 |  | ||||||||||||
        | |||||||||||||
 | |||||||||||||
| |||||||||||||
Wednesday, December 15, 2010
Journal of Pan African Studies is Online
Wednesday, December 8, 2010
5. Male/female Unity
Toward Unity of the North American Africans 5. Male/female Unity
How shall we procreate the nation without male/female unity? Don't tell me you love the black nation when your lifestyle is diametrically opposed to the procreation of the black nation. You are a fake and a fraud and should be exposed as such, like the white oppressor and killer of the black nation, you are guilty in your hatred of rejecting the black sperm into your womb and giving birth to the black god and goddess.
Unless you truly believe in the yen and yang of life, do not enter this discussion because you are not qualified to be a part of it with your pseudo Afrocentric consciousness derived from the foundation of Eurocentric mythology. Now some of you who have issues beyond academic gender derangement or simple brainwashing, need to reach out to touch a brother and get a healing that will return you to your natural self.
Those of you who have been programmed by white supremacy edumacation, including attendance at a negro college and/or university, thinking you are so damn smart you are stupid to the ultimate degree, perhaps you need to make a visit to Gullahland or some country place where you may observe the natural order of animals so that you know the nature of the rooster and hen.
Would you then make a dog into a cat or hen into a rooster. Can you imagine the sound? A cat sounding like a dog, a hen sounding like a rooster! Give me a break. Take your academic behavior modification and wander into the ocean.
What do your people need and what are you prepared to give, the real deal Holyfield or some illusion of the monkey mind that Guru Bawa taught us. Yes, engage in the one billion one million illusions of the monkey mind and think you are aspiring to higher consciousness while we know you are engaging in the world of make believe Frazier told us about in Black Bourgeoisie just before they dismissed him from Howard University.
So let us go then into male/female unity. Only by going down this road can we continue the race of the race. Anything else is pure poppycock. The yen and yang of life is the perpetuation of life, anything else is a fabrication, a delusion, a fake and fraud.
So male and female must unite. Get beyond the ignut shit. Beyond what mama and daddy told you that was bullshit, because it didn't work for mama and daddy so how could it work for you?
The fundamental question is do you know me? Do you know who I am and who you are? Nothing else matters in the end. For if you don't know me and I don't know you, what is this all about. Kalamu ya Salaam says it is about nothing if we come together and are not transformed, we fucked and thus are still the same. We got a nut and thus are still the same. It wasn't about love it was lust, so it was about nothing, therefore we were not transformed into higher consciousness. We remain on the level of animal, beast, savage, lust, carnal, pussy and dick.
You don't know me and I don't know you. We are strangers in the night! And we got married, said we were united, but it was fake, fraud, a scam. The community was not involved. It was not truly a family affair. It was about lust, pussy and dick in the night.
Let us then rise above the carnal to spiritual consciousness that brings about unity of self and kind, unity of community, unity of family. Only then have we forged a relationship between man and woman that shall be lasting and unconditional.
--Marvin X
12/8/10
Tuesday, December 7, 2010
4. Unity of Black Women
Toward the Unity of North American Africans:
4.Unity of Black Women
The unity of North American African woman goes without question. They are the most powerful force in the black community. While the men languish in self hatred, the woman enjoy the sisterhood to the highest degree. They have achieved the wherewithal to feel secure in every area of life except having that mighty warrior beside them. But they are not dismayed, for they are willing to accept a partner from the sisterhood to comfort them in their lonely moments. If and when the black man gets his act together, sister may be ready to join with him in the love ritual.
Sister has educated herself to the highest degree, has acquired all the material comforts of this society save her man, poor fellow caught in the trap of the devil, so often his woman must carry on without him though she has unconditional love for the brother, if he can only get his act together. She is there waiting with bells on, ready to serve him as the royal king he's known to be, if only he will take authority over his throne and allow her to be the queen she is known to be.
Often she cannot unite with him because he is not in unity with himself, rather, he is an enemy to himself and to her as well, so she cannot unite with him until he gets a grip on himself, though she has unconditional love for him, will go to the depths of the ocean with him, if he will only get a knowledge of himself and recognize that she is the goddess just as he is the god.
