Ishmael Reed on the Black Arts Movement: the Good, the Bad, the Ugly

Bay Area black artists, left to right: painters Dewey Crumpler, Arthur Monroe; poets Ishmael Reed, Conyus, Marvin X and Al Young

photo Tennessee Reed

If not for the Black Arts Movement, Black culture would be extinct.--Ishmael Reed

We appreciate Ishmael Reed for his belated blackness. He was a keynote speaker, along with myself, at the Black Arts Movement Conference, University of California, Merced earlier this year, and he has been a supporter of my work for many years. He described me as "Plato teaching on the streets of Oakland."--Marvin X

Yes, there was also a nutty side to The Black Arts movement in New York. You had some of the  smartest of black intellectuals subscribing to the notion that white people were an evil race that was created by a black scientist. They got that from Elijah Muhammad, who apparently didn’t believe it because he had some of these evil beasts at his dinner table.He said that he was referring to white men who lived in the south. When found partying with some English girls, and asked why by Jim Brown, Muhammad Ali said that Elijah Muhammad had made an exception for the English.But the Black Arts in New York wouldn’t be the first movement in the arts to have a whack job side.Moreover, instead of engaging in physical combat with these beasts, some of whom gave money to the Black Arts movement,they assaulted each other. Indeed, the Black Arts Repertory theater became a black on black crime scene. Not only did they commit or threaten each other with violence but those whose lifestyles they didn’t approve of. They didn't approve of my lifestyle, but in this regard they were hypocrites.

Amiri Baraka wrote  articles in The New York Times  that were meant to intimidate black theater people who were involved in interracial relationships. Of course some of the key personnel at the Times date out and marry out ,but their behavior hasn’t been treated with this kind of ridicule. Nor has any other ethnic group had women writers as a class pitted against  male writers as class as Henry Louis Gates,Jr. on the orders of Rebecca Penny Sinkler, the kind of feminist critic who uses black men as a substitute for whatever abuses men of her ethnic background commit against women; community mores require that such abuses be kept a secret. She’s not the only one. Irish American feminist Catlin Flannagan  writes about how cruel black men are toward black women. Maybe Irish American men ought to write guidelines for the fellas to follow. Maybe members of The Westies gang can do an anthology.Ms. Sinkler got into trouble when she tried a feminist experiment on Norman Mailer, who, for The New York Intelligentsia, was more important than all of the black male writers combined, of course they’ve only read a few. ( Former go-between, Irving Howe believed that the black tradition began with Richard Wright.)

  Gates was forced to throw the brothers overboard because he was under pressure from feminists like Michele Wallace,who, writing in the black male hating Village Voice, recently in trouble for running prostitution soliciting ads on its “back page,” said that he was hogging all of the black women studies loot.Yes, Gates has made a career of pointing out the flaws in the Black Arts movement, but is his judgement to be trusted after the African American Studies Dept. endorsed the Neo Nazi series,”The Wire,” or his own backing of Tarantino’s wretched “ Django Unchained” on NPR,without informing NPR that the post-racial zine that he fronts for The Washington Post, called TheRoot, received ad revenue from the producers of “Django Unchained?”It remains to see whether Gates will give the Black Arts movement the same kind of consideration that he gives to “Django Unchained,” a project that accepts the discredited “Sambo Thesis” of black history ,or that his department accords “The Wire.” He has an opportunty to revise his notion that Black Arts was “short-lived” and that Baraka, Bullins, Sanchez , and Marvin X have done some of their best work post sixties.We’ll see whether he changes his mind in the
forthcoming Norton Anthology of African American Literature 3.

 Black Arts did more to reach black audiences than any of its critics, sheltered academics who know very little about the day to day lives of black citizens.

 The good black arts brought Jazz, literature to the masses of people. Ed Bullins, Aishah Rahman and Amiri Baraka introduced theater to people who had never seen a play.

Though the Black Arts Repertory theater received government funds, its existence made

the New York cultural establishment , an establishment that had been directing trends

in African American culture at least since the 1920s, when writers fought each other over uptown patronage; for once, an independent movement had arisen.

Though i’ve been associated with the Black Arts, with the exception of two fund raising events, I didn’t participate. I was living in Chelsea at the time at work on my first novel, “The Free Lance Pallbearers.” I’d also shared an apartment with three of the Black Arts founders before they moved up town. My associating me  with Black Arts, they are giving me credit with work I had no part in creating.

Moreover,how they treated each other or outsiders didn’t matter to those “entrenched interests” as Irving Howe put it, one of those explainers-of-blacks to mainstream readers.( He was put out of business by black critics like Larry Neal.) Amiri has a record of being harder on black writers than his beat friends. Because Steve Cannon and I  suggested that there might be a more critical examination of Malcolm X,’s legacy than  laying prostrate hero worship, he suggested that Steve and I could be "iced," causing us to be targets of all of the loose nuts associated with black nationalism.The editor of this black magazine, The African American Review, which received more grants than any black magazine in history didn't know what "iced "meant.In that essay, a number of gifted black writers were condemned for their lack of revolutionary fervor.

