A convenience store in the town I grew up in getting robbed by over 50 teenagers marks one of several flash mob incidents that have taken place in East Coast cities ranging from Philadelphia to Washington, DC. The incidents have sparked several legal measures taken against gatherings of large groups youth in these cities, both from the local government and private merchants.

Very few people have spoken in support of the flash mobs, and it’s hard to argue against the reasons if you’re sympathetic with the employees or business owners dealing with mischevious teens. Not to mention that they probably cause a nuisance for bystanders. The targeted areas of the flash mobs range from simple convenience stores like I mentioned earlier to more gentrified areas like Dupont Circle in the DC area. Several people on the libertarian right are predictably writing off the kids as dead-end losers:

It goes without saying that there are just bad kids out there too. The kinds of kids that grow up to be criminals or asking if you’d like to upsize your Wendy’s value meal. Basic evolution tells you that some people just aren’t going to reach that next rung on life’s ladder. Of course this is not to suggest that we should just stand back and watch these kids ruin their lives but we should stop trying to have “conversations” and find “solutions” when these acts are really the fault of a few things: lack of personal responsibility, terrible parenting and basic Darwinism.

Ouch. Rebels, even ones without causes, are automatically useless? Even the morally rigid Nation of Islam recognizes the recruitment potential of convicts. I always scratched my head at libertarians being so quick to associate petty criminals as “the enemies.” After all, several of America’s most important rebels began behind bars or doing petty crimes. Malcolm X was serving a sentence for robbery before he converted to the NOI and began speaking out against the effects of colonialism. Several members of the Black Panther Party were street vagrants before being recruited to the cause for Black liberation. The fact is, especially for such a political movement that cries ‘anti-state’ like libertarianism or anarchism, radicals need to recruit from the State’s most oppressed victims which includes the criminal class. Otherwise, which demographics of the population will wish to end the State besides those who just happen to read alot of Libertarian literature?

The Uhuru Movement has quickly realized the potential that exist in these kinds of flash mobs:

These large groups of African youth are actually rising up, coming together to show their unity and resistance against a city [Philadelphia] that attacks African people.

Reports state these defiant youths are organized primarily through cell phone text messaging, Facebook, Twitter and other social networks. One message sent travels through thousands of cell phones—resulting in thousands of African youth converging on a central location in the city.

Wow. How does anyone read this passage and not think to themselves the tools that the use are using are identical to the ones utilized in contemporary revolutionary movement ranging from the Arab Spring to Occupy Wall Street? I do. It’s clear as day that these kids are waging open source warfare to get what they want. Sure, it’s nothing close to a valiant cause for “freedom” but it’s a successful tactic nonetheless.

Regardless of whether or not one sees any kind of positives within the flash mobs, it’s hard to argue with the Uhuru Movement’s claim that these East Coast’s cities’ funds don’t favor the city’s indigenous population:

Starting this fall, the District will have $1.25 million to offer new or existing retail businesses that are “small and unique” along H Street. A grant application, currently in development, will be available in September… Retail shops are eligible, excluding liquor stores, restaurants, bars, barbershops, hair salons and phone stores.

Similar public-private relationships exist throughout the country in countless urban cities to bring about the urban liberal utopia against the economic progress of the city’s indigenous population. It’s not a surprise, though. We all want the perfect urban landscape of diverse stores with peaceful residents. Yet, the reality in America is that the city is the site of some of the most disastrous policies that have created scarcity of capital. Redlining, blockbusting, zoning laws, licensing fees, expressways, etc. have all pushed the increases of black/grey markets in marginalized Black communities. This means a push for gaining capital through means that have low capital investment and high profits. Drugs, DVD piracy, prostitution, burglary, and when the realization that a higher number of participants can yield a better possibility, flash mob store robbery.

By all means, necessary actions need to be taken to defend one’s property or means of providing for themselves. However, those serious about organizing urban insurrection should pay attention to the tactics, not the misguided ideology of fast money, of youth engaging in criminal activity.

