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From The Official Website of Kiilu Nyasha

.

Kiilu Nyasha is a revolutionary journalist and former member of the Black Panther Party. Through the end

of 2009, Kiilu hosted a weekly TV program, "Freedom Is A Constant Struggle," on SF Live, and many

shows are archived here. Beginning in May, 2012, "Freedom..." returned to the airwaves every first and

third Thursday for a live half hour on BAVC Commons (SF).

It can be streamed at http://www.bavc.org/public-access-tv/program-schedule/channel-76-stream. And

archives can be found by searching the title at www.archive.org.

Kiilu writes for various online and print publications and her blog: kiilunyasha.blogspot.com.

A former radio programmer, she has worked for KPFA (Berkeley), SF Liberation Radio, Free Radio

Berkeley, and KPOO in SF. She can be contacted via email: Kiilu2@sbcglobal.net

Be sure to visit Kiilu's pages at YouTube, Facebook, and MySpace.

From the Official Website of Kiilu Nyasha

http://www.kiilunyasha.blogspot.com/

Charles Garry, Kiilu Nyasha, and Huey P. Newton in Connecticut, 1970.

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From The Official Website of Kiilu Nyasha

Recent Blog Post:

Thursday, October 18, 2012

ON BOYCOTTING THE ELECTION 2012 by Kiilu Nyasha

If voting could change the system, they would make it illegal. (Jamil Al-Amin, aka

H. Rap Brown)

Here are a few arguments for those who insist on voting for the lesser of evil.

One of the first things Black folks say is, “We fought and died for the right to

vote.”

Yes, having fought in every war beginning with the revolutionary war of

independence from Britain, we have always done the dying; we've always been on

the front lines of struggle in this country. SNCC, Fannie Lou Hamer, and all the

valiant freedom fighters of the civil rights movement are to be honored and revered

for their uncompromising fight for our right to vote.

However, after we won that particular battle in1965, the reactionaries in power

initiated new ways to suppress and vacate our vote -- new rules and laws of

disenfranchisement, such as denying prisoners and felons the vote, fraudulent

registration procedures, vote tampering, rigged voting machines, etc. Eric Nielson

writes that since 2010, 11 states have passed laws that make it more difficult to

vote. Citing a report from The Sentencing Project, 5.85 million people are now

barred from voting because of a felony conviction, about 2.5 percent of the total

population.

The systematic disenfranchisement of Black voters in Florida, 2000, and elsewhere

across the country validates the following statement:

"...the two parties have combined against us to nullify our power by a 'gentlemen's

agreement' of non-recognition, no matter how we vote...May God write us down as

asses if ever again we are found putting our trust in either Republican or the

Democratic parties." (W.E.B. DuBois)

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From The Official Website of Kiilu Nyasha

Moreover, the recent Citizens United Supreme Court decision making corporations

persons and unleashing unlimited sums to campaign financing corrupts the voting

process with media madness and chicanery. It’s been projected that this

presidential campaign will ultimately cost nearly $11 billion.

“All political parties, as things stand, will support the power complex. Any

individual elected will either be a supporter of the established politics -- or an

'individual.' [Such as Ralph Nader] What would help us, in fact, is to allow as

many right-wing elements as possible to assume 'political' power...The fascists

already have power. The point is that some way must be found to expose them and

combat them. An electoral choice of ten different fascists is like choosing which

way one wishes to die. The holder of so-called high public office is always merely

an extension of the hated ruling corporate class [the 1%]. It is to our benefit that

this person

be openly hostile, despotic, unreasoning. We are not living in a nation where left-

wing parties hold eighty out of two hundred seats in a congressional body....This is

a huge nation dominated by the most reactionary and violent ruling class in the

history of the world, where the majority of the people just simply cannot

understand that they are existing on the misery and discomfort of the world."

(George Jackson, Blood In My Eye)

In fact, we Americans are hated more and more as this President targets innocent

civilians with drones and kill lists for massacres and assassinations, supports

fascist dictatorships, military occupations (such as the Zionist occupation of

Palestine), and escalating militarism across the globe in his aggressive pillaging of

global resources.

We are hated because we claim to elect these imperialist warmongers and thus

bear responsibility for their ongoing atrocities against other peoples in other

sovereign nations.

