Herbert does nothing to place blame on the thugs in blue, but has instead shamelessly encouraged the community to snitch on each other to the cops and emphasizes that we must “build better police and community relations”. On the surface it would seem that maybe there would be better relations with the police if they weren’t beating, killing, and arresting black and brown people in mass numbers. But to expect that would be an illusion: the NYPD wouldn’t be doing their job if they weren’t terrorizing us. Herbert must know this, which is why he tries so hard to distract us from the brutality of the police.

Herbert’s discourse is a classic tactic of diverting blame away from the police by switching the conversation to the topic of inner-community violence, and black on black crime. Of course violence within our communities and among oppressed peoples is a major problem, but what Herbert and those like him conveniently neglect to mention is that the source of this street violence is the political system itself.

It is this same political and economic system that Herbert is so desperately trying to gain power within – white supremacist Amerikkkan capitalism – which leaves black and brown and other oppressed peoples without a means of sustaining ourselves. Capitalism leaves our communities without jobs, or limits us to jobs without living wages. Herbert has done his part on this front, including his work in 2011 trying to bring Wal-Mart, a company notorious for its low wages, anti-union and anti-worker practices, to NYC. Without opportunities for us and our families to live and prosper, our youth are often funneled into gang activities. Seeking a sense of community, protection, and a way to sustain themselves economically, these young people fuel what often becomes a self-destructive lifestyle, fighting and killing each other for power and money in the black market.

Herbert promotes the same system whose schools miseducate us, whitewash our histories and struggles, and doesn’t prepare us to be positive members of our communities or serve the needs of our peoples. It is the same capitalist system whose media makes millions peddling glorified images of criminal life to youth with no other opportunities. The same system that would rather set police on our communities like slave catchers, targeting us with the so-called War on Drugs, mass incarceration, stop and frisk, and outright murder at the hands of the Pigs.

Without an educational system that serves our needs, without a way to defend ourselves from the racist police thugs and eventually put them and their bosses out of power, without real solutions and a new way of living we cannot expect our communities to start healing the wounds of centuries of white supremacist violence and exploitation. Without these things we cannot expect people in our communities to unite, stop fighting each other, and engage in a real struggle for liberation. But these are all topics that people like Herbert would rather not talk about because they have sold out their communities in exchange for a token part within the enemy system.

After the video was circulated on the internet, some of the activists involved followed Herbert’s advice to google him. After discovering his political ties he was called out for the house slave that he is, and declarations were made by some to politically expose him. Herbert retaliated by making various threats against them, which can be seen here:

Herbert’s recent internet ranting is instructive, because he did something that most politicians (or wannabe politicians) wouldn’t be stupid enough to do: he broke character in public and admitted that he really is nothing more than a thug with even more thugs behind him. We should apply this lesson to the other government thugs in suits like Bloomberg, Ray Kelly, bankers, CEO’s, and others portrayed by the media as “respectable” and “successful” within the capitalist power structure. We should use the example of Herbert to better understand how the power structure employs people who look like us to redirect our anger against each other, and away from the capitalist class, their police force, and the political system overall.