Anarchists serious on economic organizing should consider getting involved in community development corporations, (ones that aren’t fronts for the urban corporate elite) policy-based groups, worker cooperatives, community land trusts, credit unions, or any other kind institution building across the country.

From Dollars and Sense:

Virtually all the democratized ownership forms—including thousands of co-ops, land trusts, social enterprises, and worker-owned companies of one kind or another—are also characterized by another principle of political importance, especially as ongoing economic decay destabilizes city after city: All are inherently anchored in, and supportive of, the local economy. Unlike private corporations, worker-owned companies of all descriptions rarely move to another city. The fate of those who own the company is intimately tied to the fate and health of the locality in which they both live and work. Virtually all the many other non-profit and related institutions based on democratized ownership principles are similarly place-anchored.

And once again, Baker proves why he’s one of my favorite economists.

Copyright is an incredibly inefficient mechanism dating back from the 16th century. The costs of enforcement are soaring as the Internet makes it ever more difficult. This is a situation where we are relying on toll booths to pay for our roads, but it is becoming ever easier for travelers to evade the toll booths. Rather looking for alternative ways to finance road construction, we are building bigger more expensive toll booths and increasing the penalties for not paying tolls.

Check out whats happening at Occupy Atlanta:

Sherrod Britton, 29, was initiated into the Bloods when he was 18 years old. He joined because he felt lost and wanted to be a part of something.

Sherrod was walking down Peachtree Street past Troy Davis three weeks ago and saw all the tents. “I wanted to know what was going on, so I stopped by, I haven’t left since”, said Sherrod.

Sherrod expressed feeling a deep connection to the message and process of Occupy Atlanta.” I stayed for the common cause, speaking for the people. I feel strongly that we have the right to jobs, health care, and affordable higher education.”

Around the same day Sherrod showed up Shabaka Addae Guillory, 20, saw a story on the news about Occupy Atlanta and had to see it for himself. Shabaka stated, “I knew this kind of movement was coming I just didn’t know it would come so soon.”

Shabaka and Sherrod both found a common cause in Occupy Atlanta, but they also share another commonality in their narrative.

Shabaka was recruited into the Crips when he was 14 years old. “My parents were divorced, grandfather passed away, a lot of problems at school, and there was a lot of confusion at the time.”

On Shabaka’s first day at Occupy Atlanta he approached a group of folks doing an impromptu free style session and saw Sherrod. “I saw him in the park, saw his colors. There was no mean mug or rivalry because we realized that what’s happening here is so much bigger then gang rivalry”, stated Shabaka.

Shabaka Added, “Now we’re the best of friends.”

“I let him sleep in my tent because he didn’t have one. We are connected through music, faith, and Occupy Atlanta”, stated Sherrod.

Sherrod and Shabaka are now both very committed full time occupiers. Occupy Atlanta may have started as an act of civil disobedience designed to shine a light on the extreme wealth disparity in our city, country, and around the world. It’s important to acknowledge that one of the beautiful byproducts of this new movement is the transformative experiences that arisen as a result of so many different people from different walks of life occupying a space together for a common cause.

Gay Black gang finds a creative way to deal with homophobia… whooping ass.

At Hine, Bennett had been unsure of his sexual identity and was hurt by schoolmates who said he acted gay. When a teacher also said he acted gay, Bennett went into a rage and hit the teacher with the buckle of his belt. He was arrested and expelled from school. He never went back. And he vowed never to run from a bully. No tears. No fears. If attacked on the streets, he wouldn’t even call the police. He’d just find a way to get his revenge.

The District may have a reputation as a “gay friendly” city, home to one of the largest, most affluent and politically influential gay and lesbian communities in the country. But Bennett and his friends live in a world where attitudes toward homosexuality are not always so progressive.

Philip Pannell, a community activist who is gay, said he believes that Check It would benefit from having some adult black gay male role models in their lives. But that’s not likely to happen anytime soon.

