BRICS Affiliated Communities: Diaspora Solutions

I've talked about this before. You need to think about or or it would be worthwhile for you to think about as a goal or as an objective to pursue, to join BRICS. I'm not joking. I'm not and I'm not being hyperbolic. I'm completely serious.

Minority so called minority communities should try to join I know why you think that sounds like a joke because African Americans, right, so called Latino Americans and whatnot, they're not a country. They don't constitute a country. Only countries can join Briggs, and you're not a country. Okay. Try to think beyond the obvious constraints, please.

Don't think in terms of formal BRICS membership. Try to think in terms of how you can create a new category for BRICS recognition and BRICS cooperation. Say a BRICS affiliated community, for example, something like this, a category like this. You can think of all of the plausible criteria. Like, a given diaspora community, their their ancestral heritage should be from a country that either is a current member of BRICS, a current BRICS member state, or else it they come from a state that would otherwise qualify to apply for BRICS membership, and there should be a demonstrable pattern of marginalization for that community.

Because let's be honest, BRICS is unofficially an anti colonial, anti imperialist economic organization. So I'm saying you can argue that this or that diaspora community in the West exists actually as a quasi colonized de facto global South population that's located in the West, located in America, and it's there due to historical coercion. And this community has continues to suffer coercion within that country itself. So you're looking for economic exclusion relative to the host country's dominant population, America's dominant population, you know, political under representation, historical colonial, neo colonial relationships within the state, meaning exploitation, meaning discrimination that you suffer, meaning state violence that you suffer, mass incarceration that you suffer. I don't think that's a hard case to make, frankly, especially when you're talking about African Americans in America.

Then you'll need for that diaspora community, whichever community you're talking about, they need to have some degree of organizational coherence. Meaning, you have to have some sort of recognized representation, representative organizations that are capable of formal engagement with BRICS. BRICS members, member states, other countries, you know, some sort of institutional bodies that can carry out something that's more or less analogous to state state diplomacy. You understand? And, of course, you need the the the diaspora community, but have to be big enough.

You'd have to have sufficient population density to make it even worthwhile to deal with you. And then you wanna put in some sort of a clause about how the the diaspora community that's applying for the BRICS recognition is the separatist movement. You know, you can't be advocating the violent overthrow of the host country's government or something like that, you know, wanting to secede or have your own, you know, state. BRICS obviously doesn't wanna be involved in anything that's overtly subversive or insurrectionist or anything like that. But think about it.

Applying for BRICS membership or trying to navigate something like this, this is a practical, non rhetorical recognition of the fact that the colonial legacy doesn't only exist inside the formerly colonized countries, but it exists in the communities that were displaced from those countries, most likely due to war, due to economic sabotage, due to deindustrialization, and of course, obviously, because of the literal slave trade. You know, some people left their lands because the the the West extracted all their resources and left them in poverty. And then of course, some other people, plenty of people left because they themselves were the resources that were being extracted. That deserves to be acknowledged not just in speeches and not just in statements but recognized and acknowledged in actual practical real world ways. Imagine, this sort of a program, if you had something like this, this would be a a a kind of formal acknowledgment of shared global South identity to diaspora communities in America or in the West.

You could maybe get access to BRICS cultural educational programs. You could get some sort of an observer status at the BRICS summits. I mean, inshallah, maybe even diaspora communities could even potentially get conditional access to loans for community development from the new development bank. You understand? If you have this kind of status, if you have this kind of status with BRICS, this kind of connection with BRICS, that would facilitate trade for community owned businesses in your in your area with BRICS economies.

There could be educational exchange programs with BRICS universities. You understand? Potentially, you could establish expedited pathways to citizenship or anyway permanent residency in BRICS nations, in BRICS member states. Your community could have direct engagement with BRICS foreign ministries. There's no reason why you can't do this.

