Kwame Ture - Lessons from the 60s

Kwame Ture: We thank you for your welcome. We have been allotted half an hour and within this half an hour we are to explain some of the lessons of the movement of the 60s and its relationships of the 80s and relevance to the 21st century. I have picked about five areas that I have picked about five areas which I would like to discuss today. The first lesson that we can come to look from the 60 and gain is the understanding that the statement made by Abraham Lincoln is a true statement. You can fool some of the people some of the time, but you cannot fool all of the people all of the time. This statement can be understood within the context of United States imperialism and its role in the late 50s. In the late 50s, based on the resolutions passed at the Fifth Pan-African Congress in 1945, a decision was made that Africans the world over must create mass organizations and mass movements to confront colonialism in Africa and the Caribbean in the final round, and also to confront racism and economic exploitation in the United States. From 1945 to 1960, within 15 short years of this conference, over 230 million Africans were to gain independence. Swiftly following in that wake, the Caribbean was to light a fire with independence movement, and of course, the United States of America itself, beginning its mass movement since the mid-50s with Martin Luther King, and the Montgomery boycott came to show mass movements everywhere. The American capitalist system, in the wake of the independence struggle in Africa, was trying everywhere to demonstrate to countries just struggling against colonial powers in Europe that it was not like the European powers, that it was not racist, it was democratic, it never had colonies, etc., etc. The African masses in America came to put that lie to rest quickly. Mass struggle inside the country came to demonstrate before the entire world that America was far from being a democratic country. It came to demonstrate in fact that countries in Africa were much further advanced in democracy than America ever was. Here at least Africans can vote. In America they could not. One of the lessons then that we must draw squarely from the 60s is an understanding that real struggle must be left and must be understood only by the masses of the people. It is the masses of the people who could not believe the lies of America and came to struggle instinctively against these lies. This instinctive struggle must be properly understood. History, of course, is made both consciously and unconsciously. Last month in Miami, Africans came to unconsciously make history by revolting against brutal conditions and pushing humanity forward. But this was instinctive, unconscious, unplanned. Indeed, this is the same aspect of the struggle that we saw in the 60s, instinctive struggle. As if we're to draw a conclusion just from this aspect of struggle, that is to say the people struggling unconsciously, unplanned, spontaneously and instinctively, That since people have an instinctive love of freedom, everywhere they will struggle for freedom. The history of Africans in America prove this clearly. Nowhere have they consciously organized to make advance. All the advances they have made have been unconscious, instinctive and spontaneous. Certainly you can understand what will happen when these people become thoroughly organized. The lessons then must be clear. Human beings, like animals of the lower form, have instincts. Human beings, unlike animals of the lower form, have the ability to think and reason. The lesson then must be clear. All of our instincts, at all times, under all conditions, must be governed by reason. The instinctive struggle of the 60s, the spontaneous struggle of the 60s, the unconscious struggle of the 60s, if they are to serve to us as lessons, must come to be qualified in conscious movements, rational movements, and planned movements. This then seems to me to be the first lesson that we would have to acquire from the 60s. Of course, the capitalist system lies all the time. Some people think it lies some of the time. But it lies all of the time. And in lying it has an attempt to make us think that in the 60s we were an organized people and everything was alright. We were not organized. We were immobilized people. Thus are we to get a heavy lesson from the 60s. The lessons must be clear. Immobilized people, really, and instinctive people, spontaneous people who struggle, struggle like animals. Even if we take the example of Miami, we can see it clearly here. In Miami, we're oppressed just like we are everywhere else. But we wait until an outside force provokes us into action. Everywhere you will see us, it is always an outside force that provokes the African masses into action, even on the campus here. I told some brothers the other day, you want to organize all the African students on the campus? I can do it overnight. All I got to do is write a filthy sign derogatory against them, put them on the campus. Next day, they all come to the meeting. And one of the errors that must be corrected, a people struggling for their freedom cannot depend upon an external force to push them into motion. They must have an internal dynamism of their own. Consequently, the African masses, in drawing lessons from the 60s, must come clearly to understand that they must have a dynamism in their hands to tell them when to attack the enemy, how to attack the enemy, and where to carry their struggle. Thus the 60s must come to be qualified from a mobilized struggle to an organized struggle. We say they fight like animals. You back an animal up against the wall and the animal, even a rabbit, will come out striking at you until you back up. Thus Africans, once provoked, come out striking wildly as they do in Miami. The police retreat, give them some concessions, they sit down, and then the police comes back with more repression. None of the gains made by a mobilized people