Portland Advocate_1981-11

--------------------------------------------------------~ But perhaps it was just too much to ask a people who had been subservient for centuries, who had tried to emulate everything European, to now suddenly cast it all aside, root it up and cast it all aside ... as it were, and then plan to build all this ..• all in the twinkling of an eye, in a matter of several years; the task was just too great. And so, in 1972, with the Gary Convention and the Afrikan Liberation Day demonstrations, Black Power, like a mighty edifice whose penacles are pushing its way skyward all the time, the foundations were crumbling; and, just as that edi– fice would fall from high ... or topple ... Black Power days were numbered; and in a few months, Gary was shattered, and the Black Political Assembly tried to carry out the mandates -but to no a– vail. The Afrikan Liberation Support C9mmittee essentially broke up into antagonistic factions. And, like Humpty-Dumpty who fell off the wall and all the king's horses and all the king's men -could not put Humpty-Dumpty back together -agafn, all the wise -and since they are Black, couldn't put the Afrikan Libera– tion Support Committee back to– gether again, and it was sad ... too, too sad; so much promise, so much hope, the cry of Bla6k Power died a painful death -wounded in the house of friends. Now what other shifts, or trends that de– stroyed ... or at least stemmed from ... the Black Movement? First it was the commercialization -we should have known that capitali– zation cares nothing for patrio– tism and symbolism. If there is a possibility of profit in it, it will suck the blood out of any– thing; Its tenacles will reach out and grab Black Power symbo– lisms •.• and anything else. What we have seen is that those who engage in life to ... to whom ... whose life is no more than to make a prof~t, will put their own children o~ television and expose 1/1 "' themselves to sell some dungarees that they call jeans -Jordache~ Symbolism without substance •.. Black Power had to become more than symbols. It is easy to grow one's hair out •.. and you remember during those days we used to say, "He has an afro hairdo and a pro– cessed mind." And Jesse Jackson had just reduced the handshake to the level of repugnance with his dating of Richard Daley as the Mayor of Chicago; and even white folks would come up to you and give you a handshake; and Flip Wilson -in his usual coniclastic style which transformed the mean– ing of class both .•. it was just too much; it made you want to run away from it all. The symbols which meant so m~ch ... had sudden– ly been reduced to nothing. It is not necessarily a sign of paranoia to believe that it was all planned. And what do I mean by that? Someone once said to me that the most thorough re- page3 search is done by the FBI on For a while it seemed that we Black folk ... that if you want towere assertive, but suddenly we -that if you want to know what looked around and those leaders we're ever thought and planned who had always been ah, always to think, if you want to know been slowing us down, unless what's the latest dance, you go they lose the good graces of to the files of the FBI. T~ey their white friends, suddenly know more about us than we'll were now back on the scene ever know about ourselves, and again. it's not ... and I'm not sermo- They had been propped up and got , nizing now; I'm looking at it a shot in . the arm, and now they~ · purely from a liberation sense .. were back in the leadership posi– from a struggle standpoint. tions -it was the COINTELPRO Pro- gram that I've mentioned. It was Something happened to our unbelievable what the FBI did to music when it was transformed the Black leadership at that into this thing we call rock- time. Do you know that J. Edgar n-roll, and you people who had Hoover has his people everywhere? been a part of a glorious He knew that Dr. Martin Luther struggle seemed to have been King was going to get his honor- caught up in drugs and rock and ary degree; he would send FBI roll. A~d ever~whe~e you go, agents that you were paying for someone s shak1ng lt ... them- -to the schools to try to dis- selves. You know, they drum that credit Dr. King so that he would stuff into thei~ heads, they've not get an honorary degree. And got them so add1cted ~hat they when Dr. King was going to get have to walk around w1th the ra- the Nobel Peace Prize he sent dio ca~rying a · whole sound rhy- his agents, paid by y;ur money thm wh1le they have theses ear- -to practically every embassy in ~hones g~ued to their heads. And the world to try to get them to 1f you l1sten to_the words- use their influence so that Dr. Black women shak1ng themselves K" ld t . t th N b 1 . , . 1ng wou no ge e o e wh1le somebody s degrad1ng them; P p . -th t · d t driv~ all that stuff going into their eace rlze .e~ rle 0 . · d "t' t th" k bl th t 'that man to su1c1de, and f1nally, m1n s- 1 s no un 1n a e a I b 1 . b h tr ng ·_ those planners who have always e leve ecause e was s. o tried to figure out our next enough ... b~cause he was bu1lt_ moves •.. know that when it comes upon the k1nd of rock ... and h1s to rhythm, and I believe that strength was borne from an ex~ when it comes to rhythm and ha~stle~s sourc~,.they couldn t music I mean it seems to be a drlve hlm t~ SUl~lde .•. they . . ' ' . couldn't dr1ve h1m mad, so f1nal~ part of our her1tage. I got a 1 . t h t hi d wn. Atid ihe brother, Randy Weston, who Y JUS s 0 m_ 0 Y 1 · th t 11 · · · t d were bound to bu1ld a statue to c a1ms a a mus1c or1g1na e h d . · from Afrika. I don't know about Edgar Hoover; maybe_t e ay lS that, but I know that there is upon when someone w1ll pull that a rhythmic balance. How if you' ... blow that .. :pull that statue re goin to move a people away . down and blow 1t up. from serious study and serious There was no reason that we thinking about their conditions, were starting to do in those days what better way than to get the -that some of the brothers music, get the very thing that learned how to read Karl MarxJ is a part of them, and turn it and some of the brothers and sis~ around and make it into some- ters learned how to read Lenin, thin that is corrupt, and have and it was all the fervor on a thir minds messed up ..•whether new convert; just got religion, or not there was the pacifica- now want to drive eve~ybody into tion program that I've men- the church. They wanted to make tioned, which was deliberately everybody Marxist. Black folk set in order to appease some of struggling for years and years us. -we're now told that racism ~oesn't matter; it ain't racism,· I can remember so well, some it's 'classism' .•. how that Negro of the revolutionary brothers get up ... I mean get up folks; who suddenly got an anti~ these are some of my friends so poverty program. They would get I got to change it. There are there summer cultural programs Black folks with European minds, with a few thousand dollars, and suddenly now discovering that they would forget about all race doesn't matter. Interest- their revoluntionary rhetorc; ingly ·enough, one of the leading they had arrived - they looked protagonists of this position more like a Wall Street banker was recently beaten in New York than anybody engaged in any- by the police; and do you know, thing except trying to chase as we said to him -and I think the next buck ... and to many of it sort of converted him a bit us, some political success. -that, had he been white, there Maynard Jackson became Mayor, wouldn't have been any problem. Tom Bradley became Mayor; and Coleman Youg became Mayor of When the police saw him they saw a Black face, and they didn't Detroit; Carl Stokes became care that this man was interna- Mayor of Cleveland, and all of this gave the tendency that we tionally known; this man was read were on our way. Then another around the world, has been in- point that helped to destroy vited even to the White House. the leadership ... what I'm call- But those cops didn't care any– ing the resiliency of a certain thing about the White House; they kind of leadership among us. (Contined on Page 7)