The Need for a New Militancy. By Eric Smith

What is the reason for today's Conservatives belated embrace of the life & legacy of the late Dr. Martin Luther King Jr? If anyone is even remotely knowledgeable of Conservatives (of whatever political party) long history of rejecting Dr. King's message of love of humanity & his unconditional embrace of diversity & equal rights and justice for all they will understand that their current embrace of Dr. King's life & legacy has absolutely nothing to do with admiration and everything to do with fear.

Like their ideological forebears of slavery and the segregated South, the biggest fear that Conservatives have; that they have always have since seeking to oppress we people of color, is that from the ranks of those they oppress and continue to oppress, will emerge another avenging angel of color along the lines of Nat Turner. This is what keeps Conservatives up at night and along with racism is a key reason for their advocacy of modern Lynch Law in the form of Stand Your Ground.

Like the old southern slave owners who used the benign and relatively well treated house Negroes & like the Southern segregationists who used the bought off ministers of the black church, they seek to promote members of the African American community who are non threatening; who do not believe in self defense and for whom turn the other cheek will forever be their Gospel.

What better symbol to stave the colored hand of vengeance in the face of Conservatives continued assault of the rights & dignified treatment of African Americans than Dr. King himself but not the real Dr. King mind you but rather their bleached, sanitized, and homogenized remaking of the man? "We will assail you violently without reason or cause & strip away your right to vote and be treated as equals" say Conservatives to we African Americans "yet you will never be justified in defending yourselves against our attacks because Dr. King, was all for nonviolence, for turning the other cheek, and Dr. King was a great man!"

Yet the gross miscalculation Conservatives are making is their assumption that we African Americans do not see right through their attempts to whore out the memory of Dr. King. With each passing year, as Dr. King's contemporaries die out and Dr. King himself retreats further into history, Dr. King's message becomes less and less relevant; not because he was wrong but because modern Conservatives seek more and more to use his life's example in the same way a bully puts on a pair of glasses in order to avoid being hit after he's beaten up somebody. There is but so long that a cowardly retreat behind those standards that the aggressive parties themselves refuse to live by will work.

The time is coming when new Nat Turners will emerge and these avenging angels will replace the Angel of Love that was Dr. King even while knowing that doing so may well indeed result in the extinction of the African American community as a whole. Dr. King himself said many times something to the effect that a person who is not willing to die for something has no real reason to live.

What the African American community needs today are more Nat Turners. It needs more Malcolm X's, H. Rap Browns, and Stokely Carmichaels. The rise of such figures are the only thing that will end the blood lust Conservatives & the Radical Right for these people have proven and keep proving time and time again that the word love is not part of their vocabulary; at least where their fellow citizens of color are concerned, and if we people of color have any hope of coming through this current storm intact then we must be more than willing to give what we get in whatever manner we're getting it.

We must get it through our collective skulls that we are under absolutely no obligation to be the doormats and road kill of bigots. There is nothing wrong with wanting to defend yourself, with urging your children to defend themselves. Too many of our men have been made martyrs and not nearly enough of our martyrs have lived long enough to become men. Our lives are important and our future is worth fighting for and if necessary worth dying for. The right of self defense is not the exclusive purview of any one race or culture. It is the fundamental right of all living things and as such it, life, is priceless and therefore more than worth defending at all costs.

The root of my hostility towards the GOP. By Eric Smith

Here's the deal. The Republican Party has been catering to this racist, crazy crowd that has been calling the first African American President of the United States the "n" word in every way, shape, and form since even before he first assumed office and I'm supposed to give a rats ass about appearing uncivil, super partisan, and cruel to them? Me, an African American man is supposed to give a damn what these people think? I don't think so.

The only thing I owe the Republican Party at this point is a proverbial punch in the nose and a swift kick in the ass. You don't go where that party has gone with people who look like me in general and this president in particular and expect anything approaching civility. Until the Republican Party as a whole publicly renounces and publicly disassociates itself from this crowd it will be in no position to expect, let alone demand, anything other than open hostility from the likes of me.

As long as it caters to that crowd which calls President Obama the "n" word with impunity, which calls for his lynching, which questions his legitimacy to be president, and seeks to suppress the black vote as punishment for our having voted for this first African American president in overwhelming numbers, there will be no room for compromise, no place for civility, and certainly no reason whatsoever for people like me to seek any kind of common ground.

