💾 Archived View for library.inu.red › file › ashanti-omowali-on-kuwasi-balagoon.gmi captured on 2023-01-29 at 07:24:16. Gemini links have been rewritten to link to archived content
➡️ Next capture (2024-06-20)
-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Title: On Kuwasi Balagoon Author: Ashanti Omowali Date: 2001 Language: en Topics: black anarchism Source: Retrieved on 2007-07-22 from https://web.archive.org/web/20070722215426/http://www.anarchistpanther.net/node/6][web.archive.org]]. Proofread online source [[http://www.revoltlib.com/?id=4825, retrieved on July 7, 2020.
THERE ARE CATS, AND THERE ARE CATS...
THERE IS KUWASI BALAGOON
In the name of Allah Most Gracious Most Merciful…
Kuwasi Balagoon is dead. “Surely we are Allah’ and to Him we surely
return.” The Quran tells us each soul shall have a taste of death and
all too often we make the mistake of seeing death as a process outside
of life. Kuwasi was full of life, therefore his death seems odd.
Because it has been reported that Kuwasi died of AIDS people have a
tendency to speculate on how he came by it. In Amerikkka we are told the
high-risk groups are homosexuals and intravenous drug users. And for the
Black Nationalist, these are no no’s. So to make his death acceptable
some may theorize the pigs infected him. I personally cannot say how he
was infected but I do know from research that the majority of people
with AIDS are in Africa and the majority of the people infected here are
Black and Latino.
We should be reflecting on how to avoid this plague (if its possible)
and more so on ourselves as a movement. We must ask, Did we do
everything we could for Kwasi when he was underground, was the movement
environment conducive for the psychological and moral survival of the
individual? There is a lot of rhetoric about support but very little
practice. Sisters are forced to do a lot of things unacceptable to the
movement when they are underground but history has shown very few some
forward to aid. The guerrilla is like a fish in the sea but the New
Afrikan guerrilla must survive in a cesspool of corruption and
insensitivity.
We must never forget that Kuwasi’s history was one of struggle,
consistent struggle, and a frontline soldier who was always there. We
must never forget that Kuwasi having freed himself from prison was
captured trying to free another comrade and latter freed himself again.
He stayed in the mist until he was captured again. His stance at trial
was (that) he was a freedom fighter and everyday for the rest of his
life he thought of freeing himself and fighting oppression. He wasn’t a
bloodthirsty sociopath but a warm caring human being who knew that armed
resistance to racist terrorism was/is a legitimate means of struggle.
Kuwasi was a good soldier and comrade. He will be greatly missed.
Kuwasi taught us much in his life. Loyalty – commitment and bravery –
his death should also be a lesson. We must purify ourselves, clean up
our communities and find those things, which are good and teach them to
people. We must also learn to care for each other otherwise we’re
doomed. In Kwasi’s death we must find new meaning, seek the right path.
Nuh Washington
---
POW/PPThe above was written shortly after the death of Kuwasi Balagoon
15 years ago by Black Liberation Army soldier Albert Nuh Washington who
died himself a year ago, ALSO in prison! 1986 and 2000. Kuwasi was the
first of the BLA prisoners to die in prison. We know that Nuh was not
the last as just THIS year Teddy Jah Heath died in prison. It is said
that death varies in its significance. It can be weightier than a
mountain or lighter than a feather. We said that then as young fighters
and we feel its weight now as many of us are middle aged, in poor health
and walking everyday in the midst of social and spiritual devastation of
our communities. When one has lived the high tide of revolutionary
struggle and has tasted the power of striking back, when one has been
part of organizational forces and ancestral support that can take credit
for putting fear in the lives of formerly awesome pig oppressors, it is
hard to attend the wake or funeral of another comrade who reminds you
that YES WE DID IT. We did it and that we made a comittment to help
build the Armed Potential for the liberation of our communities. Crazy
though we may have been, and crazy as some of us still be, we left a
mark and a message for generation to come that we CAN win. And if it be
that we cant win then we can, like Eldridge say “throw a nigger wrench
into the machinery” with the only power that we have…the power to
destroy the orderly flow of official everyday bullshit.
Kuwasi Balagoon, 1946 TO 1986. The essence of the Lumpen-street outlaw.
