Black Bird Press News & Review: Black and Nobel presents Marvin X, Friday,Nov. 16, 3pm

Marvin X's peripatetic journey across America extended beyond the USA mainland to the US colony of Puerto Rico where the poet enjoyed some R and R after three months on the road promoting his Revolution of the Rocks Book Tour 2012, including his Wisdom of Plato Negro, parables and fables, Black Bird Press, 2012. But his How to Recover from the Addiction to White Supremacy, a Pan African 12-step model, was the most requested title.

After spending time splashing in the waters of the Caribbean @ 87 degrees, the poet boarded a city bus for a ride through the hood of San Juan where he observed projects upon projects of poor people as opposed to the beachside condos of the rich and famous. X did not see the so called middle class unless they were mixed with the poor as the city bus went from hood to hood on the slow ride to the airport.

X also spent a few hours in Old San Juan near the cruise ships where he encountered many black bourgeoisie negroes returning to the ship with their bags of Gucci and other products from the White Supremacy world of make believe or conspicuous consumption as described by sociologist E. Franklin Frazier's 60s classic The Black Bourgeoisie. X wondered why they needed to travel to Puerto Rico to buy garbage they could buy in New York or San Francisco?


After a few days, Dr. M returned to the US mainland and decided to set up his Academy of da Corner in the hood of Bed Sty where his daughter lives. After getting permission from the numbers runners standing nearby, X set up his Academy of da Corner at Marcus Garvey and DeKalb, giving out free books and literature to all, including his classic Mythology of Pussy and Dick, a manhood/womanhood biblo-rites of passage. To the detractors, Dr. M says check out the news, look at the US military generals falling from power, the Secret Service boys who went down in Columbia, or the latest Kansas City Chief's linebacker who killed his girlfriend and himself due to twisted male/female relations, no doubt due to his addiction to White Supremacy notions of the patriarchal domination of females, that females are the chattel or personal property of males.

Throughout my Revolution on the Rocks Book Tour, I have tried to instruct males they do not own the pussy. Indeed, a woman at Marcus Garvey and DeKalb Academy of da Corner, stated, "I know I own my stuff, " echoing a line from Colored Girls.....

A young man demanded X give him his phone number since he might have need for it in his male/female relations. Brothers, if you need, please give me a call at 510-200-4164, 24/7. Call me before you want to physically, verbally or emotionally abuse your partner!!!!!!!

Marvin X has been ignored and silenced like Malcolm X would be ignored and silenced if he had lived on into the Now. He's one of the most extraordinary, exciting black intellectuals living today! 
--Rudolph Lewis, Chickenbones.com 

 

• • 
    This book added much to our knowledge of the personal life of  young civil rights/black power leaders. That human side we seldom see without sentimentality and without condemnation. Too often there is too much concern for respectability.
     
    You are fearless in representations of black life.  Those stances have made all the difference in my own writings.
     
    Rudolph Lewis, Chickenbones.com
     

Click to order via Amazon

Right to left, Doris Knight as Eternal Woman, Ayodele Nzinga, the Other Woman,
Zahieb Mwongozi as Eternal Man, a scene from In the Name of Love by Marvin X, Laney College Theatre, 1981. Doris and Ayo later performed in Marvin X's One Day in the Life, a docudrama
of his addiction and recovery, 1996-2000, the longest running Black drama in Northern California.

How to Recover from White Supremacy Type II

THURSDAY, DEC. 6, DAY OF ACTION: We can't afford to let social service programs fall off the Fiscal Cliff! Join the NYC Central Labor Council tomorrow to gather in Times Square at 5 pm for a massive rally. NWU members will be meeting first at the NWU office at 256 West 38th Street. We can't afford to let social service programs fall off the Fiscal Cliff!       For more information e-mail info@nwuny.org. We only have a few weeks to make sure President Obama and Congress do everything they can to rebuild the middle class. It's up to us to fight for working families. Join us!    SIGN THE PETITON: Working families are urging Congress to keep America's promises to the middle class and make sure the wealthiest pay their fair share. Click here to make your voice heard.

Scholars and spies: A disastrous combination It's now time for all professional scholarly associations who might possibly be impacted by the renewed drive to recruit academics or use academic cover for spying to take a firm public stand against such practices.

The academic community needs to create a clear firewall between itself and the military and intelligence communities. Last Modified: 05 Dec 2012 13:27

The CIA's relationship with academia has gone much deeper than merely sponsoring research [Reuters]

