Here is Chokwe Lumumba's last known interview before he passed away. Yes Magazine interviewed him about the upcoming Jackson Rising conference and his plans to transform Jackson. Some excerpts:
We want to accomplish a revolutionary transformation. We are party to statistics which demonstrate that our people, black people in particular and probably the majority of the Mississippi population, are at the worst end of all the vital statistics. When it comes to the discussion of oppression in America, we’ve been experiencing the worst of it for a long time. What’s exciting to me is the prospect of going from worst to first in a forward-moving transformation which is going to take groups of dispossessed black folks here and others and make us controllers of our own destiny...
We find ourselves in a situation where we are in the "Kush" district. Kush is an ancient name for an area around Egypt, which in ancient times, encompassed a historically black community which became the genesis of Egypt and Ethiopia and others. We use the terminology to refer to a "black belt," areas which are predominantly black, but there’s a distinct reference to a formation of black counties in Mississippi: Tunica to Wilkinson, all contiguous, 18 counties, 17 of them majority black including Hinds county where Jackson sits, only one majority white, and it teeters on the edge of being majority black.
"Kush," the concept, is larger than Mississippi. It goes across the border into Louisiana and the predominantly black counties of Louisiana and Southeast Arkansas. This is really a broader area than where we are, but we in Mississippi are the center of commerce of that area. We’re 85 percent black. This is an important area because it gives us a chance to demonstrate real vitality, to vindicate that terminology of black power which was used years ago, but was so much in search of definition at the time......
We knew we were getting short-changed in the whole so-called integrationist movement, which in truth was a struggle for democratic rights; in our struggle against Jim Crow, we knew we were coming up short. And so we defined ourselves as being in a struggle for Black Power and became a black liberation movement with various different objectives....
Mayors normally help out the economic powers-that-be and try to make sure they can avoid the issue of crime as much as possible, and point to prosperity by moving and shuffling people around in a gentrifying set of circumstances, by trying to get the poor people out of town and getting rich people in....
Change does not come on thoughts alone; because we have a revolutionary ideology and give speeches on it. It comes because you can change the material conditions of people, and get people to assist in the change, be the mainstay in the change in their conditions. And so, how do we achieve that, that’s the real challenge for us. We don’t think we can do it in the way we did it in the 60s and 70s. We raised up millions of people in fiery speeches and that was good—I’m in love with that period—but at the same time, the people been suffering for a while and fiery speeches are not going to do it.
We’ve got to tell them how we’re going to fix their streets; how we’re going to feed them, how are they going to eat, where are they going to live. How are they going to avoid being in a neighborhood which goes unattended for so long that it becomes a target for urban renewal which is really just urban removal and then they lose their homes and they turn around and they’ve got condominiums there, and they can’t afford to buy a condo and then they’re shuffled out to the outskirts of the city where once again, they find themselves in another community of poverty, or even in a community of poverty outside the city.
How the kids are going to get a real education as opposed to just showing up to school and being on the pipeline to prison? Those are the material things we’ve got to change. That’s an exploration process. It doesn’t require any less knowledge or commitment to the ideals we started off with, but it requires the ability to translate the message in ways that people can understand and become part of and can teach us. We have to understand the language of the people..... Rest of the interview. These quotes are not even half of the interview.
32 comments:
um, the voters of "the bold new city" need to remember that the apple doesn't fall to far from the tree. We need to send kush and it's crackpots back to Detroit or wherever it is they came from.
I would like nothing more than for the oppressed people in the Kush nation to organize their communities and become self sufficient. However, given the lack of investment capital and a motivated workforce, I'm thinking they'll be back to fiery speeches before too much longer.
500,000 African-Americans to Atlanta during 84-94. There were 1.5 million added to the Atlanta area at that time--so 2/3 of them were not Black.
Narrow vision and focus--the Lumumba way.
Kingfish is the only journalist truly adding transparency to this campaign. Too late we learn how dramatically Mayor Lumumba softpedaled and obscured his true agenda to the Jackson and metro area public.
What makes us a little bit different is we’re not just trying to defend ourselves against that sort of stuff, we’re trying to destroy that kind of stuff. We’re trying to defeat that. We want to create something different. We don’t just want to carve out a spot on the globe where we don’t get affected by it as much as the next guy. We’re trying to destroy it not only here but all over the world.
Flanders: What do you mean by "it"?
Lumumba: By "it" I mean capitalism, exploitation, racism.
