A Conspiracy of Corruption: Lumumba Lied, Black Apologists Cried, and Electoral Politics Failed…Again!
PART II
In part of two of A Conspiracy of Corruption: Lumumba Lied, Black Apologists Cried, and Electoral Politics Failed…Again, the “marvelous” things Mayor Lumumba has done for the city of Jackson are listed and discussed. The National Conference of Black Lawyers (NCBL) statement in defense of Mayor Lumumba as a member of a Black nationalist royal family is critiqued as the shallow and politically illiterate statement that it is. NCBL is challenged to back up the claims they make about the underlying political motivations of the federal government’s indictment of Mayor Lumumba considering the fact he doesn’t have a history of taking radical actions in opposition to the federal government, but, as discussed in part I, has a history of conspiring with the federal government to criminalize and degrade the Black multitudes in Jackson. Lastly, the true meaning of Black unity for many is discussed and the weak defense of Black degeneracy that white people have been corrupt in the past is exposed as politically bankrupt and unprincipled.
Marvelous Things
Is presiding over a police state that has killed at least a dozen Black people (I’ve lost count) since his rise to office one of the marvelous things the mayor has done for Jacksonians? Is collaborating with President Donald Trump’s political appointee to the United States Attorney’s Office, Mike Hurst, in his criminalization of Black people in Jackson for non-violent gun offenses through Project Empowering Jackson Eliminating Crime Together (EJECT) one of the marvelous deeds of the mayor? How about laying the groundwork for and gradually expanding Jackson’s surveillance state through spending millions on a Real Time Crime Center (RTCC) that allows for ordinary people, not just criminals, in Jackson to be surveilled as they go about their lives not bothering anyone or doing anything wrong?
It is striking that activist dopes and legal specialists have never pointed the finger at a Black Mayor who collaborated with the Donald Trump led federal government to spy on his own people. Did the archive of the Black radical tradition not clarify what to do in such situations?
Mayor Lumumba’s administrations ran a pilot program that proposed allowing the Jackson Police Department’s RTCC to tap into the ring doorbells of residents and local businesses under the guise of addressing crime. Maybe his attempts to disarm Black people in Jackson under the pretense of addressing gun violence, an attempt that even the Republican Attorney General, Lynn Fitch, vehemently opposed and threatened to file a lawsuit against the Lumumba administration is one of his marvelous feats? If Fitch primarily had the firearms of white folks on her mind, what national coalition of black lawyers drew a line when Mayor Lumumba took steps to disarm Black toilers?
How marvelous was Mayor Lumumba’s false claim of victory after he filed a lawsuit against the multinational Siemens Corporation and its Black subcontractors for providing faulty water meters to the city only to settle the lawsuit for less money than the city lost on the contract? The mayor allowed the Black subcontractors to walk away without repaying any of the monies received for work, they either never performed or performed in a subpar manner. The mayor and his tools might call this ‘Black unity.’ I am certain of one thing; Black may be beautiful, but it is not very historical. I could go on, but all of this has been well documented by the bureau of public secrets, also known as the media. This information has been there to see for the past several years for anyone whose name is not Stevie Wonder or who is not politically bankrupt.
Mayor Lumumba Defended as a Member of a Royal Family
Way back when Bruce Dixon was managing editor of Black Agenda Report, he clarified that too many have a response to Barack Obama as president, that suggests ‘all we want is a Black royal family.’ If democracy means majority rule, feudalism means we support the preferred propertied bloodline of the ancestors.
In addition to Rukia Lumumba’s defense of her brother, which is clearly not impartial, another organization, the National Conference of Black Lawyers (NCBL) issued a statement in solidarity with the beleaguered mayor. The NCBL is a black legal organization that fashions itself as the legal arm of the Black liberation movement. This self-styling is interesting when it has members who openly justified Barack Husein Obama’s target assassinations of Africans and people of color abroad from the sky without due process or trial. Many still believe that Cuba is a socialist state, and continuously getting out the vote and supporting the Democratic Party. I guess adding to this reactionary and contradictory list, which is not exhaustive by a long shot, the uncritical fealty to the embattled mayor of Jackson, because his father was a long-time member of this lawyer’s association, can’t damage its credibility and standing much more than its own inactivity and resting on work done four decades or more in the past has.
