The fact that our ancestors were kidnapped and forced to come to the United States has destroyed our feeling of nationhood. Because our long cultural heritage was broken we have come to rely  less on our history for guidance, and seek our guidance from the future. Everything we do is based upon functionalism and pragmatism, and because we look to the future for salvation we are in a position to become the most progressive and dynamic people on the earth, constantly in motion and progressing, rather than becoming stagnated by the bonds of the past.”   Huey P. Newton - To Die For The People

Huey P. Newton and  Premier Chou En-lai - October 1971

Whoever coined the word “supermarket” must have had in mind the state of world economic affairs today, where the multinational corporations and their “national government lackeys” view the nations of today’s world as nothing more than “geographic supermarkets.” Most of the rich, the prosperous, and powerful on this planet are literally “in power,” politically speaking, because they have a religious allegiance to the notion that they can only exist as a result of,  the “benefits of capitalism.” This is a pure and simple “reactionary intercommunalist” worldview.

Unfortunately, it is this view of the world that decides the policy initiatives and practices of the so-called “global” or “international” institutions like the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF). These “do-gooder” bureaucrats do not have a clue that Modern Globalism is a “reactionary” force that must be contained and regulated by any means necessary. They cannot understand that the “nations” of the world are simply places where the new multi-national corporate entities “go shopping” for raw materials at “cut-rate” prices and “cheap” labor for their diverse manufacturing endeavors; and that the Third World is increasingly becoming mere supermarkets for the sale of technological advances in communications, weapons, and an endless flood of “consumer gadgets” and “processed food.”

The so-called “free flow” of capitalism across national boundaries, its routinized trade and finance protocols, has in reality marginalized and made obsolete the very concept of a “nation.” So-called “modern globalism” will not, cannot, solve the growing divide between the “have nations” [the prosperous industrialized nations] and the “have-nothing” nations. Ironically, although most of these “have-nothing” nations exist in very agriculturally productive and naturally flourishing areas of the planet, they, more often than not, have a neglected  history of “colonialist domination,” a past full of experiences with the “benefits of capitalism” only for the “mother country.” The free-flow of capitalism in Africa, for example, has resulted in more poverty, more governmental corruption, and more wars between brothers and sisters. 

Not unlike its predecessors, “capitalist free trade” [under which African Slavery had its birth and official sanction], modern globalism is a force  without morals, simply seeking new supermarkets and new ways of exploiting the world’s natural resources and the labor of the people. This new global phenomenon [so-called modern “globalism” or “globalization”] has its roots in the very nature of the capitalist economic system; it is this fact that must cause rational minds to have serious concerns over the prospects for human life, or for than matter, any future life on this earth. 

The origins of capitalism, we must never forget, are found, first, in the “extermination” of the indigenous peoples of color in many parts of the so-called “underdeveloped world” [particularly the “Third World” in Asia, Africa and what is now known as Mexico, Central and South America]; and, second, in the African Slave Trade and the “theft” of billions of dollars of “free labor” [paid in francs, pounds, marks, etc], and outright theft of the gold, silver, and other precious stones found in these Third World lands. 

It is an indisputable historical fact that, literally, hundreds of millions of “people of color” were sacrificed to the God of Profits, A “god” who continues to be worshiped by those who believe in the virtue, vitality, and continued viability of the “free flow of trade and finance” of the capitalist economic system. around a clearly defined role dictated by the changing challenges, expectations, and circumstances. 

Here in the beginning of the 21 century, the people of the world clearly face new challenges in the area of defining, implementing, and guaranteeing the human rights of all people [rich and poor alike], creating real, and not imagined, opportunities for economic development for the world’s poor people of color, who are its majority. The people of the world are also confronted with the reality of  “global warming” and the wholesale destruction of the earth’s forests; and the people of the world are clearly faced with the reality of genetically altered food, massive air and water pollution - not hundreds of years away but in our lifetime and that of our children. 

It is time that we all recognize what all indigenous people clearly understood: we are one with this earth and all that entails. Increasingly, finding solutions to human problems are taking on global dimensions; thus, the increasing poverty, and continued and flagrant economic exploitation of people of color in Africa, the Mediterranean islands, Mexico, North, Central and South America, should be of major concern to all of the people of the world, and also to organizations like the United Nations [which was actually founded to be the lead organization for the maintenance of international peace, human rights, and security of all “nations” (big and small)]; but its practices have fallen short.

