Thoughts for the Day

http://bhbanco.blogspot.com/ Thoughts for the day Martin Luther King: “The white establishment is skilled in flattering and cultivating emerging leaders. It presses its own image on them and finally, from imitation of manners, dress, and style of living, a deeper strain of corruption develops. This kind of Negro leader acquires the white man's contempt for the ordinary Negro. He is often more at home with the middle-class white than he is among his own people. His language changes, his location changes, his income changes, and ultimately he changes from the representative of the Negro to the white man into the white man's representative to the Negro. The tragedy is that too often he does not recognize what has happened to him.” "Every activity that asserts individuality and autonomy from corporate/government/religious control is in itself a profoundly revolutionary act."

Leonard Peltier and the Indigenous People: Our Lives Have Meaning

Leonard Peltier and the Indigenous People: Our Lives Have Meaning

I know this. My life has a meaning. I refuse to believe that this existence, our time on Mother Earth, is meaningless. I believe that the Creator, Wakan Tanka, has shaped each of our lives for a reason. I don’t know what that reason is. Maybe I’ll never know. But you don’t have to know the meaning of life to know that life has a meaning.

Leonard Peltier,

Prison Writings: My Life Is My Sun Dance

Spiritual warrior of the Lakota, Dakota, and Nakota Nation, Leonard Peltier is 65 years old. In 1977, the U.S. government believed the warrior, then 30 years old, too dangerous. Now Elder Peltier, a political prisoner, currently incarcerated at the U.S. Penitentiary in Lewisburg, PA, is scheduled to come before the U.S. Parole Commission on July 28, 2009 after spending 33 years because the government fears dissidence more than it respects justice.

Another day ends. That’s good. But now another night is beginning. And that’s bad. The nights are worse. The days just happen to you. The night you’ve got to imagine, to conjure up, all by yourself. They’re the stuff of your own nightmares. The lights go down but they never quite go out in here. Shadows lurk everywhere. Shadows within shadows. I’m one of those shadows myself. I, Leonard Peltier. Also known in my native country of Great Turtle Island as Gwarth-ee-lass—‘He Leads the People.’ Also known among my Sioux brethren as Tate-Wikikuma—‘Wind Chases the Sun.’ Also known as U.S. Prisoner #89637-132.

For three years, since the end of the 71-day takeover of Wounded Knee, the site of the 1890 massacre of women and children, the residents of Jumping Bull had been under attack. Ramsey Clark writes, a “rogue paramilitary group”—“the GOONs—Guardians of the Oglala Nation” who were provided “weapons, training and motivation to create a wave of violence…against traditional Indian people and their supporters, including the American Indian Movement,” killed over 60 residents of Jumping Bull (“Preface,” Prison Writings). The GOONs, led by Dick Wilson, mix-blood tribal leader and the leader of the anti-traditional “progressive” movement, presided over what is known as the “Reign of Terror.” Wilson openly bragged to the media about his GOON squad and the particular brand of “law and order” on the reservation that didn’t seem to alarm the U.S. government. Terrorist tactics against residents, particularly elderly people supporting the right to maintain traditional beliefs and values were beaten or murdered, was supported by the FBI.

The people of Oglala had had enough. As they had done in 1973, when they requested the help of the American Indian Movement (AIM) at Wounded Knee, the elders called on them once again and Leonard Peltier along with 16 other AIM members came to protect the people at Oglala. In a 1973 FBI document, Jon Lurie writes, “the government was concerned that AIM would shift their emphasis from advocacy of Native pride to the ‘prevention of resources exploitation’” (“The Wiping of the Tears”). Wilson had given away “one-third of the uranium-rich reservation” to the federal government (Lurie).

Thirty-four years ago, on June 26, 1975, two FBI Special Agents, driving unmarked cars and claiming to be in pursuit of a red pickup truck, owned by a Jimmy Eagle, came onto the Oglala Reservation in South Dakota.

Peltier remembers resting near the homes where the women were doing the laundry. He heard shooting and dismissed it at first, until he heard screaming. “My job was to protect the terrified people,” wrote Peltier (Prison Writings). He led the people away from the “dead zone” to a gulley where they prayed.

AIM activist Joe Stuntz and the two Special Agents Jack R. Coler and Ronald A. Williams were dead. Stuntz was shot in the head. To this today, neither Stuntz’s murder nor the murders of 60 Oglala people were ever investigated. A few days later, the body of another AIM activist Anna Mae Aquash was found murdered.

