This week, we’re sharing words from anarchist, author, organizer and former participant in the Black Panther Party and Black Liberation Army, Ashanti Omowali Alston, in the keynote address at the 2024 Another Carolina Anarchist Bookfair in so-called Asheville. The presentation was entitled “Solidarity, Spirituality and Liberatory Promise on a Turtle’s Back”. You can support Ashanti’s GoFundMe here.
From the ACAB website:
Trusting in solidarity, the mysterium of spirituality, and a promise from god knows where—a “where” that at this historical moment, might just be Palestine. What does it mean TO BE in the midst of all this right now? RIGHT NOW!
Ashanti Alston is a revolutionary Black nationalist, anarchist, abolitionist, speaker, writer, elder motivator. A long-time member of The Jericho Movement, he is presently an advisory board member of the National Jericho Movement and co-founding board member of the Center for Grassroots Organizing (Vermont land project). He continues giving talks and writing inspirational analyses concerning the dismantling of the myriad oppressive regimes in which we find ourselves enmeshed.
Ashanti is one of the few former members of the Black Panther Party who identifies as an anarchist in the tradition of ancestor Kuwasi Balagoon (BPP & BLA). He developed abolitionist politics in the early years of Critical Resistance. He has helped save the life of a baby pig with animal liberationists, learned depth-queer politics from being challenged, and wants to see non-ego eldership partaking through sincerely loving the younger generations who truly want to ‘CARRY IT ON.”
You can find other recordings from the 2024 ACABookfair at acabookfair.noblogs.org.
Transcription
Cindy Milstein: I’m Cindy. I want to really welcome everybody here on behalf of the ACAB Bookfair. It is such a joy and pleasure and delight for us to organize this and then have so many incredibly amazing people show up in one place. Why does this have to just be three days? It’s also beautiful how everybody has been really helping, so I want to thank everybody who’s done so much this weekend to make this weekend happen and to get here and to be here. Thank you, everyone, really. Welcome.
I wasn’t planning to introduce Ashanti, but I actually feel delighted. I used to see Ashanti a lot, and we used to be involved in anarchist summer schools together and other projects together. We did a lot together. We saw each other a lot and feel like dear friends. Then, I don’t think we’ve seen each other for 12 years or so, and it feels super powerful to be together again with friends and Ashanti. I’ve always really appreciated him. I keep saying “sweetheart, sweetheart.” I’m an older anarchist too, and It’s really nice to be around in this multi-generational space with someone who’s so humble and able to still see possibility, able to still see that we need to be in this for the long haul and be together no matter where we are with our anarchism.
Ashanti has had a long, illustrious career being a revolutionary and a radical, starting as a teenager with the Black Panthers, moving into the Black Liberation Army, with the State trying to contain and destroy Ashanti, and Ashanti not letting them do that, and coming out and being involved with the Jericho political prisoner support movement, among other things. And is also a parent. Okay, so enough of me. I’m gonna let Ashanti speak, and then we’ll do some Q&A afterward.
Ashanti: Okay, I’m not sure. I might sit down. I don’t know, man. I’m not used to the sitting down thing. Well, first of all, thank you for the introduction. It has been years, and it’s just been so good to reconnect. So a lot of times when you know that we’ve all been through so much, then you start seeing some of your old comrades, man, that kind of lifts your spirits up. Right on. But I need you to work with me right now, because I still got a few butterflies going here, right? So, back in them days, Black Panther Party, you know, when we said “Power to the people,” the response was always, “All power to the people.” All power to the people. So I want you to, like, help me to release these revolutionary butterflies out into your midst with your response: Power to the people.
Audience: All power to the people!
Ashanti: Power to the people.
Audience: All power to the people!
Ashanti: One more time. Power to the people.
Audience: All power to the people!
Ashanti: I see them. I see them. Alright. Now, it is clear. I said “to the people.” I did not say to the preachers, to the politicians, to them profiteers. To the people. That’s also my anarchist analysis of The Black Panther Party. It wasn’t an anarchist group, but there was so much about it that helped move me towards anarchism, anti-authoritarian thinkings and practices because the experience in the party taught me the dangers of authoritarianism, even when it was coming from good places. You know? We want to liberate our people. We want to help make a revolution in the United States, but then what happens when you got an ideology and a structure that so much resembles the ideology and structure of what you fighting, with just different words.
Then the FBI and the counterintelligence program and local police is able to feed in on your own internalized, colonial dynamics: the sexisms, the egos, and all them other things. Next thing you know we’re fighting each other. Movements are collapsing. There’s attacks on chapters. There’s comrades getting framed on charges. Others had to take off, going into exile. Others like Fred Hampton and those killed in their beds. It’s a dangerous struggle, but the fact is, that I and others have survived… And I’m 70 now, you know. My knees feel it more, so I accept the elder thing now, right? I’m an elder. So at least I have opportunities to share with you, those things that I hope will be helpful. In this particular case, when I say to you, because this is an anarchist gathering, and I’ve just been so excited since coming here Thursday to return to a spirit of “we going to make this happen.”
That’s, that’s an anarchist spirit to me, because the other folks I’m talking to are still trying to figure out “How are we going to indoctrinate people in the community to do the right thing?” You’re talking about, “How can we create the liberatory programs right now with the knowledges that we are learning right now, that we know we will learn more tomorrow, and put it into all kinds of experimental practices?” That’s where it’s at. That it is not the ideological approach that just says “We got this all laid out. We got it laid out. You just gotta follow this. No, they did it in China. No, they did it in Cuba. They did it in Africa.” No, they didn’t. No, they didn’t.