The late elder Chokwe Lumumba, the father of Chokwe Antar Lumumba, was a long-time member of NCBL. The statement of solidarity with Mayor Lumumba spends quite a bit of time rehashing the work and legacy of the elder Lumumba. It talks about how the Lumumba family has been a pillar in the Black Liberation Movement.
This politically illiterate statement idiotically situates Mayor Lumumba as the heir apparent of a royal Black nationalist family who deserves veneration and support not because of his own merit, but because of what his father did in his own time and space.
Every tub must sit on its own bottom. No one should be given support as a result of who their parents are or were, no matter the merits of their elders’ contribution to struggle. Everybody must make their own contribution to the just aspirations of building a new world that will topple the old world that is in a state of rapid decay. I dare anyone from NCBL to bring the receipts that show how Mayor Lumumba has made his own contribution to such efforts.
Tell NCBL Bring the Receipts
One thing is clear, an association of Black legal professionals made no analysis or explained to the public the legal contexts of the indictment. Even a talented group of royal families, regardless of race and gender, and their descendants should be literate enough to analyze a document of forty to fifty pages in the public domain and dissect what appears credible from what appears doubtful or challengeable. Certainly, people who claim to uphold radical traditions and heritage should be able to do so with a fundamental critique of the norms of capitalism and the state. But is it the norms of a white racial state?
NCBL, in its political illiteracy, wants its public to believe that the FBI (and Justice Department) under Joe Biden and Kamala Harris’s Democratic Party in 2024, is carrying out a conspiracy against Mayor Lumumba? Of course, conspiracy theorists like to talk about “them” and “they” where they have no idea what they are talking about, or don’t have the courage to stand up to real rulers within the systems they apparently decry.
The Democratic Party just ran Kamala Harris, a shining cackling mediocre woman of color for the office of emperor of the world. Almost all of these Black professionals bowed down to her, confident that the foolishness of white men was enough to win an election. Is it this very party that they owe fealty that is carrying out a tradition of subversion and entrapment of Black elites above society? If so, why are these “radical” thinkers associating with such swine who initiated this attack on their royal family?
Despite NCBL’s assertion that the mayor is facing an “unjust and politically motivated prosecution,” I dare them to give one example of any radical action or word the mayor has ever taken or spoken in public, not just while he’s been in office, but in his entire life, that would cause the FBI to persecute him. Many might inquire can’t Mayor Lumumba just be attacked on the basis that he is a Black man? That surely is possible, but that would not give any evidence of any special leadership qualities or political insight on his part. Further, it wouldn’t explain why an affirmative action empire or ethnically plural police state would be subverting his administration specifically.
If the NCBL can’t establish a scintilla of proof to support their asinine statement, they should be quiet. Because like many Black people on what is termed “the left”, they have stood by silently as Mayor Lumumba’s police state conquered and killed ordinary Black people without batting an eye or saying a mumbling word in opposition to it, even when the truth was placed squarely in their faces.
The thing that many fail to see when offering support to so-called Black royals is if they are royalty, that makes mostly everybody else peasants. They think of Black toilers as only present to serve the will, pleasure, and manipulations of the monarchy. These are thought crimes certain Black people impose on themselves in the name of ‘consciousness raising’ and ‘liberation.’ NCBL can pretend that we exist in a fictional Wakanda and what is happening in Mississippi is a result of some attempt to undermine efforts by the Lumumba administration to overthrow the status quo, but after nearly eight years in office his practices don’t fit this false narrative. Instead, the Lumumba administration has collaborated with global and national capital and some of the most anti-black and reactionary forces in Mississippi. Sticking one’s head in the sand and pretending what has happened did not, does not change the actual track record of the Lumumba regime.
