The Urgency of a Third Reconstruction

[Rembrandt Brown]

We are witnessing the birth pangs of a Third Reconstruction
We need a moral movement to create change.
WILLIAM J. BARBER II
DEC 15, 2016

On election night I felt a great sadness for America — not a Democratic or Republican sadness, but a sadness for the heart and soul of the nation. It is impossible to react to the election of Donald Trump with anything less than moral outrage. Trump is, as David Remnick wrote for The New Yorker, “vulgarity unbounded,” and his election has not only struck fear in the hearts of the vulnerable but also given rise to hundreds of documented cases of harassment and intimidation.

Trump ran his campaign sensing the feeling of dispossession and anxiety among millions of voters — white voters, in the main. And many of those voters — not all, but many — followed Trump because he was willing to trumpet their fury and affirm their sense, deeply rooted in this nation’s history of race and class, that a new world had conspired against their interests. Trump offered no answers to their fears. He merely said, “You are right to be afraid and very afraid. Obama is the bogeyman of coming diversity that will undo the world you grew up knowing, and I alone can save you.”

While we do, indeed, face a dire situation, this is not new. Trumpism is as American as apple pie. There could be no Donald Trump without America’s first black president. Brother Van Jones got it right on election night: we experienced a “whitelash.” And we must be clear: every stride toward freedom in U.S. history has been met with this same backlash.

We faced it during Reconstruction, in the shadow of slavery and amid the wreckage of the Civil War. African Americans joined hands with whites in the North and in the South who were willing to see one another as allies. Within four years after the end of the Civil War, white and black alliances controlled every state house in the South. Together, they elected new leaders. Almost all of the southern legislatures were controlled by either a predominantly black alliance or a strong interracial fusion coalition. They hammered out new constitutions from a deeply moral perspective.

These fusion coalitions 150 years ago also built the first public schools and in state constitutions gave all persons a constitutional right to public education — something that to this day has not been done in the federal constitution. In the state constitution of North Carolina they stated that “beneficent provision for the poor, the unfortunate, and the orphan is one of the first duties of a civilized and a Christian state.” They included labor rights and the right to “enjoyment of the fruit of your own labor” in 1868, long before the Knights of Labor came south with their first southern campaign. They knew then — black and white together — from a moral fusion perspective, that labor without living wages is just a different form of slavery. They expanded access to the ballot and wrote a new fairness into criminal justice.

But in four years, the experiment of the First Reconstruction faced powerful and immoral opposition. And we must understand that opposition then to understand America right now.

We can’t make sense of what’s happening in front of us because, somehow, we’ve failed to see that this has been happening all along.

Conservatives began to wail against taxes. The cry about cutting taxes was an effort to end the First Reconstruction by keeping the state governments unable to fulfill the promises of the post-slavery economy and to lift up the former slaves. They wanted to keep the fusion coalition from expanding opportunity and enlarging democracy and supporting public education.

Why were they doing all of this — rolling back voting rights, taking away criminal justice reform, and undoing equal protection under law? They said they wanted to “take back America.” They said “we came to redeem America.” Look at that word “redeem” — they used moral messages for immoral activity. And by the turn of the century, all of the gains of the First Reconstruction had been overturned.

This same pattern of progress and backlash repeated itself during America’s Second Reconstruction — what we often remember as “the Civil Rights movement.” But we’ve glossed over this history too often. So we’re shocked by Donald Trump. We can’t make sense of what’s happening in front of us because, somehow, we’ve failed to see that this has been happening all along.

But inside this long, sad tale about America lies a roadmap for today. We must begin to think in terms of a Third Reconstruction. I believe the turmoil we are witnessing around us today is in fact the birth pangs of a Third Reconstruction.

The demographics are changing in the South and in the country. We know that if you just register 30 percent of the unregistered black voters in the South and you get them to vote along with progressive whites and Latinos, the South is no longer solid. We saw that with the breaking through of President Obama in 2008. It wasn’t about President Obama; it was the expanded electorate that broke through in North Carolina and Florida and Virginia. That was the first sign of an idea whose time has come.

When Obama broke through in North Carolina in 2008, we witnessed firsthand the whitelash that America is reeling from right now. Some folks are saying we’ll have to wait and see what a Trump administration decides to do. But we’ve already seen it in North Carolina. The blueprint for what it looks like to “take back America” in the 21st century was laid out in the extremist makeover of North Carolina’s government during the 2013 legislative session. What’s the policy agenda of Make America Great Again? I can tell you because we’ve seen it:

Give tax breaks to corporations and to the wealthy, attack public education, deny people access to health care, attack immigrants, attack the LGBTQ community in the name of “religious liberty,” strip environmental protections, and, finally, make it easier to get a gun than it is to vote.