Lumumba: We’re open for business, for people to come down and live. If you have a cooperative you want to put together or to work with, come on down. Finally, we’re going to be asking for resources, so if you want to do that you can call (601) 960-1084 and ask for Brother Kali. He’ll set you up.
http://kingfish1935.blogspot.com/2014/04/rising-to-top.html
http://navigatingthestorm.blogspot.com/
Fire "brother kali" vote tony yarber
http://kingfish1935.blogspot.com/2013/09/the-detroit-to-jackson-railroad.html
fire kwame kenyatta. vote tony yarber
FIRE ALL OF THEM I SAY!!!!! VOTE for Foghorn Leghorn and restored us all!!!!
Flanders: Is Jackson rising?
Lumumba: We’re open for business, for people to come down and live. If you have a cooperative you want to put together or to work with, come on down. Finally, we’re going to be asking for resources, so if you want to do that you can call (601) 960-1084 and ask for Brother Kali. He’ll set you up.
Jackson is rising off the charts and we’re going to have a conference of that name too. That’d be a good time for people to come down and see what we’re doing, in May 2014. Come on down and participate.
The most phenomenal migration in our time is probably to Atlanta where 500,000 black people moved in a 10-year period from 1985 to ’95. Once we get that many moving here to Mississippi, then you will be dealing with the next formation, you can put it that way, one which will be solidly behind revolutionary change and development.
http://www.yesmagazine.org/commonomics/remembering-lumumba
That would be transformational. The degrees of kushness would be increased dramatically all across the region.
2:36-you are right about a transformation. those 500,000 african-american middle class people with means enough to uproot for a job in mississippi are as sick of the handout culture as the rest of us.
mr lumumba was formed 50 yrs ago when the white man was keeping the black man down. he never opened his eyes to see that now the black man is keeping the black man down.
you can blame the government for this if you want (particularly the FBI who enforces nothign in MS unless it is "civil rights or public corruption", is that a joke or what?) but when it gets right down to it, we have been asleep...
all those sunshine-pumpers in fundren, at whole foods and the district need to explain just what "great things" are "in store for jackson", because i got nothing here...
http://topconservativenews.com/2014/03/farrakhan-to-pay-for-forensic-investigation-into-death-of-lumumba-chokwe/
Don't forget that "Brother Kali" said here that an autopsy had been completed on Chokwe and that Brother Kali and others were waiting on that and toxicology reports in order to gain some "clarity" in the death.
Now, where are the reports? Why haven't the reports been made public? Why hasn't Antar come clean about his father's death? Why hasn't Antar's campaign publicist Donna Ladd brought some transparency to the matter?
Then over at the Black Agenda Report you will find this statement:
[T]he Mississippi state coroner has refused to perform an autopsy on the body of Chokwe Lumumba,
Get that? Refused. How about some transparency on that Ladd?
"Who Kilt The Mayor?"
A three act play presented by the Madrigal players of Highway 80. To be performed at Battlefield Park on Friday, April 18, 8:00 pm. No coolers allowed.
Special appearance by Kennuff Stoakes. Guest appearance by the relatives of Richard Barrett. Also scheduled to show up, all living relatives of Ross Barnett dressed in period clothing.
Your timing couldn't be more interesting, KF...trying to inflame something? The people who weren't going to vote for Antar reallllly aren't going to vote for him now. See how much of nothing that accomplished?
" I've got nothing here", you have what we all have in the end, yourself.
Life has never been fair and if you expect it to be, you are bound to be disappointed and disgruntled.
What we have here is a free education and if it's not as good as it should be, we have libraries where you can educate yourself and you can get tutored on the internet. Study hard and you can go to one of the many junior colleges on a Pell Grant. That will start opening other doors to success.
What Whole Foods brought is more than a few jobs and the people they chose to employ are pleasant and helpful and know the store. They aren't walking around with a chip on their shoulder , they are doing something. And, the smart ones will leave work and take a class at one of our many institutions to find an even better job.
The Whole Foods crowds are not a bunch of Pollyannas, but a bunch a people determined to do better for themselves and their community. They don't let negativity immobilized them. They do instead of bitch. They don't dwell on the past and wring their hands, but look to improving the future.
And, Lumumba may have used scary words, but he is right that the poorest and most uneducated among us are going to have to turn around their lot in life. And, if we want our community to be better , we have to strengthen the weakest links. We can't condemn children to drugs and abuse and crime by ignoring their plight and robbing them of hope by telling them it's hopeless.