“It’s sad that we have all of these gay black men in Washington and all they do is work all day and go to black gay clubs on the weekends,” Pannell told me. “They won’t help out the gay youth because then they’d have to confront the homophobia of the larger black community.”

Seriously?

This summer, the State Legislature and Governor of Louisiana passed a law that bans individuals and businesses from transacting in cash if they are considered a “secondhand dealer”. House Bill 195 of the 2011 Regular Session (Act 389) broadly defines a secondhand dealer to include “… Anyone, other than a non-profit entity, who buys, sells, trades in or otherwise acquires or disposes of junk or used or secondhand property more frequently than once per month from any other person, other than a non-profit entity, shall be deemed as being in the business of a secondhand dealer. ” The law then states that “A secondhand dealer shall not enter into any cash transactions in payment for the purchase of junk or used or secondhand property. Payment shall be made in the form of check, electronic transfers, or money order issued to the seller of the junk or used or secondhand property…” The broad scope of this definition can essentially encompass everyone; from your local flea market vendors and buyers to a housewife purchasing goods on ebay or craigslist, to a group of guys trading baseball cards, they could all be considered secondhand dealers. Lawmakers in Louisiana have effectively banned its citizens from freely using United States legal tender.

Baker releases “The End of Loser Liberalism.” Deals with the same issues as his classic, “The Conservative Nanny State.”

Progressives need a fundamentally new approach to politics. They have been losing not just because conservatives have so much more money and power, but also because they have accepted the conservatives’ framing of political debates. They have accepted a framing where conservatives want market outcomes whereas liberals want the government to intervene to bring about outcomes that they consider fair.

This is not true. Conservatives rely on the government all the time, most importantly in structuring the market in ways that ensure that income flows upwards. The framing that conservatives like the market while liberals like the government puts liberals in the position of seeming to want to tax the winners to help the losers.

This “loser liberalism” is bad policy and horrible politics. Progressives would be better off fighting battles over the structure of markets so that they don’t redistribute income upward. This book describes some of the key areas where progressives can focus their efforts in restructuring market so that more income flows to the bulk of the working population rather than just a small elite.

By releasing The End of Loser Liberalism: Making Markets Progressive under a Creative Commons license and as a free download, Baker walks the walk of one of his key arguments — that copyrights are a form of government intervention in markets that leads to enormous inefficiency, in addition to redistributing income upward. (Hard copies are available for purchase, at cost) Distributing the book for free not only enables it to reach a wider audience, but Baker hopes to drive home one of the book’s main points via his own example. While the e-book is free, donations to the Center for Economic and Policy Research are welcomed.

Leave it to a far left Black radical group to come up with a far more libertarian position than a large number of so-called libertarians.

I have a concrete plan for how public education in Philadelphia will be run and funded. This plan will ensure success and prosperity for our school system, no matter who its superintendent it is, as the real basis of leadership will come from the community and the basis of development will be driven by the community.

I strongly believe that the budget cuts are just half of the problem. Even under full funding we saw how Ackerman’s budget allocation was not serving the interests of the students. Therefore, while I state my commitment to struggle against the budget cuts with all of my might I also call for:

a. A Community-Controlled Board of Education with power to hire and fire faculty, staff and administration and determine the quality of the curriculum.

b. Economic Development: The education system itself must serve as a tool to revitalize Philly’s economy through providing economic programs to be carried out by the students who will receive training in the process. Such programs will include an urban agriculture program and other vocational training in construction, plumbing, mechanics etc.

c. The Community-Controlled Board of Education will oversee the launch of a bond issue. They will oversee the management and distribution of these securities. The board issues bonds and everybody who is interested in investing in public school education can buy the bonds. They will become a bondholder. The Community-Controlled Board of Education runs the school district.

This puts an interesting spin on the obesity debate.

• Between 1995 and 2010, $16.9 billion in tax dollars subsidized four common food additives – corn syrup, high fructose corn syrup, corn starch, and soy oils (better known as hydrogenated vegetable oils). At $7.36 per taxpayer per year, that would buy each taxpayer 19 Twinkies.

