Marvin X /El Muhajir, M.A.
The Political Poems and Parables
Edited by Nefertiti Jackmon, M.A.
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Marvin X at Laney College, Oakland, reading Salaam, Huey Newton, Salaam, a scene from his play One Day in the Life. He opened for Donald Lacey's Color Struck. The Laney College Theatre, renamed The Odell Johnson Theatre, was Marvin X's classroom when he taught drama at Laney, 1981, and produced the student production of his play In the Name of Love, directed by his student, Ayodele Nzinga, now the City of Oakland's Poet Laureate. Her Lower Bottom Playaz are in residence at 1540 Broadway, downtown Oakland. photo Alicia Mayo
In Memoriam for Lil' Joe,
My Revolutionary Comrade and Critic
In honor of Lil' Joe, selections in this collection are on the theme of politics, although my favorite theme is love. Because of oppression, we must alter our focus from love to the Political realm, a dastardly place for a poet to expand his imagination, for politics is wretched, yet if we refuse to go there, love will be impossible. How can we love while the people suffer poverty, ignorance and disease? How can we love while the blood suckers of the poor drain life from our veins and arteries?
We must take a break from our romantic poems and decipher the reality of our oppression to our people. So I hope you enjoy these Political Poems as much as Lil 'Joe did, a revolutionary to his last breath.
I met him while fighting to teach Black Studies at Fresno State University, 1969. He was among the group of college students from Los Angeles who drove to Fresno to support my right to teach, although Governor Ronald Reagan called for my removal by any means necessary because I was a black Muslim who refused to fight in Vietnam. I also believed in separation, alas, as did the plethora of Mormon professors who taught at FSU. Was it my religion or my blackness that disturbed the Governor? You may recall Reagan also had Angela Davis removed from teaching at UCLA because she was a black Communist, yes the college and university system was full of white Communists!
Lil 'Joe and his fellow students called themselves The United Black Students of California and also attended my draft trial in San Francisco Federal Court.
On a speaking tour of Los Angeles colleges and universities, Lil' Joe and his comrades showed me the building that members of the Black Panther Party had a shoot out with the Los Angeles pigs. They should me the Black Students Union meeting room on the campus of UCLA where members of US assassinated Black Panther Party leaders Bunchy Alprintis Bunchy Carter and John Huggins. Blood was still on the walls!
In the name Black Liberation, I dedicate this collection of poems to Lil 'Joe and his comrades, those beautiful students who drove up to Fresno and San Francisco to support my struggle for a liberated future, to paraphrase Larry Neal. I also thank the students and faculty at Fresno State University who supported me and especially the United Professors of California Union that paid my salary when FSU refused although 70 students registered for my classes and received their final grade from me. Yet FSU said I was never hired, although I taught four classes and gave students their final grade. Who taught the 70 students, a ghost? In the midst of this chaos, FSU President Ness resigned, saying he was pressured from above, Reagan, and below, black and brown students and faculty, What about me? I was 25 years old fighting the State of California and the United States of America. Bodyguards took me to class and dropped me home.
When I wasn't teaching I helped my mother at her real estate office while she went on calls or showing houses. Once a lady called for my mother and she recognized my voice (I was on the TV news nightly and in the Fresno Bee, Los Angeles Times and San Francisco Chronicle), she said, "Is this Marvin?" I replied yes and she said, "Boy, you still out there messing wit those white folks, you ain't dead yet?"
Black Fresno Police Sargent Jack Kelly told me, "Marvin, when you came to teach at Fresno State, you made things better for everybody. Before you came to FSU, Black police couldn't patrol on the white side of town!"
So Solomon told you there is a time for love, a time for war. Noah said, No more water, the fire next time!
Check the news, natural and political fires everywhere. One of my daughters recently quoted the title of one of my old poems, yes, political poems THE NEWS AIN'T NEWS, AIN'T NOTHING BUT THE BLUES. I had no idea my child remembered that old poem, but I suppose the times made her recall it.
So Joe, wherever you are, this collection of poems is for you, for your revolutionary friendship and love, for that acid criticism of my work, no matter political or love poems, you deciphered and deconstructed them with your inimitable analysis, grounded in your Marxist ideological persuasion. Thank you, Lil' Joe Johnson.
--Marvin X
Release date, December 2022, Black Bird Press, Oakland CA.
Parable of Jack Johnson
Heavyweight champion Jack Johnson, circa 1910. When a Southern town charged him a then ridiculously expensive $50 for speeding, he peeled off a $100 bill from his bankroll and said "Keep it. I intend to come back this way."
General Egyptsia, Membership Manager of the Black Vendors Association
photo Jim Dennis
Today Marvin X was double parked at Lake Merritt, conversing with General Egyptsia, the Manager of the Black Street Vendors Association. She was bringing him up to date on the vendor situation at the Lake. Since the City of Oakland has not been able to remove Black Street Vendors from the lake at the request of lake residents and merchants, simply because the grass roots Vendors have stood their ground. You know that ole' church song from the Civil Rights movement, I Shall Not Be Moved! Grass Roots hustlers don't give a damn about the politics of vending at the Lake. It's a survival thang with the hustling Street Vendors. Also, a few of them have heard there's a State Law SB946 on Street Vending, the result of the 30,000 Latinos and Latinas on the streets of Los Angeles who Unified to make Governor Jerry Brown sign. But common sense makes the grass roots Vendors Stand Their Ground!
Marvin X, the sole Black Street Vendor on the streets of Oakland for years at 14th and Broadway, who defied police harassment under the color of law, was awarded a grant to organize Black Street Vendors.
As he double parked to get an update from General Egyptsia, the Oakland PD, aka, pigs, came up behind him and over the loudspeaker commanded him to move or get a citation. Being recalcitrant and incorrigible, Marvin X thought about replying to the pigs in the manner of our ancestor Jack Johnson.
If you know Black History, the story goes that the first Black heavyweight champion was stopped for speeding through town in his expensive car, with a white woman on board. When the pigs told him the fine, he paid double, informing them he would be speeding on the way back!
Marvin X thought about telling the Oakland pigs to give two citations since he will be back later and most likely will be double parked!
--Marvin X
7/2/22
Wednesday, November 7, 2018
Marvin X Parable of Poets and Kings
Poets write to keep from killing, homicide or suicide, two sides of the coin of death. Most often, poets kill when they can't express themselves with words. If and when poets are political, when they refuse to write poems for the king and queen and defy court patronage, and persist in critiquing contradictions of the royal court, the king and queen has no use for them and they may be forced to flee their homeland or suffer prison or death even since no kingdoms based on lies can allow poets to speak the truth.
We have written about the symbiotic relationship between poets and politicians, although this symbiosis can become dysfunctional when the poet transcends the narrative of the royal regime, especially those king/queen for life regimes that forbid opposition. See Parable of the Parrot, Parable of Trinkets and Gadgets, Parable of Black Man and Block Man by Marvin X.
The poet who speaks only truth cannot be tolerated by any regime based on lies. Wicked regimes only love poets and artists who perform as pharaoh's magicians, sycophants willing to promote the royal narrative for kibbles and bits, crumbs from Pharaoh's table. The recalcitrant poets who are determined to be obstinate and incorrigible must be silenced or disposed permanently.
The wicked regimes become relentless in their effort to silence any narrative that contradicts the official one. Poet, writers, journalists, singers, actors, must not transcend the royal regime's propaganda machine. To do so is often called treason or sedition at the very least, which means saying anything not in agreement with the royal order.
Do not speak of the king in the negative, even if and when he is negative. When the poet cannot submit to the royal order, the symbiotic relationship is no longer tenable and must be severed for the good of the kingdom. The poet becomes a banned person. No one must speak with him, no one must read his books. He is a danger to society and to himself since he refuses to submit to the rules and regulations, policies and precepts of the royal order. He is labeled agitator, opposition, revolutionary, thus a danger to the security of the state, even his books are dangerous and fictional characters must be rounded up and incarcerated for crimes against the state. I am thinking of the Kenyan writer Ngugi wa Thiongo. In Native Son, the lawyer said, "Every glance of the eye is a threat; his very presence is a crime against the state." He was not speaking of an artist but the oppressed man, Bigger Thomas. But in the manner of Ngugi, was not only his characters but Richard Wright himself was a danger to society and died in mysterious circumstances in Paris?
And them came James Baldwin deposing Richard Wright of the Black literary heavyweight championship. And Baldwin did great until The Fire Next Time when he got the bright idea to interview the Most Honorable Elijah Muhammad. Pharaoh said enough! Shut the fuck up, we don't care if you gay or straight, shut the fuck up. Baldwin wouldn't shut up. I was blessed to interview him in his apartment across from Central Park, New York, a cold December, 1968: he had no heat in his apartment. Among other things, he said to me, "How dare they talk about the Prince of Peace while they bomb the hell out of Vietnam! Your condition proves they don't believe in Jesus, Prince of Peace. Just look at your condition. It's a miracle for a black father to raise a son in these conditions and I applaud the fathers who are able to do so. Nothing else happened here except us, nothing else happened. It's a wonder we all haven't gone stark raving mad!"
--Marvin X
11/7/18
Showing posts sorted by relevance for query Parable of the damn fool. Sort by date Show all posts
Wednesday, December 30, 2009
Plato Negro Speaks on the Hustler's Guide to the Game Called Life
Selections from the Wisdom of Plato Negro
Plato on the Streets of Oakland
The Hustler
The Woman at the Well
Dope, Mamas and Preachers
The Gambler
On Letting Go
The Death of Dreams
At the Bar
Parable of the Table
Of Monks & Ministers
The Bitter Bitch Syndrome
The Criminal Society
Parable of the Weather
The City of God
The Diffusion of Power
Healing the Sick Soul
Oakland's Need for Radical Spirituality
The Art and Soul of Oakland
Black History, Oakland's Shame
On the Dirty South
Beyond black rage/white supremacy
On the Power of Prayer
Obama's Fake Speech to Muslims
On Paul Cobb's Style
Plato's Prayer Circile--A Motley Crew
Plato on the Reactionary Negro
The Wisdom of Plato Negro:
Hustler's Guide to the Game Called Life
by Marvin XBlack Bird Press
20
10
20
10"We doubted a Marvin X
existed. We double doubt
there is a Plato Negro."
--AB
Introductionby
Ptah Allah El
Ptah Allah El
To all seekers of truth living in the post modern world, this volume of literature is your pragmatic hustler’s guide and intellectual syllabus for success. Some people found it strange when scholar Ishmael Reed first compared Marvin X, the son of Owendell and Marian Jackmon to the classical Greek Philosopher Plato (427 B.C.), son of Ariston and Perictione. No one can argue that both Plato and Marvin X have proven in their dialogues/writings to be great thinkers and critics of their respective eras. Although separated by over two thousand years of history and clearly two distinct worldviews, research proves that these poet/philosophers strangely share similar souls. Recently while reading about the Dialogues of Plato, I came across a quote by William Chase Greene, former Professor of Greek and Latin at Harvard University. Greene describes Plato’s works by profoundly stating, “In yet another field the Platonic Philosophy seeks to find an escape from the flux. Those poets and artist who are content to record the fleeting impressions of the senses, or to tickle the fancies and indulge the passions of an ignorant people by specious emotional and rhetorical appeals, Plato invites to use their art in service of truth.” These are timeless words describing Plato’s classic works, yet if you simply replace Plato’s name with Marvin X in the above quote, and review Marvin’s work over the past 40 years, you won’t be surprised why he has adopted the title “Plato Negro”. In this classic volume Marvin X truly becomes Plato personified, as we see him transcend from master poet to philosopher. Plato was once a master poet until the death of his teacher Socrates in (399 B.C.). This marked a turning point in Plato’s life causing him to fully convert to philosophy. The same can be said now with Marvin X who recently lost his master teacher John Douimbia and has since elevated beyond poetry, reincarnating as the philosopher “Plato Negro”. These “New Dialogues” of The Wisdom of Plato Negro provide a post modern Gorgias, Sophist, Symposium of Laws, on how to hustle and survive in the new Obamian American Republic. It is clear that Marvin X has become the true Platonist of the day by demonstrating his Platonic love for the people, taking us on a symbolic trip through the parable of the Cave, where all true analysis takes place, inside the true self. As an African Philosopher, as ironic as it sounds, the works of “Plato Negro” prove to be a major contribution to the field of African Philosophy. These works provide a model for a standard approach toward reflective thinking and critical analysis for African people, still trying to define their own philosophical worldview. What Plato’s works did to inspire classical Greece and the European generations to follow, we hope this brilliant piece of literature from “Plato Negro” will shed light on Africans today and future generations to come. Write on “Plato Negro”.
--Ptahotep A. El (Trace 101)
Minister of Education, University of Poetry (see Manifesto
Minister of Education, University of Poetry (see Manifesto
of the University of Poetry in the Journal of Black Poetry section)
Selections from the Wisdom of Plato Negro
Selections from the Wisdom of Plato Negro
Plato on the Streets of Oakland
The Hustler
The Woman at the Well
Dope, Mamas and Preachers
The Gambler
On Letting Go
The Death of Dreams
At the Bar
Parable of the Table
Of Monks & Ministers
The Bitter Bitch Syndrome
The Criminal Society
Parable of the Weather
The City of God
The Bitter Bitch Syndrome
The Criminal Society
Parable of the Weather
The City of God
The Diffusion of Power
Healing the Sick Soul
Healing the Sick Soul
Oakland's Need for Radical Spirituality
The Art and Soul of Oakland
Black History, Oakland's Shame
On the Dirty South
Beyond black rage/white supremacy
On the Power of Prayer
Obama's Fake Speech to Muslims
On Paul Cobb's Style
Plato's Prayer Circle--A Motley Crew
Plato on the Reactionary Negro
PLATO NEGRO ON THE STREETS OF OAKLAND
"He's Plato teaching on the streets of Oakland." --Ishmael Reed, author
When Marvin X is in Oakland at his 14th and Broadway outdoor classroom, before long a crowd of men and often women gather around to discuss a variety of topics, sometimes local politics since City Hall is across the street and many passerbys are associated with the Ron Dellums administration, such as OCURR's David Glover and members of the Oakland Post newspaper, including publisher Paul Cobb and photographer Gene Hazzard. There are passing artists such as dramatist Michael Lange, musician Agustus Hawkins, culture scholar Duane Deterville, rapper Ise Lyfe, singer Jeremiah, assorted youth and the many sick on their way inside Walgreen's Drug store for medication.
Someone said there are those with little medication, too much medication and no medication who pass through. Recently a Black woman slapped a white man and called him bitch while black men stood watching. And a young man purchased a book while downing an energy drink. A sister said to him, "Brother, look like you need something to come down, not more energy." The brother was fired up. But mostly the people are poor and mentally ill who frequent the area, although it is the crossroads of Oakland, sooner or later everybody comes through. One businessman told Marvin he was taking advantage of the poor by selling his books to them. Not so, most of the time he gives them away or for a 50% discount. One elderly lady got two $19.95 books recently for $5.00 after pleading poverty and illness to Plato. She was in a walker, but Plato sensed a little greed when she insisted on a book for her daughter. He gave two books to a college student to calm her down after he told her she wasn't as dumb as she looked, since she informed him she had read Sonia Sanchez, Toni Morrison and others. She broke down because even though she is a 4.0 at USC, people have said she looked dumb all her life. Plato hugged her and tried to convince her he was only joking. You young people are too sensitive, he said to her. Plato is often visited by an Angel who wishes to remain anonymous. When the poor say they would like a book but have no money, the Angel pays full price for them. He often pays full price to send the Teacher’s books around the country and the world, especially to friends in Africa.
A woman from China stopped to inquire if he would like his books in China for the Chinese audience. Or would he like to get his books printed in China for the English speaking audience. The poet knows it is the thing to do since the major and minor publishers are getting books printed in China, even Black publishers. And there is the poet sister who survived breast cancer, who always needs two dollars for a hamburger. And the brother who needs a dollar but will pass out leaflets for the teacher. He was hurt when he saw his teacher in white face demonstrating the addiction to white supremacy.
On the recent international AIDS day, Plato gave out condoms. He also contacted his friends in the California legislature to see what they can do about condoms being contraband in jails and prisons, thus adding to the HIV/AIDS crisis in our community. Governor Black Nigger says giving out condoms will contribute to sexual activity.
