Black History Month Forum

Racist Purge in our streets


February 05, 2007 an 18 year old man was murdered in daylight on Eddy Street in San Francisco, on the same block where a week earlier a 20 year old man was killed. I was on the bus as the account was told by a woman who lives on Eddy Street but rode the 5 McAllister bus home since the 31 Eddy street bus was shut down due to the murder. It is in prose since I am not formally trained in writing.

My womb aches and turns
As the lady on the bus
Yells into her phone
"They shot him"
"In his arms"
"His legs his face"

"He's dead"
Young Black Someone’s son
Spread out dead on Eddy Street
My forehead becomes moist
And I try my hardest to ignore her

The bus is silent
Her raspy voice
Broadcasts the ghettos news
Through the Zoloft dependent
Kate Spade bag clutching
Status quo filled bus

The blond make-up faced lady
Whose shoulder rubs with mine
As the bus brake pads squeeze
Breathes fast

Through the corner of my eye
I see her chest fall and rise
Perhaps because blood
May have splattered on her Audi
Or her property value
Steadily decreases

The elaborately hair styled
Cinnamon toned lady in the front seat
Continues to pour herself through
Her mobile phone
As a Clark Kent look alike
Calmly scans his newspaper

I am sweating more now
I called him
My heart
After four slow rings
The answering machine responds
This worries me

Let's go back to Africa I text him
I realized home is worse than the Fillmore
So I text him with never mind
I feel trapped

Her anxiety ricochets through the Muni bus
The air thickens
A perfectly manicured hand
Reaches for a window as if maybe air
Would help her breathe
Or escape the dead kid on Eddy Street
The street over from my friend
And his phone keeps ringing

"He's all laid out in the street"
She says
Since I hear no sirens
My tear ducts swell
I want to scream
I want him to answer his phone
I wish this were a bad dream

Her phone tight to her face
My phone tight in my grasp
All thirty of us on the bus silent
As if in class
As if being taught something
By this woman

This stranger next door neighbor
And her world which was ours
Until she got off the bus
And all of those who tried to ignore her
Watch her step down like a winning debutant
With her large belly and blond styled tresses

I barely hear sirens now
In real time as I write this
Hurriedly to keep from bursting into tears
In my home
Because he still hasn't answered
You'd think I'd be numb by now
But every time it hurts the same
My sons
My brothers
And my lover still won't answer his phone

Repression of blacks is bad, but so is the mass murder and repression of marxist-leninist totalitarianism

The Sparts, despite their own denial, really can only trace their origins back to the last 1960s and early 1970s. The CPUSA and SWP and some others do go back father and were tied to some of the groups that lead to the Soviet Revolution, but with all the splits and changes over the years blaming any current group for what happened back then would be like blaming all anarchists for some of the early anarchsit movements antiSemitism and racism (more a product of the location and time then the ideology) or associating the modern Republican Party with abolishing slavery in the US.

The thing is how each group relates to the class tensions and struggles TODAY. That is a lot more helpful sorting political tendencies out. How did each group face the mass movements that are happening NOW: immigration, Venezuela, Palestine, factory occupations in South America, etc.

Tracing "ideological" lineage is a bit like tracing a royal lineage. What's real is what the working class did at different times of a struggle. Did it go far enough or not.

One of the commenters above claims that anarchsit anti-semtiism was widespread. I would like to challenge him. There was soem in Eastern Europe, btu the widespreadness (is that a word) is geenrally ptu out there by capitalist and Marxist adversaries. For example, Nestor Mahkno, a leader of the Ukrainian anarchists durign the time of the Russian Revolution, has been said to be an anti-semite. Nothing could be further fromt he truth. When a peasant came to Comrade Mahkno to tell him that he killed a bunch of Jews, expecting commendation, Mahkno shot him, and told the people around him to make sure that the example is known thruout the area.

Anarchists have a way of covering up their own betrayals throughout history and their current bourgeois liberal idealism by wasting their time with ranting against "Authoritarian Leninists." I'd personally side with communists who take the struggle against the oppression of blacks and the oppressed seriously. What are the anarchists doing for Mumia anyway?