WHERE WE GO
Revolutionary parties, such as today's Black Panther Party, fail us not because they cannot provide the national apparatus and the training for self-government that we need. They can. They fail us, rather, because they do not create in us the mood and the frame of mind for independence and self-government.
They fail us because their major goal - the destruction of the total U.S. government and/or the seizing of the U.S. government machinery is incorrect. It defeats in black people the mood and frame of mind for self-government, and this in itself is sufficient reason for these parties' failing us. But it is also important to note that this goal of theirs rests on an incorrect analysis of objective reality.
Their goal necessitates black-white alignment on a class basis - that is to say, black and ‘white workers united against the small but powerful class of white exploiters. If we were to go to South Africa and suggest such an alignment as a strategy for black liberation, it would be crystal clear that we would be engaging either in a bold deception or in a pure flight of fantasy. This is hardly less true of America, A class alignment of black and white workers here is blocked as a practical achievement because the reality of the relationship between black and white workers is caste, not class. White workers in America - as a caste are hostile to black workers, believe they share few common interests with the blacks, and see no benefits to be derived from union with blacks superior to the benefits they believe they already derive-from caste.
The whole history of black-white relations - from union and plant contacts through housing riots - bespeaks this loudly.
Reality calls, NOW, for nationhood among blacks: for black reconstruction - of the black personality and dignity - BY blacks. Only through nationhood can this be achieved. Only through the marshaling of our own resources in our own interest can we escape the persistent, all-pervading cancer of white supremacy, the interminable promotion of white interests through white supremacy. Oppressed as a group, we must rise up as a group. This is not only the common sense of physics applied to human dynamics, whereby the power of thirty million people acting in unison is greater’ than the power of thirty million people acting individually, it is also a common and noble instinct of man, having to do with survival of the species.
The so-called revolutionary parties, resting on the impracticality of a black-white unity, would have us turn our energies from reconstruction of the black personality and the marshaling of our resources as a people, charging us with cultural nationalism and chauvinism; instead, they would have us disperse and dissipate our energies in vain pursuit of a black-white unity which would better and sooner come, in any event, AFTER we are reconstructed as a people, and AFTER we stand as equals with others in this world. Theirs is a game, which, as in the past, serves best the persistent aims of white supremacy. The so-called revolutionary parties would have us turn from the building of a black nation to the goal of achieving sovereignty over all fifty states. Why? Do they - like whites in power - somehow feel there is something magic, inviolable, and eternal about the present territorial boundaries of the United States? Sovereignty over all fifty states may be a proper goal for the exploited classes of whites in American society ;THEY are the majority population, even without us, but THEY, as a majority - white workers and the white poor - do not regard us as a part of them. And we ARE not a part of them; implicitly we tend to reject their most sacred more, their faith in white supremacy and their divine mission on earth, and, whether successfully rejecting that more or not, we suffer from the effects of it universally and harshly.
Only as slaves, therefore, could we regard ourselves as part of the white majority. We are an oppressed people - oppressed not only by the white ruling class but in a quite real and deeply rooted sense by the WHOLE white majority. We are not a part of them. We are robbed by them, and ALL of them partake of the riches that flow to them spiritually and materially, from our exploitation. Let them if they would call to us and say, "Join us in the American political revolution first - and when we are in power, we will wipe out racial oppression."
No. We ARE no longer slaves. The fight for power WITHIN the American society is theirs. OUR energies now must be spent in marshaling our resources for our own well-being and strength, that we may, through our own power, free ourselves of oppression, that we may, through our own power, reconstruct the black personality, which is the first step toward freedom from oppression.
We have a need, as a people, to march to a different drummer - and 4 right. We have a right to create a quality of life that is uniquely ours, meeting OUR needs, reflecting OR ambitions. The Republic of New Africa is the vehicle for achieving such a life. Our method entails campaigns for consent,followed by plebiscites, followed by defense of our land. Our success is to be predicated upon marshaling in our service eight strategic elements which are necessary for success of a black state in North America. Among these eight elements is the "limited objective."
By this element we leave to the white majority any war for control of the American machinery of government. We seek no control over their people or their goods, Neither do we seek all of their states or half of them or even one quarter of them. We seek but one-tenth of the states over which they claim sovereignty. Our claim finds its justice not simply in the fact that we are one-tenth of the people in America but that these states - Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia,and South Carolina - have beer our traditional home for three centuries, we have worked the land and developed it, and have fought to stay there against terror and murder and assault and intimidation and deprivations of all sorts. We can say: this land is ours. Here we shall build a new nation: in peace, if peace is permitted us; in war,if it is forced upon us. Our method of achieving this sovereignty over our land is the method of men of peace, of African men who love justice and honor law. In the states of Mississippi, Alabama, and Louisiana citizens of New Africa move among our fellow black people, apprising them of the fact that black people in America have never had legal citizenship, apprising them of their opportunity to become citizens of our ow nation, the Republic of New Africa, Next we shall demonstrate to the world, by means of a plebiscite, a vote, that it is New Africa, not the United States, which has the consent of the people who dominate those areas, Finally, at that moment which WE conceive to be most propitious for us, we shall declare the whole area free and independent and undertake to build the New Nation, the better society.