She despises a weak nigguh who is too ignut to realize who he is let alone who she is!Brother, get a healing she pleads with him, but often he wants to shut her up with his fist, thus bringing in 911 or the white man who must subdue her man and force him into court mandated anger management so he can try to get a grip on his misplaced anger that he wants to release on her, his lover, friend, partner and wife. Why then does he subject her to his misplaced wrath, why not direct it upon his oppressor, the boss who is pimping his drawers off, if he happens to have a job.
She must sometimes separate from him until he gets a grip on himself. She must often find love and tenderness with her sister who can give her the kindness and gentleness required of the female gender, not the rough, crushing, sledgehammer approach of her superman who wants to misplace his aggression on her instead of the white man, his natural enemy and oppressor, from whom he and his woman must ultimately unite against in a war to the death or life.
Until she can unite with her warrior king, she may wander lost and turned out on the way to grandmother's house.
--Marvin X
See his Mythology of Pussy and Dick, toward Healthy Psychosocial Sexuality, Black Bird Press,
Berkeley, 416 pages, 2010, $49.95.
Unity of North American Africans: 3, Unity of Black Men
Unity of North American Africans 3. Unity of the Black MenAncestor John Douimbia, my mentor who gave me manhood training one on one, said when I agreed to produce the Black Men's Conference in Oakland, 1980, that I was embarking on a most dangerous project that would challenge the deepest recesses of my soul. He begged me to slow down and pace myself since he had tried without success to bring together an organization of black men since the 1950s in the Bay Area. He had presented the concept of a secular organization of black men to many social activists but they ran from it like it was a hot potato. John had been an associate of Malcolm X when they hustled in Harlem. After his release from prison, Malcolm and John D, as we called him, aka The Count, since he dressed immaculately and the only brother who could out dress him was the living legend Willie Brown, an associate of John D's who became a state legislator, speaker of the state house and Mayor of San Francisco--Malcolm and John met together in Los Angeles when Malcolm arrived to organize the mosque for the Honorable Elijah Muhammad. John was doing some organizing on his own when Malcolm arrived, so he invited Malcolm to his meeting, a multi-cultural socialist gathering. When Malcolm saw what John was doing, he begged the Count to help put the mosque together in San Francisco. John was a merchant seaman but he told Malcolm he would see what he could do when he returned from overseas.
John kept his word and attempted to take the San Francisco mosque to a higher level, but the minister and members were not ready to accept the concept of an organization of black men outside the mosque but associated with the mosque. This idea freaked them out and they labeled John a hypocrite. As we know, Malcolm came to the same idea once he departed the Nation of Islam, that black men needed a secular organization where we could all come together regardless of our religious views, that's why he established the Organization of African American Unity, modeled after the OAU or Organization of African Unity.
John D and I planned and organized the Oakland Black Men's Conference in 1980 at the Oakland Auditorium, bringing together a thousand black men. Participants included Dr. Nathan Hare,
Dr. Wade Nobles, Dr. Oba T'Shake, Dr. Lige Daley, Dr. Yusef Bey, Paul Cobb, Dezzie Woods Jones, Betty King, Michael Lange, et al. As a symbol of unite, we had tried to bring Eldridge Cleaver and Huey Newton together, but it didn't happen. The final word we got from Huey was through his brother Melvin who told us Huey said there was too much blood on the path between him and Cleaver. Although he, himself, wanted to reconcile with Cleaver, in respect to the comrades who had lost loved ones in the war between the Huey and Cleaver factions, he could not meet nor reconcile with Eldridge.
In my last meeting with Huey in a West Oakland Crack house, I challenged Huey. "Why can't black men come together, after all, Arabs kill each other but they then embrace in the Mosque."
Huey's reply was, "We ain't A-rabs!"
And so this grand opportunity of black man unity was lost. My meeting was the last time I'd see my friend. He was murdered by a youth a few weeks after our meeting in the Crack house. Even his murder was supreme irony for had he not unified black youth into an army of liberation the likes of which America had never experienced, making the Black Panther Party a threat to the national security of the United States?