But just as there’s been a Moral Movement in every era to raise a moral dissent against extremism, we’ve seen in North Carolina what a 21st century Moral Fusion Movement can look like. According to Public Policy Polling’s analysis, “Moral Mondays” laid the groundwork for the only successful resistance to the “Trump-effect” on down ballot races in the 2016 election. As such, PPP Director Tom Jensen argues, this movement offers lessons for resistance to a Trump administration.

What have we learned?

First, we must recognize the need for indigenously led, state-based, state-government focused, deeply moral, deeply constitutional, anti-racist, anti-poverty, pro-justice, pro-labor, and transformative movement building. There’s no shortcut around this. We must build a movement from the bottom up. We must build relationships at the state level because that’s where most of the extremism of the current-day deconstructionists are happening. They see the possibility of a Third Reconstruction, which is why they’re working so hard this time to strangle it in its cradle — and we must know that. We have to recognize that helicopter leadership by so-called national leaders will not sustain a moral movement. What you need are local movements. The nation never changes from Washington, D.C. down. History teaches that it changes from Selma up, from Birmingham up, from Greensboro up.

Secondly, we need to use moral language, like the devotees of the First and Second Reconstructions. Moral language can re-frame and critique public policy regardless of who’s in power. A moral movement claims higher ground than merely a partisan debate, something that’s bigger than left versus right, conservative versus liberal. We have to begin to re-frame the conversation not to talk about left policies and right policies, but let’s talk about violence. And as people who run for office, are you on the side of violence?

Why did we allow extremists to say “welfare” is a bad word when welfare is found in the Constitution? It’s right there: “promoting the general welfare.” Why do we still use language like “left” and “right” when it comes from the 17th Century, the French Revolution, when the Right wanted the Monarchy and the Left didn’t. Why do we allow them to put us in boxes? And why, for God’s sake, do we call people “Right” who we think are so wrong?

Moral language gives you new metaphors. You can say, I’m against this policy not because it’s a conservative policy or a liberal policy, I’m against this policy because it’s constitutionally inconsistent, it’s morally indefensible, and it’s economically insane.

And then we have to challenge the moral hypocrisy of the so-called Religious Right, which we should not even say because they are so wrong. They are engaging in a form of theological heresy. The greatest sin in the Bible is the sin of idolatry. The second greatest sin that has ever existed whenever people worshiped themselves was injustice toward other people. There are more than 2,000 scriptures in the Bible that deal with the issue of injustice toward women, the stranger, the poor, the sick, the hurting, and the unacceptable. You might have three about homosexuality, and not one of them trumps this scripture: you shall love your neighbor as yourself.

We can’t succumb to those who bought Christianity. Nor can we yield the moral high ground because we’re angry with them. Deep religious and moral values have been the backbone of every great progressive movement; prophetic imagination must come before we see political implementation. When the social gospel looked at children dying from child labor and people dying without labor rights and people in slums and poverty and not having a minimum wage and they asked, “What would Jesus do?”

There would have been no labor movement without a social gospel underpinning. There would have been no abolition movement without William Lloyd Garrison and other people of deep faith. Without strong voices from the social gospel movement, there may have never been a New Deal. There would have been no Civil Rights Movement without the moral framework underneath the Civil Rights Movement. There would not have been a critique on poverty and unchecked capitalism, labor rights, healthcare, criminal justice reform, climate change, and raising the minimum wage, without a moral premise underneath it. Moral framing allows us to change the language.

Finally, we must insist on connecting economic issues with our racial history. Too many people are too easily blaming the rise of Trump on Democrats forgetting the “white working class.” Yes, Trump appealed to real economic fears among working people. But he lost every income bracket below $48,000 and won every group above it, blowing the dog whistles of race to divide poor and working people. Any resistance to Trump that doesn’t address his divide-and-conquer tactics from Wisconsin to Ohio to North Carolina and Alabama cannot offer a real political alternative.

We need a moral movement to revive the heart of American democracy and build a Third Reconstruction for our time. This work is not easy, and it will not be completed quickly. But we know what is required to move forward together.

I’ve traveled to 22 states this year to train local leadership in moral fusion organizing and conduct Moral Revival services. This network of state-based moral coalitions will host a National Watch Night Service on December 31st, with the event in Washington, D.C., livestreamed to local gatherings across the nation. As formerly enslaved people were invited to enlist in a struggle for freedom on January 1st, 1863, we will invite all people of conscience to enlist in a Moral Revival Poor People’s Campaign throughout 2017 and 2018.