Buried in a just published Washington Post exposé on the expansion of spying operations by the Defence Intelligence Agency (DIA) is a sentence that should send shivers down the spine of any researcher, journalist, student or scholar working in the Muslim world, regardless of whether she or he is an American citizen: "Having DIA operatives pose as academics or business executives requires painstaking work to create those false identities, and it means they won't be protected by diplomatic immunity if caught." I'm glad to know it takes "painstaking work" to create the "false" identity of a scholar (it's most likely not as hard to fake being a businessman, given the CIA's long history of using front companies for its espionage activities). But I have little doubt that the US intelligence and defence communities would do so if they believed such a cover could help better collect and/or produce actionable intelligence. Indeed, it's quite likely they wouldn't need to fake it, as there are likely many "scholars" who would willingly sign up for the job. Long and sordid history There is a long history of co-operation and collaboration between American intelligence agencies and academics. Almost a century ago, the seminal anthropologist Franz Boas was ostracised for revealing that academics were serving as spies in Latin America, a practice that apparently started in Mexico and was strengthened in World War II. As Boas argued, any scholar "who uses science as a cover for political spying, who demeans himself to pose before a foreign government as an investigator and asks for assistance in his alleged researches in order to carry on, under this cloak, his political machinations, prostitutes science in an unpardonable way and forfeits the right to be classed as a scientist". Scholars were also part and parcel of the allied effort in World War II in various capacities, including with the CIA's precursor, the OSS (the Office of Strategic Services). Since its creation in 1947, the Agency has routinely enlisted academics to engage in research and analysis, and recruited new generations of agents from the "best and brightest" students at elite colleges and universities. While the relationship waned somewhat in the 1970s and 1980s, it had already started to rebound before the September 11, 2001 attacks and grew substantially in their wake.  CIA director Petraeus quits over extramarital affair Whatever one's ideological or political views towards the CIA, it's natural that intelligence agencies would recruit employees in the same way as do the best corporations, or federal law enforcement for that matter. But it is one thing for the CIA or military to recruit students on campus. And under certain conditions, academics can do research for the military, diplomatic and/or intelligence communities, as long as the researcher doesn't hide this fact. It's also to be expected that experienced soldiers with higher academic degrees will do research and teach at military or even non-military colleges on subjects in which they've gained unique expertise or perspectives. But the CIA's relationship with academia has gone much deeper in the last sixty years than merely sponsoring research that can help it analyse intelligence data. The Agency has not merely relied on the expertise of scholars on countries and cultures it engages. It has sponsored research and journals without publicly declaring its funding, and used academics to help produce disinformation and engage directly in activities related to spying. Moreover, in Southeast Asia (particularly in Vietnam during the war years), Latin America and Africa, research on "third world" development studies and techniques in counter-insurgency became staples of CIA-academic collaborations. A January 2001 Los Angeles Times article by political scientist David Gibbs explained that "the 'cloak and gown' connection has flourished in the aftermath of the Cold War... Since 1996, the CIA has made public outreach a 'top priority and targets academia in particular. According to experts on US intelligence, the strategy has worked'." Gibbs was building on a longer 2000 article in the magazine Lingua Franca by Chris Mooney, which went into even greater detail about the renewed scholar-spy relationship. Discussing the issue with Gibbs after we'd both read the Washington Post article, he explained in dismay, "Such situations present classic conflicts of interest. The problem is compounded by the fact that academic consulting agreements with intelligence agencies are highly secretive - thus undermining yet another basic tenet of academic research, which is the need for openness and full disclosure." It's worth recalling here the response of the 1976 Church Committee Report, which investigated the abuses of the intelligence community, to the situation Gibbs discusses. The report declared: "The Committee is disturbed both by the present practices of operationally using American academics and by the awareness that the restraints on expanding this practice are primarily those of sensitivity to the risks of disclosure and not an appreciation of dangers to the integrity of individuals and institutions." Scholar-spies? Despite the ethical problems associated with such collaborations, over the years prominent scholars such as Columbia University's Robert Jervis, Harvard's Joseph Nye and Texas A&M's Robert Gates have not only supported the CIA-academia relationship, but have served at the highest positions of the CIA. Most recently, Gates, the former CIA Director and Defence Secretary, has spearheaded the Minerva Research Initiative, which attempts to achieve a "deeper understanding of global populations and their variance [to] yield more effective strategic and operational policy decisions". Even the leadership of UC Berkeley, home of the 60s' academic counter-culture, was directly involved in promoting research done under academic cover but in fact being produced by and for the CIA. In the context of the Cold War, even supposedly "liberal" public figures broadly supported the strategic - political, economic, scientific and cultural - competition with the Soviet Union. "Franz Boas was ostracised for revealing that academics were serving as spies in Latin America, a practice that apparently started in Mexico and was strengthened in World War II." However powerful and prescient Franz Boas' sentiment recalled above, it's not farfetched to imagine that in the present economic and political climate, finding people with a claim to legitimate status as academics to work as spies will not be that difficult, and that doing so will seriously damage the integrity of academia, diminish an already shrinking funding stream for non-military research as money is allocated to fund scholars who spy (the oldest carrot in the academic world), and most important, put the research and even lives of non-spying scholars in danger. One might ask, given the far greater levels of violence in which the intelligence community and military are involved, is the (re)joining of scholars and spies really worth getting up in arms about? Yes, it is. It's hard enough to go to a region of the world where one's government is engaged either in violent activities through war, occupation or drone activities (Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen), supports the oppressive policies of the local government (Morocco, Bahrain, Israel, Egypt, etc) or as bad, is actively engaged in espionage against it (Iran, Sudan), and try to win the trust of social, religious and/or political activists who would naturally be on the radar of their own and foreign intelligence services. Such relationships will be even harder, if not nearly impossible, to develop if it becomes known that the US government is actively using scholars (and, we can presume, journalists) as covers for intelligence operatives. Equally bad would be the agreement by universities, without the consent or even knowledge of their faculty and students, to provide covers for clandestine intelligence operatives, thereby putting legitimate scholars at risk without them having any idea of their so being. Such a situation would permanently taint every scholar engaged in research in the field in the Muslim majority world, or with diaspora Muslim communities in Europe or North America. However it is done, such practices would undoubtedly make it well-nigh impossible either to produce the kind of well-researched and objective knowledge that is crucial for accurate policy-making by governments, or to know when the research being produced is done explicitly to promote clandestine strategic ends, or is in fact deliberate disinformation or is otherwise tainted as the product of espionage or otherwise clandestine activities. Scholars in the field In recent years, not just the Minerva Program, but also the Human Terrain Systems (HTS) programmes have attempted to place scholars in the field of "kinetic operations" in order to help advance military and strategic objectives in Afghanistan and Iraq. There are numerous ethical problems with such programmes, as well as intellectual problems associated with the production of end-user determined knowledge. But at least such scholars, directly embedded with the military in the field, do not - as far as I have heard - pretend to be independent and outside military control. But to have scholars literally spying on the people they're studying, and in a way that puts their findings directly into the "kill chain" and thus can lead to the deaths of these subjects without any internationally accepted legal standard or judicial review, is in fact deplorable. Lest readers think that I'm being alarmist, in a follow-up article to the Washington Post piece, the Guardian reported that officials are having trouble filling the hundreds of spots that will be created by this programme, which means they'll be even more hard-pressed not to recruit members of academia. It further reported that the spying could be used to increase the efficacy of the US drone programme, which has been heavily criticised for the use of "signature strikes" that target and kill people merely for looking or behaving in a way those behind the trigger button declare is suspicious. We might imagine that most scholars, students or journalists would not risk their reputations, never mind their freedom and even lives, to spy on people while doing field work. But the success of the HTS and Minerva programmes show that in an era of deep budget cuts for research funding for students and professors, and a similar crisis facing journalism, there is likely no shortage of people who would feel compelled (or be willing) to engage in such work if enough compensation were offered to induce their participation. Frost Over the World: Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy Even worse, as I have explained in earlier columns (hereand here), a parallel scholarly universe to the existing professional systems is being created, in part through the HTS and Minerva programmes and the rise of well-funded (neo)conservative think-tanks. This set of networks and institutions has access to comparatively large levels of funding from private, corporate and government sources, and is ideologically and professionally much closer to military and intelligence agencies and the policies they promote and serve than the existing professional scholarly establishment. There may not be much interaction between scholars in these parallel universes, but the differences between them will be largely lost to anyone on the ground who could now reasonably suspect that the academic interviewing them could be an intelligence operative. Protecting academics and the broader public globally It's perhaps not surprising given its past association with military and intelligence activities that the American Anthropology Association has taken the lead in prohibiting members from engaging in spying or other clandestine activities in the guise of research. Its current Code of Ethics declares that: "Researchers who mislead participants about the nature of the research and/or its sponsors; who omit significant information that might bear on a participant's decision to engage in the research; or who otherwise engage in clandestine or secretive research that manipulates or deceives research participants about the sponsorship, purpose, goals or implications of the research, do not satisfy ethical requirements for openness, honesty, transparency and fully informed consent." In 1982 and 1985, the Middle East Studies Association passed two resolutions that precluded scholars accepting covert funding or doing covert work while working as university-based academics. Other professional associations, such as the American Sociological Association and the American Academy of Religion, might have strong codes of ethics, but they don't explicitly address the issue of clandestine kill chain co-operation or collaboration between scholars and military and intelligence agencies.It's now time for all professional scholarly associations who might possibly be impacted by the renewed drive to recruit academics or use academic cover for spying to take a firm public stand against such practices. What is clear is that the academic community needs to create a clear firewall between itself and the military and intelligence communities now, before any programme is put into place to use academia as a cover for spying and other clandestine activities. If this does not happen soon, the inevitable disasters that result, including the arrests, imprisonment or even deaths of actual academics and/or the people with whom they work or study, will be on all our hands. Mark LeVine is professor of Middle Eastern history at UC Irvine and distinguished visiting professor at the Centre for Middle Eastern Studies at Lund University in Sweden and the author of the forthcoming book about the revolutions in the Arab world, The Five Year Old Who Toppled a Pharaoh. His book, Heavy Metal Islam, which focused on 'rock and resistance and the struggle for soul' in the evolving music scene of the Middle East and North Africa, was published in 2008.  The views expressed in this article are the author's own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera's editorial policy.