If anybody listening was at Modibo’s talk… and Modibo, I think, is my elder. Modibo is like in his early 80s? And just to say this about him, also, it was such an honor for me to finally meet him in person. He’s been around longer than I have been doing this, and still believes in his 80s that we can change the world in very anti-authoritarian ways. Every workshop that I was able to attend today just reaffirms for me the same thing. When I went to the harm reduction one, because I couldn’t get into yours, it was so packed [speaking to another presenter]
This harm reduction is all new to me, because I feel like I’ve been out of it for a long time. I finally been able to say easily: depression. The depression comes when I feel like, “Man, is a generation going to take this, or are they going to get bamboozled and buy into this madness again?” And when I do that and isolate myself, I get depressed. I sit and do nothing. The years go by. The years go by. Then miraculous things happen. You know? One of them was Seattle, way back. Another one was the Zapatista movement, right? The latest one is what? Who would have thought with what’s going on in occupied Palestine, that the international resistance would be at this level? I’ve never seen anything like it in my 70 years. So it makes me feel like, “Well, Ashanti, you need to get back in there. Get back in there.” You know? And I feel like in the last year, there’s been things happening that have allowed me to feel like I can still be in there and just give it my best. You know? In the process, I am learning so much, from the social media stuff, which I always thought was quite crazy. But then I realize it also has us watching, by minute, the genocide going on over there. It’s allowing us to connect, to increase our resistance, the demonstrations, what we’re doing on the campuses. Oh my god, it’s not over. It’s. Not. Over. So I want to share that with you, because I’m like, “I’m back in. I am here,” and I thank you for the way you have invited me here.
All right. The title I chose was—I don’t know why I choose these. I try to do these fancy titles—“Solidarity, Spirituality and the Liberatory Promise on a Turtle’s Back.” Y’all know what I’m talking about with a turtle, right? The Turtle? Turtle Island, right? I wanted us to think of images. So I would go on the internet and I would put in “on the back of the turtle”, and I put in “civilization on the back of a turtle.” I wanted the images that would show this turtle. Aang was a great help for me, I should tell you. And the particular scene where he’s talking to the lion turtle.
I wanted to imagine in my mind what it means for indigenous folks who have a certain mythology around Turtle Island, and what it meant for Aang to have this conversation with the turtle, to get this wisdom. What does it mean for those who… We can be so scientific. We can just lop that off as, oh, “That’s myths. That’s folk tales. That means nothing.” But what does it mean to those for who that is their culture, and they get their wisdom from these stories? What happened to the role of stories? You know, not everything has to be so scientific. For us, as it helps to focus on the plight of indigenous folks in this country, let’s look at what it means that Turtle Island, before the European conquest, had its ways of living. Then here comes the conquest, and they start building on top of the back of the turtle. Just moving, removing whatever was there, the villages, the agricultural scenes and whatever. Now, you are chopping down trees, you are blowing up mountains, you are digging deep into the earth, and you start to build the United States, or this North American empire, on the back.
I wanted to be able to envision our role as, “How can we get this empire off the back of the turtle?” It can only happen with mass social movements that we become that can opener that just starts cranking around this turtle. And at some point we just gonna flip this motherf*cker off into the galaxy. So that we might begin to really create them lives we know we deserve. We know. We want to live better. What I like about the fact that we are anarchists is that our visions tend to be that imaginative. Our practices tend to be that daring and risky. That’s why I think we have such an important role to play, because a lot of other folks are just dealing with such old ideas, not critiquing them. Old practices, not looking at them to see how destructive or poisonous they can be. Settler colonialism is one thing to say, but what happens when you look at internalized colonialism? What does it look like as we’ve been here and it has seeped all in our behaviors, our bodies? That means that we have got to fight this battle on different level. Different levels.
What happens in solidarity a lot of times, even just in a simple way, is how do we look at each other as we go down the street sometime or knock on the neighbor’s door? How do we look at each other? From saying, “Hey, neighbor, how you doing?” Was it last night or night before the neighbors where I’m staying had lost the cat. They lost the cat. So they’re like, “Well, let’s exchange numbers, and if we see the cat, we help you and return the cat.” Is that not solidarity? Mutual aid? You hear what happened to the indigenous folks—this was me with Wounded Knee—and you want to figure out, “Well, how do you help the folks in Wounded Knee?” Attica jumps off and being that I’m in New York/New Jersey at the time, there’s folks like, “Well, we got to figure out how to get up there and help them prisoners in rebellion.” The act of doing those things has the potential to not only really aid them but to change you in ways that you may not have even expected. That is amazing. It is an amazing way to be in the world where that kind of surprise is allowed to happen in your life.
There’s a story that some of you may know from reading Assata Shakur’s autobiography, when she talks about her grandmother. She had, I don’t know if it’s a phone conversation or a grandmother came to see her. Her grandmother’s this religious woman, and the grandmother is like—she called her Joanne, I’m sure. And she’s like, “Joanne, I had a dream last night, and in that dream, you had got free!” I’m sure Assata and them at the time was plotting anyhow, but that coming from grandma, from that place… I’m sure Assata ain’t trying to do no scientific analysis with her grandmama telling her. She knows her grandma’s a spiritual woman. Take it for what it’s worth. What happens eventually, maybe within the next month, is Assata is free. Those kind of acts of solidarity… because this was an integrated underground team. It was not only Black Liberation Army, it was Weather Underground and others, some with no organization, who came together in solidarity to free Assata Shakur. I bring that up so that it’s not just all in, “We’re going to change. We’re going to evolve. We’re going to become new.” Sometimes it’s in the very physical acts of freeing somebody from one of the most oppressive situations you can be in. In that process, every one of them involved in that process was affected by it in some really great, humanizing ways when it was successful. We in a struggle that we gotta be open to what we do on the every day in our organizing and how we how we relate to people, how we meet people, how we make love, how we talk to folk, how we get up, how we get down means something.
