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African American Artists in Havana, Cuba
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Return To My Mother's land
To my mother's land
I return
a pilgrim at her grave
holy woman
who counseled the grieving
taught the ignut
raised her children
business woman supreme
leader of her tribe
I pray at her grave and talk
whisper softly into the earth
summer heat is gone now
winter in the Valley
train whistle in the night
whistle from childhood
grandmother's house in the projects on Dunn St.
everybody used to live in the projects
teachers preachers janitors nurses
Jim Crow was in the land
tent city across Thorne and Whitesbridge
not far from the Hole in the Wall
where men gather to gamble drink wine fight
right after WWII
dad was a Race Man from WWI
talked of seeing Marcus Garvey in Los Angeles
Mom and Dad published Fresno Voice, black newspaper
used to sell Fresno Voice on F and Fresno St
maybe when I was five or six
used to sit on Dad's desk watching him set type
had to spell words backward in the old days
Mom and dad used to talk about NAACP
N double ACP he used to say
I probably dreamed of NAACP
heard it so much
wondered what the hell it was
in my childhood mind
Why they keep talkin bout it so much
Dad used to take us to the drive in movie
Stormy Weather I remember
News reel of Palestinians running across a bridge
ain't stopped running since 1948
couldn't figure out why they running
Dad had a gambling problem
especially with other people's money
violated his fiduciary relationship
lost his real estate license
some nigguhs probably wanted to kill him
gambling their money
so we fled to Oakland
he became a florist on 7th street
when 7th Street was booming
Harlem of the West
Pullman Porters
Slim Jenkins Club
Ester's Orbit Room
Lincoln Theatre
Wolf's Records
Dangott's Loan
Scott's Key shop
Jackmon's Florist
Perry's shoeshine stand
Dad took me and Ollie to Perry's
to shine our shoes before church
Dad went to all churches to promote his business
Holy Ghost Methodist Baptist
took us to funeral homes to lay flowers on the dearly departed
terrified me looking at them dead Negroes
gray lookin still stiff cold
maybe he wanted us to get over the fear of death
Mama worked at Naval Supply Center as typist
Grandma came to visit
used to sit in window looking out on 7th Street
see the nigguhs acting a fool she said
country woman checking the city life
used to sit in the window all weekend nights
Negroes clubbing sailors fightin soldiers
fightin over women MPs come
the joint was jumping
Hammond B 3 on the juke box everywhere
blues jazz blues
Mama was Club Scout den mother
had us selling Jet Ebony Pittsburg Courier
Chicago Defender Detroit Black Dispatch
Fresno Nigguhs called me The Weekly Negro
when I came to Fresno for the summer
wearing Jet T shirt
The Weekly Negro Magazine
Jet Negro Bible
If it in Jet it's The Truth.
Prescott Elementary
St. Patrick's
get me outta St. Patrick's
them Nuns ain't gonna beat my hands no more
Take me outta dat old Catholic school mama and daddy, please
Mama said I came home chanting that Latin stuff
Holy Mary Mother of God
God has a mother? Who is God's father?
Did God's father make the sun moon stars earth?
Mama and Daddy broke up and made up
back and forth to Fresno we went
finally Mama left Dad for good
set up her real estate business
single mother with five kids
told them welfare people to go to hell
I didn't like that welfare powered milk no way
but real estate was her business on the surface
it was really a front for her spiritual work
she would counsel her clients, listen to their problems
guide them on the right path
according to Mary Baker Eddy
no medicine cabinet in our house
know the truth
that's all you need
disease is negative attraction
don't listen to the whisperings of the devil
leads to sickness in the head and body
Mama said
I in my Mama's bizness
wit her new man
wouldn't let her have a life beyond my Dad
had to put me out in my junior year
rented me a room to get me out her bizness
when she was pregnant with her last child
my girl was pregnant with our first son
My mother's people were cotton pickers and grape cutters
from Oklahoma and Arkansas
great grand father was a slave til Lincoln freed him
a leader among men
foreman on a ranch in Madera
died just a year or two before my birth
praised highly in the Fresno Bee
talked about throughout the valley
I am told
was he a friend of Col. Allensworth?
my grandfather was Johnny Murrill
farmer, cotton picker, grape cutter
gambler drunkard
Mama and uncle Stan used to go get grandpa
stuck on stupid in Chinatown
gambling at El Gato Negro
Uncle would go get grandpa
bring him home broke from working hard all week in the field
Grandpa use to take me and my brother to pick cotton, cut grapes
me and my brother had a fight cause he wouldn't wash his hands
before cooking pork chops
grandpa broke us up
I spoke at his funeral
a friend played the flute
Cousin Carol told me to give her a funeral like that
Crack had me when she died
my favorite cousin
I denied her last wish
my the ancestors forgive me
have mercy on me
Fresno is a big city now
freeways traffic jams
full of Mexicans
dope
brothers killing brothers
families with holy names
terrorizing the town
little is left of the black town
they live all over town now
don't come to the old West side
but the Mexicans come
it is their side now
the old Mall is Mexican shops
Mexican food
Mexican Mercados
I like the Mexican shirts with four pockets
not much field work these days
but Mexicans get money from somewhere
we don't wanna say
but they show it on TV.
This valley feeds the world
fruits vegetables of every kind
raisin capital of the world
cotton used to be king
more cotton than Mississippi
I return
peace from the deadly city
relax in the winter sun
await the deathly fog
write into the night.
--Marvin X
11/10/13
from Sweet Tea/Dirty Rice Poems, Black Bird Press, Berkeley, 2014.
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Book Review: Black Revolutionary William Patterson
“Black Revolutionary” explores life of William Patterson and global freedom fight
William L. Patterson has long been known as a hero in the fight against racism and for socialism. Probably best known for his leadership to save the Scottsboro defendants, nine African American youth falsely accused of raping a white women, and as the director of the Civil Rights Congress, which was widely viewed as the legal defense arm of the broad African American freedom struggle, Patterson also served as a national leader of the Communist Party USA.
In Gerald Horne's new book, "Black Revolutionary: William Patterson and the Globalization of the African American Freedom Struggle," we are privy to Patterson's transformation as a well-to-do New York lawyer - in Horne's words, he was "living large, accumulating a sizable bank account" - into a revolutionary and international leader who struggled his whole life against Jim Crow, South African apartheid, colonialism, red-baiting and war with the Soviet Union.
It is in his formative days as a young lawyer that Patterson met the legendary athlete, actor and artist Paul Robeson; they remained lifelong friends. It was the Communist Party's defense of Sacco and Vanzetti, two Italian born anarchists falsely convicted of murder that lead Patterson to give up his high paying gig as a law partner, and eventually join the Communist Party in 1926.
"I followed the Sacco-Vanzetti case with all my soul," Horne quotes Patterson as saying. "It was at this moment that a weighty realization dawned: 'I came to the conclusion then that through the channels of the law and of more legal action [alone] the Negro would never win equality' for 'if a white worker like Tom Mooney and white foreigners like Sacco and Vanzetti could be so victimized, what chance was there for Negroes at the very bottom.'"
Sacco and Vanzetti were eventually executed in spite of national and international protest.
After officially joining the party, Patterson immersed himself into the International Labor Defense, the legal defense arm of the Scottsboro Boys, and the American Negro Labor Congress, which challenged the racism of then lily-white American Federation of Labor.
As an emerging and prominent African American leader of the CPUSA, Patterson was sent to Moscow, where he met dozens of future leaders of the African liberation movement and forged the international contacts that proved to be so important in the coming dismantling of Jim Crow back home.
"While abroad, he recounted, 'I had met leaders [and] liberation fighters of almost every country in the world' an invaluable experience that gave him a depth of understanding beyond the ken of most of his peers...," and another example of how the former Soviet Union helped to forge the worldwide contacts and connections that served to isolate Jim Crow racism and eventually hasten its defeat.
While Black Revolutionary is a biography of Patterson, it is also an examination of how Cold War politics affected the African American freedom struggle. For example, Horne devotes considerable text to the NAACP's mismanagement of certain aspects of the Scottsboro case, as well as, their refusal to help the ILD organize mobilization protests. In many cases, the NAACP's membership participated in spite of its leadership's insistence on legal defense only. The NAACP also disavowed left-progressive leaders, like founding member W.E.B. Du Bois, in the hopes of saving itself from the emerging Cold War witch hunt.
Horne also devotes considerable text to the Civil Rights Congress petition to the United Nations, titled "We Charge Genocide," which was "a devastating indictment of the U.S. authorities' complicity and dereliction in lynching, murder, deprivation of voting rights and all manner of crimes" against African Americans. Patterson delivered the petition - to much press coverage - in Paris, while Robeson simultaneously delivered it to the UN headquarters in New York.
After the delivery of the petition, Patterson exclaimed, "...mission accomplished...[by which] I meant that the struggle for American Negroes for their rightful place in their own nation was merging with the liberation struggles of the peoples of Asia, Africa and Latin America." Joyfully, Patterson - in acknowledging the role of the Soviet Union, the Eastern European states and African liberation struggles - said, "I had learned much about the essence of the term international working class solidarity."