“When any election is held it will fortify rather than destroy the credibility of the

power brokers. When we participate in this election to win, instead of disrupt,

we’re lending to its credibility and destroying our own. With all the factors of

control over the electoral process in the hands of the minority ruling class, the

people’s party can always be made to seem isolated, unimportant, even

extraneous. If these tactics [and voting is just that, a tactic] still give the

appearance of revolution to some after decades of miscarriage, we are justified in

replacing them as vanguard.”(Jackson, Blood In My Eye)

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From The Official Website of Kiilu Nyasha

In this case, or currently, “vanguard” should indicate a new revolutionary people’s

party and platform NOT plugged into the system or trying to win a seat at the

table-- or a united front of like-minded organizations/parties.

Finally, we don’t have a one-person-one-vote electoral process. The Framers

opted for a complex system of delegates called the Electoral College. Each state

would have a number of electors equal to their Representatives in the House plus

their two Senators. Whoever wins the most votes in the state gets all the electoral

votes. This provided for a winner-take-all ballot in which voters cast their ballots

for the candidate of their choice indirectly. I.e., they are really signaling their

choice to a slew of delegates who in turn are supposed to honor the popular vote in

the final plebiscite a month later at the Electoral College. This process literally

discards all the "losing" votes in each and every state, giving more power to the

small states and putting a check on the power of the majority. And rest assured that

people of color are the current majority.

For example, in Wyoming, it takes 167,000 votes to gain a single electoral vote; in

California, it takes at least 645,000 to get one electoral vote, giving the Wyoming

voter four times the voting power of Californians. Then, let’s say one million

voters in California split their votes between the two candidates at 49% to

51%. The 49%, or close to a half million votes would be discounted. Repeat this

process in 50 states and the number of votes discarded is mindboggling. Yet we

continually hear the propaganda that “Every vote counts!” Nothing could be

further from the truth. In fact, four presidents were elected after losing the popular

vote.

You must have noticed that neither candidate, Barack Obama nor Mitt Romney,

spent time courting votes in the largest cities (New York, Chicago, Los Angeles,

etc.). Instead, they campaigned furiously in small, so-called “swing states” with

predominately White populations to win the crucial electoral votes. It’s clear that

centuries of racial segregation, regional redistricting and poll maneuvering,

especially the primaries, has rendered the smallest, Whitest states the most critical

to Presidential candidates, presenting illusory photo ops for visual consumption on

national TV fortifying the illusion of a predominately White, conservative

electorate.

In a kind of extension of the 3/5 of person adjudication by the Framers, the

predominately urban Black/Brown prisoners are inflating the rural white

populations leaving the urban areas underrepresented.

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From The Official Website of Kiilu Nyasha

Since in most states no law binds the electors to honor the people's vote, the elector

is free to vote for whomever he or she chooses. Thus, it's easy to see that this

undemocratic electoral process lends itself readily to fraud, manipulation, and

corruption. A number of polls found at least 70% of the American population

favors abolishing the Electoral College. I think that percentage would be 99% if all

eligible voters clearly understood it.

As for myself, I simply cannot be FOR what I’m AGAINST. I cannot in good

conscience vote for a fascist, for evil. That’s my bottom line.

However, I will work to help organize our people, especially poor people, around

their basic human needs: clean water, healthy food, decent housing, free quality

education, health care, and child care while fighting warmongering foreign policy

and the divisive negatives that preclude unity -- racism, classism, sexism, and

homophobia. In the effort to become the new woman, I’ll work on my own flaws

and isms in the process of making revolution. I hope you’ll do the same. Believe

me, it’s a lot harder than casting a vote and will produce tangible, positive results,

instead of more of the same only worse.

Think outside the box. Dare to struggle; dare to win!

Posted by Kiilu Nyasha

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From The Official Website of Kiilu Nyasha

Wednesday, August 1, 2012

THE REVISION AND ORIGIN OF

BLACK AUGUST

by Kiilu Nyasha (2012)

“As a slave, the social phenomenon that

engages my consciousness is, of course,

revolution.”

(George L. Jackson)

The Revision of Black August

2012 marks the 33rd anniversary of

Black August, first organized to honor

our fallen freedom fighters, George and

Jonathan Jackson, James McClain,

William Christmas, Khatari Gaulden, and

sole survivor of the August 7, 1970 Courthouse Slave Rebellion, Ruchell Cinque

Magee.

During these three decades, we’ve witnessed a steady revision of the meaning of

Black August and its inherent ideology, the undisputed leader of which was our

martyred Comrade, George Lester Jackson.