And yet, in spite of their negrocities (Amiri Baraka term), the Black Panther Party had unified black men and women into an organization of fearless youth and adults that achieved international recognition as the representatives of the North American African nation. The Nation of Islam had done the same, under Elijah Muhammad and Malcolm X. Malcolm would later say the NOI was the best organization nigguhs ever had, and Eldridge said the same thing about the Black Panther Party. Of course many people blame him for the internal problems, aside from what the FBI and its Cointelpro (Counter Intelligence Program did to destroy all black organizations and to prevent the rise of a black messiah who could unify all factions.
--Marvin X ( El Muhajir)
12/8/10
See Marvin X's Eldridge Cleaver, My Friend the Devil, a memoir, Black Bird Press, Berkeley, 2009.
Academy of da Corner
Academy of da Corner
14th and Broadway
Oakland
14th and Broadway
Oakland
"I could have freed more slaves
if they had known they were slaves."
--Harriet Tubman, Underground Railroad
Toward the Unity of North American Africans: 2. Unity of the Black Mind
Toward Unity of North American Africans
2. Unity of the Black Mind
Unifying the North American African Mind from the ravages, trauma and grief of the addiction to white supremacy is an awesome task, but it is a priority of the highest order. There can be no communal unity until the individual is processed into a New African by subjecting himself/herself to a course of detoxification and recovery. Such a course is outlined in my book How to Recover from the Addiction to White Supremacy, a Pan African 12 /Step Model for a Mental Health Peer Group. The peer group model is obviously communal, although each individual submits himself/herself to the process and must work out their own issues with honesty and truth, transcending denial and other excuses of the monkey mind.
The North American African not only suffer post-traumatic slave syndrome, but the trauma the present war against the North American African people that is ongoing as we speak. Although we cannot transcend the slave trauma, the present trauma is of immediate concern, for we have a population of people, coast to coast, who suffer a low intensity war but war none the less. Because of war in the hood, our children cannot envision a future for themselves except what kind of funeral they want. Not only do we suffer black on black homicide, but homicide under the color of law from racist police who further traumatize our community because they usually receive a slap on the wrist for killing us under the color of law. After the light sentence given to the police officer who killed Oscar Grant, Jr. while he lay on his stomach, members of the community said they were sick in the stomach, suggesting a communal psychosomatic response to the sentencing. Some persons said they were so upset they wanted to burn down America, other said they no longer wanted to be an American, that they hated everything about America.
Such is the trauma that is persistent and perennial, leaving one hopeless and horrified.
The mission of the Pan African Mental Health Peer Group to Recover from the Addiction to White Supremacy is to provide a free speech zone and a sacred space to process our trauma and unresolved grief. Dr. Nathan Hare has been our senior adviser and facilitator. Actually the peer group to recover from white supremacy was his idea which we took to the next level by establishing sessions coast to coast. No mental health expert need be present, similar to the Alcoholic Anonymous meetings. We can gather in homes, churches, street corners, barber shops, beauty shops, Laundromats , bars, poor halls. One need only follow the meeting format as outlined in the manual. The peer group concept allows democratic expression with no one person dominating the meeting.
We must understand that there are not enough certified mental health workers to heal the black mind. Therefore, we must heal ourselves. Most mental health professionals have been certified by Eurocentric institutions, thus their qualifications are suspect at best when attempting to heal the minds suffering from the trauma of European racist oppression. Even the black psychologists are suspect and now recognize their certification from white supremacy institutions invalidates them as healers. The mental health workers are now seeking certification in African holistic institutions because they see the black mind cannot be healed with European psychotherapy.
After all, it was the philosophic foundation of European psychology that caused the destruction of the North American African mind. Was not the breaking in or behavior modification of the African into the Negro an aspect of European psychology, colonial and neo-colonial psychology that persists to the present? Is European psychology prepared to heal the North American African mind from the stunted man/woman to the warrior who will aggressively go about the liberation of their people? Or is such psychology designed to create the weak, efete, passive personality that is not a threat to the oppressive society?