However, just as the noxious poison of Jim Crow was being dismantled and as the mid-50s and early 60s civil rights movements were emerging, another simultaneous trend was developing - the McCarthy era. Just as Jim Crow was gasping for its last breath, Patterson and other leaders of the CRC and Communist Party found themselves in jail; those that remained free had their passports revoked, were harassed by the FBI, were attacked, like Robeson in Peekskill, N.Y., and/or went underground.
Horne's Black Revolutionary isn't just valuable as a history of 30s, 40s and 50s era class struggle, it also highlights the role prominent communists, like Patterson, played in the legal defense of the 60s and 70s era black liberation movements, most notably the defense of the Black Panther Party - of which, Patterson acted as mentor and legal counsel to many of the leaders, including Angela Davis.
There is so much food for thought in Black Revolutionary that it is almost impossible to summarize into a short review. Without reservation, Gerald Horne's biography of William L. Patterson should be required reading for anyone interested in the global context of the African American freedom struggle.
Book review
"Black Revolutionary: William Patterson and the Globalization of the African American Freedom Struggle"
Gerald Horne
University of Illinois Press, 320 pp., October 2013
In Gerald Horne's new book, "Black Revolutionary: William Patterson and the Globalization of the African American Freedom Struggle," we are privy to Patterson's transformation as a well-to-do New York lawyer - in Horne's words, he was "living large, accumulating a sizable bank account" - into a revolutionary and international leader who struggled his whole life against Jim Crow, South African apartheid, colonialism, red-baiting and war with the Soviet Union.
It is in his formative days as a young lawyer that Patterson met the legendary athlete, actor and artist Paul Robeson; they remained lifelong friends. It was the Communist Party's defense of Sacco and Vanzetti, two Italian born anarchists falsely convicted of murder that lead Patterson to give up his high paying gig as a law partner, and eventually join the Communist Party in 1926.
"I followed the Sacco-Vanzetti case with all my soul," Horne quotes Patterson as saying. "It was at this moment that a weighty realization dawned: 'I came to the conclusion then that through the channels of the law and of more legal action [alone] the Negro would never win equality' for 'if a white worker like Tom Mooney and white foreigners like Sacco and Vanzetti could be so victimized, what chance was there for Negroes at the very bottom.'"
Sacco and Vanzetti were eventually executed in spite of national and international protest.
After officially joining the party, Patterson immersed himself into the International Labor Defense, the legal defense arm of the Scottsboro Boys, and the American Negro Labor Congress, which challenged the racism of then lily-white American Federation of Labor.
As an emerging and prominent African American leader of the CPUSA, Patterson was sent to Moscow, where he met dozens of future leaders of the African liberation movement and forged the international contacts that proved to be so important in the coming dismantling of Jim Crow back home.
"While abroad, he recounted, 'I had met leaders [and] liberation fighters of almost every country in the world' an invaluable experience that gave him a depth of understanding beyond the ken of most of his peers...," and another example of how the former Soviet Union helped to forge the worldwide contacts and connections that served to isolate Jim Crow racism and eventually hasten its defeat.
While Black Revolutionary is a biography of Patterson, it is also an examination of how Cold War politics affected the African American freedom struggle. For example, Horne devotes considerable text to the NAACP's mismanagement of certain aspects of the Scottsboro case, as well as, their refusal to help the ILD organize mobilization protests. In many cases, the NAACP's membership participated in spite of its leadership's insistence on legal defense only. The NAACP also disavowed left-progressive leaders, like founding member W.E.B. Du Bois, in the hopes of saving itself from the emerging Cold War witch hunt.
Horne also devotes considerable text to the Civil Rights Congress petition to the United Nations, titled "We Charge Genocide," which was "a devastating indictment of the U.S. authorities' complicity and dereliction in lynching, murder, deprivation of voting rights and all manner of crimes" against African Americans. Patterson delivered the petition - to much press coverage - in Paris, while Robeson simultaneously delivered it to the UN headquarters in New York.
After the delivery of the petition, Patterson exclaimed, "...mission accomplished...[by which] I meant that the struggle for American Negroes for their rightful place in their own nation was merging with the liberation struggles of the peoples of Asia, Africa and Latin America." Joyfully, Patterson - in acknowledging the role of the Soviet Union, the Eastern European states and African liberation struggles - said, "I had learned much about the essence of the term international working class solidarity."
However, just as the noxious poison of Jim Crow was being dismantled and as the mid-50s and early 60s civil rights movements were emerging, another simultaneous trend was developing - the McCarthy era. Just as Jim Crow was gasping for its last breath, Patterson and other leaders of the CRC and Communist Party found themselves in jail; those that remained free had their passports revoked, were harassed by the FBI, were attacked, like Robeson in Peekskill, N.Y., and/or went underground.
Horne's Black Revolutionary isn't just valuable as a history of 30s, 40s and 50s era class struggle, it also highlights the role prominent communists, like Patterson, played in the legal defense of the 60s and 70s era black liberation movements, most notably the defense of the Black Panther Party - of which, Patterson acted as mentor and legal counsel to many of the leaders, including Angela Davis.
There is so much food for thought in Black Revolutionary that it is almost impossible to summarize into a short review. Without reservation, Gerald Horne's biography of William L. Patterson should be required reading for anyone interested in the global context of the African American freedom struggle.
Book review
"Black Revolutionary: William Patterson and the Globalization of the African American Freedom Struggle"
Gerald Horne
University of Illinois Press, 320 pp., October 2013
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Black Bird Press News & Review: Support Black Bird Press--High Consciousness literature
Black Bird Press News & Review: Support Black Bird Press--High Consciousness literature
Either do for self, independent economics, or die. Nobody will support you or buy from you when you do not support and buy from yourselves. Do Africans buy from you, Mexicans, Arabs, Jews, Chinese? No, only rarely do any other ethnic groups buy from you yet you buy fro them every day/24/7, even while they disrespect you. What kind of man and woman are you that will shop where you are treated like a dog? Where is your manhood/womanhood? Are you an all-day sucker? Renaldo Ricketts says you are toilet paper! For sure, you suffer Addiction to white supremacy type II, as Dr. Nathan Hare says. Time to detox and recover, then discover your life's mission to free yourself and your people. You cannot escape this mission, you shall either fulfill it or betray it but you won't escape it.--Marvin X
Either do for self, independent economics, or die. Nobody will support you or buy from you when you do not support and buy from yourselves. Do Africans buy from you, Mexicans, Arabs, Jews, Chinese? No, only rarely do any other ethnic groups buy from you yet you buy fro them every day/24/7, even while they disrespect you. What kind of man and woman are you that will shop where you are treated like a dog? Where is your manhood/womanhood? Are you an all-day sucker? Renaldo Ricketts says you are toilet paper! For sure, you suffer Addiction to white supremacy type II, as Dr. Nathan Hare says. Time to detox and recover, then discover your life's mission to free yourself and your people. You cannot escape this mission, you shall either fulfill it or betray it but you won't escape it.--Marvin X
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Muhammida El Muhajir recaps Africa tour of her film Hip Hop: The New World Order
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Marvin X Love Letter to Dr. Julia Hare
Dear Julia,
As you and Nathan know, I adopted you both some years ago as my aunt and uncle, since all of my elders have transitioned to ancestor hood, leaving me as the one of the two oldest among my many cousins, my brother Ollie is one year older than I am. It is with the the deepest love that I sing this song to you, wishing you well for a job well done. Looking at you yesterday as you reposed in your sick bed, hugging you and kissing your sweet lips was one of the most joyful moments in my life. I was so happy you recognized me. As I told you, I had mentioned your name the night before on KPOO radio during my interview with our revolutionary comrade Terry Collins. One of my students read my Parable of the Bitter Bitch which opens with a reference to your book The Sexual and Political Anorexia of the Black Woman. Thank you, Julia, for all the work you and Nathan did for the North American African Nation. Thank you for teaching us how to love as you have demonstrated with your 57 years of marriage. Thank you for that wonderful performance you did on Tavis Smiley's Forum on the State of Black America. Thank you for those piano concerts you gave me at your house and thanks for being the loving wife of Dr. Nathan Hare. As a London newspaper said, you are the female Malcolm X. Just know that I love you madly and will see you next week as promised.Love Eternally,
Marvin X
BIOGRAPHY
Dr. Julia Hare is widely regarded as one of the most dynamic motivational speakers on the major podiums today.
At the Congressional Black Caucus's 27th Annual Legislative Conference chaired by Congresswoman Maxine Waters, Dr. Hare was one of three speakers invited to address the Caucus's kickoff National Town Hall Meeting on Leadership Dimensions for the New Millennium. Her collaborators included distinguished historian, Dr. John Hope Franklin, Chair of President Clinton's Advisory Board on Race, and Dr. Cornel West, Harvard professor and author of the critically acclaimed Race Matters.
Dr. Hare has appeared on "Geraldo", "Sally Jesse Raphael", "Inside Edition", CNN and Company, "Talk Back Live", "News Talk", Black Entertainment Television (BET), "The Tavis Smiley Show", ABC's "Politically Incorrect", CSPAN, and major radio and television affiliated throughout Australia and America. Her commentaries, lectures and topics include: politics, education, religion, war, foreign and domestic affairs, sexual politics and contemporary events.
