Punk Rock Never Stop

As Clayborne Carson, an African American professor of history at Stanford University said in the 2015 “The Black Panthers: Vanguard of the Revolution” documentary, “one of the ironies in the Black Panther movement is the image of a Black male in a ripper jacket and a gun, but the reality is that a majority of the rank and file by the end of 1960s were women.”

Mary Phillips, an assistant professor at the Department of African Studies at the City University of New York, or CUNY, shares Carson’s view. Phillips, one of the founding members of the Intersectional Black Panther Party History Project, also believes common portrayals of the group are one-sided.

“The public image of the party was very one dimensional, there were men who were serving the breakfast, there were men who were teaching at schools, but the image portrayed is defined by the stereotypical standards of gender roles, that is not how it played out and that is not how the party functioned. Everybody did everything. The work was divided according to your skill sets for the most part,” she said.

“There were men in the Black Panther Party who were braiding children’s hair, there were men who were taking care of the children, nurturing children, they were caretakers.”

The problem is that every day we recreate a world that wasn’t built to serve our needs and is not under our control. We are not human beings, we are human resources, cogs in a machine that knows only one purpose: profit. The endless pursuit of profit keeps us stuck in boring jobs, or looking for them when we’re out of work. It keeps us worrying about the rent or mortgage payments every month when our homes were long since built and paid for. It keeps the planet on course for an environmental disaster as climate change accelerates and world leaders pontificate.

In this world, everything has its price. Every day, more and more things enter the market. A century ago it was automobiles, today even DNAand the Earth’s atmosphere have a price. For those things which we enjoy most in life - friendship, love, play - the idea of giving them a price is absurd or even obscene. The idea strikes us as absurd because the market does not work by the same principles we do. ‘Market forces’ leave hundreds of millions starving in a world with surplus food. Millions die of preventable diseases while pharmaceutical companies spend more on marketing than basic research. The market does not recognise human needs unless they are backed up with cash. The only way to get the cash is to work for a boss or claim benefits. By working for a wage, our own bodies and minds enter the market as things to be bought and sold.

When we work, we create more things which can be sold on the market. But we don’t get paid the full value of what we create, otherwise there would be nothing left over as profit for the bosses. If the company can’t make big enough profits, it will shut down, we will be made redundant and the money will be invested elsewhere. The bosses’ interests are not the same as ours. The problem with the market is not that prices are too high or supply too short. The problem is not too much regulation or too little. The problem is that everything has a price. In the world of the market human needs only feature if those humans happen to be rich enough to satisfy them. The world’s governments all work to uphold this order, sometimes with the carrots of democracy and welfare, sometimes with the sticks of dictatorship and warfare. This is not our world.

Every day, ordinary people are fighting back. Workers organise, strike, occupy and revolt, standing up for human needs in an inhuman world. This site is for them. You. Us. Those of us with nothing to sell but our labour power and nothing to lose but our chains. Those of us whose lives this deadening world sucks dry like a vampire. When we stand up for our needs, we foreshadow a different world, a world based on the principle 'from each according to ability, to each according to needs.’ A world of liberty and community - libertarian communism.”

 - http://libcom.org/notes/about

58 Tweetable MLK Quotes to Reclaim King’s Legacy by Drew Dellinger

Use these with the hashtags #MLKalsoSaid & #ReclaimMLK. 

“All of us are on trial in this troubled hour.”

– MLK (1968)

King on police brutality:

“We can never be satisfied as long as the Negro is the victim of the unspeakable horrors of police brutality.” – MLK, Aug. 28, 1963

“The white man does not abide by the law… His police forces are the ultimate mockery of law.” – MLK (1968)

“We can never be satisfied as long as our children are stripped of their selfhood and robbed of their dignity.” – MLK, Aug. 28, 1963

“We have got to go all out to deal with the question of segregation justice. We still have a long, long, way to go.” – MLK (1965)

“How long will justice be crucified and truth buried, how long?” – MLK (1962)

“Wounded justice lying prostrate on the streets of our cities.” – MLK (1962)

“The beating and killing of our… young people will not divert us. The arrest and release of known murderers will not discourage us.” – MLK

“When we truly believe in the sacredness of human personality, we won’t exploit people … we won’t kill anybody.” – MLK (1968)

“I believe that the dignity & the worth of human personality will be respected one day. I believe this and I live by it.” – MLK (1964)

King on confronting systemic racism:

“The first thing that must be on the agenda of our nation is to get rid of racism.” – MLK (1968)

“The thing wrong with America is white racism.” –Martin Luther King Jr. (1968)

“Large segments of white society are more concerned about tranquility & the status quo than about justice & humanity.” – MLK

“However difficult it is to hear, however shocking it is to hear, we’ve got to face the fact that America is a racist country.” – MLK (1968)

“Racism is a philosophy based on contempt for life.” – MLK (1967)

“We must come to see that the roots of racism are very deep in our country.” – MLK

“There must be something positive & massive in order to get rid of all the effects of racism & the tragedies of racial injustice.” – MLK

“White America has allowed itself to be indifferent to race prejudice.” – MLK (1968)