can be maintained. It is only an organized people who can make gains and use those gains to further their struggle. Indeed, the gains made by the sixties, since they were made by an unorganized people in a state of mobilization, have not been used by the people, but in fact used by the enemy against the people. It is clear for the history of Africans in America that unlike others in this country, their history is not the same, entirely different from everybody else. All those who came here came here expecting a better life. An African put on a slave ship from Africa knew he was coming to hell. It's a fact. Consequently, the relationship between the country cannot be same unless this African has lost consciousness of his history and think that he came on the Mayflower. This aspect of organization from mobilization must be properly understood. No individual African in this country makes any advancement based on his individual talents or worth. All individual advancements are based on mass struggle. This must be properly understood and can be properly underlined for you once you know the history of Africans is not the same as the history of others. We make no progress in this country without shedding our blood. no one sitting in this audience can give me one example where africans in this country have made any progress without shedding their blood in order for them to get into a filthy five and ten cent store they must shed their blood in order to sit on a bus where they pay the same amount as everybody else do they must shed their blood in order to get their children into state schools where they pay taxes more than anybody else they must shed their blood In order to get the vote which every immigrant gets the minute he comes here, they must shed their blood. Consequently, any advances made by any individual African is made as a result of vast struggle, thus that position does not belong to the individual African, it belongs to the people. Failure to use this position for the benefit of the people is a betrayal of the blood of the people. Consequently, when we come to correct the 60s and look properly at the lessons, we must become an organized people who, once having made gains, are capable of choosing for ourselves who will occupy those gains. They come to talk about some man named Brown who's going to be head of the Democratic Party. Who picked him? Did the African masses in the Democratic Party pick him? Not at all. As a matter of fact, the Democratic Party holds the Africans in great contempt. They have more elected positions than any other ethnic group in the Democratic Party and has no power in the party at all. They have 302 mayors, 20 congresspeople, 5,000 state, county, local, but no other ethnic group in this country has those many elected officials and still they have no power in the Democratic Party. Why? Because we are not organized. Consequently, to transform our movement, to push it to higher levels, which it must go, because we will arrive at our freedom, if even instinctively, we must come here to put ration and clear reasoning to our struggle and organize the masses of our people. The second lesson we wish to speak of is the role of students. Students, of course, have a role in any society, capitalist society, social society, and their role is to institutionalize the values of the given society. Of course, in a capitalist system, this should be done unconsciously. But students are the spark of revolution. Of course, we make a difference here between revolution and reform. Those who want reform seek to work, I guess, from the top down. Those of us who understand fundamental changes know it must come from the bottom up. The students, of course, always work at the point of ideas in a society. Their job is to acquire knowledge and, of course, this knowledge which they acquired is geared by an ideology which tells them what to do with it. So if you're a doctor, instead of curing cancer, you should turn a man to a woman to get money even though she can't make babies. That was life. Students, we say, at the point of ideas and the point of values. When one speaks of revolution, one speaks of overturning the values of a given society. If one is not speaking of overturning the values, then one speaks of reform. Thus, one can join the Democratic Party. We're not here to overturn its value. But certainly, if one is here for revolution and one is here for people's liberation, one would know that a corrupt instrument can never lead a people to liberation. at all. Students then, we say, come to question the values of a society. Of course, in relationship to the values, students, just like anyone in any society, have but two alternatives. Either they accept the values or they reject the values. It's as simple as that. Of course, if they reject the values, they have a responsibility to find alternative values. But either you accept cheating as a student or you reject it. It's as simple as that. Either you accept any value in the society or you reject it. Students, once having rejected a society, bringing together their ideas and their energies and strengths to work against these values, connected with the masses, always give us revolution. Thus, from the 60s, while a reform movement, we were able to see that students, joined with the masses of the people, came to bring a lot of changes to the country. Thus, we must not confuse ourselves. The job of students are clear here. Their job is to spark revolution. Students cannot carry revolution through to the end. The final triumph of revolution must be carried through to the end by the masses, the workers, and the peasants. But students play a crucial role. We say they spark revolution. Certainly, if we did not recognize this, the enemy did. The FBI before the 60s did not have informers on college campus. After the 60s, they put an informer on every college campus in the country. Their job was simple, stop any activity at all that runs against