Visions And Nightmares

The Sanskrit word 'Krishna' means black or dark. At times, it is also translated as “all attractive”.  Some scholars have interpreted “Krishna=black/dark” and other Hindu textual/visual depictions (e.g.  In traditional patta chitras (cloth art) in Odisha,  Krishna and Vishnu are always shown as having black skin.) as evidence that Krishna had Dravidian origins.  While others see Krishna as a composite of various local deities that began to amalgamate around a single figure during the growth of Vaishnavism (worship of Vishnu) in the early Common Era.

The attempt to build a finance, insurance, and real estate (FIRE) economy in New York beginning in the 1970s led to mass deindustrialization and impoverishment. 

As the FIRE economy swept through New York, the dissolution of what were just the tepid beginnings of a social-democratic social contract accelerated under the presidency of Ronald Reagan. The ideology that brought together the Dixiecrats with free marketeers inspired by Lewis Powell’s (then a corporate lawyer, but later a member of the Supreme Court) Memorandum “Attack on the American Free Enterprise System” would eventually become elite “common sense”.

The backlash against the gains of the Civil Rights movement and the building of some minimal social safety net, begun under the Goldwater candidacy was reaching its apotheosis in the Reagan Presidency.  Through the presidencies of Clinton and Obama, much of what was contentious about the Reagan Revolution became part of the Beltway consensus.


"The conservative revolution that Reagan helped usher in gained traction because Reagan's central insight — that the liberal welfare state had grown complacent and overly bureaucratic, with Democratic policymakers more obsessed with slicing the economic pie than with growing the pie — contained a good deal of truth" - Barack Obama “Audacity  of Hope”

“I believe in states’ rights.” - Ronald Reagan (Neshoba County Fair, Mississippi August 3, 1980)

 

There was some pushback against the growing right-wing wave. The most popular expression of this may have been Jesse Jackson’s presidential runs in 1984 and 1988.  When reading the text of his famous 1988 DNC speech, it’s interesting to note how it focuses on the material conditions of the working class and the contradiction embodied by the conflict between capital and labor. 

“Our ships could pass in the night -- if we have a false sense of independence -- or they could collide and crash. We would lose our passengers. We can seek a high reality and a greater good. Apart, we can drift on the broken pieces of Reagonomics, satisfy our baser instincts, and exploit the fears of our people...Most poor people are not on welfare. Some of them are illiterate and can't read the want-ad sections. And when they can, they can't find a job that matches the address. They work hard every day. I know. I live amongst them. I'm one of them. I know they work. I'm a witness. They catch the early bus. They work every day. They raise other people's children. They work every day. They clean the streets. They work every day. They drive dangerous cabs. They work every day. They change the beds you slept in these hotels last night and can't get a union contract. They work every day. No, no, they are not lazy!”
- Jesse Jackson (1988 DNC Speech)

Meanwhile, Reagan and his followers remained unmoved by these pleas.

“In early 1984 on Good Morning America, Reagan defended himself against charges of callousness toward the poor in a classic blaming-the-victim statement saying that “people who are sleeping on the grates…the homeless…are homeless, you might say, by choice.” [source]

When politics fail, oftentimes art becomes the fount of protest. Hip hop in New York was becoming the “Black CNN” (Chuck D) and KRS-One and Boogie Down Productions may have had the most precise analysis of the State of the Nation.

“Social studies will not speak upon political crooks. It's just the presidents, and all the money they spent All the things they invent, and how their house is so immaculate. They create missiles, my family's eating gristle.” - BDP “Stop the Violence”

1990, Liner notes on KRS-One's albumEdutainment
"A SPECIAL THANKS TO GEORGE BUSH FOR F***IN' UP THE NATION AND CONTINUING THE CONSPIRACY TO DESTROY THE AFRICAN! THANKS!"

The inability of mainstream politics led many to re-engage with thoughts of a generation before to contemplate an independent direction for Black politics. Foremost among these thinkers were Malcolm X and Kwame Ture.

 “No, I'm not an American. I'm one of the 22 million black people who are the victims of Americanism. One of the 22 million black people who are the victims of democracy, nothing but disguised hypocrisy. So, I'm not standing here speaking to you as an American, or a patriot, or a flag-saluter, or a flag-waver -- no, not I. I'm speaking as a victim of this American system. And I see America through the eyes of the victim. I don't see any American dream; I see an American nightmare.”  -Malcolm X  “Ballot or the Bullet” 

Fidel Castro with Malcom X at the Theresa Hotel in Harlem, New York in 1960

“[T]he Democratic elites [have] been trying to ritually purge the party of its leftist ranks since at least 1985... Clinton, Gore and  Biden formed the Democratic Leadership Council...the leftists they most wanted to purge...were Jesse Jackson and his multi-ethnic, working-class Rainbow Coalition...so that they could transform the party into a hospitable receptacle for Wall Street money.”
- Jeffrey St. Clair (“Roaming Charges: After/Math”, Counterpunch, November 13, 2020,)

Jack O’Dell, a key advisor to Jackson and the Rainbow Coalition and a profound global thinker, thought that the future lay through building an independent path on both global and national issues.  A movement that sets its own agenda and was not beholden to either party.