Someone said there are those with little medication, too much medication and no medication who pass through. Recently a Black woman slapped a white man and called him bitch while black men stood watching. And a young man purchased a book while downing an energy drink. A sister said to him, "Brother, look like you need something to come down, not more energy." The brother was fired up. But mostly the people are poor and mentally ill who frequent the area, although it is the crossroads of Oakland, sooner or later everybody comes through. One businessman told Marvin he was taking advantage of the poor by selling his books to them. Not so, most of the time he gives them away or for a 50% discount. One elderly lady got two $19.95 books recently for $5.00 after pleading poverty and illness to Plato. She was in a walker, but Plato sensed a little greed when she insisted on a book for her daughter. He gave two books to a college student to calm her down after he told her she wasn't as dumb as she looked, since she informed him she had read Sonia Sanchez, Toni Morrison and others. She broke down because even though she is a 4.0 at USC, people have said she looked dumb all her life. Plato hugged her and tried to convince her he was only joking. You young people are too sensitive, he said to her. Plato is often visited by an Angel who wishes to remain anonymous. When the poor say they would like a book but have no money, the Angel pays full price for them. He often pays full price to send the Teacher’s books around the country and the world, especially to friends in Africa.
A woman from China stopped to inquire if he would like his books in China for the Chinese audience. Or would he like to get his books printed in China for the English speaking audience. The poet knows it is the thing to do since the major and minor publishers are getting books printed in China, even Black publishers. And there is the poet sister who survived breast cancer, who always needs two dollars for a hamburger. And the brother who needs a dollar but will pass out leaflets for the teacher. He was hurt when he saw his teacher in white face demonstrating the addiction to white supremacy.
On the recent international AIDS day, Plato gave out condoms. He also contacted his friends in the California legislature to see what they can do about condoms being contraband in jails and prisons, thus adding to the HIV/AIDS crisis in our community. Governor Black Nigger says giving out condoms will contribute to sexual activity.
The politicos told him they have been working on the matter but are being obstructed by the Correctional Officers Union and the reactionary, fake Christian Republicans. Yes, they are fake unless they are willing to do as theologian James Cone told Bill Moyers, "Come to terms with the cross and the lynching tree."
Now there are those better heeled Blacks who spend forty dollars for Dr. M’s five book collection, after seeing his books at De Lauer’s News down the block and wondering who the hell is Marvin X? In De Lauer's the five books would cost $100.00. Few whites stop to chat with Plato, except a few who have heard him on KPFA and KPOO radio through the years, or have heard him read at anti-war rallies in San Francisco. But most of the whites keep their distance from his table of books, especially since they can see from afar his latest title HOW TO RECOVER FROM THE ADDICTION TO WHITE SUPREMACY.
Few have purchased the book, only a mentally ill white man (at least he had enough sanity to want to recover from white supremacy) and an European from Ireland. One white came to the table, saw the book and told the poet, “That’s a bad word, white supremacy, a bad bad word.”
Few have purchased the book, only a mentally ill white man (at least he had enough sanity to want to recover from white supremacy) and an European from Ireland. One white came to the table, saw the book and told the poet, “That’s a bad word, white supremacy, a bad bad word.”
Poet, playwright, essayist Ishmael Reed has observed the poet selling and says, “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.”
Plato Negro on the Hustler’s Guide to the Game
Plato Negro on the Hustler’s Guide to the Game
The worse sucker in the world is a pitiful no-hustling, job-ass nigguh waiting for the white man to give him a paycheck or a woman to bring him money as in pimping. Let’s be clear on the last point—the pimp has no relation whatsoever to the hustler. The pimp is a bitch ass nigguh too trifling to do for self and make his own money. The true hustler will never wait on anybody to bring him shit—he gets his with his own wits and game. It is beneath his dignity as a man to wait around for somebody to help him when he can hustle with toilet paper and come up.
The square nigguh can’t figure out his ass from a hole in the ground, but sits around like a frog on a lily pad trying to figure out how to come up. He will pray to a mystery God to help him when the God within himself has already answered: Nigguh , get yo black ass up and do for self!
And you nigguhs with Supreme Wisdom are just as pitiful because you got it but didn’t get it—Supreme Wisdom. If you are God then wake up the town. Shake up the universe by letting your little light shine. Get yo ass out the mosque and do something for self. What does a hustler need to fellowship with some dead ass nigguhs sending all their money to Mississippi. Even the dead preacher don't send his money nowhere but his pocket.
I am a revolutionary hustler standing on the shoulders of my ancestors who made something out of nothing, who took animal food and cooked it into a gourmet meal, who were raped, lynched, tar and feathered, who couldn’t read or write but came through it all to see a better day.
You pitiful motherfuckers whining about the white man should be shot in the head as a disgrace to your ancestors, Nat Turner, Denmark Vesey, Gabriel Prosser, David Walker, Harriet Tubman, Sojourner Truth, Ida B. Wells, Ella Collins, Mae Mallory, Queen Mother Moore, Fannie Lou Hamer, Clara Muhammad, Betty Shabazz, Coretta Scott King, Booker T., DuBois, Garvey, Noble Drew Ali, Master Fard Muhammad, Elijah, Malcolm and Martin.
How can you get up each morning and go to your wage slave job with the white man and call yourself African, Black, Colored or Negro. You a bitch ass nigguh and should be pimped until your drawers fall off, then given a fake gold watch after thirty years loyal service. A one week general strike will cause the fall of America! Can you sacrifice one week for your freedom? No, you must collaborate with your woman and her addiction to white supremacy conscpiscious consumption. You are a co-dependent that needs to detox with her and your children.
The Hustler is a rebel, outlaw, incorrigible and recalcitrant, the type the white man had no choice but to kill or allow to go free, yes, that crazy nigguh each town had that nobody fucked with, not even the white man.
The Hustler is fearless and don’t give a fuck—his life and death are all for Allah! He fears nothing and serves nobody but Allah! His objective is not to satisfy a woman, he is content to let her satisfy herself as long as she doesn’t interrupt his flow. Most importantly, the Hustler is independent, meaning he will never move in with a woman to be under her control, at her whim and emotional disposition, to be thrown out in the middle of the night when she calls her real boyfriend, 911, otherwise known as the peckerwood, pig, devil.
In his independence, he usually, and most often, must hustle alone because all around him is a bunch of punk ass, jealous nigguhs who are out to down him or prevent him from coming up in a big way. There are those well heeled hustlers who will only help him a little, never in a big way so he can come up and possibly surpass them in the game.
Most people fear the hustler or won’t join with him because they fear the unknown—how can they start out with nothing each day but come up at the end of the day? It is the beginning that scares them. Therefore, the real hustler must leave his friends alone when he discovers they ain’t real hustlers but punks who got to go pray during prime time hustling hours. What the hell are you praying for when God has already answered? When God gives you a product to work, work it!
In the hustler’s mentality, business is war, something he learned from the Japanese who have executed this philosophy to the max, and now China is learning the game, with India following suit. Where is Africa in the game? Somewhere down the line trying to be the world’s greatest criminal that will get them nowhere except to drown in their greed and corruption.
The hustler will sell anything and everything to come up, for he knows he can get anything and everything again. He will sell the clothes off his back because he knows he can get a new pair of shoes, it is only a matter of time. There is no shortage in the universe. Everything Job gave up he got back double for keeping the faith.
The hustler is self confident because he knows the game and how to play it. He doesn’t burn bridges because he needs contacts, networks of fellow hustlers who are for real and not running scams. He has respect for the game and all true fellow hustlers, but he scorns fake hustlers who think they are getting over but will ultimately only go under and never be heard from again in the game.
These are the motherfuckers who fuck up the game for the real hustlers with their punk ass actions and insincerity. You can look at them and smell their phoniness. They are rats of the worse kind and are thus short-lived in the game—they only fool square ass nigguhs much like themselves who don’t know shit from Shinola.
Plato Negro and the Woman at the Well
Plato Negro and the Woman at the Well
A woman asked Plato why are the youth out of control ? He replied that youth are out of control because adults are out of control and youth observe then emulate their behavior. Even during the revolutionary 60s, the militants, who are the fathers and mothers of today’s youth, were guilty of contradictions, or saying one thing but doing another. They talked black power but went home to beat their wives and women. They preached discipline but were guilty of drug abuse and abuse of power. Much of our behavior was patriarchal white supremacy actions that debased women, considering them less than human. Of course we learned this behavior from our white supremacy socialization.
True enough, there were many good things we learned and achieved during that time, and many sincere and honest people gave their lives for the cause of freedom. But if we had been of more sober minds, we would have been able to detect agent provocateurs and snitches. We would have been able to see through the US Government’s counter intelligence program or Cointelpro. With sobriety and discipline, we might have been able to show our children better examples of male/female relations, and perhaps today’s youth would be more respectful of women, elders and peers.
The woman asked Plato what can be done today to reconnect with our children ? Plato said we must embrace them with unconditional love and do not abuse them, physically, sexually or otherwise. Do not show them contradictory behavior, saying one thing but doing the opposite. We must not say we are about freedom, yet make their mothers slaves in the home, treating them with abuse that the children observe. Many children have been abandoned and left to fend for themselves. They are without mother or father. Many are living in foster homes, the result of parental drug and sexual abuse. Adults must stop being predators and instead be mentors and guides. The youth want and seek our wisdom, but we must reach out to them because many are terrified of us just as we are terrified of them.
It is communal insanity when we allow children to rule our community, making us afraid to go outside at night, afraid to go to the store. But we can only take back control of our community by reconnecting and embracing our children, no matter how painful it is for us and them. We must make amends to them for our wickedness and then demand of them the same. Yes, they must apologize to the elders they have harmed and disrespected. What we are talking about is the urgent need for a healing session between youth and adults, a time and space where we can gather to admit our mistakes and promise to do better now and in the future. We must, youth and adults, swallow our pride and reconnect. We cannot allow the chaos to continue because we know things go from bad to worse, if we do not address the issues. Nothing is going to change until we change our thinking and actions.
We must rise up from animal to divine. The tide is turning because you are turning the tide! Mothers and fathers who are separated must come together for the sake of their children, if only for a moment. When children see parents reconciling, they will do likewise. No matter the pain of the past, adults must show the way to community unity. Why shouldn’t youth resort to violence, after all, they see adults resolving their conflicts with violence? Adults cannot get out of our responsibility to show the way, to guide and mentor.
Every youth is our child, thus our responsibility to show the right way.Give youth a chance, support them when they are selling items other than dope, such as DVDs, CDs, gear and other items to get their hustle on in a legal way. At least they are not killing to make a dollar, so reach out to them. Hug a thug before the thug hugs you! The woman seemed to understand the wisdom of Plato. Although frustrated to the max, she said she would try to reach out to youth, rather than simply complain about their behavior and shortcomings.
Dope, Mamas and Preachers
In West Africa and the Atlantic Slave Trade, a monograph published before his great work, HOW EUROPE UNDERDEVELOPED AFRICA, the late Dr. Walter Rodney explained the dire social situation as Africa entered the slave trade. He told how all institutions contributed to our downfall: the political, economic, judicial, military, and religious institutions played their role in the destruction of African society. The rulers, kings and queens, in the words of a Baraka poem, “Sold the farmer to the ghost….” The king and his military, those noble warriors, often engaged in mock battles with neighboring kings and their peoples, then divided the spoils of war (the people) between themselves; of course the “spoils” were sold to European slavers. Rodney told how the judicial system was corrupted with false charges and false evidence to enslave the victims. Persons were falsely charged with adultery and of course the sentence was slavery or sale to the Europeans..
From a previous society with no jails and peace in the streets, the time came when all were fearful of being kidnapped. No more peace in the streets, in the villages, but chaos reigned. One tribe could no longer trush another tribe; one person could not trust another. In America today, we find ourselves in a similar situation. The Arabs use the term “ya’um jahiliyah” (days of ignorance) to designate the historical time before the prophet when all was chaos, murder, revenge killing, tribal warfare, assassination, kidnapping, highway robbery of caravans, quite similar to West Africa before the slave trade or Maafa (great tragedy).
But what we have in America is not only business as usual white supremacy, but an expeditious return to slavery times, especially with the involuntary servitude of the jailed and imprisoned, with over 50% of the population African and Latino, the majority Africans incarcerated for minor drug crimes such as small amounts of crack cocaine; with a great percentage of inmates found guilty due to information or mis-information from snitches (give up three people and you go free is the mantra here in the Bay Area of Cali).
Is this not similar to the judicial corruption Dr. Rodney described in West Africa ? Nowhere is safe these days, the Mall, the Church, the schools, colleges and universities, the workplaces, the social clubs. In Oakland , nearly all clubs for North American Africans have closed due to violence inside or outside the establishments. Youth gangs have adults living in terror, afraid to go to the store. Several youth have been carjacked and murdered to obtain rims. Antar Bey, the young CEO of Your Black Muslim Bakery (now closed since the murder of journalist Chauncey Bailey), was killed to obtain the five thousand dollar rims on his BMW. And while the church marches and prays to stop the violence, it too has been corrupted by the general chaos in the hood. Sometimes it says nothing about drugs and violence because it is often the beneficiary of mothers who support the church with funds from children involved in the drug trade. One sister said if the church talked about drugs it would have no congregation since so much of its income is from tithes derived from the criminal activity of children whose mothers are church going women.
One sister told me these women are essentially pimping their children, then cry when Dante is murdered, swearing he was a good child who did no wrong. When in fact Dante was one of the biggest dope dealers in the hood, who lavished material goods upon his mother. We recall a church mother who took drugs to her sons in prison contained in baby diapers. And recently we were informed parents can no longer bring home cooked meals to juvenile hall because they were hiding drugs in the food. Yes, even mother is guilty of participating in the chaos and corruption of modern day slavery. Prostitution is on the rise since the drug trade has lead to the incarceration of so many males. Girls eleven, twelve and thirteen can be found whoring on Oakland ’s International Blvd , and they are indeed international, representing every ethnic group and multiracial configuration. The sad truth is that America has never separated itself completely from its slave past; it merely progressed into virtual slavery of segregation, then wage slavery of the civil rights era. Globalism insures the continuation of virtual slavery with the capitalist desire for cheap wages and natural resources.
To obtain and maintain their thousand per cent profits, the imperialists will insist on minimum wages and prices for natural resources. The hopeful sign is the nationalization of resources by the leftist governments throughout the Americas , throwing a monkey wrench in the continued exploitation and robbery of their peoples. North American Africans seem oblivious to events below their border, aside from joining with the capitalists in their attempt to stem the tide of immigration from the south caused by centuries of Yankee imperialism. The American Blacks are in the main ignorant of the revolution throughout the Americas , in Bolivia , Nicaragua , Venezuela , Argentina , Chile , Brazil , Peru and elsewhere. While they are glued to the insanity of B.E.T. television, peoples throughout the Americas are taking charge of their destiny, kicking out the bloodthirsty imperialists and their reactionary collaborators. We must come quickly to the realization that our freedom is connected with other people throughout the Americas , with whom we are connected by blood, sweat and tears. The poor peasants who cultivate the coca plants are victims as well, for they derive little profit for their labor under the sun. We cannot get angry with them but it is upon us to have the discipline to resist the dope when it reaches our cities, for medication is not the solution, rather we must resist oppression not submit to it by medicating ourselves into oblivion, additionally becoming victims of the criminal justice system, then clients of the billion dollar racist pseudo-recovery industry.
Yes, the same white racists who deliver the dope, offer to deliver you from the dope, especially with the new harm reduction model that says keep using dope, just do so in a controlled manner. Don’t stop being a wage slave, take a bath and make love to your mate, and don’t abuse your children, but keep taking your dope, and keep coming back to recovery—after all, we make as much money off the recovery business as from addiction process. Of course the real solution is a revolution in consciousness, then in society, yes, the destruction of all white supremacy institutions that are harmful and dangerous to our health and the health of humanity in general. Politicians, preachers and teachers must act in new ways that are progressive rather than reactionary and backward. Mothers, fathers and children must do the same. This is a family affair: slavery was about the destruction of family, thus ultimate freedom will be about the reconstruction of family. There is no other way.