   He doesn’t understand that the current crop could not advance to mainstream acceptance without disassociating themselves from Black Arts,which was despised by those who set trends in black literature New York,where trends in black culture are managed by over fifty year old white men and women. Plus the Black Arts professed  alliance with Malcolm X, who was tainted with the reputation of anti Semitism by the media of the time; this didn’t make them any friends downtown,except for those on the bohemian fringes..One remembers the gnashing at the teeth,viscous hair- tearing- out Times editorial on the occasion Malcolm’s death.

For the American media, black men don’t even have a first act and so his evolution wasn’t noticed by The New York media which celebrated his murder.

The trend setters of black literature, theater and the other arts  are usually outsiders. Bell hooks says that white feminists told her that in order to get over she had to write for them, which explains the flurry of what... calls “black boogeyman”products,books film and theater that have made some white men rich and puts the issue of racism in the background.
  Gates,who even used an essay about Philiss Wheatley to condemn the black arts  is inconsistent in another way. He says that a discovery of a novel by Claude McKay extends the Harlem Rennassiance into the 1930s; why doesn’t the fact that some of those who have been associated with Black Arts continue writing well and publishing extend Black Arts into the present?, By 1975, with the Black Arts Movement dead, His Norton Anthology asserted that Black Arts was “short lived,” which set the pattern followed by Charles Rowell that in order to get a Norton anthology a black anthology one has to denounce black nationalism ,a standard that doesn’t apply to white editors. Most norton anthologies are Eurocentric, or white nationalist anthologies with minorities arbitrarily sprinkled here and there,which explains why white editors don’t have to denounce white nationalism.White supremacy is a given.This is nothing new. Even Amiri’s hero, Langston Hughes ,had to renounce his earlier radical poetry when the House Un American Activities Committee was breathing down his neck.Ellison’s anti Communist testimony came in the form of his novel,” Invisible Man,” which became mainstream as a result of his cutting out a radical character. He had to stab Richard Wright, his mentor, in the back, and even cut some of his “Literary Sons,” in order to maintain his status as The Only One. Baraka has witnessed enough cultural wars over the years to understand why some of those whom he criticizes in his review of Rowell’s anthology, for the sake of career moves, had to renounce the Black Arts in order to receive academic and publishing acceptance.

But he’s a little harsh in his assessment of their poetry. These are excellent writers.He should give them that. The difference between him and they is that he is an original. Baraka is also in

the tradition of Richard Wright and Langston Hughes and his contemporaries, Quincy Troupe and Eugene Redmond. That of encouraging new talent. Wright aided an ungrateful Baldwin and Hughes helped Ellison who eventually betrayed his mentor. Baraka identifies new talent in the course of his review. In the old days writers would not only discover new talent but had enough patronage to get them money so that they could take time off from crummy jobs in order to write.  That role has been transferred to a black literary Czar. He has a foundation that’s suppose to support writers. So far the grants have gone to his friends.He decides who gets Fletcher awards and directs patronage to writers from a foundation based in Cleveland.

  Maybe as a result of Barka’s review, originally published in Poetry magazine, The Norton company will end its feud with the Black Arts Movement.
  Finally, how long can Amiri behave as an outsider raging against the Establishment as though it was 1965 outside. He is a member of the most select establishment club in the United States .The 250 member American Academy of Arts and letters. You can’t get anymore Establishment than that. Can’t he understand that members of the younger generation want their shot? I know what this curmudgeon is going to do. I’m going to help them get through.

 I mentioned that publishers are insisting upon “Black Boogeyman” and “Gangsta Books.” They even gave $100,00 advance to a white girl for a gang memoir. ” Turns out, she made it up. They said that they were going withdraw the book. It’s still on sale.What happens when you don’t give cross over mall audiences the side of the black experience for which they will put out hard cold cash? Mr. or the child molester in “Precious” or Leroy in” The Help.Why was Alice Walker’s remarkable book, “ The Temple of my Familiar” hated by the same critics who praised “The Color Purple.”   So what happens to a black woman who dares tackle male members of the ruling class and its subsidiaries. The kind of men who publish,stage and film "black boogeymen" products. Who are mentors for playwrights who stage a theater that show Martin Luther King,Jr. as a hapless, lecherous buffoon.Who dole out hundreds of thousands dollar to a "poet" who help to fuel the hysteria that got the Central Park Five committed to prison on the testimony of lying detectives and, innocent boys who were railroaded by a feminist district attorney and prosecutor.

  Jamaica Kincaid has risked her career by taking on the men who are part of the ruling class’s subsidiary:members of the patriarchal cultural elite of New York.One of their friends, a powerful critic, said that the book should have remained unpublished. Fortunately the book was published. It is a remarkable book. It is a book that will be regarded as a classic when all of the fuss dies down....
 

Dr. Tony Montiero and Temple U's din of iniquity directed by the Afrocentric Nigguh, now Afrocologist

 

August 24, 2014

To Donors and Signers of the Call for Monteiro:

You are receiving this because you are a signer or a donor to the struggle for Dr. Anthony Monteiro. We send out a hearty thank you to all, especially to those of you who have contributed financially. All of you played a crucial role in Dr. Monteiro’s struggle and the contributions you made are still having impact.

