“Never be deceived that the rich will allow you to vote away their wealth.”—Lucy Parsons
“We can have democracy in this country or we can have great wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we can’t have both.”—Louis D. Brandeis
The recently published statement by Chris Hedges that “Those on the streets around Wall Street are the physical embodiment of hope . . .” is partially correct. However, those Wall Street occupiers in New York, and those of us in solidarity with them across the United States and elsewhere, are not merely the “physical embodiment of hope.” They/we are the “physical embodiment” of actualized “hope;” as neither “hope” nor “faith,” in and of themselves, serve to bring about genuine change unless they are acted upon.
As Frederick Douglass succinctly put it: “Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will.” Implicit in the use of the word “demand” is action, not mere hope or faith. It is not the exclusive domain of divinity scholars to grasp the simple, universal and obvious correctness contained in the New Testament biblical passage that says, in relevant part, “ . . . faith without works isdead . . .” Indeed, the people’s historian, the late Howard Zinn, documents this simple reality time and time again throughout his book, A People’s History of the United States. This is a secular, everyday people’s bottom-up struggle. There are no gurus in it.
It is the consistent “demand,” and the protracted organizing thereto, on the part of everyday Black, White, Brown, Red, and Yellow people in this nation and worldwide that are the catalysts for real and much needed systemic change. This is why the Wall Street actions are of such enormous importance to everyday people of goodwill everywhere.
At the heart of the avariciousness of the blood-sucking corporate elite of Wall Street is their concomitant subversion of any kind of meaningful so-called ‘democracy’ in this nation. The overwhelming support for, and installment of Barack Obama, by this nation’s corporate elite, as U.S. president was, to be sure, a successful corporate coup against the interests of everyday people of this nation and the world. It is no coincidence that the Barack Obama brand became the most successful corporate-branding thus far in the history of the United States. The corporate-stream media’s propaganda machine worked overtime to ensure that their Trojan Horse fake “hope and change” candidate would become the first nominally ‘black’ head of the U.S. Empire, with the corporate/military elite of Wall Street still very much in charge.
It is important, at this point and time, to ask ourselves what some of these systemically trained, academically well adorned “leaders” who now so adroitly sing praises for the current Wall Street rebellions, were doing and/or saying back in 2008, to warn everyday people about the inherent dangers of the then impending Obama brand presidency. The fact is that many of them were overwhelmingly, conspicuously and complicitly silent or they were outright supporting (and calling upon others to support) this Wall Street corporate-backed Obama brand. Ask yourselves, can they be trusted today even as they pontificate about Wall Street’s greed and the everyday people’s pain? Wasn’t it obvious then to these academically adorned ‘intellectuals’ that Barack Obama was a Trojan Horse for Wall Street?! You, the readers, must decide this for yourselves. But remember the African proverb which says, “Beware of the naked man who offers you clothes.”
“Assuming that the corporate Wall Street elite and its concomitant opinion-forming, omission, and misinformation machinery of the U.S. corporate media successfully installs their favorite choice—Democratic Party Republicrat Barack Obama—as the first President of color of the U.S. Empire, the majority of in the United States are in for a rude awakening in the form of increased economic austerity, internal political repression, deepened racial disharmony, external U.S. military adventurism, and an endless stream of misleading disinformation from the corporate government . . .
While assorted pontificating pundits and commentators spew forth their endless and irrelevant platitudes of nothingness regarding the installment of Barack Obama as the next President of the U.S. Empire, our task is to seriouslyprepare for the intensified coming economic, political, and social conflicts which will surely be ushered in by the Obama/Biden regime. Our youth will increasingly continue to be imprisoned and/or murdered by trigger happy policing. More and more people will lose both their jobs and their homes. U.S. military adventurism abroad will in fact continue and increase. True universal/single-payer health care will remain a myth, and the greed of the corporate elite will abound unabated. In a word, Black, Brown, Red, Yellow, and White peoples will continue to be used, abused, and emaciated.”
Lessons for today
We everyday Black, White, Brown, Red, and Yellow people must be very careful not to be duped by the “progressive” sounding rhetoric of the de facto systemic gate-keepers who now masquerade as prolific supporters of the everyday people’s struggle for economic, political, and social justice. We must be careful not to allow the struggle of everyday Black, White, Brown, Red, and Yellow people to be hijacked by these would-be “leaders.”
It is the ordinary everyday people who must collectively lead the bottom-up people’s revolution on Wall Street and elsewhere in this country.
Make no mistake about it: It is you/we, the everyday people, who must direct this developing revolution, not the comfortable, systemically adorned pontificators who are somehow always available to hijack the everyday people’s struggle!
We must support, in word and deed, the struggle of everyday people for an end to corporate greed and militarism, whether it be on Wall Street or in our own neighborhoods. We must be actualized visionaries locally, nationally, and globally.
There is much work to be done! Onward, then, my sisters and brothers! Onward!
Intrepid Report Associate Editor, Larry Pinkney, is a veteran of the Black Panther Party, the former Minister of Interior of the Republic of New Africa, a former political prisoner and the only American to have successfully self-authored his civil/political rights case to the United Nations under the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. In connection with his political organizing activities, Pinkney was interviewed in 1988 on the nationally televised PBS News Hour, formerly known as The MacNeil/Lehrer News Hour. Pinkney is a former university instructor of political science and international relations, and his writings have been published in various places, including The Boston Globe, the San Francisco BayView newspaper, the Black Commentator,Global Research (Canada), LINKE ZEITUNG (Germany), and Mayihlome News (Azania/South Africa). For more about Larry Pinkney see the book, Saying No to Power: Autobiography of a 20th Century Activist and Thinker, by William Mandel [Introduction by Howard Zinn]. (Click here to read excerpts from the book.
