Practical Nationalism Part I: What Are You Going To Do About It?

[Samuel Burnham]

Hotep all.

First of all, those who do not read all of this post...but "skim" over it as too many African/Black folk do here, will miss the point and find cause for pointless debate. I also realize that there are some among the Black list whose sole purpous is to be "fault-finders". You will find something big, and if not big, trivial to disagree with somone, so as to cause pointless arguments. The latter group, will unfortuantely, perish with our enemies. The capital words are not shouts, but emphasis...that we should NOT skim over.

I've seen a bunch of arguments over the presidential election, particularly, against Obama. While I prefer Cynthia McKinney, and Obama is not my favorite, I would think that some of you would be happier to see Bush or another obviously anti-Black/anti-African enemy of Africans/Blacks in the White House! The problem is NOT that I have a problem with those who are against Obama's bid to be president. My problem is that most of these critisizers act as if ANY African/Black person in this country that will look after OUR needs unapolgetically could EVER be elected president of the U.S. without a COMPROMISE that is UNACCEPTABLE to CONSCIOUS African/Black folk! We should know this by now.

As a result, we critisize and find fault with any and every Black person that runs for political office in the country, accusing them of being pupets, tratiors, sellouts, etc. While MOST of these comments are TRUE, the problem is that the few Black folk who ARE on OUR side are WRONGLY accused of being like the ones above. As a result, we discourage EACH AND EVERY ONE of them from doing ANYTHING on our behalf.

I hate to say this, but If I had to rely upon "conscious" Black forums to encourage me to be the Pan-African PRACTICAL Nationalist that I am today, or to do ANYTHING POSITIVE on behalf of African-Black people, I would have given up and cast my lot with the assimilationist and integrationist! After all, there is so much argument and disrespectfulness among us that I dare say we are WORSE than the integrationst and assimilationists! This is be so shameful to ous that we are motivated to some form of action that will bring back intra-group respect and cooperation, so as not to prove the White supremacist and Black naysayers (which have already lost faith in their own people) right.

MOSTS...Others who critisize the rest for not looking at repatriation forget several key points:

1. MOST of these fault-finders DON'T have masses-oriented plan that will be STRATEGIC enough and ORGANIZED WITH ENOUGH STRATEGICALLY PLACED PEOPLE to make repatriation MUTUALLY benefitial to the Africans on the continent and those migrating from the diaspora. As a result, a hand-full of "African-Americans" might be lucky enough to live in Africa...and if they are EXTRA lucky...their sons and daugthers may avoid the poverty that the continental Africans are already enduring.

2. Because MOST don't have SUFFICIENT organization here in the diaspora (i.e. U.S., South America, France, etc), both in numbers of INCOME-PRODCING PEOPLE and SKILLS to make repatriation viable for THOUSANDS of people. And we NEED thousands of the type of people above in order to have any SIGNIFCANT change in Africa...if we want to make repatriation VIABLE to all but wealthy, exploitive, "African-Americans".

SOLUTION:

Since no African/Black person in this anti-Black/anti-African U.S. can hope to get elected to the office of the president without compromising TOO MUCH of what we need, then we must choose...through cooperative action...a "lobby" to act in our best interest. This lobby, as Baba Amefika Geuka calls it, is the the POBA. The POBA concept is dependant upon the conscious African/Black folk in this country acting SIMULTANEOUSLY through an ELECTED Black person whose ONLY political loyalty will be to Black folk!

Now I don't have time to "teach a class" on why this would work. Those who are not fault-finders will take the time to read ALL of the material that is attached to this message before they do what MOST of us conscious Black folk do...claim that it "will never work". Attached is a solution to pointless energy being spent arguing for and against Obama...and any other Black person running for office in this country.

This is PRACTICAL NATIOANLISM, PART 1:

Since we conscious folk are already know for our OVERABUNDANCE of theory, conjecture, and arguments...what are we going to DO about It? Take heed to ALL the attachments before forming an opinion.

respectfully,

Samuel Burnham: NBLC Science & Technology Task Force, Ghana Nkwanta Project Members

www.bringbackblack.org
http://nkwanta.tripod.com

[Samuel Burnham]

Interesting. Dead silence on this action-oriented plan!? Hhhmmm.

