Brown’s records are “under lock and key” at the University of Southern California

A task force was created in 2007 to investigate the disappearance or destruction of documents related to Brown’s time as mayor of Oakland.

In Oakland, a computer hard drive was found at City Hall and some inconsequential documents were located in a dumpster, but nothing much of substance was ever recovered.

The Return of Gov. Moonbeam

California is already well known as La la land, Wild Wild West, last frontier, end of the white man's world, after all, once on the west coast Asia awaits us, the non-white world. So Cali is indeed the last frontier, and strange things do indeed happen here, e.g., actors become governors, prisons are the universities of the poor, and now the prospect of a straight nut as governor awaits us. Jerry Brown, now Attorney General of California, has shed any semblance of liberal and some time ago, after becoming mayor of Oakland, embraced the right wing agenda of the police state. And now with himself as the chief law enforcer, wants to advance to the governorship, or more properly return to the governorship, or shall we say mothership!

While mayor of Oakland, he perfected his right wing agenda. He tricked liberals and radicals and won the mayor's race, then swiftly discarded the left wing persona for the devil's mask. The police occupation of Oakland increased, along with drug selling and homicides, throw in gentrification or ethnic cleansing. He told whites if they bought property in the old black neighborhood of West Oakland, they would be closer to San Francisco than San Francisco, since the last BART stop is West Oakland and within less than ten minutes one is in San Francisco's financial district.

Brown created the atmosphere so Chauncey Bailey, editor of the Oakland Post Newspaper, could be murdered downtown Oakland in broad daylight. As he departed the mayor's office for Sacramento, his email records were deleted, financial as well. One of his scams was the Fox Theatre and his school of the "white" arts.

To add insult to injury to the citizens of Oakland, Mayor Ron Dellums called upon Attorney General Jerry Brown to investigate the investigation of the assassination of Chauncey Bailey, when Jerry Brown himself should be investigated for his role in setting the atmosphere for the murder of Chauncey, just as Farrakhan admitted he fanned the flames for the murder of Malcolm X.

Jerry Brown allegedly said, "I'm going to get that nigger from snooping around City Hall and the police department." Chauncey was then a reporter for the Oakland Tribune, but was fired for a most trivial reason, but no doubt with the blessing of then Mayor Brown.

But in fact, the last story Chauncey worked on was corruption at City Hall and the Oakland Police Department's role in shaking down drug dealers, planting false evidence, money laundering and homicide under the color of law.

Actually, the entire political establishment is connected to the assassination of Chauncey, Brown, Don Perata, the now declared candidate for next mayor, and others. The OPD gave the alleged assassins a license to cause total mayhem in the community. Alas, an OPD officer was the chief advisor and mentor of the Black Muslim Bakery brothers, who are now fall guys for the OPD in the murder of Chauncey.

This same officer was put in charge of the crime scene and headed the raid on the Bakery in less the 24 hours after his murder. He claimed the case solved when he got a confession (since recanted) and the murder weapon. No other homicide in Oakland was "solved" so quickly. The officer was briefly taken off duty but returned just before the old chief of police retired so he wouldn't incriminate the chief. You know the drill, "I'll give you your job back if you don't rat on me."

Jerry Brown's hands are as bloody as the OPD in this matter. A woman at Burger King last night said Jerry Brown should be put under the jail for what he did as mayor of Oakland. And sadly, for Mayor Ron Dellums to ask JB to investigate the investigation of CB, when JB should himself be investigated, is the height of the ridiculous and approaches the theatre of the Absurd and theatre of the Deranged.

And now Governor Moonbeam wants to return to the governor's mansion, but this time as right wing Democrat. And the supreme tragedy is that he faces little opposition, even after pushing for the indictment of the San Francisco Eight for forty year old crimes, which most of them successfully defended themselves in spite of Moonbeam's indictment. By the way, we've heard nothing of the Attorney General's investigation of the CB assassination.

Since he faces no opposition from his party, we suspect his views are in harmony with the electorate, now brain dead from the economic meltdown.

Well, good-bye Terminator with your Crack-neck wife, and enter the Dragon, Dr. Moonbeam. Surely the Great Quake is soon to come. Watch the animals, when they head for the hills, let us join them and head for the hills before the tsunami consumes us and we drown.
--Marvin X

http://www.blackbirdpressnews.blogspot.com/
2/6/10

Marvin X as Silent Warrior

marvin x a silent warrior

mavin x a silent warrior ?
you talkin bout mavrin x
a silent warrior!
he stands in front of rite aid drug store preaching and teaching youth
and all who will listen
almost everyday
everyone knows him coast to coast
he lectures all over
he's written several books
how then do you say he's a silent warrior
i saw his play one day in the life
my sister who goes to s.f state says he's always there
spreading and tellin it just like it is
the truth the whole truth and nothin but the truth
so help him god
what hasn't marvin done in pursuit of the truth
yea i said it
and i'll say it again
marvin x is a silent warrior
we don't hear him we can't even see him
yet he's right there in our face
teaching and preaching to our whole race
the human race
you are human aren't you
like so many other silent warriors
malcolm x marcus garvy angela davis, harriett tubman, martin l king jr ,bobby seal, elijah muhammad, ida b wells, ella collins
huey newton, bobby seale, angela davis, queen mother moore, mae mallory, betty shabazz and the list go on
we didn't hear them either just like marvin x
they were invisible
we didn't change we didn't pick up the torch and continue
we kill each other at the drop of a hat when we pass each other on the street
we wont even speak
we seem to have so much contempt for one another
the hate is written all over our face
that's why they are silent warriors
we refuse to see and we refuse to hear
therefore marvin x is a silent warrior
when will we see when will we hear
and more importantly when will we do for self
for one another as our warriors taught us?
--alfajiri
2/2/10

Black Out at UC Berkeley

News Updates:
UC Berkeley Students Protest UCSD Racist Acts
By Riya Bhattacharjee
Monday March 01, 2010

Contributed photo
Black students at UC Berkeley protest racist acts at UCSD Monday.

Contributed photo

UC Berkeley students during a silent protest Monday, after which they marched to the university's administrative offices at California Hall.UC Berkeley became the scene of yet another protest Monday when a group of students and supporters staged a “Blackout 2010” blockade of Sather Gate. The group—comprised mainly of black students on campus—wore black clothing, with black scarves around their mouth, to silently protest racist acts at UC San Diego, including an off-campus event mocking Black History Month.

The situation escalated when a noose was found hanging in UCSD’s Geisel Library two weeks later. An e-mail message from Blackout’s organizers said the Feb. 14 “Compton Cookout” themed party encouraged “female participants to be ‘ghetto chicks’ with gold teeth, cheap clothes and ‘short, nappy hair ...’ and ‘a limited vocabulary,’ while consuming ‘chicken and watermelon.’” It pointed out that state Bill AB 412 makes placing a noose on school property a misdemeanor punishable by up to a year in prison and a fine of up to $5,000.

“It is deplorable that while our students, faculty and staff work to heal the campus, a few misguided individuals tried to divide it,” UC San Diego Chancellor Marye Anne Fox said in a statement Feb. 26. “We are feeling real pain, and we will take real action. The safety of our students, faculty, and staff is my primary concern.”

Fox said that an individual had come forward and admitted responsibility for the latest incident due to pressure from the UCSD community. “This underscores the fact that our university is banding together,” her statement said. “We will not tolerate hate on our campus, and all criminal acts will be punished.”

UC President Mark Yudof met with students in Sacramento today and pledged to focus on system-wide strategies to prevent further acts of intolerance. The Berkeley campus protesters stood or sat silently back-to-back, arms linked, blocking a major part of Sather Gate, the main entrance to campus, from 11: 30 a.m. to 2 p.m., after which they marched to California Hall, where Chancellor Robert Birgeneau and other administrators have their offices.

“We are brothers and sisters in a nonviolent, silent demonstration, standing in solidarity with the UCSD students who have been affected by blatant acts of ignorance and hatred,” a flyer from protest organizers said. UC Berkeley senior Lajuanda M. Asemota, who helped organize the “Blackout,” said the protest also wanted “to call attention to all the things happening on the Berkeley campus despite the administration’s promises about racial diversity.”

The protest, which remained non-violent, had about 200 students at its peak. Pedestrians were able to pass through the narrow side arches of Sather Gate, although a female protester was reportedly pushed by a student trying to squeeze through. In front of California Hall, the group read out a letter addressed to Birgeneau which expressed disappointment with a message he sent to the student body on Feb. 24.

In his letter, Birgeneau condemned the racist acts at UCSD and outlined the steps UC Berkeley has taken to promote equity and inclusion among faculty, staff and students “We are distressed by the recent event involving UC San Diego students that mocked the commemoration of Black History Month,” Birgeneau’s letter said. “We have zero tolerance for deliberate acts that discriminate or demean others based on race, gender, national original, sexual orientation, or any other personal characteristic, and know that all UC campuses share that view.”