One of the most craziest things, I think, for people to get is that our oppression is really deep and on many levels, but one of the ways to deal with the internalized part is that you got to seek joy. Sometimes it sounds crazy. How can you seek joy when there’s so much suffering? Because that joy is the most powerful way to combat the internalized oppression that you’ve been carrying. And this is what I learned from the years in prison, from reading all the radical psychologies and the different things like that. You got to return to something that for many sounds, “Oh, that’s kind of wishy washy,” but no Martin Luther King said it’s the most powerful force in the universe, love. At first, when I read that from him in prison, I’m like, “Oh, Martin, you always talking that love.” But I’m also reading books on love, from Erich Fromm to others. And I’m like, oh, I get or at least I’m getting it. Looking at what we’ve been through, I’m like, I don’t want to repeat those same things when I get out, and I want to be with folks, like-minded and like-hearted folks, when I get out so that we are trying to create new ways of making this transformation of society happen, that includes our transformation in the process, that does not leave it up to some future time when we done overcame the capitalist class. That is such bullsh*t. I use bullsh*t because I heard my other comrades use bullsh*t. [Audience laughs]
But, those things become very, very important. So when I get the opportunities to share, those are things I want to share. When we was dealing with the Palestine presentation earlier, on the resistance, what lessons can we learn? I’m already feeling like, “oh man, this is a hard thing to convey to folks, that we may be in struggles where people are really going to get hurt.” I think of that young one, [Tortugita], who I’m sure did not have any idea [they were] going to end [their] life there, right? And many others who have been in or who go to jail for one day and get bailed out, but that might be the most traumatic experience they have ever had, and they’re going to need help. So in our formations, we have got to work into what we do, how we learn: collective care, community care, self-care. It is one of the most powerful ways for us to deal with the internalized stuff, as we’re dealing with these mega systems of oppression that we’re going to meet. How are we going to change with each other?
I had one question yesterday around what happens when someone is physically or sexually harmed within the movement. It happens. I think I shared one example of back in our days when that has happened and we didn’t necessarily have the best methods, but it at least let me know that we need to have more understandings. Harm reduction, more understandings. When someone is hurt deep inside, there are folks now who can help us on them levels to help those individuals to kind of recover. Otherwise, we kind of push them to the side.
One of the new words I’ve learned this year is neurodivergency. [Audience cheers] Now for me, that is so exciting. For one, it’s like what the fu*k is neurodivergency? Because it came up in this gathering, so I know when I’m going home, I’m getting right on the laptop, and I’m looking it up. Looking it up gives me an understanding of something that can be so important in our movement so we stop isolating folks who don’t fit the norm. How do we do that? We’re the inclusive ones. We’re the ones who include. We’re the ones at least make them efforts. It’s always a struggle, but we make them efforts. For me to have that understanding also allowed me to look back on on folks who I may have avoided… because what? They sound a little crazy? They talked a little crazy? They moved a little crazy? Like “oh… oh, okay, I’m going to change that.” So I know that when I have times to talk, I want to bring that up. At least from me because I know that I got some social capital being Ashanti from the Black Panther Party, the Black Liberation Army. I done did all this prison time. Nothing compared with what Mumia is doing now. I put all that perspective. It ain’t nothing. But the things that help us to change within, for me, is still primary.
The incident in the library. I’m just gonna be brief, but I’m like, “Oh, these my childrens here.” Okay. I know I could just sit back, because they got this. They got this. But it’s like, we’re the ones who are at least willing to stand and fight. Not in the macho sense that we just going to fight. We got an understanding with it. We know that everything we do has a much larger and deeper picture, because the world we want is much larger and deeper. It’s that Octavia Butlerian world. It’s them type of science fiction worlds, right? That’s why I think that imagination part becomes so important. We cannot be locked down. We don’t lock ourselves down, you know? Because in this struggle, we do need everything. We need everybody.
As a Black revolutionary and one who, I’m very clear—I call myself a revolutionary nationalist, but I also say that you got to go beyond nationalism. One of the reasons for the “beyond” is because I know old school Black Nationalism excluded women, excluded queer folks. But I understand the power of it. The thoughts of what brings Black people together. Even if we say “Black Nation”, even if we say “Black Liberation”. We know it’s talking about our community, but I know that my role is to make sure that we’re being inclusive in our circles. So I’m constantly telling you, especially young Black folks, that those who are speaking in our behalf—because, you know, anarchists don’t play “you speaking on our behalf”. You don’t do that. But in our circles, we need to be the ones to speak up and say, “Uh-uh, we ain’t all on that page.” If you’re going to talk about our people. You talking about us too, and we’re playing a part in this, as you are. Maybe you might be the one who has to move out. In the ’60s, too, there was a point where there was a saying, “Move on over or we’ll move all over you.” That point may have come again in the Black Movement, as we speak.
I’m using this as an example, because, as we do all the things we do in our localities and our homes, in our private lives, we got to keep in mind, just like I do, that people somewhere, everywhere, always are trying to raise the stakes, are trying to break out of the box. When I don’t remind myself is when I go into depression. My friends get on me. They say, “You’re watching too much CNN, too much MSNBC, or that station”. So I got to keep reminding myself, “No, remember Seattle? Remember the Zapatistas? Remember the uprising with George Floyd?” Oh no, I got to remember. I got to remind myself. I’m telling you that as an elder now. I got to keep reminding myself. You got to keep reminding yourself that all over people are doing things that will really confirm and affirm that we can make this revolution, insurrectionary change happen. [Audience cheers]
So I’m not sure. At some point I’m gonna see if I can play something. When I do it, I’m gonna put the microphone up to give you an example of what I’m saying. There’s times when I’m sitting at home and my wife would say, “I’m sending you something.” I don’t know if it’s Tiktok or… I don’t know them things. But it was this brother at a meeting with other Black folks. And I’ll stop there for a minute. I have been in my own head searching for what ways could those of us in the Black community confront those male-ist, sexist, heterosexist folks in the Black community who are really impediments to our liberation and participation in the broader movements. And I’m like, “man, we have got to confront these folks!” I could not find words, and then my wife sends me something. This brother’s at a meeting, and he just lets these other folks—Black folks in the meeting, all black—he lets them have it. He’s telling them that, “You can’t accept the leadership of Black women and Black queers because of who they having sex with?” He just lets them have it and challenges them. He says, “their leadership seems to be calculated. They’re there for me when I can’t be there for myself because the police is shooting me and throwing me in prison, and you telling me you concerned with who they having sex with?” I’m like, “this is the language I’ve been looking for!” Because sometimes you have got to do that even amongst your own neighborhood, your own community. You got to kind of let folks know that, “no, this has to stop. I am here. This has to stop.”
