Marvin X, Crazy Nigguh, Now Available for Speaking Engagements/Readings

About Marvin X

I thought Marvin perhaps had an exaggerated opinion of himself, but the information below removes all doubt. Can you imagine comparing himself to Malcolm X (by including such an identification from Nathan Hare) and calling himself the last revolutionary. But when others say such things about someone it is understandable that they would also think these things. Such is the human psyche. --Vulindlela Wobogo

Malcolm X ain’t got nothing on Marvin X. Still Marvin has been ignored and silenced like Malcolm would be ignored and silenced if he had lived on into the Now. Marvin’s one of the most extraordinary, exciting black intellectuals living today—writing, publishing, performing with Sun Ra’s Musicians (Live in Philly at Warm Daddies, available on DVD from BPP), reciting, filming, producing conferences (Kings and Queens of Black Consciousness, San Francisco Black Radical Book Fair); he’s ever engaging, challenging the respectable and the comfortable. He like Malcolm, dares to say things fearlessly, in the open (in earshot of the white man) that so many Negroes feel, think and speak on the corner, in the barbershops and urban streets of black America….

Beyond Religion, toward Spirituality by Marvin X is a dangerous book, for it reveals the inner workings of capitalist and imperialist governments around the world. It's a book that stands with and on behalf of the poor, the dispossessed, the despised, and downtrodden. He’s a needed counselor, for he knows himself on the deepest personal level and he reveals that self to us that we might be his beneficiaries. --Rudolph Lewis, editor, Chickenbones

People who know Marvin X already know him as a peripatetic, outspoken, irreverent, poetic “crazy nigger,” whose pen is continually and forever out-of-control. As a professional psychologist, I hasten to invoke the disclaimer that that is in no way a diagnosis or clinical impression of mine. I have never actually subjected this brother to serious psychoanalytical scrutiny and have no wish to place him on the couch, if only because I know of no existing psycho-diagnostic instrumentality of pathology of normalcy that could properly evaluate Marvin completely.—Dr. Nathan Hare, Black Think Tank, San Francisco

When you listen to Tupac Shakur, E-40, Too Short, Master P or any other rappers out of the Bay Area of Cali, think of Marvin X. He laid the foundation and gave us the language to express Black male urban experience in a lyrical way. -- James G. Spady, Philadelphia New Observer

He’s Plato teaching on the streets of Oakland. If you want to learn about motivation and inspiration, don’t spend all that money going to seminars and workshops, just go stand at 14th and Broadway and observe Marvin X in his classroom. His play One Day in the Life is the most powerful drama I've seen. —Ishmael Reed, essayist, Oakland

His writing is orgasmic!—Fahizah Alim, Sacramento Bee

Consciousness-altering, astonishing -- Marvin X is the USA’s Rumi & his nation is not “where our fathers died” but where our daughters live. X’s poems vibrate, whip, love in the most meta- and physical ways imaginable and un-. He’s got the humor of Pietri, the politics of Baraka, and the spiritual Muslim grounding that is totally new in English –- the ecstasy of Hafiz, the wisdom of Saadi.--Bob Holman, Bowery Poetry Club, NYC

He’s the new Malcolm X! Nobody’s going to talk about his book, HOW TO RECOVER FROM THE ADDICTION TO WHITE SUPREMACY, out loud, but they’ll hush hush about it
—Jerri Lange, author, Jerri, A Black Woman’s Life in the Media

Declaring Muslim American literature as a field of study is valuable because by re-contexualising it will add another layer of attention to Marvin X's incredibly rich body of work. Muslim American literature begins with Marvin X. --Dr. Mohja Kahf, Department of English, Middle East and Islamic Studies, University of Arkansas, Fayetteville

Marvin X's autobiography Somethin' Proper is one of the most significant works to come out of the Black Arts Movement of the 1960s and 1970s. It tells the story of perhaps the most important African American Muslim poet to appear in the United States during the Civil Rights era. The book opens with an introduction by scholar Nathan Hare, a key figure in the Black Studies Movement of the period. --Julius E. Thompson, African American Review

He has always been in the forefront of Pan African writing. Indeed, he is one of the innovators and founders of the revolutionary school of African writing. --Amiri Baraka (LeRoi Jones)

