El Latino Negro Oscuro Partido Encantado (ELNOPE)
by Ricardo X
Written, without editing, for the Brown Berets of Watsonville… who address violence in our society in a very real way.

Special: Please glance at http://oxtogrind.org/archive/364 before plowing through this. You will note at http://oxtogrind.org/archive/336 that both Gustavo Esteva and John Ross of Mexico and Marie Trigona of Argentina have provided their imprimaturs for TOSCA.

My syntax might be screwed up, but I think I got the basic translation correct. If so, it should read The Deep Black Latino Charmed Party. [I'm open to corrections... and other names. And we're open to wild Whites, Reds, Yellows et al.] I trust that my laughable Spanish will suffice, considering the risky roll of the dice here, the spice.

This is a real party, an outlet. Not just with throbbing PR music… but with a musical invitation to one and all who acknowledge the fact of institutional racism in our country to join hands in solidarity. Not trumpets blaring for campaign purposes, but, rather, anger flaring in a healthy way, musical strains infusing our movement, our every movement… handshake, promise, cry. This is to die for. [Pause.] A party that must not be missed, must not miss.

As I’ve been recruiting people for our effort to “take over” the State of California (TOSCA ), people have warned me to be careful about alienating certain segments of the voting public. For instance, when I proposed a Davis Ticket (comprised of Angela Davis and Mike Davis, the two of them serving as our working figurehead candidates who citizens might vote for… to usher in our unprecedented gubernatorial reign of a dozen citizens functioning as Governor together), sympaticos would often say, “They have a lot of baggage.”

True, both Black Angela and White Mike boast bountiful baggage. But I no longer care. For — at this juncture — I’ve concluded* that the only the only chance in Hell that we have in the fraudulent/frazzled electoral arena is to go down that untrodden, honest road. The one that actually provides a clear street sign for travelers. The bumpy one that people have been begging for….

*I am very open to your recommendations.

We are an extremely radical party. We intend to push for institutional changes. We are going to operate on a zero budget (though we can raise funds for our needy participants). And we are going to operate without trying to appeal to racists or those who cannot acknowledge our institutionalized racism.

Only about 39% of eligible voters came out for the last gubernatorial election. We don’t need the people who keep the sickly pale dominant culture in place. We can draw from the 61% who didn’t come out. We can draw from some of the disenchanted among the 39%. We can appeal to ALL members of marginalized third parties to join hands in solidarity with us for just the next gubernatorial prize. We can try to attract the newly registered voters. We might pull in some of the quarter of a million voters whose votes couldn’t be counted because of screw-ups of one kind or another. But, in short, our grassroots voter base will likely grow from the vast garden of citizens who have had enough of going hungry. Enough of unpalatable food. Enough of doing without proper health care. Enough of unaffordable and/or uninhabitable rentals. Enough of inefficacious, tasteless education. Enough of unemployment or underemployment. Enough of our toxic environment. Enough of disingenuous media outlets. Enough of the sickening war games. Enough of communal space disappearing. Enough of atomization. Enough of domestic violence on and off the streets. Enough of gangster politicians. Enough of the growing disparity in income and wealth. Enough of the… noise, the ennui. The endless losses. The irreparable damage. Enough bad music.

We need a Latin beat. [Pause.] Or something with that heat.

Our days, and our children’s days, need to be grounded in joy, uplifting activity and thought. We need to dance.

But to do that we must help one another to see through the scams.

OUR GOVERNOR of California will be able to do many things unilaterally without having to compromise with gangster politicians. See http://oxtogrind.org/archive/311 for starters, especially the section about freeing political prisoners.

Now permit me to pull out some of my four decades of academic blah blah to make what I consider a beautiful concluding point.

Alexis de Tocqueville, echoing Adam Smith and Wilhelm von Humboldt (who inspired John Stuart Mill), asked rhetorically what “can be expected of a man who has spent twenty years of his life in making heads for pins?” He valued equality of condition, recognizing it to be the foundation of American democracy, and warning that if “permanent inequality of conditions” ever becomes established, “the manufacturing aristocracy which is growing up under our eyes,” and which “is one of the harshest that has ever existed in the world,” might escape its confines, spelling the end of democracy. Our own Thomas Jefferson also took it as a fundamental proposition that “widespread poverty and concentrated wealth cannot exist side by side in a democracy.”

It was only in the eeire early 19 century that the destructive and inhuman market forces which the founders of classical liberalism condemned were elevated to objects of veneration by Ricardo http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Ricardo and other classical economists as their contribution to class war in England.

David Ricardo. Yecch. That’s why, for now, I’ll call myself Ricardo X.

I am all about jumping into the current class war with a Latino beat. Holding hands with Chavez, King and Abbie Hoffman et al. Immediately. Paying full attention to the needs of my local communities, and making connections for one and all respecting the international scene. Underscoring how we cannot address our urgent issues without a perspective which transcends the borders which gangster politicians worldwide insist upon. [Pause.] Destroying us all.

This land is no more the land of the 9 million or so voters who voted for one of the two major parties last time out (in the California gubernatorial race) than it is the land of Spanish Mexicans or the indigenous souls they displaced. It is no more the land of our greedy elite than it is the land of the unjustly incarcerated. It is no more the land of NAFTA’s creators than it is the victims of that abomination.

And I tell you true, we will do something about this mess, me and you.

For the powers that be benefit from gang violence, from murder, confusion, cynicism, resignation and preoccupation on the street level. They are not ingenuous about addressing what worries us, harries us to death. Not any more than they are sincere about ending drug culture as it stands. For our survival stakes are not their monstrous stakes. And they’ve been able to put the breaks on us with fake distractions… like elections. By pushing the biggest drug of all, a sense of false participation in democratic society.

Maybe we should name the partido politico The Brown Berets of Watsonville Party, and rejoice in what I pray will become the source of the energy I seek.

Ricardo X can be reached at tosca.2010[at]yahoo.com
P.S. Got to warn you, however, that you should get ready to take that Obama sticker off of your bumper if you happened to have put one on, and — somehow — neglected to see that you’ve been put on. See http://dissidentvoice.org/2007/06/barack-obama%E2%80%99s-white-appeal- and-the-perverse-racial-politics-of-the-post-civil-rights-era/ for an orientation, if you need one. It is truly an unmitigated horror that “alternative outlets” and “alternative spokespeople” continue to contribute to Obama’s credibility and the credibility of our collective electoral scam as per http://www.democracynow.org/2009/11/3/by_the_people_the_election_of.