Fall 2015 Part 6

Conclusion


She is a strong person. She wants to express herself honestly on her terms and I respect her for that. Issa Rae has Issa Rae Production and Color Creative. She is making the great point that the stories of black people and people of color are just as valuable as any other story. Life will never be totally easy, but Issa Rae has the great qualities of persistence, courageousness, and determination. She has the right to say No. We know about the imperfections found in the entertainment industry. The Sony emails and the actions of many corporate executives present to the world about how cut throat the industry is. The gift of film and other forms of entertainment has been expressed by talented black people for generations. The greatness of us is found not only in our stories, but in our resiliency as a people too. Therefore, Issa Rae is a Sister with Power and she is a person to be reckoned with. A'int nothing will turn us around. I send condolences to Lesley McSpadden and the rest of Michael Brown’s family and friends. Darren Wilson can live his life and he’s breathing. Yet, Michael Brown is gone physically forever. Wilson’s interview was filled with the mentality of many officers. Darren Wilson isn’t alone in his archaic views. For him to even say that the DOJ report, which totally documents racism and police brutality accurately in Ferguson, is skewed and he hasn’t read it, shows his detachment from reality. There are serious problems in police departments nationwide. Police brutality and corruption is an institutional problem as well. We all know about the existence of the Blue Wall of Silence. Tons of studies, reports, and witnesses have exposed police corruption. Wilson totally ignores the reason why the citizens of Ferguson and citizens all over the country are tired of the status quo and human beings want a real change where communities are treated justly.

I read the entire article from Ben Carson on the Black Lives Matter movement. He wants to promote conservative solutions to solve problems. He has the right to his views. The truth is that there must be a combination of solutions that must exist from all levels of government. The War on Poverty cut poverty in half from 1960 to 1970. The problems with the War on Poverty was that many of its programs were cut (during the 1970’s and during the 1990’s via Clinton's welfare reform policies that caused huge suffering to black & poor people), the Vietnam War increased inflation in America, and there was a massive neglect of investment in poor communities after the late 1960’s. The War on Poverty was a capitalist experiment with strengths and weaknesses. Black poverty fell 43% from 1959-1973 as anti-poverty programs exploded (and overall poverty was cut in half). Progress only stalled after those programs began to be scaled back (in real dollar terms) after the mid-1970s. Ultimately, the War on Poverty was massively cut as time went on. Massive deindustrialization, the War on Drugs, and bad trade deals also crippled communities. He’s right that houses that are filled with crack cocaine must be shut down. Yet, we can't just end crack houses alone. We also need investments in drug treatment programs (to help people with drug addiction), end all forms of three strike laws, and give voting rights to nonviolent drug offenders who are out of prison. In essence, the War on Drugs must end. I support the BLM's platform on the police. Also, he’s right that the entertainment industry must be held accountable for its misogynoir and its promotion of anti-black stereotypes in the world. Also, there should be federal, state, and local responses to address racism (as there is systemic racism in our world), sexism, police terrorism, and discrimination in this nation. The system of white supremacy must end. Laws have to be changed and more progressive legislation must exist to address injustice in all levels of government. That should be a priority. We shouldn’t use our money to aid entities whose sole purpose is to slander our dignity as black people. Public schools and any school for that matter must embrace smaller class sizes, flexible curriculum, and other policies that have actually worked to improve education (in places like Finland and the state of Massachusetts. I have no issues with universal pre-K either as children development is very important). We should develop our families and end the structures of oppression at the same time. Young people need jobs, but job creation should be done by both the public and the private sectors not just by the private sector alone. So, he made many good points. On other points, I don’t agree with him obviously. Over 1 trillion dollars sent to the big banks while some in Congress refuse to pass an infrastructure bill is a disgrace. He is in error to imply that the Black Lives Matter movement says that only certain lives matter. That is not what the BLM is all about. Black Lives Matter is about promoting the human dignity of black people. Racial justice is a necessity not the worship of American exceptionalism. So, to be fair, he made some good points and on other points, I don’t agree with him. He has the right to speak his mind. Many of Ben Carson's views are too reactionary for me. At the end of the day, we want solutions and we want justice.

