Silencia Por Favor

It is only when we reach this age
we come to see we know nothing
knowing is beginning
yet it is The End
and so we begin and end with ignorance
it is the only thing we can claim for sure
ignorance and illusion
we are sure about this
after all the women, wine, dope, money
illusion
momentary passions in the night
early morn
things unsatisfied
things eternally oppositional
The moment can transcend the moment into the eternal
and if we don't get there so what
let's have ease after difficulty
no oppositional personality
silencia por favor.
no words can cover all the years tears fears
silencia por favor.
--El Muhajir (Marvin X)
3-28-13

Stanford University, first to consider the Hare Papers

Marvin X, Dr. Julia Hare, Dr. Nathan Hare and Attorney Amira Jackmon, Senior Agent of the Community Archives Project Amira Jackmon, Esq., (Yale, Stanford Law), Senior Agent of the Community Archives Project, informs us Stanford University will inspect the Hare Archives next week, making it quite possible the Nathan Hare and Dr. Julia Hare papers will be acquired by Dr. Hare's "deadline" of April 9, his 80th birthday. "Don't make me rich after I die!" he urged Marvin X, project director. Asking price for the Hare archives: two million dollars ($2,000,000.00). Dr. Hare on the Black Scholar Marvin, One other thing, on the issue of whether the journal was black if all of its support or money wasn’t -- and I said that would be determined by its content (by which I was including its ideology) – I should exlain that it is true that Bob was black (or half-black, in that his father was white – doesn’t matter that both of his wives were white, as Julia complained to the New York Times, to Charlayne Hunter, whose husband, unknown to Julia, was also white!—so he was half black but he was not black black. Indeed, the white guy, Allen Ross, and I got along well and even saw eye to eye on most things. It was Bob Chrisman that both of us had problems with, indeed as I said this morning, Al quit before I did and frequently asked me to work with him with The Black Scholar Book Club, before the died. It was Julia’s idea to call Al’s widow, who came to our apartment with her and Al’s daughter and the three of them urged me to leave The Black Scholar, over my protests that I didn’t have time, that I had to finish  my dissertation for the psychology Ph.D. in order to graduate in August. They said if I got out now that would give me more time in time to finish my thesis . That wasn’t true, but I didn’t finish it on time. I’d already planned to leave The Black Scholar once I’d graduated, before Allen Ross left. But by the time I left, the three persons on the board were Marxists and we’d argue over whether some articles should be in the journal. That included black nationalist like Haki Madhubuti, though his article was published. And after I left there was even a forum to rebut it, but perhaps causing the uninitiated to think blackness was being highlighted if anything, and giving Haki some props to boot -- so it’s easy to be misled. Bob even balked at publishing maverick Marxists like Eldridge Cleaver when he was in Algiers and out of sorts with the Panthers and the movement and a black professor in Canada, who had a divergent view – momentarily forget his name, he wasn’t famous or anything, and we did publish him, but increasingly I was losing out, once Gloria started siding with the other two, I guess partly because I had pulled away to a considerable degree in the course of the psychology degree. So the Marxist thing was just one of the reasons I left. Plus they were Marxists but acting independent of other Marxists, so far as I know, with the other two basically conceding to Bob and his caucusing with them. So actually Bob took it over. He chose Robert Allen, with my consent, as I wasn’t expecting or even cut out for no screed. Neither Al nor I wanted to hurt The Black Scholar. It was suggested to me that I sue. I could have sued but with the shaky finances of the journal it could have crumbled. What I would have done if I’m doing it now was go with Al Ross with the Black Scholar Book Club as he had left with and implored me continuously to join him, and I also could have taken the lecture bureau, which was Bob idea trying to get part of my plenteous lecture fees at the time, but I was the one who knew how it worked and set it up. Indeed one thing I came up with, Classified Ads, Bob at first opposed. I told you how we turned the corner by refusing Signet’s first printing of 105,000 copies of “The Best of the Black Scholar” over the size of the author’s cut per book, and wound up getting a bigger cut per book on two books, with 4,000 and 3,000 copies printed of each before they went out of print. There we turned the corner at the door of the big-time into the upper echelons of mediocrity. People who would build a dune in the sand disdain skylifts. Come to think of it I don’t know that Bob ever built anything else. If you don’t count the poem or two after he was at The Black Scholar and once took a leave of a month or so to work on some writing. He wasn’t missed but came back without the writing done, whatever it was. I mean the brother wrote an article in Scanlon’s, one of the few ever published anywhere, including in The Black Scholar, I remember one in the shortlved Scanlon’s called “Ecology is a Racist Shuck.” You don’t say. I almost simultaneously did an article for The Black Scholar called “Black Ecology,” which was translated into several languages around the world. Did he build that article. Indeed, I used to write little publisher’s statements and initial them. One day Al  told me Bob opposed me doing them, so I  stopped doing them, as I had other things to do. If you look at them you may see they set the tone. I interviewed people like Muhammad Ali (stayed a weekend in his home and did roadwork with him one morning when he was living outside Philadelphia to do the interview., and because I didn’t sign them when Robert Hauser wrote the biography of Ali he attributed it to  The Black Scholar and didn’t mention me. Queen Mother Moore was interviewed in my apartment (Bob didn’t know her) and I also paid my way to Detroit while I was on a speaking engagement somewhere and interviewed  Robert Williams shortly after he got back from China. Nathan Marvin, P.S. The three of us agreed to chip in $300 apiece and start The Black Scholar, but Bob could only come up with $150. Nathan From: Nathan Hare [mailto:nhare@pacbell.net]  Sent: Thursday, March 28, 2013 10:48 PM To: 'Marvin X Jackmon' Subject: RE: Hare papers Marvin, I still forgot to give you your glasses, I was trying to explain so much as usual, as I find it’s easy for people to be misguided for lack of facts they don’t have. E.g. Brother Editor didn’t come to The Black Scholar as a poet; I don’t think he’d ever published a poem so much as in a student newspaper at that point. But even if he had been Baraka,  he didn’t use poetry to build The Black Scholar. He might have helped to build a poet or two in time, through The Black Scholar, but their poetry did not build The Black Scholar. The Black Scholar hit the ground running with the first issue, with essentially all of the articles obtained by me. They didn’t  know him and there was not yet The Black Scholar to know. As I said this morning, Julia got it in Newsweek through friends she had met in her job as Director of Education for the soon-to-be-opened Oakland Museum.  He didn’t build The Black Scholar, The Black Scholar made him, if we can say he ever was fully made, i.e., a made man, he is certainly not a self-made man, but a man who came to The Black Scholar on the make, with nothing beyond  the tools of an unknown English teacher. I’ll hang on to the glasses. By the way, I didn’t mean for you guys to gut my brown supply chest next to the white file cabinet. I guess its contents were so scarce and rumpled you thought it was something rare. Nathan

