Thoughts Provoked by the Comments of Preachers at the Funeral of Oscar Grant.

by Joe Veale

At the funeral for Oscar Grant one preacher got up and said: “I thought Oscar was going to be a preacher but god had other plans.” Think about that: “…but god had other plans.”

Another preacher got up and said: “We must respond with prudence. I understand that the youngsters are upset, but nonetheless we have to trust in god. This is not your fight.”

Think about that: “…with prudence…trust in God…this is not your fight.”

In other words with “sound and reasonable thinking”…don’t be reckless.

Why are things, outrageous things like the public police execution of Oscar Grant, other police murders of Black men, and the general oppression and suffering of people here and around the world attributed to “gods plan,” “trust”—when we know or can know why these things happen, continue to happen—and, more importantly, when we can fight to change and sweep away the system which is the cause of all this?

Why are these preachers with their religion allowed to get away with spreading and imposing these mental shackles on the minds of people? Calling people “reckless” when they begin to act on real causes of their oppression?

Who, what are they serving by doing this?

Let’s “keep it real,” to use a popular phrase. Preachers and religion in general are working to keep people in mental slavery. Believing in things that do not exist – and in rationalizing, making excuses, and justifying the harm that is done to people by “real things” everyday under this system. They are working to hold together a society, a system that can not exist without brutal, murderous inequality and discrimination at its foundation.

Let’s take a closer look at the slave mentality of religion.

Not long ago I attended the funeral of a friend of mine. He too was a 22-year-old Black man. He liked to be called Dred.

Dred found himself bouncing between minimum wage jobs and selling drugs. These are the choices he found himself confronting. Not because of some non-existent god but because of the real working of the system and the conscious policy of those who run the system.

Nonetheless, this is how Dred lived for awhile. This is how he kept his head above water and survived.

He was hoping to supplement the income of his mother who worked 2, sometimes 3 jobs at a time. Dred had six brothers and sisters who lived at home with their mom.

Dred wanted revolution and ran with the RCP for awhile. He was a dreamer and fighter, but like millions in this country and billions around the world, the system trapped his life in its big powerful murderous arms—before he had a chance to really understand this—those arms squeezed him so tight they snuffed out his life at a very early age.

Dred was shot by others trapped in the same situation—local competing drug dealers shot him down on the street where his mother lived. The paramedics were late getting there and he bled to death. He bled to death while crying out: “Help me! Help me!”

After his death his mom said to me and others she wanted a closed casket. She did not want people looking down on his dead body. All their lives people had looked down on them and she did not want yet one more insulting reminder of this.

At his funeral the preacher got up and said: “god had called Dred home…” and some other things along these lines of superstition and mental slavery.

Immediately after the preacher spoke I went up front to say some things:

If the social order, the system, we live in was just and fair, if it was a revolutionary system…Dred would still be with us.

He was an amazing self taught artist. He could look at a scenery for a few minutes and capture all the beauty and things that are not so beautiful in his drawings and sketches…capture even more than what the untrained eye could see.

There are tens of millions like him in this country and billions more around the world whose lives and human potential are both smothered and cut short by this system.

When people like Dred are born, they are like the lines in that old song by Earth, Wind, and Fire:

shining star, no matter who you are, shining bright to see, what your life can truly be.

Under a revolutionary system (and I would add under the dictatorship of the proletariat as opposed to what we now live under—the dictatorship of the capitalist/imperialist class) people like Dred would be amazing us and the little children with their art and in all kinds of other ways. In ways we don’t even know about.

We need a new social order. A new system. A revolution. A revolutionary social order—that is in transition to a whole new world where there are no people “looking down or looking up”—because there is no system holding up some while holding down most—where all people are truly citizens of the planet in all their rich cultural and language diversity. Where each receive from society what they need to continually give to society what they are capable of giving intellectually and materially.

But under this system, youth like Dred run smack up against the realities that they and their lives do not count for anything in this economic-social arrangement of things.

Because this is an unjust social order, a system based on brutality holding down and exploiting the overwhelming majority—we never get to know the human potential of billions of people. It is coldly, brutally distorted, twisted, mangled, and taken from us everyday…minute by minute.

Well, after I said more or less this, other people talked — including the preacher…again. But there was no more mental slavery talk about “god calling Dred home.” Or “god’s plan.” People talked about Dred—their hurt, pain, sorrow…their loss.

But people felt uplifted knowing this loss happened not because of some “mysterious plan” of a non-existent god, but because of real things that we can understand and yes, fight and change.

Ironically as soon as the funeral was over the preacher made a point of seeking me out to say in so many words she thought what I said made more sense than what she had said.

