Greetings and revolutionary love and solidarity. Once again, this is Uhuru Rowe, prison slave number 1131545, speaking to you live on this fourth day of November, 2021, from Greensville Correctional Center in Jarratt, VA.
I just wanted to talk about the elections in Virginia on November 2nd that resulted in the so-called “Red Wave.” That saw law and order Republicans sweep all three statewide offices and flip several Democratic seats and gained control of the House of Delegates.
I listened to a political analyst attempt to explain why this red wave has happened. They pointed to gun violence, critical race theory, masks and vaccines mandates, and the 2020 protests as the culprit.
After reflecting on the issue, I’ve come to the conclusion based on historical truth that the so-called red wave was nothing more than racist backlash to black progress.
There’s also been called white backlash in the annals of history, but I’ll call it racist backlash so as to not make a blanket statement against all white people. [inaudible] the election of Winsome Sears, the first Black woman as lieautenant governor, and Jason Miyares, the first Latino as Attorney General, posed complex questions of internalized racism.
Two things occurred in the aftermath of the passage of the 13th Amendment abolishing plantation slavery in 1865. It was the implementation of a system of Black Codes that criminalized the behavior of free blacks in order to keep them in perpetual servitude. Then there was the founding of the KKK for the purpose of terrorizing black people back into submission. Both of these acts were racist backlash to black progress.
In 1821, there was also a race massacre resulting in the lynching of more than 300 black people and the torching of their homes, churches, businesses, done all by a white mob. This was all racist backlash to the economic progress black people was making at the time.
The bombing of a black church in Birmingham, Alabama on September 15, 1953, by southern white racists that resulted in the deaths of four little black girls was racist backlash against the burgeoning of the civil rights movement.
And a black church in Charleston, SC by Dylann Roof can be viewed through the same thing. The deadly Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, VA on August 12, 2017 and the storming of the U.S. Capitol on January 6th, 2021 is also part and parcel of the racist backlash against the gains of black people.
Similarly, what happened on November 2nd was the election of law and order Republicans is nothing but a continuation of 400 years of racist backlash to the progress black people have been gaining in the last few years, especially within the last few months after the protests after the murder, the lynching of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and Marcus-David Peters right here in Richmond.
There is simply no other way to explain how during a year when the death penalty was abolished, marijuana was legalized, and Confederate statues, including the Robert E. Lee monument in Richmond, was removed—all actions that greatly benefited black people, was that it was racist backlash in the form of Republicans who we know are mostly by white people who live in rural and suburban areas go out to the polls in record numbers. And this is the demographic to which law and order Republican candidates tailored their dogwhistle messaging to.
So when the Republican candidates, especially [inaudible] and Jason Miyares talked about putting uniformed police back into school, they were talking about the schools that your schools attend, black people, in order to reinstitute the school-to-prison pipeline.
They was talking about firing the entire parole board and keeping people locked up for the reset of their lives, they were talking about your sons and daughters who are locked up and rotting in these cells, black people.
When they talked about banning the teaching of critical race theory in schools, they were talking about how they don’t want white students being taught and awakened to the truth about what this racist country has done and is doing to you, black people.
When it talks about taking the Commonwealth back, they were talking about taking it back from liberal and progressive political leaders who were championing your causes, black people.
Check this out. Black people about 45 million-strong in this country with an annual spending power of upwards of $1.1 trillion. If we were considered a nation, a new African nation, an independent new African nation, we would be considered the seventh or eighth richest nation in the world.
So we have the numbers and the money. The question is what is to be done? We need to start with detaching ourselves from the two-party capitalist systems and its racist institutions, which as you know perpetuates racism and ensures white backlash against any progress black people, new African people, make.
And once we have detached ourselves, we need to create dual power, a kind of a power that will allow us as a people and as a nation to rival and challenge the dominant two-party racist capitalist system.
This is what then-gubernatorial candidate Princess Blanding did when she created the liberation party in the aftermath of the police killing of her brother Marcus-David Peters while Peters experienced a mental crisis. It is not her party. It is not a party solely for black people. It is a party for any people who feel ignored, alienated, neglected, oppressed, marginalized, disenfranchised, and who has become disenchanted with the two-party racist capitalist system.
In that sense, the Liberation Party can be viewed as the Black Liberation Party, the Brown Liberation Party, the Indigenous Liberation Party, the Women’s Liberation Party, the LGBTQI2+ Liberation Party, even the party for poor whites who in their own times have been looked down upon and treated as white trash. Power to the people.
These commentaries are recorded by Prison Radio.
