On May 17, 2004, at Constitution
Hall in Washington, D.C., the NAACP, Howard University, and the NAACP Legal and
Educational Defense Fund held a “commemoration” of the 50th anniversary
of the U.S. Supreme Court’s Brown vs the Board of Education decision. At this event, comedian/actor, Bill Cosby
and his wife, Camille, were being honored for their “philanthropic” work. For twenty minutes, from the podium, Bill
Cosby spewed a diatribe of denunciations of poor Blacks in the U.S. which
appear to be reflective of self hatred.
Many of those who have access to the print and electronic media have
had their say about Cosby’s comments.
Most of these journalists are a part of the group, like Cosby, who have
“made it” or they represent the viewpoint and class interest of rich media
owners who have.
The purpose of this paper is to address Bill Cosby’s comments from a
working class, proletarian, peoples stand point—from a revolutionary perspective.
Bill Cosby and his comments are not nearly as important as the crucial
issue of how the people process information.
Many people have made the blanket statement “I agree with Bill Cosby.” This type of comment underscores the need
for more critical, analytical—even revolutionary thinking.
Based on countless comments that I have heard on the radio, in the
print media and in general conversation, many people, in agreeing with Bill
Cosby, appear to be responding to the need to address an obvious crisis among
many Black youth in the U.S. Most don’t
have a clue as to the actual comments that Mr. Bill Cosby made at Constitution
Hall on May 17, 2004.
Bill Cosby has made several different,
backward comments. Even though each
comment is indicative of the outlook of the rich ruling class, still, each
comment must be taken separately and dissected with the precision of
revolutionary science.
This is not only true in the case of Bill Cosby, but every event,
comment, viewpoint and so forth, in society, must be more carefully, even
scientifically considered, if we are to move beyond the world of subjugation,
white supremacy, exploitation and oppression.
Let’s examine Bill Cosby’s
comments. In bold print, I will Quote (not paraphrase) some of Bill’s comments
and address them from a revolutionary standpoint.
PARENTING
Cosby: “I am talking about these
people who cry when their son is standing there in an orange jump suit. Where
were you when he was 2? Where were you
when he was 12? Where were you when he
was 18 and how come you didn’t know he had a pistol. And where is the father?”
Many a Black parent is at the same place when their child is 18 that
they were when the child was 2—that is, on lock-down inside and outside the
prisons. They are on lock-down behind a
wall of poverty and misery in the projects and ghettos of America. In fact, as of January 2005, more fathers
are incarcerated than at any previous time in U.S. history. At this writing, in twelve (12) states in
this country, prisons comprise the biggest industry and Blacks are the main
cannon fodder in this prison slavery scheme.
These parents, under such critical scrutiny, are quite often parents
without jobs, or the working poor without benefits or health-care, and
increasingly homeless, and even the working-homeless, in the land of plenty.
These parents live under a system that has traditionally forbidden aid
to families with a father in the house.
It is hell on a father who has been virtually emasculated for raising
his head or voice against a work place—a work place that has nothing for him
but exploitation and humiliation. For
the most part, it’s put up with the abuse or be thrown out. Under capitalism, it’s rough for a man to
stay in a home in which he cannot provide.
These parents are forced to live under a system that increasingly sends
jobs to other countries where the capitalists can defile and pollute the air
and water with impunity and work the people like slaves, on the one hand. On the other hand, it employs cheap (almost
slave) immigrant labor, at home. This scheme leaves the people here with no
jobs or a tripled work load for those that have jobs.
Imagine a poor family, usually a single mother household (often a
grandmother) without a credit card, lost in a society in which legalized,
criminal enterprise is legion—the phone company, public transportation/auto
up-keep, and the outrageously high costs for clothes, shoes, food, medicine,
heat, and on and on some more. Under
the profit driven system of capitalism, one serious health issue (medical
crisis) can take a well-off family, with health care, completely down,
financially. Consider the seventy
million people in this country who, at some time during the year, have no health
care at all!
After working all day, or not, after being confronted with washing,
ironing, cooking, cleaning, sewing and more, is it fair to castigate a parent
for not being this all encompassing “home school teacher?”
This society has massive, powerful, well-organized institutions that
exploit the people—the police, the courts, the utilities, the military, the
prisons, pharmaceutical corporations/illegal drug cartels and other huge
multinational enterprises including, the government and many more. Yet, the
responsibility for dealing with this massive, organized, institutionalized
exploitation, according to the powers that be and their apologists, falls on
poor parents—on the downtrodden and then, on the downtrodden as
individuals. Ponder the absurdity of
this for a moment.
Now, look around! The most
reactionary elements in this system are on mission to privatize everything—the
prisons, the schools, social security, military functions, religious
organizations as social service agencies, and just everything. This scheme illustrates, with crystal
clarity, the thrust to make the rich, richer. In the process, it drives the
people deeper and deeper into poverty and blames the people for a lack of
personal responsibility. Then, adding
insult to injury, they have rich and well-off Blacks like Bill Cosby and,
essentially, the entire Petty Bourgeoisie class, to highlight the premise that
the oppressed are responsible for their own oppression.
On top of all this, in the
U.S., our communities are inundated with these annoying, spying, blue flashing
“big brother” cameras. Our communities
are also surrounded by armed police, thugs who effectuate a selective,
“designer” police state and are the slave catchers in the new prison slavery. The police are also the shock troops in the
push to turn the U.S. into a fanatical religious dictatorship.
What are we going to do about all this? We have to fight to socialize everything. We must form organizations that relieve
these horrible, unrealistic expectations that are placed on poor
individuals. My ears are burning from
some apologist for the system running on, right now, about how their
grandmamma/momma/daddy or whoever, worked five jobs on one leg with a bad eye
and crawled twenty miles per day on their hands and knees to take care of
seventeen kids and made sure they were not like those other lazy Negroes. Well
good for them and you. Look how you turned out, philosophically.
The rich, ruling class and their apologists, feel that each poor,
individual parent should put forward this type of gargantuan effort in order
for their children to be successful.
This is a ridiculous premise. Granted, there is no substitute for hard
work. But, the point, here, is that human society needs to be reorganized in
such a way that no one should have to work like this to have their needs wants
and desires met in a world so obviously rich with material and human
resources. Shared communal effort is
the revolutionary wave of the future.
We need organizations that assist with house-work, childcare, economic
needs, education and form group unity against all the myriads of obstacles with
which the people are faced. But, then, this can never be fully achieved under
the capitalist system. This is the job and purpose of revolution.