So all these things become really important, even if they seem insignificant in an isolated way. They’re really not. We are the ones that are really putting out visions of ways that we can be in this land mass, beyond empire, respecting that this is Indigenous land. We are the ones that are really putting forth that we need to have hard conversations. We are the ones who are saying, “Hey, right now, them folks who are using needles over there, they need some help. Right now them folks that are in prison over there, they need some help. Right now these children are not getting a proper education. We need to be able to help them.” Immediate stuff. But every immediate stuff has broader, deeper visions going on. We have got to keep that in mind. Keep it in mind.
So the last few days—I know tomorrow, I’m here tomorrow. I am still on the cloud. I don’t know if you can tell. It just confirms and affirms to me that it ain’t over. Y’all make me so proud. [Audience claps] So proud.
I’m not necessarily going to be long, but I wanted to talk about the promise, the liberatory promise, which basically comes down to this: in a religious way, you could call it the covenant. In a legal way, you could call it a promise, but in a spiritual way it can also be like your ancestors. You know that your ancestors did the best they could for you, and when you give them thought, it is really like drawing from them that they wanted the best for you. Your spirituality may be telling you that, “Yo”—and this is that covenant, right?—“if you do these things, if you believe in yourself, if you believe in the people, then we’ll win. This land can change.” It’s passed on from generation to generation. In the Black Movement, we talk, probably to this day, about the promised land. It all comes from the Bible. The promised land. We ain’t got to the Promised Land yet, but I think it’s because of the situation we’re in. We were kidnapped, put in that ship and brought here. We can’t even call Africa the promised land. It may, it may have to be here. It’s got to be here in dialog with our indigenous folks, but we ain’t got nowhere else to go. We’re not immigrants. The Chicanos, they’re not immigrants. The Indigenous folks are not immigrants. We’re not immigrants. We came here in the most horrible way, but this ain’t been home to us yet. So the promise is that together, we can create the vision of what a home for all of us could be on the kind of liberatory basis that really allows for, like that Zapatista thing, a world where many worlds exist. Them kind of imaginative visionings, we still have to do that. We have to do that, probably more important than any thing else, to know why we engage in the most minute actions or behaviors.
So I’m going to see if I can play this. If I can get it, I have to put it up to the microphone. The reason I’m playing it is because I want to see my peoples pull it together. You see the election thing going on now, you got all these Uncle Tom collaborating Black folks that’s going to do everything they can to pull us back into this monster’s grip. Even with militant rhetoric. That’s an Al Sharpton, right? But when you got others on the ground having these other conversations, they give you an indication that whatever those are saying in the media, listen to the conversations that are going on on the ground level, in the communities. That might give you more of an insight of the level of resistance and the potential of more resistance.
I think Modibo [Kadalie] was saying that also with his presentation. He’s telling you the books that him and Andrew [Zonneveld] have written are dealing with the resistance going back to the 1500s when they brought the first Africans over, how they had to resist in very intimate, direct, democratic ways. Modibo brought up at the end that they didn’t write these books for people to just know the historical explanations that they’re putting out, but for us to see that even as we live now, there are people who are engaging in direct democracy, and sometimes we just need the vision to see it and to know how to support that. Which is why, again, we are not the vanguard. We just really trying to help ourselves and others to see how we can already do this and just bring the streams together. So as I go, I’m gonna try to get this. I ain’t the best at this. My computer is not the fastest. Everybody’s alright so far? [Audience cheers]
While I’m doing this too, just in New York last month. I went to New York. I’m in Rhode Island. Two of our comrades had passed. Sekou Odinga, who was Black Panther Party, Black Liberation Army. One of those, when they set up the international chapter in the Black Panther Party in Algiers, they was meeting all these different liberation movements, including the Palestinian Liberation Organization, the PFLP and stuff. And Sekou and others was part of those who went to training camps run by the Palestinians to learn guerrilla warfare and to bring them skills back here. So there’s stories like that. Some of them people didn’t even know until the memorial, because some of that was shared. But then there’s also Greg Thomas, professor in Massachusetts. He did a book on George Jackson, who was at certain point in California prisons, he was the revolutionary organizer. At one point, was incorporated into the Black Panther Party, but then they killed his brother who was trying to help free him one year, then he made an escape attempt and they killed him. When they raided his cell and took out everything from his cell, he had two handwritten poems. One of them was called “Enemy of the Sun.” When it was put out, a lot of people thought that he wrote it, but then in some research, they realized that no, it was from a well known Palestinian poet who, at the time, was in prison. But it was the impact that the Black Panther Party and the Palestinian Liberation Movement had on each other. So again, you never know how events in the world are going to impact you. Okay, I’m getting back to this.