Thus, we must heal ourselves for the doctors are out to lunch and will not return by dinner time!
We have experimented with the peer group model to the extent we know it works if you work it.
As we proceed through the steps, actually 13, not 12, for we have adjusted the traditional 12 Step Model for the North American African sensibility.
We absolutely reject the primary thesis that the addict is an addict for life. This is total nonsense that we shall be addicted to white supremacy for life, no, only so long as we believe in the white supremacy world of make believe. Once we detox and recover by working the 13 Steps, we have seen the New African emerge from the peer group, a personality released from the trauma and unresolved grief of the addiction to white supremacy.
--Marvin X, aka Dr. M, author How to Recovery from the Addiction to White Supremacy, Black Bird Press, Berkeley, 2007, foreword by Dr. Nathan Hare, afterword by Ptah Allah El.
Monday, December 6, 2010
Toward the Unity of North American Africans
Toward the Unity of North American Africans
We must force black unity!
--Elijah Muhammad
This topic has challenged the thinking and actions of our greatest minds and social activists. Our intellectuals have pondered over this topic until their brains were exhausted, depleted, and probably their bodies writhed in pain, after years of work on the subject. Some held on until the end of their lives, giving their all to the matter, others threw in the towel and departed for other causes, other opportunities, and there were those who simply sold out, convinced the cause was lost.
And so we come to the now, a time in the myth of Sisyphus where we are, in a sense, at the top of the mountain and yet at the bottom. Even Sisyphus didn't experience this dilemma, this moment in space and time that defies the law of physics, for how can one be at the top and bottom simultaneously? We're in the White House, yet in the dog house, out house, down and out in Babylon. Clearly we've come a long way but have miles to go before we sleep, miles to go before we sleep--the poet said.
We therefore ask what shall we do at this hour that is such a joy and such a pain, for as soon as we rejoiced over the victory of Obama, the pain of an economic meltdown engulfed the entire world, and of course we were caught in the belly of the beast, robbed and left half dead on the roadside.
Yes, it shall take ineluctable energy to come out of this economic minefield. for sure, if we don't do the right thing, we shall go neither backward nor forward, but we shall remain in stagnation, stuck on stupid.
So we must again don our thinking caps to configure a way out of this conundrum of major proportion. How do we escape the box of Pax Americana, for it is a certainty the American empire is falling, and perhaps the American republic as well. Long ago, Amiri Baraka asked what shall we do when white power falls? For sure, there shall be a power grab by all ethnic groups for their share of the pie as it falls into pieces. What piece of the pie do we want? Other groups shall come with a unified front, but what about us, a divided people, totally lacking a consensus on freedom. Some cling precariously to their American citizenship while slapped in the face at every turn. Others dismiss their American identity for a Pan African fantasy, for what fool would return home after 400 years in the wilderness? But the alienation is so great, the trauma and unresolved grief so severe that there are those of us who would escape from the forest to the jungle, claiming a hut on the Niger is better than suffering in Babylon, for the water of the Mississippi wreaks of blood and bones, and the putrid taste overwhelming. Let us then escape to the Motherland, even if we are called American slaves when we return through the door of no return.
What a complexity we endure, what a schizophrenic act we must perform, an action that awaits a solution, but none shall come until we gain a semblance of our mental equilibrium. Only then can we arrive at a consensus on freedom and the prerequisite unity.
Unity is the key, but we cannot unify while our minds are disparate , while our loyalties are divided between religious and political allegiances , including gender divisions. The post Million Man March Movement is but a precursor of our challenge, for after gathering the men, the post march organization was dead in the water. Apparently the Million Men went back to their sects, cults, fraternities, organizations and groups, splitting the men to winds of chaos and division, in short, to where they were before the march.
