The outraged family and friends of Trayvon
Reflections on the Trayvon Martin Murder
Listening to the conversation that has followed in the wake of revelations about the murder of Trayvon Martin – an unarmed 17 year old Afro-American boy going happily about his business who was stalked by a racist white Latino bully named George Zimmerman, who shot him down like a wild beast then claimed self-defense and white male State Attorney let this killer walk – I am reminded of a day during the summer of 1960, when I had a serious talk with my Granddad that caused me to leave Florida for good.
I had just completed my freshman year at Florida A&M University where I had participated in the student sit-ins that began that spring. Once I became active I could no longer accept the status quo again, because I could see that collective struggle was the way to freedom. But, like most people I knew in the ancient city of St. Augustine, I was not a saint like Dr. Martin Luther King.
Hence back then, as now, my inclination was to put a cracker in the cemetery if they put their hands on me. You could say I had a homicidal disposition and a grave yard mind…I was on a freedom high and ready to die! As small town southerners we belonged to a hunting culture; everybody was armed, and guns were readily available.
My grandfather George Benjamin was a pious church deacon, yet he kept a 20 gage shotgun loaded with 00 buckshot mounted on the wall just above a sign professing his faith in Jesus Christ! Grandpapa didn’t take no mess! Like his friends, he was an Old Testament Christian who believed in an eye for an eye!
We lived in a state of constant tension with the white community. They were in charge as a community, but individual whites understood that there were lines they were not to cross, and they did so at their peril on this hot August day, Grand Dad stepped to me and said: “Boy I think it’s time for you to go on up north. Cause if you stay around this town either you gonna kill one of these peckerwood crackers or one of them is gonna kill you. Either way it goes down you bout to git this whole family in a war with these rednecks….cause whatever they do to you they do to all of us!”
It was good advice, because relations between the races were very tense…just like now. My generation had reached a consensus that we would not submit to the white supremacist racial caste system any longer, although the system of separate and unequal treatment for Afro-Americans had the force of law. I heeded grand-dad’s advice and soon left town and joined the Airforce. This was three years before Dr. King came to town and lead some of the most dangerous demonstrations of his career.
The local crackers, led by local Redneck terrorist “Hoss” Manucy, were mean and prone to violence; and Dr. King told Jet Magazine he had never seen so many Negroes with guns! It was a hard sell to convince them to put down their guns and follow him in a passive resistance campaign. He never convinced me!
He didn’t convince my neighbor Reverend Goldy Eubanks either. A truly righteous and fearless fundamentalist preacher, Goldy and his sons shot it out with the Klan and offed a couple of them. They were tried for murder by the state of Florida, and only the lawyerly brilliance of William S. Kunstler, who swooped down from New York to defend them, had saved their lives!
While I now concede that Dr. King’s non-violent campaigns was the right strategy to change government policy, and the Maoist strategy of armed revolution we advocated in the Revolutionary Action Movement and the Black Panther Party of Oakland, was wrong; a half century later I still believe that anybody who steps to me with violent intentions is tired of living and I’m going to try my best to take them out of their misery!
Witnessing the way the state of Florida allowed Piggy Zimmerman to walk after murdering a black child in cold blood then covering it up, and the mounting attempt to even justify Zimmerman’s homicidal attack by painting Trayvon as the aggressor, if I were living in Florida today I would be strapped and practicing my fast draw in the mirror!
The New Black Militia is armed and actively searching for Zimmerman and his picture is all over the internet. Since the depraved child killer is in hiding like the punkass low down dirty rat that he is, the militia men intend to conduct a search, ferret him out, and make a citizen’s arrest since the police won’t do it. They consider him armed and dangerous…as all black folks should, and they intend to act accordingly.
The militia men have declared their intention to bring Zimmerman in dead or alive! Although a chorus of voices is denouncing their decision: I wish them well. White policemen have been getting away with murdering unarmed black men all over this nation….including here in New York City repeatedly. Now we are to stand by while private white citizens are getting away with murdering our children? Those who think this are flirting with disaster!
My black friends in Florida are armed to the teeth….one classmate told me he won’t go to the bathroom without his Glock! They intend to stand their ground, and there is no Martin Luther King around to cool them down…a white racist shot him years ago. So it’s on: Anything can happen! If you are planning to vacation in Florida don’t do it….unless you are some sort of freak who gets off hanging out in free fire zones.
Black Militia Men on Zimmerman’s Case
They want Piggy Zimmerman ”Dead or alive!!
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Playthell G. Benjamin
Harlem, New York
March 30 2012
The GOP and the Art of Destruction
Posted in Guest Commentators with tags GOP and Capitalism, Mitt Romney, Neo-Con Ideology, Post Industrial America, Vulture Capitalism, William J. Wilson on March 27, 2012 by playthellThe Grand Obstructionists Party’s Presidential Choice?
The Grand Old Party has become the sick man of American politics. The Republican Party has been a formidable political force in American politics since the middle of the 19th century. It fought the expansion of slavery and served as a catalyst for the abolition of slavery. It promoted American industrialization and was in part responsible for the dynamism of American mass production and scientific innovation. But from the latter part of the 20th century, the GOP has become a force thwarting American progress.
