|
Preface to Letter from Curtis Muhammad
By Marvin X
The following
letter from Curtis Muhammad reveals that working with
the people can be disappointing to say the least, and
without organizers and the organized going through the
process of recovering from the addiction to white
supremacy, little shall be gained because the people and
the organizers, which should be one and the same—if it
is bottom up, as Curtis has attempted to teach and
practice. Little will be gained because without the
necessary recovery from white supremacy and its values
of domination and exploitation, our values and behavior
are wicked and demonic, as he reveals in his letter.
Before any
community work, the workers must go through the process
of detox, recovery and discovery, then we will be able
to work together in peace, justice and equality. One may
think I am being idealist but I am being practical—in
your present condition I can't go around the corner with
you--as Curtis discovered in New Orleans and elsewhere
on his journey. Yes, the organizers ran off with the
people's money because the organizers are wicked
opportunists who are full of greed and selfishness, thus
it does not take much to destroy all the good that is
possible, to disillusion the righteous and run them
exile.
This letter should
be an eye opener for those who work or dream to work in
the community. Not only will there be opportunists, but
agents, snitches and the ignorant who will easily fall
for anything because in their wretchedness they know
nothing. It is thus necessary to go through a healing
process before working seriously with anyone or any
group, because far too many have their own hidden agenda
and it does not involve uplifting the oppressed--and
yes, sometimes even the oppressed don't want to uplift
the oppressed, so everyone must come together in a peer
group to process serious issues of fear, selfishness,
greed and the desire to dominate.
5 December 2007
*
* * * *
Farewell Letter from Curtis
Muhammad
A Message the Left and Progressive Forces inside the
USA
By Curtis Muhammad
November 12, 2007
With this second anniversary of Katrina upon us, there
are a few words I wish to speak. This letter is written
to the progressive, left movement for justice in the
USA. In the last two years, every left organization has
been in New Orleans, but despite that there is still no
sign of a mass movement. There is still no sign that
most activists are willing to put their knowledge and
resources at the service of the grass roots and take
their leadership from the bottom. I have found myself
wondering, have poor black people been so vilified and
criminalized that they are completely off the radar even
of the so-called left?
When Katrina happened, I hoped and expected that this
would be the trigger to once again set off a true mass
movement against racism and for justice in the US, led
by those most affected: poor, black working people. When
it became abundantly clear that this was not happening,
I found myself at the crossroads of hope and
hopelessness, and began to wonder how to spend the last
years of my life in the service of my people.
The thing that I remind myself when I'm contemplating
hopelessness is the beauty of humanity and the fact that
people have always fought for what was right even when
they knew they couldn't win. They tried because they
loved each other; I think it's because it's built into
human beings for people to look out for each other.
There is a drive in humanity to be just, to live in a
society that is just, equal and respectful. I believe
that ultimately people will achieve a just society; I
believe humanity came out of a just society and will
create it again.
I do believe that there was a time that the lovers of
life, the lovers of humanity, the lovers of justice
dominated the world. Some say this was so during the
hunter-gatherer days, when though there were evil people
they could never gain dominance. Their numbers were
always small, less than 1%; people ran their lives
collectively, and therefore the greedy could not
dominate. Well then, I say what happened, there is only
that same 1% who dominates the world now.
This thinking, this logic has been the motivating factor
in my life of movement work: the belief that there is a
basic humanity that is inside the soul of most people.
That this humanity can be harvested and organized into a
movement for justice to free our people from slavery,
bondage, oppression and exploitation. That the 80% of
the world who live on an average of $2 a day can and
will overcome the 1% and return us to a collective life
organized around love, justice and equality.
Most of you who know me also know I'm a storyteller and
believe story to be a universal language that can be a
vehicle for voice—the voice of all regardless of status,
class, cast, race, gender. Story is an egalitarian
language. So I wish to share with you my story, an
abbreviated story of my organizing work from SNCC in
Mississippi through the ghettoes of the US to the
villages and jungles of Africa, to CLU, PHRF, NOSC, POC
and finally the International School for Bottom-up
Organizing. My story is meant to clarify why I now
choose to live, work, teach and write outside the US and
away from the grip of a drastically de-energized and
often opportunistic and reactionary left in the USA.