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Barack Obama: Wall Street’s Trojan Horse
Posted on October 7, 2011 by Larry Pinkney
The recently published statement by Chris Hedges that “Those on the streets around Wall Street are the physical embodiment of hope . . .” is partially correct. However, those Wall Street occupiers in New York, and those of us in solidarity with them across the United States and elsewhere, are not merely the “physical embodiment of hope.” They/we are the “physical embodiment” of actualized “hope;” as neither “hope” nor “faith,” in and of themselves, serve to bring about genuine change unless they are acted upon.
As Frederick Douglass succinctly put it: “Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will.” Implicit in the use of the word “demand” is action, not mere hope or faith. It is not the exclusive domain of divinity scholars to grasp the simple, universal and obvious correctness contained in the New Testament biblical passage that says, in relevant part, “ . . . faith without works is dead . . .” Indeed, the people’s historian, the late Howard Zinn, documents this simple reality time and time again throughout his book, A People’s History of the United States. This is a secular, everyday people’s bottom-up struggle. There are no gurus in it.
It is the consistent “demand,” and the protracted organizing thereto, on the part of everyday Black, White, Brown, Red, and Yellow people in this nation and worldwide that are the catalysts for real and much needed systemic change. This is why the Wall Street actions are of such enormous importance to everyday people of goodwill everywhere.
At the heart of the avariciousness of the blood-sucking corporate elite of Wall Street is their concomitant subversion of any kind of meaningful so-called ‘democracy’ in this nation. The overwhelming support for, and installment of Barack Obama, by this nation’s corporate elite, as U.S. president was, to be sure, a successful corporate coup against the interests of everyday people of this nation and the world. It is no coincidence that the Barack Obama brand became the most successful corporate-branding thus far in the history of the United States. The corporate-stream media’s propaganda machine worked overtime to ensure that their Trojan Horse fake “hope and change” candidate would become the first nominally ‘black’ head of the U.S. Empire, with the corporate/military elite of Wall Street still very much in charge.
It is important, at this point and time, to ask ourselves what some of these systemically trained, academically well adorned “leaders” who now so adroitly sing praises for the current Wall Street rebellions, were doing and/or saying back in 2008, to warn everyday people about the inherent dangers of the then impending Obama brand presidency. The fact is that many of them were overwhelmingly, conspicuously and complicitly silent or they were outright supporting (and calling upon others to support) this Wall Street corporate-backed Obama brand. Ask yourselves, can they be trusted today even as they pontificate about Wall Street’s greed and the everyday people’s pain? Wasn’t it obvious then to these academically adorned ‘intellectuals’ that Barack Obama was a Trojan Horse for Wall Street?! You, the readers, must decide this for yourselves. But remember the African proverb which says, “Beware of the naked man who offers you clothes.”
The article titled, Wall Street Is Still Very Much In Charge, published in the Black Commentator on November 7, 2008, said in relevant part:
“Assuming that the corporate Wall Street elite and its concomitant opinion-forming, omission, and misinformation machinery of the U.S. corporate media successfully installs their favorite choice—Democratic Party Republicrat Barack Obama—as the first President of color of the U.S. Empire, the majority of in the United States are in for a rude awakening in the form of increased economic austerity, internal political repression, deepened racial disharmony, external U.S. military adventurism, and an endless stream of misleading disinformation from the corporate government . . .
While assorted pontificating pundits and commentators spew forth their endless and irrelevant platitudes of nothingness regarding the installment of Barack Obama as the next President of the U.S. Empire, our task is to seriously prepare for the intensified coming economic, political, and social conflicts which will surely be ushered in by the Obama/Biden regime. Our youth will increasingly continue to be imprisoned and/or murdered by trigger happy policing. More and more people will lose both their jobs and their homes. U.S. military adventurism abroad will in fact continue and increase. True universal/single-payer health care will remain a myth, and the greed of the corporate elite will abound unabated. In a word, Black, Brown, Red, Yellow, and White peoples will continue to be used, abused, and emaciated.”
Lessons for today
We everyday Black, White, Brown, Red, and Yellow people must be very careful not to be duped by the “progressive” sounding rhetoric of the de facto systemic gate-keepers who now masquerade as prolific supporters of the everyday people’s struggle for economic, political, and social justice. We must be careful not to allow the struggle of everyday Black, White, Brown, Red, and Yellow people to be hijacked by these would-be “leaders.”
It is the ordinary everyday people who must collectively lead the bottom-up people’s revolution on Wall Street and elsewhere in this country.
Make no mistake about it: It is you/we, the everyday people, who must direct this developing revolution, not the comfortable, systemically adorned pontificators who are somehow always available to hijack the everyday people’s struggle!
We must support, in word and deed, the struggle of everyday people for an end to corporate greed and militarism, whether it be on Wall Street or in our own neighborhoods. We must be actualized visionaries locally, nationally, and globally.
There is much work to be done! Onward, then, my sisters and brothers! Onward!
Intrepid Report Associate Editor, Larry Pinkney, is a veteran of the Black Panther Party, the former Minister of Interior of the Republic of New Africa, a former political prisoner and the only American to have successfully self-authored his civil/political rights case to the United Nations under the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. In connection with his political organizing activities, Pinkney was interviewed in 1988 on the nationally televised PBS News Hour, formerly known as The MacNeil/Lehrer News Hour. Pinkney is a former university instructor of political science and international relations, and his writings have been published in various places, including The Boston Globe, the San Francisco BayView newspaper, the Black Commentator, Global Research (Canada), LINKE ZEITUNG (Germany), and Mayihlome News (Azania/South Africa). For more about Larry Pinkney see the book, Saying No to Power: Autobiography of a 20th Century Activist and Thinker, by William Mandel [Introduction by Howard Zinn]. (Click here to read excerpts from the book.