Cosby: “These people are not parenting.
They are buying things for kids--$500 for sneakers for what? And won’t spend $200 for ‘Hooked on Phonics.”
There are no $500 sneakers but if there were, the fact remains that
ostentatious display of wealth is at the core of what the capitalist system is
all about. Capitalism itself is a grand scheme of “look what I got that you
don’t have.” This behavior does not
originate from the poor. Bling, bling
for the rich is jet planes, ocean liners, private islands and
“philanthropy.” Rich cannot exist without
it’s opposite, poor.
It’s hard for a poor person not to want at least a gold chain or
something after having their noses rubbed, nightly, in ignorant TV shows like
“Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous” or Black Entertainment Television (BET)
shows; that feature the homes and cars of wealthy Blacks or the raw,
unadulterated, gaudy, disgusting Hollywood red carpet. “Who are you wearing?”
Instead of going after a soft target like poor Blacks, it is more
appropriate to go after the criminal U.S. government. If voting would set us free, it would be illegal and liberation
will never be on the ballot. We need to
be highlighting the fact that this government disenfranchised the vote of at
least a million Blacks in the 2000 presidential election and the 2004 election
was stolen in cyberspace through rigged electronic voting machines. No one can say, with certainty, that it
wasn’t.
We need to oppose the thrust of the U.S. to take over the whole world
by violently cornering and controlling all the oil in the world. We also, need to oppose its domestic aspect
—the fascist “Patriot Acts,” the fascist-police state “homeland security”
measures. The main point of which is to
hold down dissent, protest and rebellion at home; while they carry out a
different looking, yet, Nazi type foreign policy.
So, instead of blaming the victims, the blame should be placed squarely
on the heads of those who red-line us at the banks when we apply for loans or
those who gouge the poor in the most,
criminal way with payday loans, car title loans, and the outright “legalized”
criminality of currency exchanges that serve as banks for the poor. These currency exchanges exercise robbery
with every single transaction—driving the poor deeper and deeper into the
hole.
Even those who have jobs cannot escape the vicious cycle of the
currency exchange because most never have enough in the bank to cover their pay
checks. Then the banks, even the black
banks, carryout highway robbery through the fees they charge to cash a check,
with all the humiliating finger printing and everything short of a rectal exam.
Many who jump out to support the outrageous view point of Bill Cosby
say “we all have a choice.” We didn’t
have a choice in coming over here packed in the belly of slave ships like sardines. We didn’t have a choice to work for free for
hundreds of years providing the wealth which has been passed down as surely as
the fallout from slavery has been passed down.
We didn’t have a choice in all the years of the terrible brutality of
“Jim Crow,” and massive land-grab schemes.
Even the Black farmers across the South who have been able to hang onto
their land have been crushed by huge, multi-national, agri-business
corporations; that flood the environment, and a silent populace, with their poisonous
biogenetically engineered foods and have rendered the small farms impotent in
the market place.
Have we chosen the incredible disparity between Blacks and Whites
relative to infant mortality and life expectancy? Have we chosen the great disparity between Blacks and Whites
relative to deaths from breast cancer, heart disease, diabetes, high blood
pressure, asthma and many other curable illnesses?
We have endured massive, exploitative, insurance schemes. Today there is the lottery and “the boat” (floating
gambling casinos) where many of the poor gamble away their hard earned dollars
in the hope that by some twist of fate they can escape the cycle of misery.
In this, those apologists for Bill Cosby and the system he wants us to
assimilate into so badly, say surely you have a choice in throwing your money
away on “the boat.” Well in a sense,
this is true. But, for a people who are
faced with such an endless flood of discrimination and every possible form of
running, historical exploitation and oppression, it is virtually beyond the
pale of human endurance not to do something to ease such pain.
To ease the pain, some fall victim to drugs, the chemical warfare that
is waged against the people, for some it is gambling a small part of the
economic warfare that is waged against the people, and for many it is
religion, the psychological
warfare—the opiate of the people, where
in our communities there is a church on nearly every corner in which millions
of poor people spend their hard earned dollars in worship of a god in the very
image of the slave master; which teaches millions to turn the other cheek,
study war no more, get yours in the sweet bye and bye and today it’s no matter what, the battle is
not yours, it’s the lord’s. We need to
make a radical departure from this kind of thinking.
A few “modern” churches have Black Jesus, African clothes, discuss the
oppressive system, and have put what appears to be a revolutionary slant on
things. Yet, none thoroughly oppose, fundamentally,
the system of exploitation. Don’t get
mad with me; but in addition to binding the people to metaphysical “other
worldly” methods of solving worldly problems,
the vast majority of these churches fill the people with greasy,
fat-filled greens, deep fried (traditional from slavery) illness producing
foods—not to mention all the hard-core sugar and salt. Where is the love? Backward caps, sagging pants and “bad” English figure very small
in this sordid mix.
Finally, on the issue of parenting, when we begin to look at things
right side up, we will see that the worse parents are not so much the poor,
uneducated, disenfranchised people so much as rich parents like George Herbert
Walker Bush, forty first President of the United States, ex CIA Chief and his
wife Barbara Bush. They have spawned at
least two sons that are among the worse that humanity has to offer, for all
time.
Their sons George W. Bush and Jeb Bush, have been governors of the two
states in the U.S.—Texas and Florida; which have had the largest prison populations,
the largest numbers on death row and the largest number of executions. They have been overseers of some of the
worse crimes against humanity in human history.
Collectively, they have been involved in the most blatantly criminal
acts relative to two stolen presidential elections of George W. Bush. One of their sons, George W. Bush has
launched a criminal pre-emptive war against a small “Third World Country,”
Iraq, spending billions of dollars that could be used to relieve human need and
have caused the loss of countless innocent lives.
When we look at the trail of death, destruction and crimes against
humanity, left by these two sons, when history is judging bad parents, surely
these parents will be right up there with the parents of Attila the Hun and
Hitler.
Many a poor Black parent, for
economic reasons, has been unable to receive an adequate education.
EDUCATION
Throughout our history in America, obstacles to education, have been
placed in the path of Blacks—from the illegality of reading under slavery, to
goons violently forcing black school children back onto plantations under the
“Black Codes” and “Jim Crow.”