Birgeneau said that a team comprising of students and staff was working with the Vice Chancellor to organize a Climate Forum later this semester. “They expressed their outrage regarding the UCSD event and are working to discourage and prevent such incidents at Berkeley,” his letter said. “An excellent step in this direction was the early response by the CalGreeks community deploring and distancing themselves from the actions at UCSD.”

The letter to Birgeneau from the Berkeley protesters said that his message “failed to explicitly address the ‘deliberate acts that discriminate[d] and demean[ed] others based on race...” at UCSD.” “We are disgusted that the administration is merely ‘distressed’” by the offenses,” the students’ letter said. The letter went on to outline what they said were racist incidents on the UCB campus, including:

• “A hate crime committed by the men’s crew team in which members encircled, assaulted, and poured beer on a black female student while calling her “n***er” repeatedly. UCPD was called, and did nothing.”

• “An incident in science class in which the professor turned out the lights for a classroom presentation and a student yelled, “Where did all the black people go?” The professor made no rebuke.”

• “An on-campus PETA demonstration comparing enslaved Africans, lynched Black Americans, and Tuskegee experiment subjects to chickens, pigs, and cows. Canines were brought to a peaceful protest to “calm” the situation.”

• “A hate crime in which the African-American Theme House Co-Op was vandalized with swastikas.”

• “An article in the [campus student newspaper] Daily Cal which stated that Blacks are seven times more likely to kill than whites” “Though these incidents seem isolated, they are in fact symptomatic of a deeper issue that plagues the University of California as a whole—a continued marginalization of the Black student body,” the letter said.

The letter criticized the low population of black students on campus—3.49 percent of 35,843 students—since the passage of Proposition 209 and the failure of the UC administration to recruit and retain Black students or appoint Black faculty members. Signed “3.49 percent,” the letter concluded by saying that the protesters hoped that the “few hours of discomfort” they had caused would “be indicative of the anguish experienced daily by Black UC students.”

“The UC Berkeley Black community stands here silent,” the letter said. “Silent because we fear for the future. Silent because the past is prologue. Silent because there is nothing left to say. Our silence, then, is your opportunity to act.” Asemota said UC Berkeley Executive Vice Chancellor George Breslauer and Vice Chancellor Harry Le Grande came out to talk with the group after they finished reading out the letter. “Breslauer said he was really sorry about the things outlined in the letter and that stuff like that continued to happen on campus,” she said. “He said that the campus administration would come forward with a resolution.” http://www.blackbirdpressnews.blogspot.com/

Open Letter to Obama on Black Music

OPEN LETTER TO PRESIDENT BARACK HUSSEIN OBAMA(THE-RE-MIX)

“What About We People Who Are Darker Than Blue?”

By Norman (Otis) Richmond

As this is being written President Barack Hussein Obama is yet toissue a proclamation for Black Music Month which is in its 30th yearof observance. Toronto’s Mayor David Miller however, issued aproclamation for Black Music Month on May 11th, 2009.
President Obama did issue of a statement in support of what he isreferring to as African American Appreciation Month on June 2nd.President Obama has taken in one felt swoop an international music andnationalized it. African American music is international music.Recall, it was The Black Music Association created be Kenny Gamble, EdWright and others that brought together Stevie Wonder & Bob Marley inthe Wailers in concert to demonstrate this fact.
Sir Duke Ellington pointed out nearly a century ago that we as apeople must call our music “Negro’ (Black) music so others could notclaim it.
Black music is one of the many gifts that Africa and Africans havegiven to the world.
President Obama gave a brilliant speech at El – Azhar University inCairo, The 44th president has proven that he is one of the mostintelligent if not the most intelligent head of state in the historyof the USA.
The president’s speech was like a vintage Earth, Wind & Fireperformance. However, it was just that -- a performance. MumiaAbu-Jamal pointed out “But in truth Obama had them at “Salaam-Alaikum”the universal Muslim greeting meaning “Peace beyond to you. Peace it’ssad to say is hardly a reality when ones own government is at war withits own people.”
While the president was touring the Middle East he failed to recognizethe 30th anniversary of Black Music Month. More than one person hasraised the issue that, “Maybe he didn’t know?” I find thisunbelievable. He recently hosted Stevie Wonder, Earth Wind & Fire andSweet Honey in the Rock at the White House. He even invited Odetta tosing at his Inauguration; however, she joined the ancestors before thehistorical event.
How can a man who spent most of his adult life in Chicago claim to be“deaf, dumb & blind” of Black Music Month? Chicago is the home ofMahalia Jackson, Martin Luther King’s musical lieutenant, CurtisMayfield, Jerry Butler Mavis and Pop Staples, Ernest Dawkins, R.Kelly,Common & Kanye West.
The June issue of Ebony Magazine, which I brought in the middle ofMay, is dedicated to Black Music Month. This issue has Jade PinkettSmith on the cover and features a photo of President Obama, and thefirst lady Michelle Obama with Queen Elizabeth II at BuckinghamPalace.
After being called out by The Caribbean World News Network, PresidentObama did rightly proclaimed June National Caribbean American HeritageMonth. President Obama issued this statement on June 2nd.
According to the June 6th issue of the New York Times he signed aproclamation establishing the Ronald Reagan Centennial Commission. Thecommission is supposed to organize activities to mark the 100thanniversary, in 20011, of President Reagan’s birth. What about wepeople who are darker than blue – President Obama?
If a Ronald Regan Centennial Commission is in order what about a BlackMusic Month Commission with people like Randy Weston, Dee DeeBridgewater, Cassandra Smith, Amiri Baraka and Queen Latifah? RaynardJackson of Philadelphia has opined, “It’s a no brainer to do a townhall meeting with singers, producers, and songwriters during BlackMusic Month.
The music of African people has been an international force since theFisk Jubilee Singers, gospel group from Nashville, Tennessee conqueredEurope in 1873. Since that period jazz, calypso, reggae r'n'b, hip-hopand African beats have come to be the most popular and influential artforms in the world. Bob Marley, Louis Armstrong and Miriam Makeba areknown all over this the small planet we call earth.
The great saxophonist Archie Shepp once said, “What Malcolm X saidJohn Coltrane played”. This was the expression of Africans in NorthAmerican. The same thing occurred in the Caribbean and in Africa.
In the Caribbean Walter Rodney (Guyana) and Bob Marley (Jamaica) werethe concrete expressions of this phenomenon in the 1970s and early1980s. On the mother continent Thomas Sankara (Burkina Faso) and FelaAnikulapo Kuti (Nigeria) are examples of music and politicscomplimenting one another in the 1990s.
Despite its influence on the planet it was only 30 years ago that theBlack Music Association (BMA) persuaded the U.S. government torecognize Black Music Month. In June 1979, around the time theSugarhill Gang's "Rapper's Delight" was being released; Kenny Gambleled a delegation to the White House to discuss with President JimmyCarter the state of Black music.
At the meeting, Carter asked trumpeter Dizzy Gillespie and drummer MaxRoach if they would perform "Salt Peanuts", to which Gillespie repliedthat he'd only do so if the President (who made a fortune as a peanutfarmer) provided the vocals.
Since that great and dreadful day when Carter butchered the song, Junehas been designated Black Music Month.
It must be mentioned that in 1979 the world was witnessing arevolutionary breeze as Maurice Bishop and the New Jewel Movementseized state power in Grenada, Daniel Ortega and the Sandinistas sweptthe counter revolutionary forces out of power in Nicaragua like abroom and the Shah of Iran was dethroned after being installed inpower by the CIA in 1953.
The soundtrack to all of this was (Gene) McFadden and JohnWhitehead’s, “Ain’t No Stoppin’ Us Now” which was released in 1979.Recall, “Ain’t No Stoppin’ Us Now” was played at the 2008 DemocraticNational Convention on the night Illinois Senator Barack Obamaaccepted the Democratic Party nomination for President of the UnitedStates.
Since 1984, thanks to the efforts of the BMA/TC, Toronto Mayors JuneRowlands, Barbara Hall and Mel Lastman, respectively, has recognizedJune as Black Music Month. On the 25th anniversary of Black MusicMonth, Mayor David Miller presented the proclamation at City Hall. Thelate Milton Blake, Jay Douglas, Michie Mee, Norman (Otis) Richmond(Jalali) and others participated in this event.
When broadcaster and community activist the late Milton Blake andNorman (Otis) Richmond created the Black Music Association's TorontoChapter in 1984, it was our intention to plug African-Canadian musicmakers into the international music market.
At that moment the only African Canadian that was internationallyknown was Oscar Peterson. Since that time Eric Mercury, HarrisonKennedy (as a member of the Chairmen of the Board), Deborah Cox,Devine Brown, Glenn Lewis and Kardinal Offishall have conquered theworld--musically.
By not recognizing Black Music Month in 2009 you have taken a stepbackward Mr. President. As our Comrade /Leader Maurice Bishop told us30 years ago, "Forward Ever. Backwards Never”.
One of the greatest Africans to ever grace the planet Ghana’s KwameNkrumah said the same thing 20 years before Comrade Bishop.