[Video Clip]
“…just shot dead in the street? Guess who’s not on the front lines? [Inaudible] Black women and gay men are running. So if you sit here and tell me that you can’t follow leadership from a gay man or Black woman, to be honest, you p*ssy. Because if you can’t take somebody who’s way more, far more calculated to run this because of who they decide to have sex with, I’m worried about who you’re trying to have sex with. What is your issue? If they gay. It has nothing to do with you. If they a woman has nothing to do with you. Let them lead. They trying to make sure we not shot no more. You not doing it. You not doing it. I can’t do it. A lot of us can’t do it. Why we f*cked up? If we come into contact with the police, we’re going to jail. So when they out here, and they putting [inaudible] f*cking life on the line, when they really dying. There’s an astronomical number of Black women dead for no reason. A number of gay, trans people dying. Guess what color they are? They Black. So just saying, ‘I can’t get behind that because you gay.’ F*ck outta here. Get behind them and shut up or stay at home.”
[crowd applause]
Ashanti: So I share that because you never know what helps you to keep them spirits up. Or sometimes you just could be down in the dumps and you’re like, “Are we gonna pull this together?” and it could be something as simple as that. It could be you hearing a poem. It could be you just watching a couple walking down the street with a child. Those things that feed that spirit in you for more, for better, for freedom. When I hear that, then I know that things I was concerned with, even in the Black community, that lets me know it’s already happening. Even in the different struggles that we represent in here, you should have a sense that what you’re doing is already part of 1,000 other efforts and work being done. We just need to see it. It’d be great if we can figure out more ways to connect what’s already happening. The revolution, that insurrectionary impulse is there. People want better. So we gotta see it, and we gotta believe it. We gotta believe it.
So I’mma leave it there, because if there are questions I would definitely take them. But to know you… You’re beautiful. You are the ones—and you allow me to be a part of this—that is on the forefront of changing this world. Y’all are doing this, and I’m glad that there’s that inter-generational thing that we can do now too, because I’m so glad. We cut the older generation off. We were too angry. You can’t be up in your anger all the time, but the fact that we can do this in an inter-generational way means a lot as well. We can give you what we can. We don’t need to be your leaders, but we can give you what we can and help you, especially to believe that we can win. We can win. Power to the people.
Audience: All power to the people! [Applause]
Ashanti: Right on, right on. Okay, so do we want to do it? If they want to. I might sit down for that.
Question 1: I work at a liquor store that’s very small, and most of us are queer and trans. We’re trying to maintain a culture of mask wearing among employees, and we interact with a lot of customers who have seen that as being almost a direct threat to their being, and we have seen a little bit of escalation of discomfort, especially in older generations as a result. What would be your advice when interacting with these people on a day to day basis, often every day, to help make them feel included and empowered to do that for them. And thank you. Thank you so much.
Cindy Milstein: Anarchism in action. We want to do a couple more questions, and then Ashanti can respond. Anyone else feel like coming up and saying something?
Question 2: As someone who’s been on the receiving end of some of the worst that our prison state/police state has to offer, what would your advice be for people who are in conflict with the police as part of the struggle and for people who are currently incarcerated?
Question 3: I wanted to ask what ways you cultivate joy in your life that have worked over and over for you throughout the years, no matter what you’ve had to face.
Question 4: There’s been a Black trans movement that has run parallel historically to a lot of sort of like Black liberationist struggles, and I feel like Black trans people have historically been relegated to specific margins of those movements. What do you make of this parallel track that has historically existed but is so often forgotten and removed from Black revolutionary history, and how do we even conceptualize a future Black trans resistance if we can’t even begin to conceptualize this past one?
Ashanti: [Responding to question 4] A big part of my responsibility is because—and I hate to say this—but of those from the Panther Party, I think I might be one of the few who will even bring up the fact that our movements still exclude women and don’t want to hear nothing about queer, trans, nothing. And I’m like, “Well, if you give me the platform, I’m going to tell you that you need to. And either way it’s going to happen, if you’re talking about Black people.” I did that at the Black Radical Conference in Atlanta. I think it was this year. Because I am tired of it. And tired of it, knowing that as a young revolutionary, I participated in it. Not knowing any better, I participated. But once I know, then that’s got to come to an end. Sometimes when you feel you’re speaking out for the first times, I knew it took some courage for me like, “Nope. I’mma do it, and then I’m going to do it every time after that.” We have to challenge our people. That’s one reasons I wanted to show that there, because it’s happening even when I didn’t even know it was happening.
I just felt like a lot of trans/queer in our communities, just pretty much said, “No f*ck them man. I’ve been hurt from family and others so much I don’t even care.” I know that that doesn’t work for us, but I know that we have to be very careful with it. Because we have to still move as a people. So at least as a Panther, I know I’mma speak on it. But then I’m always on internet and listening to others who also speak on and then I’m reaching out. I want us to create more ways to be together, so that our voice becomes heard and our power gets to be felt. In this sense, yeah, we need power. And this other thing. I don’t even know if I can—I say “we” a lot when I’m talking about trans and queer community. I’m a cis male. I don’t even know if I can do that. I don’t even know if I’m supposed to ask for permission, but that’s the revolutionary community I want to be a part of. You understand? [Audience cheering] So I know that we have to do that battle, and I’m hoping that I still will meet more folks and we figure out ways to communicate.
So I know the other one… Give it to me again.
Audience Member: [Repeats Question 2]
Ashanti: Conflict with the police or in the prison system. We know that we always going to confront the police. They are the front line troops. In the Panther Party we called them “the occupying army”, and it made sense to those of us who needed to see that to begin to understand their role. In the heady days, you might find yourself confronting the police in the street and in the prisons. Sometimes you also learn some wisdom and know that you ain’t got to confront all the time and throw a punch to their jaw all the time. Maybe there’s other ways you can do it, especially depending on what the situation is. I was just telling my comrade who will be a father, “when a child is in the family, that means you ain’t making decisions for you anymore. You making decisions for the family. If you’re part of an organization, you’ve also got to understand you ain’t making decisions for you. You also considering the organization. It requires a certain kind of discipline.” There’s still the trauma that you’re going to get from these people. I think that’s harm reduction too. As much as you can avoid having them kind of direct traumatic experiences, you do. If you on a road by yourself and they pull you over, man, don’t start calling them pigs and all that, “Mother f*cker, why you pulling me over?” No. Just say “Okay officer. Here’s my sh*t. Okay, give me the ticket. See you later.”
