New Orleans, Wake Up!!!

New Orleans native

[Dwayne Omowale @DOmowale]

Revolutionaries are not necessarily born poor or in the ghetto. There is a role for every person in revolution if he is revolutionary. You don't have to throw a Molotov cocktail to be a revolutionary.
-Jamil Abdullah Al-Amin

[Brian Krassenstein @krassenstein]

This photograph today deserves a Pulitzer Prize.

A black girl sits in the middle of dozens of white supremacist patriot front members in Washington DC on the Fourth of July.

This is so representative of the country. We’re living in under Donald Trump right now. I want my country back.

REUTERS/Cheney Orr @orr_photo

[Ed Gentry☀️🍊 @SunnyMarmalaid]

Ta-Nehisi Coates is asked why Obama and Kamala Harris are pro-imperialist and pro-Zionist despite being highly educated and well traveled Black Americans. Coates is completely baffled by the question and unable to give an explanation

[Dwayne Omowale @DOmowale]

The part of the story about George Washington that usually gets ignored is that the people who were enslaved by George Washington hated their condition. Harry Washington escaped from slavery to join the British to fight against his former slave owner. Harry later died as a free man in Sierra Leone. Oney Judge also ran away and evaded the attempts which George Washington made to recapture her.

This isn’t a minor contradiction that should be explained away. It represented the reality that Washington and other slaveholders did not respect the humanity of the people that they enslaved because they did not view Black people as being human.

[Daniel Mayakovski @DaniMayakovski]

Esto es Kentucky (EEUU), una iglesia evangélica organizó una simulación de fusilamiento de inmigrantes delante de niños que acudieron a un campamento de verano.

Puro amor al prójimo, excepto si eres negro, homosexual, inmigrante, comunista o musulmán, entonces toca fusilamiento.

[Dwayne Omowale @DOmowale]

I read this book years ago and to me it's still a representation of the type of confused paranoia that Western civilization has because these people see foreign invasion from non-white people as being the greatest threat to Western civilization, when Western civilization has always been a threat to itself. It was European tribes who invaded and weakened Rome, which caused the eventually collapse of the Roman Empire. The World Wars were internal European affairs. In his book, Patrick Buchanan acknowledges all of this history, yet misses the obvious point Europeans have always been the biggest threat to their own civilizations.

[Dwayne Omowale @DOmowale]

Frederick Douglass explained that slave masters used sports as a means of “keeping down the spirit of insurrection.” It was a momentary distraction but they worked as “as conductors, or safety-valves, to carry off the rebellious spirit of enslaved humanity.” To a large degree, sports serves the same function for us today. Many of us invest a great deal of time, energy, and money into what is ultimately a form of entertainment which does very little to advance our liberation.

[Dwayne Omowale @DOmowale]

This is an excerpt from Fannie Lou Hamer’s autobiography in which she discussed the close connection she felt while she was in Guinea. The customs and music that she experienced in Africa reminded her of Mississippi.

[Dwayne Omowale @DOmowale]

Because Europeans didn't create or popularize it. The actual origins of where the term "Africa" comes from is unknown, but Africa as a modern day political and cultural concept is one which was created and defined by African people throughout the Diaspora and on the Continent. Europeans actively worked to suppress the development of a unique African identity because it was seen as a threat to colonialism.

[Dwayne Omowale @DOmowale]

African isn't defined solely based on phenotype though. Robert Campbell and John Brown Russwurm were two early forerunners of Pan-Africanism and they were both mixed. Campbell looked practically white, but he was fully accepted as family in Africa. It was out of these international interactions that the concept of being "African" developed.

Europeans actively discouraged this. Africans in the Diaspora were indoctrinated to believe that Africa was a savage land and that they were better off being enslaved in the Americas, whereas colonial education in Africa was designed to get Africans to either identify with Europeans or to see themselves as belonging to narrow tribal identities rather than as part of a larger African collective.

