:yea: The best I can hope for is to plant trees in the ashes of the empire. There's no spontaneous unorganised uprising that can make a dent in a machine built to slaughter civilians and the monologue I feel most accurately describes this era is Brace Belden's "You are a serf". We aren't proactively on the verge of a 1917 or 1905 because class consciousness isn't established, but as the empire decays it stops meeting needs and allowing for civic participation and fostering organic community.
Building up dual structures in the way the Black Panthers did in the 1960s-70s seems like the most pragmatic path to achieve anything in the US so I became what they were at that point. We need to use our orgs to replace the things late stage capitalism steals from people because the people learn through observation.
edit: https://www.marxists.org/archive/hampton/1969/05/19.htm
That’s what it’s about. That’s what it’s got to be about. Huey P. Newton was a man that said that whenever a slave kills a slavemaster, it’s a cleansing process.
Because it was Huey P. Newton who said that the people can only understand basically by observation and participation. What did he do? Well, we done said it so many times, but let me tell you—it’s so beautiful.
There was a situation down on the corner where there were four intersections and people were being run over. And Huey said we’re gonna stop this situation. The people went down to the government and they redressed their grievances peacefully, begged the man to put stop signs up as a humane action, just to stop our children from being murdered in the streets, to stop these maniacs who are driving fast and they don’t have any legal reason to stop. And you know what the pig said?
They said you can go back home because I’m running this thing and you people don’t have any say-so. But Huey P. Newton came through, and he told the people to “give me a chance, because I believe something else. I believe with all my soul and with all my heart and with all my mind that the people should, could and will have the power. Let me go down and let me see if I can put the stop signs up.”
They said, “Well, Huey, we already tried.” But they didn’t understand that Huey was like brother Malcom. That Huey would do things even if it didn’t correspond to what you thought ought to be done. He would say things not because you wanted to hear them or not.
Huey got Bobby Seale and Bobby Seale got a 9m pistol. Huey got his shotgun, he got four stop signs, and got him a hammer, went down to the corner, handed his shotgun to Chairman Bobby Seale and said, “If anybody come on this corner and fuck with us, we’re gonna blow their brains out.”
Huey P. Newton said people learn basically by observation and participation. The people observed. Next time they had another four-way intersection. Same type of problem. People were running past where there should be a stop sign but there wasn’t any; children were being murdered and maimed in the streets. Again Huey went, got Chairman Bobby, Chairman Bobby got his 9mm, Huey got his shotgun, got four stop signs and a hammer. He went down to the corner, told Bobby, “Anybody fuck with us, blow their brains out.” Nailed up the four stop signs. No more accidents, no more problems.
Next time—the people who gassed last time, gassed this time, too. They observed and participated. What happened? They had another intersection, a four-way intersection. Children being murdered. Children being maimed. Huey was gonna move again, but he understood what was gonna happen, but he didn’t know it was gonna happen then. But then he looked up, and even the vanguard was surprised when he saw all the people gettin’ their hammers, gettin’ their stop signs! And the people were down there. No more problem and more accidents. How did they learn? They learned by observation and they learned by participation, and that’s the way the Black Panther Party believes in doing things.
