I Use To Be…

…all for changing the system from within. You know, the old reformation instead of revolution, or adjusting the program rather than replacing it all together. The problem is it seems like whenever someone decides to take the reformation route they start out with the best intentions of the community in mind, but as they begin to climb the corporate ladder they lose focus. There is no doubt that their elevation in socio-economic status has a lot to do with it cause lets face it if you go from making a 4 digit/low 5 digit salary to high 5 digit/6 digit salary and up then all of sudden Sam doesn’t seem as bad of a guy as he did when you were broke. And why would you want to bite the hand that feeds you? Examples of this are Ice Cube who went from “Amerikkka’s Most Wanted” to “We Be Clubbin” in less than a decade(although Cube returned to revolutionary rhetoric on his two last albums which were released independently), Reginald Hudlin BET’s President of Entertainment who’s friendship with his protege Boondock’s creator Aaron McGruder has been ruined by his decisions and actions(or lack of) at BET, and to an extent Tupac Shakur who started out with heavy revolutionary overtones and rhetoric on his debut and was national chair of The New Afrikan Panthers but was reduced to just another “nigga”(which he tried to conceptualize and redefine in a positive way) and his T.H.U.G.L.I.F.E. movement simplified, derailed, and restratigized by the powers that be. And the list could go on, these are just some examples that come to mind right off top.This makes me wonder could a person really make revolutionary reforms from within the system. I don’t think it’s possible(unless the person is willing to risk their economic, political, social, and possibly physical life). The higher the level of success you reach in a profession the sharper your game has to become, and in order to trick those in power into believing that you are for their system you have to wear a mask for so long that by the time you are in a position to make siginifigant change what was once a mask is now who you have become. This is why I practice and preach the principles of self-determination and self-help, because I don’t expect any corporation and especially not the federal or even state governments to give my community the resources it needs to cure itself from infection and sustain itself after we are healthy again.