Bob Robideau and Dino Butler were captured at charged with double murder. Both men contended that they were defending the people who had for so long experienced an atmosphere of terror at Pine Ridge. The jury found them not guilty. The FBI cried foul! They set about to stack the deck on Peltier who was fighting extradition from Canada to the U.S. The FBI, instead of pursuing justice, pursued revenge, and a means to characterize AIM as a homegrown terrorist threat, as they had with the Black Panthers. The FBI sought and found a favorable environment. Contrary to U.S. Congress, in particular Senators Lindsey Graham and Jeff Sessions belief that judges don’t advocate a certain ideology, the FBI located a judge favorable to permitting a kangaroo court, where false evidence was allowed to be presented against Indigenous People. It also procured a favorable jury—all white. In 1977, the government selected Fargo, North Dakota to hold the trial.

“Peltier's conviction is one of the worst examples of government manipulation of the justice process in American history,” according to Dan Skye, June 2009, “Leonard Peltier Parole Hearing July 27, 2009.” “In 1977… the judge disallowed testimony describing the state of open warfare that existed on Pine Ridge, nor was Peltier allowed to claim self-defense. Later, an appeals judge called the conduct of the FBI ‘a clear violation of the investigative process.’” By the time the trial ended, it was Peltier’s red and white van (not a red pick up truck now) that was just ahead of the two unmarked car. It was Peltier’s rifle that shot the officers “point blank.” Peltier is sentenced for crimes in which “false affidavits” were used as evidence and witnesses were “intimidated” and “coerced” into testifying against Peltier (Skye).

The Spiritual warrior of the Lakota, Dakota, and Nakota Nation, entered the hellhole that can only be conjured by hate and fear for people who struggle for freedom.

During the 1960s, Peltier worked as a farmer and then an auto shop worker in Seattle,” writes Carolina Saldana, “Leonard Peltier: Silence Screams,” Born Black Magazine. “At that time he got his first taste of community organizing” and joined, in the early 1970s AIM, participating in the Trail of Broken Treaties, a march from Alcatraz to Washington D.C. He also participated in the occupation of the BIA [Bureau of Indian Affairs] in Washington (Saldana). As a result, Peltier became a “target of the FBI program [COINTELPRO] to ‘neutralize’ AIM leaders and was set up and jailed at the end of the year.”

My own personal story can't be told, even in this abbreviated version, without going back long before my own birth on September 12, 1944, back to 1890 and to 1876 and to 1851 and, yes, all the way back through all the other calamitous dates in the relations between the red men and white, back to that darkest day of all in human history: October 12, 1492, when our Great Sorrow began (Peltier).

Some people know the facts surrounding October 12, 1492, but not many have sat long enough to feel the impact of the Great Sorrow against humanity. Fewer still truly recognize the willful destruction of people, cultures, and lands; the mandate forcing survivors to relocate in mass; the government neglect and the lies, deceit, and outright heavy-handed enforcement of legalities backed by repressive presence of police and military operatives— long before the ghettoizing Black urban communities,

long before the 1948 Nakba in Palestine,

A First people, the Indigenous People of the Americas, abused by European forces and then by the might of the United States is expected to be forgetful and further assist in their own annihilation by assimilating to the rulers of capitalism and to foreign beliefs and values.

Give up the fight or at least remain silent!

Silence, they say, is the voice of complicity.
But silence is impossible.
Silence screams.
Silence is a message,
just as doing nothing is an act

Let who you are ring out and resonate
in every word and every deed.
Yes, become who you are.
There's no sidestepping your own being
or your own responsibility.

What you do is who you are.
You are your own comeuppance.
You become your own message.

You are the message.

Peltier, “The Message”

The Great Sorrow, while victimizing the Indigenous People of Americas, has not diminished the peoples’ knowledge of their history and relationship with the Mother Earth.

I had the honor to speak by phone with Tiokasin Ghosthorse, master musician and flutist, storyteller, poet, university lecturer, scholar, essayist, human rights activist, and host of First Voices Indigenous Radio (WBAI). “We are not claiming to be victims,” Ghosthorse said. “We’ve known we have always been out of the box.”

Ghosthorse is a survivor of the official Reign of Terror, 1972-1976. But the Reign of Terror began long before 1972. During the 1960s, Ghosthorse explained, the mining for uranium on the Pine Ridge Reservation included more than mining of the land: it mined the spirit of the people. “Some people ended up working for the government on those projects while it was said of the ‘traditional’ people that we were ‘backward.’”