the status quo. We say it's to mobilize people who can allow this, because when you mobilize and fight like an animal, after you get tired and you wind down, then the enemy comes back stronger than he did before. Students spark revolution, and we must work everywhere to have students live up to their responsibility of sparking revolution. Here, of course, it calls for the students properly understanding the role of knowledge. Knowledge has but one purpose. Its purpose is to alleviate the sufferings of humanity. Knowledge has but one purpose. Its purpose is to alleviate the sufferings of humanity. Capitalism is a backward and stupid system. Capitalism is a contemptuous system. Capitalism is a system made on profit. It will make a commodity out of everything. It will take my mother and sell her on a slave block. It will make students acquire knowledge and make them sell their knowledge on the slave block to advance themselves rather than serving humanity. The struggle becomes especially crucial for African students. We say no individual African in this country makes any advance unless it is a result as mass struggle. Any student sitting in any seat in any college in America know that they didn't gain that seat through their own individual talents, but only through the struggles of the masters of their people. Thus that seat belongs to the people. The knowledge they acquire there must be used for the people, otherwise they have already betrayed the people and have repeated errors. Thus, students of the 80s going into the 90s have a responsibility to use their knowledge to help advance the struggles of humanity. We say the lessons here must be properly understood and the students going to spark these movements must go properly organized in order to bring organizational skills to the masses of the people. The third area The 1960s, of course, was a mobilized area and as a mobilized area there would be a lot of confusion. One of the biggest areas of confusion was the basis of the struggle. Some felt that the base of the struggle must be made by appeals to morality. Of course, anyone knowing anything about struggle knows that this cannot be. Even Frederick Douglass so long ago told us that power concedes nothing without demands. It never did and it certainly never will. Consequently, what was learned from the struggles of the 60s is that when one comes to struggle, one must struggle for power, not for morality. Certainly, one cannot speak of morality when one is speaking to capitalism. It is an immoral system. It has no conscience. It knows only its own interest. It will commit genocide to take land from the red man. It will commit slavery to enrich itself. It will drop napalm bombs on babies in Vietnam. Consequently, when we come to talk of advancing ourselves through power, we must come to speak of just that, power. And we must understand that the only place we find power is through the organized masses. Simply put, until the masses of our people are organized, we will remain powerless and thus the victims of all vicious powers that seek to exploit us. The question of morality, of course, must not be put aside, no. But it is clear that any struggling people struggling for justice are already struggling for a moral struggle. Consequently here, the question of morality doesn't lay with them but with the enemy who seeks to keep them oppressed. We must then understand clearly that when we look for power in the 90s, when we struggle in the 90s to advance ourselves, we must struggle only based on our own power, the power of the ability to organize our people. Of course we said that we advance only through mass struggle and that is clear. Consequently, we must come to understand that it is only through mass organization and conscious mass struggle that we will properly arrive at our liberation in a planned manner. This leads to another point which must be clear, the questions of coalitions. The 1960s, of course, made many errors with coalitions. Here, we believe that political coalitions could be made based on sentiment. Somebody said they feel the way we do. And consequently, we come to organize them. The history, of course, of our people shows that this cannot be the case. If one would go back to the history of the South in this country, immediately after the Civil War, there arose at that time a party known as the Populist Party. One of the leaders of the Populist Party was a man by the name of Tom Watson, a white man from Georgia. Watson came after the Civil War to tell the Africans that the rich white man, he exploits the poor white man and the poor African. And consequently, what we need to do is to join an alliance against the rich white man. Well, you know us Africans, we just love anything and about. We just ran into the party. We filled the party of the populist, we did work for the populist, we were everywhere in the populist party. After the Hayes-Tilden Compromise, when the government decided to give the South back to the slave masters, Tom Watson became a member of the Ku Klux Klan and drove us out of the populist party. What was the error? The error was that as a force we were not independently organized, thus not even knowing our own power. We went in as individuals into the party, thus they could chase us out. Examples will be found everywhere. The struggle of the labor movements in this country is certainly instructive. If one would look at the struggle for labor unions in this country, one would find that Africans have, everywhere, played a role out of proportion to their numbers. If you look at labor unions today, they are racist from top to bottom. What was the error? Africans came to enter the unions without being first an organized force. The sixties then, come here, we were told that we had coalitions with groups I've never heard of, the labor union, we had issues with the church groups, all of them, they were all for our interest. Of course, the error was that some Africans