"I am a revolutionary!"

Judas and the Black Messiah (2021)

It is not easy to change society. The people of the top of the perch want to continue having their nice view undisturbed. Those in the middle rung wish to have continued access to the top and maintain their gateway to positions whilst asserting dominance upon the plebians under their feet. The plebians, well, they are a pathetic lot. They bicker amongst themselves to be king, imagining the changes in their lives upon springboarding to the top. 

The minions' blinded voracious appetite is not the only impeding factor that prevents them from reaching the top. The kingmakers also send in their instigators and moles to derail any flicker of progress.

The Civil War was not started by the Northerners because of altruistic intentions, because they could not stomach seeing black slaves being treated worse than animals. It was economics, stupid. The Union just wanted to liberate the slaves and pack them off to Africa, specifically Liberia, not treat them as an equal inhabitant of the USA. The slaves were emancipated, but nobody wanted to go anywhere. So they stayed back but were harassed of their liberties by the Klan members and bound by the Jim Crow laws.

Rainbow Coalition logo

Despite the restrictive living conditions that they were exposed to, some sociologists saw marked improvement in their living standards. As slavery was outlawed the world over, fellow African formers from the Carribeans and South Americans looked up to their American counterparts as role models. This era also saw intellectuals like Booker T Washington (1856-1915), born into slavery, who rose to become an intellectual and advisor to President Theodore Roosevelt. He established Tuskegee Institute (later University) in Alabama. Washington believed that the way to advance is to be pally with the ruling establishment, concentrate on education, learn valuable trades, and investing in their own businesses. This, he believed, would eventually lead to equal political and civil rights.

However, his nemesis, W E D Du Bois (1868-1963), a Ph D in history scholar, disagreed. He abhorred segregation and demanded equal rights for all blacks. Du Bois believed that racism is an inevitable effect of capitalism. He became a card-carrying member of the Communist Party, but his work spearheaded the subsequent black civil rights movement. 

The 1920s America also saw the Harlem Renaissance when African American culture, manifesting in literature, music, stage performance, and art, became mainstream.

Despite Washington and Du Bois' efforts, lynching and inequality continued.  

In the mid-20th century, other black leaders came to the fore with different strategies. Dr Martin Luther King advocated his passive, non-violent movement. Some took a militant stance. Elijah Muhammad and his 'Nation of Islam' united blacks under the Islamic religion were asking for a separate nation. Malcolm-X broke away from the 'Nation of Islam' and concentrated on social improvement efforts. The 'Black Panther Party' screamed for a revolution.

Fred Hampton (1948-1969)

In 1968, the Illinois Chapter of the 'Black Panther Party' piqued the FBI's radar, notably J Edgar Hoover. Its charismatic leader, Fred Hampton, was getting popular. He found a place in the hearts of the poor via the party's breakfast programme to feed the poor kids. Medical clinics were set up to meet their medical needs. He even tried to unite various fringe societies through his Rainbow coalition. Not only did he reached out to blacks, but his party also formed allegiances with Latino immigrants 'Young Lords', black gangs of Chicago and the group called 'Young Patriots', of poor white Confederate-supporting workers who came from the Southern states of the USA.

It was a time when Chicago was easily the most divided cities in the world. Police brutality was rife, and the mayor's support base was uneasy with the migration of poor blacks, Latinos and even 'white trash' into their neighbourhood. However, cooperation between these newcomers and the scream of political revolutions did not augur well for the local white population who had lived there for generations.

With the FBI's cooperation, the Chicago police planted a mole in the Black Panthers Party to monitor the party's activities and subsequently kill Fred Hampton. This movie is the story of the whole operation through the eyes of the police informant, William O'Neal.

Fred Hampton is portrayed like Jesus, the Messiah, the revolutionary who united a motley crew of marginalised people against a mighty but despotic Roman regime. But, unfortunately, Pontius Pilate and his sycophants saw Christ as a troublemaker instead. And Judas, like O'Neal, doublecrossed Jesus by being a follower for a meagre sum of money. Like Judas too, in the latter part of his life, O'Neal is said to have committed suicide for the sell-out. This, he is said to have done after his 'bare-it-all interview with the PBS channel. Others like to believe the 'accident' was 'arranged' by the FBI for his exposé.

The issues, all the while, have been the same by all movements - demand for good education, decent housing, adequate medical coverage, fair trials and an end to police brutality. It is pretty much the same ring even today.

Note the Confederate flag and Black Panther logo in the background on the same platform. 

One screams of White Supremacy and the other of Black Consciousness.

[When black, white and brown banded together to make life better for communities in need via 

The Rainbow Coalition, the power elite got so frightened, they had to kill it.]