We should know now that only a secular non-religious, non-political formation shall bring and keep us in any degree of functional unity. We should understand that we can have no multi-cultural unity until we have forged unity within our group, North American Africans, and this can only come about after we go through the process of detoxification from the addiction to white supremacy in all its vicissitudes. The process begins with recognizing the grand denial some of us pretend, for no problem can be solved until we admit we have a problem, that we are indeed addicted to the American mythology to the degree our lives are unmanageable and we are a danger to ourselves and others. Yes, this is a humbling moment on the road to unity and freedom in the last days of the American empire.
So many of us are arrogant, in the manner of our master, of course, believing that we are exceptional and beyond fault since we have obtained all the manifestations required to live in the world of make believe. Yet there is clear evidence in our behavior that self hatred consumes us at every turn. We are unable to look at another black man and/or woman without feelings of hatred, jealousy, envy and contempt. Even when we have it all (nigger rich), we cannot stand to see another black person with little or nothing. Many of us steeped in Pan Africanism and Afro-centrism, go to Africa but find ourselves eating only American food at restaurants. And our children attend socalled independent black schools yet refuse to clean up after themselves because they say they don't clean at home since they have maids.
No, until we enter a process, some giant or house to house recovery ritual, there shall be no real, functional unity in our community. This addiction has infected all classes of our society, the middle class actually in a mental state more pathological than the bloods in the hood. Yes, the edumaked blacks may need more help, therapy, than the traumatized bloods who are homeless, drug addicted and criminalized.
The edumaked middle class so-called Negro is first a victim of his brainwashing in the white and/or negro universities and colleges. He's more Greek than African. Amiri Baraka says we send them to the white schools/negro too, and they come home hating everything we're about but they don't even know what we're about, don't have a clue, for they are too brainwashed to understand. Classically, he/she is the colonial elite, those privileged to receive the white supremacy edumakation.
Dr. Wade Nobles says while our black boys go to prison, our black girls enter college yet find themselves in a kind of prison as well, for few of them shall find mates, and many shall suffer mental breakdowns trying to absorb the Eurocentric racist mythology called education.
Again, the absolute need for all of us to enter a detoxification and recovery program before we talk about unity as a people, for with our weird, twisted, convoluted thoughts, we are indeed a danger to ourselves and others. And this goes for all classes, from the black bourgeoisie to the grass roots.
--Marvin X
See Marvin X's How to Recover from the Addiction to White Supremacy, a Pan African, 12 Step Model for a Mental Health Peer Group, Black Bird Press, Berkeley, 2007, foreword by Dr. Nathan Hare, afterword by Ptah Allah El, $19.95
Sunday, December 5, 2010
Jobs or Do for Self?
Jobs or Do For Self?
Tonight on 60 Minutes, the Federal Reserve Chairman told us the job situation may not improve until four or five years from now, if then, for surely he does not know, only pontificating in the manner of white supremacy spin doctors. He admitted that although the corporations and banks have been replenished from their pyramid schemes, to the tune of three trillion dollars, including banks around the world, the bankers are hording their wealth, their new found profits and bonuses.
They are making no loans, nor are the corporations hiring. Yes, they are hoarding the wealth. So the Fed Chairman is putting 600 billion more into the economy to entice the robbers to share the wealth. Will they do so? What will make them break down into civility? Mao told us the reactionaries will never put down their butcher knives, they will never turn into Buddha heads!
Not many have proclaimed they will do as Bill Gates and Warren Buffe't have done, agree to share their wealth. Of course, in their contempt for the people, the robber barons cannot conceive of sharing, not until they face the wrath of the people, when the lethargic, passive and pitiful Americans hit the streets in the manner of the Greeks, French, English and Irish, who've
been protesting the resulting austerity measures instituted after the economic meltdown caused by international finance, under the leadership of American capitalists, including the wicked Federal Reserve that is neither Federal nor the reserve of the people, but the bankers bank for the blood suckers of the poor around the world. Did the Federal Reserve bail out the suffering American people? Did they bail out those scammed out of their basic wealth? Do the corporations plan to rehire any of the laid off workers any time soon? No indeed.