[Dwayne Omowale @DOmowale]

It inspired Denmark Vesey to revolt. It also inspired Martin Delany enough to name his son after Toussaint and it inspired Rev. James Holly enough to move to Haiti. In "Rebels and Runaways," Larry Eugene Rivers pointed out that slave masters in Florida were concerned about the revolution in Haiti and expressed as much in their newspapers. History is very clear on the fact that the revolution in Haiti was well-known in America. It inspired hope for black people and fear for slave masters.

[Dwayne Omowale @DOmowale]

Elon Musk’s business ventures have benefited greatly from being subsidized by the government. This is an example of what Martin Luther King was referring to when he spoke of socialism for the rich.

[Stephen Hunter Johnson @stephenhjohnson]

As I age, I'm enjoying Adam Clayton Powell more and more.

[Dwayne Omowale @DOmowale]

The founders of the United States took ideas from Greece, Rome, and Britain. Despite fighting a violent revolution to gain freedom from Britain, the US kept the English common law legal system and drafted a Bill of Rights which took inspiration from the English Bill of Rights.

Other people look into their own historical traditions and use it to build their political institutions. The only thing preventing African people from doing the same is that we have allowed other people to convince us that our history is less valuable and isn't worth studying.

[RT @RT_com]

Painful to watch quake SWING earth then DOWN roof on crying schoolkids as death toll rockets to at least 15 & 129 injured

[Dwayne Omowale @DOmowale]

Correct. It wasn't only him either. Walterio Carbonell was harshly punished by the Cuban government for calling out racism in Cuban society. The problem with Castro's approach was the assumption that racism would just disappear through laws which outlawed racism, while failing to address the social and cultural roots of the problem. There was also the belief that class struggle could resolve racial issues. Robert F. Williams was told by officials in Cuba that the race problem in America was due to class and that the solution was class struggle. They didn't understand that the white working class benefits from racism, so as a class they have historically had no reason to join in class struggle with black workers.

[Dwayne Omowale @DOmowale]

This is what happens when people don't study their own history. There is a lengthy history of Black Americans being treated more favorably than in America than in Africa. For example, in Martin Delany's writings he mentions the treatment he recieved in Africa, especially the honor given to him by King Shita and the treaty for land that he made with Okukenu and other Egba rulers. Those who returned to Liberia were treated as long lost kin. John Robinson was able to establish a successful cotton business and school in Togo without fear of the locals trying to destroy it as was often done to Black American businesses. Malcolm X mentioned being more accepted by African audiences than he was by American audiences. Fannie Lou Hamer wrote about how she recieved an audience with President Sekou Toure in Guinea, even though the president of her own country ignored her.

Based on this history, why would Black Americans have more hatred for Africans who welcomed them as family than for a society which has always viewed Black Americans as sub-humans and second class citizens?

[Dwayne Omowale @DOmowale]

The fact that Ethiopia avoided being colonized worked to Ethiopia’s advantage in some respects. Menelik II was free to modernize aspects of Ethiopian society, such as developing Ethiopia’s first modern hospital. What hindered Ethiopia’s development was its feudal system which was expanded with the help of the Italian colonizers who supported Menelik’s conquests in the hope that they could get him to submit after he did the work of conquering territory for them. Haile Selassie also continued the process of modernizing infrastructure in Ethiopia. Ethiopia was able to support liberation struggles in Africa because the nation had its own weapons factory. But Ethiopia’s development stagnated under the feudalism of Haile Selassie, who often forcibly resisted calls for more sweeping changes until he was overthrown in a revolution.

If anything, Ethiopia's history demonstrated the possibilities of what Africa could have accomplished if not for the decades lost due to colonialism. Without colonialism, African nations could have industrialized sooner. The same could be said for Vietnam, which has been setback for many decades due to colonialism and the devastation caused by the war with America. Vietnam recovered, whereas most African nations are still recovering because they have failed to completely dismantle the colonial systems.

[Dwayne Omowale @DOmowale]

In Africa and the West Indies, the petty bourgeoisie display characteristics such as self-hate, because they are usually black men who have a certain white orientation. They have what is correctly identified as imitativeness and lack of creativity, which were not characteristic of the European bourgeoisie in its heyday.
-Walter Rodney