We have two purposes in writing you now: first, to announce a change in the Monteiro coalition’s way of deploying the funds raised on his behalf through the Indiegogo campaign, in the amount of $1045 (far short of our needed $17,000 for a summer time ad in the Chronicle of Higher Education), and second, to provide you important information on the current state of the struggle for Dr. Monteiro.

This has always been about more than Dr. Monteiro; it is about the health of a vigorous and needed and historic African American Studies program at Temple, and about university relations to gentrifying dynamics in urban communities. Consequently, Dr. Monteiro, student activists, community leaders, and politicians at the highest levels of Philadelphia and Pennsylvania politics are still in vigorous struggle to pressure TU to reinstate Dr. Monteiro. This struggle is far from over, and because of Dr. Monteiro’s organic connection to his community and to Pennsylvania politics, this is a long-term political effort. It will take time to play out. It will certainly continue into the next academic year.

Dr. Monteiro’s contract has now expired, but even as he looks for alternative employment, he and his supporters in Philadelphia have been planning both summer and Fall activities on his behalf. 

On Redeploying the Funds 

It is clear now that the fundamental need for funding is at the local Philadelphia and Pennsylvania levels. The Chronicle ad would have been nice, but a summer ad does not have the greatest impact. Moreover, we feel that national and world scholars have already weighed in with significant influence with the “Call for Monteiro.” The primary need now is to deploy funds in an aggressive local and state effort on behalf of Dr. Monteiro and the issues of scholarship and social justice he represents.

The bulk of the Indiegogo funds will be re-deployed locally for hiring artists to work up a logo for the Coalition to Reinstate Dr. Monteiro. The company, Reclaim, will also be paid for producing T-shirts for the movement which, again, will highlight Dr. Monteiro’s struggle for reinstatement at Temple but as related to the broad campaign in Philadelphia and the Pennsylvania legislature for community justice against gentrification and amid Temple University’s often blatant disregard for Black Philadelphians and their community needs. As a sign of how vibrant the local campaign is, a Philadelphia jazz event sponsored by the Coalition brought in additional funds that community members will use to augment the Indiegogo funds. So know that our funds are being put to first-rate use, as community social movements continue to put legs on the national campaign that we have built for Dr. Monteiro. 

The Monteiro Struggle Today 
at Temple, and in Philadelphia & Pennsylvania

Perhaps the dramatic nature and complexity of the struggle for Dr. Monteiro is best exemplified by remarks offered on the floor of the Pennsylvania legislature by State Representative W. Curtis Thomas.  Rep. Thomas is the Pennsylvania legislator for the Philadelphia District in which lies the majority of the campus of Temple University and for communities strongly affected by Temple University policies. The remarks by Rep. Thomas suggested putting a hold on some funds for Temple University (TU), which the University normally receives, if TU administrators do not respond positively to the following four conditions:

(1) Reinstate Dr. Anthony Monteiro to his post in TU’s African American Studies Department, not only because of his excellence as teacher and scholar, but also as a voucher of good faith commitment to high quality relationships between the North Philadelphia black community and the University.

(2) Reinforce Temple’s commitment to educational opportunities afforded North Philadelphia. These were significantly undermined when Temple seemed to proceed with an illegal purchase of William Penn High School, in order to build at its location its own university stadium and athletic facilities for TU students. (Under pressure from Rep. Curtis and the Monteiro movement, TU has now announced that it will work with the community to establish an educational center for the neighborhood at the former high school site, complete with a new Career Educational Technical Center.) 


(3) Redress the increasing problem of a severe “lack of diversity” at Temple University, both in the ranks of its faculty and also in the upper level of its administrators.

(4) Reverse TU’s ongoing neglect of the basic needs of North Philadelphia communities that border the University. Showing good faith, here, would mean admitting more of the graduating honors students from neighboring black Philadelphia high schools and redressing students' needs in those neighborhoods.

At present, Rep. Thomas and others are working every possible political and community angle on behalf of Dr. Monteiro, together with these broader issues. The funding from the Pennsylvania legislature to TU is not automatic, and Rep. Thomas seems to have support from both Republicans and Democrats to hold up the dispersal of these funds.

Indeed, the power of the purse-strings has been evident, as Rep. Curtis has had personal meetings with the President of Temple University, Neil Theobald, on all these matters, and especially on the firing of Dr. Monteiro.

We are upbeat, and so is Dr. Monteiro. He has reports that TU administrators have had up to 3-hour meetings on his case, and that TU knows that its reputation on these matters is not strong, in the media or in the local urban community. Dr. Monteiro’s case is at the heart of the deep concerns over urban gentrification in the TU area, and has stimulated renewed organizing around whether black folk will be allowed to live in North Philly near to Temple University.

