Brothas & Sistas,
The 21st Century is not only the continuance of the "Color Line" that WEB DuBois so accurately laid out. It is also the pivotal century for the existence of Humanity on this planet. Capitalism's unbridled bumrushing of the Earth's natural resources and its spawning of all forms of environmental havoc has left us no choice but to find immediate solutions to stopping and reversing this process of making Earth unlivable for Humankind.
I know it's hard to imagine, even harder to actualize, but our next generation of African children must begin to concentrate their intellectual powers more and more on science & technology- wherever they may live. Our children and their children are the saviors of the Planet- if and only if they are engaged in finding and developing solutions to the enviromental ills five centuries of capitalism has brought forth. I am suggesting that we consciously generate thousands of African-descendent scientists and engineers who are concentrated on working on all aspects of the environmental crises. We cannot rely on the GM-Exxon-Chase-Microsoft-Sonys of the world in collaboration with their governmental offshoots to come up with solutions to stopping and reversing the growing environmental disasters: they profit from disasters.
This means we Blackfolk need to create a five-year plan, a ten-year plan, a twenty-year plan and a thirty-year plan... because that's all the time we have left to keep earth habitable for Humanity. Enviroonmental degradation is an exponential development- not a linear one.
An African Diasporic (PanAfrican) Social Forum on Starting the Process of Real Environmental Justice is needed for 2007 or 2008. Our Reparations and antineocolonial Struggles must embrace this issue as a central part of it work. We want our children to inherit a habitable Earth- not one where they die after victory over white supremacy because their Earth is enviromentally jacked up.
It is a monumental challenge when we look at the power of racist capital's continual normalization of the myth of Black youth as the icon of anti-intellectualism (some of us enlightened Blackfolk even believe it... and most of our children revel in it). It is a monumental challenge when this nation is hellbent on dumbing down everyone for profit's sake.
But we have no choice- if we want to re-inherit Planet Earth as humane Humans that our Ancestors had taught us to be.
Think about how Black youth can be directly involved in making environmentally friendly technologies a normal function within the daily lives of our descendents 75-100 years from now....
Our youth are at the cutting edge of new prison technology AND new environmental-friendly technology. It is up to US with our youth (once again) in leadership fighting for the latter and destroying the former.
In Struggle,
Sam Anderson
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