Bill Cosby makes statements like: “These
people marched and were hit in the face with rocks to get an education and now
we’ve got these knuckleheads walking around.” He’s right when he says “these people” in this case, because even
though Bill was around during this era, while we were out there storming the
previously forbidden domains of white supremacy, going to jail and getting
terrorized by pigs and white goons, Bill Cosby was not there!!!
Bill Cosby is a classic example of someone who made it big by not
rocking the boat—by making white people laugh with innocuous, stupid, humor
like “why is there air—for blowing up
basketballs” and such crap. His legacy
is making families like the Huckstables, from The Cosby Show, who like Cosby, reflect the value system of those
who have “made it” and basically, neglect or demean the plight of the vast
majority of those who have not.
He has, over the years, made so many negative comments about the
people’s comedians for cursing. This is
indicative of some profound self-hatred and complete identification with the folkways,
mores and world view of the exploiters, on the part of Bill Cosby. The thrust to not cuss is simply Bourgeois
morality.
To blame the victims like Cosby is doing, is unacceptable; when those
who have enslaved us have created a running, evolving chain of obstacles in
every single aspect of American life, for centuries.
Are we to accept and forever attempt to assimilate into a system that
has always relegated Blacks to the worse schools, with the worse books and
learning tools, the worse content relative to our needs and the worse
opportunity, if you do graduate?
Even today, recent studies have compared the sprawling university-like
high schools in the suburbs of Chicago to the prison-like, metal detected,
pathetic, poorly equipped schools for Blacks in the inner city.
Whenever issues of the failing education system come up, there are
those like Bill Cosby, who have access to powerful means to influence public
opinion, who jump up to blame the parents. I DEMAND of you, how can they give their children what they
themselves do not have?
Bill Cosby has become what he has mocked. Those in the Black community,
who have become educated, are more to blame for dropping the ball than those
who have not become educated. Years ago
people expected those who went off to college to come back and up-lift those
who couldn’t make it to college—to enlighten and free the down trodden.
The revolutionary trick, however, is not to come back from college
perpetuating the system of capitalist exploitation and oppression. A good and true message to bring back is
that we can never get freedom under the existing system. Those who say we can, divide into two. They
are either un-informed or they are a lying part of the problem.
Being educated, well-off, or even wealthy does not condemn someone to
the enemy camp, but it is one’s outlook, worldview—a question of whether one
supports the class interest of the rich or the class interest of the working
class and the poor.
Regarding “Hooked on Phonics,” it’s too bad that a good education has
to be based on private money or the lack thereof, but that is just one more
reason, among thousands, why capitalism must go. Gateway, the producer of “Hooked on Phonics,” is so profit driven
that they have, (since Cosby’s May 2004 speech) broken their own privacy
promises and have been selling the private information of purchasers of “Hooked
on Phonics.”
As far as education is concerned, this rich society has all the
resources necessary to deliver an all-around, deep and thorough education for
the vast majority of children in this society, within public institutions and without
regard to homework.
This system has the resources to prepare teachers and thousands and
thousands of institutions to educate children exceedingly well. This rich system has the resources to employ
the best experts in the world to educate our children, in every area of human
endeavor. To blame parents, who for the
most part are not prepared for this task, is an excuse for the abuse and
neglect of the system, and is the lowest form of scape-goating.
I have a degree in education from one of those Black colleges. Back in the day, I just happen to have made
the highest score on the National Teachers Exam in the history of my
university. It is clear that there is nothing
in the education of an educator that teaches one to put down the student—to
tell them how bad and messed-up they are.
Anyone, with an advanced degree in education, like Cosby, should know
this.
I worked in the youth movement
for at least 40 years. I have seen
countless situations in which money or the lack thereof, keeps kids out of
school or they can’t concentrate when they get there or they don’t have needed
supplies or their life’s experiences automatically engender behavior problems,
or mental or emotional illness, learning disabilities or perceived learning
disabilities, malnutrition and/or obesity or lead poisoning or asthma, bad eyes
and no glasses and on and on and on.
In the worse capitalist tradition of haves against have-nots, the lack of
“acceptable” clothing often draws such derision from the peers of young people,
that it is enough to drive many children from school. Even many teachers abuse and neglect the poorer children
sometimes unintentionally, and actually create behavior problems.
Historically, education, from the one room school, to the Normal
School, to all the schools established under the Rosenwald Fund (Howard, Fisk,
Tuskegee, etc.) and every last Historically Black College and University has
served to teach the people to think, walk, act, dress, smell, and talk like the
ruling class—to perpetuate their system—to defend our own slave chains. Students were killed in the sixties trying
to make these universities relevant to the masses.
The problem is that the profit-driven system of capitalism has no need
to educate our children in a meaningful way. Our task is to smash this system
and replace it with one that is driven by the needs of people—a system that
wants our youth to know everything about everything.
When we study revolution, we find that there are two kinds of
contradictions. There are
contradictions among the people and contradictions between the people and the
enemy. We freedom fighters must go to
any lengths in lovingly and patiently explaining things to the “people”—in
educating them in non-ruling class ideas, in revolution.
When it comes to
contradictions between the people and the enemy, we must harbor no illusions
about the thorough-going, organized, armed violence that must be carried out
against them if we are to ever enjoy true freedom. Bill Cosby has one foot in the camp of the enemy and the other
foot on a banana peel.
Finally on Education, we need “after school, schools” that provide the
people, young and old, with a real education—an education that teaches us
everything from elementary to advanced forms of reading, writing, math, natural
forms of energy, to organic gardening, to sub-atomic particle physics, to
Object Oriented Analysis. We need an
education that teaches us how to make a successful revolution, keep exploiting
classes from returning to power and how to achieve the bright future that we
can have without the ruling class and its lackeys.
GUNS
This whole issue about guns needs to be examined in a serious new
light, considering the quote by Mao after Lenin, “political power grows out of
the barrel of a gun.” Our oppressors
use guns as one of the key ways that they have held us, and most of the rest of
the world in subjugation for centuries.
Believe you me. The fact that
the Bush Administration lifted the ban on assault weapons has nothing to do
with drug dealers or petty gangsters in the ghetto. It is designed to arm the reactionary, civilian, social base of
the right-wing with assault weapons.
Why is it so axiomatic that a Black man should not have a gun? A better more intelligent plan would be to
arm all oppressed people and to educate them as to who the guns should be
pointed at and why. We will need guns
to do away with guns. All of human
history has taught us that ruling classes will not give up their power without
a struggle.