Read more »

Posted by Kiilu Nyasha

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From The Official Website of Kiilu Nyasha

Saturday, June 30, 2012

RAPE IGNITES A NATION DURING CIVIL RIGHTS MOVEMENT by

Carmen Rivera

Introduction by Kiilu Nyasha:

As a Black woman who grew up in the 1940s, ‘50s, and 60s. I’m fully aware of the

treatment of colored girls and women not only by White men, but men of every

description. I’m old enough now not to be too embarrassed to state that I was

raped numerous times and didn’t even know it was rape. It was referred to as

Bogarting when men forced you into sex against your will in those days. There

were no phrases like “date rape,” or “sexual harassment,” though both were quite

common, the latter mostly in the work place. Black women were singled out

particularly due to the prevailing racist notion that we were animal-like and

oversexed.

Read more »

Posted by Kiilu Nyasha

Saturday, April 7, 2012

A REVOLUTIONARY PARTY PLATFORM

This is the latest version of a proposal for a revolutionary party and

platform. These ideas are not new, just newly organized to fit today's realities. In

September 1970, in Philadelphia, the Black Panther Party and its allies pulled

together a Revolutionary Peoples Constitutional Convention (RPCC) that drew

10,000 - 15,000 people from all over the country and the globe for three days of

workshops and plenary sessions to rewrite the Constitution. See Liberation,

Imagination and the Black Panther Party, ed. by Kathleen Cleaver and George

Katsiaficas for details of this incredible event. A follow up convention was

thwarted by COINTELPRO no doubt. When Larry Pinkney and I agreed to

present this proposal, we were hoping for lots of comments, suggestions,

criticisms, feedback. We did receive a letter of endorsement from Mumia Abu-

Jamal and support from Terry Collins (KPOO) and Dr. Lenore Daniels of the

Black Commentator, among others. However, we're still hoping more of you who

check this out will send us your ideas/critiques. Meanwhile, here's the latest

version and a letter of introduction, written by Larry Pinkney.

Read more »

Posted by Kiilu Nyasha

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From The Official Website of Kiilu Nyasha

Thursday, April 5, 2012

May Parole Hearing for Hugo Pinell, in Solitary for at least 42 yrs --

POSTPONED!

NEWS ALERT (4/6/12):

Yogi's board hearing has been postponed another year due to CDCR's new gang

validation rules. Uncommon Law, the firm of Keith Wattley, is handling Yogi's

case and they think they can get some relief for him under the new rules. So let's

take this year to do everything we can to support Yogi and help him to stay strong

in that hell hole for another year.It would be a good thing for those with resources

to check with Att. Wattley to see if Yogi needs financial assistance in covering

legal fees.

Read more »

Posted by Kiilu Nyasha

Saturday, March 31, 2012

Fatal Invention: How Science, Politics, and Big Business Re-Create Race in

the 21st Century

Book Review, by Kiilu Nyasha

March 19, 2012

Dorothy Roberts’ new book, Fatal Invention: How Science, Politics, and Big

Business Re-Create Race in the 21st Century is a must read for all human beings

desiring to witness the beginning of the end of racism.

“We have long had scientific confirmation that race is a political and not a

biological category. The recreation of biological race in genomic science today,

like its invention by scientists in past centuries, results from an ideological

commitment to a false view of humanity,” writes Roberts.

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From The Official Website of Kiilu Nyasha

In 2000, The Human Genome Project mapped the entire human genetic code,

proving that race could not be identified in our genes, that we are not naturally

divided into genetically identifiable racial groups, that there is one human race.

Roberts explains and elucidates race as a political division, not a biological one.

And details how the new science and technology of racial genetics is threatening

“to steer America on a course of social inhumanity that already has begun to

dominate politics in this century. Government policies that have drastically slashed

social services…accompanied by particularly brutal forms of regulation of [so-

called] racial minorities: mass imprisonment at rates far exceeding any other place

on Earth or any time in the history of the free world; roundup and deportation of

undocumented immigrants, often tearing families apart; abuse of children held in

juvenile detention centers or locked up in adult prisons, some for the rest of their

lives;…torture in police stations and prison cells; and rampant medical neglect that

kills.”

Read more »

Posted by Kiilu Nyasha

SLAVERY ON THE NEW PLANTATION (updated March 2012) By Kiilu

Nyasha

"Slavery 400 years ago, slavery today. It's the same, but with a new name. They're

practicing slavery under color of law." (Ruchell Cinque Magee)

The 13th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution retained the right to enslave within

the confines of prison. “Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a

punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist

within the United States or any place subject to their jurisdiction.” Dec. 6, 1865.