Moreover, since Dr. Molefi Kete Asante’s independently initiated role in the firing of Dr. Monteiro (and we now know that this is the case from the highest level of Temple administrators), the African American Studies Department remains in a state of seeming chaos. Dr. Asante is trying to have it renamed Department of “Africology,”organizing it around his own version of Afrocentrism. Significantly, though, one promising young scholar in the Department just submitted last week – unannounced and just weeks before start-up of classes – her resignation from the Department. Dr. Monteiro’s stabilizing influence is still needed in the Department – now more than ever – as is his commitment to principles of community justice that he combined with rigorous scholarship in the Black radical tradition of W. E. B. Du Bois and Angela Y. Davis.

It is for the purpose of supporting these powerful local and state efforts that we now are suggesting that the funds raised for the Chronicle ad, be released to activist in the Philadelphia and Pennsylvania organizing work.

Thank you everyone for your support. We will continue to keep you updated.

Sincerely,

Mark Lewis Taylor, Professor, Religion and Society, Princeton Theological Seminary

Johanna Fernandez , Professor, Dept. of History and Black and Latino/a Studies

Jamila K Wilson, Campaign to Bring Mumia Home

Patrice K. Armstead, Coalition for the Reinstatement of Dr. Anthony Monteiro/Philadelphia

The Mythic Afro Horn of Francisco Mora Catlett

art by David Mora Catlett

Note: Marvin X performed with Afro Horn at the memorial for Elizabeth Catlett Mora, Schomburg library in Harlem. He reunited with her sons, Francisco and David, after thirty years during his Mexico City exile after refusing to serve in Vietnam for American imperialism. It is his desire to connect his Black Arts Movement Poets Choir and Arkestra with Afro Horn, especially when he arrive on the east coast. Francisco and Marvin X both worked with Sun Ra's Arkestra.
--Black Bird Press News & Review

By

TOMAS PENA, 

Published: January 15, 2014 | 2,938 views

Francisco Mora-Catlett and Afro Horn
Zinc Bar
Greenwich Village, NY
January 8, 2014

There was a moment during Afro-Horn's performance at the Zinc Bar where the lines between reality and fiction became a blur. It occurred when Sam Newsome, an imposing figure of a man and a consummate reed player, appeared to be possessed by the spirit of Probe, the protagonist and wielder of the Afro Horn, a rare object of power in Henry Dumas's short-story, "Will the Circle Be Unbroken." In the midst of an intense and passionate solo, Newsome's ..." lips swelled over the reed and each note fell into the circle like an acrobat on a tight rope stretched radially across the center of the universe."

For the uninitiated, Afro Horn is a multicultural, multigenerational ensemble created by the Mexican-American drummer, composer and visionary Francisco Mora-Catlett, who was introduced to the writings of Henry Dumas and the legend of the Afro Horn during his tenure with Sun Ra. Mora-Catlett was so moved with Dumas's message and the concept of an instrument with the power to unite people and "clear out" unfounded notions and misconceptions, that he formed an ensemble around the idea.

The ensemble opened with an invocation praising the ancestors, then wasted no time in plunging into a wildly progressive interpretation of the gospel hymn, "When the Saints Go Marching In," followed by "Afra Jum," a play on the words, "Afro Jam," an open invitation for everyone to participate in the festivities. "Barasuayo Mamakeña" is a praise song dedicated to the West African deity, Elegua. The set concluded with "5XMax," a tribute to the legendary drummer, Max Roach. The music was in the moment, fluid and true to its intrinsic nature, free.

As the evening came to a close there was an eerie silence, a collective feeling of, "What just happened?" and smiles all around. Afro Horn is: Rashaan Carter, bass; Aruan Ortiz, piano; Sam Newsome, reeds; Roman Diaz, percussion/vocals; and Francisco Mora-Catlett, drums, leader. Absent was saxophonist Alex Harding.

Francisco Mora Catlett: Afro Horn MX

By

STEVE BRYANT, 

Published: September 16, 2012 | 4,901 views

Francisco Mora Catlett

Afro Horn MX

AACE Records

2012

When Afro-Mexican Drummer Francisco Mora Catlett first came to this country in the1970s, he dreamed of playing drums for the Sun Ra Arkestra. Not only did Mora achieve his dream, he also forged a lifelong relationship with drum legend Max Roach, which resulted in his performing in Roach's seminal drum ensemble, M'Boom. As a composer and bandleader in Detroit, Mora focused on creating Music of "The Afro-Americas," a vision which encompassed fusing the music of Cuba, Brazil with American modern jazz.

For the highly-anticipated double-disc Afro Horn MX, Mora draws inspiration from the legend of the Afro Horns, with Henry Dumas (1934-1968) writing, in his short story "Will The Circle Be Unbroken?," that there are only known to be three actual "Afro Horns" on the planet. The horns are forged in a rare metal only found in Africa and South America. No one knows who forged the horns, but some think that it was the Egyptians. There is one in a heavily-guarded European museum and another on the west coast of Mexico, amongst a tribe of Indians. MX also stands for Malcolm X and Mexico.

To advance his vision, Mora put together a crack team of players which includes three of the baddest reedmen to come out of Detroit—JD Allen and Vincent Bowens on tenors, andAlex Harding on baritone. The rhythm section is superb, too, including master Afro-Cuban drummer Roman Diaz , who performed with the legendary group Yoruba and Puntilla Rios, and here handles congas and bata.