In the end, Lumumba was selling hope. If he thought hope comes with government " give aways", he was doomed to failure.
If he thought bringing in successful blacks willing to participate in the community and share the secrets to being a successful person rather than to come be a darker version of " good ole boys" helping themselves to limited resources, then maybe he'd have seen some progress. If his vision was having black businessmen stealing like the Wall Street guys and not having to go to jail for it, then he was envisioning better criminals who have get out of jail free cards.
Abuse of power is abuse of power and oppression is oppression. No race seems to have a shortage of assholes willing to oppress others to enrich themselves. Look in any country anywhere with any race in the majority.
The Jackson is going to hell white folks whining are just like you. Whiners. It takes determination and optimism to be successful. That the challenge is great makes success sweeter.
So stop looking at what others are or aren't doing and focus on fixing what you can fix...yourself.
That old saying is true, " Can't never did do nothing".
Another day, another mindless lecture from 7:14 AM. May the good Lord save whoever in this world has to actually listen to you blabber on ad infinitum.
7:14 said-"And, Lumumba may have used scary words..."
Scary words? He is advocating treason.
He does not try to conceal the long-range goals of the RNA, "by any means necessary", to overthrow our government.
They have chosen Jackson as their focal point.
If I wanted to inflame anyone, there are better ways to do it.
I discovered it while reading more about the Jackson Rising conference, which I have blogged about before. I consider his last interview newsworthy just because it is his last interview.
The ideology of Lumumba is scary because it is for freedom. The model is not capitalism. The oppression of working for others benefit in the suburbs is the common daily grind of minimum wage and no benefits while dodging the drug dealers, liquor stores, hi-interest lenders, and sex workers of this present capitalist inner city. Lumumba wants cooperatives because they have a different model. I can remember hearing the promises in the 80s from liberal Democrats who managed the city parking re: revenue sharing with the workers. Did not happen under Danks or Ditto. Nor the black mayors. We need something different than the marginalization and exploitation of the poor.
how about THIS radical thought---don't get knocked up wo a full time husband/wife--get an education and /or learn a skill--get a job--GET OFF THE GOVT TEAT AND STOP BITCHIN ABOUT BEING A VICTIM1111
8:10, your words sound like they were taken right from the book of Jim Jones. You remember? The People's Temple guru.
We know how that ended. The woods are full of these types...
Comparing Lumumba to Jim Jones? Seriously?! I tried to give this blog a chance, but I'm done attending tar and feather ceremonies by way of your readers.
So you'll leave not over the actual posts but because of the comments? Pretty weak-minded. Don't like the comments, just read the posts
April 13, 2014 at 12:41 PM = anonymous temper tantrum
12:41, Who compared Lumumba to Jim Jones? If you were quoting him then you should have given quotation marks.
YOUR WORDS were what received the response. YOUR PHILOSPHY is certainly comparable to Jones, Marx and other socialist, communist thoughts.
If what you wrote reflects the philosophy of others, then they, too, share the attention those thoughts bring about.
What a boatload of meaningless word salad. Chokwe's proudest accomplishments were raising water and sewer rates, and raising sales taxes - the most regressive way possible to raise public funds. Beyond that, his entire vision consisted of public "cooperative" gardens and making sure the new tax revenues "fall into the right hands" - plus some blather about self-defense. It's all intellectually lazy and economically incoherent.
Who could be surprised that no further into his last-ever interview/speech, he gets off into 'opression' before his fourth sentence.
Everything in the world of a community agitator is based on imaginary oppression, lack of opportunity, confiscation of wealth by the white devils and refusal to 'let my people rise up'.
And who thinks Junior Chokwe is any different, or any of the other candidates who were, at one time, in the race?
Gimme Mo!
Get Mo!
Hand Me Mo!
Let Me Take Mo!
We In Charge!
Free Da Lann!
" over throw the government" or change the current economic system?
Our form of government is a representative democracy. Capitalism is our economic system.
hey 4-12 @7:14am, here's one for ya...
http://www.kingfish1935.blogspot.com/2014/04/jackson-mayoral-race-edition-of-we.html
"Sheets Byrd"
ROFLMAO
Did Ted Duckworth ever get his permits to proceed with work at The District (old School for Blind/Deaf property)? You reported this story a while back.
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