No. As long as the Republican Party stands where it currently stands and caters to this racist crowd that is now its base, it will be rightly regarded by me and people like me for what it really is; our mortal enemy; a mortal enemy not to be accommodated with but destroyed.

A Most Bitter Irony. By Eric Smith

One of the great ironies I find in this ridiculous notion that to be young, black, and male is to be regarded as being threatening & violent is that the two faces universally recognized as symbolizing love, nonviolence, forgiveness, and reconciliation are the faces of two males of color by the names of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Nelson Mandela. Each one of them was at one time a Trayvon Martin & a Jordan Davis; a young kid who happened to have dark skin struggling to survive and make a place in a world that regarded the deaths of those who looked like them as a case of addition by subtraction.

How odd indeed that these two males who's skin color alone marked them as a threat in the eyes of so many are the ones who's love of humanity made the difference between destruction and survival for not one but two nations. This irony will never escape me and I will never understand it. I am considered a threat & a symbol of violence because my skin is dark and my gender is male? Really? If that is so I ask those who think along these lines how was it possible for Fate to produce people like Dr. King & Mr. Mandela; the universal symbols of the exact opposite of what so many say people who look like me represent?

Every black male murdered either by SYG laws or by their fellow people of color has the potential of being the next Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. or Nelson Mandela. That is the potential we lost in Trayvon Martin and Jordan Davis. That is what we lose every time one of our young people of color is lost to violence; a potential future symbol of hope and salvation for the world for how different & more terrible our nation and our world would be if Dr. King and Mr. Mandela had suffered the same fate as young Martin and young Davis when they were each their age. A strong case can be made that had such a thing happened there would not even be a world today at all.

So think about it. The loss of every Trayvon Martin and Jordan Davis has the potential of being the end of the world at some future time for who is to say that they, like Dr. King and Mr. Mandela, would not have been the ones to save it but for a madman's bullet getting in their way long before they even had the chance to try?

By Any Means Necessary! By Eric Smith

Violence is never the answer except in those extraordinary circumstances where the alternative is suicide. The parents of people of color are now confronted with the unimaginable reality that the lives of their children count for nothing and that they can be taken at whim and without any real fear of legal repercussions by anyone who need but utter three words: "I was afraid." No parent or guardian worthy of either title will willingly send their blood into the world knowing that their doing so will amount to sending their child to their deaths without eventually doing all that they can do to ensure that that child is more than equipped to defend him/herself.

The message to the African American community from these two miscarriages of justice in Florida is loud and clear; it is time to stop telling our children to turn the other cheek and it is time to urge them to repel any threat to their lives by any means necessary. This is no longer about taking the moral high ground; it is about self preservation; it is about preventing our collective extinction.

We are hemorrhaging our future with all of this disproportionate death and dying being done on the part of our youth of color. If we want our young people to cherish life then we must not hesitate to drive home to them that the first life they must cherish is their own; even if it means their being forced to take another life to preserve it.

Since the essence of the "Stand Your Ground" laws is the premise that one has a basic right to take another life if they are made fearful of losing their own, then we must instill in our youth of color that that rule applies equally to them; that just because their skin is dark doesn't make their life any less valuable or make their right to right to defend it by any means necessary any less valid.

Disgusted. Not surprised. By Eric Smith

As to this verdict in FL I am disgusted but not surprised. I have zero faith in this country's legal system when it comes to we people of color. As such, at forty eight I feel like a very old man who is living on borrowed time for no other reason than for the color of my skin and the fact that that color reduces me not only to the status of a second class citizen but that of an animal who is one step lower on the evolutionary chain in the eyes of those who administer this country's unfair system of justice. Talk is cheap. The fact is if you're a person of color in general and a male in particular you are a dead man walking no matter how old you are.

There are people out there who want you dead not because of anything you've done but only because of how you look and because your goddamned pigmentation & gender (over which you have zero control) automatically marks you in their eyes as a subhuman beast for whom your death is a case of addition by subtraction. So again, I'm disgusted but not surprised. It is what it is and the only thing worse than living under such an unjust & hellish system is to give up; to give my enemies the satisfaction of going down without a fight and not spitting in their faces as they take me down; defiant in who I am and proud of who and what I am to the end.