This in no way means that a hand full of armed heroes should run out
there like a “cabbage” (all head and no ass), and take on the awesome might of
the U.S. Army, Navy, Air Force and Marines.
More to the point is that these armed forces are comprised of the
working class and the poor who are brain-washed into defending their own slave
chains and suppressing and killing their class brothers, domestically and
around the world. The task, then, is to
educate these forces on their true class interests and to turn these guns on
real enemies—the oppressors and exploiters of the world.
When the system of exploitation and oppression is totally crushed there
will be no need for guns.
What teenager can’t hide
something from the most concerned, involved parent? Before we get free there’ll come a time when parents and children
will help each other hide weapons. It will become less important to hide a
pistol from your parents than it will be from reactionaries like Cosby because
surely, the Cosby’s of the world will run and tell “Massa.”
LANGUAGE
AND CULTURE
Cosby: “They’re standing on the
corner and they can’t even speak English.
I can’t even talk the way these people talk: ‘Why you ain’t, Where you is,’…and
I blamed the kid until I heard the Mother talk. And then I heard the father talk…Everybody knows its important to
speak English except these knuckle heads…You can’t be a doctor with that kind
of crap coming out of your mouth.!”
Under the current system in the U.S. you can’t be a doctor if you speak
English better than the Queen of England and have excellent grades, if you have
no money. The constant assaults on
affirmative action and other forms of aid, have denied thousands of poor
students who are qualified to be doctors.
Let’s get angry about this.
A more appropriate response would be to get angry because these Black
people can’t even speak Swahili, Bantu, Hausa, or Yoruba, or other African
languages that were so ignominiously stripped from their fore-bears by the
imposers of English.
There is only one positive and revolutionary way to look at English,
French, Spanish, Dutch, Portuguese and the other languages of those who have
imposed them on the world through slavery and colonization. We must view them as avenues of
communication between those oppressed people who before had no common
language.
They have un-intentionally united us through language. We must view these languages as powerful
tools for the world-wide overthrow of capitalism and imperialism. Yea, it’s true, these cultural crimes
happened a long time ago but we must never forget them. In fact, we need to be about the business of
constantly adding them up.
Everywhere the expanding Western European powers went from the 14 and
1500s on, under force of arms, they sought to destroy all other cultures and to
impose their own. In the English
speaking world, they saturated the brains of the people beginning with
Victorian nursery rhymes—Little Boy Blue,
Peter Pumpkin Eater, cows jumping over the moon and more. This type of cultural hegemony exists from
Kindergarten right through to advanced university degrees.
In the case of the Atlantic Slave Trade, the effect of this centuries
old brainwashing has been especially thorough, pernicious and lasting. Its depth is readily apparent in the case of
Bill Cosby in which fame, fortune, and even an advanced degree in Education
cannot remove it. Further, anyone with
an advanced degree in Education should be able to make clear statements and not
leave the people holding the bag—trying to interpret what we think he
means.
Further, still, the road to freedom will be paved with clear, precise
calculations of social phenomena, featuring scientific understanding of the
problems and the solutions. For
freedom, our statements will need to reflect this type of understanding.
Cosby‘s diatribe about the speech and behavior of poor Blacks on the
occasion of the 50th Anniversary of Brown v the Board of Education,
is an abomination and is, in light of the people’s march toward total
emancipation from exploitation and oppression, a criminal act.
The way people speak and act has a great deal to do with geographical,
sociological, and economical considerations.
If you’re born in France you’ll probably speak French. Even then, there is the French of the rich
and the French of the poor. If you’re
born into a rich family in the U.S. you’ll probably speak “standard English.” But even, “standard English” is a
dialect. It just happens to be the
dialect of the elite. The way that poor
Blacks speak is not a crime but is, in fact, the result of what they have been
exposed to—their particular socialization into society.
The expanding European powers, one and all, have used the extent to
which their subjects speak the European language well, as a measure of the
intelligence of the subject. Bill Cosby
reminds me of many Black teachers in the South in the 50s when integration
appeared to be approaching. They would
constantly say things like, “y'all ain’t ready to be with white folks.”
Those “knuckleheads” standing on the corners and those “poor-speaking”
parents and children are probably a part of the so called “under class” in
America that (through no fault of their own) have not had the advantage of
attending the Black colleges which have been so richly endowed by Bill
Cosby. Everything has a history and few
humans would choose to stand on the corner all day over meaningful options.
Our mission is not to see how clean and proper and articulately we can
fatten ourselves for the slaughter of capitalist exploitation. The problem is not that youth wear their
hats backward or their pants sagging.
Wearing a hat backward is fine.
Don’t be such a hater of self, just because “Massa” thinks it’s cool to
wear it his way. Believe me when
I tell you, we will never, ever find freedom until we learn to do many, many
things the opposite of the way that “Massa” does them.
The sagging pants thing came out of the prisons where belts are taken
away. All too many of our precious
youth get to experience prison these days.
Every generation does things—has fads that seem unacceptable to previous
generations. Anyway, why do I care how
another man wears his pants? The crimes
perpetrated by the ruling class should be the focus. Our mission should be to see how fast and thoroughly we can crush
the system of exploitation—not to become the new exploiters but to get rid of
exploitation. The revolutionary formula
is: AS WE CHANGE THE WORLD WE CHANGE
OURSELVES.
Cosby: “With names like
Shaniqua, Taliqua and Mohammed and all of that crap, and all of them are in
jail.”
Flash-back with me for a moment to Alex Haley’s “Roots” and remember
the wanton cruelty imposed by the slave master in converting the main
character’s African name, Kunta Kinte, into the European name, Toby.
For a people whose names have been brutally ripped away in slavery and
the names of the slave master viciously imposed, I applaud people who have
chosen names other than the names of their tormentors and have selected names
of their choosing. This is a
wonderful form of rejection of cultural hegemony, whether those who do it
understand it or not. Shaniqua and
Taliqua are just as valid as Nancy and Maud and actually sound better. Are these names bad because poor Blacks
selected them?
It is misguided to think that European names had a different type of
derivation than Shaniqua and Taliqua. Could you believe that they were made-up,
too?
Mohammed is the name of the founder of the Islamic religion? Mohammed is one of the most influential men
in human history. Many “Africans in
America” have chosen to follow Islam and have, therefore, chosen names
associated with this religion, like Mohammed.