The music seems to revolve around a central theme: the journey of the Africans to what is now the Americas and the diverse musics they created. The set begins with an invocation to the Yoruba orishas with Mora and Diaz playing bata drums. "Saints at Congo Square" follows, commemorating the first City of Afro-American culture, New Orleans, and is also an homage to Mora's mother, renowned sculptor Elizabeth Catlett, who created the statue ofLouis Armstrong in Congo Square. The music uses "When The Saints Go Marching In" as a recurring theme while the horns create a swirling ethereal mist of sound.

"Barasuayo" features all three horns playing a mournful melody over a base of ritual bata drums, segueing into "Quinto Regimiento," which starts off with Mora evoking Roach, as Allen and Bowens engage in some sax talk that brings to mind John Coltrane,Pharoah Sanders, and Archie Shepp. Bowens, who possesses that rougher Detroit edge, comes out with guns blazing. Pianist Aruan Ortiz (someone to watch for) has a thundering attack, whose use of arpeggios brings to mind Don Pullen in his younger days.

The highlight of the set is "Los Consejos Del Olumo," a mashup of Yoruba ritual and coffeehouse slam, with Roman Diaz reading the poem on which the song is based, and a turn by Allen. The date ends with "Cultural Warrior," a dedication to the late Detroit pianistKenny Cox (of Contemporary Jazz Quintet fame), and immediately brings to mind 'Trane and his 1960s quartet.

Even though this is an extended outing, there isn't a boring moment on Afro Horn MX. Mora is one of the most versatile percussionists in jazz and Afro-Latin music, as well as an original composer. Allen and Bowens stack up against any tenor man in jazz (including the 2012 Downbeat Rising Tenor Star, Anat Cohen), while Harding is a blaster who displays complete mastery of his instrument. Here's hoping that word of this dynamic ensemble gets out beyond the island (Mahattan) and reaches the hinterlands.

Tracks: CD1: Egun Moyuba; Saints at Congo Square; Barasuayo; Quinto Regimento; Hush Rush; 125th & Lenox. CD2: 125th & Lenox; Los Consejos Del Olumo; Wemilere; Afro Horn MX; Cultural Warrior.

Personnel: JD Allen: tenor sax; Vincent Bowens: tenor sax; Alex Harding: britone sax; Aruan Ortiz: piano; Francisco Mora Catlett: drums, bata; Roman Diaz: congas, bata, voice.

Track Listing: CD1: Egun Moyuba; Saints at Congo Square; Barasuayo; Quinto Regimento; Hush Rush; 125th & Lenox. CD2: 125th & Lenox; Los Consejos Del Olumo; Wemilere; Afro Horn MX; Cultural Warrior.

Personnel: JD Allen: tenor sax; Vincent Bowens: tenor sax; Alex Harding: britone sax; Aruan Ortiz: piano; Francisco Mora Catlett: drums, bata; Roman Diaz: congas, bata, voice.

Record Label: AACE Records

Black Bird Press News & Review: Race in America: The Grand Denial

Black Bird Press News & Review: Race in America: The Grand Denial

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, for to do so would incriminate the mythology and ritual of said society, and 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.

Brazil: Black Woman President: Marina Silva?

Tragedy puts Marina Silva at heart of Brazil campaign

By Julia CarneiroBBC Brasil, Rio de Janeiro

Marina Silva has been chosen as the PSB's presidential candidate after the death of Eduardo Campos

Continue reading the main story

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Environmental activist Marina Silva has unexpectedly found herself centre stage in Brazil's presidential election campaign, following the death in a plane crash of Eduardo Campos, the candidate for the Brazilian Socialist Party (PSB).

But Ms Silva is an experienced politician with an impressive record.

A former environment minister during the government of Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva she is seen as having the national and international profile to replace Mr Campos.

In 2010, she ran for president for the tiny Green Party and secured 19 million votes, forcing the race into a second round.

At the time, she said she wanted to be "the first black woman of poor origins" to reach the presidency.

Difficult alliances

Most people expected her to try again in 2014.

But after her newly created party, the Sustainability Network, failed to achieve the 500,000 signatures needed to be officially recognised, she joined Mr Campos as his vice-presidential running mate.

The Sustainability Network failed to get enough signatures to be able to endorse Ms Silva as its candidate

Now she will face the challenge of remaining faithful to his legacy - which PSB officials are determined to hold her to - while staying true to her own ideals.

Ms Silva opposed some of Mr Campos's alliances with regional candidates - especially when they were members of the country's powerful agribusiness lobby, which accounts for over one fifth of Brazil's GDP.

Having locked horns with the sector during her time as environment minister, she may now have to reach a compromise with its backers.

Humble beginnings

Ms Silva was born into a family of 11 children in the northern state of Acre, in the heart of the Amazon.

Ms Silva's style and image have not changed much in the past 10 years

She still wears her hair in the same tight bun and prefers simple clothes

As a child she would walk several miles in the forest with her father and siblings every day to collect rubber from trees.