By What Right?

By what right do we sport and play while our guns and bombs destroy the world--since America is the number one arms merchant today? By what right do we consume 25% of the world's energy while most of the world has no electricity, clean drinking water and works all day for a dollar? By what right do we enjoy ourselves sipping cafe latte while the people of Africa, Asia and the Americas live lives of sadness and grief at our expense, since we are the reason they live sad lives after centuries of exploitation, slavery and neo-colonialism?

Yesterday a former Special Ops killer told me he was guilty of doing things in countries that have every right to bomb America into the stone age, countries we now call terrorist havens, while we are the real terrorists, the world's greatest!

By what right do we live in peace, drive gas guzzling Hummers and Escalades, attend Super Bowl, music concerts, while people we destroy have no money to eat or bury their dead loved ones we call collateral damage?

By what right do we charge our children with rape while we teach them how as we go about the earth raping, robbing,plundering and exploiting the labor and national wealth of the poor. In the US military, 33% of female soldiers suffer sexual assault by their comrades in arms. We may wonder how a female soldier with a weapon can get raped? But an old rapist told me, "I wish I would see a bitch with a gun jogging through the jungle." Apparently US soldiers feel the same.
We know the patriarchal religions teach domination of women and rape is ultimate result. It doesn't matter if it occurs in the military, college campus, on a date or in the marriage bed.

By what right do we imprison two million persons for drug related offenses, who suffer mental illness as well as drug addiction at the time of their arrest, 80% would be released if they had proper legal representation. Furthermore, the US government is the number one drug supplier as we saw with the Crack epidemic and the heroin traffic in Afghanistan today.

By what right do we deny nuclear weapons to non-white nations while the only nation to use the atom bomb was white America? Why are not Zionist Israel denied their nuclear arsenal--oh, because they're God chosen people! Not my God, maybe the God of devils. Either everyone should have nukes or nobody, including America.

By what right do we give insurgents, i.e., terrorists, in Iraq, Afghanistan, Yemen and elsewhere, schooling, housing and employment if they lay down their arms, while you have no solution to violence in the hood other than police occupation and prison, meanwhile families are utterly destroyed and communities destabilized.

The only right is the arrogance of white supremacy, from which the adrenalin rush is too high to stop and white privilege has become habitual and full blown. Like getting a nut, you want more, until finally, you must be taken away for detoxification and prevented from leaving the white supremacy recovery center because you are a danger to yourselves and others. Nelson Mandela said you are the main threat to world peace, America! Your privileges must be taken away, including visits to the outside world, until you fully recover, although you may be constitutionally unable, therefore you must remain long term.
--Marvin X
2/28/10

Notes on the Elders Council

by Marvin X

These notes are based on the teachings of the Honorable John Douimbia (RIP), founder of the Black Men's Conference, Oakland, CA, 1980. I served as chief planner of the BMC. John gave me one-on-one manhood training. On the morning of the conference, over one thousand black men gathered at the Oakland Auditorium to hear from John, myself, Dr. Nathan Hare, Dr. Wade Nobles, Dr. Oba T-Shaka, Dr. Yusef Bey, et al. Women organized an event that evening for the men, organizers included Betty King (RIP) and Dezy Woods-Jones.

This draft has never been implemented, although Bay Area elders were seated at the Tupac Shakur Youth Conference at McClymonds high school, circa 2000. Those elders seated included Geronimo Pratt, Tarika Lewis, Willie Tate, Tureeda Mikell, Aishah Kokomon, Suzzette Celeste, Frank Kellum, David Johnson, Emory Douglas, myself, et al.

(1) What is the function of a Council of Elders?

The Council of Elders should be the final authority in the African community. It should be the final authority in moral, domestic, personal, criminal justice and economic matters. It should provide counseling and guidance to troubled men and women. For example, O.J. Simpson could have gone to the Elders Council for guidance on his domestic problems--Tiger Woods as well.

Brothers in the hood should be able to take their problems before the EC for conflict resolution, rather than resorting to violence and destroying entire families over a twenty-dollar dope debt.
The EC would pay the debt to prevent homicide. Incest and other child abuse cases would be matters for the EC. Political prisoners and inmates could be released to the custody of the EC.

(2) How should the EC be composed?

If no other way, it must be drafted by respectable elders in the community. They must be men and women of wisdom and honor. They need not be holy Joe's, but cannot be of outright, flagrant unholiness and negativity. They should be of revolutionary consciousness as opposed to conservative--they ought to have radical thoughts that can guide us through the millennium, not keep us in the past. The last thing we need is a group of tired, reactionary, boot-licking Negroes in authority, persons who want to deliver the EC to the black bourgeoisie running dogs for pharaoh. Elders should not be able to be bought, sell out or traded.

(3) How does the EC receive power?

The EC receives power from the people who agree to submit issues before the EC for resolution. There should be a community consensus that the EC is the point of authority to resolve issues that need not involve the so-called elected governmental agencies which have proven incapable of resolving human rights abuses, economic justice, political empowerment, disparities in health, education, mental health, drug abuse, homicide, suicide, domestic and partner violence, emotional and verbal violence, child abuse, spiritual decadence and myopia (especially with respect to men--the churches are mostly full of women).

(4) How would the EC administer its decisions?

Persons might receive a citation to appear before the EC. They might peacefully submit to arrest and detention in a community center before their case is adjudicated. The decisions of the EC would be enforced by Guardians of the Community, men and women trained to enforce the dictates of the EC.

(5) Should the EC be a religious or spiritual body?

No. Religion should not dominate the EC. The EC exists for the community as a whole, not for any religion or group of religions. Extremely religious persons should be barred from the EC.
Persons concerned with religious matters should remain in their churches, mosques, temples--yes, keep praying. Of course, the EC should have a spiritual dimension as part of its holistic approach to problem solving.

(6) What should be the relationship of the EC to the established government and its agencies?

It should be a cooperative but independent relationship. If there are problems the EC cannot handle, then we should turn matters over to the criminal justice system, or mental health agencies. What we want is the first option to control our community, rather than have outside forces intervene. We feel the EC can eradicate the sale of drugs in our community without involving the criminal justice system. We will do this by simply uniting the males and making their presence known. We will also do this by presenting alternative economic opportunities to youth, such as entrepreneurship and micro credit. We know that if youth can sell drugs, they can sell anything. Why not books, watches, shoes, clothing, arts, DVDs, CDs, food, etc. Rather than pay the criminal justice system fifty thousand dollars per man per year for incarceration, why not give the brothers and sisters a voucher for the same amount to purchase legal goods to sell?

The goods would be housed in a secured community warehouse and issued as per need. If youth persist in criminal activity such as selling drugs and pimping, they would be banished from the community, if necessary, for life.

(7) Should there be a Council of Women Affairs?

Women should be an equal part of the EC, but also have a department of Women's Affairs to handle issues only women should settle, the same for men and youth. As per women, we know cases of elderly abuse by daughters--sons as well. Why should elders live 70 and 80 years to be terrified by their children, especially when the elders are caring for the grandchildren due to the drug addiction of parents?

(8) Should there be a youth council?

Yes. It would deal with youth matters. We had the case of a youth who was prevented from entering a certain department at San Francisco State University--she couldn't get assistance from the Black Student Union, Black Studies Department or any other help. A Council of Youth would represent the student in a matter of this nature, which the student believe was racial discrimination. You might have simple adolescent or sexual identity problems that peer counseling or ultimately manhood training could resolve, or problems with parents who might be drug or sexual abusers--such issues might be immediately taken to the EC.

These are my views, all points open for discussion. I welcome all comments.
Sincerely,
Marvin X
revised
2/27/10
www.blackbirdpressnews.blogspot.com
jmarvinx@yahoo.com

Give Africa back

to its traditional rulers!

Give Africa back to its traditional rulers.!The post colonial leaders in Africa have been a disgusting assortment of military coconut-heads, Swiss bank socialists, quack revolutionaries, crocodile liberators, briefcase bandits, kamikaze looters, vampire elites, and crackpot democrats. They only know how to do 3 things very well:

1. Loot the treasury.

2. Brutalize and squelch all dissent and opposition to their misrule,

3. Perpetuate themselves in office.

Ask them to develop their countries and they will develop their pockets. Ask them to seek "foreign investment" and they will invest their loot in a foreign country.Name me just 10 African leaders who do not fit this bill.Give Africa back to its traditional rulers. In traditional Africa, chiefs and kings are chosen; they do not choose and impose themselves or stupid alien ideologies on their people. Further, chiefs and kings are held accountable at all times for their actions and are removed if they do not govern according to will of the people.