We face some difficult days ahead, but don’t let anybody tell you America hasn’t seen worse. Our foremothers and fathers faced far greater odds with far fewer resources. It’s our time now. Arm in arm, we’re moving forward together, not one step back.

 

[Rembrandt Brown]

​

 

[Rembrandt Brown]

The Urgency of a Third Reconstruction
The ratification of the Fourteenth Amendment marked a turning point in U.S. history. Yet 150 years later, its promises remain unfulfilled.
Robert Greene, Dissent
July 9, 2018

The ratification of the Fourteenth Amendment on July 9, 1868 was a turning point in United States history. Arriving at the height of Reconstruction, the amendment marked the first time the U.S. Constitution explicitly addressed the question of who qualified as an American citizen. Southern African Americans who had won their freedom in the Civil War were, in effect, forcing the country to redefine its identity, and to make good on its promise of universalism. The vision of emancipation expressed in the Amendment was expansive, serving to enshrine in law the principles of due process and equal protection as well as the basic right to citizenship.

Yet, a century and a half later, its goals remain unfulfilled. Movement leader Reverend William J. Barber II argues that the task facing the United States today is nothing short of a “Third Reconstruction,” drawing on the legacies of both the Reconstruction era of the 1860s and 1870s and the civil rights movement, or “Second Reconstruction,” of the 1960s and 1970s. In making these historical connections, today’s activists can understand that they aren’t alone, and draw both lessons and spiritual strength from those previous eras of promise and dashed expectations. If the left wishes to make the most of the Third Reconstruction—not just defeating a revanchist right wing at the polls but fundamentally changing the nation for the better—we can draw important insights from these two previous eras of civic revolution.

Allen C. Guelzo’s recent book Reconstruction: A Concise History (2018) reminds us that deeming Reconstruction a “failure” overlooks the many successes of the period. Many historians focus on the fact that Radical Reconstruction’s greatest victories—the ratification of the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth amendments, along with the transformation of the idea of citizenship into how we understand it today—were achieved over a relatively short period (1865 to 1870), only to be met with decades of vicious backlash. The rise of “redeemer” Democratic governments in the South, white supremacist forces who refused to countenance equal rights for African Americans, and were aided and abetted by most white citizens below the Mason-Dixon line, destroyed the brief moment of promise in the South. By 1877, the Reconstruction dream of biracial governments in the South—as emerged in South Carolina, for example, beginning in 1868—was dead. But it laid a foundation for the work of future activists by enshrining in the Constitution provisions that protected civil and political rights from discrimination due to skin color or ethnicity—if only the federal government would enforce them. The nation did not realize even a shadow of the promise of Reconstruction until the landmark civil rights victories of the 1960s.

The Second Reconstruction—a name given to the civil rights movement by historian C. Vann Woodward and embraced by many activists—encapsulated how many viewed the clash between African Americans seeking freedom and the white supremacist power structure of the South. Both eras saw considerable political and social upheaval in the South. However, most activists in the civil rights movement recognized they weren’t just fighting against Jim Crow segregation in the South, but against a nationwide system of discrimination that had to be dismantled. Local civil rights campaigns in cities such as New York, Boston, Detroit, and Philadelphia should be spoken of in the same breath as Montgomery, Birmingham, Selma, and Albany. Activists today, too, have shown a savvy understanding of how racist policies have taken hold from Wisconsin to New York to North Carolina—in red, purple, and blue states alike.

During the Reconstruction period, African Americans fought not only for political and economic rights in the American South, but also for civil rights in the North. The assassination of civil rights activist Octavius Catto in Philadelphia in 1871 is a testament to this fight. Catto was pivotal in raising African-American regiments for the Union Army during the Civil War. After the war, he campaigned for desegregated trolley cars in Philadelphia. Murdered on election day in 1871 for his forceful civil rights advocacy, Catto was honored with a statue in Philadelphia only in 2017—making him the first African American to be honored with a public monument in that city. The struggle for civil rights by Catto and others in the North during Reconstruction should remind us that the fight for freedom has always been a national one, even when public memory only focuses on the Southern front of that contest.

Even William Barber’s own biography points to links between the three Reconstructions. Barber’s father grew up in Plymouth, North Carolina, a place where African Americans still retained some economic and political freedom well after the end of Reconstruction. Barber’s parents were called back to North Carolina to integrate local schools as teachers, while Barber himself participated, as a second-grader, in the integration of a local school in the 1960s. The story of Barber’s family—not to mention that of many other African Americans—showcases a history of finding ways to get ahead during brief moments of political freedom in the United States, then bracing for the worst during the long nights of racist backlash.