Even before the abolition of chattel slavery, America's history of prison labor had

already begun in New York's State Prison at Auburn soon after it opened in 1817.

Auburn became the first prison that contracted with a private business to operate a

factory within its walls. Later, in the post Civil War period, the "contract and

lease" system proliferated, allowing private companies to employ prisoners and sell

their products for profit.

Today, such prisons are referred to as “Factories with Fences.”

(/www.unicor.gov/information/publications/pdfs/corporate/CATMC1101_C.pdf)

Read more »

Posted by Kiilu Nyasha

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From The Official Website of Kiilu Nyasha

Thursday, March 1, 2012

Slave Farms in the 21st Century: Reflections on the Socio-economic and

School Pipeline to Prison

In the age of globalization, Blacks, Immigrants, and resisters are targeted for

elimination and enslavement by the power brokers, fearful of losing their wealth,

privilege, and whiteness. Central to this process is the school to prison pipeline,

high unemployment, homelessness, and the so-called war on drugs that supply the

prison system with its oppressed population. In this presentation, we explore some

of the facts that characterize this system—no less insidious than past forms of

slavery—and some of the narratives, policies and practices that work in the interest

of the dominant corporate plutocracy.

To accompany this new video of Kiilu addressing the University of Wisconsin, she

has released an updated version of her 2006 essay entitled "Slavery On The New

Plantation" (Read the full article here), where Kiilu writes:

Chattel slavery was ended following prolonged guerrilla warfare between the

slaves and the slave-owners and their political allies. Referred to as the

“Underground Railroad,” it was led by the revolutionary General Harriet Tubman

with support from her alliances with abolitionists, Black and White. It only makes

sense that this new form of slavery must produce prison abolitionists.

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From The Official Website of Kiilu Nyasha

As George Jackson noted in a KPFA interview with Karen Wald (Spring 1971),

"I'm saying that it's impossible, impossible, to concentration-camp resisters....We

have to prove that this thing won't work here. And the only way to prove it is

resistance...and then that resistance has to be supported, of course, from the

street....We can fight, but the results are...not conducive to proving our point...that

this thing won't work on us. From inside, we fight and we die....the point is -- in the

new face of war -- to fight and win."

Power to the people.

Posted by Kiilu Nyasha

Friday, November 11, 2011

A revolutionary party platform

This is the 4th draft of a proposal for a revolutionary party and platform. These

ideas are not new, just newly organized to fit today's realities. In September 1970,

in Philadelphia, the Black Panther Party and its allies pulled together a

Revolutionary Peoples Constitutional Convention (RPCC) that drew 10,000 -

15,000 people from all over the country and the globe for three days of workshops

and plenary sessions to rewrite the Constitution. See Liberation, Imagination and

the Black Panther Party, ed. by Kathleen Cleaver and George Katsiaficas for

details of this incredible event. A follow up convention was thwarted by

COINTELPRO no doubt. When Larry Pinkney and I agreed to present this

proposal, we were hoping for lots of comments, suggestions, criticisms,

feedback. We did receive a letter of endorsement from Mumia Abu-Jamal and

support from Terry Collins (KPOO) and Dr. Lenore Daniels of the Black

Commentator, among others. However, we're still hoping more of you who check

this out will send us your ideas/critiques. Meanwhile, here's the latest version and

a letter of introduction.

Read more »

Posted by Kiilu Nyasha

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From The Official Website of Kiilu Nyasha

Friday, September 23, 2011

SOLEDAD BROTHER:

Memories of Comrade George

(updated 9/23/11

SOLEDAD BROTHER:

MEMORIES OF COMRADE

GEORGE (updated 9/23/11)

By Kiilu Nyasha

It’s hard to believe that our

beloved Comrade, George

Lester Jackson, would be 70

years old this date, September

23, 2011.

On reading his first book, a 1970

bestseller, “Soledad Brother:

The Prison Letters of George

Jackson,’ I felt a kindred spirit

with George’s rage and

resistance, but thought he

contradicted himself on women.

So I began a correspondence with him from New Haven, Connecticut, where I was

a member of the Black Panther Party, and working for the lawyers defending

Chairman Bobby Seale, Ericka Huggins, and Lonnie McLucas, as well as

organizing community and national support for their freedom.

Read more »

Posted by Kiilu Nyasha

Drawing by Kiilu Nyasha