In reality, a peaceful, that is non-violent solution to the economic and related social ills of people of color all over the world is intricately related to whether or not the international community, led by the so-called “developed” and “industrialized” nations, will acknowledge the just demand for payment of reparations, making restitution for wrongs done, and/or eliminating the impossible-to-be-paid “debt” of the Third World’s poor nations. This acknowledgment, to be real, most certainly will involve the complete overhaul of the world’s monetary, trade, and financial institutions; and a extensive modification of the rules of engagement applied to those multinational corporations who have heretofore plundered, and stolen, the world’s natural resources and its people’s labor, with impunity. Only through the adoption of such a revolutionary or scientific intercommunalist view of the world can this planet and its peoples be saved from a fate worse than individual death.

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Consider this, the population of the United States makes up only 5% of the world’s population and yet it holds 25% of the world’’s prisoners. Furthermore, despite the hysteria whipped up by the media, the majority of prisoners are being held for non-violent offenses. Undeniably, a disproportionate number of prisoners in America are poor men, and increasingly women of color, in particular people of African and Mexican descent.
Consider further, the U.S. is one of a minority of nations in the world that continues to use the death penalty as a legitimate part of its “justice” system. Each year approximately 300 people are sentenced to death. Last year 98 people were executed, the highest number since the Supreme Court reinstated the death penalty in 1976. This is despite the fact that there are now 87 individuals around the country who were exonerated after being sentenced to death. These were the lucky few. Of course, poor people of color are disproportionately represented on the the death rows of this country. Who are these men and women waiting, sometimes for many years to be coldly put to death in the name of justice? 
The case of Shaka Sankofa, a Black man executed earlier this year in Texas is tragically more the norm than the exception. His case exemplifies the situation of countless others and is eloquently described in these words written by Mumia Abu Jamal before Shaka’s execution:

“At the tender age of seventeen a youth named Gary Graham was faced with a terrifying reality. The state of Texas and Harris county district attorney picked him as another expendable Black life form; a Black youth to feed to the death machine. In a case of murder, where neither fingerprints nor ballistics nor any credible evidence points to any notions of guilt, Gary Graham faces a legal murder.

Over half his life spent in a hellish and harsh Texas death cell, Gary Graham has grown into the man now known as Shaka Sankofa, a young man who is deeply conscious of his individual and collective self and of his place in history. If there is a crime for which bloody Texas seeks his death it is this: it is a crime in a racist nation for a Black youth to be conscious and thinking in political and collective terms. For Shaka Sankofa innocence is not enough. The state and federal judiciary have, it is true, provided oceans of process, but not an iota of justice.  His life, and the life of thousands of young men and women like him were expendable at birth not just at trial. Why should it be otherwise before the lily white and wealthy appeals courts?

“Death: The Poor’s Prerogative? That’s what capital punishment really means. ‘Those that ain’t got the capital gets the punishment,’ is the old saying. Once again we see the inherent truths that lie in the proverbs of the poor.”                              Mumia Abu Jamal Just before the National Democratic Convention held here in  September 2000, thousands marched in Los Angeles to demand a moratorium on executions and justice for Mumia Abu Jamal and other political prisoners. Just one of many similar demonstrations held all over the country over the last few years.

When Shaka was executed earlier this year I happened to be in London and I saw on British T.V. an analysis of the death penalty in America that exposed the many flaws inherent in the system. The report, done by the B.B.C.’s Newsnight program showed the death penalty for what it is, barbarity. Despite the brevity of this report I have yet to see anything even approaching its depth on the mainstream news media in the U.S.

However, it is not only the international community that is paying attention to these issues. Despite the biased coverage of the media in America, the tide is turning.

A recent nationwide poll showed that a majority of Americans, 53%, now favor a moratorium on the death penalty until questions of fairness are resolved. Furthermore, support for it rose to 64% when people being surveyed were told “in several instances criminals sentenced to be executed have been released based on new evidnece or DNA testing.” In respose to this even 49% of those who described themselves as “strong supporters” of the death penalty favored a moratorium. 

This poll was conducted by both a Republican and a Democratic polling firm. It was released by a nonprofit, the Justice Project, and by members of Congress who are supporting a measure which would require that those facing the death penalty be represented by a qualified attorney and be given access to DNA testing.

Other polls have found that support for executions has decreased in specific states, for example California, Ilinois, Kentucky and Alabama. Despite the personal assurances of Bush, a poll carried out in June found that  57% of Texans believe the state has killed someone who was innocent.

The time is ripe for those committed activists who have aways opposed the death penalty to step-up our efforts and galvanize the current changes in mood; they will not last forever! In ending his piece on Shaka Sankofa, Mumia wrote, “It is necessary to mobilize unsparing protests and stiff resistance to the death machine to bring about what should be our obvious goal:  the life and freedom of Shaka Sankofa.”  We could not save Shaka but let his death not be in vain.