Salih Muhammad
July 7, 2015
A Reasonable Sacrifice
Blessed are those who struggle, oppression is worse than the grave, it is better to die for a noble cause, than to live and die as a slave.
Today in America, it has again become exceedingly clear, that Black life has NO value. As our churches are burned, our women abused, our children shot, little is left to the imagination as to how valueless we’ve become.
Deep into the still of the night, many of us have wondered, just when will it end? When will our babies stop dying from senseless murders - from both police and each other? Four-hundred sixty years of suffering, violence, and death. When will it cease!?
After the Charleston Shootings, I gave remarks at a Vigil hosted by the Black Student Union at UC Berkeley. At the time, filled with vigor, zeal, and confidence in our unalterable ultimate liberation, I remarked that these murders will stop - WHEN WE STOP THEM. The reality of the situation is that White America has made it abundantly clear that is has no moral conscious. The only way to put a cease to this madness, is to be so fed up, that we would give our lives for OUR Freedom.
The great White American liberator Patrick Henry infamously captured the spirit of White America and declared, “Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take; but as for me, give me liberty or give me death!” The racist state of New Hampshire declared as its motto “Live Free or Die.” When the Greeks declared independence in 1830, they memorialized it with the statement “Freedom or Death.” In Macedonia, Liberty or Death. In Turkey, Independence or Death. In France after the French Revolution, the War cry was “Liberty, Equality, Brotherhood, or Death.” In Nepal, they found “it is Better to die than to be a coward.” In Yugoslavia, “Better the grave than a slave, better a war than the pact.” Here in the good ol’ US of A, Benjamin Franklin published a magazine, “JOIN, or DIE.”
All over the World, any Free and Independent Nation came to the ultimate and final conclusion, Either we will be Free or we will DIE. Not get rich or die trying, we must get RIGHT or Die Tryin! We must get FREE or die Tryin!
The house of Freedom is built on SACRIFICES, not DREAMS. Anyone unwilling to pay the price for Freedom is not deserving of the Freedom we ultimately will earn. There will be no cowards nor work-escapist in the post-revolutionary world.
What do I mean by Freedom or Death? Any true struggle for freedom comes at the expense of Individualism. We must sacrifice what we may WANT for what our people NEED. We must be willing to sacrifice that extra hour, extra dollar, extra tweet, or extra time! To give one’s life for our people, means that you commit the essence of self for a cause bigger than self! This is the choice that we all must face today!
Be willing to give your life for our people, or stop TALKING (and tweeting) about Freedom. The choice today, as it has always been, Freedom or Death. When we realize that, we will be free.
What choice will you make?
More next time…