Red, Black, and Green: What Black Unity Really Means
For many who identify politically as nationalists and Pan Africanists, Black unity means supporting Black rulers above society as they crush the Black multitudes under foot while claiming they are their benefactors who have their best interests at heart. It means disciplining Black labor to exploitation and degradation in the name of uplifting the Black led state or municipality. I know many won’t like my saying this. But they can’t deny it because it is the truthful widespread pattern verified by post-civil rights, post-colonial history not only in the United States, but in the Caribbean and on the African continent. To be clear, this pattern is not a sign of the self-destruction of Black people in the minds of those who internalize white racism. It is the design of what the Black political class does aspiring to be equals with all decadent rulers under the state and capital.
The accusations leveled against Mayor Lumumba do not make him an aberration. What he and his “co-conspirators” stand accused of is business as usual in electoral politics. His co-conspirator, DA Jody Owens alleged statement to FBI agents, that he characterized as ‘drunken locker room banter’ is poignant and should serve as a sobering moment for those who still believe the fairy tale that these people seek office to represent the interest of commoners.
While the author certainly does not support the sexual assault or harassment of women or even discussion of such odious things, let’s keep in mind when Donald Trump was recorded as saying he often grabbed women in their private parts, those who don’t like arrogant white men, didn’t find the excuse of ‘locker room banter’ sufficient. But D.A. Owens has been caught conversing among the Black political class arrogantly and openly about his illegal and corrupt methods of extracting personal wealth from the business of city government that serves overwhelmingly Black constituents, and coercing Black elected officials to be complicit in the stealing. D.A. Owens openly pursued Mayor Lumumba as a partner in his over the top arrogance. This does not mean D.A. Owens’ conniving judgment of Lumumba as a partner in corruption makes him guilty. But when we read the indictment based on recordings the state claims to possess, what do we see and hear?
In Conversation with Self-Described Crooks
In describing his role as the Hinds County District Attorney Owens was allegedly recorded saying, “This is the part time job to get the conversations and the access. Access equals the other shit we are trying to do.” Now some people are still under this false notion that he sought office to fight crime and do justice and by his own admission he got that position to build wealth for himself at the expense of the multitudes in Hinds County. If this is not the case, what business does a District Attorney have allegedly seeking out developers to get into the door with elected officials to secure money for himself?
Owens, according to the indictment, said more than this. That he uses the surveillance state to coerce city council votes to support development projects. Further, there was a tone of arrogance where the District Attorney said he had almost a million dollars stashed, money he laundered, and that he could not be bought. This was so as he volunteered to be the distributor of the payoffs to various people, that he knew how, for he had done it before. Further, that the Jackson community, overwhelmingly Black is so ignorant, they have no idea what his office actually does. They are fools enough to think the office is there to fight for justice and fairness.
Now Mayor Lumumba, according to the indictment, did take action to fix and carry out favors for these same developers, in this business meeting. His answers were largely brief, ‘yes’ and ‘no’ as he appears to take part in this crooked path. While he is innocent until proven guilty, he is documented in a transaction that someone else equally took part, and has admitted to guilt already, and another has been recorded as being very arrogant and heinous in contempt for the law he administered and the citizens of Jackson.
Bypassing Every Opportunity to be Recorded Standing for Justice
Though he made himself available for the bribes, according to the indictment, Lumumba had every opportunity, despite not knowing he was being recorded, to say to the apparent developers they were meeting in the presence of everybody, something refreshing.
Mayor Lumumba could have said in the meeting that was recorded: ‘I am for the legal economic development of Jackson. But I categorically reject D.A. Owens statements about how business is done, what the law is really for, and most importantly, his obvious contempt for the intelligence of the ordinary Black people of Jackson.’ He did not say anything like that.
Now if FBI investigations and its recordings can be manipulated, they did not place him saying anything as vividly disgusting as his apparent associate in pursuit of graft as D.A. Owen. Further, Mayor Lumumba appears perfectly comfortable around degenerate people who spoke of stealing and the ignorance of Jackson citizens in his presence. It was as if this is how Black capitalists think, act, and talk among themselves all the time.