• Outside of commodity crops, other agricultural products receive very little in federal subsidies. Since 1995, taxpayers spent only $262 million subsidizing apples, which is the only significant federal subsidy of fresh fruits or vegetables. Coming to 11 cents per taxpayer per year, that would buy less than a quarter of a Red Delicious apple.

• In Detroit, taxpayers give $2,448,555 each year in junk food subsidies, while only $37,883 each year for subsidies for apples. That’s enough to buy 6,443,567 Twinkies, but only 73,650 apples.

Sort of old news but I was unaware that the CEO of the Southern Poverty Law Center works with The Department of Homeland Security on a campaign called “Working Group on Countering Violent Extremism.” Interesting how a supposed anti-racist organization is a part of a campaign that parallels the mission of COINTELPRO.

Flash mob robberies are brewing in the nation’s capital. Mayor Gray is getting pissed.

Several radical groups plan to demonstrate against the curfews imposed on youth throughout Philadelphia in response to flash mobs.

I’m almost positive the DC chapter of the Uhuru Movement will be responding to Gray accordingly in a similar matter to Philly, and I’m trying to get a hold of them now. I’ll update whenever there’s more developments.

Jim Clingman at Blackonomics:

Will you continue to be more concerned with catching the latest episode of the Basketball Wives, as they call one another the b-word over and over, or will you at least make an attempt to be informed on economic solutions to our problems?

Will you rest in the refuge of now being able to see a Black man in the 6 o’clock slot on television, making butt prints in your easy chair, or will you get busy making footprints on the path that leads to economic freedom?

Will you continue to subscribe to mantra, “Jobs! Jobs! Jobs!” (Why must it be said three times?), asking the guv-ment to create them, you know, the same way it created jobs with the stimulus package, or will you start making your own jobs by growing Black businesses?

The folks in Washington are hardly concerned about our moanin’ and groanin’, our whinin’ and cryin’, and our yellin’ and screamin’. They couldn’t care less, and they have shown us time and time again. Why do we keep asking them to do what we know they won’t or can’t do? Why can’t we see we’ve been played again? Are we really that stupid? Do we need to be hit upside the head with a sledgehammer in order to take care of business for ourselves?

On August 27th there will yet another march in Washington, and on the 28th they will dedicate the made-in-China Martin Luther King monument (Another example of our dysfunction when it comes to economic empowerment; can’t lose with that Chinese granite and a Chinese sculptor; wow! what a find!). The songs will be sung again, the speeches will be given again, the tears will flow again, the chants will be yelled again, and the prayers will be prayed again. A few Black folks will be exalted, and the peons will look on from a roped-off distance “feeling good” once again. And after it’s all over, Black folks will lose – again. That is, if we fail to stop all the rhetoric and emotionalism, and take appropriate action to end our losing streak in the economic empowerment game.

Desktop manufacturing will be shaking things up in the counter-economy to come.

But what kind of world results from widespread use of 3D printers to make goods on demand? Don’t conventional ideas of value go out the window when any object can be duplicated endlessly?

Not necessarily. First, as I mentioned in my Txchnologist piece, fabbers will create their own demands for energy, information, raw materials and so on, so value may still rest on them. But also, I gather from some speculations about such “post-scarcity societies” that the value of consumption becomes supercharged: everyone’s basic needs may be covered but perhaps only a minority can get access to the newest, the fastest, the best of anything. Or consumption of endless free goods may be used to help draw attention to something else in shorter supply.

The Cincinnati NAACP is teaming up with the Coalition Opposed to Additional Spending and Taxes to oppose the proposed Cincinnati Streetcar. It’s an interesting alliance, especially given the fact that the Cincinnati NAACP is somewhat more radical than its national counter-part and COAST is obviously very conservative. It gets even more interesting with the fact that the opposing group is called Cincinnatians for Progress. Not saying the revolution is going to pop off over a streetcar, but we’re seeing a total blur of the left/right spectrum in the urban sphere where on one side we have the interest of the Black working Class allied with the financial conservatives Vs. the Urbanites.