You want to live. You want to survive to fight another day. The ones who are doing time in there. They learn very quick, you got to learn how to get around these people for your sanity, for your survival. Then at that point, if you ever make the parole board, you want to be able to give your best little performance. You got to do that sometimes. It’s a survival skill, but it’s also constantly recognizing the police is the police. Whether they in the prisons, they on the street, whether they got the uniform, going to Vietnam, other places, they’re still playing the police role. You understand that they’re part of the system that’s got to change, Anti-police, anti-prison system, all that is my concept of Abolition. That whole thing gotta go.
The other one was joy. And then there’s one after that. [Responding to question 3] Here’s what I do. The last few days: Easy. I got joy. This is the easy one. I got joy, and I know that I need to keep putting myself in situations of joy like this more. I think it’s been part of the problem that I’ve been isolating, and I feel like it’s been for years and years. Stop isolating. Get amongst them folks. I say like-minded and like-hearted because feeling like I’m amongst people that want to make this thing happen, it keeps my spirits up. Sometimes, at home it’s putting on music. I’m from Plainfield, New Jersey, the land of Parliament-Funkadelic. I might have Parliament-Funkadelic blasting sometimes, walking the dog up and down the neighborhood. Let me tell about the neighborhood. Barrington is the suburb of Providence. Barrington is pretty white. I don’t know what my neighbors think when I’m playing the music. I don’t put them earplugs, and I want to hear the music. I’m bopping as I’m walking the dog, and I’m sure the neighbors like, “What is he doing?” But the music brings up things for me. It was them good times. Parliament-Funkadelic, Temptations, Stevie Wonder, the jazz players. Sometimes I put on “Compared to What.” I don’t know if you’re familiar with it. Yes! Those things keep my spirits up.
Going to church. I’m back in church. A little thing about my church: it’s a Hebrew Israelite church. Not the people with the buckles and the outfits and stuff, just regular folks. It comes out of the Black experience, so it might seem like regular Black gospel, regular church, but we have our rituals which are different from Rabbinic and other stuff. But man, when you go there and you hear the singing and there’s times when you’re getting up and there’s a marching thing, right? To me, the marching thing is like, “that’s that marching thing. We at war. Hold up that banner. Don’t let the banner fall.” It means a lot to me. I need that community. I need them kind of visuals. I understand that the visuals are from a language we don’t use anymore, but I understand it. It helps me to know that I’m still in this battle. So going to church is the thing, too. And then connecting with my comrades, my old comrades, whether on the phone or sometimes it might be a memorial. It’s those moments when we’re together that we know we’ve been through something that not others will quite understand. And they may not get when we laughing over something we done did and we hope nobody ever knows. We know we’ve been through hell, but we came out still with some level of humanity and an ability to laugh about it.
Those are the kind of things now and then with the kids. My oldest is 50 and 49, then I got married again, so it’s a 14 year old an 11 year old. Their friends think I’m granddaddy, and they then my kids got said, “No, that’s dad. That’s my Baba”. But anyhow, watching them grow, like my son, who’s 14, big afro, and he’s into track and field. I’m watching this body grow. He’s got this little hairline coming. Joy that I’m still here to be able to see it because I did not think I was going to make it past 20. Did not think so. I’m 50 years over that. But being able to watch them, it’s them kind of moments of joy. And that’s the kind of thing that I want for us all. Moments of joy are precious. We have got to know that we need them. And for moments when you gotta sometimes take off—you’re going to the beach, you’re going on a hiking trip, whatever. Do it! Do it because it is you building a resistance against the sh*t that we face. Joy, and you’re changing in the process. So I’m really big on that now, and I think I’ve been in a good space now for maybe the last year for a long time. And I plan on staying. [Audience cheers] So I know there was one more, the first one?
Audience Member: [Repeats Question 1]
Ashanti: I think we need to figure out have how to have better conversations with folks who we know they’re not necessarily on the same page as us. One of mines was around probably 10, 15, years ago—being at anarchist spaces and you start hearing the pronoun thing, and I ain’t understand it then. But even as I did, I’m like, if I who make an effort to understand it find it difficult, because I gotta remember—My memory ain’t the best. What about other folks in the communities that just don’t even know what the hell you’re talking about? They might come into a meeting out of curiosity, and you giving them vibes because they ain’t calling you by the pronoun you wanted, you got an attitude and you’re actually showing it to them. I want you to have some compassion for those of us who are older. It may take a minute, but we try, those of us who try. Others who don’t try, you may just want to put it like, “I got a limit. If you can’t handle that, maybe we don’t need to talk, whatever.” But people are going to get it because you’ve been pushing it, and others have been pushing it, and the children have been pushing it. My daughter, especially the one at 11, she she already has a sense of who she is.
It’s going to get better, but there’s got to be some compassion. The resistance is not from a mean spirit. It’s just like, “What the hell is this?” And you talking about someone who physically looks like female has a different way to define themselves. Some folks are like, “What the hell?” The Rush Limbaugh folks are all on this. That’s why they’re saying “We’ve got to get Trump in office.” They are really on this thing of trans and queer and gay. Which is another reason why, if Trump should get in, we need to figure out how we’re going to support each other. Because we know some of the things Trump will do that a Biden may not do as fast. But we know that, you know, on the issues of gay and queer, there’s going to be some things that Congress may not pass that kind of makes it easier. It’s just like alternatives to abortion. We already should be thinking—I’m sure we are—about what we can do if certain things happen. We’re going to take care of ourselves and possibly show others that they can do the same. Because the State is the State. The Empire is the Empire.