Plato Negro On the Gambler
From a previous society with no jails and peace in the streets, the time came when all were fearful of being kidnapped. No more peace in the streets, in the villages, but chaos reigned. One tribe could no longer trush another tribe; one person could not trust another. In America today, we find ourselves in a similar situation. The Arabs use the term “ya’um jahiliyah” (days of ignorance) to designate the historical time before the prophet when all was chaos, murder, revenge killing, tribal warfare, assassination, kidnapping, highway robbery of caravans, quite similar to West Africa before the slave trade or Maafa (great tragedy).
But what we have in America is not only business as usual white supremacy, but an expeditious return to slavery times, especially with the involuntary servitude of the jailed and imprisoned, with over 50% of the population African and Latino, the majority Africans incarcerated for minor drug crimes such as small amounts of crack cocaine; with a great percentage of inmates found guilty due to information or mis-information from snitches (give up three people and you go free is the mantra here in the Bay Area of Cali).
Is this not similar to the judicial corruption Dr. Rodney described in West Africa ? Nowhere is safe these days, the Mall, the Church, the schools, colleges and universities, the workplaces, the social clubs. In Oakland , nearly all clubs for North American Africans have closed due to violence inside or outside the establishments. Youth gangs have adults living in terror, afraid to go to the store. Several youth have been carjacked and murdered to obtain rims. Antar Bey, the young CEO of Your Black Muslim Bakery (now closed since the murder of journalist Chauncey Bailey), was killed to obtain the five thousand dollar rims on his BMW. And while the church marches and prays to stop the violence, it too has been corrupted by the general chaos in the hood. Sometimes it says nothing about drugs and violence because it is often the beneficiary of mothers who support the church with funds from children involved in the drug trade. One sister said if the church talked about drugs it would have no congregation since so much of its income is from tithes derived from the criminal activity of children whose mothers are church going women.
One sister told me these women are essentially pimping their children, then cry when Dante is murdered, swearing he was a good child who did no wrong. When in fact Dante was one of the biggest dope dealers in the hood, who lavished material goods upon his mother. We recall a church mother who took drugs to her sons in prison contained in baby diapers. And recently we were informed parents can no longer bring home cooked meals to juvenile hall because they were hiding drugs in the food. Yes, even mother is guilty of participating in the chaos and corruption of modern day slavery. Prostitution is on the rise since the drug trade has lead to the incarceration of so many males. Girls eleven, twelve and thirteen can be found whoring on Oakland ’s International Blvd , and they are indeed international, representing every ethnic group and multiracial configuration. The sad truth is that America has never separated itself completely from its slave past; it merely progressed into virtual slavery of segregation, then wage slavery of the civil rights era. Globalism insures the continuation of virtual slavery with the capitalist desire for cheap wages and natural resources.
To obtain and maintain their thousand per cent profits, the imperialists will insist on minimum wages and prices for natural resources. The hopeful sign is the nationalization of resources by the leftist governments throughout the Americas , throwing a monkey wrench in the continued exploitation and robbery of their peoples. North American Africans seem oblivious to events below their border, aside from joining with the capitalists in their attempt to stem the tide of immigration from the south caused by centuries of Yankee imperialism. The American Blacks are in the main ignorant of the revolution throughout the Americas , in Bolivia , Nicaragua , Venezuela , Argentina , Chile , Brazil , Peru and elsewhere. While they are glued to the insanity of B.E.T. television, peoples throughout the Americas are taking charge of their destiny, kicking out the bloodthirsty imperialists and their reactionary collaborators. We must come quickly to the realization that our freedom is connected with other people throughout the Americas , with whom we are connected by blood, sweat and tears. The poor peasants who cultivate the coca plants are victims as well, for they derive little profit for their labor under the sun. We cannot get angry with them but it is upon us to have the discipline to resist the dope when it reaches our cities, for medication is not the solution, rather we must resist oppression not submit to it by medicating ourselves into oblivion, additionally becoming victims of the criminal justice system, then clients of the billion dollar racist pseudo-recovery industry.
Yes, the same white racists who deliver the dope, offer to deliver you from the dope, especially with the new harm reduction model that says keep using dope, just do so in a controlled manner. Don’t stop being a wage slave, take a bath and make love to your mate, and don’t abuse your children, but keep taking your dope, and keep coming back to recovery—after all, we make as much money off the recovery business as from addiction process. Of course the real solution is a revolution in consciousness, then in society, yes, the destruction of all white supremacy institutions that are harmful and dangerous to our health and the health of humanity in general. Politicians, preachers and teachers must act in new ways that are progressive rather than reactionary and backward. Mothers, fathers and children must do the same. This is a family affair: slavery was about the destruction of family, thus ultimate freedom will be about the reconstruction of family. There is no other way.
Plato Negro On the Gambler
The gambler is a sick man walking, a little sick puppy in a world of many other sick puppies, drug addicts, alcoholics, speed freaks, and the many suffering from the addiction to white supremacy. But the gambler exhibits traits that reveal the extreme effects of white supremacy addiction. He is hopeless in desiring a quick turnover of his fate in life, having faith in the Fates to deliver him home safely and with good fortune. He believes the Fates are with him, yes, in his warped mind and confounded conviction that he must win, thus in his delusion God is with him or he is with God, which on the positive is a good thing, the very essence of spirituality, but on the downside, the murderer or drug dealer can say God is with him.
We know better, we know God is not with murderers and drug dealers or others who poison the people with games of chance, and let’s put those sub-prime scamming international bankers in the forefront of Gamblers Anonymous.
Like any other addict, the gambler must detoxify his desire to win at any cost, no matter the odds stacked against him. The gambler will not quit while he is ahead but is not happy and satisfied until he has lost all. His rationale is that the world is but a gamble so why not do all or nothing? If you’re going to do it, do it in a big way, is the gambler’s mantra.
The gambler is highly motivated although his delusion is that his activities are merely occasional and recreational. In his denial, he has no problem and should be left alone to pursue his dreams. He works hard, so why not play hard? In his wretched mind, he is doing fine, so get out of his mix, his grill.
We see a concerted effort by family and friends to intervene with the gambler but he waves them away, for his addiction is turning for the worse, he is not able to make it to work in the morning or make those monthly bills, his love life is going down hill but he is oblivious to it in his classic tragic blindness of ego and selfishness.
He will ultimately lose family and friends because the addiction goes from bad to worse, until we reach that classic rock bottom. Maybe in our exhaustion, we consider the possibility of recovery and the reconstruction of family, which, as with all addicts, is the only road to sanity, for people are above profits, love is priceless and the gambler ultimately comes to this realization or pursues his addiction until he dies, until he is with the homeless, the down and out, the skid row community of derelicts and soup kitchen attendees famous at Glide Church, Saint Anthony’s, St. Martin De Poores and St. Vincent De Paul..
Plato Negro on Letting Go
Hold onto nothing but the rope of God, the Divine force within us that connects us to all that is righteous and true, to the source of energy for all creation, thus we must never be swayed by the one billion illusions of the monkey mind that Guru Bawa taught us about, those imaginings and wonderings that cause lack of faith in ourselves and the Divine power to bring us in contact with all that is good, righteous and holy—yes, the power of love that brings our beloved within our grasp.
But we should know that nothing lasts forever, so be prepared for the day of separation from our beloved, even though we vow to be dedicated for life. In the arms of our beloved we are selfless, for all is for the beloved, to make her satisfied that we are the one and only one to make her feel complete.
Without the beloved we suffer the emptiness and grief of the reed when cut from the reed bed. There is the eternal yearning for the return to the source of our creation which was love. Material things can never satisfy the longing in our heart for the connection to the Divine we feel when serving our beloved. All selfishness must go, only the selfless feels the joy and pain of love. “We feed you for Allah’s pleasure only. We desire from you neither reward nor thanks.”
Whenever the beloved desires to depart, let her go in the name of Love. Wish her well, and pray she will go safely to her lover. If she never returns, pray that she finds love wherever she rests. For the bed of love is infinite, thus one door closes and another opens. But true love always seeks to return to the source of the first flame in the fire of love. We never forget that flame no matter where we go in our wanderings, for the lover who opened our heart in the name of love is remembered with fondness and joy.
It was the first lover’s touch that cut us from the reed bed and made us know the power of love. Those lovers who feel they cannot be without the object of their love, are sick with love and need to be treated for their addiction to white supremacy, a form of domination and oppression under the delusion that one can control the lover, even own the lover, while we are not to be controlled by anyone or anything except the Creator of the Universe, God Almighty.
No lover controls us, no lover owns us—we belong to God, not to any lover, no matter how much they proclaim they love us. When the lover proclaims they love us more than God, they are a lie and are behaving in the manner of devils who wish to deceive us and control us in the manner of master over slaves.
How can you love me, yet you wish to kill me? You do not even love yourself but rather, you are coming in the spirit of Satan who wishes to dominate and oppress. Your love must be rejected for the sham that it is. Go somewhere and find yourself, process your issues and heal yourself of white supremacy thinking.
Plato Negro on the Death of Dreams
Plato Negro on the Death of Dreams
The death of dreams occur when reality has become so overwhelming, so dreadful that our imagination is exhausted and thus our ability to navigate the conundrums of life. We presently have an entire civilization on the brink, on the precipice, the chasm we created by accepting the corrupt and imbecilic leadership of the political, economic and spiritual blood suckers of the poor. In our passivity, we permitted the blood suckers to drain the body politic of its vitality, to empty to coffers of the global village, and so we find ourselves at the bottom of the well with no exit, for who shall lead us out of the bottomless pit—was not God unable to find one righteous man to save the town? Thus, as we seek solutions to the present economic meltdown, we are afraid to admit we are devoid of leadership, unless the hens accept the guardianship of the wolves.
The robbers are able to resupply their booty from the treasury of the people, the trillions stolen from unregulated, free market capitalism now called globalism, the new form of monopoly capitalism that transcends nationalism and borders, with no sympathy for the citizens of any state who are mere cogs in the wheel of gamblers, speculators and fascists who practice an archaic socialism of the wealthy, looking out for their brothers at every turn, bailing them out from every blunder, every losing roll of the dice.
Imagine, the robbers who bankrupted the nation’s largest insurance company proceeded to celebrate with a $400,000 retreat at taxpayer’s expense. There is no end to their arrogance and addiction to white supremacy. But, again, where shall we find the honest man, the righteous man who shall not take a bribe, who is not addicted to greed, lust and conspicuous consumption?
From what ivory tower shall our radical thinkers emerge to guide us on the right path? Are they not tainted with their white supremacy education? Have they gone through the process of deracialization and decolonialism, have they detoxified to the degree that they are clear and sober minded enough to offer us a plan out of the matrix?
We have suggested the 13 Step Model to recover from the addiction to white supremacy, but of course we are smarter than God, so we have no need of any plan other than to continue in our inordinacy, “blindly wondering on.” Even before the economic meltdown, our intellectuals were impotent and bereft of any ideas that would guide us safely into the new millennium.
In spite of the two million imprisoned, there is no call for a general amnesty to free the non-violent, drug related offenders, who should be working or learning skills to work in the reconstruction of the hood, economic as well as social, with radical plans and programs of substance rather than window dressing and band-aids.
With all the brothers locked down, what choice do women have other than to mate with each other for comfort and love? The new demographics do not bode well for the future of the family in the hood, with so many reconfigurations of male/female relations: the women becoming men, the men becoming women. A young lady was overheard on her cell phone telling her girlfriend that she is the baby daddy and the baby daddy is the baby mama. “He stay home with the baby while I bounce….”
With all the brothers locked down, what choice do women have other than to mate with each other for comfort and love? The new demographics do not bode well for the future of the family in the hood, with so many reconfigurations of male/female relations: the women becoming men, the men becoming women. A young lady was overheard on her cell phone telling her girlfriend that she is the baby daddy and the baby daddy is the baby mama. “He stay home with the baby while I bounce….”
Even when we have the possibility of forward movement, disillusionment sets in or we intellectualize ourselves out of enjoying the moment, suggesting that joy is sinful and we shall not be guiltridden, even after we who imagaine ourselves leaders and thinkers are forced to confess we are running to board the freedom train.
The great philosopher Sun Ra would say, "We so right we wrong, " for in our revolutionary purity we escape the motion of the masses, ultimately becoming their followers rather than leaders. And the pseudo hip hop intellectuals and artists fare no better than the 85% deaf, dumb and blind, for the hip hop are blind with spurious antiquated African philosophy that is doing nothing for Africa, and thus can do nothing for Africans in North America. Better to search for ancestral bones in Mississippi rather than digging for King Tut's relatives only to be embarrassed at discoveries that will reveal a glorious past that at our present rate will take eons to equal.
Plato Negro at the Bar
Plato was invited to read poetry at Dorsey's Locker, a bar in North Oakland known for it's Blue Candle poetry nites. Plato had resisted attending as he rarely reads his poems in public. (His last public reading was with Amiri Baraka at UC Berkeley: www.ucberkeley/hollowaypoetryseries/amiribaraka.)
But the MC is one of his students, President Davis, an up and coming actor/poet that Plato has encouraged and mentored. President revealed his talent as Sisyphus in Baraka's Opera of the same name. So finally, Plato made his way to Dorsey's on a Tuesday night. President was elated to see him finally show up and said the first drink was on him. President brought him his favorite drink: Hennessy mixed with Baileys. He told President to taste it. Hmmm, President said. Plato warned him, "This is not a milkshake, this is not a milkshake, this is not a milkshake.
President said ok and continued setting up the venue. He later came back with the same drink for himself. Seated at the bar in front of Plato was a brother talking loudly about his exploits as a bomber in the US Air Force during the war in Kosovo. He was ranting at the top of his voice about the greatness of the American planes and how they bombed the Serbs into the Stone Age. He spoke of the pitiful Russian Migs the Serbs used to defend themselves and how the technically superior Americans outgunned the Serb pilots. He spoke about his skills as a pilot, sounding and behaving like the hero in Hancock, especially in his drunkenness. He admitted he was retired from the Air Force due to alcoholism.
Plato was disturbed by the ranting of this sick man, even more so because he was so loud. Plato has been suffering from Vertigo so the man's voice hurt his ears. But then he thought about how loud he has been known to be after a few drinks of Hennessy and Baileys. He hoped he was not as embarrassing and disgusting as this man. The man ordered drink after drink, while Plato sipped his. When the man turned around to engage Plato in his mad monologue, Plato dropped his head, then turned away, saying to himself, "Nigguh, don't say shit to me. I'm not going to converse with you and your right wing bullshit."
Plato ordered a dinner of chicken wings and thought about the article he read in the morning paper on veterans coming back from Iraq and Afghanistan drugged out, having bar fights and domestic violence, partly because there are not enough mental health workers to serve them. It was clear the man before him was a very sick puppy and needed healing for his crimes against humanity. Was not his ranting a cry for help, letting the world know the depth of his sickness and sorrow? Plato decided to move to another table far away from the man. But as he downed the chicken wings, the man followed him, stopping at a customer not far from Plato. Plato said to himself, “I’ll be damn, this nigguh won’t leave me alone.” The man was in his face now, repeating his story.
Plato looked at the man and said, “Fuck America! Why don’t you black nigguhs in the Air Force drop your bombs on America?” The man was silent. Yes, Plato had hit him with a low blow. He tried to come back by saying there were some brothers in the Air Force “doing things.” Plato said nothing. The man walked back to his seat. Plato finished his chicken wings. When the reading began, Plato was finally called. He read several poems, then departed.
Plato Negro and the Parable of the Table
The clients at the drop-in center for the dual diagnosed (persons with mental and drug problems) asked me to come share. When I arrived and told them I was a former client, they corrected me by saying I am still a client. There was a conference table in the meeting room so I told them to sit at the conference table but several refused. I thought by raising my voice they would follow my command but several still refused. I had no idea why they would not sit at the table. But after the meeting at which I shared my writings and had them do a call and response reading of my poem "What If," it dawned on me why they might have refused to sit at the table.
What if the table reminded them of the table they sat at before the parole board, or maybe it was the table when they were sent to foster care as a child, or the table that threw them out of a drug program or sent them to a mental ward where they were tortured into the night or sexually abused.
Yes, maybe one of them was raped on that table while visiting their the rapist. All these possibilities came to me and I was ashamed I had been so adamant they sit at the table. It was clear to me the clients were people who had been crushed by the world of white supremacy, their hearts, minds, souls, bodies, crushed into tables like the one I had demanded they sit at.