[Marcia]

Hello: I've gotten this far:

We are looking for One Million racially-conscious Black Americans who are registered to vote, to join the NBLC, and agree to withdraw from whichever party they are presently identified with and register as “No Party Affiliation” (NPA), or whatever is the equivalent in your respective state. It is important to note that we are not asking you to switch your registration to “independent,” because in many jurisdictions “Independent” is itself a political party. We want you to resister as having NO party affiliation whatsoever.

Next, we want you to agree to cast your ballot in the general election for whichever party’s candidate is willing to go on record as supporting certain litmus-test issues that evolve from our NBLC Convention to be held on October 18, 2008. At present, blacks have the dubious distinction of being the only special interest group among the American
electorate for which neither candidate of either party has seen fit to offer even a token “plank” in their campaign platform! This is unheard of in contemporary political times, and is especially unnerving in an election where an African-American candidate is deemed to have a realistic chance of winning his party’s nomination, and ultimately even the Presidency of the United States of America!

At the rate things are going, the political pundits are anticipating a “close” election, with effectively all of the black vote going to the Democrat’s nominee, and that being offset by the racist or “red-neck” group going against its economic class interest and voting for the Conservative/Republican. In an attempt to avoid admitting the obvious, mainstream media pundits and certain candidates are referring to this red-neck racist voting block as
“blue-collar, hard-working white people,” rather than what we all know them to be. As things stand, the stage is set perfectly for an enlightened group of racially-conscious Blacks to seize the initiative and take advantage of the fortuitous situation that has been put in place.
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I would say that the GREEN party would hope that registering Green and helping to get the GREEN party on the ballot SHOULD do the same thing as registering no-party affiliation.

In terms of voter disenfranchisement, the GREEN party black caucus was working on some things which I posted before but I'll post again. Perhaps it will be of some interest. Or perhaps you will comment as to why what we're doing isn't good enough (assuming that's where you'll stand after you read it)
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Greetings All,

1. The GP Black Caucus ~8 years ago intiated support for the "Democratization of the Electoral College" initiative by Asa Gordon that would finally bring about the support of the National Green party over several national conventions. It was a long haul of motivation and education. See Green Press Releases at ww.electors.us. Thanks.

2. This "initiative" provides the only means that can translate popular votes for the McKinney/Clemente ticket into electoral votes that can empower their campaign in a close election. By way of example, the effect of this "initiative" if realized in 2000 would have awarded 12 electors to the Green Party candidate in 2000 and Nader would have been in the position to be "king" maker in that presidential election.

3. This "initiative" is the highest ranked Digg subject matter (by far) at the McKinney/Clemente web site -- http://digg.com/users/mckinney2008/history.

4. This lawsuit "initiative" was filed on July 28th, 2008, to commemorate the Century and Two Score years anniversary of the adoption of the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States. The "initiative" seeks to enforce the mal-apportionment penalty (MAP) provision of the Second Section of the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution to empower Black Voters that is loss under "Winner-Take-All".

5. This "initiative" exposes the "Winner-Take-All" white electoral quota as structurally anti-majoritarian because it concedes over half(147) of the Presidential Electors needed to select the President of the United States of America to the 11 states that made up the former Confederate States of America. "Winner-Take-All" is institutionally racially bias because it only counts the nearly 27% of general election white votes cast in the former Confederate States, while disregarding the near 46% of the general election black votes cast in those states in our presidential elections. The true measure of a democracy is not in counting how many votes are cast, but in how many of those votes that are cast count.

6. This "initiative" also exposes an unfortunate irony . The "Reconstruction Party" and the Black Liberation Movement (BLM) apparently shares the public general ignorance of this most powerfull reconstruction provision to empower black voters and are in need of education by the GP Black Caucus to obtain the progressive understanding of the National Green Party at this stage.

7. Finally, this "initiative" is to honor that voter empowerment amendment to the Constitution that represents the crowning achievement of the ultimate sacrifice made in the Civil War by that "band of brothers" of Americans of European and African descent to effect "a new birth of freedom" and forge "a more perfect union".

Thank You,
Asa

[Samuel Burnham]

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I would say that the GREEN party would hope that registering Green and helping to get the GREEN party on the ballot SHOULD do the same thing as registering no-party affiliation.