There has been a lot of talk about Bernie Sanders and his campaign. He has had massive crowds coming to him. I have researched his foreign policy. While Sanders legitimately is exposing economic inequality and he is right that the 1% readily supports the bad agenda of redistributing the wealth from the poor and the working class into the super wealthy. Bernie Sanders’ foreign policy is blatantly conservative and that’s a problem. He has not stated how his foreign policy differs from Hillary Clinton, President Barack Obama, or the Republicans (who have blatantly neo-conservative views on how to deal with international or foreign policy issues). Sanders said that there is a nuclear threat from Iran, which is false, because even the CIA said that Iran has no nuclear weapons and has no nuclear development program. Bernie Sanders has said that he wanted to push the regressive regime of Saudi Arabia to have more intervention in the Mideast. Decades ago, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. said on record that the United States government is the Greatest Purveyor of Violence in the World Today and the U.S. has gone made on war (because when the U.S. spends more money on military defense than programs on social uplift, then it is approaching spiritual death). No Presidential candidate on either the Republican or Democrat has said that in public. We are not only against racism and economic exploitation. We are against materialism and militarism. A real revolutionary explicitly exposes imperialism. So, Bernie is not the only one that should expose imperialism and brutal militarism. Every candidate does. When you look at the issues, Sister Cynthia McKinney, Sister Barbara Lee, Jill Stein, Dennis Kucinich, Ralph, and even Ron Paul (though I don’t agree with him on his reactionary social and economic policy positions) have a better anti-war, anti-military industrial complex, and anti-surveillance security state positions than Bernie Sanders. So, Bernie Sanders should confront imperialism and the surveillance state in much stronger direction. It is important to not that 2 courageous women of color spoke to Bernie Sanders in saying to his face about his lax responses to racial justice matters. Afterwards, because of the efforts of the 2 women (who have been slandered and disrespected by vile people in the Internet), Bernie Sanders has shown a racial justice platform on his website. As for voting, people have the right to vote for who they want to. People should vote their conscience. As for me, I will continue to stand up for civil liberties, economic rights, and social justice. We live in a society where Citizens United and other unjust laws have made mainstream politics parasitic, greedy, and very much infiltrated with big corporate interests. We should maintain our political independence and we will never turn around. We want to move forward, so people can have freedom and justice.

Donald Trump is certainly an extremist. People have called him anti-establishment when he isn’t. He is part of the same capitalist system that allows him to run for President. Trump’s rhetoric is blatantly nativist. Many people like Trump talk about the budget. The myth is that the federal government has to balance the budget in the strictest terms in order to get the federal deficit in check. We know that spending cuts to balance the budget is a policy that results in a shrinking tax base, which will require more spending cuts to balance the budget. Federal government spending is the main driver of real production, so increased government spending correlates to an increased tax base. This is why some people want to use a credit stimulus using low interest rates. We know that Trump is a racist, a war monger, a neoliberal, a speculator, a xenophobe, a misogynist (with his disrespectful comments about women like Rosie O’Donnell, Megyn Kelly, etc.), and he is very narcissistic. Trump talks about Greece and America in terms of debt, but he refused to advocate making the Wall Street banks accountable for their policies at all. He ignores the excessive power of Wall Street financiers over the U.S. polity, economy, and society.  Trump blamed the decline of the U.S. job market on other nations like China and Mexico while he mostly ignores Wall Street financiers who gave the order to ship jobs overseas. He doesn’t care that Mexican and Chinese workers are exploited and oppressed by vulture capitalist policies, but he believes in the American exceptional myth (that America is superior to every nation on Earth and we must be destined to lead the Earth in some messianic vision). Mexico and China didn’t ship jobs overseas, but Wall Street banks and other multinational corporations did. Trump is obsessed with austerity and deficit reduction. Trump wants to decrease the federal corporate income tax rate to 0% (in claiming that jobs would boom, which is false) when he doesn’t advocate a Wall Street sales tax. Trump supports eminent domain. Trump is a war monger advocating militarism against Iran, North Korea, etc. He wants corporations to take over Iraqi oil. That is why many progressive people want to tax Wall Street, demanding interest free public credit to build our national infrastructure, and create a policy for full employment. Henry Kravis is one person that Trump is considered to be the Treasury Secretary. Kravis have tons of establishment ties and his views on the 14th Amendment are extreme and obscene.  So, I don’t support Donald Trump, who disrespected the Central Park Five and he has been investigated by the government for discriminating against black people too. He is a person that is an extremist. The United States need to promote living wages, an end to imperialism, an end to the War on Drugs, the end to police brutality, the prosecution of police officers involved in extrajudicial murder of black people, a federal end to racial profiling, and other progressive solutions.

By Timothy