When you call names like Shaniqua, Taliqua and Mohammed crap (which if
I’m not mistaken means shit) this is not only a slap in the face to probably
millions of black mothers, who are perfectly honorable, but these comments
insult millions of Islamic people. Many
Islamic people are actually violently offended by such comments about
Mohammad. Bill, be sure you don’t draw
any cartoons about Mohammed.
These comments, on names, by Mr. Cosby, unmistakably reflect
self-hatred, in deference to love of European culture. With out a doubt, this is a clear case of
down with non-European things, and up with things approved by “Massa.” Think about it!
THE
CLASS CONTENT OF COSBY’S COMMENTS
Throughout the annals of Western European expansion and the rise of capitalism,
a major ingredient in the ability of the capitalists to exploit a people, has
been the need to create a buffer class from among the oppressed—a Petty
Bourgeoisie, a better-off group to keep the masses in check, ground
down—waiting lambs for the slaughter.
The role of this buffer class is to administrate over, and educate the
masses in the ways of the rich, master class.
This buffer class lionizes the folkways and mores—the culture of the
rich class and demeans the culture of the poor, the downtrodden—the
people. The buffer aspect of the Petty
Bourgeoisie is that they stand ideologically, politically and if need be
physically between the people and the ruling class. They want to be like “Massa” so much that they will “do
something” to the people to keep us from cracking the head or getting at the
throat of “Massa.” Further, they serve
as the ever present example of “I made it so why can’t you.” Bill Cosby epitomizes this boot-licking kind
of role.
But, some say, “hasn’t Bill Cosby contributed a great amount of money
to black colleges and, therefore, earned the right to say what he wants about
the ignorant Blacks that he’s trying so hard to help. After all, he came from nothing and pulled himself up by his own
boot straps. He is one of us.” Others have said that everyone was thinking
what Cosby said but afraid to say it.
Bill Cosby is one of us if you look at things through racial eyes, but
from a class perspective he is not. We
can only solve our collective problem through class analysis and we are well on
our way as we separate ourselves from Black reactionaries
(counter-revolutionaries) like Clarence Thomas, Armstrong Williams,
"Condi" Rice, Colen Powell, and others, but we must mature even
further and faster.
Some people feel that Bill is just expressing “his” opinion. But, every opinion is stamped with the brand
of a particular class. In Bill Cosby’s
case, his comments are stamped with the brand of the rich class. After reading articles from around the
country on his comments, we find that most journalists have agreed with him and
others have mildly disagreed with some of his comments.
A co-host, on a Friday morning
talk show, on WVON radio in Chicago, thought that Cosby should get an award for
his comments.
On July 1, 2004, at the 33rd Annual Rainbow/Push Coalition
& Citizenship Education Fund’s Conference, in Chicago, which featured Bill
Cosby and a tidal wave of “coonage” and ruling class mouth pieces (Bill Clinton
and John Kerry) one man, the head of all the city colleges in Chicago, thought
that Bill Cosby should be Secretary of Education under a possible John Kerry
Presidential Administration.
At the Brown v Board
commemoration, Bill Cosby said that the dropout rate for Black youth was 50
percent. While we must also watch them
like a hawk, the National Center for Education Statistics says that in the last
year, for which statistics are available, 2000, the dropout rate was 13.1
percent for African American children.
At the Rainbow/Push Conference, the president of Malcolm X
College believed Bill Cosby’s, off the top of his head, 50 percent statistic,
and is running backward with this figure.
This is a sad, sick chain of coonage.
The genocide that Blacks on
Planet Earth face is so severe; that we cannot afford to let skin color blur
the line between real enemies and real friends. This does not mean that all of the Black people spoken about in
this paper are real enemies but that their thinking must change. If we develop class consciousness and learn
the vital interests of each class in capitalist society, freedom from
exploitation and oppression will not be far behind.
Eyesight analysis tells us that we have been enslaved as a race,
segregated as a race, and exploited as a race.
On the face of it, all this is true. But when we look at the situation
under the microscope of revolutionary science, we find that eyesight analysis
will not be adequate to overturn the mighty mountain of capitalist and
imperialist subjugation. It can,
however, be overthrown.
Looking at things through
racial eyes, believe me when I tell you, we will be hoodwinked and bamboozled
again and again and again. With working
class science, we can finally solve the problems of exploitation and oppression. Who, in the world, has more of a working
class history than Blacks in America?
Many ape the mantras of the class of men like Cosby “let me get rich so
I can provide some jobs.” We don’t need
benefactors or sugar daddies of any nationality. What we need is a society that
meets the needs of all people as a matter of course. No wealth is produced without labor. Who wants to exchange White exploiters for Black exploiters? The correct path is to get rid of
exploitation.
If we use class analysis of the conditions and events in society, right
away, we have a science on our side that has been hammered out through the
blood, sweat and tears of freedom fighters around the world. We don’t need to
re-invent the wheel. We just need to
learn to apply existing knowledge to our objective condition and build upon
that.
In European expansion (which continues today) and the rise of
capitalism, slavery and colonization the Europeans seized the world,
essentially, using machine guns against the spears (literally or figuratively)
of the various peoples of the world. We can no longer afford to use this model
of: them having the machine guns and us having the spears. We cannot use this model ideologically,
philosophically or militarily.
Clearly, we will need to use more advanced science than they use. We will
need to master class struggle—Dialectical Materialism—Marxism, Leninism,
Maoism, Reed thought; which will sharpen our struggle ideologically,
philosophically and militarily. If we
study and learn to apply the science of revolution, we can achieve total
emancipation from the system of exploitation and oppression. The science of revolution will give us the
tools we need to wage and win the revolution, through all its twists and
turns—in its changing nature.
Kwame Nkrumah wrote Class
Struggle in Africa because as soon as they drove the White colonialist out
of Ghana, black Africans jumped right up to take their places. Understanding the nature of the various
classes in capitalist society and revolutionary science, provides relief from
all the crutches that this society forces people into—the drugs and alcohol,
“the boat,” the religion, the bling-bling and all the other forms of escape
from reality. The hope resides in
consciously understanding the world and consciously working and fighting to
change the world. AS WE CHANGE THE WORLD WE CHANGE OURSELVES.
We have learned from the study of revolution, that no matter how much
we have done for the people we must never become arrogant. We have learned further that we
revolutionaries are like oxen for our backs to be ridden by the people. That’s our job for which we ask no
thanks.