A prime innovator on issues affecting the black family and society as a whole, Dr. Hare is mentioned or quoted in national newspapers, including "The New York Times", "The Washington Post", "Sun Reporter", "San Francisco Chronicle", "Miami Herald", "Louisville Courier Journal" and "The Oklahoma Eagle" among others. She has appeared in "Ebony", "Jet", "Dollars and Sense", "Heart and Soul", "USA Today", "Today's Black Woman", "Essence" and other periodicals. She is co-author with her husband, Dr. Nathan Hare, of "The Endangered Black Family"; "Bringing the Black Boy to Manhood"; "The Passage"; "The Miseducation of the Black Child" and "Crisis in Black Sexual Politics". Her most recent best-selling book is "How to Find and Keep a BMW (Black Man Working)".
Her work has brought her many accolades and honors, including Educator of the Year for Washington, D.C. by the Junior Chamber of Commerce and the World Book Encyclopedia in coordination with American University; the Abe Lincoln Award for Outstanding Broadcasting, the Carter G. Woodson Education Award; the Marcus and Amy Garvey Award; the Association of Black Social Workers Harambee Award, Third World Publishers' Twentieth Anniversary Builders Award; Professional of the Year from "Dollars and Sense" magazine; Scholar of the Year from the Association of African Historians; Lifetime Achievement Award from the international Black Writers and Artists Union; as well as a presidential citation from the national Association for Equal Opportunity in Higher Education. Dr. Hare has also been inducted into the Booker T. Washington Hall of Fame.
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Black Bird Press News & Review: Marvin X and students in anthology Stand Our Ground, for Trayvon Martin and Marissa Alexander
Black Bird Press News & Review: Marvin X and students in anthology Stand Our Ground, for Trayvon Martin and Marissa Alexander
Academy of da Corner poets Marvin X, Aries Jordan and Toya Carter appear in the anthology Stand Our Ground, for Trayvon Martin and Marissa Alexander. The following is Marvin X's entry:
Academy of da Corner poets Marvin X, Aries Jordan and Toya Carter appear in the anthology Stand Our Ground, for Trayvon Martin and Marissa Alexander. The following is Marvin X's entry:
FRIDAY, MAY 25, 2007
Memorial Day, 2007
I am a veteran
Not of foreign battlefields
Like my father in world war one
My uncles in world war two
And Korea
Or my friends from Vietnam
And even the Congo “police action”
But veteran none the less
Exiled and jailed because I refused
To visit Vietnam as a running dog for imperialism
So I visited Canada, Mexico and Belize
Then Federal prison for a minute
But veteran I am of the war in the hood
The war of domestic colonialism and neo-colonialism
White supremacy in black face war
Fighting for black power that turned white
Or was always white as in the other white people
So war it was and is
Every day without end no RR no respite just war
For colors like kindergarten children war
For turf warriors don’t own and run when popo comes
War for drugs and guns and women
War for hatred jealousy
Dante got a scholarship but couldn’t get on the plane
The boyz in the hood met him on the block and jacked him
Relieved him of his gear shot him in the head because he could read
Play basketball had all the pretty girls a square
The boyz wanted him dead like themselves
Wanted him to have a shrine with liquor bottles and teddy bears
And candles
Wanted his mama and daddy to weep and mourn at the funeral
Like all the other moms and dads and uncle aunts cousins
Why should he make it out the war zone
The blood and broken bones of war in the hood
No veterans day no benefits no mental health sessions
No conversation who cares who wants to know about the dead
In the hood
the warriors gone down in the ghetto night
We heard the Uzi at 3am and saw the body on the steps until 3 pm
When the coroner finally arrived as children passed from school
I am the veteran of ghetto wars of liberation that were aborted
And morphed into wars of self destruction
With drugs supplied from police vans
Guns diverted from the army base and sold 24/7 behind the Arab store.
Junior is 14 but the main arms merchant in the hood
He sells guns from his backpack
His daddy wants to know how he get all them guns
But Junior don’t tell cause he warrior
He’s lost more friends than I the elder
What can I tell him about death and blood and bones
He says he will get rich or die trying
But life is for love not money
And if he lives he will learn.
If he makes it out the war zone to another world
Where they murder in suits and suites
And golf courses and yachts
if he makes it even beyond this world
He will learn that love is better than money
For he was once on the auction block and sold as a thing
For money, yes, for the love of money but not for love
And so his memory is short and absent of truth
The war in the hood has tricked him into the slave past
Like a programmed monkey he acts out the slave auction
The sale of himself on the corner with his homeys
Trying to pose cool in the war zone
I will tell him the truth and maybe one day it will hit him like a bullet
In the head
It will hit him multiple times in the brain until he awakens to the real battle
In the turf of his mind.
And he will stand tall and deliver himself to the altar of truth to be a witness
Along with his homeys
They will take charge of their posts
They will indeed claim their turf and it will be theirs forever
Not for a moment in the night
But in the day and in the tomorrows
And the war will be over
No more sorrow no more blood and bones
No more shrines on the corner with liquor bottles teddy bears and candles.
--Marvin X
25 May 2007
Brooklyn NY
I am a veteran
Not of foreign battlefields
Like my father in world war one
My uncles in world war two
And Korea
Or my friends from Vietnam
And even the Congo “police action”
But veteran none the less
Exiled and jailed because I refused
To visit Vietnam as a running dog for imperialism
So I visited Canada, Mexico and Belize
Then Federal prison for a minute
But veteran I am of the war in the hood
The war of domestic colonialism and neo-colonialism
White supremacy in black face war
Fighting for black power that turned white
Or was always white as in the other white people
So war it was and is
Every day without end no RR no respite just war
For colors like kindergarten children war
For turf warriors don’t own and run when popo comes
War for drugs and guns and women
War for hatred jealousy
Dante got a scholarship but couldn’t get on the plane
The boyz in the hood met him on the block and jacked him
Relieved him of his gear shot him in the head because he could read
Play basketball had all the pretty girls a square
The boyz wanted him dead like themselves
Wanted him to have a shrine with liquor bottles and teddy bears
And candles
Wanted his mama and daddy to weep and mourn at the funeral
Like all the other moms and dads and uncle aunts cousins
Why should he make it out the war zone
The blood and broken bones of war in the hood
No veterans day no benefits no mental health sessions
No conversation who cares who wants to know about the dead
In the hood
the warriors gone down in the ghetto night
We heard the Uzi at 3am and saw the body on the steps until 3 pm
When the coroner finally arrived as children passed from school
I am the veteran of ghetto wars of liberation that were aborted
And morphed into wars of self destruction
With drugs supplied from police vans
Guns diverted from the army base and sold 24/7 behind the Arab store.
Junior is 14 but the main arms merchant in the hood
He sells guns from his backpack
His daddy wants to know how he get all them guns
But Junior don’t tell cause he warrior
He’s lost more friends than I the elder
What can I tell him about death and blood and bones
He says he will get rich or die trying
But life is for love not money
And if he lives he will learn.
If he makes it out the war zone to another world
Where they murder in suits and suites
And golf courses and yachts
if he makes it even beyond this world
He will learn that love is better than money
For he was once on the auction block and sold as a thing
For money, yes, for the love of money but not for love
And so his memory is short and absent of truth
The war in the hood has tricked him into the slave past
Like a programmed monkey he acts out the slave auction
The sale of himself on the corner with his homeys
Trying to pose cool in the war zone
I will tell him the truth and maybe one day it will hit him like a bullet
In the head
It will hit him multiple times in the brain until he awakens to the real battle
In the turf of his mind.
And he will stand tall and deliver himself to the altar of truth to be a witness
Along with his homeys
They will take charge of their posts
They will indeed claim their turf and it will be theirs forever
Not for a moment in the night
But in the day and in the tomorrows
And the war will be over
No more sorrow no more blood and bones
No more shrines on the corner with liquor bottles teddy bears and candles.
--Marvin X
25 May 2007
Brooklyn NY
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Belated Justice for Scottsboro Boys
In Alabama, a measure of justice for the Scottsboro Boys
The state's parole board grants posthumous pardons to black teenagers falsely accused of rape in 1931. The case helped precipitate the civil rights movement.
Members of the Alabama National Guard escort the Scottsboro Boys - a group of black teenagers falsely accused of rape - into court in 1933. The state's parole board Thursday granted pardon posthumously to the last of the teens. (Decatur Daily/ November 27, 1998) |
FAIRHOPE, Ala. — The state of Alabama can't rewrite a history shot through with hate and violence, but with the help of one determined woman it has added a postscript.
On Thursday, Alabama's parole board pardoned the last of the long-dead Scottsboro Boys, nine black teenagers falsely accused of rape in 1931. Their case was monumental. It divided some residents here and united others, led to two landmark Supreme Court decisions, and precipitated the civil rights movement in the decades that followed.
All the while, though, justice remained undone for some of the boys as they became men, went into hiding, and eventually died with the stigma of rape on their reputations. That changed only after a long campaign by a Scottsboro woman.