We should also remember that each of the three Reconstructions, while revolving around the links between race and citizenship in American society, were concerned with two other questions as well: the role of gender and the clash of class interests. Movements for race, class, and gender equality did not always work in harmony: in the late 1860s, the fight over women’s suffrage dominated headlines and became a point of divergence between activists primarily concerned with securing the political power of African Americans in the South, versus gaining voting rights for white women across the nation. (“I will cut off this right arm of mine before I will ever work or demand the ballot for the Negro and not the woman,” Susan B. Anthony famously told Frederick Douglass in 1866. Douglass, for his part, said in 1868: “I have always championed women’s right to vote; but it will be seen that the present claim for the negro is one of the most urgent necessity.”) A century later, as the tail end of the civil rights movement coincided with the rise of second-wave feminism, the divisions were less acute—many leaders of the feminist movement had been galvanized by their experience in the civil rights revolution—but nevertheless resurfaced in different forms.

Today, of course, the rise of Black Lives Matter and a “Third Reconstruction” dedicated to safeguarding voting rights has coincided with a deepening women’s movement—for reproductive freedom and against Donald Trump’s policies as well as popularization of sexism and misogyny. Likewise, the rise of movements such as Occupy Wall Street and the Fight for $15 in the last decade parallel the rise of labor activism during the Reconstruction era, or the oft-forgotten but crucial labor strikes of the late 1960s.

What we should take from the idea of a Third Reconstruction is an awareness of how issues of race, class, and gender continually intersect to shape people’s lives. Queer African American women being at the forefront of Black Lives Matter—and making it clear that their multifaceted identities informed their leadership—is but one example of intersectionality in the Third Reconstruction. Another is the success of the Moral Mondays movement, led by Rev. Barber in North Carolina, which has championed abortion rights and voting rights, environmental justice and racial justice alike, all while fighting cuts to social services and a raft of discriminatory laws like the state’s notorious “bathroom bill,” HB2. The same spirit carried through the Poor People’s Campaign of this May and June, again led by Rev. Barber and channeling the legacy of Martin Luther King’s 1968 campaign of the same name.

In each of the previous two Reconstructions, an inability to unite across various identity fault lines contributed to the collapse of the progressive insurgency. The early labor unions of the 1870s just weren’t powerful enough to unite with the vibrant political movements below the Mason-Dixon Line—often led by African Americans—that promised to change the South forever if not for anti-Republican guerrilla warfare and determined white Democratic resistance. The Panic of 1873 galvanized labor activists and sparked demonstrations for public relief, as desperate farmers tried to fight off debt. But these groups lacked the political power to mobilize together. Nor were there serious attempts to link politically with African Americans in the South who were squeezed by both racism and the worsening economic crisis of the 1870s. In the 1960s, fractures among the left, combined with the politics of white backlash, pushed back a more radical human rights revolution, as captured in the Poor People’s campaign that King was planning when he was assassinated. State repression, backlash, and internal divisions also destroyed the growing Black Power movement, which in places like Chicago linked up with poor whites through the Young Patriots organization and promised a multiracial assault on white supremacy.

The backlash to both previous Reconstructions is also a bitter reminder of the need for economic and social justice organizers to be ready—and, indeed willing—to endure difficult political times. American history is punctuated by many moments of conservative retrenchment, threatening to subsume the small number of hopeful progressive moments. Much of the country’s history contains elements of both: after all, Reconstruction coincided with the dawn of Gilded Age, a period where unfettered capitalism unleashed an economic boom along with gaping inequality and new levels of corruption. Titans of industry—the infamous “robber barons”—cast their shadow over city, state, and federal governments alike. Corruption marred Reconstruction governments in the South, too, and opponents of black emancipation used their example to claim that African Americans were incapable of self-government. (Such an account, of “carpetbaggers” and “scalawags” conspiring with freed African Americans to destroy the noble South, lies at the heart of the Reconstruction portion of the 1915 film Birth of a Nation.) Distrust of what the government could accomplish in the 1870s was given form both by Reconstruction’s inability to forcefully take hold in the South, and by the corruption at various levels of government. By the turn of the twentieth century, movements on behalf of economic freedom—Populism and the labor movement—had either been decisively defeated or were in retreat. The battle for racial equality, too, took severe blows as African Americans lost their voting rights across the South and Jim Crow laws were instituted to further harm black political, social, and economic power.

The end of the Second Reconstruction coincided with the collapse of New Deal liberalism and the rise of the New Right in the late 1960s and throughout the 1970s. While the activists who carried the torch of the Second Reconstruction made remarkable gains—a record number of African-American elected officials in the South, gaining national support for sanctions against Apartheid South Africa in the 1980s, and the declaration of Martin Luther King, Jr.’s birthday as a national holiday in 1983—they also had to scramble to protect affirmative action and fight against the erosion of the Voting Rights Act.