Black Arts Movement Poets in Stand Our Ground Anthology

Amiri Baraka, Sonia Sanchez, Askia Toure, Marvin X, Haki Madhubuti and Everett Hoagland, some of the leading voices of the Black Arts Movement of the Sixties, will be featured in Stand Our Ground: Poems for Trayvon Martin and Marissa Alexander. The ultimate purpose of the book is to raise funds the justice campaigns of both cases and to raise awareness about the persistence of racial injustice.

“We are honored and excited to have these legendary world-renowned poets involved in this important project, says Ewuare X. Osayande, creator and editor of the book. “These poets have spent their entire careers as writers doing exactly what we are attempting to do with this book – speak truth to power and to empower the people. Their involvement is an affirmation of the mission and aim of Stand Our Ground: Poems for Trayvon Martin and Marissa Alexander.”

Marvin X, Master poet/teacher and Black Arts Movement co-founder, appears in Stand Our Ground. Marvin X founded Black Arts West Theatre, San Francisco, 1966, the Black House (with Eldridge Cleaver) 1967,and worked at the New Lafayette Theatre in Harlem, New York, 1968, served as associate editor of Black Theatre Magazine, also associate editor of  the Journal of Black Poetry, Black Dialogue, Soulbook; contributed to Negro Digest/Black World and Muhammad Speaks. He is the author of 30 books published by his Black Bird Press. 

Acclaimed Poet and Publisher Dr. Haki Madhubuti Joins Stand Our Ground

FreedomSeed Press is proud to announce the inclusion of Dr. Haki R. Madhubuti - one of the most prominent and relevant contemporary African American poets - in the forthcoming global anthology Stand Our Ground: Poems for Trayvon Martin and Marissa Alexander.

Black Arts Movement pioneer, Madhubuti is founder of Third World Press, a publishing company that holds the distinction of being the oldest and largest Black publisher in the United States. He is the author of more than thirty books of poetry and essays that cover a span of forty-five years. In 1967, Madhubuti's first book of poems, Think Black, was published by the legendary Broadside Press. Since then, he has published a canon of work that encompasses the broad range of issues and concerns germane to the cultural and political advancement of the Black community in the United States. Among them are the classic works Black Men: Obsolete, Single, Dangerous? and Groundwork: New and Selected Poems, 1966-1996. His latest books include YellowBlack: The First Twenty-One Years of a Poet's Life and Run Toward Fear.