In terms of voter disenfranchisement, the GREEN party black caucus was working on some things which I posted before but I'll post again. Perhaps it will be of some interest. Or perhaps you will comment as to why what we're doing isn't good enough (assuming that's where you'll stand after you read it)
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Hotep/Greetings, sister Marcia. The originator of the no party affiliation idea is not myself, though I agree with him. So I will send the information you have posted to him (Baba Amefika Gueka) so we can be on the same page. This will aslo include Baba James Clingman who is co-conviener of the NBLC.

Till then, I'll give you a response from my perspective. I think there are bad ideas, good ideas, and better ideas. With all due respect, I think Baba Geuka's was a slightly better idea than registering as Green party Loyalists (though no-party-affiliation does not prevent us from voting Green). I will explain why to the best of my ability. So please bear with me. I hope not to make this too long.

Since our so-journ in the U.S., Blacks/Africans have tried aligning ourselves to the political group that pays us the most positive "attention", relatively speaking. However, the majority of the policy making power in all of these groups rests with non-Blacks, which usually includes agendas that we collectively do not support. As a result, we get the "crumbs" of whatever success these political parties gain, usually missing the "meat and potatoes" that we hope to get. While we often attempt to gain more power within these parties, our collective failure to be self-determining in our values prevent us from effectively holding these parties accountable to most of our needs. Combine this with the seemingly inborn fear of non-Blacks in these parties of "reverse racism", favortism; Black folks who fear self doing anything without the approval of non-Blacks, etc. and the end result...we are forced to compromise our stance way too much to effect masses-oriented change among our own people...and as usual...others benefit more than we do off our own hard work (like affirmative action, free breakfast and lunch programs, etc).

Advantages To No Party Affiliation:

In general, Blacks switched from a White-owned-and-controlled Republican to White-owned-and-controlled Democrat party, starting during the presidency of Franklin Roosevelt, and accelerating during the Kenedy/LBJ era. Now we are once again dissatisfied, plus we must wait 4 years to see if Obama is able to make siginificant changes to this repeating cycle, even while we know racists and so-called conservatives will fight him every step of the way, preventing some of the change we seek. Rather than repeating history again, registering as "no party affiliation" , combined with the "litmus test" concepts mentioned in the article, will do a few things:

1. It will signal to all the political parties of America that we are loyal to the needs of the Black collective more so than any political party, forcing those who want a minimum of one million votes...to pander to us!
2. With a minimum of 1 million voters unpredictable in who they are going to vote for untill the "last minute" politically, it will make it more difficult for any party to betray us....because in general, they don't have us on their roster! We'll be able to more speedily "switch loyalties" in a way we can't do if we are affiliated with a party. Keep in mind that this minimum of 1 million voters will have a set agenda, as part of the "litmus test" ,as mentioned earlier.
3. We could still do all the positive things mentioned in the above post, without the Green party, or any other party thinking they have us in the bag.

The end result of our previous and current efforts still leave us dependant upon a group of people, that as a collective, even with the non-racist exceptions, have failed to treat us right several centuries prior to comming to the North American continent (As proven by Chiek Anta Diop, John Henery Clark, Chancellor Williams, our sojourn here, etc). The no-party-affiliation concept will allow those of us who put the needs of the Black community ahead fo the wants of others, a strong barganing chip that we can't get by being loyal to the current chioces of U.S. political parties.

Those who read "Understanding Where We Are", and the "Rational for A POBA" will know that we are Practical Nationalists, so we arne't interested in hating others or oppressing others, nor are we talking about total isolation in a "Blacks only enclave" in the U.S. Those running for President of "all Americans" are not expected to be totaly uncompromising on our (Practical Nationalists) behalf, which is why the POBA concept is also pushed. However, the American president, idealy, would try much harder than they are now, to accomidate the needs of Black folk, with this type of combined pressure.

I want to re-emphasisize the fact that the positive initiatives you mentioned can still be pushed for by Black folk, including those of the NLBC, as the more competition on the powers that be, the more barganing power we have as Africans in America.

I hope I've provided an intelligent answer to your question. I'll ensure the leaders of the NBLC recieve your suggestion.

Respectfully,

Samuel Burnham