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

You say you want a revolution

The Trial of the Chicago 7 (2020; Netflix)

Everyone wants to live in a utopia. Even the Islamic jihadis, who are hellbent on destroying everything nice, are looking for that heaven on Earth. The human race continually feels dissatisfied with the way things are run and yearns for reforms. 

Firstly, the society starting with the moderates will initiate the move to change. The ruling regime would appear set in their old ways and seem apathetic to the demands of the majority. Like the 'Emperor in his new clothes', they would be pleased in their own echo-chamber. 

People would rise to the demand for their place in the sun. People would win. Sadly, other self-serving radicals will piggyback on the movement. Controlling a large crowd is no easy task. Emotion runs high, and quickly the peaceful demonstration escalates into a violent protest. Even if the moderates managed to change the status quo, the comrades in arms with different ideologies would steamroll their own agendas. The system will become corrupt. Bear in mind there would exist external forces who are one-track minded on collapsing the whole society so that they can infiltrate with their own plans.

There is an eerie similarity between 1968 America and the 2020 USA. 1968 saw an angry America sending his not-so-fortunate sons of the soil for the slaughter in Vietnam at a draft rate of almost up to 35,000/month. Sending young American men as sacrificial lambs in a land 10,000 miles for a mission so bizarre as countering global Communist threat. That would cost LBJ's re-election ambitions, and the Americans wanted to make their dissatisfaction felt. It was a tumultuous year with Martin Luther King Jr and Robert Kennedy, the Democratic hopeful being assassinated. Many civil society group members would congregate outside the Democratic Party Convention in Chicago to express their dissatisfaction in the US involvement in the Vietnam War. 

The Chicago 7: Abbie Hoffman, John Froines, 
Lee Weiner, David Dellinger Rennie Davis, 
 Tom Hayden, Jerry Rubin

What started as a peaceful protest quickly escalated to a blood bath when the crowd became rowdy and the police used their might to subdue the mob. With accusations of high handedness by the police and malice intent of protestors, eight civil society group leaders were charged for intending to start a riot. Bobby Searle, the founder of 'The Black Panthers', was initially included in the charge list but later dropped during trial after a blatant disregard for his civil rights.

This movie narrates the drama, and high tension that hung during the trial of the accused (Chicago 7) in a courtroom presided by an old school judge whose standards would raise many eyebrows by today's standards.

Many liberal and left-leaning thinkers assert that the general anxiety of the American is comparable to that of the 1968 generation. With increasing death toll due to Covid, the uncertainties associated with the post-Covid world and the possible imminent loss of world dominance to a Communist country, people are generally angry, in their assessment. This, they say, is the reason for volatility of public as evidenced by Black Lives Matters movements, increasing Islamophobia and hostility to immigrants. Of course, it is not so straight forward. The world has become more complicated since 1968.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International. 

50 Years Ago in Photos: A Look Back at 1968 (5/5)

(...Cont.)

ALAN TAYLOR JAN 10, 2018

https://www.theatlantic.com/photo/2018/01/50-years-ago-in-photos-a-look-back-at-1968/550208/

A half-century ago, much of the world appeared to be in a state of crisis. Protests erupted in France, Czechoslovakia. Germany, Mexico, Brazil, the United States, and many other places. Some of these protests ended peacefully; many were put down harshly. Two of the biggest catalysts for the protest were the U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War and the ongoing lack of civil rights in the U.S. and elsewhere. Two of America’s most prominent leaders, Dr Martin Luther King Jr. and Senator Robert F. Kennedy, were assassinated within months of each other. But some lessons were being learned and some progress was being made—this was also the year that NASA first sent astronauts around the moon and back, and the year President Lyndon Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act into law. It’s fitting that I post this retrospective today, since it is the day I was born—January 10, 1968. So, a 50th birthday present from me to you today: a look back at 1968.

A U.S. Marine keeps his head low as he drags a wounded buddy from the ruins of the Citadel's outer wall during the Battle of Hue in Vietnam on February 16, 1968. Bettmann / Getty

United States President Lyndon B. Johnson listens to a tape recording from his son-in-law Captain Charles Robb at the White House on July 31, 1968. Robb was a U.S. Marine Corps company commander in Vietnam at the time. Robb was later awarded the Bronze Star and, after returning home, became governor of Virginia in 1982, and later a senator for the same state. Jack Kightlinger / AP

Original caption: Several hundred hippies gathered at "Hippie Hill" in San Francisco's Golden Gate Park for a happening at which several bands played rock 'n' roll music. Most of the hippies sat and listened, but some just couldn't keep from dancing to the rhythms. Bettmann / Getty

Mexican army soldiers crouch with weapons ready in Mexico City's Tlatelolco district, in this October 2, 1968 photo. The truth behind the stunning assault on a peaceful democracy protest known as the Tlatelolco Massacre, in which some 300 people are believed to have been killed, remains largely hidden by government and military secrecy. AP