In the mid-1970s, when Sheila Washington was 17, she found a package under her parents' bed. She retrieved it: a pillowcase, which held something rolled in layers of plastic. She unwrapped it, and a book tumbled out.
"An old, thin paperback," she said Thursday. A book about nine boys who were black, like her. What she read changed her life.
In the depths of the Depression, young people throughout the South hopped trains — hoboing, they called it — looking for work. That March, along the rail to Memphis, nine teenage black boys, a few white boys and two white girls had hopped on at various stops in Georgia and Tennessee.
Someone got jostled, a fight started, and the outnumbered white boys jumped off and went to the police. In Paint Rock, Ala., authorities boarded the train and arrested every black male, ranging from 13 to 19 years old. They also found the two white girls, who claimed they had been raped.
As Sheila Washington read about one of America's greatest judicial miscarriages, her father caught her with the book. He snatched it from her hands. She heard fear in his voice. "You don't need to know about that," he said. "Just keep quiet about this now."
Keep quiet: a refrain she would hear again and again, for years, about the Scottsboro Boys.
In 1978, her brother died in Kilby Prison, where the boys had been held. Guards had killed him, she said, after he had killed a white man in a fight.
These dark moments — finding the old book, her father's fear, her brother's death — hardened inside her as a young woman. She began work on a project on the Scottsboro Boys. A museum, a monument to their suffering. People in town expressed outrage. "They said I was disgracing the good name of Scottsboro," she said.
After almost two decades of work she opened the Scottsboro Boys Museum and Cultural Center on Willow Street, where visitors could learn about the case out in the open, free of plastic wrap and pillowcases.
Along the way she made a realization, she said: Civil rights leaders had abandoned the boys. "After Rosa Parks, everybody shifted to her case, because it looked better and smelled better," she said. Even after it became clear the Scottsboro Boys had committed no crime, they still lived with the stigma of rape.
Their nine trials had spanned just two days at the Scottsboro courthouse, before an all-white jury, argued by a defense lawyer who didn't know Alabama law. All but the youngest teen received the death penalty. Afterward, the Communist Party USA intervened with legal help for an appeal, and the case eventually reached the U.S. Supreme Court, where it led to two historic decisions: that jury members cannot be systematically excluded by race, and that defendants have the right to adequate legal representation.
In 1937, one of the alleged victims recanted her story. She had never been raped. That led to five of the boys' convictions being overturned. One of them, Clarence Norris, received a pardon in 1976.
By then, the remaining boys had died, but Sheila Washington felt they still deserved exoneration. She went before the Alabama parole board but was told there was no process for posthumous pardons.
So she approached state Sen. Arthur Orr, a white Republican whose greatest remembrance of the case, he said, came from a television special about one of the judges.
Orr was moved by Washington's plea. "Alabama is such a different place now," he said Thursday. "This felt like a chance to do something."
He drew up legislation that would allow for posthumous pardons in cases of racial discrimination. The last politician to make a stand on the case — Judge James Horton had declared the men could not receive a fair trial in a court filled with a hostile mob — had been crushed in the next election. But in April, when Orr presented his bill, he said, the state legislators "were filled with a sense of unanimity, Republican and Democratic." The law passed unanimously.
On Thursday, when the parole board granted the pardons, the gallery burst into applause. Republican Gov. Robert J. Bentley issued a statement saying, "The pardons granted to the Scottsboro Boys today are long overdue."
John Miller, a professor at the University of Alabama, worked with Washington and Orr on the language that became law. He acknowledged that the pardon was, in a sense, symbolic. But that's all right, he said. "Alabama has a history of being very good at political theater, but I think this is more than just theater. It's a declaration that justice delayed doesn't have to mean justice denied."
Sheila Washington said the decision felt more than symbolic to her. It felt like the satisfaction of a lifetime's work. "I believe the boys can rest now," she said.
http://www.latimes.com/nation/la-na-scottsboro-boys-20131122,0,6670872.story#ixzz2lO7II1A4
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Is the Black Bourgeoise Dangerous to our health?
It is quite possible we must conclude the class/caste known as the North American African bourgeoisie is dangerous to the health of common North American Africans. This caste/class within the American social structure is a well known type, especially in modern times. E. Franklin Frazier described them best as inhabiting a world of make believe that has a penchant for conspicuous consumption or crass materialism. Since they are bereft of original thinking and acting, they mainly exist as a buffer between the white supremacy rulers and the North American African masses. They may be seen as the overseer that originated in slavery, although even more profound is to understand this class derived from those Africans who sold us into the slave system. Today they enjoy the same mentality and will keep us in virtual slavery if and when allowed to do so. Although the masses toil from day to day, this class enjoys privileges approaching their white bourgeoisie comrades. A radical NAACP president recently said to me, "While our people suffer racial discrimination, the Black bourgeoisie remains enclosed within their gated villages, insulated from the perpetual suffering of their less fortunate brothers and sisters."
We must admit that although this group of collaborators and boot lickers enjoys a few crumbs from the table of white supremacy, making them positive apathetics since they have the wherewithal to expedite the liberation of their downtrodden brothers and sisters but do nothing, there is indeed a progressive element that must be acknowledged, although even members of this progressive element have been heard saying they are not sure they want to help get jack and jackie out of the box, thus sounding very Masonic is their secret treachery.
And so while we would expect this upper class to be "leaders" in the liberation struggle, especially the progressive element, it is doubtful even this element will be totally beneficial in freeing their people. This element is so reactionary even when they are awarded grants to assist the less fortunate, they will block the implementation of said grants because they have such disdain for the masses they cannot stand seeing the masses enjoy a moment of respite. In sum, this class, including the progressive element, play the role of "block man and block woman". For example, after three North American African mayors, Oakland, California suffers a degree of poverty, crime, disease, miseducation and political disenfranchisement that his totally overwhelming and absolutely disgusting for the once radical city, birthplace of the Western arm of the Pullman Porters and the Black Panther Party.
Politically, the North American African bourgeoisie has done the same nationally, nothing! The only bright spot is the recent election of Attorney Chowke Lumumba as Mayor of Jackson, Mississippi and the coming election of Ras Baraka as Mayor of Newark, New Jersey.
Will the North American African bourgeoisie transcend their class/caste identity to champion the liberation of the 2.4 million incarcerated men and women who are the New Jim Crow? Or will they salivate over the election of their class/caste brother President Obama as the New Negro King of Africa?
In the 60s, Eldridge Cleaver and the Black Panthers told us you are either part of the problem or part of the solution. The masses must dismiss the Black bourgeoise as part of the problem and continue their solitary journey on the freedom train! Not only is the air, food and waster toxic in America, but this class of sycophants as well. Only grassroots leadership that has recovered from the addiction to white supremacy can expedite the liberation of our people. Educators, religious, political and cultural leaders must be dismissed out right as representatives of neocolonialism or the New Jim Crow. These culture police are essentially Pharaohs magicians and thus only a Moses can dispel their reactionary magical hold that is anathema to our freedom. Let us all be a Moses, let us all assume the central command, thus when a spoke is broken, the wheel shall continue rolling up the hill beyond the myth of Sisyphus!