Go back and re-read the history of the Oyo Empire, (Benin Empire), which was governed with an elaborate system of checks and balances in the 17th Century -- well before the U.S. became a nation. The modern leadership is a despicable disgrace to black Africa. They are a far cry from the traditional leadership Africa has known for centuries.And get this, Lil Joe. Africa has not just a traditional political culture and heritage based upon consensus but also an economic heritage of free village markets, free enterprise and free trade. Challenge this.

Marxism was never part of indigenous African economic heritage. Get that straight.I am fed up with quack revolutionaries and crackpot intellectuals who seek to impose alien ideologies and systems on the African people. There is nothing wrong with Africa's own indigenous institutions; nor does Africa have to reject them in order to develop.

The Japanese, Koreans and other Asians did not have to reject their culture in order to develop. Only educated zombies think Africa has to. The continent is littered with the putrid carcasses of failed imported systems. Now we are being told to go Chinese! Such stupidity.Africa's salvation lies in returning to and building upon its own indigenous institutions. Africa's salvation does NOT lie in the corridors of the World Bank, the inner sanctum of the Chinese politburo. Nor does Africa's salvation lie in the steamy sex antics of cockroaches on Jupiter!

George Ayittey,Washington, DC

The People of No

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, your legs, your feet. You are a no person. I run from you. You say no to God. I am afraid of your no touch. I cannot expand my mind around no people. You will kill my spiritual development. No no no no!

When you say yes to life you open the world of infinite possibilities. I understand no part of no, only infinite possibilities. No does not exist in my world, only yes. Yes to love. Yes to success, yes to hope, yes to truth, yes to prosperity, yet to divinity, yes to resurrection, yes to ascension, yes to eternity. I am the language of yes. If you cannot say yes, get away from me. I run from you, want nothing to do with you. There is no hope for you until you open your mouth to yes.

Cast away the yes fear. Let it go, let God. Yes. No matter what, yes. No matter how long, yes.

No matter how hard, yes. Let there be peace in the house, yes. Let there be love between you and me, yes. Let there be revolution in the land, over the world, yes. We will try harder, yes, we won't give up, yes. We shall triumph, yes. Yes is the language of God. Yes is the language of Divinity, Spirituality.

All the prophets ssaid yes. Adam said yes, Abraham said yes. Moses said yes. Solomon said yes.

Job said yes. Jeremiah, Isaiah said yes. The lover in Song of Solomon said yes. David said yes.

John and Jesus sasid yes. Muhammad said yes. Elijah and Malcolm, Martin and Garvey, Harriet Tubman and Sojourner Truth said yes. Fannie Lou and Rosa Parks, Betty Shabazz and Coretta Scott ssaid 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!

--Marvin X

from Beyond Religion, toward Spirituality, Black Bird Press, Berkeley, 2007

www.blackbirdpressnews.blogspot.com

Beyond Religion, Toward Spirituality
Essays on Consciousness
By Marvin X

Review by Rudolph Lewis, editor, chickenbones, a journal
www.nathanielturner.com

Marvin X has done extraordinary mind and soul work in bringing our attention to the importance of spirituality, as opposed to religion, in our daily living. Someone—maybe Kierkegaard or maybe it was George Fox who—said that there was no such thing as "Christianity." There can only be Christians. It is not institutions but rather individuals who make the meaningful differences in our world. It is not Islam but Muslims. Not Buddhism but Buddhists. Marvin X has made a courageous difference. In this book he shares the wondrous vision of his spiritual explorations. His eloquent language and rhetoric are varied—sophisticated but also earthy, sometimes both at once. His moods are both reverent and irreverent: at times he consoles, other times cajoles with biting mockery. At times amusing but always deadly serious.

Highly informed he speaks to many societal levels and to both genders—to the intellectual as well as to the man/woman on the street or the unfortunate in prison—to the mind as well as the heart. His topics range from global politics and economics to those between men and women in their household. Common sense dominates his thought. He shuns political correctness for the truth of life. He is a Master Teacher in many fields of thought—religion and psychology, sociology and anthropology, history and politics, literature and the humanities. He is a needed Counselor, for he knows himself, on the deepest of personal levels and he reveals that self to us, that we might be his beneficiaries.

All of which are represented in his Radical Spirituality—a balm for those who anguish in these troubling times of disinformation. As a shaman himself, he calls too for a Radical Mythology to override the traditional mythologies of racial supremacy that foster war and injustice. It's a dangerous book, for it reveals the inner workings of capitalist and imperialist governments around the world. It's a book that stands with and on behalf of the poor, the dispossessed, the despised, and downtrodden.

Marvin X has found a way out of our spiritual morass, our material quagmire. We are blessed to still have him among us. If you want to reshape (clean up, raise) your consciousness, this is a book to savor, to read again, and again—to pass onto a friend or lover.
—Rudolph Lewis, Editor, ChickenBones: A Journal
Contents
Preface, Joy and Happiness, Work
Reconciliation, Health, Elders
Women, Men, Youth
Children, Sex, Solitude
Blessings, Music, Writing
Africa, Love, Partner Violence
Prison, Street Violence, Pimpin
Rap, Jerusalem, Teacher, Myth
Militant, Language, Nature,
Global Violence, Sectarianism
Technology, Ancestors, Death
History, Future, Polygamy
Polyandry, Prostitution, Nukes
Religion, Sufi, Prayer, Radical God
Ritual, Drugs, Family, Marriage
Education, Gay/Lesbian, HIV/AIDS
Art, Traumatic Stress, Poverty
Black Bourgeoisie, Media, Panther
Peace, Politics, Immigration, Land
Holy Joes, Sovereignty, Democracy
Fascism, Amnesty, Capitalism, Americas
Berkeley, Condi, Chinaman's Chance
Paris Burning, Sudan, London Bridges
Welcome to Mexi-Cali, Pan Africa
Evil, Tookie Williams, Fathers and Daughters
Why I Talk With Cows, Jesus, Pharaoh's Egypt
Death Angel, When Jazz Ain't Jazz, BAM at Howard U.
Lucy Is Coming, One Mind, Afterword

Teaching Diaspora Literature:

Muslim American Literature as an Emerging Field

Marvin X is too extreme for many, but I like strong voices even if I don’t agree with everything they say.--Mohja Kahf

by Mohja Kahf

Mohja Kahf (Comparative Literature, University of Arkansas) is the author of Western Representations of the Muslim Woman: From Termagant to Odalisque (1999), E-mails fromScheherazad (poetry, 2003), and The Girl in the Tangerine Scarf (novel, 2006).

Is there such a thing as Muslim American literature (MAL)? I argue that there is: It begins with
the Muslims of the Black Arts Movement (1965–75). The Autobiography of Malcolm X is one of
its iconic texts; it includes American Sufi writing, secular ethnic novels, writing by immigrant and
second-generation Muslims, and religious American Muslim literature.

Many of the works I would put into this category can and do also get read in other categories, such as African American, Arab American, and South Asian literature, “Third World” women’s writing, diasporicMuslim literature in English, and so forth.

While the place of these works in other categories cannot be denied, something is gained in reading them together as part of an American Muslim cultural landscape. Like Jewish American literature by the 1930s, Muslim American literature is in a formative stage. It will be interesting to see how it develops (and who will be its Philip Roth!)

I suggest the following typology of MAL only as a foothold, a means of bringing a tentative order
to the many texts, one that should be challenged, and maybe ultimately dropped altogether.

My first grouping, the “Prophets of Dissent,” suggests that Muslim works in the Black Arts
Movement (BAM) are the first set of writings in American literature to voice a cultural position
identifiable as Muslim. Contemporary Muslim writing that takes the achievements of the BAM as an important literary influence also belongs here, and is characterized similarly by its “outsider”status, moral critique of mainstream American values, and often prophetic, visionary tone.

In contrast, the writers of what I call “the Multi-Ethnic Multitudes” tend to enjoy “insider” status in American letters, often entering through MFA programs and the literary establishment, getting published through trade and university book industries, garnering reviews in the mainstream press. They do not share an overall aesthetic but are individual writers of various ethnicities and a wide range of secularisms and spiritualities, and indeed I question my placing them all in one group, and do so temporarily only for the sake of convenience.

On the other hand, my third group, the “New American Transcendentalists,” appears to cohere,
in aesthetic terms, as writers who share a broad Sufi cultural foundation undergirding their
literary work. Their writings often show familiarity with the Sufi poets of several classical Muslim literatures (e.g., in Turkish, Farsi, Arabic, Urdu), as well as with American Transcendentalists of the nineteenth century, and that which tends toward the spiritual and the ecstatic in modern American poetry.