“I am sorry to have to say that the vast majority of white Americans are racists, either consciously or unconsciously.” – MLK (1967)

½: “The doctrine of white supremacy was imbedded in every textbook and preached in practically every pulpit…” – MLK

2/2: “… It became a structural part of the culture.” –Martin Luther King Jr. on white supremacy (1967)

“The great majority of Americans… are uneasy with injustice but unwilling yet to pay a significant price to eradicate it.” – MLK

“There aren’t enough white persons in our country who are willing to cherish democratic principles over privilege.” – MLK

King on the importance of direct action and civil disobedience:

“The blanket of fear was lifted by Negro youth. When they took their struggle to the streets a new spirit of resistance was born.” – MLK

“When [Black youth] cheerfully became jailbirds & troublemakers… they challenged & inspired white youth to emulate them.” – MLK

“We have, through massive non-violent action, an opportunity to avoid a national disaster & create a new spirit of class & racial harmony.”

“I’ve just come to a conclusion that our country doesn’t really move on these issues until a movement is mobilized.” – MLK (1968)

“I’m talking about poor people’s power. That is what is needed.” – MLK (1968)

“Every [person] of humane convictions must decide on the protest that best suits [his or her] convictions, but we must all protest.” – MLK

“There must be more than a statement to the larger society; there must be a force that interrupts its functioning at some key point.” – MLK

“Non-violent protest must now mature to a new level… The higher level is mass civil disobedience.” – MLK (1967)

“Our power lies in our ability to say nonviolently that we aren’t gonna take it any longer.” – MLK (1967)

“I’m worried today when there are those who try to silence dissenters.” – MLK

“We aren’t going to let this attempt to crush dissent turn us around.” – MLK (1968)

“Our experience is that marches must continue over 30-45 days to produce any meaningful results.” – MLK

“I believe in dissent. We must never lose this.” – MLK

“The greatness of our nation–and I don’t want to see us lose it–is that… it does keep alive the opportunity to protest and dissent.” – MLK

King on economic justice and ending poverty 

“The time has come for an all-out world war against poverty.” – MLK 

½: “The nation doesn’t move around questions of genuine equality for the poor and for black people…”

2/2: “… until it is confronted massively, dramatically in terms of direct action.” – MLK

“Many white Americans of good will have never connected bigotry with economic exploitation.” – MLK

“In the final analysis, the rich must not ignore the poor because both rich and poor are tied together.” – MLK 

“I choose to identify with the poor…. This is the way I’m going. If it means suffering a little bit, I’m going that way.” – MLK (1966)

“I think it is absolutely necessary now to deal massively and militantly with the economic problem.” – MLK, 10 days before assassination

“I still have to ask, why do you have 40 million people in our society who are poor? I have to ask that question.” – MLK (1966)

“Poverty, the gaps in our society, the gulfs between inordinate superfluous wealth & abject deadening poverty have brought about… despair” – MLK

“There’s going to have to be more sharing in this world.” – MLK (1967)

King on the question of “Riots”

“Social justice and progress are the absolute guarantors of riot prevention. There is no other answer.” – MLK (1967)

“Riots are not the causes of white resistance, they are consequences of it.” – MLK (1967)

“There are many persons who wince at a distinction between property & persons—who hold both sacrosanct. My views are not so rigid.” – MLK

“Three hundred years of humiliation, abuse and deprivation cannot be expected to find voice in a whisper.” – MLK

“It is clear that the riots were exacerbated by police action that was intended to injure or even to kill people.” – MLK (1968)

“Our summers of riots are caused by winters of delay.” – MLK

King on interconnection and linking issues and movements:

It really boils down to this: that all life is interrelated.” – MLK

“The black revolution is much more than a struggle for the rights of Negroes…” (½) – MLK

(2/2) “… It is, rather, forcing America to face all its interrelated flaws: racism, poverty, militarism, and materialism.” – MLK (1968)

“Local problems are all interconnected with world problems.” – MLK (1968)

“I’m still convinced that the struggle for peace and the struggle for justice… happen to be tied together.” – MLK (1968)

 “We aren’t going to have peace on earth until we recognize this basic fact of the interrelated structure of all reality.” – MLK

Now you have ammo. Seize the moment!

My friend shared this video with me from Barcelona.

Today (October 1st) people across Catalonia are voting for a referendum that will declare the region independent from Spain. Spain has declared the referendum illegal and are using extreme violence against people who are attempting to vote.

Catalonia is an ‘autonomous region’ of Spain but they have their own distinct language (Catalan) and culture. 

In the video, Catalans are occupying a polling station that Spanish Forces are attempting to close so that people cannot vote for independence. Spanish police are tossing people down a flight of stairs, kicking people in the faces and forcibly removing them for the polling station. 

The Spanish police have raided government offices and pro-independence press throughout the last few weeks and have arrested over a dozen politicians who support independence and confiscated polling papers and machines in attempt to silence their will.

700 out of approximately 900 Catalan mayors are under threat of being arrested by Spanish forces because they proceeded with the referendum. Over 450 people have been injured by police so far today.

It’s incredible how many people don’t know this is currently happening. Reblog for visibility and please share your photo’s and videos for the world to see.