How could I be so insensitive, so rude, so ignorant not to immediately understand their resistance to the table, their fear and loathing of that piece of furniture. What horrors inhabited that piece of wood constructed to represent authority and power? Why would the powerless rush to such a device of destruction and inhumanity?
Yes, the table had been an evil force in their lives, so even in their wretchedness, they had enough sense to stay away from it. So they had listened to me from afar, hearing every word I said, even joining with me in reciting lines from my poem. But they knew not to come near the table.
Of Monks and Ministers
The recent march of protesting monks through the streets of Myanmar ( Burma ) has demonstrated once again the spiritual power of activist clergy. We suggest that ministers in America take to the streets in a show of spiritual power to attack political and social problems such as the war in Iraq and war in the hoods of our inner cities. Perhaps long lines of preachers leading their flocks to the promise land of social justice will have a healing effect on this wretched nation that somehow thinks it can bring democracy to Iraq at gunpoint and not have gun play at home. Yes, we need to see our religious leaders in the streets tending to dissocialized youth and delusional politicians who believe in unprovoked wars for oil and white supremacy. But sadly, America is not Myanmar and ministers don’t have the courage of monks these days, rather they sermonize about prosperity rather than corruption in high places, least they offend pharaoh and suffer the fate of the Myanmar monks who have been shot, beaten and had their monasteries surrounded with troops and barbwire. No, except for a few, our ministers are content to build crystal cathedrals and travel down safe roads to prosperity, meanwhile the monks show us that spirituality is not devoid of radical political consciousness and action to liberate the oppressed rather than advocate their followers drown themselves in filthy materialism on their way to heaven. Having had a personal relationship with ministers as diverse as the Nation of Islam’s Farrakhan and Rev. Cecil Williams of San Francisco ’s Glide Church , we know social activism can be a reality with determined and principled spiritual leaders. But perhaps it is romantic to think the majority of American clergy will step out of their comfort zone, certainly not to the degree of a Rev. Al Sharpton and Rev. Jesse Jackson, although these gentlemen often seem to be ambulance chasers, showing up at every accident for media performances. Spirituality is an awesome power when utilized for the common good, but there are communities where the religious leaders are silent and seem to collaborate with sins such as gambling, prostitution and drug dealing, even murder, for as someone noted, often if the preachers didn’t condone such vices they would have no congregation since the children of church members provide their parents with money from criminal life that is given to churches in the form of tithes, thus many ministers are silent about drug dealing and the resultant violence and mayhem in their communities. They would not dare march in monk fashion to community dope spots to pray for wayward youth, or offer to save them by providing alternative economic solutions such as micro credit that is raising millions of people out of poverty around the world. As my daughter in Houston , Texas boarded the bus to march in Jena , Louisiana , she noted the organization skills and discipline of activist Muslims, but when she called around to Houston ’s mega churches, she said they had no knowledge of buses leaving for Jena . And we recall that when a minister named Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., attended a national Baptist convention, he was called a hoodlum and thug. And pronouncements to the contrary, we sense he would be called a hoodlum and thug by many ministers today, yes, even while they profess to love Jesus, another hoodlum and thug of his day.
Plato Negro on the Bitter Bitch Syndrome
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 mater 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.
Plato Negro on the Criminal Society
“All money ain’t good money, “they say in the game, thus the riches of the American criminal society will in the end avail them nothing. Ultimately, this society must be dismantled, including all the institutions tainted by the criminal activities of said society from slavery down to the present moment, including the political, educational, economic, social, cultural and especially the religious—all have the mark of the beast and are direct beneficiaries of genocide upon the Africans and indigenous peoples of the Americas.
The contradiction between the democratic ideals and the pragmatic chattel and wage slavery of today can only be resolved by revolution in consciousness, followed by the reconstruction of the entire society to eradicate the white supremacy and blood sucking values of capitalist exploitation, including the neo-imperialism called globalism.
The decadent roots of this criminal society were well documented by historian J.A. Rogers in Africa’s Gift to America. He described the founding fathers not as puritan holy men but rather as a gang of thieves, kidnappers, murderers, sexual deviants, including child molesters, homosexuals and others depraved sociopaths.
Just as Castro not long ago emptied his jails and prisons of such persons, England did the same, sending their outcasts to America and Australia. America has never acknowledged her true roots. While Alex Haley showed America’s African roots, we are yet to see the true roots of the criminal founders of America. Thus, this criminal society has no moral foundation, except in a constitution of words but without deeds to institute true democracy, of, for and by the people.
It is yet a society of the criminal rich robber barons in suits and ties who are the puppets of international finance which cares nothing for the 85% who are deaf, dumb and blind to the true nature of the ruling class, that 10% who own and maintain the wealth solely by police and military power. The 5% who deliver truth are indeed poor righteous teachers who must struggle to pull the covers off the criminal rulers, whether they are in the political, religious, educational or economic institutions.
It is not enough to blame politicians when the educational system is in cahoots with politicians, and the same can be said of the preachers who act as pharaoh’s magicians with their “opiate of the people” witchcraft of religiosity, closely followed are the media pundits who add their magic to construct the world of make believe inhabited by the 85% deaf, dumb and blind.
Such a criminal society must be uprooted and discarded into the dustbin of history, only then can the righteous rise to the top and institute true democracy, freedom, justice and equality. After 400 years, we have a descendant of African colonialism as president of the United States. And yet the majority of citizens have been so poisoned by the criminal rulers that a great percentage of them are full of hatred for the brother, even those of his ethnic group (although he is from the white and the black, but one drop of African blood makes him African in the traditional racial paradigm).
He must largely follow the criminal agenda of American political philosophy, which includes an imperial view of the world, unless of course he is pressured from below by the masses who see him as the savior who has finally come to adjudicate the criminals, putting them away and liberating the people from centuries of degradation and oppression. But it is highly unlikely the brother will be able to satisfy the social angst and shattered cultural strivings of the people (in the words of Dr. Nathan Hare), especially the North American Africans since he cannot appear to be partial to any ethnic group, although whites have done so for centuries.
Maybe it would be well enough if he can lighten the whip lashes on the backs of the oppressed, if only for a moment, since this has been the nature of our Sisyphusian drama, as described by Dubois and more recently by Amiri Baraka—we have endured cycles of progress followed by regression and reaction by the criminal society, and now with Obama we are clearly on the upward path, for he has given inspiration to the down and out that a modicum of change might be possible, in spite of detractors on all sides of the ethnic divide.
Obama brings a breath of fresh air to a rotten, stinking, criminal society that in the last eight years of the Bush reign of terror has made the world a hell hole, not to mention America itself, with the worse financial crisis since the depression--the sub-prime loan crisis has divested millions of people of their fundamental wealth contained in home ownership.
The quarterly earnings of the oil barons allied with the criminals in the white house, have engineered an energy crisis beyond the imagination, since the petrochemical industry is connected to food commodity prices and supplies ingredients such as pesticides, insecticides, hormones and genetic engineering that lead to diseases contracted by the people who must then turn to the pharmaceutical industry which conspires health insurance companies, doctors, nurses and the funeral directors in the classic manner of Elijah Muhammad’s Yacubian mythology.
How can one extricate oneself out of this morass of criminality? Some attempt to become criminals themselves, thinking they can out criminal the master, yet we see tale after tale of gansta genre films that end with a sad tale of nothingness and dread, for after all is said and done, the boyz and girls in the hood have a life of ephemeral joy, followed by grief if not death itself. So what price glory? My brother, a career criminal, recently told me his son asked him, “Dad, why didn’t you teach me the game?” My brother said he told his son, “Son, I didn’t want to teach you the game because look what the game got me—a life in prison, more or less.”
The supreme irony, the conundrum of criminality is that it takes the same energy to do right as it does to do wrong. It is a matter of how a man thinks and then acts. We can plan a bank robbery or we can compose a letter to the banker for a loan or grant even. On more than one occasion, I have composed a one page letter and obtained a grant or loan (sometimes it was a ghetto loan, but a loan none the less).
Mama said use the mind God gave you! It is time to rise up from the criminal paradigm—the notion that we are going to beat the master criminal. No matter how much killing goes on in the hood, it can never match the State sponsored mass murder of America and her allies around the world. We must seize the moral authority and hold fast to the rope of righteousness, thus reclaiming our spirituality and dignity to walk as free men and women without the blood of criminality and the resulting grief we bring more often than not to our people. We cannot kill them with drugs, prostitution and other moral depravities, yet simultaneously proclaim we are saving them. Either save them or leave them alone in their wretchedness!
Plato Negro's Parable of the Weather
Sutter County Jail, Yuba City CA
10.1.08
10.1.08
And the Holy Spirit spoke to me through the night, saying speak to them, my servant, about the weather. Tell them they are unaware of the coming weather. The weather station is telling of conditions in nature but the people are ignorant, thus they shall be destroyed. They do not listen to the news but are preoccupied with music, games of chance, idol gossip, lustful sex, mind altering drugs and material gain, usually at the expense of the poor.
They cannot see the coming storm on the horizon that shall consume them. “Oh, the Calamity, what will make thee know the Calamity?” If they would only peek outside the window, they would see the coming storm. They would then prepare themselves, secure the doors, the windows, tie the horses and cows, but the people are in a mind-altered state, medicated against the pain of life.
They will not stop dancing to put on their boots, but wink and blink at each other as the sun fades behind the clouds, and the thunder roars, yet they hear it not, for they are consumed in the moment. Put on your trench coat, carry your umbrella, a voice admonishes them, but they are deaf, dumb and blind, so the storm proceeds to consume them.
And then they wail as the water approaches and their children are broken from their grasp. Oh, they cry, only if we had known the storm was coming. Only if we had listened to the weather station, we might have avoided the Calamity! We might have grabbed our silver and gold and fled to higher ground. We would have gathered our children, our wives and taken them to safety. But in our hard-headedness, we heeded not the warnings and prepared not for the danger. We partied like the fools on the Titanic, until the ocean swallowed the great ship.
And so it is with the economic weather. Any fool knows things go up and then come down—nothing lasts forever. But the greedy persist until the end. They are like children in the candy store who can never get enough of the sweet stuff until they eat themselves sick, then cry to Mama they have a stomach ache.
Now their bank accounts are empty, homes in foreclosure, life savings blown to the winds of chance. What shall we do now, they wail, where shall we go? They join the army of the homeless and the hungry, pushing shopping carts through the streets. No more Hennessey and Champagne. They join the poor drinking rot gut wine to quench their thirst. Oh, if we had not been greedy, if we had not become addicted to games of chance. Oh, if we had listened to the weather man. But we were too busy dancing, drinking, winking and blinking. Now we must suffer the water and the fire.
Plato Negro and the City of God
You have destroyed the City of God, turned it into a hell hole wherein brother is against brother and sister against sister. The City of God has become the habitation of devils who kill at will the children of God who are slain in the streets while no action is taken against them and the so-called good people are silent in the night, hiding in their mansions in fear and terror, knowing for a certainty the devils shall invade their homes, it is only a matter of time, simply because they have done nothing to reach out to the devils in their midst.
Alas, the devils are their children who have gone astray and no one will lay hands on them in fear the children will tear their limbs like hungry beasts. But these beasts are hungry for love, yet no one will reach out to them, no one will lay hands on them except other devils such as robbers, thieves and murderers.
No one will guide the young devils so they behave like Yacoub’s children of old, playing with steel, cars and guns, for these are symbols of power. And in their hunger and thirst for love, they seek satisfaction in steel since the human touch is absent their lives.
If only someone would speak with them, tell them a kind word, guide them on the right path, but no, the elders are in fear of the monsters they created by being silent, neglectful and abusive. No matter how hard they try, the elders in the City of God cannot get out of their responsibility to teach truth to their weary children gone mad from lack of love and direction.
The schools have made them ignorant, the church doors are closed to them, thus they are hungry and homeless causing them to make terror in the streets. If only someone would lay hands on them with kindness and love that is expected in the City of God, the so-called devil children, the children of Yacoub who love playing with steel, would put down their guns and stop using their cars as weapons of mass destruction.
They would stop filling their young bodies with drugs and disease from unprotected sex. Why will not those in the City of God step to the front of the line and represent Divinity? How can they tarry in Jerusalem doing nothing while the house of God is defiled and becomes an abomination.
You who are holy, take off your holy rags and confess naked before your God that you have neglected to clean his temple, that you have destroyed his children, turning them into beasts of the jungle or even worse, for they lack the love of beasts, for they are ready to kill for the slightest reason, without thinking of the consequences, the pain and suffering they cause families, friends and community.
Why will you not teach them legal trade and commerce. No, you allow the dope man to teach them and love them while you party in the night, wink and blink at concerts wearing your rocks, stones and animal skins. Continue doing nothing and see if things get better or worse, but you live in the City of God and He expects you to exercise the reins of power, not cower in the corner afraid of that which your hands have created, for that which your hands have created shall seek you out in the night and in the day, but if you are without the armor of God, that which your hands have created shall slay you and the City of God shall be no more.
Plato Negro on the Diffusion of Power
Sutter County Jail Yuba City, CA 10.4.08
In society power must be diffused. If not, the natural and usual result is corruption and domination, such as we see in the patriarchal, white supremacy society. In the family the father and husband must diffuse power to the mother/wife, making matters in the family more functional than the absolute patriarchy which makes the woman feel like a slave and the man a brute, since he has final say in all matters , with violence his ultimate weapon. Such a family construction can never be free and just because one person can never make the right decision all the time. The human mind is bound to make mistakes in judgment occasionally, and sometimes mistakes can be fatal, causing the destruction of the family, such as fighting a wild beast or confronting a stranger. As Solomon suggested, two are better than one, two that are in unity and harmony. If one falls, who can pick us up? If we travel and get lost, shall not the mind of another be an aid in getting us back on the right path? It is the same in organizations such as the gang, the corporation and the state. Ultimate power corrupts absolutely. The gang leader wields so much power he begins to fear his friends because he knows they want to be the leader one day, even his closest friends, but in his ego blindness, he feels it is his divine right to be the gang king for life. It is the same with the leader of the state, even the democratic state. Not only did George Bush win the 2000 election by voter fraud and the right wing supreme court, but once in power pushed aside the constitution to claim absolute executive power, negating the congress, declaring unilateral war against Iraq when that country was no threat and had committed no act of aggression. In a devil’s mind, what looks more lucrative: the oil fields of Iraq or the barren mountains of Afghanistan? Bush fantasized Iraq was the cause of 9/11, was associated with Al Qaida and possessed weapons of mass destruction. Two trillion dollars later, none of the above is true, but America is determined to acquire long term oil contracts before she exists Iraq. To further the goals of the fascist state (communism for the rich), Bush came forth with the Patriot Act to curtail civil liberties, and contrary to his conservative principles, let the oil barons run free to earn 300 billion in profits. He allowed Wall Street to usher in the greatest pyramid scheme (sub prime loans) since the Great Depression. Suddenly the supreme capitalist free marketers became overnight socialists, i.e. state socialists, i.e. fascists! The duped workers were forced to let free market forces play out, meaning they will get no bail out or substantial aid to reverse foreclosures caused by the sub prime loan scams. The people who gambled on Wall Street, lost their shirts and stand naked with their dicks in the hands and hearts racing! They are like a trick when the whore departs, telling him she will be right back! The Wall Street bandits, in cahoots with the supreme ruler of the land and his international political cronies in conspiracy with the national banks around the world, have organized multi-trillion dollars bailouts of the banks to restore confidence in the capitalist system suddenly turned communist. Free market capitalism does not nationalize financial institutions and corporations—they let market forces play out—and the strong will survive. Those who lose in the capitalist games of chance—well, that’s life! The world leaders in political economics have defied their fundamental principles to save their buddies, yes, at the expense of the masses, the wage slaves, the working poor, the gamblers. This debacle could have been avoided with the diffusion of power, with strident regulation of financial institutions, but with the executive hand in the cookie jar, there is no mystery why so many cookies have disappeared. With checks and balances out the window, the supreme leader does as he wishes with the body politic. With a three page letter, he requested the US Treasury deliver 800 billion of the people’s money to his brothers on Wall Street. In fact, he moved the headquarters of Wall Street to the White House. We will shortly see if there shall be a legitimate transfer of power or will he connive to usher in another right wing regime to further the goals of the fascist state, again, depriving the democratic state the diffusion of power to maintain the just society. In Stalinism, Nazism and now Bushism, we see how men seize power for personal aggrandizement. They will execute world wars to extend their power until checked by a people’s democratic revolution. Somehow, someday soon, our mental health experts must cast their digging rigs down into the oceans of our minds to decipher the meanderings of the wretched psyches of men whose egos compel them to execute power over people, to the detriment of society and civilization. In making state violence their ultimate weapon, such men must be confined to the deepest spaces of our prisons until their consciousness evolves to the level where the diffusion of power is no more a problem for them than walking or jogging. In conclusion, theatre is a model of diffusion. No matter how great the playwright, he alone cannot produce the finished product without the aid of others. Even the one man show needs a director, contrary to the thinking of most spoken word performers who have never heard of the director—the one man show needs lighting and sound technicians, set and costume designers, promoters, ticket sellers and front house people. The one man show needs music arrangers and choreographer, make-up artists,etc. With such needs, the playwright and or the actor with the greatest egomania, should humble himself with the reality that he is not alone in the show business, that he is in need of a chorus of workers, designers, technicians—in short, geniuses like himself to get from process to product. Certainly, this was true for me in theatre. And if it’s true for me, then it is true for everyman for all the world is a stage. And for everyman there comes The End, when the lights go down and all is quiet on the set. For the tragic hero, this is the moment of dred, especially when the torturer becomes tortured, falling into his own puke as he exits the stage of history.
