Revolution is not a word but an application; it is not war but peace; it does not weaken, but strengthens. Revolution does not cause separation; it generates togetherness.
-- John Africa, Strategic Revolution
Never doubt that a small group of committed people can change the world; indeed, it's the only thing that ever has.
-- Margaret Mead
FOR MILLIONS, perhaps billions of us, life is a search, a journey of seeking for that which we found unfulfilled in our youth. We search for love; we search for family; we search for community. And in so doing, we seek the completion of Self in others, in the larger Self where similar selves are united in commonality -- in community.
As we search and grow, we find that modern life, with its bursting balloons of materialism, leaves us more and more empty inside; "things" that once seemed to fill us now fail to bridge the gaping chasms in our psyche. Our inner selves are pulled in too many ways at once -- the demands of work here, and social obligations there, the pressures of financial need (or the lesser burdens of wealth), public responsibilities, the needs and wants of our private sphere -- and finally they break, atomized, meaningless.
The dominant societal ideology of the hour is a perverse individuality hammered into our consciousness by myth and legend. It ignores the historical verity of community -- of groups striving to move the social order forward. It ignores the reality that people working together are the only viable solution to any social problem.
As human beings, we are at root social creatures. Outside the bonds of our familial and social relations, we cannot truly live. Our very sanity depends on them. We are birthed in and into community. We grow in community. Community determines who we are. It is not the individual self per se, but its place in the broader social network of human society that defines our identity and gives our life meaning.
Whether in religious, political, economic, or educational matters, collectivity is a basic requisite for meaning. Can there truly be a religion of one? What political action can be effectively undertaken by a lone person? Doesn't every step toward economic progress require at least some level of social agreement -- some willingness to put aside antagonisms -- for it to function? Doesn't education, especially as it is presently constituted, consist largely of teaching youth how to play by the rules of the broader social order? Is it purely coincidental that students are organized into "classes"? Doesn't it teach them how to acquiesce, not how -- or even whether -- to transform the status quo?
And what of a circumstance in which the status quo is unfair or oppressive? Such can be said to have given rise to a community of resistance, known as the MOVE Organization, which, in the words of its legendary founder John Africa, has as its raison d'etre total liberation:
The MOVE organization is a powerful family of revolutionaries, fixed in principle, strong in cohesion, steady as the foundation of a massive tree. A people totally equipped with the profound understanding of simple assertion, collective commitment, unbending direction.
While the so-called educators talk of love, mouth the necessity for peace, we live peace, assert the power of love, comprehend the urgency of freedom. The reformed world system cannot teach love while making allowances for hate, peace while making allowances for war, freedom while making allowances for the inconsistent shackles of enslavement. For to make allowances for sickness is to be unhealthy; to make concessions with slavery is to be enslaved; to compromise with the person of compromise is to be as the person you are compromising with. [1]
John Africa founded and forged a remarkable family, a small but potent community of resistance that took Life as its creed and fought to protect the lives of all the living, even animals like dogs and cats.
Everyone is born into the family of their flesh; here was one of choice, commitment, and faith. It was a family embattled, but a family nonetheless. It lives, grows, and thrives today. Long live John Africa's revolutionary family!
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Notes:
1. "On the Move: from the Writings of John Africa," Philadelphia Tribune, 28 June 1975, 17.