Golden PEN Award for LKJ

Read more: http://www.jamaicaobserver.com/entertainment/Golden-PEN-Award-for-LKJ_13133294#ixzz2EHaFWUUA

And furthermore, there is more oppression in the world caused by men’s attitude toward pussy than toward their dick, although the patriarchal society gives dominance to the dick, but in the male’s headlong rush to enter the pussy, he becomes blind to his own sexuality and consumed by the need to plunge his organ inside the vagina. In his blindness and his resulting sexual pathology, he becomes numb to the reality that the female is more than pussy, that pussy has a mind, a brain, a cornucopia of emotions based on phases of the moon. “If you think I am just a physical thing, wait til you see the spiritual power I bring”, says a poem by Phavia Kujichagulia.

 

But rather than consider the totality of pussy, let’s limit our discussion to the physicality of pussy, although we may, by the end of this essay, arrive at a more holistic attitude toward pussy. In our initial discussion here, let us then deal with pussy as a physical thing, somehow unconnected to the phenomenon known as “woman.”

Let us begin by saying pussy is transient, elusive and ephemeral. “See,” a woman demonstrated to me as she jumped, “When I jumped my pussy jumped—therefore my pussy belongs to me.” Thus the locus of control of pussy is with the pussy, not any external source such as a man, based on marriage rites and patriarchal social definitions of authority, or de facto slavery when the female is viewed as chattel (personal) property. “I pay the cost to be the boss.”

The time is way past for men to get a grip on themselves regarding the matter of pussy and their warped attitude toward it that is primitive, reactionary and in the modern world forces men into court mandated anger management classes, and often jail and prison as a result of domestic violence.

The purpose of this discussion is to bring about progressive consciousness on this matter so that men finally “get it,” and in the process free the woman of oppression and free themselves as well, so both man and woman can pursue their divinity by transcending the focus on sexuality to the higher level of spirituality. Of course the roots of this sexual dysfunction are religious based—and nearly all the religions are guilty, certainly the patriarchal religions, Judaism, Christianity, Islam. The educational system enforces the religious order by the sin of omission or saying nothing.

