LUMPENPROLETARIAT—We knew we had to make it out of the ghetto.  What we didn’t know is that the USA’s ghettos were created by the capitalist mode of production.

What we didn’t know is that, once we made it out, we owed it, morally and ethically, to those still trapped in the ghetto (many families trapped for generations), to go back and lend our new skill sets and resources to our neighbours trapped in the ghetto by the institutional structure of the capitalist mode of production.

—Messina

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“The Ghetto” (1990) by Too $hort

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[Image “Tooshort (300dpi)” (of Too $hort at Martin Luther’s Rebel Soul Fest at DNA Lounge in San Francisco, July 2008) by Sehar Sikandar. Licensed under Fair use via Wikipedia; licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons.]