But traditionalist persisted, as has the Reign of Terror, he said.

“The Reign of Terror began long before the years of 1972-1976. Before that things were happening,” Ghosthorse recalls. The government came and told the Nation that thousands of Lakota people living near the Missouri River, where the government was building a dam, had to move. “The government flooded the land and up rooted people.” Whites living along the river were given sufficient time to evacuate the area, and they were compensated. This was not the case for the Lakota people.

The Reign of Terror precedes the official beginnings of the COINTELPRO FBI program. As early as the 1950s, “if you said you didn’t like the system, you were deemed a dissident.” And the police state continues today.

Ghosthorse explains that in 1999, 2000, and 2001, 9 men, educated in both traditional and at non-Indigenous U.S. institutions, were found dead, “face down, in Rapid Creek.” Why? These young men, Ghosthorse said, were starting to organize the people, organize a movement. The government responded to this perceived threat. “No investigation [occurred] because they [the FBI] claimed they didn’t have the resources.” The U.S. government didn’t investigate human rights violations against the Indigenous People. “But we are talking about our ‘natural’ rights—not those given by any government.”

Currently, at Pine Ridge, “the life span of men is down to 40 years of age. It used to be 120.” Women’s life span is 45 years of age. “Sixty-four percent of our population is 20 years.” That means most of our young people “are without parents and grandparents,” Ghosthorse said.

He remembers that in his own childhood, he walked to school, dodging the GOONs and the FBI. “Everyone walked. But we knew where to walk and where not to walk.” The people devised ways to walk where the GOONs and FBI agents wouldn’t drive their cars. But people were “maimed for life and wounded” during this period. Many were killed, “far more than 60 people.”

The culture of greed fuels the continuation of the Reign of Terror against the Indigenous People whose understanding of “freedom” precedes the imposition of capitalist values.

If we were dealing with truth, the U.S. would owe the Native Indian well over 125 billion dollars. What matters is not the money, but the truth that all Americans need to know. We are talking about the U.S. government’s war on Earth that’s driven by profit. Our way of relating to the Earth is anti-profit. That’s what this Reign of Terror is all about. That’s what we are talking about.

But, Ghosthorse added, if we use “the language of the government…we are not going to get anywhere. We are going to stand until we get it—our ‘freedom.’”

“It’s about who we are—not were.”

“We have always been poor,” Ghosthorse concluded, “but we’ve been the riches in spirit. This is what the government does not want Americans to know. [But] if we forget who we are, this country is lost.”

The persecution of elder Leonard Peltier is intended to conceal the attack against spiritual warriors who attempt to defend the Indigenous People against the violence of the U.S. government and those who engage the ruling power against their own people.

The meaning of Peltier’s life is linked to the meaning of freedom for the Indigenous People.

This spirit of Crazy Horse is a spirit of being in total resistance to the wrongs perpetrated towards your people, community, family and yourself. It is when we make a conscious choice to try and balance the wrongs in this society that we are being compelled by this spirit of resistance to stand in defense of the wronged.

Leonard Peltier, “Letter Written November 5, 2008,” San Francisco Bayview, January 2009.

AIM Casualties on Pine Ridge, 1973-1976

4.17.73-Frank Clearwater-AIM member killed by heavy machine gun round at Wounded Knee. No investigation.

4.23.73-Between eight and twelve individuals (names unknown) packing supplies into Wounded Knee were intercepted by Goons [Guardians of the Oglala Nation] and vigilantes. None were ever heard from again. Former Rosebud Tribal President Robert Burnette and U.S. Justice Department Solicitor General Kent Frizzell conducted unsuccessful search for a mass grave after Wounded Knee siege. No further investigation.

4.27.73-Buddy Lamont-AIM member hit by M16 fire at Wounded Knee, Bled to death while pinned down by fire. No investigation.

6.19.73-Clarence Cross-AIM supporter shot to death in ambush by Goons. Although assailants were identified by eyewitnesses, brother Vernal Cross-wounded in ambush-was briefly charged with crime. No further investigation.

4.14.73-Priscilla White Plume-AIM supporter killed at Manderson by Goons. No investigation.

7.30.73-Julius Bad Heart Bull-AIM supporter killed at Oglala AIM supporter killed at Oglala by “person or persons unknown.” No investigation.

9.22.73-Melvin Spider-AIM member killed Porcupine, South Dakota. No investigation.

9.23.73-Philip Black Elk-AIM supporter killed when his house exploded. No investigation.