After all, a person can attend the highest universities in the land, Harvard, Yale, Stanford, without ever having a class on human sexuality or male/female psychology and socialization. And so the male, in the absence of manhood training, is left to his own ignorant notions of the nature and value of pussy. His main concern is that the pussy is his and nobody else’s. That he can come and go into the pussy at will, at his beck and call.
 A
Of course this is a mental blindness he must overcome immediately he can enter the road to spiritual maturation. He cannot continue throughout his life in these enlightened times with such backward notions of pussy. Pussy is never static but ever moving, dynamic and fluid. Pussy told me, “I can come with anyone.” But in the cave man’s mind, pussy is static, thus the man is shocked when pussy shows its fluid and dynamic nature jumping in tune with another dick or pussy for that matter.
These days, pussies are jumping in tune with each other, partly due to male ignorance of feminine psychosexuality, but more importantly due to the feminization of black males by societal forces or institutional racism. The social construct has always been to keep the black male from the reins of power.

In the Sisyphusian mythology, we advance to retreat, for with each advance the rules change so we must renew the march up the hill, for the closer we get, the more the mountain top retreats to higher ground. The 60s was the great leap forward in black manhood, but it was crushed of necessity by the US government—black men were determined to take power by force of arms—which could only mean civil war, so they had to be stopped—no society can risk civil unrest by its slaves or former slaves and/or their descendants.

This rush to manhood had to be stopped by any means necessary, infiltration, agent provocateurs, disinformation, sabotage, conspiracy, murder, false charges leading to imprisonment or exile, drugs, sex and rock and roll. Perhaps a well disciplined army could have withstood the barrage from the oppressor America, but brothers went mad with power, misusing pussy while the government used pussy to destroy the movement by using pussy power to cause chaos in the movement. Sonia wrote, “What a white woman got cept her white pussy?” She also told us about brothers taking pussy in the name of Fanon, Fanon, Fanon—the “revolutionary screw!”

As activist parents were terrorized by the oppressor, the men in turn terrorized the women, often beating them in the name of black power. The children took note of this parental behavior and some of the males emulated their fathers. And daughters emulated their mothers by remaining passive and submitting to male oppression.

The religions enforced this notion of male domination or “leadership.” But when the blind lead the blind, they both fall into the ditch together. How can the male lead when he is ignorant to knowledge of self? Has no knowledge of Supreme Wisdom, or if he does, he doesn't know how to apply it! So he is blind, yet he is supposed to be in authority over his woman—his pussy, rather. This doesn’t make sense!

The women fled from this ignorance to embrace each other, finally free from male terrorism, the man who only saw her pussy as pussy, never having a name, a personality and spirituality. The gay/lesbian revolution caught the fallout from the failure of the pussy culture, the deconstruction of the patriarchy that could not remain in the process of the modern technological revolution that forced the woman out of the house as chattel slave--and once she saw the city, she would never return to the country. World War II brought her the beginning of economic independence with the desecration of the male population from the war. It instituted the matrifocal household or female dominated culture that would become pervasive as we entered the new millennium.

The 60s revolution was the last outbreak of black manhood, after which came the crushing power of the state to crush his nuts back into the sands of time, drugging him out, imprisonment, lack of economic opportunity and homosexuality took its toll. After losing control of the pussy forever, some men turned into pussy, became weak and passive, a disgusting representation of the macho man so familiar to the female who concluded if she was going to have a woman she might as well have a real woman. Terrified of the new woman, the pussy man turned to his own kind for support, adding to the devastation of his gender.

Do not think societal forces had no play in his deconstruction, for the 60s terrorized him as much as he had terrified the state--and of course the state won with its awesome police and military power. The state went a step further: it turned the male against himself, his brotherhood, by supplying the drugs and guns that would further deplete the male population by creating internal fear as well as external.
As his woman seized power allowed her by the state and given her by the powerlessness of her man who suffered a military and political defeat after the 60s rebellion, the next generation of males tried to continue the sexual domination with the rise of hip hop culture, the culture that is the direct descendant of 60s black power culture. The young males saw their fathers abuse their mothers and continued the tradition, even trying to extend the pimp/ho culture. So the black woman had a moment of glory when she became a "queen" in the sixties, but by the 80s she was depicted as ho, dog, bitch, even with her advance education and attempt at economic parity, thus equality. In short, his woman was completely and forevermore out of control unless he accepted reciprocity which was anathema to the patriarchal ideal of dominating the pussy.

But with female economic security, the woman would not tolerate his reactionary view of her as pussy. Or maybe she would flip the script and make him her boy toy, to be kicked out at her whim, depending on her emotional disposition or phases of the moon. Alona Clifton, a political woman in the Bay Area, asked what happened to the love revealed in the song, I Love You Porgy?

Indeed, the passion is gone, the chase, the capture, the triumph of domination. It is all fake these days. No one is true, but lies prevail and pervade the love ritual. What has love got to do with it, Tina asked? And Janet said, "What have you done for me lately?" And so we have arrived at a moment in the sun wherein the Creator has things fixed, as Sun Ra taught me, either do the right thing, or we can't go forward or backward in our relationships. Relationships are fragile at best, with men and women filled with insecurity.
Look at the tragic love affair of the young quarterback. It represents the woman asserting her rights to the dick, and so the script has flipped. She owns the penis now, are we not to assume, to the extent that she would blast him four times while he slept. Young men beware, things ain't like they used to be and never will be again. "If you think I'm just a physical thing, wait til you see the spiritual power I bring," says Phavia.


Part Two
Brother McNair, may he rest in peace, was an NFL quarterback who made it to the Superbowl, but in the Superbowl of Pussy he was an abject failure: he could not quarterback his team of pussies. In the end, pussy triumphed a thousand to one, meeting him on the one yard line and knocking him into eternity. Poor soul, his patriarchal mentality of "I pay the cost to be the boss" didn't mean anything when pussy stood up to confront his proposition of male domination. Clearly, he thought, like men of patriarchal socialization think, that he could have all the pussy he wanted, without a consensus from the pussies. At least the Muslims get a consensus in their polygamous fantasies.