A Pigmentation Problem. By Eric Smith

If you want to better understand the mindset of African American Conservatives; especially those who are so open with their hatred of President Obama think of some of those studies done in the lead up to 1954's Supreme Court decision Brown versus Education which declared "Separate But Equal" to be unconstitutional. In order to establish the devastating psychological effects of racial segregation, one of these studies involved showing little black girls two dolls; one white and one black.

When those little black girls were asked which of the two dolls was beautiful; they always pointed to the white doll. When they were asked which of the two dolls was ugly, they always pointed to the black doll, and when they were asked which of the two dolls they looked at looked like them, they would first freeze, point to the black doll, and then begin to cry.

That is the place where these virulent Conservative African American haters of the first African American President of the United States really are. They can no more conceive of the idea of someone who looks like them occupying the highest office in the land than those little black girls of so long ago could conceive of those little black dolls that looked like them of being beautiful.

To them their color is a curse. It is reminder, at least to them, of their second class status as human beings. In order to feel even remotely meaningful they have to distance themselves from who they are; from what they look like because in their eyes anyone who looks like them is inferior; anyone who looks like them who succeeds is a fraud for in their eyes "inferior" people; people who look like them, have absolutely no business being President of the United States; they have no business being the First Lady.

In their eyes, if either the President or First Lady looks like them then something has to be wrong because they do not see themselves as being worthy of that high office. To them whiteness equals success whereas blackness equals failure. That's how their brains are wired. That's how they view the world and that is how they see themselves for in the end, like those little black girls of yesteryear, African American Conservatives have a pigmentation problem; that pigmentation being their own.

An Early Education. By Eric Smith

When I attended Kindergarten in 1970-71 me and a childhood buddy of mine would walk to and from school by ourselves and being that the school was something like seven to eight blocks from our homes this was quite a hike for a pair of five year old kids. Now this particular part of Freeport NY where I lived had only only allowed African Americans to buy houses there within the past ten years and black people were literally barred from moving into many sections of that town until the Fair Housing Act of 1968 was passed in the immediate aftermath of the race riots following the assassination of Dr. King.

Yet even though by 1970 things had begun to change, at that time they hadn't changed all that much. So me and my friend in order to get to and from school had to walk through a few sections of town that were still lily white and one day either in late 1970 or early 1971 this created a huge headache for me and my friend as we were walking home from school. I mean were just going about our business as usual trying to get home when suddenly out of nowhere a bunch of older white kids surrounded us. One of them poked me in the chest and said "Hey you (maybe he called me the "n" word and maybe he didn't. I'm not sure), this is a white neighborhood and black people aren't allowed to walk through here!"

Now I'm all of five years old and I am totally confused. I looked at him and said "What are you talking about? What do you mean black people can't walk through here? What do you mean by black people?" At that point one of them grabbed me by the arm and pointed to it. "See?!" he said. "That's black and people with this skin color like this aren't allowed to walk through this neighborhood, see?!" Now by this time these kids were getting ready to beat the living crap out of us and I don't remember exactly what me and my friend did next. The only thing I recall is me and my friend running like hell towards home & glancing back and seeing the lead white kid picking himself up off the ground. I don't know if me and my buddy hit him or barreled him over as we tried to get out of there.

I do know that when my Dad found out he erupted because as he told me, the same exact thing had happened to him when he was around my age in the early 1930's. He and no doubt some other folks did something in response to this because me and my buddy never faced a similar situation again, though I'm not sure that my parents ever really got over my having had to face something like this at so young an age. I mean my witnessing of a race riot following Dr. King's assassination had alerted me to the fact that something just wasn't right in the world.

The incident I have just described clarified just what that something was because until that particular incident, the fact that people looked different from each other just didn't register with me. It registered with me then, and it will register with me forever. I don't dwell on it but I'm never going to forget it and I sure as hell am never going to allow anyone else to tell me to forget it; to let bygones be bygones. As long as incidents like this occur I am going to call them out for exactly what they are for I owe that to my five year old self and every little black boy and little black girl who experiences the same exact thing and for the same ignorant reasons.