A reasonable question can be asked: are we in the middle of a Third Reconstruction, as William Barber has suggested, or in the early stages of a “Second Nadir” of African-American history? The First Nadir, as it was dubbed by historian Rayford Logan, stretched from roughly 1890 until 1930. That was the lowest point of African-American political power in the United States since the abolition of slavery, culminating in both parties ignoring the black vote in the 1928 election and W.E.B. Du Bois proposing that African Americans had little to vote for in either party. Historian Nathan Connolly proposed in the pages of the Boston Review’s special issue Race Capitalism Justice that we were, in fact, in the beginning of a Second Nadir with the election of Donald Trump. Another historian, Sundiata Cha-Jua, proposed in the pages of Black Scholar that African Americans were already faced with a Second Nadir in 2010—at the midpoint of Barack Obama’s first term, but also during an era of weakening economic power for black people and continuing police violence against people of color. New York Times Magazine reporter Nikole Hannah-Jones, Atlantic writers Vann C. Newkirk and Ta-Nehisi Coates, and Slate reporter Jamelle Bouie have all warned in their works of the backslide of the tenuous gains made by African Americans during and after the civil rights movement. In the contest over power, justice, and freedom that has defined American history, things have often gotten worse before they got better.

Nonetheless, the Third Reconstruction idea holds some merit—if for no other reason than that both previous Reconstructions similarly rested on shaky progressive political coalitions doing ideological battle against incredible forces of reaction. Today, those organizing with the Democratic Socialists of America, the Poor People’s Campaign, teachers’ unions, and the Fight for $15 understand just how tightly intertwined their battles are. This new coalition will have to do battle by marching, through political education, and at the voting booth to achieve victory. The political climate today offers both peril and promise for the future—just as the previous two Reconstructions did.

 

[trstar]

Vulgarity unbounded.

Damn

 

[geechiedan]

sub

 

[roots69]

Hmm,, Controlled Opposition!! Thats been the name of the game for decades!!



Controlled Opposition – The Hidden Hand of Misdirection

By Zen Gardner


“The best way to control the opposition is to lead it ourselves.” ~ Vladimir Lenin

This concept eludes public awareness to a scary degree. It’s similar to the reality of false flag operations, the epitome of carefully planned societal manipulation by unseen forces who have no regard for the human condition other than to control it at any cost.

This is so very similar to the slogan of the nefarious Mossad: “By way of deception, thou shalt do war.”

And the war is on us; for the subjugation, exploitation and control of…. us. The human race.

Nothing is as it seems. Nothing. Not the least of which is anything and everything in our engineered society. It’s all misdirection, controlled opposition for the mind. This game of ruthless deception is endemic to the fabric of the entire matrix.

Useful Idiots and the Puppeteers
We’ve all been useful idiots at one time or other. No one’s been fully conscious or completely independent of these influences all of their lives. We all have had to compromise in some manner just to survive in the matrix and unwittingly played into their hand.
This entire social landscape is an engineered one, and we help build and maintain it at varying degrees of conscious awareness until we disengage. Some aspects become more obvious than others to different people. The banking system for example has been getting hammered by the awakening. The full extent of its control is known by very few, but people are getting the idea. And it leads to more questions.

That’s how it works.

Many people come to the awakening via the health crisis we’re facing, with contaminated and mutated foods being forced into the market without the slightest compunction from our ever-so-caring slightly disguised crypto fascist central State. Just going to natural food or natural or alternative medicine sites is another way to go into the Wardrobe and land in a Narnia of Truth people had no idea existed.

For those looking to help others, this is a great way to approach someone still under the spell to get them started looking around. GMO awareness has jacked and is a great entry point. And just like the bankster revolving door with government, the Monsanto/Merck et al. infestation of so-called health agencies, this will make their heads spin if they’re willing to see it.

Geoengineering and Fukushima are other portals to the awakening. The surreal potential ELE nature of these assaults is seriously disrupting many entrained minds.

Finding out the extent of our own involvement is a trip in itself, and will lead to many wonderful, sometimes disturbing discoveries. Even more so is realizing the source of information we were trusting was tainted, twisted and distorted, or as in most cases, a complete fabricated lie, propped up by the energy of those that believed it. Matrix battery pods powering the collective.