Law-breaker, law-manipulator, law-eliminator. And revolution sounds like
grandma’s breakfast call. It was not only the social and historical
forces that shaped him and so many others like him. It wasn’t only the
creation of the Black Panther Party and the genius of Huey P. Newton’s
vision of an American Revolution led by that day’s discarded peoples
“with no ties to the basic means of production.” It was that the idea
was INSANE that anyone should believe that the discarded people of the
streets can be ACTORS, leading actors on the stage of human struggle for
freedom. Power to Insanity! This is the most advanced technological
society in the world. White racism had corralled black people into urban
Bantustans. Out of seemingly nowhere comes Franz Fanon’s hustlers,
janitors, maids, stick-up kids, alcoholics, welfare recipients, killers
(some trained by Uncle Sam to kill other people of color), illiterates
and college students turned revolutionaries who will rock and inspire
others to join all kinds of social movements to ROCK this kapitalist
empire at its very foundations. Kuwasi was a part of that. He was an
OUTLAW; an outlaw who was in search of a way to be the most effective
political actor he could for his people and for the destruction of
Babylon. His very constitution was freedom. His very personal
constitutional make-up was outlaw, as in, “I cannot accept any law that
is out of harmony with my very being.” That search for existential
relevance was found in the Black Panther Party. Marx, Lenin and others
could agree on one thing about the Lumpen, that you can’t harness them,
you can’t discipline them. And maybe they were right. You can’t, or at
least it’s hard to harness the Lumpen spirit, which is a nomadic spirit,
an anarchic spirit which is finally, a fuck the bullshit spirit cuz Free
Life is worth taking your best shots, literally. It was a good thing
(that just needed other creative organizational forms) not a bad thing.
That’s why when those of us even thought about joining the Black
Underground we thought of panther outlaws before us like Kuwasi, Saundra
Holmes, Geronimo and Twyman. Kuwasi’s name was already well known. Wild
man, escape artist. Freed himself and risked it sneaking armed back to
the prison gates for others. Daring, a daringness that was not anything
foolish but represented the kind of spirit that you can’t harness, the
kind that guided Huey’s intellectual daringness, the literary daringness
of Papa Rage, the role-breaking daringness of Assata Shakur, and the
bi-sexual daringness of… who? — of Kuwasi himself!
I remember when I was in prison we got word through the VooDoo
Communiciations network through Kuwasi (and others whom I can’t name),
that if we needed help in raising up on outta that high walled prison to
let them know. We did. That was Kuwasi, for whom RISKS were like the air
he breathed. You breathe, you take risks. I risk, therefore I AM. And
though it made no sense to me then that he was also The Anarchist, I
thoroughly understood it now. When the BPP could no longer serve his
spirit, the Black Liberation Army’s anarchistic style could. And he
obviously liked the vision of a Republic of New Afrika, free from
Babylonian control and self-determining. I respect that.
Upon my prison release at the end of 1985 and attending his Memorial
after his death on December 13, 1986, comrades of the Black Liberation
Army (and those in the know) shared with me those stories (which make
for precious new motivating Myths) of the TRICKSTER, shape-shifter,
elusive, daring, bold… Kuwasi. He could take’em down: enemies, armored
cars, while being sustained by love and loyalty, both giving and
accepting. Kuwasi lived his life, his short 40 years own his own terms,
outlaw terms from his personal to his political. He was in solidarity
with whomever he wanted, he loved whomever he wanted, he fought on
whatever terrain he landed, whether on the streets or in the prisons.
Lastly, in my ramblings, he left us all a rich legacy in actions and
words. Both had these things in common: they challenged the dominant
reality that held humanity in check, and they challenged us\our dominant
revolutionary thinking if IT was holding our humanity and movement
activities IN CHECK. That was the meaning of his political outlawry, his
free lifestyle and his undying love for Lumpen Humanity. He is bigger
now than he was in life. We can all, proudly – the Black/New Afrikan,
the Youth, the Queer, the Outlaw, the Community, the Other – take a
piece of him and be further motivated to struggle. Each piece will only
multiply. Ha! He’d probably just ask that we learn to CONVERGE
collectively and deal a final DEATHBLOW to this infernal enemy of LIFE.
There are cats, and there are cats. There is Kuwasi Balagoon
“A strong people don’t need strong leaders.” – Ella Baker
Work for the Freedom of All Political Prisoners with Urgency!
Good Morning, Revolution, I See Your Light Again.
All power through the people!
Ashanti Omowali
Anarchistpanther
May 15, 2001