I was lucky to escape with my head. One of my pussies said she thought about killing me in my sleep for abusing her. And my father-in-law said he would have killed me a long time ago if his granddaughters didn't love me so much. Pussy is a life and death matter, as we see with McNair and millions of other men who are meeting their fate these days in the pussy rebellion sweeping the planet. Some time ago I went to speak at a court-mandated domestic violence session. I had come early to the men's session, so when I arrived a women's group was in session, so I sat in. I was amazed to hear the women speak of what they were doing to men these days: from violence to threats of violence over the phone. They were charged with making terrorist threats. Men and women, know that you cannot make "terrorist threats" over the phone or in person. Verbal violence is the same as physical violence. Take a walk, smoke a blunt, chill out.

Whether in anger management or not, Brothers need to study the psychology of pussy. As the great mythologist Joseph Campbell noted, women know they are women after the first cycle. When do men know? All primitive societies had manhood rites that taught about womanhood and manhood, but in modern society this training is absent, so men rely on the ignorance of their friends or some reactionary pimp psychology. So when do men get the lesson they are dealing with a spiritual being, a being who can actually take more pain than they--who can bleed for five days without dying while a man cannot bleed for five minutes! Brothers need to get a healing real quick, quicker than you can say Jackie Robinson!

Brothers, don’t ask for the pussy. Wait until she offers it to you, after all it is her pussy. Please, brothers, get an immediate understanding on this, no matter how much you pay on your pussy bill, it’s still her pussy. Your ignorance on this point has caused many of you to be locked down in prisons and jails, some for the rest of your lives, simply because you thought, in your deranged patriarchal mentality, that you owned your woman, that she was your chattel or personal property, causing you to kill your brother or friend. I have friends no longer on this earth because they got caught up in the pussy game. I sincerely miss my friends and wish they were here to enjoy the fall of Western civilization with me—and the fall of Eastern civilization, for that matter—all the reactionary myths and rituals of the East must fall into the dustbin of history as well, the domestic violence, female genital circumcision, child marriage, honor killings, the whole range of reactionary, archaic, ignorant male mythology pervading the religions and culture of Africa and Asia.

And obviously, women need a healing as well. The woman who killed the quarterback thought she owned her man’s penis. Just as your pussy is not his, his dick is not yours, he can and will give it to whomever he likes. Get a healing on this point and you will advance in your spiritual maturation. These days, you can’t get on your cell phone and call baby boy to tell him you’re gonna “key” his car because your girlfriend saw him riding down the street with baby mama. Nobody owns nobody, no matter what the marriage papers say, no matter what shacking laws say.

We are free spirits and only when we recognize this will some relationships become lasting, after all, what does flesh have to do with it? Flesh has nothing to do with love and I can use myself as an example—read my essay The Maid, the Ho, the Cook, in my book In the Crazy House Called America. I describe my love for a prostitute who sold her love up and down San Pablo Avenue, one of the longest streets in the Bay Area. But when she showed up at my door I was happy as a puppy dog, so don’t tell me about flesh. It wasn’t a physical matter, but a matter of the heart. I didn’t give a damn how many men she had slept with since the last time we were together, just come on in the house and give me my moment in the sun.

And what is life except a moment in time? That’s all we have with each other, a moment or two, so enjoy the one you’re with for the moment it is and have no regrets. Get rid of all that sexual greed and guilt from religious socialization that have you inside the box of sexual madness and depravity. Ask any prostitute or sex worker, her pussy will be just as good tomorrow as it was yesterday. Come out of all that holy Joe bullshit that he violated my trust or she violated our vows. Grow up, what do vows have to do with the reality of life? Human beings are subject to do anything in the course of a day. A large percentage of black women admitted to having sex on the job with the boss in Jet Magazine some years ago. Now you know Jet is the Negro Bible, if it’s in Jet, it’s got to be true!

So love the one ya wit, give them all you can for the moment you are with them and have no regrets, since nothing lasts forever, know this and grow in your spiritual maturation. Let our boys become men with this knowledge and our girls become women. Don’t be a fifty or sixty year old man or woman still tripping about pussy and dick! Oh, he/she was unfaithful! He/she lied to me. He promised to be true. How can you worry about her pussy when you can’t safeguard your dick? You want to stick your dick in every hole yet worry about what dick is going in her pussy. Get a life! What does it matter what dick is going in her pussy when you don’t even know who she is as a spiritual being and she doesn’t know you accept as a hard dick? Again Phavia, “If you think I’m just a physical thing, wait til you see the spiritual power I bring!”

Part Three

 
Brothers, clean your hands before entering the pussy, cut your fingernails, remove the dirt. Otherwise, you will wonder why your pussy is not feeling good, but it will be because of your filthy hands causing infection, to say nothing of your filty dick that might have been in any hole it could find, even a hole in the ground. Pussy is delicate, treat it gently, not like you are entering a machine, even though some pussies like it rough and hard, so accommodate those pussies, even though bad results will appear sooner or later.

A friend tells me her doctor friend told her we can't imagine some of the problems pussies come to her with as a result of how the men treat pussy, the objects they put in it, beyond dildos--sometimes fists and arms up to the elbow. But pussy is to be treated gently for it is a vital, the most vital organ of the female, well, maybe not equal to the heart, but life comes through pussy, so threat it right. Let it rest from time to time, something I had to learn in my cave man days. In general, the woman's body is precious and complicated. You cannot beat it down and think it is going to serve you forever because it is going to break down. If you beat on your car with a sledgehammer how would it look.
We do the same with our woman in general, beat her down then expect her to function at her best. Sometimes we beat her while pregnant with our child. What can come of a savage who does this--nothing of good, no good luck, as my mother told me time after time when she learned I was abusing my women (as if I owned them).