She campaigned alongside the rubber tapper and trade union leader Chico Mendes, who was killed in 1988 for his activism.

Throughout her childhood years, she was seriously ill a number of times - suffering from hepatitis, malaria and contamination by heavy metals.

As a result she suffers from frail health and has an intolerance to a long list of things - such as cosmetics, perfume, alcoholic beverages and red meat.

This and her devout evangelism have marked her style. She uses no make-up and prefers simple and sober clothing, mainly long dresses.

She often wears her hair in a tight bun tied by a thin braid.

It is a stern image, but according to political scientist Ricardo Ismael she also conveys personal warmth.

"She inspires confidence in ordinary voters - that she is accessible," explains Mr Ismael, who is a professor at the Pontifical Catholic University of Rio.

Analysts say Marina Silva comes across as accessible and has a way with people

"Wherever she goes, she approaches people and allows herself to be approached. She seems frail but conveys remarkable strength.

"She knows Brazil. She knows the problems from seeing them on the streets, or living them," he adds.

Educational success

Aged 16, Ms Silva left her community of rubber workers in Bagaco and moved to Rio Branco, the capital of Acre, to study and get treatment for hepatitis.

She was taken in by nuns in a convent and became the first person in her family to learn how to read and write.

"When I saw my name on the list of people that had passed the course, I knelt down and gave thanks to God. That list saying I was literate opened doors for me," she said in an interview with BBC Brasil years later.

After she left the convent, she went to work as a domestic maid in exchange for lodging.

Ms Silva was widely praised on an international level for her work as environment minister under President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva.

Marina Silva has been praised for her work as President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva's environment minister

During those five years, hundreds were arrested for crimes against the environment, a record area of territory was set aside as indigenous reserves and there was a significant slowdown in rainforest deforestation rates.

But she also faced defeats such as the approval of the first genetically modified soybean crops, which she had opposed.

Fearing her agenda was losing ground, she resigned in 2008 and a year later left the governing Workers' Party.

Agenda of change

Opinion polls conducted following last year's wave of protests against World Cup spending, corruption and poor public services suggested Ms Silva was the only politician whose image had benefitted from the unrest.

Political scientist David Fleischer of the University of Brasilia says she appeals to the younger generation and those who want change.

"Those who took to the streets saying they didn't feel represented by Brazil's political system were still undecided, and now many will choose to vote for her", he says.

However, some of those critical of the bigger establishment parties are also uneasy about Ms Silva's devout religious views, fearing she is too conservative on social issues such as gay marriage and abortion.

Even though the protests have diminished, her supporters believe there is still a yearning for change.

They hope that the desire for change along with the emotional circumstances of her selection will result in a powerful boost to her campaign just weeks ahead of the election.

Book Review: Ralph Nadar's Unstoppable

Book review: ‘Unstoppable’ 

by Ralph Nader, on building 

a left-right alliance

By Timothy Noah 

Timothy Noah is the author of “The Great Divergence: America’s Growing Inequality Crisis and What We Can Do About It.” He writes twice weekly for MSNBC.com.

Ralph Nader wants liberals and conservatives to work together. In his new book, “Unstoppable,” he cites many instances in which such cooperation ought to be possible, at least theoretically. But the book’s greater value may lie in the opportunity to contemplate, almost half a century after he first stepped onto the national stage, where Nader himself fits on the ideological spectrum.

Any discussion of Nader must begin with the acknowledgment that he is a great man. He created modern consumer advocacy when he published“Unsafe at Any Speed,” his 1965 book about auto safety, and he founded a network of nonprofits dedicated to muckraking and lobbying in the public interest, challenging the government on a host of regulatory issues that previously received scant attention. It’s a backhanded compliment to Nader that the stampede of corporate lobbyists into Washington starting in the 1970s began as an effort to counter him (before it acquired a fevered momentum of its own).

Most people would situate Nader on the left. That’s a reasonable judgment but also a simplistic one, because in many ways he is fairly conservative — conservative enough to harvest favorable book-jacket blurbs for “Unstoppable” from the likes of anti-tax activist Grover Norquist and anti-immigration activist Ron Unz. No doubt part of Nader’s appeal to such folks is their sheer gratitude that he helped keep Al Gore out of the White House (though with a margin as thin as the one in Florida’s vote count, you could blame Gore’s 2000 defeat — or, if you prefer, thwarted victory — on just about anything). But the right’s affinity for Nader is not based solely on partisan interest. He holds more beliefs in common with conservatives than is generally recognized.

Income distribution, a long-standing concern for the left, has seldom interested Nader, except insofar as government can be stopped from redistributing upward. He favors much stronger government regulation of corporations, but his argument is that corporations would otherwise avoid the sort of accountability that any well-functioning market demands. If a pro-regulatory, highly litigious libertarian can be imagined, that’s what Nader is.