I mean, the potential benefits are absolutely massive. And obviously, this this could work not only for just the African American community or not even just only with regards to America. I mean, if you think about North Africans, for example, in France or the Pakistani Bangladeshi community in The UK, you can think of plenty of other examples. I mean, the Palestinian diaspora, on and on. There's plenty of people who could benefit from something like this.

That's practical morality. You're not just asking people to be good. You're trying to build systems that actually create safeguards, for yourself against the bad behavior that exists by others. You're not waiting for bigots to stop being bigots. Like I said many many times, you need parallel systems that will bypass the systems that oppress you.

That's what real solutions look like. That's what real morality looks like applied in the real world. Your own sources of financing, your own supply chains, your own trade relationships. Right? Your own, community governance structures that you create yourself among each other, your own economic networks.

See, this is what I mean by practical morality versus performative morality. Performative morality, that's protest signs and diversity statements and politicians making speeches about equality and justice and what have you. That's all theater. No. Practical morality is actual institutions that actually work and that actually protect you and that actually create the conditions for you to flourish regardless of what racists think.

We're not concerned about reforming them Because that's what you would be building if you were aiming at trying to get some sort of a bricks recognition. Do you see what I mean? The objective itself, bricks recognition, bricks acceptance, that's less important than what you would build in the process of pursuing that goal. Every step towards that goal is a step towards economic sovereignty, is a step towards political autonomy and civilizational dignity. Brexit recognition would just be a coup de grace.

But everything that you build on the path to that, everything that you build on the way to that would constitute practical liberation already. Again, I've talked about this many times I know. But look at the numbers. African Americans, if you're if if African Americans were considered as a separate economy, then that is an economy that generates somewhere between 1.6 to $2,000,000,000,000 in economic activity every year. You understand?

That's massive. That's larger than most countries entire GDP. That's equivalent to Brazil which is a founding member of BRICS. You have a massive economy already right now. But right now you're functioning like a colonized nation.

You understand? You have economic activity but you don't have economic sovereignty. You don't have economic control. You generate wealth but you don't control the wealth that you generate. You participate in every single sector of the economy mostly as labor and mostly as consumers, not as owners and not as decision makers.

Your spending power is absolutely enormous but it flows out of your communities into the hands of people who have no interest whatsoever in your well-being or the well-being of your community. Just like a colonized country. You understand? So you thought that your struggle was trying to gain acceptance in America, trying to end racism in America. No.

Your struggle is trying to liberate yourself from America. You are yourselves in an anti colonial struggle whether you know it or not. And no colonized country ever tried to gain the acceptance of their colonizers. They tried to get themselves out from under their colonizers. And that's what you should be doing.

This is the only thing in my opinion that makes sense for African Americans or any other diaspora community from the global majority that's living in that country. That's the only thing that makes sense. If colonization was the ultimate version of offshoring, where your communities represent the onshoring of colonization. And I don't think that it can even get any clearer than what we're seeing right now in America with ice and so forth. You're literally having slave rage taking place across that country.

So I'm saying see yourself and your community as literally a colonized nation, as an occupied people. And every colonized country, had preexisting structures. They had preexisting authority structures, governance structures and so forth. And those continued in one form or another even while the occupation existed. They operated beneath the imposed colonial governments.

And these formed the foundation for their independence later on. And it helped them to struggle against the colonizers during the colonization. And that's what needs to be built in my opinion, some semblance of that. You need some sort of unified economic governance. Right now your economic activity, like I said, it's fragmented across millions of individuals, across thousands and thousands of, small businesses with no coordination, with no unified strategy, no collective leverage.

That's counterproductive. That's counter liberation. You need to create some sort of a diaspora economic council. I've talked about it before. You can call it whatever you like.

The name isn't important. The function is what's important. Have regional chapters across the country, advisory boards, so forth. People with actual expertise, expertise in economics, in law, international relations, and so forth. Every community has people like that.

The point is to have some sort of a body, some sort of an institution that can speak with one voice about the economic interest of the community. This isn't a far off dream. This is something that you can literally start organizing next month. Have community meetings, online coordination and so forth. It's it's it's very easy to facilitate something like this.