Soldiers cut a student's hair after he was arrested during the first hour and a half of shooting in the Tlatelolco area in Mexico City on October 3, 1968. Another student stands against the wall. AP

SRI’s Bill English, the engineer who built the first computer mouse prototype, prepares for the December 9, 1968 "mother of all demos." The demonstration is hailed as one of the most significant technological presentations in history, showcasing technologies that have become what we now know as modern computing. He gave the first public demonstration of a computer mouse, a graphical user interface, windowed computing, hypertext, word processing, video processing, and much more. SRI International

Richard M. Nixon is mobbed by wildly cheering supporters as he arrives at the Hilton Plaza Hotel, his Miami Beach headquarters. Bettmann / CORBIS / Getty

French Foreign Minister Michel Debre and U.S. President Lyndon Johnson watch television coverage of the flight of the Saturn 1 B Rocket launching from Cape Kennedy, Florida, on on October 11, 1968, in the White House Office in Washington, D.C. Charles Gorry / AP

A heavy beard covers the face of astronaut Walter M. Schirra Jr., Apollo 7 commander, as he looks out the rendezvous window in front of the commander's station on the ninth day of the Apollo 7 mission on October 20, 1968. Apollo 7 was the first Apollo mission to carry a crew, and it made 163 orbits around the Earth in 10 days, setting the stage for Apollo 8, which was heading to the moon. JSC / NASA

Apollo 8, the first manned mission to the moon, entered lunar orbit on Christmas Eve, December 24, 1968. That evening, the astronauts—Commander Frank Borman, Command Module Pilot Jim Lovell, and Lunar Module Pilot William Anders—held a live broadcast from lunar orbit, in which they showed pictures of the earth and moon as seen from their spacecraft. Said Lovell, "The vast loneliness is awe-inspiring and it makes you realize just what you have back there on Earth." They ended the broadcast with the crew taking turns reading from the book of Genesis. NASA

Get a copy of the book 'Real Lessons in Reel Life' here...Your entry into the elusive world of Maya, the stage set by Man to learn from to live on the stage set by Nature.  https://asok22.wixsite.com/real-lesson

50 Years Ago in Photos: A Look Back at 1968 (4/5)

(...Cont.)

ALAN TAYLOR JAN 10, 2018

https://www.theatlantic.com/photo/2018/01/50-years-ago-in-photos-a-look-back-at-1968/550208/

A half-century ago, much of the world appeared to be in a state of crisis. Protests erupted in France, Czechoslovakia. Germany, Mexico, Brazil, the United States, and many other places. Some of these protests ended peacefully; many were put down harshly. Two of the biggest catalysts for the protest were the U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War and the ongoing lack of civil rights in the U.S. and elsewhere. Two of America’s most prominent leaders, Dr Martin Luther King Jr. and Senator Robert F. Kennedy, were assassinated within months of each other. But some lessons were being learned and some progress was being made—this was also the year that NASA first sent astronauts around the moon and back, and the year President Lyndon Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act into law. It’s fitting that I post this retrospective today, since it is the day I was born—January 10, 1968. So, a 50th birthday present from me to you today: a look back at 1968.

Coretta Scott King, widow of Martin Luther King Jr., walks past the casket containing the body of the assassinated Senator Robert F. Kennedy in St. Patrick's Cathedral in New York City on June 7, 1968. Bettmann / Getty

A large crowd lines railroad tracks as the funeral train of Robert F. Kennedy passes on its way to Arlington National Cemetery in Washington, D.C. Bettmann / Getty

Youths prepare to board buses for Chicago in August of 1968. Peace activists and anti-war groups organized to travel to Chicago to demonstrate outside the 1968 Democratic National Convention. AP

Police and demonstrators clash near the Conrad Hilton Hotel on Chicago's Michigan Avenue August 28, 1968, during the Democratic National Convention. Bettmann / Getty

Mike Wallace, a CBS newsman, is hustled off the Democratic National Convention floor in the aftermath of a row between delegates and security officers during the nominating session on August 28, 1968 in Chicago. He was taken up a ramp to a second-floor room. AP

Vice President Hubert Humphrey and his running mate, Sen. Edmund S. Muskie, with their wives shown at the final session Democratic Convention in Chicago following their nominations for president and vice president, on August 29, 1968. AP

Members of the Black Panthers gather in front of entrance to the Alameda County Courthouse in Oakland, California, on July 15, 1968, to protest the trial of Huey Newton, 26, the founder of the Black Panthers. Newton went on trial for the slaying of an Oakland policeman and for wounding another officer on October 28. Ernest K. Bennett / AP

Original caption: Miami policemen, one holding the man's arm and the other with an arm lock on his neck, drag away a Negro youth during a clash between police and rioters in that city's predominantly Negro Liberty City district on August 8, 1968. Bettmann / Getty