I welcome reading the work of a “grassroots guerilla publicist” who is concerned with the psychological/intellectual freedom of his people. I think of Walter Rodney as the “guerilla intellectual” who was organically connected to the grassroots. Key book here would be The Groundings With My Brothers [and sisters]. Or Steve Biko’s I Write What I Like. I think though that Dr. M. is closely affiliated with Frances Cress Welsing’s Isis Papers: Keys to the Colors (along with Bobby Wright’s thesis). Of course we need to also consult that classic: The Black Anglo Saxons, and Frazier’s Black Bourgeoisie. What I am most impressed with is Dr. M’s Pan-Africanist perspective. We all need to “Detox” as Dr. M states, wherever we are in this world. So the Pan-African element is important. Du Bois knew this, and many of the other giants. Even though they were also, ironically, “infected” like most of us in some way today. I think this citation from Step I is important: “…We are only powerless when we deny who we are and do not recognize we exist in harmony with the universal spirit of peace, justice and mercy. White supremacy is an illusion in the minds of those who believe it and those who accept the scam”….--Mark Christian, PhD Associate Professor Sociology & Black World Studies Miami University (Ohio)

Biography

Marvin X (El Muhajir)was a key poet and playwright of the Black Arts Movement (BAM) in the 1960s and early 1970s and is still active today. He is called the USA's Rumi and considered the father of Muslim American literature. He wrote for many of the leading black journals of the time, including Black Dialogue magazine, the Journal of Black Poetry, Soulbook, Black Scholar, Black Theater Magazine, Negro Digest/Black World and Muhammad Speaks.

He founded Black Arts West Theatre with Ed Bullins, and Black House with Ed Bullins and Eldridge Cleaver, a political/cultural center which served for a short time as the headquarters of the Black Panther Party, the militant black nationalist group. Always a controversial and confrontational figure, Marvin X was banned from teaching at Fresno State University in the 1969 by the then state governor, Ronald Reagan.

When asked in 2003 what had happened to the Black Arts Movement, Marvin X told Lee Hubbard: "I am still working on it..telling it like it is." Marvin X was born Marvin Ellis Jackmon on May 29, 1944, in Fowler, California, an agricultural area near Fresno. His parents were Owendell and Marian Jackmon who published a black newspaper, The Fresno Voice, in the central valley. His father later became a florist, his mother ran her own real estate business.

He has been known as Nazzam al Fitnah Muhajir, Maalik El Muhajir, and is now known simply as Marvin X. Marvin X attended Oakland City College (Merritt College) where he received his AA degree in 1964. He received his BA in English from San Francisco State College (San Francisco State University) in 1974 and his MA in 1975. The drama department at San Francisco State produced his first play, Flowers for the Trashman, 1965. Marvin X was involved with various theater projects and co-founded the Black Arts/West Theater with Bullins and others, 1966. Their aim was to provide a place where black writers and performers could work on drama projects, but they also had a political motive, to use theater and writing to campaign for the liberation of blacks from white oppression. Marvin X told Lee Hubbard: "The Black Arts Movement was part of the liberation movement of Black people in America. The Black Arts Movement was its artistic arm...[brothers] got a revolutionary consciousness through Black art, drama, poetry, music, paintings, and magazines."

By the late 1960s Marvin X was a central figure in the Black Arts Movement in San Francisco and Harlem, New York (a member of the New Lafayette Theatre) and had become part of the Nation of Islam, changing his name to El Muhajir and following Elijah Muhammad. Like the heavyweight boxing champion Muhammad Ali, Marvin X refused his induction to fight in Vietnam. But unlike Ali, Marvin X, along with several other brothers, decided to evade arrest. In 1967 he escaped to Toronto,Canada but was later arrested in Belize, Central America. He chastised the court for punishing him for refusing to be inducted into an army for the purpose of securing "White Power" throughout the world before he was sentenced to five months at Terminal Island Federal Prison. His statement was published in the journal The Black Scholar in 1971.

Despite his reputation as an activist, Marvin X was also an intellectual, and a celebrated writer. He was most concerned with the problem of using language created by whites in order to argue for freedom from white power. Many of his plays and poems reflect this struggle to express himself as a black intellectual in a white-dominated society. His play Flowers for the Trashman (1965), for example, is the story of Joe Simmons, a jailed college student whose bitter attack on his white cellmate became a national rallying call for many in the Nation of Islam and other black nationalists. Marvin X's own poetry is heavy with Muslim ideology and propaganda, but it is supported by a sensitive poetic ear. Perhaps his greatest achievement as a poet is to merge Islamic cadences and sensibilities with scholarly American English and the language of the black ghetto.