Finally, the “New Pilgrims” is my term for a loose grouping of writers for whom Islam is not merely a mode of dissent, cultural background, or spiritual foundation for their writing, but its aim and explicit topic. Of the four groups, the New Pilgrims are the ones who write in an overtly religious mode and motivation, like Ann Bradstreet, Cotton Mather, and the Puritans of early American history. This does not prevent them from being capable of producing great literature, any more than it prevented the great Puritan writers.

Here is an example of just a few writers in each category, by no means a comprehensive list:

Prophets of Dissent

From the Black Arts Movement:

• Marvin X, whose Fly to Allah (1969) is possibly the first book of poems published in English
by a Muslim American author.

• Sonia Sanchez, whose A Blues Book for Blue Black Magical Women (1974) is the work of
her Muslim period.

• Amiri Baraka, whose A Black Mass (2002) renders the Nation of Islam’s Yacoub genesis
theology into drama. As with Sanchez, the author was Muslim only briefly but the influence
of the Islamic period stretches over a significant part of his overall production.

Later Prophets of Dissent include:

• Calligraphy of Thought, the Bay area poetry venue for young “Generation M” Muslim
American spoken word artists who today continue in the visionary and dissenting mode of
the BAM.

• Suheir Hammad, Palestinian New Yorker, diva of Def Poetry Jam (on Broadway and HBO),
whose tribute to June Jordan in her first book of poetry, Born Palestinian, Born Black
(1996), establishes her line of descent from the BAM, at least as one (major) influence on
her work.

• El Hajj Malik El Shabazz (Malcolm X) is an iconic figure for this mode of Muslim American
writing and, indeed, for many writers in all four categories.

Multi-Ethnic Multitudes

• Kashmiri American poet Agha Shahid Ali, an influential figure in the mainstream American
poetry scene, with a literary prize named after him at the University of Utah, brought the
ghazal into fashion in English so that it is now taught among other forms in MFA programs.

• Naomi Shihab Nye, Palestinian American, likewise a “crossover” poet whose work enjoys
prominence in American letters, takes on Muslim content in a significant amount of her
work.

• Sam Hamod, an Arab midwesterner who was publishing poetry in journals at the same time
as Marvin X.

• Nahid Rachlin’s fiction has been published since well before the recent wave of literature by
others who, like her, are Iranian immigrants.

• Mustafa Mutabaruka, an African American Muslim, debut novel Seed (2002).

• Samina Ali, midwesterner of Indian parentage, debut novel Madras on Rainy Days (2004),
was featured on the June 2004 cover of Poets & Writers.

• Khaled Hosseini, debut novel The Kite Runner (2003).

• Michael Muhammad Knight, a Muslim of New York Irish Catholic background, whose punk
rock novel The Taqwacores (2004) delves deeply into Muslim identity issues.

• There are a number of journals where Muslim American literature of various ethnicities can
be found today, among them Chowrangi, a Pakistani American magazine out of New
Jersey, and Mizna, an Arab American poetry magazine out of Minneapolis.
New American Transcendentalists

• Daniel (Abd al-Hayy) Moore is an excellent example of this mode of Muslim American
writing. California-born, he published as a Beat poet in the early sixties, became a Sufi
Muslim, renounced poetry for a decade, then renounced his renouncement and began
publishing again, prolifically and with a rare talent. His Ramadan Sonnets (City Lights,
1986) is a marriage of content and form that exemplifies the “Muslim/American” simultaneity
of Muslim American art.

• The Rumi phenomenon: apparently the most read poet in America is a Muslim. He merits
mention for that, although technically I am not including literature in translation. Then again,
why not? As with so many other of my limits, this is arbitrary and only awaits someone to
make a case against it.
• Journals publishing poetry in this mode include The American Muslim, Sufi, Qalbi, and
others.

New American Pilgrims

• Pamela Taylor writes Muslim American science fiction. Iman Yusuf writes “Islamic
romance.” This group of writers is not limited to genre writers, however. Dasham Brookins
writes and performs poetry and maintains a website, MuslimPoet.com, where poets such as
Samantha Sanchez post. Umm Zakiyya (pseud.) has written a novel, If I Should Speak
(2001), about a young Muslim American and her roommates in college.

Writers in this group also come from many ethnicities but, unlike those in my second category, come together around a more or less coherent, more or less conservative Muslim identity.
Websites tend to ban erotica and blasphemy, for example. The Islamic Writers Alliance, a
group formed by Muslim American women, has just put out its first anthology. Major
published authors have yet to emerge in this grouping, but there is no reason to think they
will not eventually do so.

My criteria for Muslim American literature are a flexible combination of three factors:
Muslim authorship. Including this factor, however vague or tenuous, prevents widening the
scope to the point of meaninglessness, rather than simply including any work about Muslims by
an author with no biographical connection to the slightest sliver of Muslim identity (such as
Robert Ferrigno with his recent dystopian novel about a fanatical Muslim takeover of America).
It is a cultural, not religious, notion of Muslim that is relevant. A “lapsed Muslim” author, as one
poet on my roster called himself, is still a Muslim author for my purposes. I am not interested in
levels of commitment or practice, but in literary Muslimness.

Language and aesthetic of the writing.

In a few cases, there is a deliberate espousal of an aesthetic that has Islamic roots, such as the Afrocentric Islamic aesthetic of the Muslim authors in the Black Arts Movement.

Relevance of themes or content.

If the Muslim identity of the author is vague or not explicitly professed, which is often the case with authors in the “Multi-Ethnic Multitudes,” but the content itself is relevant to Muslim American experience, I take that as a signal that the text is choosing to enter the conversation of Muslim American literature and ought to be included.

In defining boundaries for research that could become impossibly diffuse, I choose to look
mainly at fiction and poetry, with autobiography and memoir writings selectively included. I have not included writings in languages other than English, although there are Muslims in America who write in Arabic, Urdu, and other languages. I have looked at the twentieth century onward, and there is archival digging to be done in earlier periods: the Spanish colonial era may yield Muslim writing, and we already know that some enslaved Muslims in the nineteenth century have left narratives. More research is needed. If one expands the field from “literature” to“Muslim American culture,” one can also include Motown, rap, and hip-hop lyrics by Muslim
artists, screenplays such as the Muslim American classic The Message by the late Syrian
American producer Mustapha Aqqad, books written for children, sermons, essays, and other
genres.

There are pleasures and patterns that emerge from reading this profusion of disparate texts
under the rubric of Muslim American cultural narrative. It is time! I hope, as this field emerges,
that others will do work in areas I have left aside in this brief initial exploration.

Snow Job In Oakland:

Mayor Ron Dellums State of the City Speech

Mayor Ron Dellums gave his State of the City speech tonight at City Hall. My two-year old grandson Jahmeel wanted to pee on the steps of City Hall but I redirected him to a corner where he could relieve himself. He was assisting me passing out my poster poem Black History is World History. A woman walked up with her daughter to ask what was going on at City Hall since she saw all the television vans outside. She asked was it a black history event? I said it's either a black history or white history event! After getting her poster, she went on her way. Jahmeer was photographed by journalist Reginal James.

After my grandson Jahmeel gave posters to Oakland Post Publisher Paul Cobb and Gay Cobb, Geoffrey Pete and Joyce Gordon, Supervisor Keith Carson, we lingered awhile then went inside to catch the Mayor on the giant screen in an anteroom.

We came in to hear the Mayor giving a glowing picture of progress in Oakland. Crime is down 10%, 38% since the new year. Ex-offenders have a voice in the Mayor's office, Isaac Taggert, who used to be a brother but is now too busy to speak with brothers he used to hang with. We saw him bringing in refreshments for the event. Another person my grandson gave a poster to was former city councilman Wilson Riles, Jr. When he saw my Haiti, Oh, Haiti poster, he gave me a quick history lesson on Dessalines, Toussaint and Henri Christophe, leaders of the revolution in Haiti. He said they flipped and flopped at various times and that we might hear some of the same tonight. It was snowing in Oakland, but it all seemed to get caught in the white natural of Mayor Dellums. When my grandson saw people clapping on the giant screen, he clapped, but nobody else was clapping in the anteroom.

We see the USA is providing schooling, housing and jobs for insurgents in Irag, Afghanistan and Yemen. We didn't hear a similar program in the Mayor's speech. Rather than police, why doesn't he pay former inmates to secure their neighborhoods, by paying them a living wage. Give gang bangers a living wage. Call for amnestry from all petty criminals in jails and prisons. True, he took off the box for city employment that asks have you ever been arrested. This is good. But how many other employers have done so? No doubt the City will be laying off workers, although Dellums said Oakland actually hired workers while other Bay Area governments and cities were laying off workers. The snow is falling in Oakland. Let's have a snow ball fight!