Brothers in prison and jail behind women, either directly or indirectly (those who committed crimes to satisfy your pussy, i.e.,pay your pussy bill) need to think hard, now that you have a moment to think. There's a right way and wrong way to pay your pussy bill. Don't kill half the community to pay your bill. Figure out a way to hustle without killing people because that shit comes back on you. All money ain't good money. Money with blood ain't no good--it will never bring peace and happiness. Have you seen any movie where the gangsters and murderers went on to live a happy life?

And when you go to jail, you want to put your pussy in jail on the outside. You didn't treat your pussy right when you were free, so now that you're locked down your pussy wants revenge, and yes, your friend is the best way to get revenge--pussy knows how to hurt you real bad by giving some to your friend, best friend. Now you want to kill him and her over her pussy that you abused, disrespected time after time. You locked down with twenty-five to life, so let the pussy walk. Let it have a life. You can't stop it anyway. Go ahead and get with cellie Joe because your days with pussy are over--you blew it, buddy!

Don't stalk your pussy from the prison house. Got your boys following your pussy around town to make sure it doesn't find a dick. It's gonna find something, if only another pussy since you played yourself out of pocket, thinking out of your dick head. Now your girl's girl got your pussy. How you like that Mister Big Time? Life is a thinking man's game, so think before you act. There are very few things in life really important and pussy ain't one of them.

Can you take pussy to the bank? Even so-called pimps know pussy comes and goes, rarely does pussy stay forever, so why you killing over pussy that was going to leave anyway--it was just a matter of time, dummy. Ask Fillmore Slim how many of his ho's stayed forever? Ask him where are all those ho's he had, where did they go--they went to pussyland where all pussies go. So appreciate the pussy while you got it, if only for a moment. Like Fillmore says, if you treat pussy right, it might come back, but if you treat it wrong, it will be long gone.

Part Four

Lick the pussy lightly, like a feather in the wind. Don't devour it like a Mike Tyson cannibal, "...so greedy for my lady, I turn her womb into a tomb.... Be cool, fool, go away and pray and pray and pray." Yes, pray on the pussy, bless it with kindness until the lips open and spread wide, stroke it til juices flow like Niagara Falls washing your face with love. Oh, the juice of love in the night or early morn. When joy comes do not spoil the hour with negative ideas, but open the heart of love as the bird cage opens for the bird to take flight only to return when it wills. There is no compulsion in love, for love is not to be forced but happens when it happens, so let it happen on its time not yours, for what do you know of love except when it speaks and you are silent, only then you gain understanding and wisdom. Be silent is the best mode, not the lips that chatter when silence is glory.

In silence all things come to you for pleasure, because you are deserving and so the pussy runs over with the juice of love. And you have not touched it with tongue or finger or penis, but the silence of your mind is read by the pussy and so it came running as a lover in search of lost love, that eternal love beyond pussy and dick and silly gender notions of the infantile ones who dwell on the animal plane. Imagine, the pussy is far away yet so near you smell it, feel it, stroke it until it comes, yet it is not there, only a thought, a memory of time past when pussy was young and fresh and wild, and you ran to it and it embraced you on the beach, in the wind and sun.

There was no shame, no guilt, no greed, just innocence of time and place, not even knowing you were in paradise, heaven. It was the best of times and they did not end but reappear even now in the fourth quarter of your life. There is joy and joy knows you and welcomes you home with open arms and lips. Be gentle, ask for nothing because all is yours. No one can have what is yours, for the door only opens for you and you alone. It is no effort on your part, it is the voice of the wind, the falling leaves say it is yours for your labor under the sun.

Part Five

Pussy ruled the world until along came Crack. Crack diminished the respect and value of pussy forever. It did not destroy the power of pussy but it wounded it forever. After Crack, pussy will never be the same. Its value became so low on the stock market, one could hardly find it, for it dropped worse than in the Great Depression and in this Second Depression pussy is fighting for its life, especially with young brothers thinking they can pimp pussy because the dope game has played out. But these days pussy can take your life, with one drop a man can die from the myriad STDs, not to mention AIDS. Yes, pussy has gone from the giver of life to the taker of life, from the power of God to the power of the devil. Oh, will the glory days of pussy ever come again. The young brothers in the barber shop said to me, "OG, when you were young and caught something from a girl, you only got a drip--today, when we catch something we die!" The times, they are a changing and so has pussy.

Brothers coming home from prison are infecting their women from the joy of prison life. Some women are infertile as a result of their man's homosexual behavior in prison that he denies until it is too late: his poor, innocent woman suffers a death dealing blow because of his dishonesty and debauchery. See Ayodele's great play Death by Twilight. The woman has so much faith in her man she never admits he is the cause of her dying from AIDS. And then older women go to bars and nightclubs for that one night stand and never recover from their evening with undercover brother who looked like a man but was all bitch inside, even beyond bitch because he was a lier and deceiver, a wicked devil in the night, who stole the woman's heart, body and soul.

I wrote about the insanity of sex in my book The Crazy House Called America. As they say in sociology 1A, sometimes there's a cultural lag because the people are ignorant of the paradigm shift. They are caught unaware of the new order, so they play by the old rules and are naturally knocked out of the game. The Bible says the people were destroyed for lack of knowledge. There is no excuse for ignorance these days, in this information age with knowledge pervading the Internet, my space, face book, twitter and elsewhere. Yet the people walk in darkness. Young girls and old girls fall victim to the pleasures of life, or what used to be a pleasure, but what pleasure is there in making love to a dummy? Or a psychopath? I saw a girl with a T shirt that said, "Cute, but Psycho," at least she warned us, not that the boys will heed her message, for they are psycho as well. So when the blind lead the blind.... Michael said Remember the Time!