What Really Matters
Religion, politics, education and the economic meme are of course the most predominant in the mainstream mind. But important things like where we came from, why we’re even here and where we’re going are barely addressed, and if they are it’s all gobbledygook designed to confuse and stifle the human spirit. Or freeze it into a debilitating religious paradigm where we wait for the cavalry to save us and are told “the powers that be are ordained by God”.

This is the true controlled opposition, although we’ll get to the modern oracles of this insidious ploy soon enough.

We have to see this for what it is. Anything short is not going to cut it. Just about every aspect of the opposing paradigms we’ve been handed as the absolute truth are designed. And even outside protesting elements who seem to know what’s going on are often generated by, or soon channeled by, these same overlords.

Here’s where and how the manipulation kicks in. Just like the controlled State media propaganda, there have to be enough apparent facts to cultivate credibility. Just enough. They won’t overdo it unless it’s some innocuous subject. Many of those “facts” will be wrapped in fear and violence as well, designed to cauterize your sensitivity while heightening your fear.

Religions have effectively done this for eons. Tapping into your inner knowledge of the spiritual and mixing in a few truths, they have no problem steering you straight into a numbed state of docile subservience to some weird-ass hierarchy of spiritual and physical abuse. In the name of God of course. Name dropping, anyone? Oh, and in the name of that guy they can send you and your kids off to fight their wars, build and support oppressive exploitative corporations, or be a professional gladiator and gain fame and fortune pounding other contestants into the ground to the roar of the frenzied, flag waving mob.

It’s Rarely Black and White – Deliberately
Layered in the imposed matrix are many overlapping memes and projected illusions, rendering fundamental empowering truths either hidden altogether, disguised or distorted. In a loving, uncontrolled conscious world there would be no need to hide anything. Instead, this mutant matrix system is built on deceit in order to spiritually disconnect and disempower those they wish to exploit.

Think of the mega volumes of information and technology being held from public knowledge under the guise of “national security”. How about “closed door meetings” or “need to know basis” or the massive labyrinth of secret ops operating in their vast network built on compartmentalization in the name of science or military confidentiality.

Now slide over to the Vatican sitting on brutally gained secret history accounts for centuries.

Does this make any sense to you?

Why do they keep all this as separate concepts? Connect them and they form a picture, a very clear one. Our entire society is completely staged, controlled and with vastly sinister intent.



Who’s Controlling Whom? Rethinking the Strategy of Protest
It’s well known that the various elite foundations and other power organs such as Soros’ empire finance various so-called opposition groups and protests. It’s a very sleazy bunch dressed in do-gooder garb who manipulate with money, not just compromising the causes, but misdirecting them into a validation of the very overarching structure they say they are against.

It’s time we learn to step out of that false, disempowering, matrix affirming paradigm and know exactly what we are up against and take consciously aware action and not feed into their little chess game.

“By providing the funding and the policy framework to many concerned and dedicated people working within the non-profit sector, the ruling class is able to co-opt leadership from grassroots communities, … and is able to make the funding, accounting, and evaluation components of the work so time consuming and onerous that social justice work is virtually impossible under these conditions” (Paul Kivel, You Call this Democracy, Who Benefits, Who Pays and Who Really Decides, 2004, p. 122)

While the “Globalizers” may adopt a few progressive phrases to demonstrate they have good intentions, their fundamental goals are not challenged. And what this “civil society mingling” does is to reinforce the clutch of the corporate establishment while weakening and dividing the protest movement. An understanding of this process of co-optation is important, because tens of thousands of the most principled young people in Seattle, Prague and Quebec City [1999-2001] are involved in the anti-globalization protests because they reject the notion that money is everything, because they reject the impoverishment of millions and the destruction of fragile Earth so that a few may get richer.

This rank and file and some of their leaders as well, are to be applauded. But we need to go further. We need to challenge the right of the “Globalizers” to rule. This requires that we rethink the strategy of protest. Can we move to a higher plane, by launching mass movements in our respective countries, movements that bring the message of what globalization is doing, to ordinary people? For they are the force that must be mobilized to challenge those who plunder the Globe.” (Michel Chossudovsky, The Quebec Wall, April 2001)

There you have it. The information war to bring these Truths to a wider audience, sparking local action and alternative solutions in the face of this crumbling matrix of deceit. But it must be thoroughly identified for what it is before we know how to dismantle it while building real conscious community to supplant it.

Pushing up against it in these channeled, compromised and half awake antiquated methods only serves to reinforce it.

The Need for Discernment
I try to be very careful about what I read and certainly what I “take on board” in my mind and heart. I’ll look at just about anything, even mainstream drivel, to keep an eye on stuff and get the pulse of what’s going on, but not much.