Returning to what the preachers at Oscar Grant’s funeral said—I say this: get the fuck out of the way with your religion, chains of mental slavery, and attempts to make people helpless, hopeless, mental slaves…believers in superstition.

To the people I say: if they don’t get out of the way—then knock and push them and their religion out of the way with a “keeping it real” revolutionary understanding of reality. Make them take a back seat to this. Continue to do this in deepening ways as we build this revolutionary movement to uproot and sweep away this system.

How many more Dreds will there be? How many more mothers like his? How many more Oscar Grants, Sean Bells? Everyday here and all over the world in direct and indirect ways people are crying out: “help me! help me!”

And religious figures are insulting and hurting them by telling them it is all part of “gods plan.”

How many more people and little children in Gaza must be bombed, including with chemical weapons by the U.S. hit-man Israel? By the U.S. itself in Afghanistan, Iraq? How many more must cry out “help me! help me” before YOU cast aside ALL the mental chains of religion and get with the revolution?

None of this is “god’s plan.” All of it can be traced to the needs, workings, and conscious policy of this global system of imperialism that is headed by the U.S.A.

These are real things that humanity CRIES OUT to be emancipated from—and which it CAN BE emancipated from with an approach that is rooted in a real revolutionary and scientific understanding of things instead of one that is rooted in superstition and religion

Oscar Grant Becomes a Poster Boy for Jihad

http://www.bluetruth.net/2009/01/oscar-grant-becomes-poster-boy-for.html

The event report below was contributed by our good friend Tzipporah, who now can't get back the several hours of her life that she gave up to subject herself to this event. But at least she is able to shed some light on what's crawling around in the political gutter in Oakland, California.

Those outside the Bay Area may not know the backstory: Early on January 1, a young adult African-American named Oscar Grant was fatally shot at a BART (Bay Area Rapid Transit) stop by a BART police officer. The incident was captured on a few cellphones as it happened. The officer has been arrested for murder and there have been several riots in downtown Oakland.

How is this connected to the recent action in Gaza, or to the Israel-Palestinian conflict in general? Nothing published about Grant suggested that he was politically involved in this issue. However, this incident has been cynically manipulated by the local anti-Israel groups to recruit support in the African-American community for their own jihadist agenda. So, to nobody's surprise, recent anti-Israel rallies in San Francisco featured posters attempting to link Grant's death to the Gaza situation, to recruit those angry over the shooting to the side of those for whom Grad and Qassam rockets are "legitimate resistance".

Here's Tzipporah's report from a "community meeting" held in Oakland 2 days ago. For upcoming attractions, just see what's been happening in France.



Violence Brewing in Oakland: A Forum to Incite African Americans to Hate Jews

Last night I fell down a rabbit hole and found myself in a world where honesty and truth were banished and lies reigned supreme. I was not out chasing rabbits though; I was at the Eastside Cultural Center in Oakland, along with about 200 other people, participating in a program called “From Palestine to Oakland: An Emergency Community Forum.”

The forum was co-sponsored by the Eastside Arts Alliance and the Gaza Action Committee. Speakers were from various anti-Israel organizations, such as the Arab Resource and Organizing Center, Malcolm X Grassroots Movement, Communities Against Police Execution (CAPE,) and Plan for a Safer Oakland (aka, CriticalResistance.org.) Many of the organizers looked familiar because I had seen them before, from other recycled ANSWER niche groups, such as Jews Against Zionism. The goal of the forum was to draw parallels between the so-called oppression of Palestinians and Oakland African Americans. This forum was clearly a slick attempt by anti-Israel groups to co-opt African Americans and draw them into the world wide movement against the existence of Israel and hatred of Jews.

Subtlety was not their strong point. First, three young people from the Eastside Arts Alliance and the Gaza Action Committee stood on the stage with crudely drawn maps of Oakland and Israel. In this rabbit hole, Israel was called Palestine. The speakers taught us that Palestine was once a great and peaceful Muslim country. But then in 1948 European Jews and the United States decided to work together to rid Palestine of Muslims and give the country to the Jews. These Jews are called Zionists: “Zionism: A political belief system started in the late 1800’s (sic) and based on parts of the Jewish religion that believes the land of Palestine was given by God to the Jewish People. (Not all Jews are Zionist and not all Zionists are Jewish). (sic)

The U.S and Zionist forces embarked upon genocide and ethnic cleansing because they felt that Palestine was in a strategic part of the world, and the U.S. and the European Jews wanted to have a foot-hold in the midst of the Muslim world. The speakers stuck pieces of paper with outlines of brown people on them all over the pre-Israel Palestine map. They added other pieces of paper symbolizing trees and orchards. When they declared that it was now 1948, they moved all the people to Gaza and the West Bank and filled the map with a dozen or so large blue Stars of David which took the place of the displaced Palestinians who were presumably huddling in fear on the edges of the map. They added pictures of Uzi machine guns and barricades to the map.