Plato Negro On Healing the Sick Soul
Plato Negro On Healing the Sick Soul
A sick society produces sick souls. It is ludicrous to expect more. So what we have today are stunted men and women, unable to stand tall and take full responsibility for their actions. Some try mightily to do so, but can't find the strength to overcome their character flaws induced by the sick society. How can we expect men in a criminal culture to behave other than criminal? We want them to go out to kill, then return home to be loving fathers and husbands.
What kind of monster do we have here; perhaps the kind Mary Wells sang about in her classic song about two lovers who were actually one. Yes, the sick society produces the schizophrenic personality or persons with the dark side we are shocked to discover in the neighbor until we read about him/her in the morning news. A society wherein half the households are without men is a sick society. It is a society in an obvious state of war with itself. Surely there are elements in the power strata making events happen that are detrimental to a certain strata, especially the lower economic class which is in chaos, and short of revolution, we cannot expect nothing but more chaos because the economic machine is determined to keep the status quo to maintain power.
The day strong men of consciousness rise to take responsibility for themselves and their families is the day of revolutionary action. On that day they will be loving and caring, for themselves, first of all, then for their women and children. Having eliminated the dirt and grime from their souls, their actions will be healing and cleansing. They will allow no excuses to prevent them from forward motion. Their women will likewise be about the business of cleansing and healing themselves from ignorance and reactionary behavior that has made them incapable of being wives and mothers.
The sick society must be overthrown by any means necessary. It has no right to exist solely to produce sick personalities lost in consumerism or conspicuous consumption that devours the souls of potential men and women. The sick soul must of necessity heal itself of fear, fearing to love itself, fearing to do what is necessary to protect and raise the children, preventing them from becoming monsters who exist on the animal plane or even worse because animals show love for each other. The sick society monsters have not a microdot of love for anything but self destructive behavior which in the end benefits no one.
Thus we have jails, prisons and mental hospitals full of sick souls who are a danger to themselves and others. Many wander the streets as predators, hungry and determined to attack anyone. Poor, innocent citizens are overwhelmed by the actions of the sick souls, even though they share in the creation of the monsters in their midst, for the innocent are only a matter of degree away from sharing the sickness that spreads like a virus from generation to generation, from community to community, yes, from class to class, for the sickness is pandemic because the economic situation is controlled by global forces who do not discriminate.
Ray Charles told us the danger zone is everywhere. From class to class, the sick souls go about their daily round in denial they need healing, although some do so in fear of losing their material comforts, thus they tolerate self abuse and partner abuse to enjoy the so-called good life—many women wear the golden handcuffs, refusing to release themselves from the monster within and without.
It is then that the sick souls medicate themselves with legal and illegal drugs to cover the pain of wretchedness. Society cannot arrest all the sick souls because they are being produced in such abundance there is no room to house them. Can we not see that soon the entire society will be one giant jail, prison and mental ward? And so only the sick souls can heal themselves, for the doctors are sicker than the souls they seek to heal. They have not heard, “Physician heal thyself.”
The police cannot apprehend the criminals because they are themselves murderers, drug dealers and robbers under the color of law. The very earth itself is rising up to overthrow the sick actions of man. The green revolution will ultimately remove the sick from the earth, yes, they will be drowned in floods, buried in earthquakes and consumed by fire.
Dr. Nathan Hare has told us to establish mental health peer groups in our homes, work places, houses of worship, barber shops, beauty shops, social clubs and elsewhere. Follow the 13 Steps outlined in my manual How to Recover from the Addiction to White Supremacy. It is highly doubtful religiosity will help you since the world is full of religion, yet the global village is getting sicker and sicker. We know it is indeed an act of insanity to repeat the same behavior yet expect different results.
Plato Negro on Oakland's Need for Radical Spirituality
We know the spirit world is beyond color, therefore we must pray for all those slaughtered in the streets of Oakland, whether police or citizens. It is indeed sad when officers of the peace are unable to secure the peace of a community, but often become brute beasts in blue uniforms. And in return the citizens must become beasts in self defense, especially when they are already under stress from lacking the necessities of life: jobs, food, clothing and shelter, a stable family environment wherein they can evolve from animal to spiritual consciousness.
We know the spirit world is beyond color, therefore we must pray for all those slaughtered in the streets of Oakland, whether police or citizens. It is indeed sad when officers of the peace are unable to secure the peace of a community, but often become brute beasts in blue uniforms. And in return the citizens must become beasts in self defense, especially when they are already under stress from lacking the necessities of life: jobs, food, clothing and shelter, a stable family environment wherein they can evolve from animal to spiritual consciousness.
When violence becomes the order of the day, when the community is mortally afraid of those employed to protect them, when the citizens resort to violence in interpersonal relations, then that society is not of Divine, but is existing on the animal plane, the lowest level of existence, and yet we pretend to be civilized. We act like violent savages at the drop of a hat, the glance of an eye; we are ready to kill, slaughter each other often without the slightest cause, rhyme or reason.
In my 1968 interview with James Baldwin, he said, "It's a wonder we haven't all gone stark raving mad." Jimmy, I submit 40 years after your statement, we indeed have now gone stark raving mad. The streets of Oakland are no place to be somebody; they are on par with Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan and Mexico, where violence rules the day and every man must be conscious of his surroundings and behavior at any time.
The politicians and police are not the only ones to blame, but the entire community. We have churches on every corner yet there is something lacking in their spiritual message, something is lost in translation from pulpit to congregation to street. How can such massive violence exist in a Christian society or Muslim society for that matter? Why is there so little spiritual transformation evident in the people? The prosperity consciousness in religiosity theology these days only leads to conspicuous consumption that has led us to the present precipice.
Shall we continue in our madness until we slip over the cliff, until we are consumed by our own vomit? Someone, anyone, step forward and show us the light, the path, the way, for we have become a headless monster, a car without a driver; clearly the politicians cannot solve this conundrum of our lives, the educators are lost in perpetuating the world of make believe called white supremacy. Our economic leaders are lost in their shoestrings, trying to revive a decadent and dying free market capitalist system based on greed, cheap labor and cheap resources.
They are determined to ignore their own people in a global conspiracy of pyramid and Ponzi schemes which is the essence of international finance. All brother Mixon (who killed four police) wanted was a job. And the tragedy is that there are desperate men and women like him throughout the streets of Oakland, men and women who will find no job and become mad enough to follow his act of desperation and despair.
The police had a job watching him. His parole officer had a job watching him. His prison officials had a job securing him. Was he some sacrificial lamb to be slaughtered for all except himself? No wonder his desperation and despair, no wonder his feelings of nothingness and dread. No wonder his spirituality was crushed to the earth, making him a beast of prey, willing to do the ultimate to escape the jails and prison, the American gulag, the neo slavery plantations that exist throughout this nation, wherein the commodity is the souls and bodies of men and women.
Up from Slavery, Up from Ignut, up from the animal plane to the Divine. Throw off the shackles of mental slavery that permits us to claim the gun as our savior, the panacea for all that ills our community, when in reality it is only putting on the armor of God that will elevate us out of the dungeon of wickedness and despair.
The churches must teach a new way, the schools must teach a new way, discarding that primitive, out of date white supremacy curriculum that over fifty per cent of our children are intelligent enough to reject outright for its abject meaningless absurdity.
The churches are empty, especially of young men because the message does not touch their spiritual consciousness. They are too smart to be pimped by pimps in the pulpit.The brothers at the barber shop asked me, "OG, what's the difference between the pimp and the preacher?" I replied, "The difference is that the preacher has more whores."
As Brother Fritz Pointer noted, we can and must police ourselves, the police must be from our community, not living in Dublin, Tracy and Livermore.These are foreigners who have no love for our community. They are here to enforce white supremacy, white privilege and white power. And nothing shall change but go from bad to worse until the fundamental order is radically restructured. Sun Ra taught me, "The Creator got things fixed, you can't go forward or backward until you do the right thing."
So do the right thing, Oakland, the eyes of the world are on you at this hour, as it has been in the past when you raised up with the Black Panther Party to check the power of brute beasts in blue uniforms.
This time around, know that we have a problem that is not physical but spiritual, for when we put on the armor of God no one can touch us. Didn't Hammer tell us, "You can't touch this"? Those of you who don't believe in spirituality continue down the physical path when we know the end of this path.
Look at America at this hour drowning from excessive belief in the physical and material things of life, while none of this path has brought joy, peace and happiness to this world. As I look around Houston, Texas at the mansions owned by black people, at the same time I see the numerous hospitals here to heal those sick from the trappings of materialism, the mental stress, the cancer and other diseases caused by excessive belief in the physical things of life, while we know our health is our wealth.
What good are these mansions if we act like nigguhs inside, if the women are in golden handcuffs, abused, neglected and depressed, on the verge of suicide? We consume, consume, consume, and yet there is never enough. Our closets are full of trinkets we never take out of the bag, with the tags on them because they were wanted but not needed.
And yet there is enough to go around but we dare share, we dare give away anything, but hoard for dear life as though there will be no tomorrow. When we do not reach out to men like Mixon, we see the result, it is no mystery the desperation of his heart, the poverty of his dreams for simple things, basic survival in a land of plenty. Continue to deny his generation and await the Calamity.
To avoid the Calamity we must embrace the Religion of the Heart or spirituality, beyond churches, temples, mosques; simply recognize our spiritual essence, beyond the physical and material. What is the use of violence when the end of all wars is political discussion or diplomacy. Whether national or personal violence in the home, at the end of the day we want to talk, have a discussion, admit our wrongs, make reparations. Then why all the violence when ultimately we must do as Isaiah taught, "Reason together."
March 24, 2009
March 24, 2009
Plato Negro on the Art and Soul of Oakland
The Art and Soul of Oakland What we want to examine is how art was separated from the soul. We have a stinking suspicion that this is more of the Western psychodrevel for we are clear in our holistic philosophy that art and soul are one, that they cannot be separated or in anyway disconnected simply because one is the causation of the other, i.e., art is the absolute reflection of the soul.
And it was/is clear from the reality of the Art and Soul Festival that the Soul of Black Folks predominates this annual Labor Day event in Oakland, the most multicultural city in America, if you believe the hype. Ask the white restaurant patrons if they felt multicultural while being robbed at dinner in the string of restaurant takeover robberies of late by young hooded black men. And the Art and Soul Festival itself was as segregated as any even in deepest Mississippi. Saturday was probably the most multicultural day of the three day event. Sunday was white folks day to enjoy the Art and Soul of Oakland or the Bay Area, but come Monday, Labor Day, this was Nigger or Nigguh Day, depending on your ethnicity.
On Monday, the Blacks came early, lining up from 13th and Broadway for the ticket booth at 14th and Broadway. Compared to Sunday, one could say the whites were almost absent, and the Blacks were out in full force, no matter the severity of their Negrocities, the insanity of hip hop youth or the full blown madness of their parents. Labor Day was Oakland’s Congo Square day, to celebrate the beauty and love of unity, if only superficial, as in the varieties of color in the Black Nation, seeing them mix together in peace and harmony, for the most part, although we understand one vendor was robbed, though the event is fenced in, so we wonder how the robber thought he was going to get away. But back to the Art and Soul of this happening so needed in a town suffering much grief and trauma as a result of impotent political, educational, spiritual, economic and cultural leadership that dawns the persona of Invisible Man to the people, the suffering masses who are barely able to eke a living from the wage slave economy that has forced many Blacks from the city to the valley, in such central valley towns as Sacramento, Stockton,Tracy, Modesto, Madera and Fresno. Again, Art and Soul are one, or rather art is the reflection of the soul of a people, their deepest fears, loves, joys, hopes, dreams and aspirations. Separating art from soul is the likely cause of schizophrenia so evident in the youth, the gays, lesbians and even straight people. Why is their daily round a masquerade? As Chris Rock said of the woman, “Every thing about you is fake and phony.” Your hair is fake, your eyes, your nails, your smile, your fuck—you are a fraud, a scam that must be exposed before you do more harm to yourself and others.
And it was/is clear from the reality of the Art and Soul Festival that the Soul of Black Folks predominates this annual Labor Day event in Oakland, the most multicultural city in America, if you believe the hype. Ask the white restaurant patrons if they felt multicultural while being robbed at dinner in the string of restaurant takeover robberies of late by young hooded black men. And the Art and Soul Festival itself was as segregated as any even in deepest Mississippi. Saturday was probably the most multicultural day of the three day event. Sunday was white folks day to enjoy the Art and Soul of Oakland or the Bay Area, but come Monday, Labor Day, this was Nigger or Nigguh Day, depending on your ethnicity.
On Monday, the Blacks came early, lining up from 13th and Broadway for the ticket booth at 14th and Broadway. Compared to Sunday, one could say the whites were almost absent, and the Blacks were out in full force, no matter the severity of their Negrocities, the insanity of hip hop youth or the full blown madness of their parents. Labor Day was Oakland’s Congo Square day, to celebrate the beauty and love of unity, if only superficial, as in the varieties of color in the Black Nation, seeing them mix together in peace and harmony, for the most part, although we understand one vendor was robbed, though the event is fenced in, so we wonder how the robber thought he was going to get away. But back to the Art and Soul of this happening so needed in a town suffering much grief and trauma as a result of impotent political, educational, spiritual, economic and cultural leadership that dawns the persona of Invisible Man to the people, the suffering masses who are barely able to eke a living from the wage slave economy that has forced many Blacks from the city to the valley, in such central valley towns as Sacramento, Stockton,Tracy, Modesto, Madera and Fresno. Again, Art and Soul are one, or rather art is the reflection of the soul of a people, their deepest fears, loves, joys, hopes, dreams and aspirations. Separating art from soul is the likely cause of schizophrenia so evident in the youth, the gays, lesbians and even straight people. Why is their daily round a masquerade? As Chris Rock said of the woman, “Every thing about you is fake and phony.” Your hair is fake, your eyes, your nails, your smile, your fuck—you are a fraud, a scam that must be exposed before you do more harm to yourself and others.
You have forgotten the language of love, you and your man, thus you are consumed by the bitter bitch syndrome, you and your man—yes, he is bitter bitch too. When he buys his dope from the youth, they address him as “bitch ass nigguh.” In truth, he has separated his art from his soul. Rather than deliver truth to the youth so desperate for his attention and wisdom, he presents himself as a walking contradiction to everything he should be about.
On no occasion should the elders buy dope from children. This is a contravention of nature and the children rebel when they see us coming. Actually, they are hostile to us in general. For they have observed our many contradictions in male/female relations, parental/child relations, and the myriad fears they have seen us express when dealing with the hostile society we are passing onto them, which in no way are they prepared to handle, though a hip hop father told me of his concern that he support his daughter and instruct her so that she knows how to deal with a man when she matures.