I hate to play the devil's advocate, but my job as a poet/critic is not to give any ground to pharaoh and his magicians. I'm for radical change and I see little of that in Oakland, from the past two black administrations down to Dellums. Dellums talks a good game but it sounds like the same old song. The truth is that Oakland is in dire straits and the modicum of change the Mayor has brought about is merely kibbles and bits, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing. More police, police as mentors, police as saviors, police as all in all, as in police state. The new police chief Bates walked in with his entourage. Oakland received the biggest grant for police in the nation, according to the Mayor.

In truth, slavery has returned to Oakland, or the slave codes. Youth are told they cannot gather in groups on the corners or in front of businesses in downtown Oakland. There are "youth police" to urge them on in violation of their constutitional right of freedom of assembly. At the building on 14th and Broadway where a giant Walgreen's is about to open, there were seats where people could sit awaiting the bus. These seats were bulldozed but not before a security guard was stationed on post to stop people from sitting while waiting for the bus.

There are no places in businesses for people to use the rest room, including customers. It is Jim Crow second class citizenship in black face.

The snow job continued as my grandson begged for water, so I left the room looking at Dellums on the giant screen. I hear he'll run for a second term. His chief rival will be Don Pareta, a gangster politican retired from Sacramento. So the choice is twiddle dee or twiddle dum. Amiri Baraka of Newark, New Jersey, says go with the black, no matter his negrocities.
--Marvin X
2/22/10

Eldridge Cleaver, my friend the devil,
a memoir by Marvin X

Introduction by Amiri Baraka

Marvin X‘s newest book, “Eldridge Cleaver: My friend, the Devil” is an important Expose!, not only of whom his good friend really was… (I confess I thought something like that, in less metaphysical terms, from the day we met, at San Francisco State University, 1967). But also of whom Marvin was/is. Now Marvin has confessed to being Yacub, whom Elijah Muhammad taught us was the“evil big head scientist” who created the devil. (Marvin’s head is very large for his age.) What is good about this book is Marvin’s telling us something about who Eldridge became as the Black Panther years receded in the rear view mirror. I remember during this period, when I learned that Marvin was hanging around Cleaver even after he’d made his televised switch from anti-capitalist revolutionary to Christian minister, denouncing the 3rd World revolutionaries and the little Marxism he thought he knew, while openly acknowledging beating his wife as a God given male prerogative, I said to Marvin, “I thought you was a Muslim”. His retort, “Jesus pay more money than Allah, Bro”, should be a classic statement of vituperative recidivism. But this is one of the charms of this memoir. It makes the bizarre fathomable. Especially the tales of fraternization with arguably the most racist & whitest of the Xtian born agains with Marvin as agent, road manager, co-conspirator-confessor, for the post-Panther – very shot- out Cleaver. It also partially explains some of Cleaver’s moves to get back in this country, he had one time denounced, and what he did after the big copout. Plus, some of the time these goings on seem straight out hilarious. Though frequently, that mirth is laced with a sting of regret. Likewise, I want everyone to know that I am writing this against my will, as a favor to Yacub. --Amiri Baraka

Review Eldridge Cleaver, Marvin X and Memoirs

By Rudolph Lewis, editor Chickenboneshttp://www.nathanielturner.com/

Marvin has a "memoir." Promotionally, it is about Eldridge Cleaver, my least favorite Black Panther. I am down with Huey. For Bobby there is always gagged in Chicago . There was whiteness: everybody could see that fairly well by 1969 and we could see that it was a whiteness that did not tolerate and doesn't allow you to pretend that you have no understanding of whiteness and its operations. In this game of subjection, Eldridge's point indeed in his crazed cranium, mistakes nor ignorance aren't forgiven. All literary work is about "power"—that is mastery. For a month or so I daily saw this writer writing a book—piece by piece (part by part). Marvin X exudes power. He just turned 65 but he removes space like Archie Moore 44 in the ring. The book is Marvin. I know it is an odd thing to say a book is an author. If that is the case this “memoir” is indeed a memoir in the most perfect sense of one thing being another. Marvin pulls his memoir through the mode of “storytelling.” Marvin, his memoir, each identifies with the people: to paraphrase Langston, in all their beauty and ugliness too. Marvin can walk into a barroom and in seconds have everyone laughing or falling out on the floor. Marvin doesn’t feel uncomfortable like Cornel West speaking before a class of black middle-class folk, or uncomfortable like other self-corporate prophetic leaders. These are objects of his jest, ridicule, scorn. Their pretensions, their respectability. Other than a poet, playwright, director, publisher, and editor, Marvin X is a recovering addict who works daily in drug invested communities. He knows where his allegiance lies and in whom to invest. I want to be open in this discussion as much as necessary. I encouraged this book while Marvin was writing madly and emailing part after part, revision after revision. I found it all so riveting. Watching a writer write a book himself day after day, hour after hour, and the next thing I know we are on part 32, is quite an unusual and extraordinary experience. The writing process is indeed important. Each of us has his own way of going about it. Marvin’s last approach, similar to other Marvin escapades, intentionally and directly seeks an audience for his memoir. Actually, he was out on the road—a book tour. In Houston , Texas. On a book tour, Marvin sends what one might call a “barrage” of responses to event or current events, keeping in touch with friends, writers, publishers and more. In ways he is always a political organizer as well as self-promoter. He makes his way as speaker, writer, event organizer, performer. He keeps people tied to one another and valuing their lives. Marvin is uniquely developed into an informed black man who is religious, spiritual, and political. He is as representative of the Black Arts Movement (BAM), then and now, as anyone I can think. In ways Marvin is galactic to the point you think he’s standing still, still mired in the betraying clays of the 1960s and 1970s. Ones need to be half-crazed, extremely intelligent, and extraordinarily visionary for his words to reenact the BAM world, as is achieved in memoir, to see the hole we are clearly in and still remain faithful that “Blackness” will find a way. The memoir fell silent. Marvin moved onto South Carolina . Then he was in New York , Philly. And then New Jersey . Where he hooks up with his buddy, Amiri Baraka. From what I observed for the last decade is that Marvin loves Baraka, right or wrong, and would die for Baraka. This day. This moment view love I knew when I was a soldier out on the streets of Baltimore . Brothers I would die for. That kind of enthusiasm about changing whiteness in the land and thus the world, well, that kind of “militancy” was buried with Mr. Jim Crow. The resulting vision of the NAACP. Marvin X suspends the past present future like a diamond and makes us believe in “blackness” when it has grayed and entered a nursing home. Yet Marvin believes, he’s a soldier to the death. I did not want Marvin’s memoir to end. We were only at the beginning, though at chapter 39, chapters fairly short. In New York Marvin was talking about Amiri’s response and willingness to help secure Marvin a book deal for his memoir. From Marvin I received some piece of a rejection notice, all too stereotypical. I do not know where the cat was. But it seems he did not think the “memoir” was worthy of work or revision. What Marvin has as his “memoir” is indeed phenomenal. In its present form one can find nothing like it or better in representing the BAM world. The larger frame of the book could withstand double its size. The expose could be put to work toward understanding what caused BAM writers to decline, and why the BAM literary legacy is more critical, than before or since the Harlem Renaissance . Two extraordinary playwrights. August Wilson and Marvin X have maintained their reverence and significance of the BAM period. Maybe Wilson is more introspective. Maybe less or differently ideological than Marvin. But both believing there is indeed such a thing as a “black perspective,” whether you want to agree with it or not. It is this kind of daily believing that makes Marvin X our saving grace. Many of us are too willing to give up the significance and totality of what can be called Black Life in America , of the significance of identity in the personal, social, and economic progress or “success.” One cannot have a healthy psychic if one half of your people are free and the other half wallow in ignorance and superstition. How Moses satisfied such a state of being? I don’t want to hear about COINTELPRO or slave catchers. I want to hear more on how or why Huey died the way that he did. I want to hear more about why Cleaver’s madness was entertained by anyone sane in the black community—a rapist and murderer. I want real discussion why Baraka’s walk away from cultural nationalism of the 1970s no less an act of betrayal than Cleaver in Cuba , in Algeria , in France , and black in the United States . The expose does not work so well if there's no thorough attempt to make any sense out of BAM failing to seize the high ground. Maybe there was an inadequacy, a sweep in BAM, that was too large, too public, and in other aspects too personal, to be sustained as a social movement for a people spread out across a nation. I love Jimi Hendrix not one iota less to know that he died (by some reports murdered) in a drug house. My love for Huey is eternal. What I’ve heard and read so far brings nothing of import to account for Huey’s rise and fall. That’s from Marvin as well. How Huey came to the drug house? How for that matter Marvin X? Often we see it more in the light of spectacle, of shame, and guilt. Not only drug use but the entire cultural breakdown of race, sex, and gender, during that period, breaking down for new frontiers. At the time we were all under its spell. Woodstock !!! Too many of us cultural radicals have warped into cultural conservatives, sometimes a too willingness to serve the Beast, at other times a cold hard decision, like “Allah does not pay as much as Jesus.” We are all Januses. Some more fortunate than others. At the Crack House the doors of Hell are open, how low a man, a woman will stoop, what acts she will perform for crack’s grain of joy. The deconstruction of crack must continue. That the whole scene is made unlawful shows how far the respectable stoops to crush any kind of resistance, political, social cultural or otherwise. I’ve read two other memoirs by black male writers: one Jerry W. Ward, Jr., The Katrina Papers (2008, $18.95) and the other by E. Ethelbert Miller, The 5th Inning (2009). Miller’s memoir is more personal, though it too contains social commentary. Jerry Ward’s work is post-modern, the memoir imitates, sets itself up as the same powerful forces of post-Katrina—powerful with the fragments of people’s lives on motor boats and housetops; great sludge and dead bodies floating down the streets of your neighborhood. Marvin self published his memoir. Each of these memoirs is special. Read them. My feeling is that most publishers are not interested in black male memoirs. But many readers including females may find a great interest in these three black male writers and how differently they situate black life in America .