thought that the interest of America was the same as the interest of us. Of course, the job of the system, the job of the enemy is to confuse you and to let you think that your interest in your history is the same as that of your oppressor. As a matter of fact, the job of the master is to convince the slave that the master is really concerned about the interest of the slave. And if the master doesn't do well, the slave will be in trouble. Any slave who believes that he has the same interest as the master will pick cotton at night. All slaves must understand that their interests are diametrically opposed to the interests of the master. Not only are they diametrically opposed, they are antagonisms to each other. What is good for the master is bad for the slave. What's bad for the master is good for the slave. Of course, we said that even the people instinctively understand this, and the 60s come to clarify the point clearly. Of course, if you would look at the 60s, you would see at the height of the struggle, the struggle for human rights, there came to be some confusion here with the war in Vietnam. The people always see clearly. Instinctively, the people understood, the African masses, that they had to be against the war in Vietnam. There was no question here. But it was in just expression of this position against the war in Vietnam that one came to see that in order to have coalitions, one must really have coalitions based on interest. I am not even talking here of the student nonviolent calling committee, which was really the radical cutting wing of the movement of the 60s, and which was the first one to take a position against the war in Vietnam. Indeed, it did not take a position for peace. It took an anti-imperialist position. It said clearly it wanted the Vietnamese to win, and the way it was going to do that was to demobilize the Americans by not having an army. Thus, the slogan which Nick gave to them was a simple one. Hell no, we won't go. Simple as that. And that simple slogan, of course, came to cause splits within these coalition forces. The labor unions, who walked hands in hands with us for struggles, all of a sudden were for the Vietnam War against us. The church itself had to step back. Obviously, here, we didn't understand what we were fighting for. We thought we were fighting for freedom. And Dr. Martin Luther King said it all the time, freedom is indivisible. As a matter of fact, he used to say all the time, injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. Consequently, if there's injustice in Vietnam, I'm stupid thinking I'm sitting in America not to think that it affects me. If there's injustice in Vietnam, I better go cut it down before it comes to find me. Consequently, since Africans, assuming that justice was indivisible, and began to move, and to move everywhere against injustice, they came up against contradictions with those whom they made coalitions around the question of the war in Vietnam. We only use it here as a clear example. Africans cannot form coalitions until they themselves are organized and know exactly what their interests are. Thus, there's no need for us to talk now about coalition with anybody because we are a disorganized people. First we must become organized. It is for this reason that we're held in such contempt by the Democratic Party because inside the Democratic Party we are a disorganized people, even inside there, with one fighting against the other, simply because we have not organized ourselves properly. It is for this reason that they will give us somebody and make us think that we picked them just because he looks like us. Coalitions then can only be formed once we are organized and know precisely what our interests are. What then are the relevancy for the 90s? Revolution is inevitable everywhere in the world, this is clear. And anyone taking just a cursory glance at the United States of America must know that America is more ripe for revolution today than it was in the 60s. What are the conditions that lead us to this conclusion? Number one, the conditions are worse today than they were in the 60s. In the 60s, we didn't have to deal with 3 million homeless. And not only that, the very objective conditions put the people into contradictions with their own instinctive knowledge. Every man and woman in America, even the most unconscious man or woman in America, knows that America has enough wealth to feed and clothe three million homeless. It is a question of the will of the people. Consequently, the objective conditions, we say, are higher. But these objective conditions are higher with also another rising factor, the rising consciousness of the people. The enemy tries everywhere, through their mouthpiece, the mass media, to make it appear as if the people's consciousness is not growing, as if it stopped. This is stupidity. The consciousness of the people must forever grow. And some of us become confused, not even understanding how it manifests itself. The other day, having a discussion with an elderly man, he came to say to me, Kwame Ture, you're always up on the college campus with our students. I said, oh yes, I work with them all the time. He said, they are more unconscious. They're so unconscious. They're more unconscious than you were when you were a student. I said, never. He said, yes. I said, no, they're more unconscious than we were. Our work was in vain in the 60s. He said, no, I'm telling you, they're more unconscious than you are. I said, no, they cannot be. He said, if you go up on a college campus and talk to them, they know nothing about Martin Luther King. They know nothing about Malcolm X. I said, that's correct. We don't teach them. But one thing is certain, you cannot put them on the back of a bus. Yes, of course. Of course. Not just he was, he went on the back of the door. Once history is made, it cannot be unmade. The job of the enemy is to push the people back. Once we broke out of slavery, they did everything