By Chief Llabe
A real revolutionary is one that is constantly with the people. You won’t see a revolutionary stay dedicated to the struggle without making a real relationship with the people. Avoid “revolutionaries” who flinch at you when you walk to them. Or those that make you flinch like the old white men from CPooSA who claim they’re leading the revolution. Since when???
Black Hammer Party members spend hours with the people gathering resources for the homeless. Our way of serving the people every week comes from being in the community, right alongside every hustler, artist, and defender of the community. The poor and working class doesn’t have the luxury of lots of time off the job, so we make friends just like them while working hard out here.
Our revolutionary leadership comes right from these streets and is strengthened by that relationship. Every conversation I have teaching the people keeps me going in the revolution for a hundred days. But learning from the people teaches me that they will lead billions of lives in the revolution! This system keeps revolution flowing despite whatever setbacks stand in the way of this service.
We don’t just connect with people on the streets, often they are busy. So we get the people’s phone numbers! That way the revolutionaries can bring themselves to the people wherever they go. When we call people we call it phonebanking, because the people are our Gold! I met Austin during one of these calls, a great person who stayed true to Black Hammer’s mission.
Meet Austin
Austin was someone who came to our church at the invitation of our people who knew that we served homemade burritos. The people knew that we were the group that was going to care for him strongly and for a long time. Not only did he get a burrito, he also got clothes, a hygiene kit, and a blanket as the temperatures were dropping. It was here he began seeing the people of the park, gathered and united, living like they deserve.
His story was different than many of the park. Most of the people sleeping in Woodruff Park were poor and working class, but with the COVID pandemic they slipped into homelessness from the economic deprivation. Austin came from a gated community in the south side, went to college, had a child, and what seemed like a secure future. But with a combination of a cancer diagnosis, the loss of his parents from COVID-19, and Joe Biden’s economic crisis, this colony had Austin destined for homelessness. Despite this high-class background, the streets treated this African man the same way as any homeless colonized person would get treated.
Coming to the streets as someone who knew only abundance, the streets were familiar, but the ease was far away. Stores didn’t give him the resources he needed anymore. The suit and tie professionals were not giving him respectful conversation. The streets were now right against him, giving him no space. Black Hammer calls this process class suicide, when high-class Black and Brown people become internally and externally linked with the Poor and Working Class.
This life is not all negative, rather the Poor and Working Class stay building even when homeless. The people embraced their new homeless brother and made sure he knew where to get the basics. He learned quickly how selfless the people were, despite the violence done between them. He learned so many stories from the people that had become homeless for every reason except that it was their fault. He learned first hand how hard these people worked, bringing paychecks from their jobs, only to stay living on the streets due to the high cost of housing.
It was in this forge of the streets that Austin learned about the people. After attending Da Revolutionary Church for months and bringing his circle of friends along with him, he made sure so many got served like he did. As time went on he went and struggled to get housing, for months and months working tirelessly to get that security back.
Once working so hard and able to get housing— internalizing the messages of Black Hammer, of Da Revolutionary Church—Austin opened his house to his friends to stay in, so they can become independent as well. We would call him to invite him to Da Revolutionary Church week after week for months, always getting his affirmation of attendance. During the campaign to #FreeTheBHP3, Austin showed great initiative and had kept up with our articles, stayed in the know, and had been sharing this to the community he had been serving! His experience with us and the people proved to him that putting the relationship you have with others first is the only way to develop oneself personally.
The hard work of providing a new way of living does not come without sacrifice. Whether it is free time, old ways of thinking, or ways of working many must be thrown off. Austin exemplifies the way of class suicide, and staying with the community through THICK AND THIN. The revolutionary must not only keep to the poor and working class, but also to the fact that so much of the colonial system must be dropped off, burned, and turned into new materials for the new world.
The people’s struggle never stops, and neither does the Black Hammer Party! No nation, class, or other enemy can smash the people or the party’s indomitable spirit of progress. The strength of our people, our party, our leadership, and our nations are boundless! We move regardless of any obstacle, we will fight to Free the BHP 3, take leadership, and build our new world!
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