"To have Dr. Madhubuti's poetry in this anthology is an affirmation of the book and its mission. Brother Madhubuti has lived his life on the front-line of our community's struggle for justice and liberation as an educator, institution-builder and activist," says Ewuare Osayande, editor of Stand Our Ground. "It is an honor to include him and his work."

Stand Our Ground: Poems for Trayvon Martin and Marissa Alexander is a global collection of poetry that brings together the voices of poets from all over the world including the United States, South Africa, the Maldives, England, Palestine, Kenya, Finland, Canada and Nigeria.

Stand Our Ground: Poems for Trayvon Martin and Marissa Alexander is more than just an anthology of poetry. It is a call for justice! Once published, all the proceeds from the sale of the book will be donated to the justice campaigns for Trayvon Martin and Marissa Alexander. For more information on the book and campaign visit the book's website at:StandOurGroundBook.com.

‘Stand Our Ground: Poems for Trayvon Martin & Marissa Alexander’ is Now Available for Pre-Order!

28 March, 2013 editor Comments off

Title: Stand Our Ground:Poems for Trayvon Martin and Marissa Alexander

Publisher: FreedomSeed Press (Philadelphia, PA)

Paperback, 272 pages

Publication Date: April 22, 2013 (Pre-Order Now)

$25.00

All proceeds will be shared with the families of Martin and Alexander to aid in their respective pursuits of justice.

Stand with us! This will be a limited publication run. Purchase your copy today!

Stand Our Ground is available online exclusively at StandOurGroundBook.com.

Contact: Ewuare X. Osayande

StandOurGroundBook@gmail.com

In Stand Our Ground: Poems for Trayvon Martin and Marissa Alexander 65 poets from all over the world join together in one voice for justice, freedom and peace. Stand Our Ground is the definitive testament of a revolutionary generation. In this historic collection Black Arts Movement legends Amiri Baraka, Sonia Sanchez, Haki R. Madhubuti and Askia M. Toure’ are joined by poets of all ages from across the United States and around the world representing countries in Africa, Asia, Europe as well as North and South America and the islands of the Caribbean.

The cases of Trayvon Martin and Marissa Alexander expose the duplicity of an American justice system that remains rooted in racism and sexism. Stand Our Ground is an effort to raise funds for both families to aid in their pursuit of justice even as it raises the consciousness of a generation toward the pursuit of a movement of justice for all!

The book’s editor, Ewuare X. Osayande, is a poet, educator and activist. The author of several books including Blood Luxury with an introduction by Amiri Baraka (Africa World Press) and Whose America?: New and Selected Poems with an introduction by Haki R. Madhubuti (Black Proletariat Press). He is an adjunct professor of African American Studies at Rutgers University.

In the introduction for Stand Our Ground Osayande writes, “This book has been a labor of love. My love for my people. My love for humanity. I acted because I knew it was not enough for me to just march, or write an editorial or to just allow myself to sit and simmer in the face of wrong. I acted because I knew that there were others like me. I knew that if I acted, others would join with me, and, together, we could create a work that would simultaneously raise collective support for these two families and raise the collective consciousness of our generation. So in the Summer of 2012 the call went out and this is the result. A collection of poems. But not just any collection of poems. Herein are contained –

Death-defying poems

Injustice-decrying poems

Poems that speak truth to power

Poems that break chains in freedom’s name

Poems that confront abuse

and provide sanctuary for the bruised

Poems that escape from cells

Poems that provide a pathway back from hell

Poems that refuse to be silent

Poems more just than the judge’s gavel

Poems that have tasted cop’s mace

stared down the barrel of a gun in defiance

Shackled poems trying to break free

Poems picking the locks on our minds

Poems that transcend place and time

that tell the histories and herstories

that have been banned from the textbooks

Poems that refuse to look the other way

Poems that say what needs to be said

Poems that resurrect the dead

Poems that refuse to sell their souls

Poems that revolt and rebel

that holler, scream and yell

Poems that leave us speechless

that tell us truths we don’t want to hear

Poems that leave the status quo

quivering in fear

Poems that know that justice is like rain

to the seeds of peace

Poems that move us to act

like you know

Marching poems

Chanting poems

Ranting poems

Poems sick and tired of being sick and tired poems

Poems that inoculate us against ignorance

Poems that make us think

Poems on the brink

Poems that challenge us to see

the world as it could be

as it should be

Poems in love with freedom

Poems that resist

that resist

that resist

that resist racism and sexism

that refuse to be conned

Poems for a mother named Marissa

and a young brother named Trayvon.”