I have written this document to explain honestly what I believe and why I believe it. It has been written for all people. I address the people I come from as well as the many other people who I have come to love and trust as family from other backgrounds.
You are all in my hearts, all of the time.
These are not idle thoughts but calls to action. If you unite with these words, don't beat around the bush and talk about particulars; I'm interested in the spirit of what you have to say and what I am trying to say. We all need to get down to destroy all that threatens to hold us back and the only way to do that is by being realistic. And I'm being as real as I can be.
I don't think we can make a perfect society, but I know we can make something better than this... at least for those of us who are poor and have nothing at all. It can't get worse than this, and I am willing to fight with my life. I'm fighting as much for me as I am for you, even wealthy people, because I want us all to be friends and live in peace.
But I'm tired of starving, of being in debt, of having nothing really belonging to me. I'm tired of dying slowly and calling that living while some people ride around in private jets and families lose their homes and savings because of banks scamming us. I'll work with anyone who wants to fix this bullshit.
Have a brain and a heart. We need both to win.
I'd be willing to be friends and comrades with anyone who is serious about a revolution, from left to right to anywhere else on the spectrum. If we can all respect and care about each other, fuck all those personal dramas and petty beefs. Get that shit out of your system and cleanse yourself with the truth! There's no place for childishness or pettiness about different ideas.
The spirit of this document is this: I'm serious and ready to go. Who's with me?
Let's get a million people together. Let's get all your friends and family, or get your armies and militias. Let's get serious. From the Communist Party to the Tea Party, from the Anarchists to the Anarchocapitalists, from the Liberals to Libertarians, from Muslims to Christians and all other faiths, from men to women, old and young, parent and child, from the South and from the North, all lifestyles and all orientations: all that matters is that we want a better world for us and our descendents.
We know the government of the United States does not want us to have a better world; it is totally corrupt and unwilling to help us. We can't fix it, we can only replace it. We may even need to divide in to separate nations afterwards, like freeing Puerto Rico and Hawaii and making sure they can survive as independent nations. We have to be open to any people who do not want to stay in the union - though we will encourage everyone to work together.
That is what it means to have the "consent of the governed" instead of just tyranny by majority.
Local communities will have as much power as possible; the smaller the central government's control over individuals' lives, the better - but the greater involvement of individuals voluntarily with mass forms of democracy, the better! We need mass and democratic management of big businesses and property itself. Without corporations, we can fight corruption more easily. These are some of the basic rallying points of our new revolutionary path; we need to be able to be willing to negotiate on all issues with all people involved, but we have a final destination in mind.
That destination is equality - an equality that does not infringe upon anyone's individual freedom to express themselves and utilize their talents.
All that is necessary for this is millions of people who agree and who are willing to get armed or prepared in humanitarian ways; help us get connected to strategic resources and people. Many people have no idea how useful their connections and resources are to poor folks and to a popular rebel army. I'm telling you, whoever you are: we need you!
We need a new world with real freedom for individuals to live their lives, real justice for those of us who have been denied it, and real equality between each other as human beings with opportunities to be happy. They wrote that in the Declaration of Independence when America was founded; is it so much to ask for now? Let's make the ruling class give us what it has promised humanity for so long yet never delivered.
Please, share your thoughts.
The Revolution We All Need
It should come as a surprise to few that I have been white my entire life. Thus, I feel adequately qualified to speak on the issues of white people as a whole, especially in relation to poor white people. I am a poor white person from a poor white family from rural Ohio, Appalachia.
I never had any money to go to college and I refused to turn over my life by joining the military - the only financially stable option offered to my people. Many of my friends and family faced this. Many of my friends have lost their homes; everything they ever had and understood, despite having nothing of real value to begin with. The only families who have not lost everything were the ones whose kids joined the military.
I migrated from the farm to a city instead, trying to find a new life. In Philadelphia, the original revolutionary capital of America, I have found only poverty, destitution, racism, government terrorism of the people, and rich kids partying while children starve.
I've been a hard worker my whole life. As an honest, intelligent and capable white man, one would think it easy to make a living even on nothing in America. I've never said no to a task or opportunity to make money, yet I've always lived paycheck to paycheck with nothing left to save.
My entire working and adult life has been spent living in the ghettos of Philadelphia because I didn't know anywhere else to go or anyone else who would let me stay with them. At first, I lived with a poor white family in a small, roach-infested apartment in the increasingly ghettoized part of Northeast Philadelphia. Then I briefly stayed in a suburb for the first time in my life with a middle class Jewish family that kicked me out because they felt I was from too low of a class to stay in their home.
At that point, the only friend I had with a place to stay was Haitian. In immersing myself in a new environment, I began to understand a different people who had a different culture and language from mine. I discovered an entirely different world that existed parallel to mine but which, in the final analysis, was in exactly the same position as my own. These people became like family to me. I understood better what it means to be human.
Many poor whites in the city seem to be formerly wealthy, though some are not and turn to radical white chauvinism. They do this because they do not understand that other people are facing the same struggle they are. They do it because they don't understand that this concept of "whiteness" itself was invented to separate us from people of color so that we won't unite to destroy the wealthy and powerful. We're not white; we're Irish, Italian, German, etc. We're not Americans, either; we have pretended for too long that we are part of this government - it was founded by the rich and powerful to defend the rich and powerful. Corporate America wants us to defend them and their government, to defend their money and their fancy houses in the suburbs, to defend their businesses and their political puppets.