So, Bill Cosby has given millions to Black colleges and
universities. Under capitalism, for the
rich, “philanthropy” is often a tax
write-off proposition. Even if Mr.
Cosby gave his last dime to Black colleges, since the first whites came south
after the Civil War in the U. S. to educate the poor, ignorant “Negroes,” the
function of American education has been to train the populace to maintain and
extend the wealth and power of the ruling class.
Bill Cosby’s
comments let the ruling class, the perpetrators, completely off the hook. In my view, these comments constitute a MAJOR problem. As we say in the revolutionary movement,
everything divides into two and so it is with Cosby’s comments. They have divided our community right down
the middle between those who agree with Cosby and those who do not.
A very frightening thing has occurred with respect to the Comments of
Bill Cosby at the “Commemoration” of the 50th anniversary of Brown
VS the Board of Education. The Black
Petty Bourgeoisie, the “educated class,” has jumped out, as a class, and has
not only co-signed Cosby’s comments but has, subsequently, obliterated his
original comments (without examination) as if he said something entirely
different from what he actually said.
Many people are not privy to his original comments and Bill is
perfectly willing, without apology, to have the petty Bourgeoisie embrace him,
based on his “passion” (form over content) or based on comments that he said
after his May 17th Constitution Hall comments. There has been no umbrage taken even with
the police shooting a Black person in the back of the head over a piece of
pound cake comment. This is like
putting a bandage on a wound without first treating the infection.
The power of this Petty Bourgeoisie class is significant. It exerts its influence over the
universities and colleges, and other classrooms, the print and electronic
media, the pulpit, civil rights organizations, the hospitals, the social
agencies and more. No matter what type
of service the people need, they must go through this Petty Bourgeois army
which serves “Massa” and, basically, finds the people disgusting.
They are standing, joined at the hip, as a class, not literally or even
consciously, but ideologically. In many cases they are hating on the down
trodden youth and blaming the parents.
They view the poor class as a hindrance to their ascension into the
kingdom of “Massa.” Imagine a poor
child going to school day after day, year after year to a school in which he is
disapproved of or looked down upon by the vast majority of those in
authority. This is the reality.
This Petty Bourgeois class has learned well from a ruling class that
has swung far to the right and does dirty deeds around the world; then uses
smoke, mirrors, and spin to make these events appear different from the
reality. This is why we need
revolutionary science so that no one, no one—no matter how rich, or famous, or
well educated, or articulate, or “slick out the mouth” can fool us ever again.
Again, this is not so much about Bill Cosby, personally, although, he
is almost a billionaire (they say) who concentrates the outlook of the ruling
class (I say). This is about an
oppressed people who are a part of a global, oppressed class and how they are
going to learn the type of outlook, world-view, organization and action that
will be needed to smash the old unfair, exploitative, oppressive system and
replace it with a system that functions in the interest of all the workers and
oppressed of the world.
The crisis, with which we are confronted, is reflective of the types of
world-views that people hold. It is
reflective of people’s view of history and of how things got to be the way that
they are. The debate is on and I submit
to you that there are two broad, major world-views.
One world-view is the world-view that Cosby holds. It is the world-view of the rich class, the
Bourgeoisie, the ruling class. This world-view
features more and greater profits, and more privatization. This reactionary, privatization push is not
limited to devastating us, here, through the prisons, education and so forth
but it is the device used around the world to destroy any state-owned
“production entities” many of which attempt to serve the people.
They brutally force the doors of these countries open (especially in
Africa) to Western businesses, multi-national corporations and such, in
exchange for life saving/sustaining aid, debt relief and entry into the WTO in
the case of China. This drives
thousands and thousands of people out of work and more.
The world-view of the ruling class features more police, no unions, no
health-care, no benefits, more prisons, less help for the dispossessed, the disabled—more
capitalism and imperialism. The same
capitalist class that exploits us administrates over a world in which half the
people in the world live on under two dollars ($2.00) per day.
This bourgeois world-view is steeped in metaphysics—gods, ghosts,
goblins, devils, magic, astrology, and belief in things without proof—on blind
unquestionable faith. It believes in
the static nature of things in the world, and this encompasses the rule of the
rich which the rich believe is un-changeable.
It also features criminal wars of plunder and exploitation.
The other world-view is the world-view of the proletariat, the working
class, the vast world of slaves and wage slaves. It seeks the opposite of more privatization and that is
socialization—ownership of the major means of production by the whole people,
not private individuals. It believes in
collective economics—cooperatives, collectives, buying clubs, mutual aid, and
group ownership.
This world-view wants to take profit out of human society and remake
the world based on the needs of people.
That is, to appropriate the wealth and resources of the world for the
benefit of the vast majority of human kind not just for a few rich individuals.
The world view of this class is to remove the need for people to have
to choose between things like heat and medicine, in a world of such
plenty. This class wants to remove
homelessness in a world of boarded-up buildings—to remove hunger in a world of
obvious abundance.
Philosophically, instead of blind faith, the science of the working
class is dialectical materialism—the belief in things that can be tested in
reality. The science of revolution
teaches that things in the world exist because of a struggle and unity of opposites. It is the belief that all things come into
being and pass away, including the rule of the rich class. This world view features just wars of
freedom and liberation.
In the final analysis, the question is whether we want to bash the
people or do we want to bash the slave masters of the world? Do we dare to look beyond the symptoms of
things like “undesirable behaviors” of poor Blacks, to the root causes of these
things like historical, abusive, exploitation and oppression from the hell of
rich-class rule. Do we want to quietly
accept things the way that they are and be good little well fed slaves, under
the current system; or do we dare to dream and fight for a world free from
white supremacy, capitalism and imperialism.
POLICE
BRUTALITY
Cosby: “There are no political prisoners…these are
people going around stealing Coca-Cola.
People getting shot in the back of the head over a piece of pound cake
and then we run out and we are outraged ‘saying’ ‘The cops shouldn’t have shot
him.’ ‘What the hell was he doing with
the pound cake in his hand?”
Since this conversation is kind of “all in the family” and if
“America’s dad”, Bill Cosby, can say that, let Uncle Ray Ray say this:
“A better question is why the hell do we need Klansmen and white
racists when a Black FOOL, William Cosby, can fix his mouth to say some
shit like that?” With the state of
police brutality and murder of un-armed black men and women in the U. S. being
the epidemic that it is, Bill Cosby must never be forgiven by the people for
such comments. Recently, at least 15
Blacks have been murdered by the pigs in Cincinnati, Ohio, alone, in a very
short period of time.