--Marvin X
11/22/13
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Seattle's new socialist council member on the End of U.S. Capitalism
An interview with Seattle's new socialist councilmember, Kshama Sawant. | |||
On November 5, Seattle voters made Occupy activist and economics professor Kshama Sawant the first avowed socialist city council member in their city’s history – and the country’s first big city socialist council member in decades. In an interview Thursday – one day before her vote count lead spurred her opponent to concede the race – Sawant slammed Obama economics, suggested she could live to see the end of U.S. capitalism, and offered a socialist vision for transforming Boeing. A condensed version of our conversation follows. It appears you’re on the cusp of winning a major city’s council race as a socialist. How did that happen? I think the basis for everything that’s happening in Seattle, and everywhere else, is the fallout of the economic crisis … In Seattle, we are seeing a city that is very wealthy but is very unequal, and has become unaffordable for the vast majority of people … Along with our [state Legislature] campaign last year and [city council] this year, we’ve seen a movement towards $15 an hour through the fast food movement … workers have courageously gone out on one-day strikes … The workers of [nearby airport city] SeaTac and the labor movement, they put a $15 an hour minimum wage initiative on the ballot for SeaTac city, and that is now leading … All of this is happening in the cauldron of the economic crisis and the burden placed on the shoulders of working people … The conditions that shape people’s consciousness in Seattle are not different from anywhere else. And in fact, there is a deep frustration and disgust with the political system … This is the background in which our campaign has had a resounding echo. After the 2008 financial crash, were you disappointed that there wasn’t more of a left turn in U.S. policy at the national level? I think it’s been it’s been demoralizing for the left for a while. But at the same time, I think what we’re seeing is a slow but steady change, and the Occupy movement was a really significant expression of the disenchantment from the system that we knew that everybody was feeling… In the absence of movements, especially mass movements, people tend to feel atomized, and everybody is privately thinking that “the system is not working for me.” The Occupy movement, what it did was it ended that silence and people were more openly talking about the economic crisis, the fact that the banks got bailed out and the rest of us were left with unemployment, low-wage jobs, and an epidemic of foreclosures and evictions. So I think, contrary to what people thought…It’s really been a period where newer, small but new movements are starting to rise up. There’s been the Occupy Homes campaign in Minnesota, which has actually prevented several foreclosures…And there’s been sort of initial eruptions of the environmental movement. …Now, what [the] Left has to do is to recognize that there is an opening here, there is a hunger among people in the United States, especially young people, young working people…In reality, what has become a dirty word is capitalism. Young people can see that the system does not offer any solutions. They can see that a two-party system is not working for them. But what is the alternative? We have to provide the alternative… Boeing workers…rejected this contract that has been forced on them by Boeing executives [who are] holding the state hostage to their demands…Every few years Boeing demands a massive corporate giveaway from the state, and the state each time gives into it – and this is a Democratic governor of the state who was leading this effort. For Boeing workers, it’s very clear that neither of the two parties is going to stand by them. And so the signal that it sends to the labor movement is that we have to have our own political organization. So what is the most likely path in your view to making the United States more socialist? I wouldn’t call it “more socialist,” in the sense that it doesn’t make sense: It can be either capitalism or socialism. But what we can do, in the journey toward making the economy into something that works for everybody: We have to fight for major reforms under capitalism … We are going to be pushing forward for $15 an hour minimum wage in Seattle in 2014 … The only way we can get that any of these demands to be fulfilled is if we have mass movements of workers and young people coming together in an organized way and demanding these reforms … But we also have to be honest … That’s not going to be enough. Because the system itself is a system of crises … Capitalism does not have the ability to generate the kind of living wage jobs that will be necessary in order to sustain a decent standard of living for the majority … So we have to have a strategy where we not only fight for every reform that we can get, including single payer healthcare, but … It can’t be in isolation from also thinking about fundamental shift in society … In all this discussion, we cannot ignore the questions about climate change that are looming large in terms of this. And capitalism has shown itself completely incapable of addressing this crisis. And in some ways that’s as compelling a reason as any to think about a fundamental shift. Do you believe that capitalism can or will end in the United States in your lifetime? I can’t give a definitive answer to that because it will depend on what role we play – you know, we as in working people, young people, older people, people who have a stake in changing society, you know – it’s in our hands … We have to point the way forward, and that is the responsibility of the left, and we’re trying to do that. But we need other forces to step in. We need the labor movement to play a huge role in this. And you know, one of the things that the labor movement can do is it can join hands with the environmental movement … The other thing the labor movement needs to do is run their own candidates, independent of the two parties, independent of corporate money, and show that it’s possible. I mean, our campaign has shown that you don’t have to obey the rules. In the best case scenario for you, the day that capitalism ended in the United States — how would that happen, what form would that transition take? It would be difficult for me to lay out a blueprint of that. But … we can think about what it will require … Capitalism is a system where it’s extremely productive, and productivity rates are at an all-time high, but the gains of the productivity are delivered almost exclusively to a very tiny elite at the top … Boeing has an enormous factory, [as well as] all the auto factories that are lying defunct right now in the U.S. — they all have enormous capacity for production. And there’s any number of workers with the skills, and people who have the potential of learning those skills. And instead we have a situation where, because we don’t have a say in the production, either the machines are lying idle, or the machines are being used to produce destructive machines like drones. So what we need to do is to take the machines and the factories into democratic, say, democratic ownership — and the workers can contribute rail cars or buses, something like that, something that is beneficial to society. And that’s something that creates jobs — it will create living wage jobs … That’s the kind of system that we need, where the decisions on what to do with resources, and what to produce, how much of it to produce, that is made in accordance with democratic principles, and in accordance with what human society needs, not because the Wal-Mart CEO needs to make 2 percentage points more profits this quarter. Under that vision of socialism, would there still be a Seattle City Council? Absolutely. There has to be elected representation. There would still be unions. There has to be accountability. What will change is how democracy actually functions. I mean, today we have a certain level of democracy — I mean, when you look at the vote, that’s true. And we are running within the system. But it’s a very limited form of democracy. You know, in order to get your message across, if you are a campaign with loads of corporate money, it’s easier for you. If you’re going against the status quo, it’s harder … And voters themselves are disenfranchised in so many ways … Democracy is nonetheless absolutely the bedrock of socialism. In fact, I would say that democracy is absolutely critical for this vision to come alive. And in fact democracy is antithetical in many ways to capitalism. And in fact this democracy that we have is something that allows us to do a little bit within the system, but that’s not what the capitalist class want. I mean, they do not want us to fight for $15 an hour, they don’t want to give that. But we’re able to fight for it within the system. But that’s despite capitalism, not because of capitalism. President Obama told the Business Roundtable – speaking of “the capitalist class” – in his first term that he’s an “ardent believer in the free market,” and that he sees three roles for government: to create rules for a level playing field; to provide things that individuals can’t do for themselves; and to provide a social safety net. What do you make of that kind of politics? First of all, I think Obama is being quite honest … he believes in capitalism. And so for people to have the faith that he is going to really fight against those ideas … there is no basis in reality for that … I would say that the “free market” is basically free for the super-wealthy, and extremely un-free for the rest of us. Because they dictate the terms. And so this idea that the free market can generate conditions where social programs can thrive and a level playing field can be created — it is an oxymoron. Because what the capitalist market does – and that’s what they call the “free market” – is that if you are a big player, like one of the oil companies, then you are in the best position to consolidate your wealth even further … One of the systematic, statistical realities under capitalism is intergenerational transmission of wealth and intergenerational transmissions of poverty … I often ask my students, “What do you think is the best way of making money under capitalism?” They often give me interesting answers, like maybe [creating] an app for an iPhone … I tell them, “Look, the best way of making money under capitalism is to have money in the first place” … You also hear people saying, well, it’s “crony capitalism” or it’s “disaster capitalism” or some other capitalism. Well, the fact is, you know, they’re all dancing around [that] this is capitalism … It’s not built into the system that the goal is to ensure that socially responsible life is possible. The goal is to maximize profits for those who already have wealth … The reality is that capitalism rewards the biggest corporations and it tends toward monopoly. That is what capitalism is. If you end up on the city council, how different is your agenda on the council and your voting record going to be from the liberal Democrats on the Seattle City Council? Most of them are typical, homogenous block of more pro-Big Business conservative advocates, although in name they’re all Democrats … Seattle, like most major cities of the United States, is ruled by the Democratic Party establishment. And all of the problems that we see here, you know, crisis of affordable housing, low-wage jobs and all of those things, lie at the doorstep of the Democratic Party … One [example] was a vote on whether the city should allow regulated homeless encampments … a very necessary stopgap measure to protect families from the ravages of homelessness. And my opponent … was the fifth vote that crushed it … Another example — this is also politically really instructive — is the paid sick leave for Seattle workers … That was possible because rank-and-file workers and the labor movement took it on themselves — I mean, they were the ones who championed it. They were out on the streets demonstrating and demanding that the council pass a paid sick leave initiative … That, in combination with the fact that there are one or two more progressive voices on City Council who took that on and pushed for it, ensured that basically the issue was passed … My opponent [cast the] sole vote against it. That one thing should be enough for people to not elect him again, because that was a completely unconscionable thing to do… When we launched our campaign, and it was early this year, no one else was talking about $15 an hour except for us and the fast food workers, and all the corporate candidates — including the mayoral candidates — were very, very carefully avoiding it … Ultimately, it was impossible for the corporate candidates to ignore, and toward the end of the campaign you had both of the mayoral candidates putting on paper that they support $15 an hour … What I can do on the City Council as one socialist is really far more than what people imagine it to be. Because it won’t just be my voice … to talk to other council members, but it’s also going to be to continue to really encourage and to invite public pressure into it. Which is how this camp succeeded. Are there countries that you look to as good examples of socialism? There is no real full example … but there are elements of what we are talking about in our vision for a future society … In the United States, the creation of the welfare program in the first place. The creation of Social Security. All the advances that have been made in women’s rights and LGBT rights — a lot of this is well within the vision of what I would consider a really humane society in the future, and what I consider socialism … The gains that we have today are very consistent with our vision for a socialist society, and also they came about because a lot of these movements were headed by socialists. And there are elements of socialism or socialist society in many other countries as well. So if you look at Finland and the funding for public education, how strong the teachers’ unions are, the full funding for healthcare in Cuba, also education. These are all elements that we would want to see put in place in a future society. But at the end of the day, it’s not possible to have socialism in one country … If resources are organized globally along capitalist lines, it’s just not possible to provide that really high standard of living that some people have to everybody else … [A] small section of the working class has attained a really good standard of living. But first of all, that was not delivered to the vast majority. And secondly, and more importantly, those kinds of living are starting to disappear … It’s a politics of austerity in Europe, and all of these programs are under major assault. And so that shows you that you can’t have socialism in one country, and you can’t stop at social democracy. You can’t stop at having reforms … We have to have a fundamental shift. In the past few decades, has the United States been moving closer toward that ideal of socialism, or further away from it? As far as what has been happening broadly in the economy, no, it hasn’t been moving closer to socialism. And in fact what’s been happening is that some of the gains of the post-Second World War era, the creation of the middle class, for example, the funding for public education, a lot of these things are under attack … You don’t have to be a socialist economist for someone to admit that the middle class is fast disappearing. You know, Paul Krugman talks about it. So that’s going in the wrong direction. What it shows is that, you know, when there is a major crisis in capitalism, the people who are going to be squeezed are working people. When did you become a socialist and what brought you to socialism? Consciously, I became a socialist when I came to Seattle, and I just happened to attend a meeting where somebody from Socialist Alternative gave a speech. And for me, there was — that was exactly what I was looking for. And I haven’t looked back since then. But I would say more accurately that I have always been a socialist, but less consciously. From my very childhood, it was just the experience of growing up in Mumbai, India, and seeing just the ocean of poverty and misery all around me. And for me, it was not simply a question of outrage or fellow-feeling. Of course that’s the starting point, but for me it’s a logical question as well. Which is: How is it possible that there is so much wealth in society, and you can see that there are so many wealthy people who are just wealthy beyond measure, and you have such unimaginable poverty and misery, and just absolute horrendous conditions that human beings are living in … It just seemed very, just unacceptable to me logically that that situation was a natural one. I mean, I could see that it had nothing to do with resources or productivity. It was clearly a political obstacle to eliminating poverty. | |||
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Parable of the Bitter Bitch
Parable of the Bitter Bitch
In Dr. Julia Hare’s recent book The Politically and Sexually Anorexic Black Woman, is described a personality devoid of sexual desire and political action, a person so traumatized she is of no use to herself or anyone else, although this person may seek escape in lesbianism to assuage the pain of sexual deprivation and the abuse of patriarchal domination.