The rich white people want us to believe that if they look like us, they are us. But we aren't that easily fooled; at least I'm not.
They want us to work hard and pay for the prisons full of innocent people, for the military occupations of Iraq, Afghanistan and the inner cities of this nation, the bombings of Libya and everywhere else. They even want us to pay for Apartheid in Israel! They finance a Western fortress in the Middle East while they butcher the Arab natives of the land. They allowed the rich Jews who did not want to integrate in to European whiteness to move away and form their own paradise with endless help from the same treasury filled with the wealth the rich have stolen from us all. If that does not make you sickened and angry, what does?
You're being robbed every minute of every day. Its only logical to pick up a gun and learn how to fight.
We need to destroy this system not just because we're poor, but because everyone who has been made poor by America deserves reparations from America. We have pretended for too long that we are part of this government; it was founded by the rich and powerful to defend the rich and powerful.
In my lifetime, I have seen my family come to ruin and destitution because of a system that does not care. As I write this, my parents have no source of hot water; they collect it from a hillside spring and boil it on the stove in pots. They have no sources of income and haven't for at least half a decade. Most of my people in Appalachia are on welfare.
All of America's leaders and politicians and bankers have failed us. They only care about their profits. We all knew that yet we let them keep robbing us for so long. Now, there's almost no money left. Now, we have only one choice: unite and take what's left all for ourselves.
But we can't do it alone.
All oppressed and exploited nations and people of America deserve reparations.
Reparations can come in many forms. People need homes, jobs, schools, opportunities for advancement, occupations that help us form healthy ways of life that utilize our talents and maximize our happiness. We understand money is not unlimited, especially not now, but we can see plainly that money is not being invested wisely for the people. That is why we will take control of those resources.
The natives are still forced to live in mass impoverishment in the deserts and on insulting "reservations." Black folks and immigrants have been forced to live in shantytowns and ghettos. Appalachian people have been left to die, their resources stripped out of their land and paid nothing for this rape of the Earth.
Poor white people have been abandoned by their rich counterparts, and they are in a uniquely useful position to challenge the white establishment. They must rise up! But if they want to be able to claim their own, they have to be allied to and work with all other poor people. We have to stop fighting our brothers and sisters!
Why fight immigrants? They're just trying to survive just like we are. Why disrespect and make fun of Black people? We'd have to be senseless not to make friends with all people and be polite and have manners just like our mothers taught us. I'm sure some people have experiences that make them what they are, that make them afraid or angry at other people, but we can't live our lives assuming things and negatively generalizing whole cultures and races. We have to build with them and unite with them and train with them because our enemies are the same people.
Anyone who engenders fear and hatred towards non-white people from our nation has to be redressed and taught a lesson. They have to be struggled with and fought, if necessary, because they are making it hard for US to get OUR reparations. We're united in the cause of giving everyone what they deserve, and we'll have to be united in fixing this nation after we take it over. We have to get started now, people have to be communicating, people have to be going from city to country and country to city. We need a program of revolutionary acculturation.
We must build a New America and carry out swift justice for all poor people!
If you are a middle class or wealthier white person, especially an activist type or some kind of Liberal, how much do you care about and support the impoverished people of the world?
If you don't care that children are starving because one or both of their parents can't afford to support them, if you don't care that the men who can't find jobs are becoming alcoholics who abuse their wives, that people are dealing drugs just to get by, that the kids are becoming addicts...
If you don't care that we see no future in sight, then don't be surprised when the cities are rioting and on fire and the rural people of America are grabbing their guns and preparing to enter the suburbs!
HEAR US SHOUT! We will let the night roar with it!
We don't want them to be scared, but we want them to know we're angry as hell and not going to take it anymore. We are human beings and we want them to stop being vultures and join us.
They will know we mean it. They will know we mean business. We just want what they stole - and we're uniting to say that if we are not approached as human beings and given what we deserve, we will have to take it from them. And we will be many. We will be diverse and mass. We will be every nation, every people united. We will be your cooks, your bus drivers, your airplane pilots, your server at the McDonald's, your maid at the hotel, your doctor, your kid's Kindergarten teacher, your soldiers! Hell, give us enough time and we'll have your cops and security guards, too.
We are gathering together all forces that want to unite with this program, who want to protect each other during the coming storm. We are forming a broad collective of comrades dedicated to building a New America with reparations for all impoverished people. If you can get down with this, I want to talk to you, my comrades want to talk to you and meet you. Even if you've had disagreements or contradictions with us before, let's get over it; nothing is as important as building an effective fighting force to destroy Imperialism.
I ask only that we all get to know each other and spread this message. We all need to link up, work together, train together, and prepare our bodies and our minds. We have to be ready, all people of all ages, all capabilities; there is work for everyone to do. Everyone can contribute something because we all need to live together here in the same country. We have to wage a struggle to win.
What is needed most is friendship and understanding between all people and to create a broad popular army of brave people of all races, genders, ages and lifestyles to take power.
And we will ask our brothers and sisters forced to join the military to survive to join us when they are out. We'll take their training and spread it, we will form militias. We will welcome the cops and sheriffs out there to defect to us, and bring corrupt cops who abuse their authority to popular people's courts to bring about justice.
If we do not dare to stand together with others who demand justice, we are not daring to win. We have enough injustice to justify action and we have to start somewhere.
If not you, then who? If not now, then when?
POWER TO THE PEOPLE!