On no occasion should the elders buy dope from children. This is a contravention of nature and the children rebel when they see us coming. Actually, they are hostile to us in general. For they have observed our many contradictions in male/female relations, parental/child relations, and the myriad fears they have seen us express when dealing with the hostile society we are passing onto them, which in no way are they prepared to handle, though a hip hop father told me of his concern that he support his daughter and instruct her so that she knows how to deal with a man when she matures.
He knows that if he does not instruct her, she is destined for failure in her male/female relations, after all, how will she talk with a man, how will she respect him and accept him, trusting him will all her affairs, when, in reality, as a young lady informed me—how can she accept my view of history and reality when she has never seen black people in power, only in submission to white supremacy. Art and soul must be integrated, and it is anathema to attempt the separation. It is similar to the problem with the people of Oakland and the police. When the police truly serve and protect the people, there will be no walls of separation between them, for they shall be one and the same. Until such a time, it shall be war between the people and the police. The Black Panther Party of Oakland ultimately realized it was futile to fight the police, since they can call such associates as the National Guard, United States Army, Air Force and Navy. But they also proved these official gangs (under the color of law) must be challenged and not allowed to be the brute beasts in blue uniforms they are known to be—simply another gang like the Cripps, Bloods, BGF and others.
We must stand on the shoulders of Huey Newton, Bobby Seale, Eldridge Cleaver, Lil Bobby Hutton, John Huggins, Alprentice Bunchy Carter, Fred Hampton, George Jackson and the man thousands gone but not forgotten. And must not forget our women warriors as well,
Ida B. Wells, Harriet Tubman, Sojourner Truth, Angela, Asata, Clara Muhammad, Betty Shabazz, Coretta Scott King.
In short, we must unite our art and soul into one human machine of radical execution. We are the fearless and the selfless, the sacrificial and the sacred fighters who have come to avenge our ancestors and elders, and there is no price great enough that we are not willing to pay.
Black History: Oakland's Shame
The purpose of history is to give people a memory of their past in order that they may endure the present and propel themselves into the future. When they are disconnected from their myths and history, the present can be chaotic and the future problematic. Such is the present condition Oakland’s citizens: they have allowed their grass roots heroes and sheroes to languish in obscurity and infamy. Oakland heroes from the 1960s, namely radicals such as the Black Panthers have no streets named after them for their valiant struggle against oppression. There are no statues or other monuments to the Black Panther leadership or the thousands of rank and file grass roots people who sacrificed their sweat and blood to make Oakland and America a better place. There’s a Federal building named after Ron Dellums, a state building named after Elihu Harris, a psychiatric hospital named after John George, but nothing to honor the common people who fought in the streets of Oakland and across America to make this nation live up to constitution, by creating a society of , for and by the people.
There are no statues of Huey Newton, Eldridge Cleaver, Bobby Hutton, Panther leaders who have joined the ancestors. What is the excuse for not officially naming Defermery Park after Little Bobby Hutton, the 16 year old youth murdered by the Oakland Police in a shootout after the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. Little Bobby was the third member of the BPP and its secretary. Today he should be an example much needed by youth to show them the path to freedom rather than the rode to self destruction they are presently following. After three black mayors, there is yet no official name change of the West Oakland park where so many Panthers and other radicals grew up on the basketball courts and picnic grounds.As one who grew up in West Oakland and familiar with Oakland’s radical tradition, I am embarrassed when people ask me where are the monuments to the great radicals Oakland produced, especially during the 60s. People from out of town who visit Oakland are dumbfounded that they cannot visit any sites where Black Panthers and other radicals are honored.Oakland’s old Merritt College on Grove or MLK street, was the hotbed of radical Oakland during the early 60s. It is where I attended college and obtained my radical education, not in the classroom, but on the steps at the main entrance, listening to young radicals such as Bobby Seale, Huey Newton, Richard Thorne, Ernie Allen, Isaac Moore, Ann Williams, Ken and Carol Freedom, Donald Warden, Maurice Dawson.
With all due respect to Martin Luther King, the site should not have been named in honor of MLK but to those Oakland radicals who helped change America and the world from the hallowed steps at the front of the college. The world should know that Oakland’s 60s revolution was spearheaded by students who would extend their struggle for freedom to UC Berkeley and San Francisco State University, which had the longest and most violent student strike in American history.
And many of the students at SFSU had transferred from Merritt College, taking their desire for equal education, including black studies, across the bay and eventually across America when the call for black studies became a priority of the freedom struggle. Well, Merritt College, now located up in the Oakland hills, far from the flatlands and the population who made the college historic, has belatedly named a room after its most controversial student, Dr. Huey P. Newton.But the real significance of the BPP is that they gave a voice to the voiceless masses of youth and adults suffering oppression in Oakland, the US and the world. And these brothers and sisters must be honored for their sweat, blood and tears on the streets of this city. The tragic shame is that today’s youth have little or no knowledge of what happened in Oakland, for there are no monuments at 14th and Broadway or anywhere to remind them of their roots, of the struggle and sacrifice of their parents and grandparents.--Dr. M1/30/08Marvin X. Jackmon (Dr. M) grew up in West Oakland on Seventh and Campbell, the son of a florist who had published the first black newspaper in the central valley, The Fresno Voice. Dr. M’s first writings were published in the children’s section of the Oakland Tribune. His latest book HOW TO RECOVER FROM THE ADDICTION TO WHITE SUPREMACY is now a textbook at Berkeley City College and Oakland’s Merritt College.
Black History—Oakland’s Shame
Part Two
We call upon Mayor Ron Dellums, himself a part of Oakland’s radical history, to make it a priority of his tenure to establish monuments to Oakland’s Black Radical Past.If streets can be named after African and European radicals, how long will local heroes be neglected, especially when youth need knowledge and symbols of progressive social activists so they can see there are alternative lifestyles other than the self destructive American gansta genre of psycho-socialpaths.And more important than symbolic gestures, we call upon the mayor and city council, in coordination with other Bay Area governments, to establish a special fund to award and reward the still surviving freedom fighters who sacrificed their lives, educations, jobs, and families to make a better world for Bay Area citizens in particular and Americans in general. After all, these liberation fighters in the Panther Party, the Nation of Islam, Black Student Unions and other social activist organizations, suffered the blows of fascist America. These valiant men and women endured police surveillance, family intimidation, jail, prison, torture, murder, exile, black listing and other forms of obstruction in the battles they waged to make things better for all Americans. They are thus entitled to just compensation as are veterans from any war, for their battle was in fact the Second Civil War, far more important than the racist war in Vietnam and the present unprovoked war in Iraq.One result of the Black Panther Party was the US government’s adoption of their free breakfast program for all children. Black Student Union members fought for diversity in education, and with the establishment of Black Studies, it was soon followed by Asian Studies, Native American Studies,Chicano Studies, Gender Studies, and American academia was forever changed for the better, for the racist Eurocentric education suffered a death blow.Let us not fail to acknowledge and reward the cultural workers who established the West coast arm of the Black Arts Movement or BAM, which revolutionized the esthetics of the arts, replacing the art for art sake of the European paradigm with a functional approach that stated art is indeed didactic, i.e., for education and elevation of consciousness, not merely for entertainment. Cultural workers such as Ed Bullins, Marvin X, Danny Glover, Jimmy Garrett, Vonetta McGee, Sarah Webster Fabio, Adam David Miller, Ntozake Shange, Reginald Lockett, Avotjca, and others, raised the standard of the black arts that had been initiated by the Harlem Renaissance, but BAM was more political and directed to the masses rather than to the whites seeking exotica and erotica. It was a revolutionary artistic movement, working in tandem with the political liberation movement. Not only was BAM the sister of the Black Power movement, but in a very real since, it was the mother since many of the politicos were nurtured in the womb of BAM, then advanced to the political revolution. We think of Bobby Seale, Eldridge Cleaver, Huey Newton, Benny Stewart, George Murray, Emory Douglass, Samuel Napier and others who came through BAM.And finally, BAM, by the very nature of the literature, forced inclusion of its material in academia, thus upsetting the status quo, altering it forever when ethnic literature was forced into the Eurocentric curriculum. Other ethnic groups followed suit with demands their literature become apart of the general curriculum. The Asian poet Janice Mirikini (wife of Rev. Cecil Williams of Glide Church) will tell people, “It was the poetry of Marvin X that awakened me to my ethnicity.” So yes, BAM awakened other ethnicities to the power of their indigenous literature and artistic expression, freeing them of Eurocentric domination or white supremacy/lunacy.Unfortunately, opportunists took advantage of the situation created by the liberation fighters to simply obtain tenure, thus the original mission was aborted with the resultant disintegration of community. If black consciousness had been properly spread to the community, there would be children today carrying on the tradition rather than engaged in self destructive behavior. The present situation is indeed a shame, but perhaps if the veteran liberation fighters are honored, it will inspire the children of today to engage in the protracted struggle to liberate themselves from the last vestiges of white supremacy/lunacy.
Plato Negro on the Dirty South
A haunting place, home of my ancestors, a place of blood and terror, hate and love. My child lives there, my grandson. They were in Jenna today to be part of history. My daughter wanted her son to see history in the making, so they traveled from Houston to Jenna by bus. There were so many people my daughter and grandson were not able to hear the speakers, but just being there was an experience, especially for my ten year old grandson.
My daughter has been part of history since she was born. She was conceived while I was in exile in Mexico City and Belize with her mother during the Vietnam War era, so she is a political baby. She learned to walk at the Black Educational Theatre I founded in San Francisco while teaching at the University of California, Berkeley,1972.
As a toddler, she heard the sounds of Sun Ra’s Arkestra backing my play Take Care of Business, so she is a child of the Black Arts Movement. She grew up, married and settled in Houston. She loves it there because she lives in a world of black people, sometimes never seeing white people for days. It is like this in the South, this land where my fathers and mothers died, this land so haunted and vexed with pain, guilt and shame, compounded with denial and manners, etiquette, decorum, innuendo and circumlocution.
When I copied a manuscript in South Carolina, the sister at the copy center saw the title How To Recover from the Addiction to White Supremacy and said, “You ain’t from here.” I asked why do you say that? “Because we don’t say that down here (White Supremacy),” she replied.. I didn’t ask why. I knew it was because the South has manners—one can’t be in your face as I am, a North American African from California.
The South has another way of doing things, not so crude and rude, but polite and civil, even in their savagery, it is a civil savagery, after all every one knows how to act, the oppressed and the oppressor, so they do a dance, a masquerade, a ballet of pure denial until things explode or those outside agitators appear to rock the boat.
And so they came today to Jenna, rocking the boat of injustice, hoping to change the traditional way of doing things, attempting to bring the white supremacy customs to an end after years, decades, centuries of corruption and miscarriage of justice. Will the people of Jenna get it? Will America get it? We think not, not without a second civil war.
In spite of the blood and terror, slavery and failed reconstruction, segregation, integration and subtle and not so subtle racism of today, there is the persistent and lingering desire on the part of whites to continue white supremacy.
It is in the air, in the trees, in the swamps and bayous, in the lakes and rivers, even the ocean beaches, a feeling that all is not right and will not get right without a final battle, the battle to end white supremacy once and for all times.
And this is true in spite of all the progress, all the interracial harmony, for in spite of all the good, the bad, the evil persists like a sore on the psyche, a disease of the heart that no amount of political realignment can rectify, no amount of religiosity, no amount of economic justice can heal.
Peace without justice is no peace at all, rather it is merely prolonging the inevitable day when a generation shall rise up and say no more sham peace, sham justice, shame economic parity, but we want the real deal and death is better than persecution.
BEYOND BLACK RAGE/WHITE SUPREMACY
BEYOND BLACK RAGE/WHITE SUPREMACY
Anger and rage are the dominant emotions expressed at the Pan African Mental Health Peer Group sessions to recover from the addiction to white supremacy. The initial emotion is joy due to the relief and excitement of persons finding themselves in a safe space to express themselves, finally and freely. The consensus is such a space has been long overdue and why has it taken so long to figure out the solution to an unbearable situation of stultification. What a relief to be in a space where persons can speak and be heard, accepted and not rejected or told they are too angry or too emotional. Poetically speaking, it is as though they have been standing in the rain but finally someone has arrived with an umbrella. As each addict to white supremacy does his/her check-in, anger is clearly the dominant emotion, with women expressing the most severe degree of outrage, the men maintain their well known cool pose until they go deeper into their testimony, then we see their rage equals if not surpasses that of the women. There are those of both genders who want to do acts of violence to white society. They are pissed at the hostile environment on the job and want to attack their boss or co-workers. Again, they are overjoyed to be in a space where their anger can be expressed without recrimination. There are those upset at the recent arrival of white people in the hood. They don’t understand why the white people are there, how they got there, and why nothing can be done to get them out, such as burning down their houses or even burning crosses on their lawns, such is the severity of the rage—totally irrational, making those addicted a danger to themselves and others. Some of the blacks addicted to white supremacy are angry at other blacks. They cannot understand the negative behavior of blacks, why they are killing each other nightly, why youth are out of control, or why the police harass them for simply being black. Of course violence is the ultimate result of anger and rage, and there are quite a few men and women forced into court mandated anger management classes. Homicide and suicide are clearly on the rise, especially as we slip into the worldwide recession/depression, for tension is heightened, frustration is deep because many persons cannot decipher a solution to their economic woes. Misplaced aggression is the order of the day because the cause is never attacked such as blood sucking oil companies, scheming and scamming mortgage companies who graciously gave sub-prime loans only to foreclose, and the perennial wage slave bosses. More often the object of rage is the wife, another brother or sister in the hood who is just as frustrated as the victimizer. Obama’s run for president has given hope to some in the hood, but many can see how racism is tearing him down at every turn, even his wife has been attacked for saying she only of late is she proud of being an American, as if we owe America the Nobel peace prize for oppressing us through the centuries down to the present moment. Even his pastor is ridiculed for having black consciousness and teaching liberation theology—so what if some of his sermons crossed the line of propriety, according to white American standards. If Obama is harmed, look for the ghettoes of America to explode from anger and rage. The Retreat to Recover At a retreat to recover from the addiction to white supremacy, peer group members expressed joy at escaping the city to the country, finding themselves in nature, seeing pine trees standing tall, upright, the sound of water flowing in the creek, the beautiful rolling hills, cows grazing in the distance, lizards running about—bowing up and down as if in salat (prayer), the mighty hawk gliding above our heads, deer and wild turkey outside the window, stars in the night sky, a phenomena never seen in the smog filled city. After observing the wonder of God, a peer group member said she was beginning to finally understand there was no need to be angry at white people, she now felt the urgent need to recover her mental balance so she could follow her bliss, not spend time in anger and rage due to her hostile environment and the resulting addiction to white supremacy, the cause of much stress, disease and death. Overpowered by the beauty of nature, she saw the need to focus on her destiny as a divine being in harmony with the beauty in her midst. She said a light had come on in her head so that she see clearly now the infinite possibilities of life. The retreat began with the ritual entering the gate of the land, stopping at the creek for a moment of silence to ponder the sound of water, acknowledge the ancestors, to say a prayer asking permission to be on the land: O Ancestors, we come in peace and righteousness We ask permission to be on this sacred land today We praise our Native American ancestors whose blood Is on this land. We ask that they grant us permission to walk On solid ground as we seek their healing energy. Facilitator: Ahlan wa sahlan (welcome to my home And may you walk on solid ground.) Ahlan wa sahlan. Group: Ache. The group walked up the hill to the meeting house where a meal awaited them: baked salmon, baked chicken, brown rice, bean vegetable soup and potato salad, carrot juice, sweet water from the well. Ahlan wa sahlan. Al humdulilah. Grace: We acknowledge the Creator and thank Him for the breath of life, thank Him for the beauty of life, thank Him for the intelligence and wisdom we are blessed with, thank Him that we have the consciousness to desire unity with our brothers and sisters in America, Africa and the Diaspora, thank Him that in spite of slavery, colonialism and neo-colonialism, we yet have African and spiritual consciousness and are determined to make the cultural revolution a success; thank Him for keeping us on the straight path to national liberation and Pan African liberation….