Build catalogs of businesses. Create databases of economic activity. Start the work of actually understanding your collective economic position. Get a full map of what your situation is. I'm sure that a great deal of this is already being done to one degree or another by different organizations in civil society.

But these civil society organizations are not treated as and maybe they don't see themselves as or even maybe they don't behave as anticolonial institutions. This is a mindset recalibration that needs to take place. Look, I'm not advocating aggression. I'm not advocating hostility. But there's a big unspoken element in these community organizations that's getting lost, in my opinion, because it is unspoken.

You know? In your mission statement, if you have a a an NGO of some form, your mission statement is to help the community, help the African American community, help this or that community, the so called any any member of the so called minority communities. You want everyone to know that you're there to help. Right? That's what you have to say in your mission statement.

But help against who? Help them against what? No. The fact of the matter is that you are living under aggression. You are living under hostility.

You are living under persecution and bigotry. Conditions are being imposed and you say that you wanna help the people who are enduring those conditions, but you don't wanna talk about who's imposing those conditions and that those that those conditions are being imposed. Do you understand me? There is an adversarial reality going on here. There's no two ways about it.

You have to acknowledge this. You have to recognize this and act accordingly. Every organization that says that they're out there to help the community is or should understand that it is or should be treated as if it is and they should behave as if it is an anti colonial revolutionary organization. In my opinion, there needs to be some urgency and some importance given to what they're doing. You know, if people are compiling a catalog of so called minority owned businesses, well that's a chart of an anti colonization network of economic sovereignty.

You understand? This is important. It needs to be framed like this. It needs to be understood like this. In my opinion, this is very important because if you don't understand it like this, then there's a danger that people will just fall into acting just like the the the same way that the oppressors do, the colonizers do.

And they'll just use their community owned status of their company as a technique for more extraction themselves and self enrichment instead of being part and parcel of a larger, broader, deeper community struggle for autonomy. So in my opinion, you need to start by, registering and coordinating these community owned businesses. Right now, there's no comprehensive, registry that I know of. There may be. So nobody knows where they are, who they are, what they are, what sectors they're in, what they need, what they can provide to each other, and so forth.

Create that registry. Make it possible for African American owned businesses or so called minority owned businesses to find each other, to trade with each other, to support each other, to invest in each other. Build an actual ecosystem rather than isolated entities that are all just trying to survive. You know, survive separately in a hostile environment because that's what you're in. You're in a hostile environment.

I don't actually know if if if a if a registry like this exists, it may. I haven't been in The US for over twenty years, but back in the day, they were only sort of localized versions of this and only in in specific sectors like restaurants and and maybe mechanics and so forth. And then you should try to create investment funds. I've talked about it again before. Pull your resources.

Now African American wealth is scattered and isolated. Like I say, individual families trying to build something with no support. You can combine, pull your resources and combine that into some sort of a diaspora investment fund. Like I say, pool your resources. Make strategic investments in businesses in your community that serve the community interest.

Finance the creation of institutions that you need yourself. Build that parallel infrastructure. Obviously, like I said, this is not only for the African American community, it's for any community. Any community can do this. Every community needs to do this because yes, like I say, 90% of you are colonized by 10%.

That's something I've talked about many many times, community sovereignty, building sufficiency zones, establishing sufficiency zones, parallel structures, and so forth. And you can make sure that these funds, this this community fund or what have you, it doesn't operate according to the same predatory financial system that you're currently trapped in. No interest based exploitation. You can have equity partnerships where the risk is shared. You understand?

Investment decisions being made based on community benefit, not just profit maximization. That can be determined by a committee, by a council. This is about trying to build something that actually works for you, not replicating the same extractive systems that have been bleeding you dry. And in the process of all this, you are building community institutional structures that you that you'll be able to utilize in the future. And yes, you can establish direct partner trade partnerships, trade relationships with the BRICS nations.