“The revolution is not an apple that falls when it is ripe. You have to make it fall.” -Che Guevara

The president of the International People’s Democratic Uhuru Movement has announced his bid to run for mayor of Philadelphia.

For years he’s been jousting with city government from outside city hall, now Diop Olugbala wants to capture the mayor’s office and fight from the inside out.

“We need to promote the needs of the people and provide people with a way to eat as opposed to fighting each other over crumbs,” said Olugbala, who is no stranger to city hall. He plans to officially announce his candidacy Monday.

Supporters have been gathering the signatures necessary to get his name on the ballot for several weeks. Fliers have popped in unlikely places, near the entrances to subway stations, bus stops and fluttering through the courtyard at city hall.

Very active politically, Olugbala, 34, is perhaps better known as the president of the Philadelphia chapter of the International People’s Democratic Uhuru Movement, a Black nationalist movement with chapters across the globe. He’s traveled across the country as a community organizer and activist.

He and his bullhorn have long been a visible and audible presence at protests outside city hall. Olugbala — also known as Wali Rahman — has even been dragged out of the building by police after a scuffle at a city council meeting in 2009.

For that, he was arrested, jailed and convicted of aggravated assault, simple assault, recklessly endangering another person, resisting arrest and disorderly conduct.

Because he had no prior convictions, Olugbala was given two years probation.

His slogan — Unbought. Unchained. Unbroken — captures the spirit of his independent campaign against incumbent Mayor Michael Nutter and city government in general.

His platform rests on three main planks: job creation, education reform and rolling back what he called “police containment.”

All three are linked, he said: “I’m running on a campaign platform calling for economic development, particularly for poor and working class communities — as opposed to what is currently a public policy of police containment.”

Olugbala said the portion of the city budget dedicated to “police containment” — by his estimates about $1 billion — in funding for courts, prisons and police could be better spent putting people to work.

“The reality is that flooding our communities with police is not the answer,” he said. “The real solution is economic development. The creation of jobs and businesses that promote the needs of the people.”

That leads to education.

“The public education system should be seen as an instrument for economic development. It should be fully funded to provide vocational skills for students that would result in employment, contracts that the city gives away to the unionized contracting firms … we should develop the capacity for young people in the public schools system to take on these contracting jobs,” he said.

His sweeping reforms would be overseen by community control groups.

“I’m calling for a genuinely community-controlled board that has the ability to hire and fire police staff and administration,” he said. “And, the same thing for the education system.”

Olugbala was born in Brooklyn, N.Y., and followed his family around to various military postings. He graduated from the University of Texas at Austin, with a bachelor’s degree in African-American Studies and linguistics in 1999. He lives in Germantown.

From theblackbottom. DBCFSN has showcased itself as one of the most serious groups organizing for community resilience in a city that has witnessed a breakdown of its government and economy.

There’s a mention of the BPP in the article as well:

While the Black Panther Party (BBP) is best know for brandishing loaded shotguns through the streets of Oakland (which for the record was completely legal under California law), there was much more to the BPP. Though firearms always seemed to overshadow the “survival programs” like free breakfast, clothing distributions and sickle cell screenings, the community programs made much more impact. While it’s tempting to see the work of Feedom Freedom as an extension of the BPP’s “survival programs” Wayne is quick to correct that notion.

“The conditions that existed before do not exist,” Wayne says.”Some of the strategies coincide with what’s going on today but the tactics have changed, the concepts have changed. You can’t use old terminology to explain new phenomena.”

If old terminology won’t explain new phenomena, then what explains the purpose of the work of Feedom Freedom growers? While organizing, community building, and developing local economies come up several times, the idea that comes up over and over again is the idea of transformation. That the gardens are a place for us to make personal and community transformation. While capitalism has managed to turn almost everything into a commodity, the gardens still function as a place for us to connect with objective reality (though with corporate sponsorship becoming more and more common, even this may no longer be true) and with each other, becoming the people we are destined to be be, not just a consumer of capital culture.