Do you have any more? I could if you want [answer more questions]. I always like the this part, because I know people going to ask some direct stuff that they want to know or share.
Question 5: So many faces… First of all, thank you. Your contribution to the struggle is like innumerable and immense. I oftentimes find myself returning to your words in times of intense despair, and I just want to thank you so much for that. I came from so-called Chicago, where Stateville prison is planned to be torn down and replaced with a reformative, so-called rehabilitative prison instead. Someone inside also passed away this past weekend from a heat wave that affected him and had he had an asthma attack and died. So I just want to ask, knowing the death trap that prison is, how do you think that we can be in more material solidarity and support of people inside, beyond book packing, letter writing and phone zaps and all that type of stuff, especially knowing that folks inside are this wellspring of revolutionary, insurrectionary knowledge and practice?
Ashanti: The prison issue and the political prisoner issues are some of the hardest issues to get our communities to take on. As a member of the Jericho Movement, Jericho fights for the freedom of political prisoners in the United States. Man, we’ve been doing this for decades. Even just getting the folks in the community to listen to us that they are political prisoners, that they’ve been in there for decades. They’re the same ones, many times, who the politicians got them voting for more police, more prison construction or better… even if they say in better prison, no one is talking about abolition. It seemed like at some point that abolition was gaining some ground. I don’t know if that’s still the case, but I still think we need to work at that. We got to put ourselves in situations where we have more face-to-face with key figures in the community. When I say key figures, I don’t necessarily mean the politicians. Maybe sometimes the preachers, maybe the deacons and deaconesses, maybe and the regular folks or folks who are at the community centers and possibly even the street organizations. I think that we don’t do the face-to-face anymore, and I think because of that, we’re not developing a better way of presenting the kind of narrative that might get folks to understand why we need to intervene and what’s going on in the prisons, why we need to get our political prisoners free. There’s all kind of things.
It’s the most difficult area that I have ever worked in. There’s not been many joyous moments. My comrade Veronza Bowers just got out several months ago, after 40 something years. There ain’t no recognition about who he is, his contributions, nothing. When Dhoruba bin Wahad got out, there was a little recognition. When Jalil Muntaqim got out after almost 50 years, there’s no recognition. But every decade, every year he was in there, we was fighting for his release and going to as many different venues to speak about political prisoners. Reverend Joy Powell is in upstate New York prison now. No one knows about her. Reverend Joy Powell is one of them who has stories similar to Malcolm X when he was Detroit Red. That was Reverend Joy Powell at one time, and then she changed. She became a minister I think in Rochester, New York or somewhere upstate. She’s fighting against police brutality, next thing you know, they done got her jammed up on something, and she’s doing I don’t know how many years in upstate as a New York political prisoner.
So it’s hard, but I think the challenge is for us to find a different narrative and to start going into communities and having actual conversation with, I say, key folks. They might say “influencers” today, maybe on certain levels. I’m not big on the social media with that, but to be able to sit down with folks and say, “Hey, you know the situation we’ve been in. You know that there’s people going to come forth and fight back or try to lead us or raise consciousness. Why are they sitting in prison?” In the women’s prison, men’s prisons, there is such a clamp down that even me trying to stay up on it now, I can’t imagine how that would be for me. I just did total 14 years, but what I hear they’re doing now? That’s to drive you insane. You don’t even get the actual letters anymore. You might get a visit, and there’s the screen, if they do come up. You’re so far away, you may not get a visit. And it’s the same thing inside. The way that they talk to you, treat you, it’s like you’re an animal. So it’s a big order. Even on that, I don’t have no immediate answers, but I always go to [that] we don’t have them kind of conversations in the community no more. We need to start trying to build grassroots movements from the bottom by having them conversations.
A lot of times, the street organizations can’t get too involved because they already got records, and the slightest violation they got, then they right back in. So it even makes it harder. But what they’re doing in the prisons—and they’re expanding—we will be that open air prison like Gaza and all these situations now. The ways that they are laying down their technologies of control. It ain’t just the prisons anymore. I feel like it’s the welfare. I don’t even think they call it welfare no more. You got to go to court for all kind of fines, your car fine, your house fine, or they’re getting ready to do all these other things. They got us under such control. The Internet got us under such control. The cameras on the corners. The things that fly, [drones]. So it feels like it’s closing in, and it keeps closing. And we gotta figure out more how to break out of them confinements and get the people to see, man, we can’t keep wasting time, because it’ll get to the point where we can’t even breathe without their permission. So we strike out. Anarchists, we know what to do, so… I wish I had more to give you.
Question 6: Thank you so much. I’ve written down part of a question because we’ve had other comrades ask for advice when dealing with physical conflictuality with the state. And you’ve also spoken about times when, if you’re alone in the car at night, where strategic de-escalation might be something that you approach. We call that a version of a harm reductive approach. This has come up in conversation. I also relate to what you’re saying about this kind of disorientation and difficulty remembering the lessons that you’ve learned and other people have taught you sometimes at these very tense, fight or flight moments. So I’m wondering if you have some lessons that you can put into the collective consciousness. What might go through your mind in a moment where you’re choosing between this crossroads? Not to create a duality between moments of intentional escalation and otherwise.