And so what shall we do, meantime, stand around with our dicks in our hands and our hearts racing? Your President says he has jobs for terrorists in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan and Yemen, if they lay down their guns and pledge loyalty to one of the American protectorates in the above nations, yet the president nor the congress, Democrats or Republications, can come up with a solution to the job crisis in America, especially for the boyz in the hood, the perennially unemployed, underemployed, uneducated, criminalized and despised; those suffering from traumatic stress from violence in the streets, unresolved grief, disposed to sell dope, murder and pimp to survive, who soon find themselves incarcerated and suddenly a ward of the state wherein they are a commodity worth between fifty and sixty thousand dollars per inmate per year. And guest what, after incarceration, they suddenly find employment at 100%. The correctional officers tell them upon release, "Hurry up and come back. I got a yacht for myself, I need to get one for my son."
Perhaps we can find a solution to our economic conundrum from the program for American veterans coming back from Iraq and Afghanistan. They have a program for vets suffering post traumatic stress syndrome since they realize most of these men and women shall never be able to hold down a normal job. They are training them to be entrepreneurs that will be able to operate their own businesses. I maintain we must use this model for our young men and women in the hood who suffer traumatic stress from war in the hood, call it the war on drugs, the war against the poor, the war against the wretched and despised, but war none the less, a low intensity war that lingers on into the night and into the day.
I hate to sound repetitious and redundant, but the brothers and sisters in the hood can be given micro loans to come up, as people are doing around the world, based on the model established by Muhammad Unis who won the Noble Peace Prize for his effort at helping the poor.
But rather than help the poor, the bourgeoisie has a pattern of taking ideas for the poor and using them to uplift the middle class while the poor languish in poverty, ignorance and disease.
If we are to avoid a coming class war, the black bourgeoisie must decide to be part of the solution rather than part of the problem.
--Marvin X
12/5/10
If you have a comment, send it to me at jmarvinx@yahoo.com. Visit my blogs:
www.blackbirdpressnews.blogspot.com
www.parablesandfablesofmarvinx.blogspot.com
www.mythologyofdickandpussy.blogspot.com
Saturday, December 4, 2010
Economic Growth versus Development
Economic Growth versus Development
In the world of economics, growth is the primary metric. It's all about the numbers, and so we try to reach the sky with growth, quarterly, annually. As long as there is growth, we know we are on solid ground. The assumption is that growth is infinite, for there are infinite possibilities for growth if we search for new lands to exploit the labor, resources and addiction to consumerism or things we have programed people to desire, even beyond their needs.
As we look at the global economic crisis and the slowdown in growth, perhaps it is time to ponder this wanton desire for growth, especially when it propels people to spend beyond their means to satisfy the bloody capitalist swine who perpetuate
Two friends enjoying a moment in time, Marvin X and Fahizah. Above: Cornell West with Nefertiti and Amira, daughters of Marvin X. Man on left is John Douimbia (RIP), Marvin X's mentor, founder of the Black Men's Conference, Oakland, 1980.
the world of make believe, including the addiction to growth as the only barometer of successful economic policy.
But we know a child may grow but not develop, thus perhaps we should consider development as essential to economic policy. How many people were employed with jobs at a living wage in the last quarter? How many had health insurance coverage on the job. Did we reach wage parity with Black and white men, white men and white women? How many claimed they were happy on the job in the last quarter or last year? How many feel secure?
What does it really prove to have increased growth and profits? Well, it's all about profit, right?
It's all about making a profit with the cheapest labor and resources, even if we need to start wars to obtain such, even if we must remain on a permanent war footing to satisfy the bastards in the military/corporate/university complex who earn mega salaries with bonuses while the workers are rapidly slipping into poverty or require two salaried persons in the household to make it.
And because the workers have become addicted to things or conspicuous consumption, their lives suffer underdevelopment while the bosses drive them to increase the growth metric, no matter the development metric, especially the human development, after all, we are not talking of abstractions.