If Mayor Lumumba was not present when D.A. Owens was recorded blabbering, and did not affirm the over-the-top illegal strategies he placed forward, and he was caught off-guard, meant well, and was entrapped, he has had every opportunity to clarify to the public (after the indictment was unsealed) that D.A. Owens’s scheming outlook on politics and economics clashes with everything his Jackson city administration stands for.
After the Unsealing of the Indictment, No Credible Public Address
Mayor Lumumba could easily have given a public address about the myth and irrationality of Black capitalism and how those who go into public life with such propertied individualistic mentalities on their mind are bound to possess decrepit worldviews and dispositions that have no respect for cooperative or democratic development. He could have discussed how they will even falsify pursuit of private wealth as a cooperative endeavor. For it is the only meaning of ‘black power’ they know or can relate. But Mayor Lumumba, the false cultivator of the popular will, who couldn’t positively pursue raising consciousness even if he tried, did not even do that. For raising awareness against the current of the dominant socialization brings little reward in the short-term.
What makes it worse for Mayor Lumumba is that he is accused of this corruption after operating for many years under the false pretense that he is some type of ‘radical’ fighting for the liberation of people. Far too many times, the only thing people pay attention to is what white politicians have gotten away with in the past.
So What if White People Got Away with it?
Not long after the mayor announced that he was going to be indicted, many people began talking about how white politicians take bribes and get away with it all the time. It is clear that a significant section of the Black popular will, even those who don’t have a pot to piss in, believes when Black elites above society come to power, it is alright if they scheme and take something for themselves beyond the law. Ethical community organizers must teach against this trend but also must first be aware that this contradiction with liberating strategies to bring the new society closer is present among us.
Why should what white people do or have done in the past have any bearing on what values and ethics Black people place on themselves? Do people propose a type of race to the bottom toward degeneracy in the name of being able to get away with the type of criminality and graft that certain white people have been able to get away with? Have all white people gotten away with corruption above society in the past?
What is it Our Turn to Do?
This type of ‘we have arrived’ and ‘it’s our turn now’ thinking among Black folks is sickening and counterproductive. It lacks integrity and principle, and it is employed by people who only care about themselves and their own circles who will do anything to get rich or die trying. It is disturbing when such thinking is prevalent among the Black masses because it is a barometer that shows the aspirations that many Black people have is to be exploiters and thieves while talking out of both sides of their mouths about racial injustice and fundamental unfairness.
Lumumba’s Victory has been Black People’s Disorientation
While the fate of mayor Lumumba in this bribery scandal has yet to be determined and will likely be dragged out for some time, one thing is clear. He is a totalitarian ruler. When most people think of totalitarianism, they think of an autocratic ruler who rules with an iron fist. However, when a ruler claims to be the embodiment of people’s freedom and self-government while in the same breath in backroom deals restricts and curtails this popular self-direction in a myriad of reactionary ways, that ruler convinces people that they are in fact a symbol of people’s arrival on their own authority. This is a form of totalitarianism.
Don’t believe me? How many who know this is all true but will steer away from gathering forces to confront a Mayor Lumumba who we know has presided over the killing of at least ten Black people? That has been fully established. But I suspect those who like getting dressed up in African clothes and lighting candles really don’t believe in higher principles, and really don’t have great feelings of love for ordinary Black people. Not to mention the degenerate, “don’t get left” whites who can’t maintain a principle unless they can phone a friend and snap a photo.
At every turn, especially in the early days of his administration, Mayor Lumumba emphasized that his election and rule was the culmination of a longstanding freedom struggle as embodied by the efforts of struggle of his father and other people who struggled against reactionary forces in Mississippi in their own place and time. The truth of the matter is that Mayor Lumumba’s election was the rise of an individual who was mostly, if not only, interested in power for himself and his small circle of friends. If what the federal government has charged Mayor Lumumba and his alleged co-conspirators with can in fact be proven by the government, it should be clear by all observers that it was Mayor Lumumba’s own greed and self-aggrandizement that caused his downfall, not some conspiracy to remove him from his perch above society that he has perpetually used to collaborate with reactionary forces to suppress ordinary people’s desire for self-directed liberating activity.
This post was reposted from Stories by Adofo Minka on Medium