Co-signing the police murder of Blacks is the most egregious of all the
comments of Bill Cosby at the 50th anniversary of the Brown vs the
Board of Education commemoration. The
police are at the fore-front of the genocidal assault on Blacks in the
U.S.
I feel especially sickened by this comment because I was one of those,
here in Chicago, who took to the streets for Leonard Clark, the streets and the
courtroom for Jeremiah Mearday, the streets for Latanya Haggerty and Robert
Russ, Kenneth Dukes (shot seven times in the back in his mother’s yard) and
others brutalized and murdered by the local pigs.
I wonder how a poor mother like the mother of George and Jonathan
Jackson would feel about Cosby’s recent comments. Both her sons fought for freedom and died courageously but
violently at the hands of the degenerate system under which we live. George Jackson, her older son, wrote the
famous 1971 book Soledad Brother, from prison. This book championed freedom fighters and launched a scathing
attack on the American system of exploitation and oppression.
On August 7, 1970, in an attempt to free his brother, George Jackson,
and other “political prisoners” from prison, the 17 year old younger son,
Jonathan Jackson, was brutally gunned down.
George Jackson was gunned down on August 21, 1971, in the California’s
San Quentin Prison yard. The claim was
that he had a gun hidden in his afro.
Jonathan Jackson Jr., like Fred Hampton Jr., was conceived, yet, un-born
when his father was killed. Jonathan
Jackson Jr. re-issued his Uncle George’s book, Soledad Brother, in 1994.
Before he died, this is what George Jackson had to say on page 237 of Soledad Brother, about Bill Cosby.
“Black capitalism, black against itself. The silliest contradiction in a long train of spineless, mindless
contradictions. Another painless,
ultimate remedy: be a better fascist than the fascist. Bill Cosby, acting out the establishment
agent—what message was this soul brother conveying to our children? I Spy
was certainly programmed to a child’s mentality. This running dog in the company of a fascist with a cause, a
flunky’s flunky, was transmitting the credo of the slave to our youth, the mod
version of the old house nigger. We can
never learn to trust as long as we have them.
They are as much a part of the repression, more even than the real live,
rat-informer-pig. Aren’t they telling
our kids that it’s romantic to be a running dog? The kids are so hungry to see the black male do some shooting and
throw some hands that they can’t help themselves from identifying with the
quilsing. So first they turn us against
ourselves…..”
Further from Soledad Brother,
page 246—“We’re going to have to start all over again. This next time around we’ll let it all hang
out, we’ll stop betraying ourselves, and we’ll add some trust and love.
I do not include those who support capitalism in any appreciable degree
or who feel they have something to lose with its destruction. They are our irreconcilable enemy. We can never again trust people like Cosby,
Gloves Davis, or the black Chicago policeman who was reported to have shot Fred
Hampton…..Any man who stands up in defense of capitalism must be slapped down.”
Bill Cosby’s 2004 comments are so dangerous because on April 23, 2004,
a Black man, Roy Veal, was found hanging in Wilkinson County, Mississippi, the
childhood home of Jefferson Davis—President of the slave-holding Confederate
States. Cosby’s comments are dangerous
because on June 24, 2004, a Black man, Stanley Miller, was caught on video tape
being brutalized by Los Angeles pigs.
Even though the lynching took place before the Cosby speech, in question,
Bill Cosby’s comments still open the flood gates for this kind of violence
against Blacks.
First of all, everything is
political; therefore, every black man woman and child in prison in the U.S. is
a political prisoner. It’s political
when blacks are forced into the underground economy. It’s political when white people in the U.S. do most of the drugs
and black people do most of the time.
CONCLUSION
The problems our youth face are manifold but they themselves did not
create these problems. They had neither
boat nor plane to bring in the tons of drugs that devastate our communities
throughout every city in the U. S.—north or south, big or small.
The political brutality, the social brutality, the economic brutality
and the police brutality came first. The underground economy, ribald rap
lyrics, and anti-social behaviors, in general, came as by-product of the
historical and current abuse and neglect, of the people, by the rich-class
power structure. The nature and breadth
of the anti-social and negative behaviors of Black youth, today, were unknown
to African society prior to the Atlantic Slave Trade and its aftermath. We
are not our own worse enemy!!!
A few blacks like Bill Cosby have managed to escape to the upper ranks
of society but this is by design as much as the abuse and neglect of the masses
is by design.
Our children are inundated with never ending visual and auditory images
which do them no good, images that promote all kinds of negative behaviors, in
an all around way—not the least of which is a skinning, grinning, shuffling
Bill Cosby promoting that poisonous Coca Cola and Jello Pudding.
There is a definite, political relationship between poverty and certain
types of crime. However, in this
country, it is well documented that blacks face harsher penalties for the same
crimes for which whites get slapped on the wrist. This is very political.
The handkerchief heads, like Cosby, need to focus on the real knuckle
heads like Bush and Cheney, and Rumsfeld and Kissinger, and Rice, and
Wolfowitz, and Powell and Ashcroft and Gonzalez, and Pickering, and Negroponte
and their rich masters. These are your
real gang-bangers; who create the conditions for mini-gang-banging in our
communities. They are global gangsters
and they do fly-bys instead of drive-bys. And you know what else? A knuckle head on the corner is not nearly
as bad as a Sambo.
We need to get angry with a government that spends billions and
billions of dollars, and innocent lives, in a pre-emptive war, for oil, against
a small country, Iraq, that was no threat to the U.S. There is no point on the globe that the avaricious tentacles of
the U.S. monster do not reach. How
could they possibly not be imperialist with over 700 military bases around the
world and counting, and 5 trillion dollars in overseas investment?
We should get angry with a government that squanders over a $billion of
our hard earned tax dollars, eulogizing the perfectly, devilish pig, Ronald
Ragan, and millions more to convince us that he was a good man. This is why we need revolution—to use these
kinds of resources to stamp out disease, and poverty, and homelessness and
general human need.
It is true that the European conquerors have established systems in
which it would behoove those who wish to succeed in these systems to ape the
speech, dress, behavior, the humor and the very essence of the rulers. It’s also true that we need jobs. But any oppressed man or woman worth their
salt, with a modicum of intelligence and self-respect, has to hope and fight
for a world in which our red, white and blue, rulers, the marauders of the
world, are not in charge. How long, how
long will it be before we make a break with their criminal system? Damn!!!