They taught us that “war broke out in 1967,” and Israel conquered more Muslim land. They did not explain the cause of the war. To them, war simply “broke out,” perhaps as a bad case of the hives might break out.

We learned that Israel was founded “with the purpose of creating a ‘Jewish only’ state even though the vast majority of the population was not Jewish. They told us that Muslims have curfews in Israel. Palestinians must carry ID cards that designate what limited rights they are entitled to. Only Jews have the full panoply of rights.

Then they asked the audience to make the connection to Oakland. Think, they exhorted us, how the same forces that oppress the Palestinians also oppress the Black people in Oakland. I wondered if Zionists control Oakland. Why yes, I learned, they apparently do. They moved the brown people from “occupied Palestine” to the map of Oakland. They pointed to Piedmont and stuck a couple of Stars of David there. Then they surrounded the brown, oppressed Oaklanders with the Uzis and placed barricades around Piedmont and other areas they considered to be Zionist identified.

The audience loved it. They were very receptive to this blatant anti-Semitism and Palestinian mythology. My heart was thumping and I was certain that the word “JEW” was written on my forehead. I kept my pepper spray handy. The crowd was pumped up - lots of cheering and clapping. Two hundred happy Jew-haters surrounded me.

The remaining speakers revealed the following amazing facts:

1. The CIA and the Mossad are one big organization;

2. Oakland and Boston Police go to Israel for training (this factoid was imparted by a member of the New England Committee to Defend Palestine;)

3. Members of the IDF come to Oakland to train police;

4. During Hurricane Katrina, the Mossad sent Israeli snipers to New Orleans with orders to shoot black people “who were trying to survive;”

5. Palestine is Oakland;

6. The condos in Oakland are equivalent to the Jewish settlements in Israel, because Black people were pushed out of gentrified areas of Oakland the way the gentle Palestinians were pushed out of Palestine;

7. A speaker who identified herself as Nicole Solis said she is a teacher at a rich private school in Oakland. She described the school as a bubble for privileged kids. She said she is not permitted to talk about the things that really matter, such as graffiti art, Zionists, and guns;

8. Black people dressed in baggy pants are targets for Oakland police who are itching to kill them;

9. Oakland is heavily policed because Black people live here. The police are here to occupy the Black neighborhoods and commit genocide. Their presence has nothing to do with crime. The Oakland police are equivalent to the Jews in Israel;

10. Palestinians and American Blacks have one enemy: the U.S. Actually two enemies, because Israel is an extension of the U.S.

11. Palestinians cannot walk more than 30 minutes without violating a curfew;

12. The same Israeli people building the “wall” in Palestine are also building the “wall” between the U.S. and Mexico;

13. Gang members are now prosecuted as domestic terrorists. (As a criminal defense lawyer in Oakland, I know this is not true;)

14. Their definition of occupation is an outside power coming into a neighborhood, city, or country by military or police force, conquering the native people, and then forcing them off their land. In Oakland, this is achieved by gentrification. Gentrification is occupation;

15. Tel Aviv was an Arab city. The Zionists changed the name as part of their colonization of Palestine;

16. Schools in the U.S. should teach Arab history;

17. Oakland schools teach that slavery was a good thing and slaves were happy;

18. Palestinian and Black leaders are kept illegally in prisons so they cannot organize the people;

19. The first thing Israel does when they attack a village is to destroy the agriculture, such as the olive trees;

20. Federal police working with Oakland police intend to destroy Black culture;

21. COINTELPRO is actively trying to divide Black and Palestinian people in order to disrupt their organizing;

22. An Israeli PR firm in San Francisco is trying to entice people from grassroots organizations to visit Israel in order to feed them false information;

23. “They” do not want us to make the connections between what is happening in Palestine and Oakland;

24. Jews have invented creation myths of persecution in order to justify the genocide and colonization of Palestinians;

25. Oscar Grant represents persecution, resistance, and a great wave of grief, and love;

26. Myths are perpetuated in churches and temples to control the people;

27. Jews paint themselves as eternal victims;

28. The Committee Against Police Execution (CAPE) defends the right of people to come together to destroy property. The people who were arrested in the Oscar Brand riots should have all charges dropped against them, and the Oakland police chief should be fired.

Several times during the meeting, we were urged to attend a demonstration later in the week on the Berkeley campus to protest a lecture by Benny Morris. They reminded us several times that violence is an acceptable response to “justice denied.”



After 90 minutes of this anti-Semitic rubbish, I left. The red queen was on her head.