possible to push us back into slavery. No, sharecropping, yes, but not slavery. Since the 60s, they've been doing everything else to push us back. But once a man or a woman has learned something, as Sigmund Freud has scientifically demonstrated, it never leaves the mind, even if he thinks he's forgotten it. And once the people have learned something through struggle, never can they forget it. Consequently, the struggles of the 60s, you must understand, are already ingrained in the culture of the people, making them more determined to fight, not less. If you come to look properly at America, we say it is more ripe for revolution today than ever before. In the 1960s, and we must show here the rising level of political consciousness. If you want to see the rising level of political consciousness in this country, don't look to the left, look to the right. The right in America today are involved in activities which in the 1960s they considered to be communist. If you would look properly at America today, you will see the conditions are more ripe. In the 60s, the progressive forces were facing the government and the right wing, which were fighting for status quo. Today, the right wing is not with the government. It's against the government. It's fighting the government. You have the right fighting the government and the left fighting the government. The possibility of change becomes easier, even though the right is not fighting for the same change the left is fighting for. That's understood. But the fact that both of them are fighting against the government makes the possibility of change much easier. And we say if you want to see the rising level of consciousness, look to the white right in this country. Where they disagree with busing, they burn buses. Where they disagree with abortion, they bomb clinics. Thus they themselves have come to demonstrate it, the use of violence as a potent force in arriving at a political objective. Everywhere the conditions for revolution are more ripe today than ever before. And in all of this is of course the rising consciousness of the people. The younger generation of Africans in this country, the youth, really believe that everything in America they have a right to. They believe it, as a result of the struggles of the 60s. When they come up against a wall, there's going to be a serious explosion in this country. That explosion cannot be a repetition of the 60s. Indeed, history never repeats itself, even though bourgeois scholars never stop harping this song. Nothing repeats itself, but people, however, can repeat their mistakes, yes. And of course, once you repeat a mistake, it is more grave than the first time around. The lessons then must be clear. There is no question and you must in no way lose faith in the masses of the people. It is they and they alone who make revolution, not their petty bourgeois spokesmen who betray them everywhere. And the conditions of the masses are worse today than they were in the 60s. These masses must have changed and will have changed by any means necessary. The final point here... The final point then. You must not become confused by the American capitalist system which holds up betrayers of the people's struggle as representatives of the people. In any army in the world, if you desert, you should get shot. It's a law. Certainly you must be shot. And if you volunteer for an army, you should be shot twice. Of course. Of course. You volunteer for the people's army. The people go to fight. They're ready to fight. You say, I'm leaving. What do you mean you're leaving? But if you will look at our struggle since the 60s, you will see nothing but betrayals by the petty bourgeois elements in our society. The African bourgeoisie is the most corrupt bourgeoisie in the world. In Africa, they seek luxury in the midst of mass suffering. There are more Mercedes in Africa than in any other continent in the world. In America, as soon as they arrive at a position based on this blood of the people, they snatch that position and run away from the people. But you must not think that they represent the people. They only represent their opportunistic self using the people every step of the way. So you must not be confused. It must be clear then for the 60s, the class struggle in the African revolution must be more ruthless and uncompromising than in any other revolution. Here then the masses must come without pity and without mercy to trample upon these reactionary pigs who after the people have gained struggle through their blood come to hand back the gains on a silver platter to the very enemy the people fought. This will come as a natural consequence. The people themselves are everywhere screaming that it's time for them to deal with these reactionary pigs. Even in America they say, our leaders must be held accountable. They're only saying here that these people must be accountable to those who made it possible for them to get there. Thus, not only is the revolution inevitable, but it is clarifying itself and it is qualifying itself. For the African masses everywhere, the clair poise position now for class struggle has become inevitable and irreversible. The petty bourgeoisie everywhere will be running for cover, but the masses will spare them not. Consequently, we, who have dedicated our lives to the people's struggle, we, who knowing that the people will always be free, we, understanding that we must make a contribution to qualify our struggle since the 60s, have been dedicating all our energies to only one task, the organization of the masses of our people. the organization of the masses of our people. We are not running for mayor. We're not running for president. No changes can come from the top down. We're not stupid. Changes can only come from the bottom up. The masses and the masses alone can make them. If you want to learn something from the 60s, the lesson is simple. Organize the masses of the people. Thank you. Mr. Kwame Turei.