But I’m very careful. I know I get fooled sometimes like anyone, but I’m not afraid to admit when I’m wrong. In fact it’s a joy every time that happens. Hey, I got another damn velcro hook and loop off my spiritual body!

And media outlets and information sources are something to look at very closely and carefully. And keep watching.

It’s never, or should I say rarely, totally clear cut as to who is who. Someone can be piping out a high percentage of true information, but then throw in some massive monkey wrench that few see coming. Sometimes it’s the tone and lower vibrational level. I’m skeptical of crass self-promoters who are more caught up in their image that the message. They’re usually humorless as well. If there’s that much ego there’s that much less conscious awareness, and the love starts running thin. If people can’t see past all the evil in this world to the wondrous beauty of the Universe and the amazing unlimited potential of the human spirit, I wonder about their information, or at least how it’s used.

But no one’s perfect, so we need to see and process the good and the Truth, and chuck the husks in the trash. It can take time and things morph, but that’s all part of the process.



Snowden, Color Revolutions, Wikileaks, Occupy, “Parties” and Other Corruptible Things
Keep a close eye out on these supposed whistleblowers. While we need real ones to come forward desperately and there are many wonderful, brave souls, those that attain public acclamation by way of major media attention are always suspect. This is because the corporate media is completely controlled. So I get suspicious. They may let out some truth, but it’s always to inoculate us against the full truth. There is no more responsible mainstream media today. It’s fully controlled.

These 6 big corporations running everything media are a fascist cabal.

I’ve written much about Snowden and my suspicions, as have many others. When the Wikileaks phenomenon appeared, I and many others were again very skeptical. It was playing right into the globalists’ plan, not the least of which is to muzzle the internet and smokescreen real events. Like most disinfo outlets, it conveniently sidestepped, minimized or dodged many of the really important issues. And sure enough, Assange was groomed in the Oligarchs’ machine for years. Then when he came out and said 9/11 was NOT an inside job… that cemented the deal.

It’s very similar to how these “partial” whistleblowers never mention Israel or the Zionist influence. Not even the Gaza genocide. Incredible, but telling.

The Occupy movement was clearly co-opted and engineered to be a controlled opposition release valve. Wonderful things still happened, but they managed to dilute and mis-steer the message enough to diffuse its greatest potential effects. The Orwellian stomp down by the Police State was off the charts, and of course the State run media made nothing of it. Instead they focus on seeming “rioting” often consisting of stock footage or if there was violence it was agent provocateurs, as caught in the recent Ferguson arson attacks in one particular block where a swat team was filmed lurking.

But that “movement” is gone. Not moving anywhere. But people got involved, that’s good. But it lacked the full on truth and was misguided.

The Tea Party? Again, born of a driven passion to stand up within that paradigm. Now? Zionist stooges Michelle Bachman, Glenn Beck and Hannity types are all over a wimped out “movement”, a form of expression that desperate middle class folks were joining in for the first times in their lives. Neutered and detoured once again. And now a ridiculed arm of the flag waving, warmongering republican party.

Who Are the Moles?
Who is this controlled opposition? Here is an example that came to light that would normally go unreported by the mainstream media. This is a good sign.

Did an undercover cop help organise a major riot? [Ha! – When didn’t they? – Zen]
From the Stephen Lawrence inquiry we learned that the police were institutionally racist. Can it be long before we learn that they are also institutionally corrupt? Almost every month the undercover policing scandal becomes wider and deeper. Today I can reveal a new twist, which in some respects could be the gravest episode yet. It surely makes the case for an independent public inquiry – which is already overwhelming – unarguable.

Before I explain it, here’s a summary of what we know already. Thanks to the remarkable investigations pursued first by the victims of police spies and then by the Guardian journalists Rob Evans and Paul Lewis (whose book Undercover is as gripping as any thriller), we know that British police have been inserting undercover officers into protest movements since 1968. Their purpose was to counter what they called subversion or domestic extremism, which they define as seeking to “prevent something from happening or to change legislation or domestic policy … outside the normal democratic process”. Which is a good description of how almost all progressive change happens. [Source]

Their influence is vast. We have no idea how many inroads have been made and how much the military industrial government complex has infiltrated and controlled all we see and hear at this point, even within our alternative community.

It’s staggering, but it doesn’t frighten me. It’s expected.

Follow your heart. You’ll know.

The Wake Up – Is It In Time? What Will You Do?
Clearly we’re up against massively orchestrated activities, outlets and manufactured disinformation, and there’s much controversy on this subject. It’s a huge part of their agenda. Never mind…it’s just the matrix at work. Rise above it.

But will humanity “get it” in time?