But to her surprise, she may soon find herself under female domination on a level equal if not surpassing patriarchal domination. Yes, now she is a victim of the matriarchy, finding no escape except the temporary tenderness of her gender group’s gentle massaging of her wounds, which are healed with the feminine touch so missing in the rough masculine approach upon her psychosexuality.
But no matter what gender, persons in the Western world are prone to oppress and dominate in their interpersonal relations. Thus in homosexual relations, partner abuse and violence is equal if not more violent than traditional male/female partner abuse. We are aware of a young lesbian who is avoiding a confrontation with two lovers who want to “beat her up.”
And we recall the tragic case of choreographer Raymond Sawyer who was stabbed over fifty times by his lover or associates. In short, everybody wants to dominate in the spirit of white supremacy socialization. There is thus the need to detoxify from our addiction to white supremacy culture, including the psychosexuality inherent in such culture, no matter the gender of the participants.
The result is persons with the bitter bitch syndrome, exhibiting a hatred, jealousy and envy that is obvious in their aura upon approach. It can be seen in the evil vibe they give off, the sinister look in their eyes, especially when a heterosexual man approaches or interacts with a person in their homosexual gender group. People are generally insecure in their relationships, simply because their personalities are fragile, making them apprehensive and ultra sensitive to the approach of any person outside the group--thus the bitter bitch syndrome.
Now this syndrome transcends homosexuality because the heterosexual woman, who in Dr. Hare’s view is anorexic, is bitter as well against the male who ignores her for “foreign women,” in the manner of Samson and Delilah, especially those brothers sporting locks and spouting One Love, Iree, Jah Rastafari, although a true Rasta would not be seen with Babylon woman. Sisters long ago gave up attending Reggae concerts because brothers were so entwined with Babylon woman that it became useless to seek a man in such venues. More reason for the Bitter Bitch Syndrome. And it is the same with the Hip Hop generation who are edumakated in Kemetic science or Afrocentricism, but opts for foreign women to the detriment of the conscious sister who is left alone while her Kemetic brother again finds solace in the arms of women who caused his people’s downfall 6000 years ago in the Nile Valley culture.
But he is so absorbed in his intellectuality that history escapes him, robbing him of the experience of love and nurturing with his natural mate. The trials and tribulations of Hillary Clinton’s run for the presidential nomination revealed the white supremacy of her and her sisters, to say nothing of her racist husband, Billy boy, the first black president—so Obama is the second?
Alas, I must quote Fahizah who has informed us the white woman is the bearer of children who shall inherit the white supremacy world of her fathers, mothers, brothers and sisters, and the Negro like the tragic Othello, yet is blind to their agenda, especially since he has no agenda of his own, but is free styling in a boat without a rudder, riding a bicycle without a kickstand.
In the Destruction of African Civilization, Chancellor Williams taught us how after cohabitating with foreign men, the African mothers raised children with misplaced loyalties that have persisted down to the present moment in the multiracial children. Are they black or white, shall they identify with the African mother or foreign father—the tragic mulatto syndrome that has morphed into the bitter bitch syndrome of today.
“Why does the black man hate me?” a so-called conscious sister asked me recently. Now I have written that often it is the woman’s mouth that turns off the black man so he is unable to desire her sexually. There is thus an urgent need for males and females to again learn the language of love; otherwise the anorexia will be an addiction of both genders.
Neither will have the desire to experience sexual love with each other. We think maybe it is time to have a great love fest in the community, a ritual to celebrate the spirituality of sexuality, making it a healing tool in our relations and thus bury the bitter bitch syndrome, no matter what gender.
--Marvin X
from The Wisdom of Plato Negro, parables/fables, BBP, 2012.
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Mythology Defined or Don't Say Pussy
Marvin X and Akhbar Muhammad
Mythology Defined
Myth is all there is, like air, without myth we cannot breathe, therefore we die. Myth is the essence of religion. There are no rituals without myth--myth is the story, the word, hence the foundation of ritual. We take the myth and create the drama as in the original Osirian drama of resurrection, first the story then the enactment of the story, followed by the absorption of myth into the social-psychology of a people. Myth then becomes the foundation of culture, the purpose of existence and the goal of after-life.
Yes, culture is all that we do but all that we do is based on the myths we live by. When we suggest transcending myth it is an awesome challenge to the psyche and thus to the society. What white person wants to give up the myth of white supremacy. It is the essence of their being. Shall they become black? But black is not simply a color, it is a culture that is bound by myth as well. When we suggest giving up myth, we realize the task is daunting, for what shall a person stand upon, what rock, what reality?
We want the schools to change but again it shall involve dismantling the American mythology, all the lies, stories, dreams, holidays, statues, images, symbols that abound the society--in short, a decolonialization must occur—or call it detoxification. The teachers cannot teach a different way because they are victims of myth as well, trapped in their madness which is the essence of all they have been taught and certified to teach.
The black American psychologists are grappling with the problem of myth as I write. At their last national conference in Oakland they spoke about casting out Eurocentric psychology and returning to the ancient African healing philosophy. They want to transcend European psychotherapy for a more holistic approach that will embrace the entire being of the spiritually ill person, for sure, the mental is related to the physical to the social to the political to the economic. But as with education, how shall the mental health workers get certified to teach African healing when they have been trained in Eurocentric psychology? And what is the mythological foundation of African healing?
Imagine throwing out white education, but the question is can they heal the black mind with white psychology? As much as we applaud the psychotherapeutic peer group approach, prescribed in my manual How to Recover from the Addiction to White Supremacy, even the peer group is not sufficient unless the group bonds together in a holistic manner to overcome the myriad ills due to oppression.
The myth of love is an example of how we are entrapped in mythology. Love becomes an ever changing illusion based on materialism and economic security, thus it is a physical thing that in the end causes us to cry, "What does love have to do with it?" But in reality love is all there is. God is Love! Yet we spend a lifetime seeking that which is our essence. Surely we must be on the wrong path or in the wrong house of love. And after a lifetime with the beloved, we wonder was it in vain, a waste of energy, a pitiful existence with a beloved who hated our guts, was jealous, envious, greedy, yet this was our mate, this was us.
And so detoxification is in order to begin our recovery from sick mythology. We resist and deny anything is amiss but we must summon the strength to make a change, to jump out the box toward a brighter day. We fight leaving the comfort zone for it is all we know, like the slaves upon emancipation: where shall we go, what shall we do without the master? He was our everything, our god, our lover, our enforcer, our rapist even. But deconstructing alien mythology is the only way out, just as the dope fiend must stop using dope upon the pain of death. Now some choose death, the die-hards who claim dope is the best thing that ever happened to them. So they are not satisfied until they fall into the pit. The society addicted to sick mythology is no better than the common dope fiend. It is determined to commit mass suicide. America is not alone in this manner. It is the same with Israel, North Korea, Iran and elsewhere. Mythology (call it ideology if you wish) will be the final determinant of the political actions in the above nations.
Will they transcend their mythology and live or persist in their inordinacy until they die? The sooner we get beyond myth into a progressive, radical and revolutionary state of mind, the better we shall all be. But it would be a step forward if we simply stopped believing in the superiority of myth. This notion of superiority is probably worse than the myth itself. The myth of white supremacy is no better or worse than other myths, but the problem is when whites want to spread their myth and force it upon others who have their own mythology.