The Parable of the Fire

Parable of the Fire

There was a pile of weeds in the backyard. They were an eyesore to the neighborhood. People complained until the man in the white house decided to burn them down. He lighted the pile of weeds and they began to burn. Then a wind came and started blowing the embers into the field nearby. The man saw he could have a problem if he didn't do something quickly, so he grabbed the water hose and began sprinkling water on the pile of weeds. He put water on the top of the pile and the flames seemed to subside. He continued pouring water on the top of the pile until he thought the fire was out, since he didn't see anymore flames. He went inside and went to sleep. While he was asleep the smoldering fire underneath began to burn again until the flames could be seen by neighbors who called the fire department. They rushed to the scene. When the man heard the fire trucks he got up and ran outside to see the pile of weeds flaming high with embers going up into the night sky.
The firemen put out the fire and told the man to get out of the way so they could finish the job he had half done. He did as told and the firemen extinguished the fire, including the smoldering weeds on the bottom.
The firemen told him to never forget the fire underneath that can smolder for days and flame up periodically, depending on the wind. Just because you put water on the top, don't think the fire is out. Remember the smoldering flames underneath that must be suppressed.

2/19/10

The condition of the American economic and financial crisis is analogous to the Parable of the Fire. The fire took place in the back yard of the White House. The President was the man trying to put the fire out. He applied the socalled conservative voodoo trickle down theory to the fire, starting at the top as the President did with his bailout of the banks, insurance companies and corporations. While the trickle down theory did assuage the meltdown, the crucial factor was not at the top but the fire smoldering underneath. But being so smart he outsmarted himself, the President proclaimed a victory over the crisis, even though the fire underneath was yet burning with unemployment, mortgage debt, homelessness and growing anger among the people since many were also starving for they were without money for basic survival.

The President even continued sleeping without addressing the issue at hand, jobs, jobs, jobs, rather he focused on health insurance that even if passed would be unaffordable since people are unemployed. Like the man putting out the fire, his energy was misplaced though well meaning.

The neighbors who called the fire department are all those who were for him initially and even those who were against him. The fire is causing a symbiotic unity among the people that will likely cause his removal from the White House. Yes, dissatisfaction brings about a change, real change. It appears the President will be evicted from the White House after his first term. The winds are gathering to sweep him from office. The winds of war are yet blowing in the East, costing him trillions of dollars. There are even little fires in the fields nearby caused by the embers blowing in the wind. The global financial system is yet burning. Greece is on fire and other nations are no out of danger. There is the fire of the drug war on the President's border. Seven thousand murders in the last few years. Even inside the border there is fire in the cities, with thousands murdered in the inner cities, yet we hear nothing from the sleeping President.

He promises to address the problem of education, housing and employment with the avowed enemies of his country before addressing the smoldering fire of discontent in his backyard. We wonder does he hear the cries of the people or is the siren of the fire truck so deafening that it drowns out the voices of those suffering on the bottom of the pile of weeds.

--Marvin X

2/20/10

The Psycho-linguistic Crisis of the North American African

Marvin X

4/16/98

I have long wanted to discuss language problems relating to the psychology of the oppressed. Let's begin with the notion that the oppressed is a disoriented person suffering symptoms of amnesia: he is not quite sure who he is, where he is, where he came from or where he is going.
We know to a great extent he was stripped of his cultural trappings and forced to don the apparel of the so-called negro, for American slavery would not allow him to retain critical and essential knowledge of his African self--this was a danger to the slave master's plan of eternal servitude. The proud African was beaten down from Kunta Kinte to Toby, perhaps the first level in his psycho-linguistic crisis: who am I, what is my name? He was no longer Yoruba, Hausa, Ibo, Congo, Ashante but Negro, and according to Grimm's law (the consonants C,K, and G being interchangeable) he was a dead, from the Greek Necro, something dead, lifeless, without motion and spirit.

Of course, he retained residue of his African consciousness in the deep structure of his mind, in the bowels of his soul and he expressed it in his dance, his love life, his work habits, his songs and shouts, but basically he was a traumatized victim of kidnapping, rape and mass murder--genocide, for after all, when it was all said and done, between 50 and 100 million of his brothers and sisters were lost in the Middle Passage, the voyage between Africa and the Americas, thrown to the sharks trailing slave ships, one ship was named Jesus, perhaps the same one whose captain, John Hawkins, had the miraculous conversion and wrote the song Amazing Grace!
But changing the African into Negro was a primary problem in terms of identity that persists until today, for even as we speak a new generation is now in crisis trying to decide whether they shall be called by Christian, Muslim or traditional African names, trying to decide whether they are Americans, Afro-Americans, African-Americans, Bilalians, Khemites, Sudanese, or North American Africans. With this term I've tried to emphasize our cultural roots by making Africa the noun rather than the adjective. Also, I wanted to identify us geo-politically: we are Africans on the continent of North America, as opposed to Africans in Central and South America, the Caribbean, Europe, Asia or the Motherland.
As such, we are unique and have created an original African Culture in North America, imitated throughout the world. The world wants to talk like us, dance like us, sing like us, dress like us:
Bay Area poet Paradise has a classic poem with the major line, "They like everything about us but us...."
We have the highest standard of living of any Africans in the world and are thus in the position of leadership even though we lack any degree of National sovereignty, are yet a de facto Nation, albeit captive and colonized, exploited 24/7 by any pimp fearless enough to enter the ghetto, and there are many from around the world, including Asians, Indian, Koreans, Arabs, Jews, Africans, West Indians, and Latinos.
I refuse to be sympathetic to anyone exploiting North American Africans--call me anti Pan African, anti Third World, whatever, but don't pimp my people and expect me to accept it because you're from Africa or Jamaica. I wouldn't go to Jamaica and exploit Jamaicans, then have the nerve to refer to them as "you people." I would be nice and diplomatic on their turf--then talk about them when I got home. We are often derided by our African and Caribbean brothers, sometimes called "black Americans" but often simply "Americans," said in the most derogatory manner, as if we're dirt or feces, meanwhile they are in America enjoying the benefits of our struggle with the white man. If everything is so cool in Jamaica, why did they leave their Island in the sun? If everything is so cool in Nigeria, why ain't they rushing back to Lagos? With the last statement, we enter the Pan African psycholinguistic crisis, transcending the borders of North America, and perhaps the crisis of the North American African cannot be understood except in terms of Pan African struggle for liberation from neo-colonialism, the last stage of imperialism.
The colonized man--wherever he is, wherever he's from--is a sick man, mentally ill. And as Franz Fanon pointed out, the only way the colonized man can regain his mental health is through the act and process of revolution. Dr. Nathan Hare tells us in his introduction to my autobiography SOMETHIN' PROPER, that neither sex, messianic religiosity nor chemical dependency will free us from our "social angst and shattered cultural strivings."

We must grab the bull by the horns or slay the dragon. I referred to an African as black brother recently. He responded, "Why do you call me that?" "What do you want me to call you," I asked. He said, "Call me gentleman." And the beat goes on. Here was a man blacker than night, ashamed of himself, preferring to be called a gentle man rather than Black man, once proud, but now whipped into gentleness, or servility, expressing clearly the mark of oppression, the mark of the beast. The recent discussion of Ebonics was most certainly an example of the psycholinguistic crisis of North American Africans. Of course we are bilingual, with one pattern of speech used in the "slave huts" and one for the "big house." Technically, if we were able to deconstruct the language of the "slave huts" we would be in a position to deconstruct the "big house" language as well.