Ashanti: Just real quick on that. I did share with somebody today. There was times I’ve been in demonstrations, marches, and the police start really getting out of hand. There was one time where they was really being abusive to this elder Black woman. And I can’t take that. I can’t stand and watch that. So I see myself walking. But the younger comrades, I had already told them about me in this sense: When you see me in that zone, all I need you to do, stand in front of me, make me look you in the eye. That’s all. Just say “Ashanti.” Because I know, and they know, I’m getting ready to jump on this mother f*cker. So imagine how I felt when I’m watching George Floyd. I am so angry at the people around him. I understand they scared, but you just stood there and watched them kill this Black man to his last breath. There’s times where you gotta really chill out. You gotta consider who’s around you. You gotta consider the repercussions of your own actions. So you can’t just snap like that. And if you folks, who you’re close to know you, they know what to do. And I would give them young folks permission, “Y’all know. Get in front of me. Get in front of me.” And I think a part of that why I don’t have no fears, because from the Panthers to the BLA, I learned to take them on. I learned that, oh, they can be just as scared as anybody else. But the thing is to think, just think about it. That’s why it’s important for when you let people know you, know your limitations. It becomes really important. That’s that’s why it’s really great when we can share our stories with each other. So folks know who you are, what you’ve been through, so some things don’t trigger you.
In the Panther Party—and this is around sexual abuse—a lot of times there was sexual abuse in the Black Panther Party, but even more, we didn’t know who was sexually abused before they even joined the Black Panther Party. You do certain things, and it’s a trigger. So me now, we need to know each other, but that calls for trust too. That’s cause for that kind of vulnerability, that you say, “I need to share with you that when you do this or you say that, it’s a trigger. I need to feel safe. I need to feel like it matters to me what you do and how it’s going to impact me.” That’s what we have to do more. It can’t be no side thought. It has to be fully integrated into how we’re raising ourselves. So, the thing with what do you do in them situations. Do you fight? Sometimes you do. Do you stand back? Sometimes you do. Do you think as much as possible who’s around you, who needs to be safe around you? That mother and the child that’s close by you, is it possible that they could get hurt? Just things to think about. So it ain’t just the macho thing. You think about it. And imagine them situations even beforehand, because sometimes that helps you to make snap judgments when it actually happens.
Question 7: So one of the questions I had is regarding “influencer” people, like how social capital affects the way that we organize sometimes, where people that are very influential in a place, because they’re more outspoken, or they know the right words to say and therefore can get into positions of more influence in anarchist circles. For example, in the Panther Party, like Huey or whoever, like people that get in those leadership like roles. How do we combat that? Sometimes it’s subtle. I’ve seen it in anarchist circles where it happens, but it’s not an actual leader. They don’t have a chairman or a title. Yet they’re able to move people around situations sometimes and therefore have more influence or bully other people. You see this sometimes. People don’t know how to approach this, especially when a person is of a certain identity as well or like goes through this specific struggle, and just finding a way of dealing with that.
And then another thing kind of adding to what you were saying about agitation. As an anarchist, my approach was always to agitate. Anywhere you go at the beginning, we hold the sign and we stayed on the sidewalk where it’s legal. But it’s “blah,” right? What can we do because normally, historically, anarchism has been agitative, right? You go to places, we’re known for doing the rowdy sh*t. So I was just wondering, like expanding on that a little bit.
Ashanti: I think we should stay rowdy. I think we should stay rowdy. [Audience cheers] But on the other level, now we can we talk about interpersonal relationships within the group and why it’s important to have some things you agree upon in terms of how you’re going to function with each other. What we’re trying to do in Providence now, we’re putting together community center, but the first retreat we just had was just laying down things as simple as: how do you want to be treated in the organization, how do you want your relationship to be with others, how do you want to make decisions, how do you want to deal with issues of egos and and the authoritarian? Because it ain’t like anarchists are free of all this. We got all these tendencies. We’re in this society. But I still think to this day, we’re more likely to at least be willing to talk about it and try to struggle against it. I think other folks it’s not even on their agendas. That’s so-called movement folks.
There’s a lot of information out here now, readings that people can do that helps us to see why it’s important for us to get to know each other and for us to create the kind of practices that helps us to minimize the tendencies of the bully, the sexist, the one who’s super submissive that has never known anything else but possibly listening to a man. We know that these are some of the internalized oppressions that we have to deal with. So let’s learn them. And there’s a lot of people that do trainings in them. There’s a lot of books out on it, and we are reading people, man. You know. I say that because I’m reading things all the time, because I know the internal stuff is really the thing that killed us in the Panther Party. The FBI just knew how to manipulate it.
So what do we do? We develop those capacities to help us to evolve, to get to better places. From our stories—our stories are so different. Each one is unique, but we gotta know it. It helps if we can get to the point to be honest and vulnerable, to share with the trust that ain’t nobody going to abuse what you just shared with them, that they will work with you, you and others will work together, to be better as a human being and what you do as an organizational member. It’s a struggle, so that’s why we ain’t bringing this thing down without, at the same time, getting it out of us. It’s got to be the same. You can’t do one without the other. That was that New Age stuff: “Oh, we just gonna free ourselves,” and no consideration about the mega-oppressions. We got to do both. The more that we do it, I think the better we can get. And I think it helps us also, we get better with each other when we see in the community, folks who have similar things. We got a little bit of experience and wisdom in how to help others in the community that don’t have this experience to know how to get to a better place. They want to join the group. They see things.
One quick example: One of the things that helped with Critical Resistance, because Critical Resistance was pretty much run by anarchists and anti-authoritarians, the ways that we did meetings, was always to get the men to not talk so much and to step back and to use the board to be inclusive on everybody’s input. Some people who had no political experience, when they saw that, like, “They really want, my opinion? It’s going up on the board?” That blew their minds, because no other time had that happened to them. It was us saying, “No, we are all important, and we all want to be included.” I’m telling you, it was us who were putting them examples forward. So we got to continue to do things like that.
I thank you for being patient. If I said anything rambling or whatnot, you can blame it on Cindy. But this has been great. This has been good. Let’s leave from here with that spirit, that spirit that we can change. We got ancestors. We got folks who we are building off of them. We know that this can happen, that what the United States is now can be no more.
Our dreams. Our dreams up. Our dreams up. Let’s make it happen. Power to the people, one last time.
Audience: All power to the people!