You don't need BRICS recognition in order to do that. Like I said, your consume your consumption power is enormous already. You're keeping entire industries solvent, but you have zero control over your own supply chains. Everything is mediated through American corporations that mark up the prices, that control the availability in the market, and they extract maximum profit while giving you the minimum value. It doesn't have to be like that.

You can have direct relationships with Chinese manufacturers. There's no reason why you can't do that. Asian suppliers, African producers, Chinese manufacturers, like I say. Everything doesn't have to go through, middlemen. There's no reason for that.

I mean, don't mean to repeat myself. I've said all of this before, but it does bear repeating. I think sometimes we need to hear ideas reiterated several times before they finally click. Pursuing Brix membership, in my opinion, sort of forces you to think of yourselves as a nation. A nation that is connected to the rest of the world, not as a minority begging for inclusion, not as a demographic within someone else's country, but as a people with your own economic interests, with your own political aspirations, with your own civilizational heritage and with your own collective destiny.

That psychological shift is is absolutely vital and like I say you're not gonna get anywhere without it. Now I know that you might be stuck on the idea of being an American. You might be stuck on that idea especially because if you're African American then your ancestors bled and they sweated and they built that country. Look, I'm not telling you to disavow what is your right. I'm telling you the practical way to get your right, and that's not going to be, by buying into the bait and switch con job of citizenship because that's what it is.

You can't put your faith in the idea of trying to get your rights, your heritage rights, the legacy of what your ancestors earned. You can't put your faith in trying to get that from the same people who denied your ancestors those rights in the first place, the same government. You know. Talking about your rights as a citizen and thinking there's gonna be anything that you can cash in the bank. You can't cash that anywhere.

Your citizenship so called. No. They didn't sweat and bleed for that country. They sweated and they bled for you. And that goes for every diaspora community, for every immigrant community and so forth.

Everyone who went over there did not go over there to make America great again. They went over there for their own children. They went over there for their families to try to secure a better life for themselves and their families than the misery that America and that the West had inflicted on them in their home countries. So you don't owe anything to that country. You owe it to yourself to make a better life for yourself in spite of that country's determination to deny you a better life.

And the way to make a better life for yourself and for your children and for your community is to recognize that you do have to do it on your own with clear eyed understanding that that society is gonna try to hinder you in every way possible at every turn. So you need to understand your community as a nation within a nation, as a colonized nation within a colonizing nation. You understand me? And you need to understand that your struggle is adversarial in nature. You're not in a struggle to join the system, you're in a struggle to separate from the system.

And that's the key difference between this, and the end racism approach. Because when you work to end racism and fail, which you will, you'll have nothing. You will have spent decades protesting, decades petitioning, decades voting and pleading, and you're still essentially in the same structural position that you were at the beginning because none of that built you any actual power. None of those actions built you any actual power. But when you work to build economic sovereignty and build an international relationships, even if you don't achieve the ultimate objective.

You've built real things. You have institutions now. You have networks now. You have alternatives now. You have leverage now.

You have reduced your dependency on systems and on people that hate you. That's a win. That's a practical strategy. That's practical morality. Like I said, you don't need pie in the sky, you need a bakery.

Understand everything that I'm telling you here, rests on one fundamental premise. You have to see reality clearly. You have to see it clearly. You have to stop believing in fairy tales about American democracy and equal opportunity and, believing in the eventual triumph of justice in America. You have to stop making your strategy dependent on racists having a moral awakening.

America is what it is and it always has been what it is and it will continue to be what it is. The violence, the exploitation, the dehumanization, none of that, represents a deviation. That's the normal operation of the system. I've said it many times. You need to build as if your survival depends on your own capabilities rather than upon their goodwill because it does and it always has.

Capability is the only currency in that country. I'm telling you. You are not going to end racism in America, but what you can do by building, by connecting with the global South, by identifying as and operating as a diaspora community, By building cohesion, by building capability within your community, you can make the racists incapable of holding you down and holding you back, and that's the moral thing to do.