And why shouldn't deconstruction of the Mother Tongue be the point of departure for acquiring language skills? Let's start with the child's primary language and build; teach the child that even his so-called slang, dialect or African speech patterns can be examined and explained according to the rules of grammar or the science of linguistics. Is there any sound, any speech pattern in any language that cannot be explained and thus respected on a scientific level? We know that no matter what language Africans speak, whether English, Spanish, French, Portuguese, we speak it from an African speech pattern, from an African grammatical structure. Is there a genetic basis for this phenomenon, I'm not sure, but its existence appears universal throughout Pan Africa.

The N Word

Nigger or Nigguh has caused the most severe psycholinguistic crisis among North American Africans. Earlier we traced its etymology to the Greek Necro, something dead, which is more befitting and functional than the Spanish Negro (black), or Niger, from the river. We became dead beings in the transformation from Africa to America, so quiet as its kept, Negro is very appropriate, nigger and nigguh a variation thereof. Of course the Honorable Elijah Muhammad said we were so-called Negroes and therefore not truly Negroes, but temporarily under the spell of white magic--white power--which caused us to be deaf, dumb and blind to the knowledge of self and others, therefore dead. We became the living dead, despised and rejected around the world, even today, although the valiant struggle of the 60s put us in a more favorable light in the eyes of the world.

The dead socalled Negro awakened and shook off the chains on his brain and let the world know he was no longer dead, no longer a tool and fool of the white man. He rejected being called Negro and Nigger and became Black man, the Aboriginal Asiatic Black man, ruler of the planet earth, god of the universe.

For a moment, it appeared he truly believed this mythology, which was as valid as any other mythology, at least it was original and Afrocentric. But with the destruction of the black liberation movement, we can say the Negro returned, as per plan of the U.S.A.'s counter intelligence program, Cointelpro: kill the black man and bring back the Negro or shall we say the Nigger that the Master used to know, and to make sure he remains dead, introduce CRACK to make him a first class zombie, the corpse of a man. Imagine, for the first time in history, the black woman lost her ass behind crack, meanwhile the white woman was at Gold's gym working on acquiring an ass, which I must admit, she has obtained. Let's not exclude her diet of hormone fed beef and chicken. But this point takes us off course into psychosomatics. Let's stay with psycholinguistics.

In the 70s, 80s and 90s, the so-called Negro has been fighting to erase the N word from our vocabulary, particularly brothers in prison who have been the most "negroid" in their death dealing criminality, terrorizing, robbing, raping, murdering and subjecting our community with drugs to the total destabilization of the hood. Perhaps in their guilt, they have been trying to purify their behavior and speech to gain self respect and dignity--if caught using the N word, they will require the user to do any number of push ups.

This is very noble, but the reality is that the N word has now transcended the North American African community and is in global use by Asian, Latin and white youth who call each other nigguh as a badge of honor. We no longer have a monopoly on our language, and this is another reason for the present crisis: our culture is forever eluding our control, consequently making us the most insecure people on earth. We have lost everything on the good ship America--for three centuries we lost complete and total control over the fruits of our labor, the primary source of security. How else does one secure the family, the women and children? In short, the term Nigguh is a billion dollar term and ain't no way it's going the way of the dodo bird, not any time soon. If nigguhs don't want to be nigguhs, there's a lot of other people around the world who do, whether they understand all the nuances of the word or not.

Bitch

Not long ago, I heard rappers discussing their tour of Italy. Upon arriving at the airport, the first thing they heard Italian youth discussing was how many "Bitches" they had, obviously influenced by hip hop culture or shall we say specifically gansta rap--yeah, ganstas who when caught are ignorant of a preliminary hearing.

But let us deconstruct the controversial term BITCH. Besides Nigger or Nigguh, no other term has caused more controversy of late, no other term has created a crisis situation among North American Africans, prompting the Million Man Marchers to vow never to use the term again. They claimed it demeaned the black woman, the mother of civilization. My personal view is that crack culture demeaned the black man and women to the extent that the term "bitch" has taken on new meaning and now refers to both male and female, and a discussion of the term cannot be limited to the feminine gender.

Youth in the dope culture will quickly address a tweeking, fumbing OG as "punk bitch." For example, to a male they will say, "Punk-bitch, you better take this dope and get the fuck up outta here wit da quickness." This sentence is most indicative of the psycholinguistic crisis because it reveals the utter destruction of filial piety (respect or duty of children to elders) in the North American African community. When adults began buying crack from children, children saw the utter weakness in the older generation and lost total respect which was expressed in verbal denunciations such as "punk bitch." In my recovery drama ONE DAY IN THE LIFE, a youth confronts the late Huey Newton and myself with the following words as we sat in a West Oakland crack house: "Yeah, you nigguhs is dope fiends, you ain't no revolutionaries, so don't say shit to me bout no program. How you gon buy dope from me and my podnas--I mean, I'm in recovery now but when I was a dealer, you couldn't come to me and tell me you some revolutionaries--you some punk-bitch nigguhs. When you get your shit together we'll have some respect fa ya, but until then, don't talk to us bout no revolution, O.G., cause if I saw ya comin on my turf, I'd make a movie out that ass, podna. Don't be no walkin contradiction ma nigguhs." My associate, J.B. Saunders, asked me to include a word-picture of male "bitch behavior" as expressed in the crack ritual. An example of this comes from the observation of monkeys when the female is ready to present herself to the male. She will go to a corner of a cage or by a tree and expose her rear end to the male, letting him know he can come and get her or know her as the Bible says.

In the crack house, the male bitch will expose his posterior in his ritual of crawling on all fours around the room, supposedly looking for crack, but mainly picking up lint and other particles, even chips of dry wall. The ultimately expression of male bitch behavior is the so-called straight guy who under desperation, i,e., when the tweeking ritual is exhausted, will present his posterior to the dope dealer--accompanied with the words "I'll do anything for another hit," and perform homosexual acts to obtain more crack, but in his psycho-linguistic crisis he adamantly denies he is gay, all the while swallowing the dope dealer's penis and cum.

The worse bitch in the world is the bitch in denial! And even that bitch will--in a moment of scandalous activity declare, "I know I'm a bitch." But why bitch? My views on the matter are prejudiced by the fact that I grew up in a house with six sisters who referred to themselves as bitches--and I must say, many times acted like bitches, if we mean behavior unbecoming a woman--such behavior being acceptable only during PMS or pregnancy! But is it demeaning to say, "That's a fine bitch!" We know words only have the power we give them, i.e., we define words. Bourgeoisie culture cannot define mass culture or the culture of the grass roots. A rich man cannot tell a poor man what to say. If a rich man comes to the poor man's community, he better talk like a poor man or he may be a dead man!

Those who want to criminalize black language are in many cases people who are in the business of criminalizing black people for the benefit of the real criminals, the Masters of the Realm. Not only do you not like the way I talk, but you don't like my dress, my eating habits, my choice of drugs, the way I pray and the loud manner of my worship, how I earn a living--my hair or non-hair--actually, you don't like anything about me, in fact, you wish I were dead, in fact, you do everything you can to kill me, in fact, you have now made a new industry of confining me for life without the possibility of parole. From a writer's perspective, a poet, much of endgame in the psycholinguistic crisis is censorship, pure and simple, a violation of First Amendment rights and human rights. I have a right to say what I want to say the way I want to say it. This is an old tired discussion we encountered thirty years ago in the Black Arts/Black Culture revolution of the 60s: shall we define ourselves or the shall the masters and their pitiful bourgeoisie imps impose their definitions, their hypocritical, perverted moral standards.

If a bitch is bitch call her a bitch. If yo mama is a bitch call her a bitch. If your wife is a bitch call it, your daughters call it. The worse bitch in the world is the bitch in denial. And as I've said, men are known to be bitches too!

There was a time when we were kings and queens, in Africa and during the 60s in America, but this was B.C., before crack. With the coming of crack, we reduced ourselves beyond slavery. We returned to the auction block of the crack house, and indeed, in fact, became bitches and hoes. With crack, the sexual etiquette of North American Africans has been forever altered and whether we will again reach the level of kings and queens depends more on the success of our total liberation than our correct grammatical structure, after all, we see Asians, Arabs, Latinos, come to America and get rich speaking no English, yet we are being deluded by our leaders into believing we must speak the Kings English in order to be successful. This is the bullshit of the culture police, the hypocritical black bourgeoisie, including many socalled radical intellectuals who are puritanical until they are upset, then we hear the depths of their psycholinguistic crisis as well.If nothing else, the rappers have shown us they can make millions for themselves and billions for the white man utilizing three words: bitch, hoe and motherfucker. The tragic reality is that the black bourgeoisie failed to teach inner city youth proper English or anything proper for that matter, so the upper class must reap the rewards of neglect, in the form of their children as well, enraptured by rap and thus incomprehensible to the middle-class parents-- and as my daughter has said, "You might not like rap, but if you want to understand me, you better try to understand rap." To paraphrase Eryka Badu, the psycholinguistic crisis goes on and on......on and on.....
--Marvin X
revised 2/19/10

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