From The Freeman.

The militarization of compassion does not help strengthen families, rebuild communities, or cultivate commerce. Instead, it centralizes efforts and ignores the local knowledge that resides in individuals and that is embedded in communities. Our intuition pushes toward command and control, but the science of economics pushes back against this intuition and favors the decentralized, on-the-ground information possessed by individuals—who are capable of embracing the challenges of the “cares of thinking and all the troubles of living” (as Tocqueville argued was required of a society of free and responsible individuals). The militarization of compassion may help those far away to feel they are doing their best to address the crisis, but once we get beyond the initial search-and-rescue phase and on to the second, rebuilding phase, the result is usually planned chaos.

Karl Hess’s friends from back in the day are criticizing a new bill that will subsidize the waste incinerators in Maryland. Though not quite as large as a scale as advocated by Kevin Carson in regards to the nuclear industry, ILSR and its programs represent an interesting voice from the environmental conscious left in that they put community control over resources as a priority in their mission. Sometimes to the annoyance of other environmental groups that demand “green” without regard to any other factors.

“Calling incinerators ‘waste-to-energy’ is a marketing ploy by the incinerator industry to peddle
their wares,” said Brenda Platt, a national expert on waste reduction and Co-director of the Institute for
Local Self-Reliance. “Preventing waste saves energy. Reuse saves energy. Recycling saves energy.
Incineration wastes energy, material resources and money. Recycling a ton of materials generally saves
far more energy than burning it generates.

David Morris brilliantly demands Time Warner to accept the truth:

If forced to, private companies will compete, but they much prefer to spend tens of millions of dollars buying the votes of state legislators to enact laws that thwart competition rather than spend hundreds of millions to improve their networks.

Today four states have outright prohibitions on municipal networks. Fifteen others impose significant roadblocks. For example, Alabama requires each communications service (phone, Internet access, and television) offered by a public network to be self-sustaining in isolation from the others. Similarly, in Utah, if the public network wants to offer retail services it must conduct feasibility studies to show the network will cash flow in the first year and that separate services will each cash flow separately. Making a network –a hugely capital intensive investment — cash flow in the first year is all but impossible.

Interesting report from Dollars and Sense. I found the following quote to be extremely interesting:

In the 1930s and 1940s, many employers accepted unions, grudgingly, as a way to ease labor unrest. As much as employers might dislike unions and collective bargaining, they were preferable to strikes or even factory occupations (or “sit downs”). Since the 1970s, however, employers have fought unions and unionization drives with increasing aggressiveness, as part of what labor historian Michael Goldfield calls the “employer offensive.” In the early 1970s, Goldfield notes, about 15% of National Labor Relations Board (NLRB)-supervised union elections were so-called “consent elections,” in which employers had come to a prior agreement with the union(s) on the terms of the election. Historically, unions are more likely to win consent elections than elections in which the employer formally disputes the terms of the election, such as the group of workers (or “bargaining unit”) that has the right to vote and will have union representation if the union wins. By the early 1980s, only about 3% of NLRB elections were consent elections.

Watts is etched into many people’s minds. Even the Cincinnati Riots of 2001 received national coverage. However, I rarely hear anything about the Mount Pleasant protests in 1991. DC has always been a political mess (not just Congress or the White House) but I was unaware of this example of hostility between the Black and Salvadorean populations. There are cultural differences and segregation amongst the DC/MD/VA area, but at least it’s not a call for ethnic genocide like what has been seen on the West Coast.

In Richmond. The State must feel under threat.

From all sides of the political spectrum, I’ve heard a host of different economic strategies that have been proposed to encourage job growth in blighted urban communities. These have ranged from jobs within the public sector to entry level positions in the corporate liberal dream of a burgeoning center city. More disappointingly, many from the far left disregard the wishes and wants of an indigenous population and propose either altruistic gift economies or a demand to proletariatize black market entrepreneurs.