10.5.73-Aloysius Long Soldier-AIM member killed at Kyle, S.D. by Goons. No investigation.

10.10.73-Phillip Little Crow-AIM supporter beaten to death by Goons at Pine Ridge. No investigation.

10.17.73-Pedro Bissonette-Oglala Sioux Civil Rights Organization (OSCRO) organizer and AIM supporter assassinated by BIA Police/Goons. Body removed from Pine Ridge jurisdiction prior to autopsy by government contract coroner. No investigation.

11.20.73-Allison Fast Horse-AIM supporter shot to death near Pine Ridge by “unknown assailants.” No investigation.

1.17.74-Edward Means, Jr.-AIM member found dead in Pine Ridge alley, beaten. No investigation.

2.27.74-Edward Standing Soldier-AIM member killed near Pine Ridge by “party r parties unknown.” No investigation.

4.19.74-Roxeine Roark-AIM supporter killed at Porcupine by “unknown assailants.” Investigation open, still “pending.”

9.7.74-Dennis LeCompte-AIM member killed at Pine Ridge by Goons. No investigation.

9.11.74-Jackson Washington Cutt-AIM member killed at Parmalee by “unknown individuals.” Investigation still “ongoing.”

9.16.74-Robert Reddy-AIM member killed at Kyle by gunshot. No investigation.

11.16.74-Delphine Crow Dog-sister of AIM spiritual leader Leonard Crow Dog. Beaten by BIA police and left lying in a field. Died from "exposure." No investigation.

11.20.74-Elaine Wagner-AIM supporter killed at Pine Ridge by “person or persons unknown.” No investigation.

12.25.75-Floyd S. Binais-AIM supporter killed at Pine Ridge by Goons. No investigation.

12.28.74-Yvette Loraine Lone Hill-AIM supporter killed at Kyle by “unknown party or parties.” No investigation.

1.5.75-Leon L. Swift Bird-AIM member killed at Pine Ridge by Goons. Investigation still “ongoing.”

3.1.75-Martin Montileaux-killed in a Scenic, S.D. bar. AIM leader Richard Marshall later framed for his murder. Russell Means also charged and acquitted.

3.20.75-Stacy Cotter-shot to death in an ambush at Manderson. No investigation.

3.21.75-Edith Eagle Hawk and her two children-AIM supporter killed in an automobile accident after being run off the run by a white vigilante, Albert Coomes. Coomes was also killed in the accident. Goon Mark Clifford identified as having also been in the Coomes car, escaped. Investigation closed without questioning Clifford.

3.27.75-Jeanette Bissonette-AIM supporter killed by sniper at Pine Ridge. Unsuccessful attempt to link AIM members to murder; no other investigation.

3.30.75-Richard Eagle-grandson of AIM supporter Gladys Bissonette killed while playing with loaded gun kept in the house as protection from Goon attacks.

4.4.75-Hilda R. Good Buffalo-AIM supporter stabbed to death at Pine Ridge by Goons. No investigation.

4.4.75-Jancita Eagle Deer-AIM member beaten and run over with automobile. Last seen in the company of provocateur Douglass Durham. No investigation.

5.20.75-Ben Sitting Up-AIM member killed at Wanblee by “unknown assailants.” No investigation.

6.1.75-Kenneth Little-AIM supporter killed at Pine Ridge by Goons. Investigation still “pending.”

6.15.75-Leah Spotted Elk-AIM supporter at Pine Ridge by Goons. No investigation.

6.26.75-Joseph Stuntz Killsright-AIM member killed by FBI sniper during Oglala firefight. No investigation.

7.12.75-James Briggs Yellow-heart attack caused by FBI air assault on his home. No investigation.

7.25.75-Andrew Paul Stewart-nephew of AIM spiritual leader Leonard Crow Dog, killed by Goons on Pine Ridge. No investigation.

8.25.75-Randy Hunter-AIM supporter killed at Kyle by “party or parties unknown.” Investigation still “ongoing.”

9.9.75-Howard Blue Bird-AIM supporter killed at Pine Ridge by Goons. No investigation.

9.10.75-Jim Little-AIM stomped to death by Goons in Oglala. No investigation.

10.26.75-Olivia Binais-AIM supporter killed in Porcupine by “person or persons unknown.” Investigation still “open.”

10.26.75-Janice Black Bear-AIM supporter killed at Manderson by Goons. No investigation.

10.27.75-Michelle Tobacco-AIM supporter killed at Pine Ridge by “unknown persons.” No investigation.