Helicopters fly low during Operation Pegasus in Vietnam on April 5, 1968. They were taking part in the operation to relieve the Khe Sanh marine base, which had been under siege for the previous three months. Dang Van Phuoc / AP

Evidence of the My Lai Massacre. A photograph of Vietnamese women and children in My Lai before they were killed by U.S. soldiers in the massacre on March 16, 1968. According to court testimony, they were killed seconds after the photo was taken. The woman on the right is adjusting her blouse buttons because of a sexual assault that happened before the massacre. Image taken from Volume III, Book 6, of the Report of the Department of the Army Review of the Preliminary Investigations into the My Lai Incident, photographed by United States Army photographer Ronald L. Haeberle. Ronald L. Haeberle / U.S. Army

50 Years Ago in Photos: A Look Back at 1968 (3/5)

(...Cont.)

ALAN TAYLOR  JAN 10, 2018

https://www.theatlantic.com/photo/2018/01/50-years-ago-in-photos-a-look-back-at-1968/550208/

A half-century ago, much of the world appeared to be in a state of crisis. Protests erupted in France, Czechoslovakia. Germany, Mexico, Brazil, the United States, and many other places. Some of these protests ended peacefully; many were put down harshly. Two of the biggest catalysts for the protest were the U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War and the ongoing lack of civil rights in the U.S. and elsewhere. Two of America’s most prominent leaders, Dr Martin Luther King Jr. and Senator Robert F. Kennedy, were assassinated within months of each other. But some lessons were being learned and some progress was being made—this was also the year that NASA first sent astronauts around the moon and back, and the year President Lyndon Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act into law. It’s fitting that I post this retrospective today, since it is the day I was born—January 10, 1968. So, a 50th birthday present from me to you today: a look back at 1968.

Demonstrators march on Washington, D.C., during the Poor Peoples' Campaign Solidarity Day on June 19, 1968. Charles Tasnadi / AP

The Beatles pose together on February 28, 1968. From left are Paul McCartney, John Lennon, Ringo Starr, and George Harrison. This was the year they released the White Album. AP

American actor Gary Lockwood on the set of 2001: A Space Odyssey, written and directed by Stanley Kubrick. The groundbreaking film premiered in April of 1968, and earned the Academy Award for Best Visual Effects. Sunset Boulevard / Corbis via Getty

A propaganda image from China's Cultural Revolution. In 1968, China was in a phase of their Cultural Revolution where Chairman Mao Zedong's cult of personality was still being elevated, and intellectuals and disloyal citizens were being forced into labor camps or exiled to remote farming regions. Original caption: Members of the Sichuan Province Revolving Committee unite with civilians and soldiers to work in the fields on August 26, 1968. API / Gamma-Rapho via Getty

Federal Nigerian troops walk along a road near Ikot Expene, Nigeria, to the frontier with Biafra, a few miles away, on October 13, 1968. On the roadside, two emaciated Nigerian boys slowly die from starvation and malnutrition. Biafra was a breakaway state within Nigeria that fought a war for independence from 1967 to 1970, ending after years of fighting and a crippling blockade by Nigeria resulted in the deaths of between 500,000 and two million Biafran civilians by starvation. Dennis Lee Royle / AP

A street scene from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, Grant St. at 5th Ave. on August 24, 1968. See the same scene today in Google Street View.CC BY David Wilson

Original caption: A Feminine First. Mexico City: Mexico's Norma Enriqueta Basilio, the first woman in the history of the modern Olympic Games to light the Olympic Fire, runs up the 90 steps with the Olympic Torch during the opening ceremonies here on October 12, 1968. Bettmann / Getty

Tommie Smith and John Carlos, gold and bronze medalists in the 200-meter run at the 1968 Olympic Games, engage in a victory stand protest against unfair treatment of blacks in the United States. With heads lowered and black-gloved fists raised in the black power salute, they refused to recognize the American flag and national anthem. Australian Peter Norman is the silver medalist. Bettmann / Getty

Senator Robert F. Kennedy is surrounded by hundreds of people as he leans down to shake hands during a presidential campaign appearance at a street corner in central Philadelphia on April 2, 1968. Kennedy had declared his candidacy for the presidency of the United States only weeks earlier, on March 16. AP

Senator Robert Kennedy lies sprawled, semi-conscious in his own blood after being shot in the head and neck while busboy Juan Romero tries to comfort him in kitchen in the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles, California, on June 5, 1968. A Palestinian immigrant named Sirhan Sirhan, who was angry with Kennedy over his support for Israel, shot Kennedy three times. Sirhan remains in prison to this day, last denied parole in 2016. Bill Eppridge / The LIFE Picture Collection / Getty