What I rarely hear from major outlets or organizations is a strategy to increase low capital intensive entrepreneurship despite the already widespread existence of an underground economy in America’s major cities.

Currently, discussions on open or desktop manufacturing are limited to hackerspaces or garage-based innovators across world. Joining them in practice is the immensely successful Shanzai industries in China that are going to be facing issues of their own. While it may be confined to these groups for a few years, it’s only a matter of time before it bursts out into the mainstream.

The file sharing revolution and the introduction of high quality low-cost DSLR cameras has greatly influenced the access to production for many belonging to a class that were formerly (or still presently) black market entrepreneurs. Rappers outside the mainstream industry now have an almost indistinguishable difference from their bigger counterparts, HD-quality music videos are not just limited to major record or video companies but are now the product of local start-ups selling their services to the artists, people can make a significant part of their income from selling bootlegs, etc. And these are not just hobbies, but many times even transcend into careers.

Shouldn’t open-style flexible manufacturing and the many ideas of peer-to-peer economics thrown around in the hacker world fit right into this paradigm? It kind of already is.

My generation has an obsession with what peer-to-peer technology thrives off of. Cell phones, internet videos, computers, downloading, and others. Check out this description of the Chinese Shanzai from internet blogger Andrew Huang: (hat tip to Kevin Carson )

The contemporary shanzhai are rebellious, individualistic, underground, and self-empowered innovators… They [are] individualistic in the sense that they have a visceral dislike for the large companies; many of the shanzhai themselves used to be employees of large companies (both US and Asian) who departed because they were frustrated at the inefficiency of their former employers. They are underground in the sense that once a shanzhai “goes legit” and starts doing business through traditional retail channels, they are no longer considered to be in the fraternity of the shanzai. They are self-empowered in the sense that they are universally tiny operations, bootstrapped on minimal capital, and they run with the attitude of “if you can do it, then I can as well”.

This description sounds extremely similar to the common attitudes shared amongst my demographic. While many may not have manufacturing jobs, the dissatisfaction with the jobs that are offered to them (wage slavery at ___ multi national corporation) is all too obvious. With college out of reach, many turn to alternative ways to stack up capital and the attitude “if you can do it, then I can as well” maybe directed at mainstream artists rather than mainstream corporations, but this is where counter-economics may have the upper hand in popular approval leading to economic prosperity over the state-capitalist absentee ownership model.

Also, counter-economics can also be compatible with programs put out by community development corporations, urban agricultural organizations, other self reliant groups, and especially cooperative economic organizing. Collaboration with such groups is absolutely necessary to help the black market transition into a “legitimate” market, or at the least, be acceptable to the point that enforcement against it is almost a waste of resources.

From Uhuru News One of America’s greatest and most relevant revolutionaries.

The problems and concerns of our people which shaped Malcolm X’s worldview are the same as the problems and concerns we are confronted with today, although some of us would rather ignore them.

They are police terror — the same kind of police terror that shot down Paul Barney, and snuffed the life from Larry Murphy, right here in Tampa; the same kind of police terror that murdered Curtis Murph just a month ago in St. Petersburg, across the bridge from here, and that takes the breath away from any black person in this country when we find ourselves accidentally passing a police station while traveling throughout this country.

The problems and concerns that shaped the worldview of Malcolm X are still with us today. They are economic terror. The same kind of economic terror responsible for one out of every four black adults, and one out of every two black teenagers being unemployed in this country; the economic terror that makes you too cowardly to do the things you ought to do because of fear you’ll lose your job. The kind of economic terror that makes you choose employment and so-called economic security over freedom.

No, Malcolm X’s ideas did not fall from the sky. They were products of the real world that we experience. And since they were born from the world they are good ideas, they are correct ideas, and we ought to know, study, understand and live them.