rejected nonviolence and exposed American hypocrisy on the question:

As long as the white man sent you to Korea, you bled. He sent you to Germany, you bled. He sent you to the South Pacific to fight the Japanese, you bled. You bleed for white people, but when it comes time to seeing your own churches being bombed, and little black girls murdered, you haven't got no blood. 
Marable shows how Malcolm was drawn to the civil rights movement, even as he mocked its leaders as "sellouts" and "uncle Toms." He agreed, for example, to participate in a Harlem coalition initiated by the labor leader A. Philip Randolph.
And although Malcolm famously called the 1963 March on Washington a "Farce on Washington," Marable shows another side of Malcolm's attitude towards it. While NOI members were forbidden to attend the march, Malcolm organized some to sell copies of Muhammad Speaks to people getting on the bus early that morning. Furthermore, despite the ban, Malcolm himself attended the march and engaged in discussions with civil rights leaders there.
As Malcolm increasingly became a national--and later, international--figure, tensions within the Nation of Islam rose. Malcolm gained a tremendous audience as a militant, and his calls for armed self-defense struck a chord, especially with urban Blacks who saw little possibility of change through nonviolent civil disobedience. But as much as Malcolm came to be perceived as someone calling for an escalation of the struggle, the program of the NOI was, in practice, a retreat from any struggle at all.
While the Autobiography portrays Malcolm's break from the NOI as primarily a result of the revelations that Elijah Muhammad was a serial adulterer, an internal power struggle within the NOI, and, later, a religious conversion, the result of his hajj (trip to Mecca), Marable explores the political dimension of the process.
Marable makes use of Malcolm's diaries (which were unavailable to previous researchers) to explore his longest sojourn abroad--19 weeks. He paints those trips in great detail and provides insight into Malcolm's state of mind throughout.
As Marable tells it, the purpose of these later trips was to make good on the escalation he had been calling for--by raising the Black struggle from the national plane to the international one.
Malcolm set up two organizations: Muslim Mosque Incorporated (MMI) and the Organization of Afro-American Unity (OAAU). While abroad, he tried to establish formal connections between the MMI and Islamists, including the Muslim Brotherhood on the one hand and the Saudi royal family on the other. He also met with the newly minted heads of state in several liberated African countries, aspiring to make links between their revolutions and the struggle of U.S. Blacks.
Marable shows how, freed from the NOI, Malcolm's ideas--about racism and even sexism--evolved rapidly. He rejected the idea that all white people were "devils" and appointed a young woman to head the OAAU.
These shifts were, at times, too jarring for Malcolm's supporters. At one point while Malcolm was abroad, an MMI organizer received a letter from him but was "scared to open the envelope, knowing that the revelations contained in Malcolm's communication could pose major problems with the MMI rank and file."
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
SEVERAL LEFT-wing writers have developed a critique of Marable's approach to Malcolm in general and to these shifts in particular. Basically, they argue that Marable waters down Malcolm X's politics in order to make him palatable to a broader audience. Marable, they maintain, turns Malcolm from a nationalist into an "anti-racist," and from a revolutionary into a reformist.
At Black Agenda Report, for example, Kamau Franklin argued that "Marable's unsubstantiated claims are actually meant to create controversy in order to sell books, but more importantly as a way to undermine Malcolm's standing in the Black Nationalist community." Likewise, Jared Ball said on Black Agenda Radio, "The overall tone of the book is simply foreplay to his repackaging of Malcolm's political trajectory into marketable liberal politics of the post-9/11 book publishing world."
It's true that Marable at times makes unsupported claims about Malcolm's state of mind or his political conclusions. It's also true that in the final chapter, Marable tries to draw a line of political continuity from Malcolm's fight for Black liberation to the rise of liberal Black politicians, and especially of Barack Obama:

[Malcolm] became an icon of black encouragement, who fearlessly challenged racism wherever he found it and inspired black youth to take pride in their history and culture. These aspects of Malcolm's public personality were indelibly stamped into the Black power movement; they were present in the cry "It's our turn!" by black proponents of Harold Washington in the Democrat's successful 1983 mayoral race in Chicago. It was partially expressed in the unprecedented voter turnouts in black neighborhoods in Jesse Jackson's presidential campaigns of 1984 and 1988 and in the successful electoral bid of Barack Obama in 2008. 
Given that the rise of these politicians has coincided with the defeat of the Black power movement, and with the rise of mass incarceration of African-Americans, the resegregation of American schools and the continuation of the Black housing crisis, it seems more likely that Malcolm would have questioned such linkages.
These weaknesses, while important, shouldn't lead anyone to dismiss Marable's book as a cynical attempt to "sell books." Marable's work is a serious, decades-long attempt to understand one of the most important figures in American history. The wealth of detail and information Marable has assembled will be a valuable resource for students of history for a long time to come, including for those who would challenge a few or many of Marable's conclusions.
In the meantime, Marable's book has performed a more immediate service. "It rescues Malcolm X from the pedestal," the Afro-British writer Gary Younge said of the book, "and puts him back where he belongs, which is among us."
Pennsylvania death-row political prisoner Mumia Abu-Jamal agrees. "[B]y painting Malcolm thusly," he said, "he makes him more human, more like us all."

-- 
********************************************************
ISO Resources:
isochampaign.org
internationalsocialist.org
haymarketbooks.org
socialistworker.org
isreview.org
********************************************************

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.chambana.net/pipermail/peace/attachments/20110531/c1cdc620/attachment.html>