Lorenzo Komboa Ervin

[b]In May 2000 two anarchist ex-Black Panthers from America did a British speaking tour. Lorenzo KomBoa Ervin and JoNina Abron talked to groups ranging from white anarchos to mass black meetings on police racism.

5,000 people have been killed in a murderous attack just a few days ago, clearly stemming from past events in the Middle East. Although the President of the United States correctly refers to this as "acts of war", he does not tell us that this war has been raging for many years, and is fueled by long standing American support of Israel, acting as its military proxy. The US is "no peace loving country," it is the world's largest salesmen of military armaments and has its hands in most of the wars waging around the globe.

There are no fair elections in America, certainly when the questions of race and political power are evident. It's interesting therefore to look at the presidential election of the year 2000. Many things have not been widely reported, which shows that this electoral race has come so close to political violence, if not outright fascism.

Black Capitalism, by Lorenzo Komboa Ervin, 2001.

A massive anti-cop rebellion has broken out in Cincinnati over the police shootings of 15 Black men, ranging in ages of 12-44 years old, all unarmed. The latest case of Timothy Thomas, a 19-year old brother, allegedly wanted for misdemeanor traffic offenses, was gunned down last week by a crazed white cop.

A right-wing Republican angrily wrote me a letter last week, something to the effect like: "why don't you Blacks just give it up about charges of fraud [?]... your man [Gore] just lost, and hey Bush has now appointed Black people to high positions in this administration, which shows he is not a racist." Well, yes, the Grinch (aka as George W.

Recently Governor John Engler, Republican Governor of the state of Michigan, sponsored legislation which outlawed so-called "Living Wage" laws, championed by both civil rights and labor groups, in the state. This far reaching legislation not only outlawed existing laws in several cities, including Detroit, but also prevented other cities from adopting it.

By Lorenzo Komboa Ervin. 8 June 1996

Several people have written to me from Genoa, telling me of what they suffered during the recent protests there. I join in with those who are beginning to call for an international tribunal to investigate the police murder of Carlo Guiliani, and the brutal attacks upon the Genoa Social Forum and the Italian section of the Independent Media Center by Italian police and security services. These attacks were clearly organized by the Italian state security and political forces, working in consultation with the secret police agencies of the G-8 nations. The decision for this brutal repression was made earlier at a Spanish conference of police officials in Europe this past February to decide upon how to beat back the anti-globalization movement. I had made a statement denouncing this meeting at the time, alerting protesters that much more severe repression was coming.

When I was a boy coming up in the South, I used to hate to see the army of white insurance men coming into the Black community. They represented a variety of companies, many long since having been swallowed up by some multinational conglomerate, or not even in existence at all now. But I remember them well.

I am not one of a number of persons and commentators who come merely to hypocritically give salutations to Dr. King, when in their own times, they betray his entire history of activism. In fact, the political establishment present us with a Martin Luther King, who never really existed.

Police death squads in American cities are a sign of the times. Every year in the USA anywhere about 800-1,000 persons are killed in police custody. Like the nine people in Detroit this year, Amadou Diallo in NYC, Tiyesha Miller in Riverside, California, and many others whose names we don't know, they were undeniably slaughtered by the police.

I was reading a letter from an activist a few days ago about the protests around the Democratic and Republican political conventions this past Summer, and about how the media distorted and covered up everything that happened. Did you know that over 3,000 persons have been arrested since the November 30, 1999 demonstration in Seattle?

Lorenzo Komboa Ervin is a Black Autonomous Anarchist comrade, and a personal friend of mine, who's been in many struggles throughout his life and has paved many paths for the oppressed. This man was once involved with the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC)during the early sit-in campaigns in the South to stop racial segregation and inequality.

Historically, there have been three major forms of socialism -- Libertarian Socialism (Anarchism), Authoritarian Socialism (Marxist Communism), and Democratic Socialism (electoral social democracy). The non-Anarchist Left has echoed the bourgeoisie's portrayal of Anarchism as an ideology of chaos and lunacy. But Anarchism, and especially Anarchist-Communism, has nothing in common with this image.

I wish to make this statement to the Australian people, and especially to the Black people of this country. It will probably be my last statement as I shall have been forced out of the country or held incommunicado at an undisclosed prison in another part of Australia, a place where my attorneys will not be able to freely visit me.

It's difficult to know where to begin with this open letter to the various European-american leftist (Marxist-Leninist and Marxist-Leninist-Maoist, in particular) groups within the United States. I have many issues with many groups; some general, some very specific. The way in which this is presented may seem scattered at first, but I encourage all of you to read and consider carefully what I have written in its entirety before you pass any judgements.

I was talking to a funeral home director in Georgia recently who told me something that shocked me, and I am sure, will shock you too.

Think you know who owns your local Black community funeral home? Think again. It's probably owned by a large multinational corporation, instead of a Black family like in the past. A shadowy group of billionaire white businessmen from British Columbia called the *Loewen Group* owns 30-60% of all the Black funeral homes in America (and over 1,500 funeral homes and cemeteries in all). The Loewen Group is the #2 largest mortuary company in the world, with assets in the billions of dollars, made eating the flesh of our dead.

In one of my columns about racial profiling and the Michigan police, a white "radical" wrote in "chastising" me about referring to this form of police harassment as "Driving While Black", since he said that he as a white male had on occasion been stopped by the cops himself because of his "long hair." He also went on to say that I should concentrate on "class politics", instead of "mere racial issues." Since I didn't want to answer him in a personal letter, frankly didn't have the inclination to engage in this discussion with yet another smug white middle class "radical", I decided to do it in my column.