* * * * *
I grew up in a community that, of necessity, had to take
care of its own. In rural Mississippi in the 40s, 50s
and 60s, mothers and fathers, grandparents, uncles and
cousins protected the children from the hostile, racist
world and collectively helped each other meet their
needs. Nonetheless, when I was a child traveling to
church on Sundays, I had to pass the tree from whose
branches my cousin was lynched. The community of my
birth gave me both my strength -- my faith in the
people, my dedication to egalitarianism—and my undying
hatred of racism and the oppressive few that control the
world.
When SNCC came to town, I found my direction. It was
both a community of love and a set of organizers
devoted, at the risk of their lives, to the folk on the
bottom: the poorest black folk in Mississippi, those who
had nothing, not even the knowledge of how to read. SNCC
introduced me to the struggles of my brothers and
sisters around the world, and particularly in Africa. I
became an internationalist and a revolutionary. The
lessons of Ella Baker and SNCC have stayed with me
throughout my life; I labored to make them a reality
from Mississippi to the ghettoes of our major cities,
from my time in the revolutionary movement in Africa to
my work as a labor organizer, and I have done my utmost
to apply them in post-Katrina New Orleans.
In 1998, I helped to organize Community Labor United (CLU),
a coalition that was founded with a commitment to
bottom-up organizing. (CLU principles included "ending
the exploitation of oppressed peoples everywhere;
educating, organizing and mobilizing the masses within
our organizations and communities from the bottom up.")
After eight years of organizing in some of the poorest
areas of New Orleans, it became the "first responder"
after Katrina, and led the formation of the People's
Hurricane Relief Fund (PHRF).
As a founding member of PHRF and an organizer and New
Orleans resident, I was back in the city within 8 days
of the flood, struggling with overwhelming pain and
anger. I felt that Katrina represented an historic
moment. Never before had all levels of government united
to attempt genocide of 100,000 black people at the same
time. Even in the 60s in Mississippi, they were
murdering us in ones, twos and threes. I threw myself
into the attempt to put the knowledge and resources of
the left and nationalist organizations and "movement"
people under the direction of the bottom: the poor and
working class black folk who had been left to die in New
Orleans. PHRF became a coalition that committed itself
on paper to that goal.
What followed was a dramatic learning experience for me
and for all those whose commitment is truly to the
people and not to their own particular grouping. Within
months, mainly as a result of a speaking tour I went on
for PHRF, we had raised about a million dollars from
folk across the country who were deeply moved by the
attempted genocide of over a hundred thousand black
folk. And by December, there was already conflict over
who controlled that money and how it was to be used.
The New Orleans Survivor Council was organized by PHRF
with the understanding that it was to become the
leadership of the organization and the movement, and
should control all resources. By April of 2006, when the
NOSC began to sound like it wanted oversight of the
funds, the interim leadership of PHRF took the money and
ran, firing its own organizers for daring to tell the
poor black residents in NOSC that they had the right to
control the resources raised in their names. Undaunted,
the young organizers continued working for the survivors
and formed a new group called People's Organizing
Committee (POC).
This event was a turning point for me. I realized that
the words of those who I had considered my comrades were
empty, that their so-called commitment to bottom-up was
a fiction; that their real commitments were to various
organizations and their own egos. Our attempt to
institutionalize bottom-up had led instead to a
coalition of opportunists.
When I had spoken to mass audiences about Katrina in the
fall of 2005, I had spoken of my discovery of the depth
of the fear and hatred America has for poor, black
people. The images on the media of those left to die
could have been taken in sub-Saharan Africa or the
Caribbean: those people were very poor and very black.
With the desertion of PHRF, I was confronted by the
knowledge that this hatred of poor black people extended
into and throughout the progressive movement, even
within exclusively black organizations. I felt very
lonely in my continued commitment to lift up precisely
that segment of oppressed Americans to lead the
movement.
But POC plunged ahead, still dedicated to that vision.
