Yes, it is a question of raising consciousness now as in the past. Some of my students who were involved in demonstrations over issues of police brutality last semester have vowed to engage in teach ins and other consciousness raising activities. I will support them.
-Savant
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My lady and I checked out SELMA last night. I do recommend it even though I question the historical accuracy of some of the incidents as depicted in that film. Yes, see SELMA and let's discuss it. Remember than in roughly TWO MONTHS, we will have the fiftieth anniversary the Bloody Sunday, that first demonstration for Voting rights at Edmund Pettus bridge that was brutally suppressed by Sheriff Jim Clark and his racist thugs. BLOOD was paid for your rights, rights now endangered. Wake up, black people. It's later than you think!
-Savant
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That is part of what I stated in my reply to Harrisson that disappeared. It's kind of like what Fanon says about African police after the end of classical colonialism, under neocolonialism. If the system or structure of domination doesn't change then neither will the police which is a part of that system. The problem is structural.
-Savant
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Where did this happen? At Cornel U? I discovered Marable's writings in the 1980s. I met him once while he was a Fisk University. I met him a a Socialist Scholars Conference in the 1990s (by which time I was also teaching philosophy).. His first book, or the first that I read was FROM THE GRASSROOTS. I read also BLAKWATER (which didn't mean that nefarious company, but something akin to Du Bois' DARKWATER). I checked out HOW CAPITALISM UNDERDEVELPED BLACK AMERICA and a few others. But I've not yet read his controversial book on Malcolm X. And there are a few others. I last saw him about 2007 at a meeting in Birmingham, AL of the Association for the Study of African American Life and Culture, where I also delivered a presentation which was to be the basis of an essay I was later to write on Dr. King's revolutionary vision of community. He was there and I was glad to see that he liked it and encouraged to continue.
Once I was at a meeting of the Socialist Scholars Conference in NYC during the 1990s. Marable, Cornel West, Sonya Sanchez and Paul Roberson, Jr--yeah the son of THE Paul Roberson--were there on the same panel. The question was raised somehow about why Black conservative politicos and intellectuals can be so marginal within the black community, but get more attention than those more progressive intellectuals who sentiments were more aligned with the sentiments of the majority of the Black community. Marable talked about evolution of the Black class structure, and the political strategies of the Right from Nixon's "southern strategy" on. But then Marable said "But to put it more simply, any one of us could probably triple our salaries if we were willing to prostitute our intellects for the right wing and their well heeled think tanks. Any of us could be well rewarded for being a Black mouthpiece of the conservative agenda; and regardless of the sentiments of the majority of Blacks--even within the petty bourgeoisie---some of these right wing black folk just want to get PAID."
Fellow philosopher Cornel West, a bit more religious than Marable, spoke of the need for courageous moral action, and speaking in characteristically ethical language, affirmed: "If we are socialists, democratic socialists, it's not mainly because of something that Marx wrote. We are socialists because we believe that ORDINARY people have a right to enjoy lives filled with DIGNITY and DECENCY." True indeed. True, indeed.
-Savant
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Democrats are another corporate political party whose candidates intelligent and sane citizens--unlike yourself---often feel compelled to vote for because proto-fascist Republicans are the only other option left. European countries at least have a multiparty system which allows more elbow room. As for the Swedes and other European countries, my position remains the same. If they ALLOW their liberties to be lost, if they willingly put into power fascist regimes once more, then they're on their own. If a Nordic Franco somehow seizes power by force and overthrows their social democracy, then my attitude will be different. As for the USA, our task is to create the kind of society that will make Nazi-esque racist cretins like you impossible
-Savant
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