Remember the time when pussy was golden and pure, pasteurized and homogenized! Today pussy is filthy as the harlot's, or maybe hers is cleaner than the square girls because the harlot knows how to clean hers, the square girl knows nothing because mama taught her nothing because mama didn't know being the Crack ho she was. But I agree with Tupac, "You might be a Crack fiend, Mama, but you still a black queen, Mama!"

Part Six

We support a woman's right to control her pussy and the fruit thereof. At the same time we condemn men who deposit their semen in the pussy of a murderer, for we agree with Mother Theresa who said, "Abortion is the first murder, after which all other murder is possible." And prophet Muhammad said, "Do not kill your children for fear of poverty." Abortion would not be possible if men did not have sex with women they know favor abortion, so I put the onus on men, not women. Men should ask the woman if she gets pregnant will she kill the unborn child? If she says yes, he should depart from her in haste, unless he favors murder as well. Why are you jumping in a woman's pussy you know is a killer? Now if you want her to kill your seed, that is another matter--the matter is why? What if your parents had aborted you?

What is wrong with putting an unwanted child up for adoption, since there are many women who cannot have children? There are couples who would love and cherish that unwanted child, so why is there a need to kill it? And even though a woman's body is her business, it seems to me the man should be informed--supposedly, in the woman's mind, it's none of his business. This is why I say the man was wrong to enter her pussy in adverse circumstances. Even in the case of rape, why not put the child up for adoption? If the life of the mother is in danger, this is another matter--abortion must be considered.
We are absolutely opposed to the right wing Christian anti-abortion hypocrites who favor murder to stop murder, even to the point of assassinating doctors.

Furthermore, these right wing Christians--where in the Bible does Jesus advocate murder?--only want to delay the death of the child, allowing it to grow up so it can fight and die in imperialist wars across the planet. So these Christians are no different from the pro-abortion women, it is only a difference of time, the objective is the same. Does it matter if the child is killed in the womb or 18 years later in wars for the expansion of capitalism and slavery?

If the woman (and man) is too poor to feed the child, put it up for adoption. A dear friend of mine adopted a child from Jamaica whose family could not afford to feed. She brought the child back to America and raised him like a prince. She paid for him to received manhood training at the African Village in South Carolina. She adopted and raised four other Crack babies, giving them a wonderful life, even though they yet appreciate it--like most children (even the "normal ones")--they are ungrateful. Often times economics is not the problem but education and psychology or the mental state of the parents, especially the woman--although the young man or father is in the same situation, ignorant and often mentally ill. The result is child abuse.

Too many young mothers are ignorant of how to feed a child, even hold a child. I know young mothers who habitually feed their child and themselves at McDonalds--breakfast, lunch and dinner. Many young ladies were drug addicted when they got pregnant, thus unable to breast feed their child. These mothers need community support. We see these babies with babies on the streets of Oakland. We see their stress, how they curse the children, calling them motherfuckers and sons of bitches. They need community support because often grandmother (thirty, forty or fifty years old) says she's "too old" to be a grandmother. One grandmother whose son has two children, says she wants her son to stay home with her rather than live with his baby moma who's struggling for dear life with two children at 26 years old. This poor mother grew up in Berkeley but had never been to San Francisco. She is no different than young people in Newark, New Jersey who've never been to New York. Babies with babies is not helpful to our community progress. Often the mother, father and children are doomed to poverty unless they are determined to rise up in spite of circumstances. And community support is greatly needed.

Teach the young people manhood and womanhood rites or how to restrain themselves until they mature. At eighteen when I fathered my first child, I was a baby with a baby, and soon followed another child before I was twenty. I am happy for the children, but they could have been delayed until I finished my education. I am happy my children restrained themselves sexually until they completed their education. Thank God they had more discipline than I. I do know that one of my sons (now deceased, RIP) impregnated an Asian girl while in college. He asked me what to do and I told him not to abort, but he did so anyway because he said the girl could not return to Japan with a black child. As I've written elsewhere, she could have left the little Tiger Woods here and took her funky ass back to Japan.
ve  15. 

Black Bird Press News & Review: Black Bird Press Presents the Writings of Marvin X

Black Bird Press News & Review: Marvin X Classic--How to Recover from the Addiction to White Supremacy

     Hi, Marvin! We would be so honored to have you be in East Palo Alto anytime to be with us! Thank you so much for letting me know about your interest in doing this in the future. Congratulations on your upcoming appearance @ the San Francisco Public Library on February 1, 2013. When I saw this posting on Facebook, I decided to include the flyer in the Calendar of Events that I publish, & I thought about having a schedule of events happen here in East Palo Alto for performing artists & speakers to celebrate Afrikan History Month in the community. Seeing your email tonight, not only am I receiving confirmation from The Creator that this can be, but I now know how to make it happen. Thank you for the inspiration.
 
     I'm now hosting a monthly Friday Night Open Mic event @ the Live In Peace Academy in East Palo Alto. Attached is a copy of a flyer on the upcoming one & a program from the one held last month. I had presented (3) by the Summer. However, by the last one in October, people started talking about wanting the event to happen on a monthly basis. Of course, this was music to my ears because I've been spending the past year & a half working to create & launch new Cultural Arts Initiatives to help bring the arts closer to people's hearts. So, I forged an association with a new organization known as the Live In Peace Music Academy to help make more artistic programs happen in a space where creative events could thrive & flourish. Now, that I have a space to work out of, more visions are coming to mind about what more to do in the future. Under a separate email, I'll share with you information about the plans that I am making for 2013. 
      Being inspired by your email tonight, what I'd like to see happen here in the community, in celebration of Afrikan History Month, is to to have every Friday & Saturday booked with activities. It's been a long time since anything like this has been done here in the community. Specifically, my vision is to have every Friday & Saturday night filled with a schedule of program presentations on Poetry, Music, Lectures, Community Forums, & Film-Screenings to benefit a multi-generational audience. I also want to have an Afrikan Marketplace @ all of the events, so that our people will have the opportunity to buy something Afrikan throughout the month, while they come out to fill their souls with Cultural Arts experiences. Additionally, I'll continue negotiations that are already underway to get Calvin Keys to come to East Palo Alto in February 2013. How does this plan sound to you? 
 
