Message to the Grassroots: An introductory brief fifty years on

Malcolm X interrogates all in Message to the Grassroots

“Just as the slavemaster of that day used Tom, the house Negro, to keep the field Negroes in check, the same old slavemaster today has Negroes who are nothing but modern Uncle Toms, 20th century Uncle Toms, to keep you and me in check, keep us under control, keep us passive and peaceful and nonviolent”

Today is the fiftieth anniversary of one of Malcolm X’s most quoted speeches, capturing many of the facets that make him a central figure in death just as he was in life.  With his words Malcolm creates an intimate atmosphere, maintains a sense of humor while utilizing a radical and uncompromising tone to build an all-encompassing criticism.  Clearly the content resonates with audiences today just as much as yesterday with the familiar unaddressed themes of class, injustice and war.  Malcolm X delivered ‘Message to the Grassroots’ at Northern Negro Grass Roots Leadership Conference on 10^th November 1963 at King Solomon’s Baptist Church in Detroit, Michigan.

“We have a common oppressor, a common exploiter, and a common discriminator. But once we all realize that we have this common enemy, then we unite on the basis of what we have in common”

The speech begins with a call for unity but this is not a demand for uniformity, an aspect made clear through the fact that this was Malcolm’s last speech before leaving the Nation of Islam.  Rather the call for unity is a strategy to promote a consciousness that has been denied amongst a people dispossessed and to investigate diverse cultural and intellectual traditions in order to build from these strengths.  Malcolm highlights the relevancy of the Bandung Conference where non-Western countries met to discuss their concerns without the overbearing gaze to the imperial nations; making it clear that people need to set their own agendas rather than simply reacting to a static political system.  The need to set our own terms is a conundrum that remains significant to contemporary activists and alternative media outlets.  The power of the grassroots is not in seeking to be a part of a bankrupt and corrupt political system but using creative abilities to organize themselves.

“If violence is wrong in America, violence is wrong abroad”

We might actually invert this quote as being ‘if violence is right abroad than violence is right in America’ thereby capturing a trajectory of Malcolm’s ‘by any means necessary’ stance that continued to develop until his death.  While there is always a need for contextualization Malcolm uses a discussion of revolutionary movements around the globe to reveal how black people in America are being contained by fighting imperial wars abroad and by being compromised by civil rights leadership.  In doing so Malcolm highlights the importance of land in revolutions, although not his intention he perhaps exposes a fissure of impotence to the revolutionary spirit of today; what skills can massive urban populations rely on in the event of a revolution and what can they hope to gain from a revolution when they a reliant upon the safety of the city?  Getting back to Malcolm’s words, the house negro/field negro dichotomy is used to launch into a criticism of other civil rights leaders as well as wider class conflict, Cornell West is utilizing the same rhetoric to expose almost identical inconsistencies today in Obama and others.  Indeed both note how civil rights leaders contain and co-opt the demands for change of people.  Some of the most interesting details emerge when Malcolm explains how the March on Washington came about and how President Kennedy drafted in Martin Luther King Jr and the rest of the ‘big six’ to contain and co-opt the discontent of black Americans.  Peter Gelderloos makes the same point about the failure of non-violence.

“If you think I’m telling you wrong, you bring me Martin Luther King and A. Philip Randolph and James Farmer and those other three, and see if they’ll deny it over a microphone”

While many of the differences between 1963 and 2013 are clear from the language the contrast that stands out in my mind is something that is easily missed or taken for granted; audience and location.  One of basic fundamentals of this speech is not the content but the audience and location.  In contrast to today, Malcolm is not speaking to some abstract ‘grassroots’ over the Internet or to those in the luxury of a university but to some of those most affected by inequality.  It is a well-defined audience that does not have to go to him on his terms – he goes to them and meets them on their terms.

Peace…

The Shape of the Beast Come September

“Nationalism of one kind or another was the cause of most of the genocide of the twentieth century. Flags are bits of coloured clothe that governments use first to shrink-wrap people’s brains and then as ceremonial shrouds to bury the dead”

Arundhati Roy, Come September

Arundhati Roy has consistently engaged with people and in issues to unhesitatingly question power. And she does not start from the position of acceptable western middle class standards. This has become more apparent as she seeks to question fundamental principles around subjects such as democracy, justice, the accumulation of capital, and non-violence.

Roy is at ease engaging political realms while simultaneously addressing complacency in her craft as well as in personal areas. And she does so with more acumen than established corporate media commentators. All of this was obvious from her Come September speech ten years ago and in her most recent publication she states explicitly, “my language, my style, is not something superficial, like a coat that I wear when I go out. My style is me – even when I’m at home. It’s the way I think. My style is my politics”.

To me she demonstrates most clearly that you can and should take a stand for something: assume a polemic but avoid being polemical in thought and action. And she gives those willing to listen a boost to do likewise, “I’m not here to tell stories that people want to hear. I’m not entering some popularity contest. I just say what I have to say, and the consequences are sometimes wonderful and sometimes not”.

The interviews of her latest book have all been published before, but this does not stop them reasserting something that is fresh in a world where mainstream politics stinks of decaying flags waved impotently by empire, in nostalgia as much as hope. Collectively the interviews shed light on what a critical persona can aspire to be while escaping the muck of corporate media in a necessarily penetrating yet poetic manner.

“To expose things is quite different from being able to effectively resist things. I am more interested now in whether there are new strategies of resistance. The debate between strategies of violence and non-violence.” Such points sound like self-criticism as much as accusation or provocation to impotent and incidental groups opposing empire. “I think that no one form of resistance is going to succeed. Like you cannot have a monoculture forest, you need a diversity of resistance… because non-violent resistance is a form of ‘theatre’, sometimes an effective form of theatre, but it needs an audience and a sympathetic audience”.

I am grateful for this collection of interviews but wait to see how many commentators remember her excellent writing presented 29^th September 2002, Come September. Or indeed if Arundhati Roy will provide a ‘ten years on’… but unfortunately I know not enough has changed. A repeat listening exposes Empire and we do indeed require new ways to act.

It is all too true that none of us need anniversaries to remember the unforgettable, so I choose not to drench myself in the horrific but to celebrate the alternative.

Peace…

Come September was presented on 29th September 2002.

The Shape of the Beast is available out now.