(from Step 11, p. 92) After the meal, the group unpacked and began a session of biblo-therapy, a discussion of the 13 Steps to recover from the addiction to white supremacy. STEP l We admit we are not powerless over self hatred, racism and white supremacy thinking, but our lives have become unmanageable, partly because we live in denial and fear. Denial is quite simply the evasion of reality. Denial can be personal or communal, for sometimes an entire nation can be in denial about its abominations, for they are too painful to make adjustments in the collective psyche and the personal reality, to do so would incriminate the mythology and ritual of said society, thus the normal daily round would be disrupted and dysfunctional, for painful adjustments would be in order, and as long as we can avoid the painful the better, after all, the status quo can be maintained…. ….But in our grand denial, blacks as well as whites will attempt to convince the world this point of view is left wing poppycock, the thoughts of a disgruntled segment of black Americans who have failed to enjoy the benefits of capitalism, now globalism--no matter the disparities in birth and death, education, wage parity, housing, health care, homicide and suicide--in every aspect of Americana…. (from Race: The Grand Denial, unpublished essay by Dr. M) ….Fear is the residue of slavery, the torture, rape, murder, the mores of submission and passivity whipped into our ancestors and elders and transmitted through DNA to the present generation who live in fear of white authority, especially the police who are the modern day slave catchers. But fear remains as the single most element that prolongs white supremacy. We fear each other, we fear success, we fear to do for self or to attempt self sufficiency on the economic level—for how shall we live without a paycheck from the white man, how shall we make it? We fear associating with a black radical brother or sister, after all, the white man is watching us always, he has spies tracking our every move, we are certain of it…. We fear the woman and man we love, for surely they will betray us, it is only a matter of time, they are going to cross us, so we cannot trust them ever, no matter how much they say they love us and no matter how much we love them. We cannot unite with the brotherhood or sisterhood because we fear something is surely to go wrong, money will be stolen, our wife or girlfriend will run off with another brother…. (from How to Recover, Step 1, page 30) With respect to fear, the group was asked to do an exercise to dispel fear of each other. They were told to give each other a massage as they sat at the conference table. The purpose was to help them get to know each other. This exercise was said to be one of the highlights of the retreat. It relaxed everyone, making them feel safe. In the name of love we come We go Peace in the name of love In the name of love we exist forever We are the trashing floor The opening door In the name of love Life is for love Give love Receive love Submit to love Do not deny love Suffer only a little while for love Let not love make you suffer Long suffering is not love Peace is love A face of joy is love…. Tell me of love you who have loved longer than I In the fire of love In the heaven of love I am a child In the name of love Let me grow in love I am the black bird in love I fly with love I swoop into the ocean and pluck the fish In the name of love Oceans flow with love Let the ocean wash me with love Even the cold ocean is love The morning swim is love The ocean chills me with love From the deep come fish Full of love…. (from In the Name of Love by Dr. M/Marvin X) STEP 2 We have come to believe that a power within ourselves--for we are within God and God is within us--can restore us to sanity, freedom, self-determination, independence and nationhood as a Pan African people, as spiritually conscious human beings. Nothing and no one can help us until we are ready to help ourselves. Even God tells us we must take the first step, then He will take ten…. …We must call upon that power within to restore us to sanity, to cast away our fears, the inferiority complex we have allowed to master our soul as a result of believing the white supremacy hype. We must call upon the power within and the Higher Power without, call it God, Allah, Jesus, Jah, whatever, whomever, just know we must tune into the source of spiritual power to overcome our addiction to white supremacy that has us disunited, hateful, selfish, greedy, with hearts full of evil and murder. In such a state of mind, how can we be successful in life, certainly we are in no condition to love or to be loved. We are a wretched wretch and of no good to ourselves or anyone else. In such a mental state, we cannot think of freedom, justice, self-determination, independence…. So we call upon the Higher Power to heal our sick minds and hearts…. STEP 3 We have made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understand it: that God is a power within ourselves. Yes is the message to ourselves, yes, the magic word…. Find a place to be silent, silent as the trees, as the wind, as the rolling hills. Meditate on the purpose of this retreat, on the purpose of your life. The language is silence. It speaks louder than words. Sometimes it is better to say nothing, let life reveal itself…. Sometimes the mouth cannot keep quiet. It must chatter out of fear not being heard. Yet one is heard in the silence. It is when one talks that one is not heard. The eyes speak, the heart, the hands, the feet speak. Hear the feet running in fear. Hear the feet running in love. Hear the arms moving in hate. You do not talk to me, yet I hear everything you say. No, no, no, that is all you say. Everything about you is no. Your lips say no, your eyes, your heart, your mind, your arms, legs, feet. You are a no person. I run from you. You say no to God…. When you say yes to life you open the world of infinite possibilities. Yes to love. Yes to success, yes to hope, yes to truth, yes to prosperity, yes to divinity, yes to resurrection, yes to ascension, yes to eternity…. Yes is the language of God. Yes is the language of Divinity, Spirituality. All the prophets said yes. Adam said yes. Abraham said yes. Moses said yes. Solomon said yes. Job said yes. Jeremiah, Isaiah said yes…Jesus said yes, Muhammad…Elijah and Malcolm, Martin, Garvey, Harriet Tubman and Sojourner Truth said yes. Fannie Lou and Rosa Parks, Betty Shabazz and Coretta Scott said yes. Mama and daddy said yes, grandma and grandpa said yes. All the ancestors said yes. Forevermore, let go of no and say yes. Dance to yes. Shout to yes…. (from Beyond Religion, toward Spirituality, Dr. M) …All negativity in the family must cease immediately because it is not of the Most High and cannot be redeemed in the temple of holiness. Fly into the winds Pan Africa, fly into the winds of the Most High and be as one with the wind, yes, even that whirlwind Garvey told you about that was sure to come and has come, let us rejoice. Say again, we are within the Higher Power and the Higher Power is within us. Say again, the tide is turning because we are turning the tide. Ache, Amen, Amin, Hotep. STEP 4 We shall make a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves…. …We can never stand tall until we face all the truth about ourselves, as Sun Ra taught, the low down dirty truth, that is what we want to examine, for the plain truth is not good enough, rather, we want the low down funky truth. Cornel West says everybody wants to hide the funk, tame the funk, disguise the funk, but we are only enabled and empowered when the funk comes through…. A sister volunteered to clean the funk in the house. She said this would be her contribution to the retreat. So she began to clean the dust, the spider webs, the grime, the clutter. Others joined her, but she took the lead. Amina Baraka said, “The only way you can clean the funk is to get down and clean the funk!” We cannot be healed until we clean the funk in our lives, the baggage, the waste, the clutter that prevents us from thinking clearly, from hearing the voice of God when He speaks to us. Why are you still praying when God has already answered? You are blocking the message to your mind—you are blocking your blessings with your filth, yet you want to be in heaven. For too long my patron has begged me to clean up so God can bless me in a big way! So I thank the sisters who came like angels to help me clean up my act. Surely God will not bless us until we stop acting ungratefully, until we take a complete inventory of ourselves and make corrections to qualify for our blessings. …What if we leaped into the sun What if we danced around the pond Mud on our face and body Naked but entwined with love Perhaps a smile would come We would be grateful for the breath of life So precious we would fight and fight and fight…. (from Remembering Shani Baraka) After reading and discussing several more steps, the facilitator asked the group to apply white paint on their faces and walk to the pond, a short distance into the woods. One person resisted taking the walk but finally submitted, and once at the pond was overjoyed she had decided to come. The walk to the woods and arriving at the pond full of clear water from the mountain show transformed her spirit and the spirit of all present. One person wanted to shout so she did. On the other side of the pond cows were grazing. The bull roared as if to reply to her shout. Turtles stuck their heads out of the water. One person conversed with them. The turtles lingered, then disappeared only to reappear. Upon returning from the pond, the group continued reading the steps. Step 5 caused persons to break down. This step involves admitting to God and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs. When the facilitator read the text about apologizing for being a dope dealer, a sister confessed that she too had been a dope dealer and apologized to those persons whose lives she destroyed. She began to cry and had to be comforted. When the facilitator read from the text the apology to black teachers and professors, another person testified she had been mean and cruel to her college professors and apologized. She too began to cry and had to be comforted. The retreat ended with the ritual washing of the white paint off the faces. During the retreat, the facilitator received a call from poet Amiri Baraka, and when he was asked to give a message to the group, said simply, “White off!” And so it is. But the retreat revealed a problem deeper than the addiction to white supremacy, for after all, white supremacy is an illusion for no one is superior to another, thus the old folks said white people suffer lunacy and should be left alone, as one does the crazy uncle in the family. The Holy Qur’an says, “Leave them alone in their inordinacy blindly wandering on….” The real problem for Pan Africans is to ascend from the animal plane to our divine self, to be in this world but not of it, to strive to express our greatness, to defy the hostile environment by not giving energy to it—expel the anger and rage with love, but be always on the alert and wear the armor of God, only then can we walk untouched through the valley of the shadow of death, only then can we sit in the presence of our enemies, yet our cup shall overflow with goodness and mercy, and we shall dwell in the house of the Lord forever. Ache.
On the Power of Prayer
Brothers and Sisters, we must pray to get through the day. We must pray for all those sick in hospitals and those in hospices and who must make their transition because of final stage diseases. Pray. Some of those in need of prayer are our relatives, loved ones, friends, and even strangers we come upon in our daily round tell us of their sorrow stories, so we pray for strangers and even those we hate when they are in grief. Pray just to make it through the day. Pray for the Ancestors, that they are happy with us for staying the course, that we do not shame them with wicked behavior and demon consciousness, that we elevate ourselves to the divine plane always, discarding the animal plane of consciousness. Pray for those in hospitals not served by our own kind because we refuse to build such hospitals, and so our sick and diseased must go to strangers for treatment.Just know the devil used the doctor, nurse and undertaker to carry out the creation of the devil. And why do we love the devil, because he gives us nothing! So we are at the whim of our enemy for medical treatment, experimented on, misdiagnosed, victim of malpractice and other scams in the medical profession, along with no observers from family or friends, we go under the knife and often do not come out alive. What part don't you understand? Pray, so we can get through the day. Prayer is energy like air, fresh air, healing, soothing, air, a prayer.
Obama's Fake Speech to Muslims
I, Plato Negro, predict our President will go down in history as a great actor. In Cairo we will see him pretend to address the Islamic nations, calling for moderation and cooperation with the US toward a Palestinian state and a united front against Iran. In truth, there is already a group of moderate, uncle tom Muslim nations in league with the US and Zionism and united against Iran. This group includes the sycophants Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Jordan and the Gulf states. These nations are conspiring with Israel to contain Shite expansion from Iraq, Iran, Syria and Lebanon via Hezbollah. The Sunni Muslim Nations have no intention to allow a functioning Shite government in Iraq. They are and will do everything in their power to check Iran's influence in Iraq, including sending insurgents from their countries, not only to counter Shite power but to get the young men away from home where they are potential trouble makers who might join the opposition to overthrow the reactionary Sunni regimes aligned with Zionism and American imperialism, now called Globalism. So send them away from Sudan, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Jordan and elsewhere to be suicide bombers and blame Shite Islam as the problem, including Iran's nuclear program, while only America has used nuclear weapons in our lifetime and the Zionists are prepared to use such weapons to prevent justice in Palestine. Thus we need to be concerned about the American use of such weapons of mass destruction, more than anyone else, including North Korea. Does not America have the biggest nuclear arsenal in the world and has she not proven she will use it, especially to attack her non-white enemies?It is totally hypocritical for Obama to talk of peace with Muslim nations while the US is still occupying Muslim land in Iraq, Afghanistan and slowly but surely moving into Pakistan as he vowed to do while running for president. So, yes, we have a white imperialist in black face, a negro afraid to say the word Black, but if one million black men return to Washington DC and camp out until freedom is won, he will immediately seek out black leaders to make a deal. So called black leaders and thinkers should be planning for a post-white supremacy America. As Baraka asked years ago, "What are you going to do when white power falls?" Answer this question, Black America! Don't tell me all you want is a job, a good slave job for which you were brought here in the beginning. Are you that delusional, is your break with reality so profound that you cannot see the day of jobs in America is over and done, and that you are now on your own, finally free and independent whether you want to be or not. You are now forced to get your nuts out the sand and stand up to do something for self. You are now being called upon, yes, by God Himself/Herself, to get you black ass out the white house intoyour own house because when white power falls, including white power in black face, you may find yourself again with the scraps in the multiracial power grab or Balkanization of your land of the free and home of the brave.
Brothers and Sisters, we must pray to get through the day. We must pray for all those sick in hospitals and those in hospices and who must make their transition because of final stage diseases. Pray. Some of those in need of prayer are our relatives, loved ones, friends, and even strangers we come upon in our daily round tell us of their sorrow stories, so we pray for strangers and even those we hate when they are in grief. Pray just to make it through the day. Pray for the Ancestors, that they are happy with us for staying the course, that we do not shame them with wicked behavior and demon consciousness, that we elevate ourselves to the divine plane always, discarding the animal plane of consciousness. Pray for those in hospitals not served by our own kind because we refuse to build such hospitals, and so our sick and diseased must go to strangers for treatment.Just know the devil used the doctor, nurse and undertaker to carry out the creation of the devil. And why do we love the devil, because he gives us nothing! So we are at the whim of our enemy for medical treatment, experimented on, misdiagnosed, victim of malpractice and other scams in the medical profession, along with no observers from family or friends, we go under the knife and often do not come out alive. What part don't you understand? Pray, so we can get through the day. Prayer is energy like air, fresh air, healing, soothing, air, a prayer.
Obama's Fake Speech to Muslims
I, Plato Negro, predict our President will go down in history as a great actor. In Cairo we will see him pretend to address the Islamic nations, calling for moderation and cooperation with the US toward a Palestinian state and a united front against Iran. In truth, there is already a group of moderate, uncle tom Muslim nations in league with the US and Zionism and united against Iran. This group includes the sycophants Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Jordan and the Gulf states. These nations are conspiring with Israel to contain Shite expansion from Iraq, Iran, Syria and Lebanon via Hezbollah. The Sunni Muslim Nations have no intention to allow a functioning Shite government in Iraq. They are and will do everything in their power to check Iran's influence in Iraq, including sending insurgents from their countries, not only to counter Shite power but to get the young men away from home where they are potential trouble makers who might join the opposition to overthrow the reactionary Sunni regimes aligned with Zionism and American imperialism, now called Globalism. So send them away from Sudan, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Jordan and elsewhere to be suicide bombers and blame Shite Islam as the problem, including Iran's nuclear program, while only America has used nuclear weapons in our lifetime and the Zionists are prepared to use such weapons to prevent justice in Palestine. Thus we need to be concerned about the American use of such weapons of mass destruction, more than anyone else, including North Korea. Does not America have the biggest nuclear arsenal in the world and has she not proven she will use it, especially to attack her non-white enemies?It is totally hypocritical for Obama to talk of peace with Muslim nations while the US is still occupying Muslim land in Iraq, Afghanistan and slowly but surely moving into Pakistan as he vowed to do while running for president. So, yes, we have a white imperialist in black face, a negro afraid to say the word Black, but if one million black men return to Washington DC and camp out until freedom is won, he will immediately seek out black leaders to make a deal. So called black leaders and thinkers should be planning for a post-white supremacy America. As Baraka asked years ago, "What are you going to do when white power falls?" Answer this question, Black America! Don't tell me all you want is a job, a good slave job for which you were brought here in the beginning. Are you that delusional, is your break with reality so profound that you cannot see the day of jobs in America is over and done, and that you are now on your own, finally free and independent whether you want to be or not. You are now forced to get your nuts out the sand and stand up to do something for self. You are now being called upon, yes, by God Himself/Herself, to get you black ass out the white house intoyour own house because when white power falls, including white power in black face, you may find yourself again with the scraps in the multiracial power grab or Balkanization of your land of the free and home of the brave.
