reading Fred Hampton

I read transcripts of Fred Hampton's speeches recently through marxists.org because it was the anniversary of his death. First off-- fuck the FBI, fuck white supremacist capitalist racist bigoted pieces of shit that saw people of color and poor people coming together, doing things to improve themselves, and killed them. Shot a sleeping young man. Fuck anybody and everybody that had a part in COINTELPRO. 

Fred Hampton taught me that as Science for the People and somebody who actually organizes, we are the vanguard and the leadership. We are part of the people but we are separate too, and that's okay because we understand that what we do we do for all of us. Our aim is to uplift everyone and leave no one behind to suffer in the old world of white supremacy.

Huey P. Newton said the people learn through observation and participation. I have a pretty simple way of putting it that may be a familiar idiom to y'all: monkey see monkey do. It's the basis of interactive, life experience learning. Honestly, I like to jump in blind sometimes but for the most part & for most people, observation as the FIRST step is very important. Another analogy is reading product reviews, something I do all the freaking time. People share their observations which you ingest, digest, then you participate by buying that product. So we (organizers) need to do things so that the people do things.

Being Black (and specifically Jamaican / Caribbean-American) is really important to me and has greatly shaped my politics. As much as people might see me as fully Asian, I'm not. I'm half Jamaican and insanely fucking proud of who I am, not ashamed. I'm so thankful to live in a world where I learn about Black heroes and learn from them. They inspire me and hey, the fact that I share names with them makes me feel cool. Our names have so much history.