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Forum nameOkay Activist Archives
Topic subjectsolidarity/intervention
Topic URLhttp://board.okayplayer.com/okp.php?az=show_topic&forum=22&topic_id=24451&mesg_id=24462
24462, solidarity/intervention
Posted by 360sunsumyea, Wed Jun-07-00 06:35 AM
mm: You know, one of the things white folk who have been struggling against racism on both a political and personal level have confronted is contradictions or confusions about what real solidarity means...Will you speak on the concepts of solidarity and intervention, define them and say what you think true avenues for that could be?

assata: OK, i think one of the fundamental things needed for solidarity is respect. The respect of other people's culture, other people's ideas, and respect for Self-Determination. Going back to the experience of eastern europe, on one hand you had Stalinists and the Stalinist model, and in some ways, some very real ways, the Soviet Union lent real help to Third World people who were struggling. In other ways they fell short of that. Many of the eastern european countries, with the exception of those having a pardon school (having some foreign students there), really showed no true internationalism in the sense of say, a Cuba. Even though Cubans are generally a people who share what they have, Cuba is an underdeveloped country. The sense of imperialism in Cuba is much more highly developed than in any of the european countries. That was one of the fatal errors of that process. To consider solidarity as simply going to the U.N. and voting with the Soviet Union and not much more. It did not include personal sacrifices, it did not include a much more serious commitment to the liberation of Third World people. And so you have european workers who did not really feel a sense of solidarity with workers in the Third World, but felt a material kind of envy for workers in england, france and the united states. Workers who shared those kinds of values, the "we want color tv's", and did not really perceive that the reason why the lifestyle of some workers, and i have to emphasize "some" workers, in the developed countries was at a higher level was because those countries were directly involved in sucking the blood of Third World workers -- Third World people. Only a country that is involved in this kind of behavior can give some workers a higher standard of living.

...You have a situation where europeans are attacking Third World people all over europe and eastern europe, too. Eastern europe, western europe, there is this wave of racism that didn't just come out of nowhere. It is there because there was not real struggle raised against it. There was not real ideological process that took place on any real, in-depth level. So, solidarity meant one thing very superficial, and in addition to that, there was chauvinism. A kind of "we have the answers and all y'all savages gotta listen to us, cause we got Marx and Engels and we know all the answers. And you can make a revolution just the way we think you should make it, and you can just repeat what we say. And if you say anything different from what we say you're a revisionist."

...And you had people, from Che Guevara to Nkrumah, who were completely ignored. i mean, nobody studied what Fidel was saying and Fidel made critical remarks about what was happening in europe dating back to 1968 or before. But nobody listened. He was like, "our boy in Havana" -- the revolutionary with the gun rather than anyone who had any ideological input into the world revolutionary movement. The same thing happened all over the world, whether it was with Ho Chi Minh or whoever. The ideological contributions were minimized. Therefore, the doubts and the problems raised in reference to the Third World were minimized.

...So, it was just this kind of chauvinistic outlook that the white left all over the world has been historically guilty of; must take the weight for; and must try to rectify by studying, listening, and learning from Third World people. They must recognize that logically, the most oppressed people must have a leadership role in any revolutionary process.

mm: ...intervention?

assata: Intervention can take place, armed intervention, ideological... Intervention is a broad term. If you talk about intervention in terms of the role of the white left in the united states--if that's the context we're using...

mm: Yeah. Absolutely.

assata: What people really have to think about is the work, and the content of that work. And if the content of the work is anti-racist, anti-arrogant, anti-imperialist, then i think that's the important part. i think the most important thing is to commit to an ideology and workstyle that's not arrogant and is anti-imperialist, anti-racist, anti-sexist, etc., etc., etc.

**********THE SIG**********

i'm a tru pisces tryna flow in the direction of both of these okplayer quotes:

"I m raising a fuckin angelic being who is going to replenish this fuckin earths cuz in 2G all we fuckin do is talk.....im teachin my seed to turn his spirit inside out and spread beams of green light"
-nebbie

"GOd give me the strength to change the things i can, understanding for those i cannot and the muthafuckin heart to stand up for my beliefs and principles, so that when the government that is suppossed to protect me turns against me and my people we will have the means, the might and the muthafuckin gun power to blow away our oppressors
umm amen"
-earthqueen

and last but not least:

"all things considered, i'd rather be me"
-bfnh