Preface to Comments
Yes, it was indeed thrilling to hear an American president say As-Salaam-Alaikum and quote passages from Al Qur-an, and his middle name is Hussein! What in the world is going on? And then he spoke of the splendors of Moorish Spain. He noted the first American treaty was with a Muslim nation, Morocco, in the 18th century. Moorish Americans, followers of Noble Drew Ali, site this treaty to claim the Moors were not slaves but independent people and were recognized for their nationality, not as Negroes but citizens of Moorish civilization and their descendants should be respected as such today. Obama mentioned the splendor of Islamic science, art and literature, especially geography, calligraphy, medicine, translating the classics to enable Europe to come out of the "dark ages" into the rennaissance of the Middle Ages. Most Muslims know this history, so he was clearly speaking to non-Muslims to educate them on the billion plus people in their midst. It was his duty to be diplomatic and not upset his host, Pharaoh Mubarak (umm, they have the same name, Barack or blessed, Mubarak, one who is blessed). He even quoted the Bible, blessed are the peacemakers, they shalled be called the children of God. Truly, it was a breath of fresh aid to hear an intelligent president speak, and to speak with clear knowledge of the subject matter. But finally, have no illusions, take off your rose colored glasses, Obama is a master politician, otherwise he would not be president of the United States, so he is playing a game with the players for the high stakes game of world hegemony--it might be a losing battle because the consciousness of white supremacy and capitalism must go into the dustbin of history. It should be a Communist nation is coming into world power. And one need only look south of the border to list the nations turning toward Socialism and Communism, to one degree or another, call them Democratic Socialists or simply say they have an alternative to the free market economy that seeks cheap labor and natural resources at the point of the gun. I'm afraid your president cannot tell you the deep structure issues he is dealing with, but confounds you with surface platitudes about democracy and women's rights, while people want to know what is changing on the ground: can we get clean water, electricity and garbage service in Baghdad, can we get food and building materials into Gaza; can we stop the killing of civilians from US war planes in Afghanistan, can we return home three million refugees in the US inspired war in Pakistan?
The Speech
The SpeechAs I predicted, his speech was Obama Light, full of poetic sounds but no fury. How can you tell a man not to be violent when you've invaded his house for 60 years? And now you want to be recognized as the owner of his house while he is living in a tent in the backyard. I don't blame Hamas, if it takes one hundred years (as with the Crusaders who finally departed with Saladin's sword on their throats) or two hundred years. No one is going to give up his land, no matter how long it takes. And furthermore, Mr. Obama, don't tell me to be non-violent when you too have invaded the land of my brother's in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan and maybe soon you will plant your feet, guns, and bombs in Iran. Yes, you spoke in the land of Pharaoh, talking of democracy while you know Pharaoh Mubarak's son is about to take over to extend the dynasty. You speak of democratic elections but Hamas was elected but you overthrew their election with money and guns delievered bythat whore Condi. You said you were about truth but you hide the truth while you know. You know you are already in bed with Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Jordan and the Gulf States to stop the spread of Shia Islam which is flowing rapidly from the Tigris to the Mediterranean. And the Jew is in the middle of the bed with you all in one giant orgy of lies, death and destruction. Can the devil fool a Muslim? No, not these days!
Casinoleo3 writes:
Brother Marvin it is no suprise,Obama is a creation of the ruling class,he is a political Bill Cosby, Mr. Huxable. What has Obama done for Black people who are suffering so much ? Not a damn thing, Obama is an Uncle Tom butt kisser.
Plato Negro on Style & Paul Cobb
Paul Cobb is a great writer who is an undercover poet with the flair for elegant poetic expression. Also, he has the unique ability to emply subterfuge, supreme irony and circumlocution. He can make something that stinks like rotten meat (Langston Hughes) smell like a rose. This puts him in league with wizards and/or magicians, persons with the ability to make that which is not appear to be. His salvation is that his heart is in the right place. It is a shame he must spend his writing time on mundane issues and only occasionally reveal his poetic genius. We pray he will one day find the time to let his poetic light shine to the max which will elevale him above the mediocre muckracking journalistic writing, more often his writing is perpetuating the world of make believe as delineated in E. Franklin Frazier's classic Black Bourgeoisie. Such output is far beneath his talents. The world is being deprived of his wonderful poetic expression, even though it is comes through prose.
Plato Negro on Style & Paul Cobb
Paul Cobb is a great writer who is an undercover poet with the flair for elegant poetic expression. Also, he has the unique ability to emply subterfuge, supreme irony and circumlocution. He can make something that stinks like rotten meat (Langston Hughes) smell like a rose. This puts him in league with wizards and/or magicians, persons with the ability to make that which is not appear to be. His salvation is that his heart is in the right place. It is a shame he must spend his writing time on mundane issues and only occasionally reveal his poetic genius. We pray he will one day find the time to let his poetic light shine to the max which will elevale him above the mediocre muckracking journalistic writing, more often his writing is perpetuating the world of make believe as delineated in E. Franklin Frazier's classic Black Bourgeoisie. Such output is far beneath his talents. The world is being deprived of his wonderful poetic expression, even though it is comes through prose.
Plato’s Prayer Circle--A Motley Crew
Plato gathered the men in a circle to his rear as he continued vending books. As each man came to his table, he ushered them into the circle of brothers attempting to heal themselves from the addiction to white supremacy. It was a motley crew; one brother had had a private session with Plato earlier that morning. The brother was thirty years old and in grief due to losing his father, a doctor, who was murdered on the streets of Oakland six years ago at the age of 54.
As the brother talked, the conversation eventually came to the death of his father. At this point the brother broke down in tears and had to depart for a moment to compose himself with a cigarette. He returned but his pain was so great he began crying again, embarrassed at himself.
Plato hugged him and let him know he too had lost a loved one, his son, who committed suicide at the age of 38. Plato told the young man how much he hated the term closure, because he would never get over the death of his son. The young man said the movie Pursuit of Happiness broke him down because his father had raised him alone, had given him consciousness, while his mother, a Nigerian, had returned home, leaving him to be raised by his father. He said his mother was an arrogant woman with class issues, thinking everyone, including he, was her servant.
He despised her for the way she talked to his father, demeaning and castrating, while his father was humble. He said the good in himself came from his father, the negative from his mother. While visiting Nigeria, he observed their supreme arrogance. Plato said Black Americans have this same arrogance, no doubt because so many of us are descendants from that area of West Africa. Other men in the circle included two black CIA agents. Well, one was a Special Forces Operative, the other a Consultant to the military in Southeast Asia. They debated each other about which one was still on the payroll. Was Plato on their current watch?Plato only occasionally listened to their conversation which included a variety of topics, but Plato’s objective was to let them talk, free style, to detoxify the pain of white supremacy. The Special Forces brother told Plato he was not well after his service to America. He said no man who kills can ever be well again, no matter what is said about recovering from post-traumatic stress. He said he has been trained to kill his mother, if ordered to do so. Another brother was a Five Per Center, so when a customer asked for literature on this cult founded by Clarence 13X, Plato pulled the young man out of the circle to speak with the customer. The Five Per Center showed him the literature, the basic text and other writings on the group. The customer claimed the Five Per Centers are the wave of the future. Plato did not argue with the customer, but told him to make sure he studied the writings of Noble Drew Ali, Master Fard Muhammad and Elijah Muhammad, the precursers of Clarence 13X. As per the prayer circle, Plato wished the men would be diplomatic with each other rather than attempt to doctor the patient to death, since we are all sick to one degree or another, but we must and will heal ourselves, so there is the urgent need to practice patience and kindness.
We must understand the fragile condition of our personalities, our damaged self esteem. And this is especially necessary for the elder brothers when speaking with the younger generation who are hostile to any message from the elders, especially if it is not delivered with gentleness, kindness and respect, even when we know the young brother may be ignorant.
But do we want to save our people or simply express age superiority because this attitude will not heal the brotherhood or sisterhood. We must engage in the spirit of revolutionary love and submission to the higher cause, the salvation of our people.
As the brother talked, the conversation eventually came to the death of his father. At this point the brother broke down in tears and had to depart for a moment to compose himself with a cigarette. He returned but his pain was so great he began crying again, embarrassed at himself.
Plato hugged him and let him know he too had lost a loved one, his son, who committed suicide at the age of 38. Plato told the young man how much he hated the term closure, because he would never get over the death of his son. The young man said the movie Pursuit of Happiness broke him down because his father had raised him alone, had given him consciousness, while his mother, a Nigerian, had returned home, leaving him to be raised by his father. He said his mother was an arrogant woman with class issues, thinking everyone, including he, was her servant.
He despised her for the way she talked to his father, demeaning and castrating, while his father was humble. He said the good in himself came from his father, the negative from his mother. While visiting Nigeria, he observed their supreme arrogance. Plato said Black Americans have this same arrogance, no doubt because so many of us are descendants from that area of West Africa. Other men in the circle included two black CIA agents. Well, one was a Special Forces Operative, the other a Consultant to the military in Southeast Asia. They debated each other about which one was still on the payroll. Was Plato on their current watch?Plato only occasionally listened to their conversation which included a variety of topics, but Plato’s objective was to let them talk, free style, to detoxify the pain of white supremacy. The Special Forces brother told Plato he was not well after his service to America. He said no man who kills can ever be well again, no matter what is said about recovering from post-traumatic stress. He said he has been trained to kill his mother, if ordered to do so. Another brother was a Five Per Center, so when a customer asked for literature on this cult founded by Clarence 13X, Plato pulled the young man out of the circle to speak with the customer. The Five Per Center showed him the literature, the basic text and other writings on the group. The customer claimed the Five Per Centers are the wave of the future. Plato did not argue with the customer, but told him to make sure he studied the writings of Noble Drew Ali, Master Fard Muhammad and Elijah Muhammad, the precursers of Clarence 13X. As per the prayer circle, Plato wished the men would be diplomatic with each other rather than attempt to doctor the patient to death, since we are all sick to one degree or another, but we must and will heal ourselves, so there is the urgent need to practice patience and kindness.
We must understand the fragile condition of our personalities, our damaged self esteem. And this is especially necessary for the elder brothers when speaking with the younger generation who are hostile to any message from the elders, especially if it is not delivered with gentleness, kindness and respect, even when we know the young brother may be ignorant.
But do we want to save our people or simply express age superiority because this attitude will not heal the brotherhood or sisterhood. We must engage in the spirit of revolutionary love and submission to the higher cause, the salvation of our people.
Plato Negro on The Reactionary Negro
Why does the so-called Negro react to everything in the world? Why cannot he/she learn how to be proactive, to originate an agenda and stay on focus no matter what else goes on around him? Remember that old civil rites song, "I Shall Not Be Moved." And the other tune, "Ain't Gonna Let Nobody Turn Me Round."
These are songs of the warrior, not the supplicant, and until we dawn the persona of the warrior we shall continue chasing fires, from coast to coast, like chickens with our heads cut off. What about a general action plan for the next one hundred years--our enemy has one for us, to keep us oppressed for eternity, but what is our plan, for then it doesn't matter what is his plan.
But if we have no plan, then we shall surely follow his, whether it is expending our energy on a white woman for president or a white Negro--this has nothing to do with the ultimate national aspirations of forty million people. It is about submission to the national agenda of white supremacists and their collaborators.
The Democrats and Republicans are both white supremacists who will ultimately attempt to maintain white privilege and power around the world, utilizing the power of North American Africans when it suits the agenda of white supremacy—forget about the dream of democracy for it only has relevance when it can be used as a subterfuge for maintaining and extending white supremacy at home and around the world. One need only take a photo of the US Congress and Supreme Court to understand this is a white man's land, no matter what the demographics say or suggest for the future. Mutabaruka told you don't stay in a white man's land too long.We are caught in a class war where color makes no difference. There shall be blacks as dangerous to our national health as whites, yet they shall be presented as our saviors and we shall go for the sham liberators just as we would go for fried ice cream or duped into purchasing the Brooklyn Bridge. Wake up, North American Africans and get a healing. Your slothful thinking has you going backward into neo-slavery. You are being attacked by white supremacy from Jena, LA to West Virginia to Yuba City, CA, mainly because you have been lulled to sleep with nursery rhymes of rappers and pseudo prosperity sermons from preachers with more dramatic techniques than Shakespeare. You claim to be mature adults and elders with wisdom, yet you appear to suffer arrested development, for your pants sag on your behinds just like your children, adult women have tattoos above the crack of their behinds just as their daughters.
Adult men drive cars and SUVs with wheels spinning backwards as do their children and the cars of adults play rap songs unfit for adults with mature minds we would expect to be listening to Miles, Coltrane and Charlie Parker.
Thus, you are part of the problem rather than the solution. So we wonder from whom might a solution derive since naturally and traditionally adults are expected to rule their communities. But adults and elders in the North American African communities are terrified of their children, refuse to speak with them or intervene while they practice mayhem and behavior fit for animals. We refuse to hug a thug even when the thug is our own sons and daughters, nephews, nieces and neighbors. Even when they go to jail, the sons of most men are left to the tender love of their mothers, for the men abandon their sons to the criminal justice system or are themselves victims as well. And again, reaction is the order of the day, for thinking is confined to the box of Americana, thus the adults in the hood rarely consider taking total and absolute authority over their community, excluding the police, politicians and religious leaders who are mainly agents of pharaoh, Masonic neophytes duty bound to let the blind stay blind. But no matter how long it takes, no matter how long the adults linger in passivity and Hamletic indecision, the ultimate solution is for elders to step to the front of the line and represent, take total control over the social life of their community. They must form elder councils of radical men and women who are proactive with ideas fit for the new millennium, integrated with the new technology and wisdom from progressive elements of the global community. Ideas such as entrepreneurship and micro credit must be presented to our youth so they can envision solutions to their economic woes other than drugs, pimping, prostitution and murder. http://www.blackbirdpressnews.blogspot.com/
These are songs of the warrior, not the supplicant, and until we dawn the persona of the warrior we shall continue chasing fires, from coast to coast, like chickens with our heads cut off. What about a general action plan for the next one hundred years--our enemy has one for us, to keep us oppressed for eternity, but what is our plan, for then it doesn't matter what is his plan.
But if we have no plan, then we shall surely follow his, whether it is expending our energy on a white woman for president or a white Negro--this has nothing to do with the ultimate national aspirations of forty million people. It is about submission to the national agenda of white supremacists and their collaborators.
The Democrats and Republicans are both white supremacists who will ultimately attempt to maintain white privilege and power around the world, utilizing the power of North American Africans when it suits the agenda of white supremacy—forget about the dream of democracy for it only has relevance when it can be used as a subterfuge for maintaining and extending white supremacy at home and around the world. One need only take a photo of the US Congress and Supreme Court to understand this is a white man's land, no matter what the demographics say or suggest for the future. Mutabaruka told you don't stay in a white man's land too long.We are caught in a class war where color makes no difference. There shall be blacks as dangerous to our national health as whites, yet they shall be presented as our saviors and we shall go for the sham liberators just as we would go for fried ice cream or duped into purchasing the Brooklyn Bridge. Wake up, North American Africans and get a healing. Your slothful thinking has you going backward into neo-slavery. You are being attacked by white supremacy from Jena, LA to West Virginia to Yuba City, CA, mainly because you have been lulled to sleep with nursery rhymes of rappers and pseudo prosperity sermons from preachers with more dramatic techniques than Shakespeare. You claim to be mature adults and elders with wisdom, yet you appear to suffer arrested development, for your pants sag on your behinds just like your children, adult women have tattoos above the crack of their behinds just as their daughters.
Adult men drive cars and SUVs with wheels spinning backwards as do their children and the cars of adults play rap songs unfit for adults with mature minds we would expect to be listening to Miles, Coltrane and Charlie Parker.
Thus, you are part of the problem rather than the solution. So we wonder from whom might a solution derive since naturally and traditionally adults are expected to rule their communities. But adults and elders in the North American African communities are terrified of their children, refuse to speak with them or intervene while they practice mayhem and behavior fit for animals. We refuse to hug a thug even when the thug is our own sons and daughters, nephews, nieces and neighbors. Even when they go to jail, the sons of most men are left to the tender love of their mothers, for the men abandon their sons to the criminal justice system or are themselves victims as well. And again, reaction is the order of the day, for thinking is confined to the box of Americana, thus the adults in the hood rarely consider taking total and absolute authority over their community, excluding the police, politicians and religious leaders who are mainly agents of pharaoh, Masonic neophytes duty bound to let the blind stay blind. But no matter how long it takes, no matter how long the adults linger in passivity and Hamletic indecision, the ultimate solution is for elders to step to the front of the line and represent, take total control over the social life of their community. They must form elder councils of radical men and women who are proactive with ideas fit for the new millennium, integrated with the new technology and wisdom from progressive elements of the global community. Ideas such as entrepreneurship and micro credit must be presented to our youth so they can envision solutions to their economic woes other than drugs, pimping, prostitution and murder. http://www.blackbirdpressnews.blogspot.com/
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