Like his close friend Eldridge Cleaver, in the late 1980s and 1990s Marvin X went through a period of addiction to crack cocaine. His play One Day in the Life (2000) takes a tragicomic approach to the issue of addiction and recovery, dealing with his own experiences with drug addiction and the experiences of Black Panthers, Cleaver, and Huey Newton (1942-1989). The play has been presented in community theaters around the United States as both a stage play and a video presentation.

After emerging from addiction Marvin X founded Recovery Theatre and began organizing events for recovering addicts and those who work with them. His autobiography, Somethin' Proper (1998) includes reminiscences of his life fighting for human rights as well as an analysis of drug culture. Drug addiction and "reactionary" rap poetry are two areas of black culture that he has argued have "contributed to the desecration of black people."

His latest books are a memoir of Eldridge Cleaver, My Friend the Devil, BBP, 2009, and Mythology of Pussy, a manhood/womanhood rites of passage, BBP 2009. In the late 1990s Marvin X became an influential figure in the campaign to have reparations paid for the treatment of blacks under slavery. He organized meetings, readings, and performances to promote black culture and civil rights. He has worked as a university teacher since the early 1970s (Fresno State University, University of California, Berkeley and San Diego, San Francisco State University, University of Nevada, Reno, Mills College, Laney and Merritt Colleges in Oakland), as well as giving readings and guest lectures in universities and theaters throughout the United States. Recent speaking engagements include San Francisco State University, University of California, Berkeley, University of Arkansas, University of Virginia, Howard University, Morehouse, Spelman, Medgar Evers College, Berkeley City College.

Marvin X has also received several awards, including a Columbia University writing grant in 1969 and a creative writing fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts in 1972 and grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities, 1979.
Selected writings
Books
Sudan Rajuli Samia (poems), Al Kitab Sudan Publishing, 1967.
Black Dialectics (proverbs), Al Kitab Sudan Publishing, 1967.
Fly to Allah: Poems, Al Kitab Sudan Publishing, 1969.
The Son of Man, Al Kitab Sudan Publishing, 1969.
Black Man Listen: Poems and Proverbs, Broadside Press, 1969.
Black Bird (parable), Al Kitab Sudan Publishing, 1972.
Woman-Man's Best Friend, Al Kitab Sudan Publishing, 1973.
Selected Poems, Al Kitab Sudan Publishing, 1979
Confession of a Wife Beater and Other Poems, Al Kitab Sudan Publishing, 1981.
Liberation Poems for North American Africans, Al Kitab Sudan Publishing, 1982.
Love and War: Poems, Black Bird Press, 1995.
Somethin' Proper, autobiography, BBP, 1998.
In the Crazy House Called America, essays, BBP, 2002.
Wish I Could Tell You the Truth, essays, BBP, 2005.
In the Land of My Daughters, poems, BBP,2005.
Beyond Religion, toward Spirituality, essays, 2007.
How to Recover from the Addiction to White Supremacy,BBP, 2008
Eldridge Cleaver, My friend the Devil, a memoir, BBP, 2009
Mythology of Pussy, a manhood/womanhood rites of passage, BBP, 2009
Plays
Flowers for the Trashman (one-act), first produced in San Francisco at San Francisco State College, 1965.
Come Next Summer, first produced in San Francisco at Black Arts/West Theatre, 1966.
The Trial, first produced in New York City at Afro-American Studio for Acting and Speech, 1970. Take Care of Business, (musical version of Flowers for the Trashman) first produced in Fresno, California, at Your Black Educational Theatre, 1971.
Resurrection of the Dead, first produced in San Francisco at Your Black Educational Theatre, 1972.
Woman-Man's Best Friend, (musical dance drama based on author's book of same title), first produced in Oakland, California, at Mills College, 1973.
In the Name of Love, first produced in Oakland at Laney College Theatre, 1981.
One Day in the Life, 2000, produced at Recovery Theatre, San Francisco.
Salaam, Huey Newton, Salaam, (with Ed Bullins),produced at the New Federal Theatre, New York, 2008.
Sergeant Santa, 2002
Other
One Day in the Life (videodrama and soundtrack),2002.
The Kings and Queens of Black Consciousness (video documentary), 2002.
Love and War (poetry reading published on CD), 2001.

Proceedings of the San Francisco Black Radical Book Fair, 2004, 9 disc set

Speech at San Francisco State University, 2009

Conversation with students at Berkeley City College, Peralta College District

Conversation with Amiri Baraka, Lannan Foundation, Santa Fe, New Mexico, audio, 2009

Interview at Philadelphia International Locks Conference, 2009

Archives

The Marvin X archives are available at the Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley.