As far as I am concerned, let the whites in the American south keep their confederate flag, just don’t subject it upon me and my people. Keep that shit in yo house, your church or wherever you dwell and I don’t. And if I fly the Star and Crescent, leave me the hell alone. But let’s go deeper into the world of myth for a story is composed of words, thus we must consider linguistics or language when attempting to transcend myth, for the devil is in the language. We may therefore find ourselves in need of a new language in order to transcend myth, for we speak a mythical language, and just as we do not understand the mythology, we do not understand the language. To have a common language suggests we have agreed upon definitions, but again, what do you mean by love, and are you prepared to love your enemy? Can you love yourself, and who or what is yourself? Who is the black self, what is it?
We grappled with this problem in the 60s in trying to define a black esthetic. What is beauty and truth to us? Suddenly the Negro was ugly and black was beautiful, and for a moment there was a consensus and a people moved forward. And then came the breakdown and the consensus was gone. The natural hair style was no longer en vogue. Ugly became beautiful. Ugly was freedom, although we never got a consensus on what freedom meant, nor do we have one today. What is freedom to you is not freedom to me. You say freedom is a job, and that’s the totality of your freedom. Other people fight for land, natural resources, self determination, but you say just give you a job and you are satisfied. So how can we unite?
You say freedom is having sex between persons of the same sex. Nothing else matters to you in life. But we ask what does sex have to do with it? Were you put aboard the slave ships so you could have sex with the same gender loving persons, is this why your ancestors suffered in the cotton and cane fields, was it for sexual freedom, or what is possibly something that went far beyond pussy and dick, getting a nut in the dark or in some alley, bathroom, park? Again, we need to define some terms before we can move forward into the new era. Let’s list some terms and define them—and how can we do this when terms are ever shifting, for language is dynamic and fluid, Negro, Colored, black, African, Bilalian, Moorish, et al. We are forever changing our identity because we cannot come to a consensus as a people. At least the white people know they are white, they may not know anything else, but they know they are white.
You don’t know if you are black or white, man or woman—for the sands are constantly shifting under your feet—the result of your insecurity, personal and communal. It is an identity crisis of the most profound degree imaginable. So myth is composed with language, from myth to ritual, from ritual to reality, but language is the foundation. The child’s world only becomes real when it takes command of its “mother tongue.” Within the mother tongue is myth which is composed of surface and deep structure terminology and meaning, the said and the unsaid, the seen and the unseen.
We are that child that has yet to master language, hence our world is chaos without solid, safe and secure definitions, leading us not to know what is real and unreal, a confusion of self and kind. We are not certain our brother is a friend or foe. We are not sure if our mate is friend or foe, lover or hater. In a moment of passion we may hear words we never thought was in the heart of our lover, or we may use such words ourselves. Now there is more doubt and insecurity in an already fragile relationship, that more than likely originated in lust rather than anything that can be called love. And so we see the task before us, a psycho-linguistic mythological conundrum that will take centuries to resolve since in the global village our mythology is bound with other mythological tribes and nations, some of which seek our life blood.
We may be forced out of our slumber to shed the old raggedy clothes of worn out mythology, whether religious or political, sexual or social. Elijah told us the wisdom of this world is exhausted—one need only look around and listen to the language, the babble blowing in the wind, in spite of all the technology, all the human advancement. Surely, in spite of it all, reverse evolution has set in, a kind of atrophy, a freezing of the mental apparatus, a paralysis of thought while the very hour challenges us with the need for grand vision to make that great leap forward into the new millennium.--Marvin X
Don't Say Pussy
Don’t say pussy
just beat your woman half to deathbecause you own her
she yo private property
don't say pussy
just gang rape from America to Africa
from the streets of Richmond to the DA's office
don't say pussy
that's a nasty word
just cut off clitoris
it's African tradition
and we african to the bone
don't say pussy
let AIDS infect the world
but don't say pussy
say vagina
cunt
anything but pussy
say cat
dog
boo
anything but pussy
nastiest word in creation
we presume
don't say pussy
just be a church ho
jezebel in the temple
don't say pussy
people might understand
it's a woman's body not man's
not his pussy but hers
24/7 she owns it
you don't have a pussy
you don't have a pussy
pussy man
get the concept baby boy
now you got 25 to life for rape
don't say pussy
say asshole from now on
don't say pussy
abuse yo wife cause she gave up some
to yo buddy
only after you fucked her best friend
but don't say pussy
cause you own it
paid for it
got it legal
not in the alley
in yo house
so abuse it accuse it
but don't say it
send yo woman to the hospital
two black eyes
why not kill her cause she gave it up
in a revenge fuck
you taught her to say
"You don't have no evidence
I gave it up"
you told her that many times
on yo pussy runs
but don't say pussy
in anger management class
court mandated
since you so warped
wanna beat her
why not beat the white man
beat yo boss
not yo woman, yo pussy
you love so much
but it's gone now
ain't coming back
you so crude and rude
don't say pussy
just think about it.
think about who taught you pussy was dirty, nasty
the church, the pope, the bishop fucking little boys
what he know bout pussy
ain't pussy God's mother
holy Mary mother of God
who taught you pussy was nasty, funky
was it religions of men
wanting control of women and the fruit of their womb
control of property
control of the world
who are these men
did they come from women
did women teach them this madness
was it her breast milk
her kindness
wiping their asses
snotty noses
was it mama's hands taught them this
yet they hate pussy
will beat it to death, throw it in the Bay, on the roadside, in the woods
in the backyard, in the wall
what kind of people are these
constructing a world to hate pussy
the very thing that gave them life
won't let it be free
want to cage it box it handcuff it tie it up in the closet
what manner of man is this
what beast what cave animal what dog
still cave acting in the modern world
actually hating that which he loves
some kind of schizophrenic devil
can't do without pussy for five minutes
he wants to cum
wants some head
wants some yeah pussy
wants some ass
wants wants wants
but hates hates hates pussy
a sick man really
go to the pussy doctor
not the gyno but the psycho
talk to him bout yo problem
why you so warped demented deranged
want to get violent over her pussy
that you can't own no matter what the papers say
no matter how much you pay on yo pussy bill
you can't own it dog
don't think you own it for a minute cause you don't you can't
it's not yours to own baby boy
get a life a real life in a hurry
before the end of the world
don't you see it coming
and you still stuck on stupid
go be dead in this life
dead in the hereafter
be careful
pussy gives life and pussy takes life
you can't beat it
too strong
you lose in the end
pussy always wins
pussy bad
better ax somebody.
go get a healing!
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From the Archives: Marvin X on Chauncey Bailey, Rupert Murdoch, Media, Police and Politicians connected
Oakland Post Opinion by Marvin X
Opinion
Chauncey Bailey, Rupert Murdoch, Media, Police and Politicians connected
by MarvinX
The charges against media mogul Rupert Murdoch, the UK police and politicians has implications and parallels with the Oakland political establishment, the Chauncey Bailey Project and the Oakland Police Department.
The situation in the United Kingdom reveals the collusion of politicians, the Media and the police. Shall we say they had a symbiotic relationship or was it more sinister and synergistic, for allegedly Mr. Murdoch's newspaper paid the police to help them hack into the phones of murdered persons. And it has been asserted that Murdoch’s American media organizations may have hacked into the phones of 9/11 victims. Politicians served at the behest of Mr. Murdoch's media empire, seeking his support, Murdoch acknowledged that they slipped him into the back door of the Prime Minister’s residence.
The whistle-blowing journalist who worked for Murdoch and was investigating the corruption scandal was found dead 24 hours before Murdoch’s testimony before the Parliament. The Scotland Yard police said the death would not be considered “suspicious”. In 1987, another journalist, Daniel Morgan, was murdered because he, like Chauncey, was about to expose a drug conspiracy linked to police corruption.
Shortly before Chauncey was murdered, a group of mothers wanted him to meet with them at an Oakland Church to intervene between them and the police because they said the police were shaking down their sons for money, drugs and jewelry, without arresting them, letting them go free, putting their lives in danger with dope dealers.
As with the British treatment of Murdoch, Oakland politicians sought the blessings of Dr. Yusef Bey, founder of Your Black Muslim Bakery, and father of the now convicted murderer of Chauncey Bailey. Politicians who lined up at Dr. Bey’s door included Barbara Lee, Sandre Swanson, Keith Carson, Don Perata and Jerry Brown.
Derwin Longmire, the officer in charge of the investigation, was the chief mentor of the bakery boys. They were finally convicted of three murders, including Chauncey Bailey. Under his mentorship, the bakery boys imagined themselves as police, purchasing a bus and cars equipped with police lights. They were arrested for impersonating police and kidnapping, after they stopped a woman on the freeway. Most importantly, why didn’t the OPD inform Chauncey that the bakery boys were planning to kill him, since they had informants at the bakery and had them under surveillance for two years with tracking devices and tapped phones.
The Chauncey Bailey Project was formed at the request of Paul Cobb, but when he asked that they pursue the angle of police corruption, they dismissed Cobb’s suggestion, especially the Oakland Tribune which had a longtime embedded reporter at the OPD.