An entire chapter of “Unstoppable” celebrates the Southern Agrarians, a reactionary populist movement of the 1930s that cast “a baleful eye on both Wall Street and Washington, D.C.” Nader admires the Southern Agrarians not for their racial attitudes (most of them were notably racist and anti-Semitic) but because they believed fiercely in maintaining small-scale rural economies in which both ownership and control stayed local, often in the form of a co-op. Squint a little, and the Southern Agrarians may start to resemble today’s left-wing microbrewers and locavores.“Any government intrusion into the economy,” he wrote in 1962, “deters the alleged beneficiaries from voicing their views or participating in civic life.” He probably wouldn’t put it so tea-party-ishly today. But he remains much less enamored than most liberals of representative government as a solution to life’s problems. Nader’s allegiance is not to politicians and bureaucrats, whom he routinely excoriates, but to the citizens who petition them, sue them and vote for or against them. His ideal is a small community (like Winsted, Conn., where he grew up) that unites to force corporations and unresponsive government to act in the public interest. Think of every Frank Capra movie you ever saw. People often assume that Capra was a New Deal Democrat, but in fact he was a lifelong Republican.

Much of the left’s agenda, “Unstoppable” argues, can be justified by citing revered conservative authors. Adam Smith described the invisible hand but also the “bad effects of high profits.” Friedrich Hayek condemned certain cartels and monopolies. Russell Kirk, who feared untrammeled government and capitalism, wrote that John D. Rockefeller and Karl Marx“were merely two agents of the same social force — an appetite cruelly inimical to human individuation.”

Nader cites these and other examples to argue that left and right should band together against the common enemy of “corporatism.” It’s really more the Naderite left he’s talking about, and an ever-shrinking pool of principled conservatives. But let’s hear him out. The issues he has in mind for a left-right alliance break down into three categories.

Category One is the Centrist Agenda. This consists of ideas that are uncontroversial but difficult to achieve in practice. They include promoting more efficiency in government contracting and spending, requiring an annual audit of the Pentagon budget, reviving civic education in schools, and preventing private exploitation of “the commons,” i.e., anything that’s owned by everybody — public lands, public airwaves, the Internet, etc. (One of two people to whom Nader dedicates “Unstoppable” is my late friend Jonathan Rowe, a journalist whose 2013 book, “Our Common Wealth,” argues for better stewardship of the commons. Like Nader, Rowe makes the case that there are good conservative reasons to do this.)

Category Two is what I’d call the Right On Agenda. It consists of ideas that are controversial to some degree but (to my mind, at least) extremely worthwhile. These include adjusting the minimum wage automatically to inflation, as proposed by the Obama administration — and supported by Mitt Romney before he ran for president. One argument Nader could make here, but doesn’t, is that such automatic adjustments would deprive Democrats of a political stick with which they’ve lately been beating Republicans who don’t want to raise the minimum wage.

Another controversial but worthwhile idea is to break up the “too big to fail” banks. Several prominent conservatives already support such a move, including Washington Post columnist George Will; Richard Fisher, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas; and Sen.David Vitter (R-La.). Limiting the size of banks appeals to both left and right because it would eliminate any need to bail them out in the future. Now proponents just have to win over centrists such as former treasury secretary Tim Geithner, who has pronounced any effort to end “too big to fail” “quixotic” and “misguided.”

A third controversial but valuable idea suggested by Nader is to rein in commercial marketing to children, especially through TV. This is exploitation, plain and simple. Trying to stop it has been the life’s work of Peggy Charren, founder of the now-defunct liberal group Action for Children’s Television. Nader notes that the evangelical right is also troubled by the way toy companies and fast-food restaurants are permitted to hawk often-questionable products to kids.

Category Three is what I’d call the Nutty Agenda, a rubric that should be self-explanatory. Nader favors further direct democracy through initiative, referendum and recall, but the results from these have seldom been encouraging. California’s Proposition 13, for instance, launched a nationwide revolt against property taxes — Thomas Piketty’s worst nightmare — and hobbled California’s state budget for a generation. Nader’s advocacy in this instance reflects his too-severe impatience with representative democracy. It’s probably not too much of an exaggeration to say that his ideal republic would conduct government business almost entirely by plebiscite, with the rest settled in the courts.

Nader would also like to end fast-track trade agreements, a goal more in tune with the left (and less so, I think, with the right). But although I’m sympathetic to many of his pro-labor and environmental arguments, the damage done by fast-track trade deals would not, I believe, exceed the likely damage that protectionist Senate amendments would do to slower-track agreements.

“End unconstitutional wars,” another overlap on Nader’s left-right Venn diagram, sounds reasonable enough — Nader is correct that a strict reading of the Constitution assigns exclusive warmaking authority to Congress. But Congress has demonstrated in a thousand ways since 1941 that it doesn’t want to assume much responsibility, pro or con, for foreign interventions. How does one force it to? Nader is pretty vague about that in “Unstoppable,” but elsewhere he’s said he’d like to impeach President Obama for “war crimes.” He similarly wanted to impeach George W. Bush for waging war “based on false pretenses.” This seems indiscriminate, to say the least, and another sign that Nader deems representative government highly disposable.

Of course someone has to pay for all this politicking. One of the zanier directions Nader’s thinking has taken in recent years is the belief that public-interest-minded rich people can be relied on to restore political power to ordinary citizens. This is the theme of his 2009 novel, “Only the Super-Rich Can Save Us.” In the book, rich self-described “Meliorists” enact single-payer health insurance, elect Warren Beatty governor of California and persuade Wal-Mart to unionize.