Marvin X Speaks

Obama Drama, A One Act Play

Unless our first black president makes a radical policy shift in his State of the Union speech, we expect he shall retire or be retired after his first four year term. We understand Hillary Clinton has informed Tavis Smiley she will not serve a second term as Secretary of State, probably so she can resume her run for president since she was so rudely interrupted by Obama.

What is clear is that our president doesn't seem to get it, especially with respect to the least of those, the poor, homeless, imprisoned and those forced into acts of violence and other criminality due to economic circumstances.

His focus has been to aid the rich and middle class, neglecting the working poor, the under and unemployed, temporary and contract workers. Yet he has allocated billions to employ poor insurgents in Iraq and Afghanistan. Logically, if the poor and violent persons in the hood would aim their guns at the White House, there would be an immediate policy shift toward the home front.

Even mass protest by the poor, homeless, unemployed and mentally ill might force his administration to shift its focus. Imagine, nearly one million children go to school homeless in America! And addiction to crass materialism is the major reason 2.4 million people are imprisoned in this nation. Of course, many of the imprisoned are dual diagnosed, suffering drug addiction and mental illness. We must help the least of these, the captives, the broken hearted, the rejected and despised.

Obama's focus on saving the financial system may work in the short term, but there is no future for capitalism with its free market exploitation of poor nations and their resources. As we enter the Age of Consciousness, the free market system of cheap labor and resources, will not stand.
What is the real cost of exploiting poor nations of their wealth so the West can grow fat with conspicuous consumption, devouring 25% of the world's energy while only 4% of the population?
This is white supremacy pure and simple, and all those who enjoy the spoils of free market capitalism shall endure the wrath of those who rise up to claim their labor and natural resources.
Free market exploitation is the breeding ground of so called terrorism and revolution. Many so called terrorists are simple freedom fighters reclaiming their land from foreign occupiers and neo-colonial running dogs.

The insurgents are fighters who are fed up with poverty, disease and ignorance. Some are poor farmers, others educated urban dwellers who are unemployed, too poor to get married. Of course they are sitting ducks for radical ideology, whether Islamic or Marxist, nationalist or socialist.

And so our President will need to get on the right path. He, his administration and the Democratic party, had a wake up call in Massachusetts with the Republication senate victory. This was clearly the result of Democratic arrogance and myopia, a tragic flaw in classic drama.
This same blindness caused him to focus on health care while millions are unemployed and homeless, victims of the sub-prime loan scam, the pyramid scheme of global finance. How will they pay for health insurance while unemployed and homeless?

How in the hell did he earn the Nobel Peace Prize in the midst of wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia? Yet violence in American cities outnumber American deaths in all those nations--we don't count the innocent thousands killed by Americans.

While he is putting out the fires of war abroad, American cities burn in a low intensity war of the dispossessed, the wretched of the earth. Unless it is a high profile case, most deaths in the hood go unmentioned, with traumatized families suffering in silence.

The ghettos of America are little Haiti's, full of ignorance, disease, poverty and drug abuse. How else can one live in hell except under medication? Unless one chooses revolution, the only therapy for the oppressed.

Youth in the Bay Area have the highest rates of STDs and HIV/AIDS in the State of California. And yet denial is the order of the day, with no national concern from the White House, after all, Washington DC is the capital of HIV/AIDS in America. The President need only look in his backyard to see the suffering that is nationwide, coast to coast. But his focus is on so called terrorists in Afghanistan. And after the war there is concluded, we shall discover a nation of people addicted to opium, and Pakistan is suffering same fate as we speak.

Is our first black president suffering the Hamlet syndrome, to be or not to be--to be for the people or for the bankers and wall street robber barons who are global and transnational, who don't give a damn about American workers, white or black, if they don't fit into the free market economy of global exploitation and domination. Have you heard the President mention the word poor or the word Black? Why is he terrified of the poor and Black?

Let's see what this Negro does in the second year of his first term, but the die is set, especially with the ever expanding wars abroad to the neglect of the home front. Why does it take thirty thousand US troops to hunt down 100-500 Al Qaeda said to be in Afghanistan? And the cost is staggering: 30,000 men/women at one million dollars each per year. Why not pay the 100-500 Al Qaeda in Afghanistan a million dollars each to leave or at least stop their violence, especially since the US did so in Iraq and is preparing to pay the Taliban to lay down their arms.