12.6.75-Carl Plenty Arrows, Sr.-AIM supporter killed at Pine Ridge by “unknown persons.” No investigation.

12.6.75-Frank LaPointe-AIM supporter killed at Pine Ridge by Goons. No investigation.

2.76-Anna Mae Pictou Aquash-AIM organizer assassinated on Pine Ridge. FBI involved in attempt to conceal cause of death. Ongoing attempt to establish “AIM involvement” in murder. Key FBI personnel never deposed. Coroner never deposed. [to testify or bear witness, especially on oath in court].

1.5.76-Lydia Cut Grass-AIM member killed at Wounded Knee by Goons. No investigation.

1.30.76-Byron DeSersa-OSCRO organizer and AIM supporter assassinated by Goons in Wanblee. Arrests by local authorities resulted in two Goons-Dale Janis and Charlie Winters-serving two years of five year sentences for “manslaughter.” Charges dropped against two Goon leaders, Manny Wilson and Chuck Richards, on the basis of “self-defense” despite DeSersa having been unarmed when shot to death.

2.6.76-Lena R. Slow Bear-AIM supporter killed at Oglala by Goons. No investigation.

3.1.76-Hobart Horse-AIM member beaten, shot, and repeatedly run over with automobile at Sharp's Corners. No investigation.

3.26.76-Cleveland Reddest-AIM member killed at Kyle by “person or persons unknown.” No investigation.

4.28.76-Betty Jo Dubray-AIM supporter beaten to death at Martin, S.D. No investigation.

5.6.76-Marvin Two Two-Aim supporter shot to death at Pine Ridge. No investigation.

5.9.76-Juia Pretty Hips-AIM supporter killed at Pine Ridge by unknown assailants.” No investigation.

5.24.76-Sam Afraid of Bear-AIM supporter shot to death at Pine Ridge. Investigation “ongoing.”

6.4.76-Kevin Hill-AIM supporter killed at Oglala by “party or parties unknown.” Investigation “still open.”

7.3.76-Betty Means-AIM member killed at Pine Ridge by Goons. No investigation.

7.31.76-Sandra Wounded Foot-AIM supporter killed at Sharp's Corners by “unknown assailants.” No investigation.

From “AIM, Pine Ridge and the FBI”

http://www.dickshovel.com/Aim.Pine.html

Leonard Peltier Defense/Offense Committee:

www.whoisleonardpeltier.info

Obama-- Have You Ever Heard the Story about the First Democratically-Elected President of the Congo?

Obama--

Have You Ever Heard the Story about the First Democratically-Elected President of the Congo?

My Dear Wife,

I am writing this without knowing whether you will ever get it or when or whether I shall still be alive when you read it...
Dead or alive, free or imprisoned by the colonialists, it is not I who matter, it is the Congo. It is our poor people whose independence has been turned into a cage...
For where there is no dignity there is no freedom and where there's no justice there's no dignity and where there's no independence there are no free men...
History will have its say one day…
Not the history they teach in Brussels, Paris, Washington or the United Nations but the history taught in the country set free from colonialism and its puppet rulers…
Africa will write her own history and it will be a history of glory and dignity…
Do not weep my love; I know that my country, which has suffered so much, will be able to defend its independence and liberty.

Long live the Congo. Long live Africa.

He didn’t sit atop a throne, or darn himself in gold chains or a uniform heavy with shiny metal. He didn’t ask the people to bow but rather rise with him. Stand side by side with him. He point to their condition: colonized, enslaved, abused. Worse, their history had been stolen. Memory of another time when they honored the land and each other had been replaced with a history that spoke of their inferiority. Recount how we are depicted as animals. See the demoralization of our children. Feel how we are made to live in fear. We are equals to the white man, the Belgian. We are a people from a great civilization beyond this imposed “civilization” that has made us the “wretched of the earth.”

Above ground, men from other lands surround our material resources while we labor beneath the ground pulling up copper, cobalt, diamonds, and other minerals that are shipped off to other lands to provide “civilization” for Europeans and U.S. citizens. They say we are incapable of caring for out land; we wouldn’t know what do to with the wealth of resources; we are so incompetent.

And what do we know about freedom?

Belgium asked: who is this man? What is he saying?