We are entering an era, especially here in the Americas, where Latin American or Indigenous peoples are discarding the blatant free market capitalism of the Europeans. The peoples of the Americas want an alternative to naked exploitation of labor and natural resources. Some rather keep their natural resources in the ground rather than give away for little or nothing. Bolivia is considering such with its new found lithium deposits that is needed for batteries and electronic devices. Other nations rather keep their oil in the ground, after all, it is exploited yet the people remain in poverty, ignorance and disease.
And so we are at the precipice of a new economic order. Progressive minded people are urgently seeking alternatives to solve the present global crisis brought about from pure greed and arrogance by the white supremacy bandits.
Is more better or less? Having more is no guarantee of happiness. In the US, workers have two and three cars, closets full of shoes and clothes, yet mates are estranged, suffering physical, verbal and emotional abuse, and of course many chose to remain prisoners of love because they enjoy the golden handcuffs of material security, neglecting to consider their spiritual security.
And so we suffer psychosomatic diseases from stress, cancer, stroke and heart attack, only then do people realize things are an illusion of the monkey mind. They are horrified when they see the poor people pushing shopping carts down the street, yet expressing happiness and joy, yes, while drinking their rot gut wine, but the couple is passionate with each other, laughing and joking as if they were in a palace.
Some economists, Robert Reich, for example, say we have reached the limit of growth, that the only thing possible now in order to have peace in the world is for the rich to share the wealth, yes, return some of the ill gotten gain to the wretched of the earth. Bill Gates and Warren Buffet are the example of what must be done. They have given back or plan to give billions back to the people. They are encouraging other rich persons to do the same. Perhaps these men understand it is not about growth but development and the transformation of the human spirit beyond the material. Call it joy and happiness!
--Marvin X
12/4/10
Mentors Meet at Marriott
Mentors Meet at Oakland Marriott
Last night black mentors gathered at the Marriott in Oakland, under the leadership of Susan Tayor, formerly of Essence Magazine. Ms Taylor said she got a vision for her mentoring project after reading stories of black trauma and grief in her magazine. Finally she got enough, finding her work with Essence totally exhausting. Welcome to the real world, Susan Taylor. I shared her exhaustion this week at my mentoring project, Academy of da Corner, 14th and Broadway, downtown Oakland. I was promoting the release of my latest book, Notes on the Wisdom of Action or How to Jump Out of the Box, when a student/teacher arrived, and after seeing my new title, said he wanted me to hurry up and get all the nigguhs out the box so he could get in. Yes, the more we try to get up the mountain in the Sisyphusian tradition, the more we must descend the mountain with the rock in hand, only to begin again. Well, Susan declared we may be on the rough side of the mountain but we can get to the other side. It is not as difficult as it appears. After all, she noted, we are not on the slave ships, in the cotton fields, tarred and lynched for being uppity, hands chopped off for trying to read.
So her mission, in the words of ancestor Marvin Gaye, is to save the children. I had the same mission in mind until I was corrected at a book reading in Philly. As I concluded my reading, the great revolutionary Muhammad Ahmed (Max Stanford), came forward to tell me, "Marvin, we must not only save the children but the adults as well. We gotta save everybody."
And so my focus at Academy of da Corner is children and adults. I talk with weary mothers and fathers as well as discarded, homeless, rejected and despised children. Sometimes I talk with both, giving them advice and direction. Yes, many of the children who pass my Academy are in foster care, and many adults are in recovery, so they all need attention, a kind word, advice on how to handle a critical situation. Even professionals come by asking how to handle a job related issue before they go postal. Of course, a persistent problem is male/female relations. Youth and adults can be heard passing by or standing on the corner talking on the cell phone to a mate or to a friend about a mate they are ready to kill for some sexual or other impropriety. See my book for healing male/female relations The Mythology of Pussy and Dick, toward Healthy Psychosocial Sexuality, Black Bird Press, Berkeley, 416 pages, $49.95. You can obtain it at the Academy of da Corner, 14th and Broadway.
Academy of da Corner is a free speech zone, a sacred space for children, youth and adults suffering stress, trauma and unresolved grief. Sometimes when I am exhausted hearing their problems, I must persist because they look me in the eyes with a look that says simply listen to me for a moment, let me vent, please brother! A brother came up to me the other day and said the following, "Fuck the peckerwood, fuck the peckerwood, fuck the peckerwood." Then went on down the street.