What is the need for an additional surge of 30,000 troops, unless there is an ulterior motive.
We see the US slowly edging its way into Pakistan with the use of drones and more recently with the mercenary Black Water army of professional killers. Supposedly it bombed a market in Pakistan and blamed it on the Taliban who refused to take credit as it usually does for its actions.
Blackwater, part of the US hidden hand government, no doubt seeks to destabilize Pakistan so the US can seize their nuclear weapons before Al Qaeda and the Taliban, who probably have access to such weapons since they both originated from Pakistani intelligence services and, ironically, the CIA, when Osama Bin Laden and the Taliban were aided by the US in the defeat of the Soviet Union in Afghanistan.

While we hoped for peace, all we have is war and more war to come. And the political Left is as effete as the Right is hawkish, with their usual agenda of militarism is good for capitalism. But the Left is pitiful, with hardly a peep from the anti-war movement, yet thousands of people are dying at the hands of the US war machine, just as the Left, including those same sex marriage people so addicted to their sexuality that it is the their sole focus for existence--consequently their racism is so pronounced the black same gender loving people say the gay flag does not represent them--just as thousands of young black men and women are maimed and killed in the concrete jungles of American cities due to their underclass status as collateral damage of technological advance.

Yet these children and youth are ingenious at packaging and marketing drugs, accounting and security, but America can find no use for them except as birds in the cages of prisons and jails to the benefit of correctional officer unions where the birds are a valuable commodity, not only of the officers, but the wider community since manufacturing and other jobs have been outsourced. The jailing of blacks and other minorities is big business, for some communities the only business.

The economic forecast is that things are not getting worse, but not getting better--12.4% official unemployment in California. In the hood, 20-50% unemployment. Yes, while the hood is in the emergency room and the middle class in intensive care, the bankers and transnational global bandits of Wall Street are in recovery and back to business as usual, multi-million dollars bonuses included.

When Hamlet made his equivocal speech to Muslims in Cairo, Egypt (I come in the name of As-Salaam Alaikum), he proceeded to expand the US occupation of Muslim land: Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia (a proxy war using Christian Ethiopia). Hamlet talks peace, but makes war with his Crusader army.

If and when America ceases her global and domestic terrorism, only then can she have time to ponder a new economic order that is truly equitable and just to all concerned. Latin American nations have configured a free market system devoid of the naked robbery of the poor. Can America envision the same. We thought Obama had the vision with his talk of change, but maybe it was full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.

With all his progressive pronouncements, President Obama yet seems mired in the world of bourgeoisie, right wing duplicity. He promised openness, yet practices secrecy. He promised to close Gitmo, yet it remains open. He has not ruled out the torture of the Bush era, and of course he has made no mention of closing the torture chambers of American jails, prisons and juvenile facilities. Why not a general amnesty--at least this was the last act of Saddam Hussein in Iraq.

Nowadays, my friends chide me for my unabashed support of Obama early on, but these days they mock me for being an emotional old fool, for not understanding all politicians are liars and schemers with the next election high on their agenda.

But if he can make a radical shift in policy, he can restore my faith and trust, and perhaps the world will acknowledge him worthy of the Nobel Peace Prize.
--Marvin X
1/27/10

Jobs for Terrorists Abroad, None for the Hood

American, Afghan and NATO leaders are also preparing to start an ambitious program to convince rank-and-file Taliban fighters to give up in exchange for schooling and jobs. That plan, expected to cost hundreds of millions of dollars, will be the focus of an international conference later this week in London. The plan aims at the bottom of the Taliban hierarchy — the foot soldiers who are widely perceived as mostly poor, illiterate, and susceptible to promises of money and jobs. In 2007 and 2008, a similar effort unfolded in Iraq, where some 30,000 members of the country’s Sunni minority — many of them former insurgents — were put on the American payroll. Partly as a result, violence there plummeted.

--Dexter Filkins, NewYork Times, January 24, 2010

It is absolutely ironic and mystifying that the United States of America pays billions to convince terrorists in Iraq and Afghanistan to lay down their guns and pledge allegiance to their governments. It was the payment of billions to insurgents in Iraq, rather than the so called surge that decreased the violence in Anbar Province. Money was provided to tribal elders who in turn hired young men to secure their neighborhoods. Billions are presently being allocated in Afghanistan to convince the Taliban to stop their violence.

So the question is whether decreasing violence abroad is more important than stemming violence in the hoods of America, especially between young black men who have been killing themselves at the rate of ten to fifteen thousand per year since 2005 and decades before in a low intensity war. Parents are helpless to protect their children, especially their sons. They can't make their sons understand the hood is a war zone and the only thing that will save them is putting on the armor of God or spiritual consciousness, combined with political consciousness and common sense.