The people came. They wanted to hear more. They had been thinking but dared to articulate what this man was saying to them. Take responsibility, he said. Stand up and we’ll stand together. To the elite Blacks he said, join us, for we are human and this is our land and we have a right to control our land. Lies for generations tell us otherwise. Lies tell us that we belong to the King and the land, too. We can’t remain silent any longer. The “wretched of the earth” must rise! We want a democracy here in the Congo!

All of Europe asked: Who is this man?

Patrice Lumumba—not monkey, not ape—but the son of a farmer, the son and brother of Congolese who declare independent, freedom, the right to form a democracy and rid the Congo of the corruption and violence of the Belgian rule.

Patrice Lumumba and we are organizing to take control of our people and our land.

Patrice Lumumba and we are taking responsibility for the Congo’s destiny.

This was not the first time a people rose up and took responsibility for their destiny, a people rose up and said enough of watching people suffer, people brutalized, people staving and dying from thirst, people without shelter, without education, without medical care, but forced to work until they died while others lived from the human carnage.

U.S. leaders put the CIA to work to swoop up communist when the U.S. and European nations declared communism the evil in the world. A democratically elected Mossadegh in Iran was declared a danger, a communist! This evil declared without consulting foreign powers that Iran was for the Iranian people. The CIA went to work. Mossedegh is evil, Iran! He’s evil, Iran. In the chaos, the CIA chased Mossedegh out of Iran and the U.S. gave the people democracy: the Shah. Neither the U.S. nor the Europeans noticed when the Shah’s secret service tortured and imprisoned thousands and slaughtered hundreds of thousands of people. But the accounts show that the great gift of democracy came with U.S. weapons.

Another democratically-elected president Arbenz in Guatemala had the audacity to turn over the land to the peasants! The former owners, wealthy elites and the foreign U.S. and Europeans, were found themselves surrounded by the peasants, the Indian natives of Guatemala, standing with their backs straight. The elite and foreigners cried out to the world! Look at what is happening to us! Look! The peasants are in control. Look Arbenz is evil!

Yes, declared the CIA. He’s a communist! And again the CIA swooped down and reestablished order. Arbenz ran for his life. The elites and foreign took control again and the peasants, evil’s accomplices, were imprisoned, tortured and slaughter by the thousand. Even closer than Iran, the U.S. leadership didn’t notice the bodies, couldn’t smell the stench of the dead rotting the streets. But, once again, accounts showed that weapons were given as a gift to the new regime to forge democratic state in Guatemala.

Did Lumumba know of this traditional method of securing democracy in post-colonial countries?

He has hope and big ideas. The people were willing.

The Europeans and the U.S. had their tradition of democracy.

On June 30, 1960, Independence Day in the Congo, King Baudouin spoke first. Colonization had come to an end in the Congo thanks to King Leopold II who envisioned this day of freedom for the Congolese! All praise to the King! Cheers to the King! And the folks at the ceremony rose and applauded. The man Lumumba selection for President, Joseph Kasavubu rose and spoke. Yes, it was the great King who did it all! More monuments, please!

But Lumumba, first democratically-elected president of the Congo walked to the podium.

Good to see King Baudouin and the other Belgium governmental officials and all the dignitaries. But a message to the people:

For this independence of the Congo, even as it is celebrated today with Belgium, a friendly country with whom we deal as equal to equal, no Congolese worthy of the name will ever be able to forget that is was by fighting that it has been won [applause], a day-to-day fight, an ardent and idealistic fight, a fight in which we were spared neither privation nor suffering, and for which we gave our strength and our blood.

We are proud of this struggle, of tears, of fire, and of blood, to the depths of our being, for it was a noble and just struggle, and indispensable to put an end to the humiliating slavery which was imposed upon us by force.

This was our fate for eighty years of a colonial regime; our wounds are too fresh and too painful still for us to drive them from our memory. We have known harassing work, exacted in exchange for salaries which did not permit us to eat enough to drive away hunger, or to clothe ourselves, or to house ourselves decently, or to raise our children as creatures dear to us.

We have known ironies, insults, blows that we endured morning, noon, and evening, because we are Negroes…

We have seen our lands seized in the name of allegedly legal laws which in fact recognized only that might is right.

We have seen that the law was not the same for a white and for a black, accommodating for the first, cruel and inhuman for the other.

We have witnessed atrocious sufferings of those condemned for their political opinions or religious beliefs; exiled in their own country, their fate truly worse than death itself.

We have seen that in the towns there were magnificent houses for the whites and crumbling shanties for the blacks, that a black was not admitted in the motion-picture houses, in the restaurants, in the stores of the Europeans; that a black traveled in the holds, at the feet of the whites in their luxury cabins.

