#self-governance

The Body as a Team

The Body as a Team

Self-Governance - FFF - Fierce Feminine Friday

In 1930, in order to implement part of his party programme he founded a Trade Union - 'The Workers and Labourers Association'. In 1935 he was forced out of Jamaica by 'continuous harassment' by the forces of inertia and wealth, determined that there was to be no change in the social fabric. Garvey failed and went to London where he died, still dreaming of a return to Jamaica. But his stay in his native land had helped to sow the seeds of 1938. Two men would emerge to give reality to the most important planks of his manifesto, plank one that called for self-government, plank two that called for 'The Protection of Native Labour'. Both, each with his particular obsession, would help in the attaining of that fatherland which Garvey  had dreamt of in Africa; and at the same time had worked to achieve in Jamaica. The paradox of Garvey's life and career was to be that, stirred up by his words and deeds, even by his defeat, the masses of Jamaica were now prepared to take the next large leap. They would no longer wait for a better life in Heaven, nor in Africa. They wanted Garvey's programme put into action and they wanted it here and now.(p. 22-23)

In the wake of the Watts Riots and the assassination of Malcolm X, Huey Newton and Bobby Seale decided to get their Second Amendment on and start an inner city militia for black people living under the jackboot of the notoriously corrupt Oakland PD. Contrary to popular mythology, the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense actually worked pretty damn well until the feds started to fuck with it. Not only did they manage to protect they're streets from the gangsters in blue with bitchin leather-clad patrols armed with walky-talkies and law books as well as rifles and shotguns, but they started up a wide array of decentralized social services and "survival programs" that empowered disaffected youth and fought crime at its roots in the garden of urban despair. In Chicago, young Panthers like the late Fred Hampton even went so far as to convert well known street gangs to radical organizations that serviced their communities rather than preying upon them. I think we need to bring these kind of experiments in community self-defense back and make them even more radical. I honestly believe that if allowed to flourish rather than being sabotaged by J. Edgar Hoover's Cointelpro, the Black Panthers would have likely developed into something akin to the more popular militias active now in the Middle East, who not only provide an alternative to centralized law enforcement but an alternative to the centralized state itself. The safest working class neighborhoods for minorities to live in in the Middle East are the ones governed by groups like Hezbollah and the Sadrists.