It’s always in time…individually. Once you’ve popped into Now awareness and even begin to grasp the fact that all this is a sham and a fabricated facade, you’re virtually home free. Personally. Your participation in propping up this fake social landscape will fall off like over-sized pants.

It just happens.

However the next step is the big one – your participation. Once you know and have gained a true perspective it’s time to take action. While the spiritual is supreme, we are here in these bodies on this planet. Now. And it’s under a massive attack. Do you want your children and grandchildren to grow up in a world such as this one is rapidly becoming?

Enjoy the awakening, but be responsive. We’ve all got to make a difference. That’s where the revolution lies. Right there.

Respond. Consciously. And in love. But do it. An opportunity is knocking on your door. Open it – and step outside. If you don’t see it yet you soon will!

Meet you there!

Much love, Zen

 

[veritech]

all of the #ADOS people need to read this to understand how we get the authority and power to accomplish true reparations.

failing to vote is not the answer. the answer is getting involved.

 

[Rembrandt Brown]

Hmm,, Controlled Opposition!! Thats been the name of the game for decades!! ...

Could you please delete this long off-topic post? Trying to have a serious conversation about Reconstruction specifically.

 

[roots69]

Could you please delete this long off-topic post? Trying to have a serious conversation about Reconstruction specifically.

I aint deleting anything.. I respect what you think, now you respect what I think!!

 

[Rembrandt Brown]

I aint deleting anything.. I respect what you think, now you respect what I think!!

So you just fuck up the thread with unrelated shit.

 

[roots69]

So you just fuck up the thread with unrelated shit.

I didnt fuck up anything.. Just showed you how controlled opposition works.. You do know these black churches and ministers are part of the deception,,,, right?? You put up a minister, I put up opposition to your article..

 

[hardawayz16]

150+ years of empty promises and y'all still think politicians are gonna save us.

 

[VAiz4hustlaz]

I can't get with some of the sentiments expressed in the second article. For example:

"What we should take from the idea of a Third Reconstruction is an awareness of how issues of race, class, and gender continually intersect to shape people’s lives. Queer African American women being at the forefront of Black Lives Matter—and making it clear that their multifaceted identities informed their leadership—is but one example of intersectionality in the Third Reconstruction. Another is the success of the Moral Mondays movement, led by Rev. Barber in North Carolina, which has championed abortion rights and voting rights, environmental justice and racial justice alike, all while fighting cuts to social services and a raft of discriminatory laws like the state’s notorious “bathroom bill,” HB2. The same spirit carried through the Poor People’s Campaign of this May and June, again led by Rev. Barber and channeling the legacy of Martin Luther King’s 1968 campaign of the same name."
​

This "intersectionality" has corrupted black civil rights struggles. Our votes are used by but our group struggles as a race are forgotten in favor of white leftist, white feminist, and white LGBT concerns.

"In each of the previous two Reconstructions, an inability to unite across various identity fault lines contributed to the collapse of the progressive insurgency.The early labor unions of the 1870s just weren’t powerful enough to unite with the vibrant political movements below the Mason-Dixon Line—often led by African Americans—that promised to change the South forever if not for anti-Republican guerrilla warfare and determined white Democratic resistance. The Panic of 1873 galvanized labor activists and sparked demonstrations for public relief, as desperate farmers tried to fight off debt. But these groups lacked the political power to mobilize together. Nor were there serious attempts to link politically with African Americans in the South who were squeezed by both racism and the worsening economic crisis of the 1870s. In the 1960s, fractures among the left, combined with the politics of white backlash, pushed back a more radical human rights revolution, as captured in the Poor People’s campaign that King was planning when he was assassinated. State repression, backlash, and internal divisions also destroyed the growing Black Power movement, which in places like Chicago linked up with poor whites through the Young Patriots organization and promised a multiracial assault on white supremacy."
​

Once again, it's not the labor unions and farmers "just weren't powerful enough" to unite with black people. They were racist. They deliberately excluded black people.

 

[Rembrandt Brown]

 

[xfactor]

Could you please delete this long off-topic post? Trying to have a serious conversation about Reconstruction specifically.

@roots69 blew up that globalist propaganda you posted. It didn’t work then and won’t work now because the Neanderthals will always turn on us once they see us having success.

 

[roots69]

@roots69 blew up that globalist propaganda you posted. It didn’t work then and won’t work now because the Neanderthals will always turn on us once they see us having success.

A prime example of these colonist turning on our people who were sucessful!! Is those Creek Indians down in Oklahoma!! This colony will never let the POW's ever get situated were we can get established and start running our own towns or cities!! But, you know what I mean!!

 

[footloose]

what book is this

 

[Rembrandt Brown]