Back here in the real world, though, the main way rich people have lately exerted significant power over the political process has been through conservative super PACs. During the 2012 Republican primaries, pashas such as Sheldon Adelson, Harold Simmons and Foster Friess were calling the shots as never before. One especially touching belief of Nader’s, expressed in a chapter of “Unstoppable” titled “Dear Billionaire,” is thatrich patrons can be persuaded to cede control over how their money is spent in pursuit of the common weal.

Cooperation ought to be possible, even in this age of political bad faith, between left and right. That Nader is pursuing it so vigorously in the current hyper-partisan environment is yet another reason to admire the man. But at least to some extent, when Nader thinks he’s talking to conservatives, he’s actually talking to the quirky conservative within himself.

Timothy Noah is the author of “The Great Divergence: America’s Growing Inequality Crisis and What We Can Do About It.” He writes twice weekly for MSNBC.com.

UNSTOPPABLE

The Emerging Left-Right Alliance
to Dismantle the Corporate State

By Ralph Nader

Nation Books. 224 pp. $25.99

Sen. Ran Paul on Ferguson and American Racism, esp. the high black incarceration rate

by MATTHEW BOYLE 21 Aug 2014 POST A COMMENT

SALAMA, Guatemala — Just before departing for the rural town here where he performed charity eye surgeries over several days, Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) caused a stir with an op-ed in Time about the violence in Ferguson, Missouri, calling for the police to be “demilitarized” and saying race skews the application of criminal justice in the U.S.

In an interview, he elaborated on his article and responded to critics on the right whom he said had misconstrued what he wrote.

“If you look at crime statistics, many people look at the crime statistics and say that blacks and Hispanics are disproportionately incarcerated with regard to what percentage of time they’re in for,” Paul said. “With drug statistics, they say blacks and whites use drugs at about the same rate, but the prisons are three out of four people are black or brown. So it’s not on purpose. It’s not a purposeful racism. It’s an inadvertent racial sort of outcome is what it is.”

In the op-ed, Paul wrote that “Given the racial disparities in our criminal justice system, it is impossible for African-Americans not to feel like their government is particularly targeting them.” Another sentence said, “Anyone who thinks that race does not still, even if inadvertently, skew the application of criminal justice in this country is just not paying close enough attention.”

The remarks prompted a pushback from critics who said Paul had attributed racial motives to the police officer who shot unarmed 18-year-old Michael Brown after a confrontation about which details remain murky, even after nearly two weeks of national debate on the incident.

For example, the Missouri GOP’s executive director said Paul’s comments were “unhelpful,” and black conservative radio figure Larry Elder said that Paul’s op-ed “lend[s] fuel to this notion that 'cops are out to get us,’” something Elder argued on Laura Ingraham’s radio show hurts GOP efforts to reach potential black voters.

Paul said he wasn't accusing the Ferguson police of racism:

No, the point I’m making is that, let’s say you’re African American and you live in our country and see the statistics and see three out of four people in prison are black or brown, and you see whites are using drugs at the same rate, you’d say: ‘Gosh it seems unfair.’ Your perception would be that ‘I’m unfairly being targeted’ when in reality maybe it’s poverty, maybe it’s the police tend to patrol more in one area than another. What I was saying is that it’s impossible for them not to feel [that way], and I think we put the word ‘feel’ for them to feel like they’re not being targeted. But I wasn’t saying that about this particular instance—I have no idea about the specifics of this. But you see how if a black community has a lot of their community in jail for drugs or whatever, that when a young black man is shot while unarmed, you could see how this is something that is just a big example of what is going on.

Regardless of the facts of the case, Paul says, “that’s the perception.”

“I think what we said in the op-ed is that it’s impossible for them not to feel like they’re being targeted,” Paul added, emphasizing the word “feel.”

Paul noted that, while President Obama “has recently started commuting some sentences of people in jail for crack cocaine,” several people “who have 15 and 20-year sentences for crack cocaine are still in jail from even before we” changed the system to lessen the disparities between crack and powder cocaine sentencing.

“The disparity used to be 100:1 crack to powder, and five to 10 years ago we changed it to 18:1—they didn’t grandfather in the people from before we changed it,” Paul said. “There are many instances where a white kid goes to jail using powder cocaine and getting out in six months with a good attorney or never going to jail, and then someone with a similar weight of crack cocaine going to jail for 15 years.”

Paul said that when young people go away for such long sentences for nonviolent crimes, they get sucked into the criminal justice system, something that’s nearly impossible to break free from. “How do you get a job when you get out? It’s almost impossible to get a job,” he said. “It all adds together. There are statistics that back up that the criminal justice system and the war on drugs has disproportionately incarcerated Hispanics and African Americans, and that if you are an African American, and you see something happen, you think it’s just one more thing piling on top.”

“I have no idea about the intent about any of the people involved in this, and that ought to be judged by the people,” Paul added. “But I can see why people would be unhappy.”