Thus we must congratulate Susan Taylor and her brain trust of of educators, intellectuals and spiritual workers. As I write, they are in retreat in Monterrey , training a new group for mentoring. The leaders included Michael Eric Dyson, Dr. Wade Nobles, Joyce E. King, Rev. Andriette Earl, Asha Bandele, Dr. Na'im Akbar, George Fraser, Arnold Perkins, Louis Gossett, Jr., et al. Congresswoman Barbara Lee was honored for helping fund the project called CARES Mentoring Movement, subtitle: Healing What's Hurting Black America.
I shall continue mentoring at Academy of da Corner, since I am comfortable there. I have freedom of speech, although this week my life was threatened because of my mouth. My primary work is my writing so I am not going to stray too far from that. The Academy of da Corner gives me a chance to leave the world of my imagination to encounter reality up close and personal.
Persons interested in mentoring should contact Oakland CARES, otherwise you can come downtown and give me a hand with your children and friends. I've written a manual How to Recover from the Addiction to White Supremacy, a Pan African 12-Step Model to assist your own recovery so we can work with our people. Dr. Nathan Hare wrote the foreword, Ptah Allah El wrote the afterword. Peace!
--Marvin X
12/4/10
Marvin X ,Eight Books in 2010
Black Bird Press Books
Marvin X Writes Eight Books in 2010
The Wisdom of Plato Negro, Parables/fables, Volume I
If you want to learn about inspiration and motivation, don't spend all that money going to workshops and seminars, just go stand at 14th and Broadway and watch Marvin X at work. He's Plato teaching on the streets of Oakland.--Ishmael Reed
Hustler’s Guide to the Game Called Life, (Wisdom of Plato Negro, Volume II)
The Mythology of Love, toward Healthy Psychosocial Sexuality, 416 pages.
This book is the most wanted title in the Marvin X collection. Youth in the hood fight over it and steal it from each other. Girls say it empowers them, and the boys say it helps them step up their game. Mothers and fathers are demanding their sons and daughters read this. Paradise Jah Love says they fight over it as if it's black gold!
I Am Oscar Grant, essays on Oakland, $19.95. Critical essays on the travesty of American justice in the cold blooded murder of Oscar Grant by a beast in blue uniform.
Pull Yo Pants Up fada Black Prez and Yoself, essays on Obama Drama, $19.95.
Marvin X is on the mark again with his accurate observation of the Obama era. The black community was so excited with Obama being the first Black Prez that they forgot he was a politician-not a messiah. Marvin X brings the community back to the reality of what Obama stands for-at the moment! He has not given up on Da Prez, he simply wants people to see what he stands for and what he still has an opportunity to do for our communities. Make sure you put Pull Yo Pants Up Fada Black Prez & Yo Self on your to-buy list It will be the best book you will read in 2010!--Carolyn Mixon
Poetry Issue, Journal of Pan African Studies, Guess Editor, Marvin X, 480 pages
In honor of the Journal of Black Poetry, Marvin X collects poetry from throughout the Pan African world. This massive issue is a classic of radical Pan African literature in the 21st century. Amiri Baraka says, "He has always been in the forefront of Pan African writing. Indeed, he is one of the innovators and founders of the new revolutionary school of African writing."
Notes on the Wisdom of Action or How to Jump Out of the Box
In this collection he calls upon the people to become proactive rather than reactionary, to initiate the movement out the box of oppression by any means necessary, although Marvin X believes in the power of spiritual consciousness to create infinite possibilities toward liberation.
Soulful Musings on Unity of North American Africans, 150 pages
Available from Black Bird Press, 1222 Dwight Way, Berkeley CA 94702. jmarvinx@yahoo.com. www.blackbirdpressnews.blogspot.com
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
-
His Black Consciousness Program Rocked the Bay Area like no other black panthers black arts black studies kwanza Khalid Ab...