Legacy of Malcolm X honored at public forum

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Rev. Graylan Ellis-Hagler speaking at Malcolm X forum SOCIALIST ACTION MARCH 1990 19 CAMBRIDGE, MASS.—One hundred seventeen people gathered here on Feb. 23 to celebrate the legacy of Malcolm X, who was assassinated 25 years ago. The Boston Socialist Action forum featured speakers active in the struggle for Black liberation locally and abroad.

The meeting began with a video on Malcolm. First to speak was Jean-Claude Martineau, a noted Haitian author and leading activist in the Haitian liberation struggle. Martineau was drawn to Malcolm's ideas soon after his arrival in the United States in the early 1960s.

Malcolm's thinking evolved in the last year, said Martineau, and "he started to understand that it was not a question of color.

The following are major excerpts from the talk by the Rev. Graylan Ellis-Hagler to the Boston Socialist Action forum on Feb. 23.

We forget sometimes Brother Malcolm's formative years, the years he spent in the Norfolk House of Corrections, here in Massachusetts. That is the place where his education began to take shape, where he began to learn how to read and to write. And he also began on his path of spiritual awakening in that prison facility.

We need to somehow focus in on that, because I think that as we talk about the legacy of Malcolm, we must understand the numbers of brothers and sisters in Massachusetts and all across this country who are currently incarcerated. We must not forget them.

It seems too often that those of us who like to call ourselves enlightened, progressive or politically active, we so easily and so often forget about those locked up, behind some prison bars, unless they are in someplace like South Africa, or El Salvador....

In 1863, the Emancipation Proclamation was signed. Slaves became physically free, but not psychologically, sociologically, or economically free. And today I think we can clearly say that still we are not free.

In 1790, the first prison was opened in the United States. That prison was primed and readied, of course, to absorb the ex-slave population after the signing of the Emancipation Proclamation.... Those who society cannot exploit any longer end up in that jailhouse, in that prison.

1990 marks the 200-year observance of prisons here in the United States.... [Since 1790] we have just continued to expand, and to allow to grow, and to absorb masses of people into that dark dungeon that offers neither hope, nor education, nor direction.

Barbaric, ineffective system

We must understand where Malcolm came from, and the sisters and brothers who are there today. Today we are not discussing doing away with the barbaric and ineffective system called the criminal justice system. But we should be discussing that. Instead we end up talking about things like larger budgets, which means more prisons, larger police forces, more district attomneys....

The United States has the highest incarcerMALCOLM X Fighter for Black liberation [Then] he became extremely dangerous. And no matter who pulled the trigger, we know who killed Malcolm X."

Kwame M.A. Somburu of Socialist Action, a former member of the Organization of Afro-American Unity and an eyewitness to Malcolm's assassination, described how "Malcolm developed anti-capitalist views as a result of his experiences."

"If Malcolm were alive today," Somburu declared, "he would be condemning the reactionary invasion of Panama. He would not feel that freedom was won in South Africa, even if they eliminated apartheid, because who's going to control the land? What about the wealth that is produced there?"

[Major excerpts from the Martineau and Somburu speeches at the forum will be pubation rate in the world, except for the Republic of South Africa.... [but] remove Black and Spanish-speaking folks and Native Americans from that prison population, you would discover that we would then have the lowest incarceration rate in the world.

That just tells you who goes to jail, who ends up in those dungeons, who they throw away the key on. The role of prisons and jails has never changed....

The issue is how to keep the mind captive, because if you can keep the mind captive, you don't have to worry about a chain, a lock, a handcuff, or a shackle. If you can control the mind, you can control the personality, and you can control the yearning of anybody to be free.

That is what's going by Kwame M.A. Somburu, Joe Ryan, and Nat Weinstein $1.25 (include $0.75 for postage). Make checks payable to Walnut Publishing Co., 3435 Army St., m. 308, San Francisco, CA 9411( lished in next month's Socialist Action.] Chris Carter, president of the Brandeis Black Student Organization, advised that we must honor Malcolm's message over the man. That message "is as important today as it was" when Malcolm lived.

The final speaker was the Rev. Graylan Ellis-Hagler of the Church of the United Community. He is a prominent independent leader in Boston's Black community. He focused his remarks on imprisoned Black and Latino youth—in jails and in their neighborhoods-and the power of Malcolm's message for them. [See speech on this page.] Many books and pamphlets on Malcolm were sold, and a number of people signed up to attend an upcoming series of classes based on Malcolm's speeches.

Scott Adams-Cooper/Socialist Action [Prisoners] may know who Malcolm X is, but they don't know Malcolm X. They don't know what he said, what he did. They don't necessarily know where he came from.... They are a lost generation, unless somebody chooses to find them....

Who will find them? In jail, they are 17, 18, 19, 20. On the streets, in this other, larger jail, they're even younger.... They're angry and hopeless. They see the contradictions of society. They know all about the "dog-eat-dog" mentality of capitalism, and the "I got mine, you get yours" obsession of colonialism.

They fight over drug turf, and they hang out in organizations that give identity, because nothing else in this society gives identity to them. We call those organizations gangs. Some engage in drive-by shootings, and some hang on the fringes of those misguided youth organizations in order to survive in [their] neighborhoods.

Frustration continues to rise The community screams for a police crackdown, and the police scream for a police crackdown, and kids are indiscriminately thrown up against a wall and pants are made to drop, and as a consequence the prison population and the frustration among our youth continues to rise and expand.

That is the cycle of violence that we're in.... Those are young lives that could be offering leadership to the liberation of a community…...

There's a real issue on our streets. Young pcople are being blown away before they even have a chance to grow up and make a difference in the culture and in the society and in the historical process....

It should be no mystery why youth are dyIcolm ing, wholesale, in the streets. We have something at the state level that is called a "budget cut." The safety net programs ... and youth programs and youth street workers are cut, and the death rate among youth begins to rise, because there's no one there to do the work that needs to be done in the midst of the community....

The fact of the matter is [government] is our enemy. But the reality is, they still have the power to force the types of conceptualizations on our community that they choose ... to give, and to take back. We have to hold those folks accountable, as long as they take one red cent out of the community of people who work hard to earn a living....

Process of liberation

The process of liberation rests with all of us. First, you have to name and claim yourself as a doer. Being about some business, not just thinking proper thoughts, but doing something with those proper thoughts that you think you think....

The reality before us is to do something. That is all Malcolm was talking about. Malcolm got cultivated out of a prison, and that cultivation didn't end. He knew he had to take his thoughts and do something with them.

And he talked to people about their own dignity, and their own worth. From a prison cell, his nobody-ness became a somebodyness. And he felt a burning desire to give that somebody-ness to all of those he encountered-to organize, to enlighten, to lift up, to motivate....

We've got to have the courage to start talking about collaborators in our community, and figuring out what we do with those collaborators. We've got collaborators on both ends of the spectrum. One [type] is those who sit down with the mayor and the governor and cut deals that benefit their own pockets and sell out their community...

On the other hand, those who sell death in the form of drugs and guns to their community, who blow each other away without thinking twice about it, they are also collaborators....

When are we going to begin to define what nationhood is all about? What nationalism is all about? Not this old brand, but a new brand of nationalism. We must be in solidarity with all of those who struggle for dignity and for human rights. And those on either end of the spectrum, blocking that kind of work, are collaborators, and we must figure out the process for punishing each and every one of them....

We need to be doing the work we can be doing, each one teaching, each one loving, and each one helping one. That is the legacy of Malcolm. That is also the future of the liberation. Unless we understand that, no freedom is ever possible.

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one year later: SociAList Action

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