Who will ever forget the massacres where so many of our brothers perished, the cells into which those who refused to submit to a regime of oppression and exploitation were thrown [applause]?

All that, my brothers, we have endured...

But we, whom the vote of your elected representatives have given the right to direct our dear country, we who have suffered in our body and in our heart from colonial oppression, we tell you very loud, all that is henceforth ended.

The Republic of the Congo has been proclaimed, and our country is now in the hands of its own children.

Together, my brothers, my sisters, we are going to begin a new struggle, a sublime struggle, which will lead our country to peace, prosperity, and greatness.

Together, we are going to establish social justice and make sure everyone has just remuneration for his labor [applause].

We are going to show the world what the black man can do when he works in freedom, and we are going to make of the Congo the center of the sun's radiance for all of Africa...

I call on all Congolese citizens, men, women and children, to set themselves resolutely to the task of creating a prosperous national economy which will assure our economic independence.

Glory to the fighters for national liberation!

Long live independence and African unity!

Long live the independent and sovereign Congo!

[applause, long and loud]

The Congolese can thank themselves. The Congolese always knew they were human; they were the rightful owners of the Congo. It was only the Belgians, the West, newly formed civilizations who thought them animals and treated them as such and made sure they acted accordingly. But it was only acting.

Jacques Brassine, Belgian diplomat, said Lumumba was “dangerous for us.” Belgian Secret Service called him a communist. They called in the CIA who seized up the matter and confirmed: Lumumba “was a danger” to the West.

The Belgians set up listening devises in his office and huddled in meetings with the CIA. What do you think? What do you think? You watch and listen and we’ll get to work with the public. We’ll find some on the Congolese who find this man a horror. We’ll tell get to the press. And the white people! Yes! Let’s get to work!

Mr. Cash, Moise Tshombe, bowed and said yes. And the Belgians handed him the presidency of Katanga, the mining area. No need to notify the actual Prime Minister, Lumumba.

In the press around the world, bulletins went out warning of the imminent danger of violence in the Congo! The white people are running for their lives. We can’t stay here. We can’t. Danger. Danger!

The Ape has escaped! Satan himself in person!

The Congo is under siege! Evil reigns!

The diamond and copper mines were secured. The peasants were pushed back. People stayed home. Lumumba heard his president. He could recognize the words. He ordered Kasavubu to step down. We will stand fast and for the people, for the struggle. But Kasavubu went to the Belgians.

The Belgians and CIA found in Mobutu Sese Seke a man of ambition, a man who would take responsibility! Head of the army, Mobutu, too bowed, and said yes, Master! You will be prime Minister. Yes, Master. Guns and money! Good, Master!

Lumumba looked to the U.S. but heard fear and saw the glaring presence of the CIA. Didn’t he know? The U.S. looked to its CIA.

It was called Operation Barracuda.

Lumumba, at wits end, called to the world: will anyone step in and help us? France said no. No! Sorry! But there was a slight nod from the Soviet Union. Well, come, let’s see, said Khrushchev. Yeah, yeah, monkey. Just like all the rest of them! Lumumba received a minimum amount of financial assistance—barely worth the trip.

But President Eisenhower didn’t like what he was hearing about Lumumba. Allen Dulles is called to the White House. How fast can this communist, this ape, this man who dares to pull the wealth of the Congo from us—how fast can he be eliminated? Fast!

Do it!

Done!

Where would the U.S. be without the responsible, hard work of military coups where the native elite take charge, and serve as camouflage for the Western governments and corporations?

U.S. diplomats and CIA personnel took Mobutu Sese Seke by the hand and led him to the throne. Motutu’s first order: Kill Lumumba. The follow up order: open Congo’s mines and arid land to U.S. businesses.

A totalitarian regime in the Congo was fine. Nixon loved him. Reagan and Bush I sent billions in aid. Only Carter thought about all those human rights violations, but nonetheless, the aid kept coming.

The people receive death. Mobutu knew how to torture and imprison. He knew how to slaughter. Individuals who dared to think Lumumba was still alive would finally come to understand their error. Opponents were executed until the people finally got the point. Elections? Lumumba is DEAD! Elections are for the electing of me, Mobuto! Dictator Mobuto!

