WHEN Imam Jameel al Ameen visited TnT in 2000 for the Emancipation celebrations (you may know him as H.Rap Brown), I had a chance to get a measure of the man.

After discussing different issues, we began to speak about Black people; he paused and gathered himself as an old sage and said: “To be Black is necessary, but not sufficient.”

I could tell that this was an expression shaped in the understanding of the Black struggle.

I say this as commentary on the recent launching of yet another Black organisation, the Black Caucus.

Now, I was of two minds whether or not I should even comment because I know accusations will fly fast and furious that Black people only fight down each other and about Black-on-Black opposition.

Indeed, this have already been expressed as “warnings” to Bro. David (Muhammed) and his group.

Others have hailed it as a rising of Black people with shades of 1970 National Joint Action Committee (NJAC).

I share neither enthusiasm.

And it seems as if anyone who attempts to comment on anything to do with this organisation or its founders will be considered as a another Black detractor or accused of Black-on-Black racism.

Are we immune from criticism due to our blackness?

As if an entity cannot have the capacity of being A and minus-A at the same time.

As far as definition goes, who are the “Black” peoples of these isles? Are the Asiatic Black people who we loosely call Indians in TnT also considered as being “Black” by this new group?

Or is Black here being used as a euphemism for Africans or Afro-Caribbeans?

This must be clarified, since the message is about block voting and a rejection of “blind ethnic voting” based on racial bias.

This new group seems to be also advocating voting based on race, but organised; so where is the qualitive difference which sets it apart from the same old thing?

The time is upon us for an imaginative post-Garveyite discourse, not to put old wine in new bottles.

All Black inward-looking organisations in the Black Diaspora for the last 75 years, including the Nation of Islam and the People’s National Movement (PNM), are fundamentally Garveyite in ideology. Black people have moved on and we now live in a post-Garveyite world, back-peddling into the future as the Jewish-owned rap music industry sets the Black agenda for the Black future.

We have arrived without reaching anywhere and yet, still do not understand where we are.

The distressing reality is that the world Black people live in today is one where all people have been reduced to the dictates of the money power elite.

Previous Garveyite solution of raising Black capitalists as the life plank to hoist the race out of its malaise is no longer tenable; it is outdated.

As for the political society, it is over, dead!

We now live in an economic society, where wealth or the lack of it defines who we are.

Electoral politics, representation, legislation and even sovereignty itself, are now utterly subservient to international financial institutions.

Isn’t that so, Mr. Prime Minister?

Who then dictates to supposedly independent nation-states, policies and legislations.

The entire socio-political transaction is totally out of the hands of the masses.

Except for making up numbers for taxation and to ensure the repayment of debts with high interest rates, the people do not count.

Political parties are no longer in the hands of members due to the demands of modern politics, that requires massive finance, which cannot be sustained by party members’ contributions.

So each party depends on financial contributions from other sources that influence policies and direct the economic clout of the ruling party.

So the whole process is compromised at the very beginning.

The people’s representative and party are already beholden, compromised, to another entity.

The spectre of the popular figure entering Parliament where the size of his votes does not count for much is something with which we are all familiar.

Power is in the hands of political leaders who are empowered to form a Cabinet of their choosing, whether of elected or un-elected members of the party or individuals not even associated to the party.

This Cabinet is the ruling entity under the diktat of one man, the Prime Minister.

All others are then relegated to cheer-leader status in the back benches of the assembly, held in check by the Chief Whip.

Well-intentioned as Bro. David and others may be, Black leaders must realise new and creative strategies in order to deal with the current political, social and economical realities of the time in which we live.

A time where not only Black people are reduced to wage slaves but all of humanity effectively, by a predatory few, their overseers and security apparatus.

The solution is no longer “political”.

As an agenda, it has been re-assembled to give the appearance to the masses that something could be done within its framework.

It has become a safe arena for draining off the built-up expectations and frustrations of the people, especially the most marginalised, who are us Black people.

My advice to the well-meaning brothers and sisters of the Black Caucus is to consider the advice of that warrior sage, Brother “Rap” Brown, that our skin colour is necessary for so were we created by God.

As ideology or survival strategy it is wholly insufficient as a means by which we can be saved, particularly, in the modern realignment of the world and the political, social and economical forces we are up against.

The disturbing truth is that since 1945, people’s power have been solely diminishing.

Even governments are now also equally reduced to managerial status, caretakers, by those who control the money power.

There can be no political freedom without financial freedom.

This applies equally to the State and the individual.

Dispossessed of control over minerals, material resources, capital and labour by the financial elites, all that remains for us is land, our Adamic heritage, and it is here we must make our last stand. Interestingly, land is also the final target for that predatory elite and our last recourse for survival, post Garvey.

Or have we forgotten that Malcolm X described land as the basis of independence.

Let them eat their worthless paper currency!