The Grand Old Party in the latter part of the twentieth century opposed the civil rights movement and opportunistically, rode the wave of the white backlash movement. It remained an uncritical advocate of oligopolistic capitalism and stumbled into the 21st century failing to understand the revolutionary changes of globalization.
The GOP morphed into an extremely destructive force at the beginning of the twenty-first century. This destructive propensity is apparent both in foreign policy and domestic policy. The invasion of Iraq in March, 2003 was a manifestation of this destructive propensity. A band of neo-conservatives seized control of America’s national security apparatus in the early days of the Bush administration and became convinced that America’s military superiority could be used to force the rest of the world to accept America’s dictat. The invasion of Iraq was selected to demonstrate America’s military superiority.
The neo-conservatives manufactured the threat that Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction and worked the country into a frenzy that led to the invasion of Iraq. The presumption was that the war would be of short duration. American arm forces would pulverize Baghdad from air, sea and land, decimate Hussein’s forces and speedily impose a pro-American democratic regime in Iraq.
According to Paul Wolfowitz, one of the leading neo-conservative thinkers of this muscular invasive foreign policy, prognosticated not only would the war be of short duration, but that the cost would be picked up by the export of Iraqi oil.
Paul Wolfowitz: Architect of Bush’s Iraq Policy
What the Devil looks like in the 21st Century
The American invasion lasted eight years and cost American taxpayers approximately $1 trillion. Not only was their loss in financial resources but over 4,000 lives were lost, 30,000 returned physically damaged by the war effort and another incalculable number damaged psychologically. The last American combat troops were withdrawn in December of 2011.
Iraq is still engaged in a religious struggle that pits Shites against Sunni and Kurds trying to maintain autonomy from the central government. All signs are that the Shites who are presently in control of the central government will continue to milk America of its resources while concomitantly drifting into a religious kinship with the theocrats in Iran who themselves are Islamic Shites.
Ayatollah Khomeini: Leader of Islamic Revolution in Iran
The Iraq Invasion expanded his influence
The Iraqi debacle led to the discrediting of the neo-conservative national security adventurers but that propensity for destruction, having been disarmed, has been replaced by domestic neo-conservative neophytes that have been the architects of the decline of the American economy.
The abandonment of New Deal liberalism and the de-regulation of the economy ushered in an age of inequality. A racketeering form of capitalism surfaced in the 1990s which has destroyed the living standards of the American working class at the same time creating a new class of billionaires.
The financial sector of the economy now gobbles up over 40% of gross domestic product and has used financial gimmicks to generate mega-profits. In September, 2008 Wall Street collapsed like a house of cards. The economy is slowly trying to extricate itself from the neo-conservative architects of sub-prime mortgages, bundling of mortgages, derivatives and over-leveraging of risky investments. The collusion between Wall Street and conservative politicians has left the American economy with a mountain of debt. America’s accumulated debt is $16 trillion.
Whereas the neo-conservatives in the foreign policy arena have been discredited, the neo-conservatives on the domestic front still have some credibility. The American electorate is still uncertain about the appropriate domestic policy to pursue. The nature of contemporary American capitalism is being debated in the presidential Republican primary.
Members of the GOP even moreso than the Democrats have slovenly romanticized capitalism. The free market is embraced as the solution to every societal problem. The documentary concocted by Newt Gingrich’s Super PAC, “When Romney comes to Town” should have triggered a debate about the changing nature of capitalism. Instead it has forced the Republican establishment to circle the wagons in an un-examined defense of capitalism.
The capitalism of the middle nineteenth century when small scale production predominated differed from the capitalism of late 19th century and early 20th century America when mass production became the order of the day. As capitalist production has morphed in a multi-national platform and with the advent of globalization, the dynamics and dialectics of the system have had a profound impact on the fortunes of a formerly secure white working class.
Sociologist William Julius Wilson
William Julius Wilson, the Harvard Sociologist in the 1980s, wrote about the de-industrialization of America and the impact that these economic changes were having on American life. As we stumbled into the latter part of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, capitalism developed new forms of accumulation that were separate and apart from industrial production. As the Gingrich documentary on Romney highlights public equity firms discovered new ways of accumulating massive profits.
Companies were bought, the exploitation of workers was accelerated, debt was accrued, benefits eliminated, and companies sold to new owners at astronomical profits. It was a form of blitzkrieg capitalism that destroys everything in its wake. The lives of workers were ruined and communities were left in an immiserated state. The discussion of the Gingrich documentary over what Governor Rick Perry called “vulture capitalism” revealed the inability of the neo-conservative movement to understand the variegated nature of American capitalism.
The GOP’s continued romanticization of capitalist enterprise will thwart the development of the appropriate policy to save capitalism from itself. In a democratic society, the change will not come from Wall Street barons or the ailing GOP but from those imperiled by the new twist in the system.
The recent findings of the Pew Research Center that the white working class has begun to understand the saliency of class and recognize that their salvation lies in electing politicians who can protect their class interest is a ray of hope that we can stop the domestic propensity for destroying people’s lives.
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By: Dr. Basil Wilson
Queens, New York
March 17, 2012