Foreign dignitaries couldn’t miss that Mobutu was everywhere. The people couldn’t dare forget. Mobuto news, too, 24/7 reminded them. Mobutu repression kept them silent. Watch the greatest show on earth: Mobutu cars and homes, Mobutu family members as government military official. Mobutu! Never mind the Congolese workers didn’t receive pay for work. That’s called slavery—and that’s fine for the Congo! The poverty of the people was of no concern to U.S. and European leaders who respected Mobutu for being accountable—to them.

He helped the U.S. squash suspected communist threats in neighboring African countries with U.S. aid and weapons. Mobutu was the man for the U.S. presidents and Valery Giscard d’Estaing of France, Belgium, of course, and even Pope John Paul II visited the great man. Gold, diamonds, copper, and other material wealth flowed up and out to the West and the great man did the dirty work of controlling those rebels in Africa calling for freedom.

In 1990, came the end of the Cold War and the fall of the Soviet Union. The .U.S. discovered a dictator in the Congo! A dictator! U.S. tried to cut off aid, because the U.S. doesn’t aid dictators! Mobutu a dictator since September 1960—and we didn’t notice! He’s stashed millions away in his private Switzerland accounts while the people die in the streets and die of thirst in rural areas, cried the Western humanitarians! Police and military are bribing citizens? How could he have done that for—30 years?

An oversight!

The riots and anti-Mobutu movements finally drove the dictator out of the Congo—along with the stash of cash in Swiss banks!

We gave you billions, said the U.S. and Europe, and the people of the Congo you will pay us back! The IMF and the World Bank[1] will see to it that we are paid back for our gift to you of democracy!

The people of the Congo have been paying and paying and paying—as they always have seen the first expedition discovered the land and the mineral resources. They have been civilizing the world by their endless suffering.

The Belgian secret service and the CIA assassinated Patrice Lumumba while the world watched, thanks to the U.S. and European press, and applauded as Lumumba was abused and tied like a hog at the airport. In an open field, against a tree, the Belgian secret service and CIA believed they were putting an end to the peoples’ demand for freedom. The CIA personnel moved on, for the CIA had other a long, long, long list of communists and terrorists, in democratically-elected presidents to remove after Lumumba’s assassination—Jose Maria Valesco in Ecuador, Kwame Nkrumah in Ghana, Salvador Allende in Chile, Jean Bertrand Aristide in Haiti—governments to support like Apartheid South Africa and repression of Nelson Mandela and the ANC and the UNITA rebels against the Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola (“CIA Coups and Secret Wars”). The list is long. Military coups and assassinations and interference continue.

In other words, the CIA, on behalf of democracy, had business elsewhere. In the meantime, the Belgians were left to dispose of the body and they dissolved the corpse in sulfuric acid.

But two of Lumumba’s teeth refused to burn, and they are souvenirs for the assassins to this today—reminders for them of the audacity of this African to think the people of Africa can truly pursue democracy.

“The future of Africa,” announced President Barrack Obama, “is in the hands of Africans.” (But the U.S. can help you!).

You have the audacity to tell the people to take responsibility. Applause from the CEOs sharing the throne here in the U.S.—your backers.

Admit it: You, Mr. Barrack Obama, a capitalist, are proposing a continuation of imperialist policies in Africa, your father’s home land. You are selling Africa, the mother of all of us, to the highest bidder!

Remember Lumumba: the people will resist!

Note:

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[1] Corporations benefited from the Mobutu regime or “from the World Bank and IMF funds used to compensate them for money stolen by Mobuto…” According to International Relations, Foreign Policy in Focus, 1997:

In recent years U.S. policy has stressed the need for good governance in Africa. Most Africans view this as a supreme irony given Washington’s quarter-century of active support for Africa’s most notorious and antidemocratic ruling crook, Mobutu. Between 1962 and 1991, the U.S. directly supported Mobutu (with close to $150 million in CIA bribes and secret payments) and his government (with more than $1.03 billion in development aid and $227.4 million in military assistance). It even provided transport for foreign troops used to suppress anti-Mobutu rebellions in 1977 and 1978.

The U.S. also helped funnel World Bank loans and IMF credits to Mobutu’s government, even though internal documents reveal that these agencies knew in advance the money was likely to be stolen and the loans unlikely to be repaid. Mobutu used IMF and World Bank loans to repay Zaire’s private creditors, thereby transforming private debt into public debt now amounting to almost $14 billion.

Mobutu reciprocated by providing bases and supply routes for UNITA rebels and by backing the U.S. in various arenas. For instance, as chair of the UN Security Council in the months immediately prior to the Gulf War, Zaire was crucial in rallying support for the U.S.-led military operation.