Even though officer Longmire was charge of the crime scene, he refused to interview an eye witness, although he later made a personal visit to the eye witness while he was in jail, with his tape recorder, and tried to convince the witness that he didn't see what he actually saw. Why did he decide to interview the witness and how did he know the man was in jail? And he recorded the interview, something he neglected to do when he put the two murder suspects in a room together, after which one made a confession? As in the London reporter’s death, Longmire, too did not think his behavior was suspicious.
--Marvin X
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FAMOUS OMEGAS OR GREEK NEGROES IN AMERICA
Omega Psi Phi Fraternity Inc.
Delta Alpha Alpha Chapter
FAMOUS OMEGAS
Politics and Business
Governor William H. Hastie
Governor L. Douglass Wilder
Congressman Kwesi Mfume
Congressman James E. Clyburn
Congressman Kendrick Meeks
Earl Graves
Mathew Knowles
Civil Rights
Benjamin Mays
Robert C. Weaver
Roy Wilkins
Benjamin Hooks
Jesse Jackson, Sr.
Khalid Muhammad
Vernon Jordan
Bayard Rustin
Grant Reynolds
Education and Medicine
Dr. Ernest E. Just
Dr. Carter G. Woodson
Dr. Ronald McNair
Dr. Nathan Hare
Dr. David Satcher
Dr. Percy Julian
Dr. Charles Drew
Dr. John Hopps
Rev. Herman Dreer
Law
Judge Togo D. West, Jr.
Judge Hayzel B. Daniels
Judge Arthur Burnett, Sr.
Atty. James Nabrit, Jr.
Atty. Wiley Branton
Atty. Vernon Jordan
Atty. Oliver Hill
Military
General Roscoe Robinson
General William E. Ward
Major General Charles F. Bolden, Jr.
Colonel Charles Young
Colonel Frederick D. Gregory
Major Robert H. Lawrence, Jr.
Arts and Entertainment
Count Basie
Langston Hughes
Roland Hayes
Bill Cosby
Steve Harvey
Tom Joyner
Steven A. Smith
Terrence J
John Salley
Sports
Michael Jordan
Marcus Allen
Steve McNair
Ray Lewis
Alonzo Mourning
Shaquille O'Neal
Vince Carter
Vonta Leach
Robert Mathis
Chris Webber
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ACADEMY OF DA CORNER COMES TO OAKLAND'S LAKESHORE DISTRICT
Academy of da Corner--
the most dangerous classroom in the world!
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The New Jim Crow at San Jose State University
San Jose State suspends students accused of tormenting black roommate
POSTED: 11/21/2013 02:33:39 PM PST
UPDATED: 11/21/2013 08:43:45 PM PST
SAN JOSE -- Anger and disbelief fueled a protest beneath San Jose State's towering Black Power statue Thursday and echoed across the nation, as the school announced it has suspended three white students charged with a hate crime over allegations they racially bullied their black roommate.
"No justice! No peace!" students shouted, protesting the treatment of a black student by his white roommates, three of whom could go to jail for year if convicted of the misdemeanor charges.
The roommates are accused of clamping a bicycle lock on the student's neck, taunting him with a racial epithet and slurs, and barricading him inside his bedroom in the suite they shared.
Gary Daniels, a student at San Jose State University, speaks at a rally Thursday afternoon Nov. 21, 2013 protesting a reported racial hazing of an African-American freshman by his dormitory roommates last month. (Karl Mondon/Bay Area News Group)
Facing mounting pressure to take action after this newspaper on Wednesday exposed the alleged hazing, university officials held an extraordinary news conference. They apologized for what happened but stopped short of saying what they could have done differently -- or what they will do in the future.
"It's stunning to me that it would be able to continue for a period of time without somebody saying, 'This isn't right,'" said William Nance, the school's vice president of academic affairs.
But Nance stopped short of blaming housing employees for failing to protect the student, despite reports that at least two residence assistants knew about a Confederate flag displayed in the room and asked the residents to take it down. He described the ordeal as "a learning experience" for the department.
"Were there other actions that could have been taken? Perhaps," he said.
Nance also spoke at the rally, announcing the three students' suspensions, which could lead to expulsions after a disciplinary hearing. Students at the rally demanded to know why San Jose State President Mo Qayoumi wasn't there to hear their concerns. He was out of state Thursday, but the school released a statement in which he said the allegations "outraged and saddened" him.
"They are utterly inconsistent with our long cherished history of tolerance, respect for diversity and personal civility," he said.
Prosecutors have charged the men with misdemeanor hate-crime and battery for the incidents. One of them -- Logan Beaschler, 18, of Bakersfield -- turned himself in Thursday. He declined to comment when reached by this newspaper. The others -- Joseph Bomgardner, 19, of Clovis; and Colin Warren, 18, of Woodacre -- are expected to surrender this week and could not be reached.
In just the single day since the story broke, anger boiled over among students, professors, instructors and alums.
At noon on Thursday a large gathering of students marched across campus to the famed 22-foot-high statue
"This is the Bay Area, and it's easy to live in a bubble and believe there is no racism, no sexism and no homophobia," said Chris Cox, a San Jose State sociology lecturer. "But the truth is we live in a society that has a long way to go in the realm of race relations."
The students demanded the university include ethnic studies and zero tolerance for racial harassment in all major programs. About 3 percent of San Jose State's 33,000 students are African-American; 32 percent are Asian, 25 percent are white and 21 percent are Latino. Student protesters on Thursday also insisted the university write a letter of support to the bullied student.
In an exclusive statement to this newspaper, the victim's parents condemned the three men's behavior as "horrific" and noted they were responsible for reporting it after seeing the racial slur and Confederate flag during a visit to his suite.
"As a family, we are deeply disturbed by the horrific behaviors that have taken place against our son. WE have taken a stand on this matter. Our response prompted the community to be alerted of the appalling conduct of the students involved."
They also expressed gratitude for the community reaction.
"We appreciate the outpouring of support from our family, community and the efforts put forth by the Black Students Union."
According to police reports, the white roommates nicknamed the black freshman "Three-fifths," referring to the way the United States once counted blacks as a fraction of a person, according to police reports. When he protested, they dubbed him "Fraction."
They outfitted the four-bedroom dormitory suite they shared with a Confederate flag. They locked him in his room. They wrote the N-word on a dry-erase board in the living room.
Students are asking how the abuse went on for as long as eight weeks, in plain sight, before anyone stopped it.
"University housing needs to make it apparent that they know what's going on in those dormitories," said Tierney Yates, a former president of the Black Student Union and co-founder of the Black Unity Group."There's no reason why that flag should have been up."
The alleged bullying alarmed many parents whose children go to San Jose State.
"It shows that nothing has really changed for African-Americans," said Los Angeles resident Derek Holt, whose son is a San Jose State student.
"It could have been my son," said Chema, a Nigerian parent who asked that his last name not be used so his son doesn't become a target. "One of the things that attracted us to San Jose State was the diversity. The university needs to take action to show this will not be tolerated."
One leader on the 30,000-student campus said Thursday, "I'm shocked, but I'm not surprised."
Similar incidents have been bubbling up around the country, said Ruth Wilson, chairwoman of San Jose State's African-American Studies Department.
"We just cannot, as a civil society, allow people to unleash these hostilities on other human beings," she said. "We must act to make sure our students understand this type of thing cannot be tolerated."
Shock over the racial bullying spread across the country. District Attorney Jeff Rosen appeared in a CNN interview Thursday. He charged only three of the seven young men who lived in the suite but criticized the others.
"They did not stand up and do what was right here," he said, adding that there was no way these were mere pranks.
"I can't believe in the year 2013 we're talking about an African-American being treated like this."
Contact Katy Murphy at 510-208-6424 or kmurphy@bayareanewsgroup.com.
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Black Bird Press News & Review: Mythology Defined or Don't Say Pussy
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Nathan Hare on Marvin X's love letter to Dr. Julia Hare
Greetings, Plato Negro,
Come to think of it, maybe you should come by the office anyway when I’m not at home, so you wouldn’t have to be writing love letters to elderly women and carrying on. Dr J and I probably wouldn’t have been married fifty-seven years if I had let the ice man and any and everybody who took a notion come by and hang around.
What did I do to be so black and blue?
Bear with me.
Nathan
1 415 672 2986
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Mythology of Pussy and Dick a hit at Berkeley Flea Market
Marvin X, aka Plato Negro, Rumi, Mark Twain, at his Academy of da Corner, Berkeley Flea Market, the cross roads of North American African culture in the Bay Area. A young Berkeley white woman came to the booth and said she didn't know such a world of Black consciousness existed. Marvin X told her welcome to the Black World, we've only been around a few trillion years! She thanked him after viewing the Black Consciousness literature. Well, he said, there are some Blacks who don't know there is such a thing as consciousness literature. They are satisfied to purchase one dollar movies from Hollywood that perpetuate the world of make believe by spreading white supremacy consciousness, infecting North American Africans with the virus of White Supremacy type II, a condition known as Negritis, an inflammation of the Negroid gland at the base of the brain due to an addiction to bad habits or Negrocities (Amiri Baraka term: "Where the soul's print should be there is only a cellulose pouch of disgusting habits!"from A Black Mass by Amiri Baraka).
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