Now, what is the character of the New Society? What is to be the rhythm of our life? Let me read you here from the Declaration of Independence, the section called "the Aims of the Revolution." If you listen with the inner ear and perceive with your most sensitive minds eye, you will catch the sure vision of our people in New Africa, among the palms and beautiful white sands and great, sun-touched waters of the Gulf, among the dirt roads and arching trees of inner Mississippi. Hear, now, the character of life, as spelled out in the Declaration.
We, therefore, see these as the aims of our revolution:
- To free Black people in America from oppression;
- To support and wage the world revolution until all people everywhere are so free;
- To build a New Society that is better than what we now know and as perfect as man can make it;
- To assure all people in the New Society maximum opportunity and equal access to that maximum;
- To promote industriousness, responsibility, scholarship and service;
- To create conditions in which freedom of religion abounds and man’s pursuit of God and/or the destiny, place, and purpose of man in the Universe will be without hindrance;
- To build a black independent nation where no sect or religious creed subverts or impedes the building of the New Society, the New State Government, or the achievement of the aims of the Revolution as set forth in this Declaration;
- To end exploitation of man by man or his environment;
- To assure equality of rights for the sexes;
- To end color and class discrimination, while not abolishing salubrious diversity, and to promote self-respect and mutual respect among all people in the Society;
- To protect and promote the personal dignity and integrity of the individual, and his natural rights;
- To assure justice for all;
- To place the major means of production and trade in the trust of the State to assure the benefits of this earth and man’s genius and labor to Society and all its members, and
- To encourage and reward the individual for hard work and initiative and insight and devotion to the Revolution.
BUT it is not enough to visualize the New Society. This has never been enough. It is not enough to make declarations and conceive structures through which to achieve those visions. Men have always had their lofty visions and their good intentions. What counts is men themselves: how men apply themselves to the tasks which MUST be performed if the visions are to materialize. And so, permit me a final thought, a final word - about US.
Because I a ma religious man - that is, because I suspect a certain order in the universe, a possible meaningfulness to it, and a certain role for human will, embodied and disembodied - I BELIEVE that we will win our Revolution. But because I am also a man of reason, I know that my BELIEF is composed of many parts hope. I know that victory is not assured. We can have victory, of course: IF the circumstances are right and IF we pay the price. Those of us who profess to be in the leadership work to make the circumstances right. But we wonder - I wonder, seventeen months after the founding of the Republic - if we are willing to pay the price. I wonder because in seventeen months I have seen "strong" brothers and "beautiful" sisters cop out. I have seen them fail one another. I have seen men who profess to be soldiers fail to be on time, fail to obey orders, fail to show up for duty. I have seen the makers of burning speeches fail to carry out the charges of their offices, I have seen citizens give money lavishly at emotional mass rallies and fail to pay their small regular taxes. I have seen us pledge our lives and our fortunes but fail to show up for an hour's worth of typing, an hour's drive to the printer's or the airport. I hope it is obvious to you that I can talk to you about our weaknesses I am dealing from a knowledge of our strength. For every one example of failing, we have seen three of dedication, consistency, and efficacy. In these seventeen months we have not only oiled the machinery of government, we have developed the first, sure, nation-wide cadre of revolutionary workers dedicated to land and power in our time, in this place. Yet it is the lost sheep who gathers our attention, the weak link. for, if our victory can be built on our strength, our defeat can be fashioned out of our weakness, a single link.
The thing that is wrong with us is that we have been imbued with a slave mentality. We have been robbed of self-confidence, instilled with self-hate, and turned into a race of selfish, paranoic, super-sensitive individuals. It is almost needless to say that none of this was by accident. But the first step in the cure is to recognize and acknowledge the illness.
We are the richest slaves in the world, but nowhere do we pay the freight in our fight for freedom. It was more than coincidence that soon after white money was withdrawn from SNICK and CORE they went into decline; it is more than accident that SCLC looks to whites for its largest donations. Of course, we do support the churches and the bars quite well; all hope, therefore, is not lost. It simply has failed to materialize for the Movement.
In like manner we admire the resolute and victorious Vietnamese, but we seem not so sure that freedom and an uncertain future are better than well fed, indolent, two-car slavery. We waiting for the organization to be perfect give up your special cop-out - and become a part of NEW AFRICA NOW. It is to bring your talents and your devotion and pledge with us to work unceasingly and selflessly,with great discipline - discipline - knowing that each of us, particularly because of the damage oppression has done to us,has many shortcomings and styles that may constitute severe sources of irritation, but vowing with your utmost determination that none of these will separate you from the Movement or from your brothers and sisters in the Movement.
Now, if you will give to us who now lead your Government, and to our program, your dedication and your discipline, for a reasonable space of time; if you will open to your Government on a regular and systematic basis the great wealth which we as a people possess, and which we individually possess, sacrificially if need be, even as you keep in balance your particular THING that you are trying to get together; if you will give us your faith, your patience, your trust, your dedicated labor at those tasks of government that need doing and which you are able to do - if you will do all this, if, in short, you will give us the power, we will give you A NATION!
POWER!
Washington, D.C. August 1969