It is ok to add-up the crimes of America from the virtual extermination
of Native Americans and the perfectly horrible enslavement of African people.
It is ok to outright reject the historical and international crimes of U.S.
imperialism from Haiti, to Hiroshima and Nagasaki, to Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos,
Santo Domingo, Cuba to Africa, to all the Caribbean and Mexico and the rest of
Central and South America. Currently
they are waging an illegal war in Iraq, Afghanistan and an ever widening web of
intrigue, threats, destruction and murder.
The U.S. crimes in Iraq are no worse than the crimes of U.S. imperialism
historically and internationally.
It is high time that we stop calling this us—co-signing this
human carnage. We have to stop walking
in lock-step with U. S. imperialism, the worse enemies of humanity in history.
The U. S reign of terror has lasted for centuries and has caused the death of
at least 24 million African slaves on the ocean alone. You know the story.
We must let no one, no matter how rich or famous, convince us that U.S.
imperialism and it’s culture is a good thing.
It is an entrenched culture of violence that has enslaved, demeaned,
debauched, exploited and oppressed people of color, as a matter of course, for
centuries. The rich class has,
basically, done the same to most whites but most of them are on lockdown behind
the bars of race/class confusion. We
cannot let defeated men like Bill Cosby convince us that we can’t beat them so
let’s join them.
Cosby truly believes that our only hope is to assimilate with those who
have never ceased to enslave, humiliate, exploit and oppress us. We have got to continue to conceive and
fight to get their boots off our necks—for a world without exploitation and
oppression.
Put the blame on a system that remands blacks to the federal and
privatized prison system where most of the modern-day slavery occurs, and
everything is harsher. Whites, when
they are incarcerated, are more frequently put in state and local confinement,
where everything is easier. Instead of
blaming the victims blame a massive system of bailing out economically
depressed rural areas with thousands and thousands of black and brown
prisoners.
Whose kidding whom when companies are getting rich from prison laundry
concessions, jacked up telephone charges, riches are being derived from prison
construction and more from prison maintenance.
Wall Street underwriters are getting rich from their involvement in the
largest growth industry in the country, the prison industry. Our young men and
women are the cannon fodder in this scheme.
Are we just bad people? Everything
has a history and we were not like whatever they claim we are like when we came
over here from Africa. Everywhere you
look in the inner-cities you see our kids bent over police cars with these
racist fools humiliating and dehumanizing them—going through their pockets, and
talking abusively to them. These are the ones who have done nothing but driving
or walking while Black.
There is massive prosecutorial misconduct, to the detriment of Black
and Brown people, in this country.
There is incredible disparity between justice for the rich and
poor. Some say the question is “how
much justice can you afford.”
Everything is political!
Like a good, little apologist for the system, Bill Cosby has the
unmitigated gall to say “stop blaming the White man.” What could be more of a reactionary ruling class comment and
concept than this? Stop blaming the
white man?!!!
Blaming the blame- worthy in no way implies inactivity or unwillingness
to fight back as many Black people assert, today. If we can’t identify the minutest blame-worthy offences, it will
be impossible to formulate an effective plan of attack because we don’t know
what it is that we don’t like—what we have to change.
It is not so much a question of “blaming the white man” as it is constantly
adding up the entire continuum that comprises exploitation and oppression. The perpetrators of the continuum of
exploitation and oppression are people and most of them are white.
However, this does not include all white people. Some of the perpetrators come
from all nationalities and many of them are Black. Herein resides the crucial nature of grasping which class people
stand for, represent—fight for, regardless of their nationality.
The perpetrators of exploitation and oppression, must not only be
blamed but must be steam-rolled over and swept into the dust bin of history.
Revolutionary science helps us distinguish between revolutionary and backward
ideas without regard to skin color.
It is useful to understand, that if we all got civil rights under the
current system, it would be on the backs of suffering people elsewhere in the
world. History has brought us to the
point where the people must become armed with the tools that are needed to turn
on this system with righteous fire-storms of world-wide revolution. The only hope of the hopeless is to
overthrow capitalism and imperialism, world-wide and remake society in the
interest of the masses, not the rich.
Will we follow the Bill
Cosby’s of the world deeper into the bloody jaws of the tired, old system of
exploitation and oppression, or will we stand up and lead the millions around
the world who suffer at the hands of this system, to freedom.
We don’t need black entrepreneurship (that hot-bed of capitalism) so
much as we need an explosion of co-opts, collectives, buying clubs, mutual aid
societies in every area of our lives.
We need co-opts that produce, purchase, preserve, and distribute
food. We need co-opts that repair the
vast world of wasted tools, computers and appliances in the U.S. We need auto repair co-pts, electronic
repair co-opts, clothes-making co-opts, education and child care co-opts, elder
care co-opts and so forth.
We can only face the massive economic assaults from outside our
communities through pooling our resources, through group economics—socialist
ideas. We need an explosion of
Socialist ideas like those embodied in the revolution in Grenada. One fisherman said: “I have a boat but no
net” the other one said “I have a net but no boat.”
We must do all this; while keeping the political struggle in 1st
place—the struggle for a republic free from capitalism, imperialism, white
supremacy, male chauvinism—and free from all forms of exploitation and
oppression of humans by humans.
These commentaries have been a sort of “all in the Black family”
discussion. While the problem is often couched in black-face, the solution
resides in Internationalism. To win,
our movement has to mature beyond non-scientific slogans like “charity begins
at home” and such; which mean to go it alone, as a people. We must get beyond the few haters or
misinformed in each nationality, and shatter the time honored tactic of the
ruling class, to divide and conquer the millions, world-wide, that it
exploits.
We must fight for and win a society in which men don’t dominate over
women—where human relations, art, science are not based on money.
In the Black community, in the U.S., many of us have the resources to learn
the languages of the oppressed peoples of the world, and to carry this struggle
around and throughout the world. It is
a good thing to be steadfast in uniting and tirelessly working to convince
other nationalities of the power and need for international unity against
capitalism and imperialism.
We are not alone and we must no longer be convinced that we are. The ruling class is working overtime to
prevent the rise of another superpower.
Little do they know, we are the world’s other superpower when we become
armed with revolutionary consciousness?
Let’s overthrow all forms of exploitation and oppression of humans by
humans. One last thing—Bill Cosby is
not funny!
FREEDOM IN OUR LIFETIME!!!
© Lee Roy Rouge 2006