It seems that violence is the panacea for problems in the hood, especially between young men and women. There is little conflict resolution or thought beyond an emotional response to every situation. A young man told me yesterday he was going to kill his brother on sight, and in the same breath said he would kill anyone who killed his brother. He went silent when I asked him what ifsomebody killed you for killing your brother?Much of the violence in America is due to pure and simple racism? We know if black men focused their guns at the white community it would be a problem of the national security of the United States. But since it is only young black men, let them commit homicide or fratricide.

At least they are not shooting at white people or American troops and/or the national guard.Only then would the US be concerned, only then would the ghettos become totally occupied by police. Indeed, the much heralded decrease in violence of New York City is because police are deployed throughout the hood who stop young blacks at random, questioning their status in the criminal justice system, then arresting them or permitting them to continue on their way.

They also reward persons with a thousand dollars if they will turn in (snitch on) anyone (friends, co-workers) known to carry a gun.In other American cities, the violence continues unabated, with no end in sight, no solution offered except more police, in turn filling the jails and prisons with young black men who cannot find any alternative to economic deprivation other than gang membership and the resultant violence. Much of the violence is part of gang initiation rites. The cost of violence to the physical, mental and emotional health of the community exceeds any amount of money, for the trauma and unresolved grief of family members is staggering and incalculable.Yet, there is no national solution from the black bourgeoisie political, religious, or intellectual leadership.

If black bourgeoisie children were being slaughtered in the hood, something would be done about it, yet we all know the violence is directly related to economics, just as it is in Iraq and Afghanistan.Many of the insurgents are farmers who cannot til the soil at a living wage, so they join Al Queda and the Taliban. When will America offer her violent prone young men the same opportunity at home? Or does she prefer to continue the destabilization of the hood, since it employs any number of white people as police, correctional officers, judges, parole agents and probation officers. The cost of incarceration is a minimum $50,000.00 per man per year, almost double the cost of attending Harvard, Yale and Stanford.

Why not offer the boys and girls in the hood $50,000.00 per year to secure their community and other jobs, or reward them for staying in school, but only after a radical transformation of the educational system to make it inviting rather than boring to tears with white supremacy curriculum that is outdated and retarded, certainly not fit for the information age of high technology.If jobs cannot be provided, why not micro loans so the young men and women can become entrepreneurs? Micro loans are allowing people to come out of poverty throughout the world. Why do Americans have their heads in the sand on so many issues? Yet, with their white supremacy arrogance, they proclaim to know everything, as President Lula of Brazil chided the President of France recently.

With respect to violence, if America continues her present policy of do-nothingism she will sow the seeds of her destruction from within, for one day the boys and girls in the hood shall discover a revolutionary solution to their problems that involves the seizure of power, the taking over of entire communities by youth and adults radicalized by an ideology born of desperation and despair. As in the 1960s, the voices of reactionary political sycophants will be ignored. Unless America intends to incarcerate entire communities, she would do well to offer an immediate solution to economic desperation in the hood.

After his first year in office ended on a sour note with the Republican victory in Massachusetts, President Obama and his Democratic party sycophants should take note that people are disgusted with his policies that rewarded the very ones who caused the economic meltdown, while the suffering of the middle class and poor has gone unattended.Massachusetts should be a wake up call to any reasonable person. Senator Edward Kennedy is surely turning over in his grave. And yet the health plan is another concession to the rich, to the insurance companies and others who impeded the bill's passage.

Contrary to his pledge of an open administration, Obama has made back room deals that call into question his honesty and suggest an inclination to political chicanery.His administration and the Democratic party are scrambling after their disastrous defeat in Massachusetts. Politicians only respond to pressure, thus the message must be gotten out that the violence caused by economic deprivation must end immediately.

Must we have a poor people's march on Washington--a march of the unemployed and homeless, including the mothers and fathers of slain children?My friend, Dr. Cornel West says we must protect, respect and correct our president. I will add that we must check him as well by organized protest until he understands it is not only the bankers and wall street robber barons who need an infusion of funds for survival. He can no longer ignore violence at home, while rewarding violence abroad. If employment is the simple solution in Iraq and Afghanistan, why not in the ghettos of America to insure the social security of the hood?

--Marvin X

1/21/10

Marvin X

Now Available

for Speaking Engagements/Readings
jmarvinx@yahoo.com