Clearly, the increasing joblessness, home foreclosures, continuing bloody U.S. wars abroad, cynical racism, gross economic inequities and social injustices at home, and the constant government and media disinformation, omissions, and subterfuge have brought some people to the very precipice of despair. Yet, we must not allow ourselves to succumb to a sense of powerlessness or despondency.

Contained within each of the above disparities are the seeds for actualized and real systemic change. Since real change does not come about by osmosis, it is each and every one of us who must consciously engage in a revolutionary tilling of the soil.

We are living in an historic period in which we are experiencing the vicious and painful internal crumbling of the U.S. Empire’s infrastructure, particularly as it affects the daily lives of everyday people. Even so, we are also living in an historic period that presents enormous possibilities to bring about real systemic change. The inevitable question is: Are we everyday people up to the tasks at hand which are required of us in order to bring about real systemic change?

I submit that, notwithstanding the constant brainwashing and disinformation on the part of the U.S. corporate government and its subservient / lap dog corporate “news” media; we arecapable of being up to the tasks required of us. Why? Because, simply stated, inaction and failure are not acceptable options. Far too much is at stake.

Let us be pragmatists and realists by taking on and carrying out these seemingly impossible tasks in order to bring about real systemic change. Virtually nothing is impossible, unless of course, we resign ourselves to the notion of impossibility.

Indeed, tilling the soil is a revolutionary concept. It is a concept that requires an actualized vision for the future that we seek to bring about. Reality is not merely that which is, but just as importantly; reality is the process by which we struggle or work to bring about revolutionary or real systemic change, or in other words, that which can be. Though the government and corporate mass media would have us believe otherwise, these two realities are dialectical and exist simultaneously. We must consciously be aware of these coexisting realities, while actively nurturing and pursuing that which offers us the endless possibilities of a better, more humane society and world.

In order to grasp or understand what I am saying, one does not need a PhD or any so-called ‘formal education’ [systemic brainwashing] whatsoever. To the contrary, a consciousness of our everyday surroundings and life itself is the real PhD that virtually all of us already possess.

People, be we Black, Brown, Red, White, or Yellow, are not, by some quirk of nature, evil. People are not innately evil at all. That is a deliberate lie. It is an orchestrated myth which serves the avaricious interests of the ruling elite, not of everyday people. Everyday people are constantly bombarded and instilled with the poison of divisiveness coupled with a negative past and present interpretation of ourselves and our collective histories. Thus, it is not history that repeats itself; but rather people who cyclically repeat the insidiously perpetuated and revisionist history put before us, which does not, and was never meant, to serve the interests of just plain everyday people. Therefore, instead of organizing, struggling for, and demanding the very best in our collective selves we, all too often, resign ourselves to the systemically dangled carrot of delusion and illusion, while simultaneously and unrealistically hoping for the best from the deplorable, hypocritical, and unacceptable system of exploitation in which we find ourselves. We have yet to truly till the proverbial economic, social, and political soil. We have yet to come anywhere near to fulfilling our capacities as informed, decent, human beings.

Tilling the economic, social, and political soil is an individual, collective, and increasingly urgent revolutionary process which knows no impossibility. It’s time to be real and accomplish the impossible!

Intensify your efforts! Educate, agitate, and organize. Till the soil! Onward my sisters and brothers! Onward!

BlackCommentator.com Editorial Board Member, Larry Pinkney, is a veteran of the Black Panther Party, the former Minister of Interior of the Republic of New Africa, a former political prisoner and the only American to have successfully self-authored his civil/political rights case to the United Nations under the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. In connection with his political organizing activities in opposition to voter suppression, etc., Pinkney was interviewed in 1988 on the nationally televised PBS NewsHour, formerly known as The MacNeil/LehrerNewsHour. For more about Larry Pinkney see the book, Saying No to Power: Autobiography of a 20th Century Activist and Thinker, by William Mandel [Introduction by Howard Zinn]. (Click here to read excerpts from the book). Click here to contact Mr. Pinkney.

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