     I'd like for some of the events & the Afrikan Marketplace to become fundraising opportunities because there is a great need for me to build a treasury to cover the expenses for the Cultural Arts Initiatives that I am creating. Soon, I will be meeting with some people to discuss ways for me to secure grants. I want to be able to offer an honorarium to the artists & speakers who agree to participate in Afrikan History Month 2013. Since you're the first person who I'm expressing these thought to, what do you think would be a good honorarium fee to offer a performing artist? Of course, for those who have products in the marketplace, they will be able to sell their work in this program plan. 
 
     I tell you creativity & dreams go together so nicely! (Smile!) I'm going to be working on getting a group of us from the community to come see you all on February 1st @ the San Francisco Public Library. Attached is a copy of the flyer that I saw posted on the Internet for you to have for your archives, if you have not yet gotten a copy. 
 
     As for the Friends of the East Palo Alto Library, I will check-in with the Branch Manager to see what the plan is for Afrikan History Month events happening @ the Library next year. I haven't heard anything, yet. Since the Friends of the East Palo Alto Library operates independently from the Library staff, we try to coordinate our efforts. I'm interested in having you appear @ the Library because it's been way too long since you've been here in the community. If this can happen, what would be the fee range for your appearance? I've had a conversation with staff in which I learned that if the Library pays an artist to perform, the artist can't sell their work. Surely, you must know how I feel about this! It doesn't make any sense @ all. Artists produce products to be sold. This is why I feel that the time has come for artists to rise, take our rightful place beneath the sun, & righteously show the world what can be. For too long, non-artists have been getting in the way of artists being able to live their day. We're rising. As a result, the arts are rising again! I'll be back in touch with you soon about the email that I talked about earlier. Work with what you have! ~Chaché~

We shall always remember the great Guyanese writer Jan Carew! I met him while in Toronto, Canada, 1967, having gone their as a draft resister to the war in Vietnam. I first met Austin Clarke, the Barbadian novelist, then he introduced me to Jan Carew. The three of us met several times during the six months of my Canadian exile. We had lively discussions because Jan and Austin were at opposite ideological poles, maybe I was in the middle, although I would say I was closer to Jan's position as a revolutionary. Since both these men were my elders, I would do a lot of listening, for Austin had published novels and so had Jan, plus Jan had been around the world, one of his novels was Moscow was not My Mecca, about the experiences of a black man in the Communist camp. Now as I recall Jan was a Marxist who had advised Kwame Nkrumah in Ghana. He told stories of the African Americans who were in Ghana during the Nkrumah years. As I recall he said their behavior was suspect, Julian Mayfield, Maya Angelou, et al. Some of these Black Americans may have contributed to Nkrumah's downfall. Black Americans were suspected of being agents of American intelligence.

As I said, Jan and Austin Clarke would argue often, either at the bar we met at or at their apartments. I remember Jan brewing that strong espresso coffee and the three of us drinking while conversing on African, the Black man in the USA and  the Americas, especially the Caribbean. Austin would talk about the Bajans being more British than the British, Jan would talk about how the African leader had to not be feared by his people and not make them fear him. He talked about the ineluctable energy needed to maintain revolutionary consciousness, to transform oneself from the oppressed man to the brother man. Jan Carew, thank you for the wisdom you shared with me during that special time in my life as a young writer/activist.
--Marvin X
12/9/12
Oakland CA

Black Midas in Moscow

3,000 US troops secretly return to Iraq via Kuwait

NATIONAL COUNCIL FOR BLACK STUDIES   CALL FOR PAPERS 37TH ANNUAL NATIONAL CONFERENCE Indianapolis, In. - March 13-16, 2013 The Westin Indianapolis, 50 South Capitol Avene | Indianapolis, IN 46204  800-228-3000 Hotel Rates: $134 /per night (NCBS members) NCBS is currently accepting abstracts for individual paper, poster, panel, session, and roundtable discussions that explore the Black experience locally, nationally, and/or globally from a variety perspective. Of particular interest are presentations that comparatively explore these experiences, as well as those that examine the discipline of Africana/Black Studies using multi-layered frameworks and methodologies. Papers that incorporate various combinations of race/nationality, class, gender, and sexuality, through the lens of, but not limited to Afrocentric, cross-and multicultural, diasporic, feminist and womanist, post-colonial, post-modernist or transnational interpretative schemes are welcomed. Send a 150-400 word abstract for a panel (one for the panel subject and one for each panelist), and/or individual paper and poster presentations. For roundtable discussions, submit a 500 word abstract that explores the discussion topic, specifying the roles of the facilitator. Each participant on a panel submission must submit their complete individual. Please submit abstracts by Friday, December 14, 2012 at: www.ncbsonline.org Call for Papers for the 2013 NCBS Conference link: http://convention2.allacademic.com/one/ncbs/ncbs13/ Abstracts will be reviewed before the end of January 2013, conference participant notifications will be sent out during late January 2013 via All Academic .   If you and/or your panel have already submitted your abstract(s), please pass this message on to your friends and colleagues.      Sincerely,   Sundiata Cha-Jua President, National Council For Black Studies