Thousands of volunteers came in the spring and summer,
and many continue to come to this day. The hearts of so
many people are in the right place. The New Orleans
Survivor Council and its member group Residents of
Public Housing continue to work to put bottom-up
leadership on the map and fight for the right of our
community to return and control its own destiny. But the
past year has also revealed further weakness and lack of
vision in our movement.
From the days immediately following the flood, we
recognized that immigrants—brown people, some of the
poorest and most desperate of our brothers and sisters
from countries to the south—were being brought into our
city. They were put to the dirtiest, most dangerous
clean-up tasks, and later to replace the forcibly
dispersed black labor force, for slave wages and in
slave conditions. From the start, we called for
organizing this new part of the New Orleans community in
unity with and under the leadership of the black folk on
the bottom.
This call was part of my message in the speeches I made
in the fall of 2005, and several immigrant organizers
heeded the call and came to work with us. However,
despite many serious attempts to develop unity between
black survivors and immigrants, it has become
clear that those organizers refuse to unite with and
take leadership from black folk. They have organized
immigrant slaves into separate groupings with no contact
with the NOSC, despite their initial commitment to
unity. They are essentially, wittingly or unwittingly,
following the government's agenda, which is to build a
racist, assimilationist immigrant "movement" that will
serve the needs of a war economy and patriotism.
And so we come to the second anniversary of Katrina.
Bottom-up organizing is still embryonic, though hanging
on to life and with a small, dedicated band of
survivors, organizers and volunteers. But the rest of
the movement is in shambles, or under direct or indirect
influence of our enemies.
Through the experience of the last two years, I have
also come to the conclusion that the infiltration of and
direct attacks on the movement that started (in my
lifetime as an activist) in the late 60s and early 70s
with Cointelpro have never stopped. Our movement has
been successfully divided into thousands of groupings,
non-profits and NGOs, and the left has been rendered
ineffectual. It is not an accident that, for forty years
now, the movement has been so totally reformist, or that
those who want to be revolutionaries are so isolated as
to be irrelevant. The government and its agencies have a
stranglehold on the people, the culture and even the
left. I do not think it is possible in the U.S. at this
time—for me—to develop and train organizers with a real
understanding and commitment to the folk on the bottom.
And thus, I find myself at the crossroads of hope and
hopelessness. I find myself possibly in the position of
writing not mainly to the current readers of these
words, but to those future revolutionaries who will
learn from our impasse. I find myself deciding to work
toward creating an international organizing school as a
vehicle to discover, recruit and train radical
organizers. I want to continue my investigation of the
movements in Mexico and South America among very poor --
members of the informal economy, workers, campesinos and
landless people —learn more about how class and hue
interact to shape oppression, take inspiration from the
fact that the struggle continues, un-abandoned,
worldwide, and share my own knowledge and experience
with the rebels of today and tomorrow.
I have lived 64 years and have struggled intentionally
for justice for about forty-six of those years. I am
thankful and appreciative to all those who have traveled
some of that distance with me: those who helped nurture
my children, who stood with me when I was imprisoned and
tortured, those who have always supported my work and
stood by me when all seemed to stand against me. To
these worthy friends, comrades and loved ones, I will
always honor you, be there for you, and know you are
there for me.
Still, I have arrived at a place in my life where I wish
to share everything I have and know with the
"sufferers." My principle continues to be the struggle
to engage the poor, oppressed, voiceless, and those who
have the least and suffer the most. The only struggle
that matters to me now is finding justice for those who
have never had it.
This is me, where I am, trying to figure out how to
organize our folk in a way that we always look at need
as the principle of justice. If you are looking for me,
look among the youth, the poor, and the struggling
masses trapped in slave-like conditions throughout the
world, for I am no longer available to an opportunistic
and racist left. I NOW SEEK REFUGE AMONG THE POOR.
This is my struggle. Wish me well, Curtis
Source:
Peoples Organizing
Click here to view a
videotaped interview by Amy Goodman on Democracy Now
http://www.democracynow.org/2007/9/4/the_privatization_of_new_orleans_curtis
* * * * *
update 30 July 2008 |
