What’s become of those days when we were united, standing strong against our adversaries for a cause greater than ourselves?
Those days when X, King, Seal, Newton, Garvey and many many more armed themselves with a selfless love aiding in the revolution – the fight for the Black man, the days when it would’ve been a bizarre oddity for any brother to degrade, beat, and humiliate another as he’s repaid by his handlers a weekly stipend barely covering his basic needs.
Looking back on those days I’m too young to have seen, my old mind asks if the extreme tokenism, self–hatred and bootlickin’ are the “advances of today” that the cohorts of Lady Liberty’s prostitution ring refer to, and all I can hear are the whispers of soldiers who walked this battlefield before me: “We shall overcome…”
But, as the blood gushed profusely from several of his orifices, only to congeal on the cold gray concrete and steel, I watched helplessly from my frigid cell wondering how, as three of my own brothers, dressed in official token garb (black S.S. boots, handcuffs and official insignia), beat another Brother, who, cuffed and restrained at the waist, tried desperately to deflect the hatred raining down upon him.
In prisons and jails across America, Brothers and Sisters suffer through similar turmoil.
Some, unfortunately, don’t make it through.
However, in comparison to the rampant psychological torment initiated and administered by our own people, acting as the parasitic minions of corrections, physical abuse could be viewed as virtually non-existent.
It’s when the destructive hands of the enemy suddenly look like yours that the pain begins to grossly manifest, transforming a multitude of individuals into beasts of pure hatred.
But, what’s failed to be seen by most is that the U.S. Criminal Justice system, when woven into the fabric of capitalism, is designed to annihilate the African masses living within U.S. borders who fail or refuse to conform, giving its minions free reign in an attempt to gain "compliance."
As individuals fight for survival in a land which despises their very essence, they’re dragged off to warehouses, held as collateral hostages exacting heavy profit, where they're regularly beaten up and psychologically tortured.
Not just by white guards either, but by the very bootlickin', parasitic tokens who hate their own reflections.
Wake up people! Open your eyes!
As the black man is the focal point, housed as the majority in America’s dungeons, what future is there for the African populace?
Condemnation to a life of servitude, until the extinction of the African race on this bloody soil?
I’d rather die on my feet than live on my knees!
We as a community must unite with our brethren incarcerated, offering love, support and education. So as each Brother and each Sister returns from the confines of those brutal places, they’ll be more apt, and better equipped, to fight in the war on imperialism in all its forms.
Only then, like the soldiers who walked this battlefield before me whispered: “We shall overcome!”
