Did You Vote Nigger?

Much of Marvin X's poetry is militant in its anger at American racism and injustice. For example, in “Did You Vote Nigger?” he uses rough dialect and directs his irony at African Americans who believe in the government but are actually its pawns.--Concise Oxford Companion to African American Literature

Did You Vote Nigger

Did u vote nigger
Like yo life depended on it?
Did u vote nigger
Cause yo master told u to
when why & how?
Did u vote nigger
Cause u think they gon stop
The lynching of yo mind
Like they stopped
The bombing of yo Brother's house in Vietnam
So you could vote nigger
on time?
Did u vote nigger
For a brand new devil
To burn yo black behind
The next four years
Like they been burn in
Yo black behind
The last 400 years?
Did u vote nigger
Cause u think somebody gon give u freedom
Gon give u a job
Gon give u land
God give u clothes
Did u vote nigger
Cause u feel like an a/mer/ri/can
Do u really feel like an a/mer/ri/can NIGGER?
Well that's what you are
An american nigger
Made in the USA
Caution: Live nigger, handle with care
Do Not Bend or fold
Did u vote nigger
U ought to be shame of yo self
Nobody vote for freedom
Take yo freedom
If u want it
The Earth belongs to Allah
The Black Man and Woman
Ain't no white man gon give u freedom
The master would be a fool to tell the slave
how to escape
Wake up nigger!
It's later than you think
Elijah say, Vote for Allah, come follow me!
As-Salaam-Alaikum.
--Marvin X, 
from Woman--Man's Best Friend, Al Kitab Sudan Press, San Francisco, 1973

As they say in DC, No representation, no taxation! The Nationalist strives for his own nation state rather than persist in the dream/nightmare of a life in an oppressive society. Revolution/separation is the only solution. How can one persist with belief in society where one cannot secure work at a living wage and health benefits fit for human beings? The Land Question is not the question but the answer that all human beings seek. Ask the Kurds! Native Americans, Jews, et al. All this poppycock about remaining in the American political system, especially after the romanticism of a Negro as President has ended, and the duplicity of the Democrats and Republicans is now crystal clear, we should be prepared, ready and able to jump out the box of Americana and do for self, a task no more difficult than trying to survive the present morass and eternal quagmire. America is the bad lover so often heard in The Blues, that lover who jilted us and left us half dead on the roadside. Oh, where is that Good Samaritan, ah, it is inside our wretched, fearful self, not individual but communal SELF. The only thing to fear is fear itself! An African proverb tells us, "Wood may remain in the water ten years but it will never become a crocodile."

--Marvin X

--- On Thu, 6/27/13, Jesse Douglas Allen-Taylor  wrote:

Date: Thursday, June 27, 2013, 12:38 AM

COUNTERPOINTS: IN THE WAKE OF THE SUPREME COURT VOTING RIGHTS RULING

A preliminary-but basic-thought in the wake of the Supreme Court ruling on the Voting Rights Act.

I was too young to be involved in the fight for the original passage of the Voting Rights Act in 1965, but I was in South Carolina during the struggle for renewal of the bill in the early 1980's.

Many have forgotten that the Republicans temporarily took control of the United States Senate in 1980 during the year Ronald Reagan was elected President. That elevated South Carolina Senator Strom Thurmond to the chairmanship of the Senate Judiciary Committee. Thurmond immediately said that one of his goals as chair would be to kill the Voting Rights Act, which was up for renewal in 1982.

In South Carolina, we formed a group called the South Carolina Voting Rights Campaign to fight for renewal of the act. To show South Carolina support for the Act, we set a goal of 10,000 signatures on petitions. By the time the petition campaign ended, we delivered more than 30,000 signatures to every Congressional District office in the state as well as to the U.S. Congress in Washington. At the same time, we sponsored workshops and rallies and demonstrations throughout South Carolina in support of the Voting Rights Act. When the Southern Christian Leadership Conference held a march from Selma, Alabama to Washington D.C. for the same purpose, we helped coordinate the march when it came through our state.

One of our actions was to follow Senator Thurmond every time he returned to South Carolina for a public event, holding demonstrations to protest his stand against the Voting Rights Act.

Some of us were jailed during those actions.

The fight put up by the South Carolina Voting Rights Campaign in 1981 and '82 was only a small part of the Voting Rights Act support going on in South Carolina, throughout the South and many parts of the nation, and in the nation's capitol. It was because of those nationwide actions that Congress made some portions of the Voting Rights Act permanent, and extended others for 25 years through 2007. Without those actions, Senator Thurmond and his friends would almost certainly been successful, and the Voting Rights Act would have been killed more than 30 years ago.

That should give us a guide on how to react to the Supreme Court's recent ruling, particularly as we observe state governments from Ohio to Texas enact laws making voting harder and harder for people who do not vote the way those governments would like them to vote.

This hits African-Americans the quickest and the hardest, but it is certainly not limited to us and ours.

The authority to participate in the governing of our communities, our cities, our state, and our country-the right to vote-is not secured by the Supreme Court.

That authority is not secured by a Presidential proclamation, or a civil war, or an act of Congress, or a voter initiative.

Our right to participate in the governing of our own lives was and is both authorized and held by our own hands.

It can be permanently minimized, or taken away altogether, only if we allow it.

The question, therefore, is not about what the Supreme Court has done. The question is, what must and will we do in response?