Fatally Flawed: Why Reaganomics can never possibly work. By Eric Smith

The fatal flaw in Republican's economic thinking (Reaganomics, trickle down economics) is that it is the economic equivalent of applying the laws of orbital mechanics to fixed wing atmospheric flight. Now how is this so? Well as is the case with fixed wing aircraft (airplanes), our economy needs to be in a state of constant forward motion (growth) in order to have sufficient airflow under its wings so as to provide lift. This comes from thrust; that thrust being the buying power of the public at large whose earnings are placed back into the economic engine in the form of the purchasing of more goods and services which in turn lead to the need to hiring more people to provide these goods and services who themselves in turn will put their earnings back into the economic engine for the purchase of more goods and services themselves; generating even more hiring, further lowering the unemployment rate, and increasing the amount of tax revenue taken in at the municipal, state, and Federal level.

The extending of unemployment benefits, food assistance, assistance for housing, healthcare, childcare; all of this puts money back into the pockets of those who need it and who in turn will use these added funds to put back into our economy. Thee Republicans, by refusing to extend unemployment benefits, cutting food assistance, seeking to undermine new laws that make healthcare more affordable, reducing or eliminating funding entirely for those programs that provide financial assistance for those who need help in paying for childcare etc; starve our economy of needed thrust by reducing the amount of revenue it takes in; a situation further compounded by its giving wildly expensive tax breaks for corporations, and tax cuts for the wealthy; all of which further starves our economy of the funds necessary to propel it forward.

Less thrust equals lower speed and a reduction in the economic airflow necessary to create lift. As a result, Republican economic policies have applied the brakes to our economy, causing it to repeatedly slow down to the point where it has stalled and crashed. This is not in dispute.

Now of course if our economy operated in a vacuum such as the vacuum of space and near Earth orbit, well their economic philosophy would work just fine because in orbit, in order to gain altitude a spacecraft must do the opposite of what an aircraft does in our atmosphere. Space, near Earth orbit space, is generally regarded to begin at around 100 miles altitude. Orbit is when forward motion equals the rate of fall and so with the Earth having a circumference of approximately 24,000 miles orbital velocity is around 17,500 miles per hour and that means it takes an object flying at that altitude roughly 90 minutes to circle the Earth.

Now the Republicans argue that the economy rises when we apply the brakes and we all know that here on Earth that means first a stall and then a crash. Yet what would happen if our economy mirrored the conditions of near Earth orbit? Well in that case, a slight braking motion would of course slow the spacecraft and cause it to rise to a higher orbit. Why? Well because in orbit the less speed you need for your rate of forward motion to equal the rate of your fall. So let's say you want to attain a stationary orbit and by that I mean an orbit where you stay over the same place all of the time.

In order to do that you have to reach an altitude of 24,000 miles; a distance that equals the Earth's circumference. You do that by braking your spacecraft and incrementally reducing its speed from 17,500 mph at 100 miles altitude to 24,000 mph at 24,000 miles up. So again, if the laws of orbital mechanics applied to our economy here on Earth, the Republicans would be right, and their economic policies would work. But our economy does not operate in a vacuum. It operates in an atmosphere and like our atmosphere it is subject to such forces as gravity and drag. You can't operate a spacecraft in our atmosphere any more than you can fly an airplane in space; I don't care how hard these Republicans argue the point; it doesn't work that way; period!

So the next time you hear someone say that the Republicans economic theories are out of this world; believe it because they are.

The Correct Lane. By Eric Smith

People like to say "stay in your own lane!" That if you're for African American rights, stick to fighting for African American rights. If you're for women's rights, stick to fighting for women's rights, and if you're for gay rights, then stick to fighting for gay rights. Well that would make some sense except for one thing; they are all the same lane. They are the same lane because each each involves the persecution of people for that over which they have zero control. No one can determine what color they are born with. No one can determine what gender they are born as, and no one can determine what their sexual orientation is when born either.

These three elements of who we are is what we enter this world with and what we will leave it with as well. We have zero control over any of it and therefore it is wrong in every conceivable sense to persecute and oppress people for that over that which they bear zero responsibility for if it is indeed a crime to be born as who you are, then everyone who is born is guilty of something since there is something about everybody that is bound to offend somebody.

Therefore it is far better for everyone to respect the rights and dignity of others; to treat them as we wish to be treated for history has shown time and time again, that the more people who do this, the fewer troubles there will be in the world. We have the right to dislike anyone for any reason; however wrong or irrational those reasons may be, but none of us has the right to use this dislike as an excuse to treat others in a way that we would not like being treated ourselves. That is where the line is and those who cross it are themselves the real problem rather than those who's color, gender, and sexual orientation give them offense.